Dolly Parton Or Elon Musk — Who Is The True Humanitarian?

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I used to be pondering the opposite day about how the tech bros — Musk, Thiel, Andreesen, Huang, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Altman, and so many others — are excellent at buying wealth however very poor at sharing it. These acquisitive sorts revel of their riches, as if cash by some means makes them superior to mere mortals.

Farewell, Dolly

Dolly Parton died on August 25, 2026. She was the fourth of twelve kids born to an illiterate sharecropper who lived in a house in Tennessee with out electrical energy or operating water. She went on to change into probably the most acknowledged feminine singers and songwriters in America. Her music introduced her fame and fortune, however she by no means forgot her roots. “Discover out who you’re and do it on goal. And do it with goal,” she preferred to say. “Don’t ever sacrifice who you’re, your ideas and your morals and your values to simply attempt to get forward in enterprise. It ain’t price it.”

In 1980 she started her movie profession by starring with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin in 9 to five, a comedy with a subtext about discrimination towards ladies. Within the movie, three working ladies exchange their sexist, domineering boss and implement applications their colleagues like, together with equal pay, versatile hours, and an on-site daycare middle, all of which lead to dramatically improved workplace productiveness. Parton wrote the theme track for that film.

At 9:25 pm on August 25, the highest of the Empire State Constructing in New York Metropolis lit up pink, as did the antennas of prime of Chicago’s Willis Tower. So did the Ferris wheel on the Santa Monica Pier, which additionally sported an enormous pink coronary heart. The Hoan Bridge in Milwaukee; Reunion Tower, and different buildings within the Dallas skyline; and the Longfellow, Burns, Fore River, Braga, and Zakim bridges of Boston; Caesar’s Superdome in New Orleans; and, after all, Nashville’s KVB Bridge and historic Metro Courthouse had been all lit up in pink final night time. The Arthur Ashe Stadium performed Jolene in the course of the U.S. Open. In London, the Buckingham Palace band performed 9 to five.

Her profession introduced her nice wealth, which she used to raised the lives of these round her, particularly the kids of Sevier County, Tennessee, the place she was born. In 1990, her “buddy” program decreased the highschool dropout price in courses that participated from 35 to six p.c. In 2016, her Dollywood Basis created the My Folks Fund, which offered rapid monetary help to households who had misplaced their houses in wildfires in Sevier County that November. It donated greater than $12 million.

In 2020, Parton donated $1 million to Vanderbilt College Medical Heart to fund the analysis that show mRNA vaccine know-how labored. That analysis led to grants that enabled growth of the Moderna mRNA vaccine towards COVID-19 that saved hundreds of thousands of lives. She additionally helped encourage others to get vaccinated, taking her personal shot on digicam in a gown she had reduce the shoulders out of so the physician would have simpler entry.

Starting in February 2022, below the Develop U program, Parton offered free tuition, charges, and books to the 11,000 staff at any of the 25 amusement parks and points of interest related to Dollywood. The president of Dollywood stated Parton is “very supportive of the staff studying and persevering with to develop themselves.”

That drive for development and alternative was behind Dolly Parton’s Creativeness Library, which she based in 1995 to place books into the arms of each younger little one in Sevier County. Her inspiration, she stated, was her father, who was “the neatest man I’ve ever identified however I do know in my coronary heart his incapability to learn most likely saved him from fulfilling all his desires.” This system has grown till it now serves kids throughout the USA, Australia, Canada, Eire, and the UK.

In February 2018, Parton donated the 100 millionth guide from her Creativeness Library to the Library of Congress. It was a duplicate of her guide Coat of Many Colours, devoted to her father. By the point Parton died, her Creativeness Library had delivered greater than 332 million books to kids all over the world.

“After I was rising up within the hills of East Tennessee, I knew my desires would come true,” the Creativeness Library web site reads. “I do know there are kids in your group with their very own desires. They dream of changing into a physician or an inventor or a minister. Who is aware of, possibly there’s a little woman whose dream is to be a author and singer. The seeds of those desires are sometimes present in books and the seeds you assist plant in your group can develop the world over.”

Elon Musk

Dolly Parton and Elon Musk are poles aside. In accordance with a report in 2024 for the New York Occasions by David Fahrenthold and Ryan Mac, the Musk Basis was created with a tax-deductible contribution of $7 billion, making it one of many largest within the US — giant sufficient to make a world impression, they wrote.

