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What Are Foundations For? - Boston Review

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Get our latest essays, archival selections, reading lists, and exclusive content delivered straight to your inbox. Image: Flickr The modern foundation is an institutional oddity in a democracy. A democratic society is committed to the equality of citizens, but foundations are the voice of plutocracy. Foundations represent an important form of voluntary choice. The public does not seem to care what billionaires give their money to. In education three huge foundations line up behind the same agenda. Judge Richard Posner, one of the foremost American jurists outside the Supreme Court, once observed, “A perpetual charitable foundation . . . is a completely irresponsible institution, answerable to nobody. It competes neither in capital markets nor in product markets . . . and, unlike a hereditary monarch whom such a foundation otherwise resembles, it is subject to no political controls either.” Why, he wondered, don’t we think of these foundations as “total scandals”? If foundations are tot

What Are Foundations For? - Boston Review Skip to Main Content Read the Responses May 28, 2013 Judge Richard Posner, one of the foremost American jurists outside the Supreme Court, once observed, "A perpetual charitable foundation . . . is a completely irresponsible institution, answerable to nobody. It competes neither in capital markets nor in product markets . . . and, unlike a hereditary monarch whom such a foundation otherwise resembles, it is subject to no political controls either." Why, he wondered, don't we think of these foundations as "total scandals"? If foundations are total scand

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