Listen (15 min): MacKenzie Scott is giving away her fortune. The next step is doing away with Big Philanthropy all together.

While MacKenzie Scott’s philanthropic approach of “no-strings-attached giving” is a step in the right direction, it’s still part of the much larger problem of Big Philanthropy — the fact that billionaires play such an outsized role in the development of our cultural and political life. This has to change. People need an equal voice in their politics and need to be free to direct their own cultural life. To do this, we’ll need “community-supported culture.” This article gives a number of concrete suggestions for how we can get there.

This is a recording of an article from April 28th, 2023. You can find the written version of the article here.

Yes, writers have to eat, but paywalls just punish low-income people. And why shouldn’t they have access to the knowledge they want?