“However in contrast to Invoice Gates, who has deployed his fortune in an effort to enhance well being care throughout Africa, or Walmart’s Walton household, which has spurred change within the American schooling system, Musk’s philanthropy has been haphazard and largely self-serving — making him eligible for big tax breaks and serving to his companies,” they reported. The donation to the Musk Basis saved Elon $2 billion in federal taxes. Federal regulation requires that such foundations distribute no less than 5 p.c of its property annually with a view to keep its tax-exempt standing. The Musk Basis has failed to take action on a number of events.

In accordance with the inspiration’s tax filings, Musk has not employed any employees to run the operation. Its billions are dealt with by a board that consists of Elon and two volunteers, one in all whom stories placing in so little time that it averages out to simply six minutes every week. In 2022, the final 12 months for which data can be found, they gave away $160 million — $234 million lower than the regulation required.

Musk is below no obligation to have a charity, after all, and has made it clear he believes his for-profit enterprises will change the world for the higher way over any philanthropic enterprise might. However as soon as he arrange a nonprofit and stuffed it with tax-deductible presents, he was required by regulation to make sure that his basis served the general public, and that it didn’t function for the “personal profit” of its chief.

The New York Occasions article claimed that about half of the donations the inspiration did make had some hyperlink to Musk, one in all his staff, or one in all his companies. In different phrases, he’s getting a charitable deduction from the individuals of America for looking for his personal self curiosity.

The Musk Basis gave $5 million to a United Nations program referred to as Giga that helps rural nations connect with the web. It seems that two of these international locations — Rwanda and Kazakhstan — subsequently grew to become prospects of Starlink, the satellite tv for pc service that could be a subsidiary of SpaceX, which is managed Musk.

Among the many donations the Musk Basis has made, $55 million need to assist a significant SpaceX buyer meet a charitable pledge. Thousands and thousands extra went to Cameron County, Texas, after a rocket blew up and scattered particles throughout the county. There have been donations to 2 colleges carefully tied to Musk’s companies — one walled off inside a SpaceX compound and the opposite situated subsequent to a brand new subdivision for Musk’s staff.

“The actually putting factor about Musk is the disjuncture between his outsized public persona, and his very, very minimal philanthropic presence,” stated Benjamin Soskis, who research philanthropy on the City Institute. The place different billionaires have aimed for a broad impression on society, he stated Musk’s basis lacks “any path or any actual focus, outdoors his enterprise ventures.” And but it’s tax exempt.

Not solely that, Musk excoriates individuals like Mackenzie Scott, the previous partner of Jeff Bezos, who has shocked the philanthropic group by giving freely billions since she divorced her philandering husband. This 12 months, Musk agreed with a put up on X, his privately owned social cesspool, that claimed Scott’s largess was making the world worse off.

In accordance with Forbes, after he secured his $1 trillion pay package deal from Tesla in late 2025, he stated philanthropy is tough. “I agree with love of humanity, and I feel we must always attempt to do issues that assist our fellow human beings,” he instructed Nikhil Kamath for the WTF podcast in an episode revealed in December 2025. “But it surely’s very exhausting. The largest problem I discover with my basis is attempting to provide cash away in a manner that’s really useful to individuals, It’s very straightforward to provide cash away to get the looks of goodness. It is rather tough to provide cash away for the truth of goodness. Very tough.” Poor Elon.

His love of humanity can finest be illustrated by how he brags that he and his coterie of techies fed USAID “into the wooden chipper” one morning as a part of the DOGE conspiracy to dismantle the federal authorities. Since early 2025, the lack of USAID funding has led to an estimated 700,000 deaths, NPR reported on July 17. By 2030, researchers estimate as many as 14 million individuals might die, together with 4.5 million kids below age 5, in response to a July 2025 examine in The Lancet.

Name it reverse philanthropy, if you’ll. Slightly than making the world a greater place for 1000’s or hundreds of thousands of youngsters born into poverty, Elon is attempting to “scale back the excess inhabitants,” thereby saving misspent tax {dollars} whereas he leverages the tax system to his personal benefit by inflicting his basis to fund a non-public college for simply 14 individuals — 5 of whom are his personal kids.

Say what you’ll concerning the proficient Mr. Musk, the truth that he could also be one of many biggest monsters ever to stay whereas on the similar time being the wealthiest particular person ever in human historical past ought to lead us to rethink whether or not capitalism is all it’s cracked as much as be. Maybe our definition of what constitutes a way of humanity wants some adjustment?

RIP, Dolly. While you get to heaven, maybe you can ask the powers that be to supply Elon Musk and his tech bro confreres with an additional dose of humanity? Ketamine doesn’t appear to be getting the job achieved.