The recent announcement that Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder, and his wife Priscilla Chan would be “giving away” their fortune to charity has become the subject of some controversy. It turns out that the new charitable entity that Zuckerberg and Chan have set up is actually a for-profit company and several critics have said that what is really happening is that this rich couple is just trying to evade taxes and then be able to decide which charitable causes to support. For me the controversy is actually deeper than about one couple deciding what to do with their vast fortune. What we should really be asking is why do we need philanthropy in the first place?

It is true that there are charitable organizations, backed by wealthy people, doing important work all around the world. But should this work, whether it be fighting HIV or providing education for impoverished people, be decided upon by a rich individuals? Providing education, health, education and infrastructure should be undertaken by society as a whole, and in practice this means by government. What are we going to do if the Gates Foundation, for example, decides that it doesn’t want to engage in a certain project? Will the work be left undone?

One of the main reasons why we currently depend on philanthropy is because we have a social and economic system which allows individuals to amass as much wealth as they can grab while others are pushed into a state of poverty. Individuals become rich but society remains deprived. The private sector remains unregulated while the public sector goes to hell. This is what is happening in the U.S. as well as abroad.

The charitable foundations wouldn’t have to help the “poor people” of Africa and the developing world if the developed countries had not colonized vast parts of the world. There would also be no need for charitable giving in these former colonies if the new countries had been allowed to gain economic independence along with their nominal political freedom.

The way to solve social woes is not to beg for or hope for the mercy of wealthy people. Rather, society should place limits on wealth accumulation in the first place, through strict taxation, so that some individual doesn’t end up with $45 billion and then have to “decide” what to do with it. When the greed of a few is checked, then there will be ample revenue available to accomplish the social work that is currently being done by various foundations in the U.S. and around the world. The proponents of the status-quo howl when such proposals are made because they say that it is because of their ingenuity and skill that wealth is created. In effect they argue, let us make the money and then we will be good guys and give it back to society. How long are we going to allow this to continue?