Here’s exactly how Elon Musk should give away his fortune.
If the world’s richest person asked you for guidance on how to give away his money, what advice would you give?
That’s what Elon Musk did earlier this month. Musk heads up the electric car company Tesla and the aerospace company SpaceX. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, when the market opened on January 7, Musk took down Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon from the top spot to become the wealthiest person in the world. Musk’s accumulation of wealth over the last year has been driven by a remarkable run in Tesla stock, of which Musk owns 20 percent. The stock price of the automaker grew by more than 700 percent in 2020, fuelling a $142 billion increase in Musk’s personal net worth — a level of growth that’s unmatched by any other billionaire monitored on the index. He is worth over $200 billion.
Not long after the news broke however, Musk asked for guidance on “ways to donate money that make a real difference,” also welcoming “critical feedback,” and mentioning that “it’s way harder than it seems.” His tweet amassed 250,000 likes — rivalling tweets from President Biden’s inauguration speech. It’s not everyday that the world’s wealthiest person asks for critical feedback on giving. So, I thought, let me weigh in.
Musk did sign the Giving Pledge way back in 2012, which is a decent start, promising to give away about half his wealth during his lifetime. Musk is a big bet, go big or go home type of a person. He has a knack for finding societal problems where there aren’t many people involved and creating massive value. He did this with PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX. He has also done this with his side ventures like The Boring Company, Open AI, and Neuralink. His ventures are massively disrupting industries like energy, telecommunications, automotive, aerospace, transportation, and health. He could easily bring this big bet philosophy into his personal giving and philanthropic plans. Approaches such as The Case for Strong Longtermism and Effective Altruism argue that if you want to maximize your chance of having a big positive impact, you should work on an issue that’s large in scale, solvable and neglected. In many ways, this is what Musk has done in business.
If you want to maximize your chance of having a big positive impact, you should work on an issue that’s large in scale, solvable and neglected.
So, assuming he uses a similar philosophy, here are a few ideas from me for Musk to chew on (luckily, these are also vetted and listed by the University of Oxford’s Global Priorities Institute).
First, bridge the digital disparity around the world to bring broadband internet to everyone as it is now life critical. Second, address the collective societal level mental health crisis that has been exacerbated with the coronavirus pandemic. And third, make artificial intelligence-based services and devices safe for everybody. These are areas largely neglected and untouched by philanthropy — in Canada and around the world.
Musk asked for critical feedback, though, so here we go.
Let’s start with this: not every philanthropic organization does good well. Many do good badly. There are a number of reasons for this, from the scattered use of evidence and foresight, to lack of public accountability, to entrenched colonial mindsets and lack of sharing decision-making power. Musk, I believe that you’re capable of selecting problems, but let’s talk about the mindset you should bring to your philanthropic plans. In my experience, one of the biggest blind spots for anyone looking to tackle big problems facing humanity has to do with recognizing and understanding the complexity of the problem itself — its origins, its interconnectedness to other problems, how it evolves, patterns it creates, its actors, how it shapes and reshapes human behaviours, its multiple and cascading causes and effects, and more. The problems we’re talking about, the problems that will make or break humanity in the next decade, don’t have single or simple solutions, nor do they have linear KPIs, nor do they exist in silos, nor can they be solved by any one sector or actor or venture. They are not complicated problems either, like manufacturing an electric car. My advice is to bring part of your Tesla thinking and leave part of your Tesla thinking at home. The part you should leave at home is the notion that bridging the digital divide is like building an electric car, that its a complicated problem — it’s not. The part you should bring, however, is how you pushed incumbents in the automotive industry to change their practices, cultures, and product lines, slowly tipping the fossil fuel automotive system. For instance, I couldn’t believe it when I heard that GM, which was founded in 1908, recently announced its corporate commitment to “putting every driver in an electric vehicle on a scale previously unseen and bringing the world to an all-electric future.” Incumbents can change, and this is a case in point.
Still, incumbents try to hold back change in any industry, and you caught a glimpse of it in the automotive world. Philanthropy is no different. There is no shortage of problems in this world, but there are problems with the way we solve problems. So, bring your automotive incumbent-tipping prowess to philanthropy. Here are a handful of questions to ask yourself as you set up your entity: Who has decision making power over where capital flows? Where in your processes might you share decision making? How might you stay current, and learn and unlearn as fast as the world is changing? How might you combine big data and artificial intelligence with human foresight to identify which problems, solutions, and risks are linked? How might you create space for grantees or investees to tell you about their impact, in their own words, with their own knowledge systems, to shape your thinking? How might you declare your public accountability even though there is no legal obligation to do so? How might you drop arduous application and reporting requirements? How might you decolonize yourself in your approach to giving, granting and investing? How might you trust your grantees and investees, and build trust with them as equals?
There is no shortage of problems in this world, but there are problems with the way we solve problems.
Change is damn hard in any industry, and business as usual in philanthropy will not get humanity and the planet thriving fast enough. This month, Musk begins his tenure as the wealthiest person on the planet. These questions should get Musk on his way to imagining and creating not just a new philanthropic plan but a new type of philanthropic plan, that is, frankly, rare today.
Vinod Rajasekaran
Publisher & CEO
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