Mark Zuckerberg Destroys Stereotypical German Image

Social envy plays with obvious emotions. When the super-rich character, the fat slob, the heavy, obnoxious braggart looks like a George Grosz painting or shows up in an early evening TV crime drama, the people in egalitarian Germany react with a lot of pharisaic head nodding. Excessive wealth is so looked down upon in Germany that the super-rich hide out here.

It’s not like that in America, and now, these villainous multibillionaires have become the avant garde of an excessive philanthropy that impresses the world — everywhere except in Germany. But we can now more closely examine this since Facebook developer Mark Zuckerberg announced that he and his wife will donate 99 percent of their equity assets to a charitable foundation.* Why? Because he just became a father and wants to leave his daughter a better world than the one into which he was born.

Deceptive Move?

Earlier, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet (to name just a couple) donated money to research and development projects, giving sums that equaled the social budgets of some small European countries. Cause for celebration, right? Wrong. Social networks, often the digital version of a table reserved for regular customers, uniformly jeered at the notion. The hypermoral street corner loiterers quickly made clear how mercilessly they dealt with the filthy rich who dared shirk their villainousness: the [rich] used nothing but deceptive maneuvers; they would always be rich; it was just their stocks; it’s all just a show. The irresponsible dispositional ethicist used any and every excuse to denounce this wonderful gesture of the generous helping hand. The Gates Foundation showed how effective foundations act when the success-addicted super wealthy want control.

In Germany, every TV star, editor-in-chief or entrepreneur that gets involved and hires refugees learns that nothing good will be written about him — it will always be poison, bile and envy. Many German opinion makers hate wealth and will never forgive anyone more successful than themselves.

It’s a bit sad.

*Editor’s note: The company they are donating their money to is an LLC and not a foundation.