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Chapter 7 examines two cases of how billionaires use philanthropy to promote social change in foreign countries. Through the massive funding of research and public–private partnerships, Bill Gates, via the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has advanced international vaccination programs to fight communicable diseases. His influence on agenda-setting and policy implementation in the governance of global health can be seen in the World Health Organization’s declaration of a “Decade of Vaccines.” The second case is George Soros, whose attempts to build open societies as a “stateless statesman” are extremely wide-ranging. The chapter focuses on his efforts to promote human rights and democracy, putting the spotlight on his role in regime change during the so-called “Rose Revolution” in Georgia (2002–4).

This chapter examines the newslore that has attached itself to the person of software mogul Bill Gates and the response to business and government warnings of economic upheaval in the event of computer failures on January 1, 2000, the so-called Y2K problem. It provides some examples of jokes about Gates and the Millennium Bug. This chapter also suggests that the Y2K story connects to urban legends about harmful technology when it cites those who see the millennium bug as a punishment for our overdependence on technology.

This chapter traces a rhetorical history of the male computer geeks, engineers, and other high-tech types who came to epitomize autism in the late 1990s. It employs rhetorical analysis of key texts, including Simon Baron-Cohen's book The Essential Difference, a Wired magazine article titled “Silicon Valley Syndrome,” and a series of articles diagnosing Silicon Valley titans such as Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates as autistic by drawing on topoi of technology, geekdom, and cognitive capitalism, or the “knowledge economy.” As presented, gendered characters help make a cultural phenomenon seem livelier and more immediate to readers, often in ways that stereotype people—in this case, autistic people—in order to make a larger rhetorical point.

This chapter unpacks the contemporary efforts of private foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to use the Global South as a laboratory ready for experiments, whether in the form of radically changing social norms or testing new technologies. With Silicon Valley as their ideological epicentre, and spurred on by the immense wealth creation of the past decades, a new group of American philanthropists and private foundations has emerged to take centre stage in the experimental movement. These hyper actors have enormous expectations about their ability to change the world, driving what they see as a global social revolution through technological innovation and experimentation. Steering this train of thought and action today is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. An immense political and economic force, investing billions of dollars in medical and social research and experimentation, the foundation is currently at full throttle towards shaping the lives of poor people and poor nations. By experimenting with the development of new toilets, vaccines, or social norm change throughout the Global South it furthers a view of this part of the world as a form of live laboratory in which the failure of technical and social experiments and interventions is necessary for social progress. From the outset of the Gates Foundation, the chapter explores the role of private foundations in shaping and pushing the experimental movement forwards in the Global South.

From Cornelius Vanderbilt to Henry Ford and all the way to Bill Gates, America's history since her independence is replete with astonishing entrepreneurs who changed not only U.S. society but the entire world in profound and irreversible ways. The chapter highlights some of history’s most noteworthy American entrepreneurs, some of whom, like the slave turned inventor-entrepreneur Andrew Beard, are not well-known by the modern business reader. In this manner, the chapter illustrates how, to a great extent, America been molded by entrepreneurship and its attendant marvels and perils.

Does extensive private philanthropy by the super-rich undermine the democratic processes of state and civil society? In our chapter, we review the history of the relationship between philanthropy, state, and civil society to explore how philanthropists came to be regarded as legitimate providers of public services. We reflect on the implications this shift may have for the practice of democracy. We contend that the modern era has seen philanthropy shift from its contributory role, in which new forms of public goods can be absorbed by the state, toward a more disruptive role, in which philanthropy-backed provisions are alternatives or competitors to those provided by the state. This shift is a product of marked changes in the institutional environment surrounding philanthropy. Among these changes is diminished faith in state bureaucracy to address public needs and expanded faith in entrepreneurialism and markets to solve problems. Thus, the current environment both legitimizes and enables a particular form of philanthropy, which we refer to as disruptive philanthropy. By shaping public conversation about social issues, setting public agendas, and providing public goods in the absence of popular deliberation, disruptive philanthropy runs the risk of eroding democracy.

The case of the WHO reveals the largest discrepancy between key formal rules governing budgeting procedures and the reality of budgeting dynamics and administration. The highly regionalized and fragmented structure of the WHO results in a budget process that is much more complex in practice than formal rules suggest. To accommodate strong regional interests and regionally organized principals, while at the same time managing budget constraints, the WHO budget process combines bottom-up, top-down, and horizontal administrative and political coordination. Due to the increasing importance of earmarked voluntary contributions for the financing of the WHO to approximately 80 percent of its budget, including very substantive financial support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation of around a quarter of its budget, new administrative structures and procedures have been introduced. For example, the Financing Dialogue has become a new element of budgeting in international organizations that attempts to regain control over an ever-more segmented budgetary landscape.

This chapter discusses the role private philanthropic foundations should play in democratic societies. Though endowments of sort or another have existed for centuries, the modern grant-making foundation -- in which private assets are set aside in a permanent, donor-directed, tax advantaged endowment with a fraction of the assets annually to be distributed for a public purpose – is a recent invention. Philanthropic foundations in this form are institutional oddities, plutocratic voices in a democratic society. Despite many anti-democratic features, I argue that the foundation is not incompatible with democracy, so long as it functions in support of what I call pluralism and discovery.

This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume which is about the so-called newslore or the folklore on the Internet. Newslore are folklore that comments on, and is therefore indecipherable without knowledge of, current events. It can take various forms including parodies of songs, mock news stories and urban legends. This volume analyzes several newslore which include those about Hillary Clinton, the September 11 terrorist attack, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Bill Gates, and Hurricane Katrina.

This chapter tracks how the rise of personal computers and electronic media led to the creation of the Internet and World Wide Web. The opener features the two Steves (Jobs and Wozniak) and the advent of the Apple II and even more influential Macintosh, even as the IBM PC and its clones dominated the personal computer market. Widespread adoption of the Internet opened the door to e-tailing in which Amazon has emerged as the ultimate engine of consumerism. Curiously, Jeff Bezos has modeled his retailing empire on the empire he threatens—Wal-Mart. From Sam Walton he adopted the idea of low prices, satisfying customer experiences, and technological innovation.

Since 1990, development assistance for health has increased approximately 500 per cent. This incredible growth is one concrete manifestation of governments’ recognition of the importance of global health within international politics. It is all the more incredible because it has continued even in times of economic recession and a generalized decrease in foreign assistance by donor states. The increase in funding for global health also demonstrates the changes in the composition of significant actors within international society. No longer solely the province of state governments, global health funding increasingly comes from non-governmental organizations, philanthropic organizations, public–private actors, and even private corporations. The funding priorities also illustrate how international society has conceptualized global health. This chapter examines the changes within global health funding over the past generation and describes the successes and shortcomings of the current funding strategies.