Philanthropy, he insists, is not an adequate counterbalance to inequality, and can act as a “fig leaf”. “I also don’t believe in this idea that the rich will save us,” he says. “I think we need to reclaim our democracy; arguably we live in a plutocracy”. Like philanthropy, taxation, too, is another fig leaf to foster the idea that private ownership is sacred and capitalists have accumulated wealth legitimately, and that the rich, or at least some of them, think of the nation and give their share. The reclusive rich
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51