The New WASPs

From National Review:

The commitment to philanthropy here is in fact remarkable. It isn’t just billionaires giving away a few millions they won’t miss — although, let’s not sneer at those mere millions, either — but an entire civic culture built around the assumption that successful people will invest both money and time in doing good on a large scale. That philanthropy is shaped by the tech industry’s expectations of high return on investment, and the business of measuring philanthropic effectiveness has taken off as a field of enterprise in itself. Of course there are carping critics, the antediluvian types at the New York Times who insist that these billionaire captains of industry should be fighting for the politically managed redistribution of wealth rather than working to make private philanthropy more effective — and that completely misses the point. There are not in fact very many self-professed libertarians out here, but the reflexive belief that government should be, or is going to be, the primary actor running the show when it comes to building a better world simply isn’t an operating assumption among the famous founders and venture capitalists who shape the culture of Silicon Valley.

The dichotomy is stunning.