There's about 30,000 new foundations — private foundations — that have been created in the last 15 years. Bill Gates used to be kind of alone among these new megadonors, but there's more and more of them every time you turn around.

Steve Ballmer, another familiar name in Seattle, is just starting his philanthropy in a big way. He's one of the richest people in the world.

There's a lot of these mega-billionaires who are going to start wielding more and more influence over different parts of society in ways both good and bad. But ultimately it does raise questions as to who has power in our society.

Many citizens already feel like their voice doesn't count. They feel that the wealthy have too much power in society. We live in an age of tremendous economic inequality, and there's lots of signs that that's translating into political inequality because the wealthy have so many more resources to affect public policy and public life.

In a democracy the ideal is that all of us can be heard equally. And we're far from that ideal. We've heard a lot about all the money and go in for political campaign contributions. I suggest that this philanthropic money is another form of money in politics or can be when it's used for activist causes.

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