I spend more time than I like to admit daydreaming about winning a lottery. I’m picky – my fantasies are not about winning a house or a car or even $10 million. I’m interested in the very big pot of gold; a lottery win with many, many zeros after the first couple of digits.
I’m not going to lie: as I imagine life with unlimited money, I first think about the things I would want to buy and do to make my life and the lives of those I care about more pleasant and interesting. There’s a lot of travel in my fantasy future, if I can square it with the truth that we should not be flying around the planet willy nilly. I’d like to own houses or apartments in more than one place. I’d have a really great car and would hire a professional driver. I’d go to a lot of concerts and have frequent massages. I’d get myself a personal assistant to do all the tasks associated with being a rich person. I’d eat at my favourite restaurant — Stella’s in Prince Edward County – as often as I wanted.
Now that I’ve admitted to my self-indulgent tendencies, I want to reassure you that my fantasies give more than a passing nod to the social responsibility that goes with having a lot of money, and I also spend a lot of time contemplating how I could spread that money around for the greater good.
Giving it all away
While my fantasies about using my unearned wealth to make the world a better place generally imagined a system – say a foundation – in which I would be the decision-maker about who got what, Engelhorn took a very different approach.
She created the “Good Council for Redistribution,” made up of 50 Austrians selected by lottery. Those people met for several weekends – all expenses paid and with an honorarium of about $1,800 per weekend for their time and efforts – to develop proposals for how inequality in Austria should be addressed and to distribute Engelhorn’s money.
It was a daring and creative approach; one that showed Engelhorn’s deep commitment to a process as democratic as she could imagine. She would have no say in the work of the Council; in fact, other than appearing briefly at the first meeting, she was not present at future meetings and did not get reports on how the work was progressing. As the letter she sent to the first round of those selected randomly to be in the lottery said, she wanted the Council to make its decisions “freely and without influence.”
Tax me now
Engelhorn inherited her wealth from the fortune made in the pharmaceutical industry by her family, and she stands to inherit more money in the years to come, so if her redistribution of wealth system proves to work well, it could have a long-term impact. Because she’s not the only person wealthy by virtue of inheritance who wants to spread their good fortune around, what she does is being closely watched by others.
There’s no doubt she’s a better person than I am. First, she’s not carving off a chunk of money upfront for herself, as I always do with my imaginary wealth. She plans to work and is holding back only enough money for her living costs until she finds a job.
Second, the system she has set up minimizes her control over how the money is distributed; something I’m not sure I could do. I would want the pleasure of thinking about what and who I want to benefit from my generosity.
For Engelhorn, the process may have been as important as the outcome. She created a few rules – for instance, the money couldn’t go to for-profit entities or groups with hostile or inhumane activities – and she provided experts and facilitators to guide the work of the Council, but for the most part the randomly selected 50 members were free to make whatever decisions they wanted to.
How did it work?
By the end of the sixth weekend, the Council, which had divided itself into themed working groups to discuss how to distribute the money, had made its decisions. Money would be spread across a wide range of good causes: wilderness preservation, sports and music programs for children, counselling services, a newspaper run by unhoused people and more than 70 other organizations the Council felt did important work that was generally insufficiently funded.
For Engelhorn, her experiment was a success in at least two ways. She rid herself of money she didn’t feel was really hers to begin with by giving it to worthy projects — as she said, “Shouldn’t the goal be to not be so rich anymore?” — while also creating a space for a randomly selected group of people to figure out how to work together in a democratic way.
I have to admit to feeling a bit let down when I read the list of the Council’s decisions. While all the recipients are no doubt doing important work that needs more financial support, none of them seemed outside the mainstream; none could not have existed but for this money; none challenged the structural causes of inequity.
But then I reminded myself that Engelhorn had taken her significant inheritance and let 50 strangers decide what to do with it, which itself is a remarkable achievement.