Philanthropy comes from philo and anthropos, so love of humanity, or thereabouts. A fun start would be looking up Greek and Latin words of a slightly more hones

Philanthropy comes from philo and anthropos, so love of humanity, or thereabouts. A fun start would be looking up Greek and Latin words of a slightly more honest nature, things like hatred of humanity, love of self, love of control, reputation washing, fear of the mob, obsession with ego, obsession with public image, etc. Modern day billionaire philanthropy is probably in most cases about maintaining one's range of options in the public and private sphere. Some of them may very well be petulant and needy enough to actually care what people think, and nurture a secret desire to be "loved", or at least respected, but presuming some of these billionaires are more intelligent and calculating than that, I can only guess that the desire in those cases is to hedge one's bets against any sort of public and/or political backlash to one's plans. Of course, some may very well sincerely believe that they're godlike entities who can solve humanity's problems, but I won't venture to attempt an analysis on the psyche of those people, if they do really exist. Of course there's the tax-dodging element, but there's tons of ways for billionaires to dodge taxes, and only some of them deem it worth the effort to go down the route involving magazine spreads about their philanthropic largesse. It's a way of absolving oneself publically from one's past villainies, real or perceived. Or, you could put it in more Nietzschean terms, things involving rebirth and phoenixes and Christ-figures, it could all get fairly poetical. If anything is certain, it's that it's not about helping people, it's about the giver themselves. The issue and its sufferers are secondary at best - background details. It's the opposite of the old-fashioned Christian notion of charity to an almost caricatural degree. People will talk about billionaire philanthropy as if it is charitable, generous, moral, and good, when in reality it's calculating, self-centered, life-negating, belittling, amoral, and even one could argue rejects ethics generally as naive and cloying. The name itself implies that it involves love directed toward humanity, when in reality it involves the desire to dominate and bully and no love, and humankind is a prop with the billionaire themselves centre-stage. What to call that? I don't know. Misanthropic philanthropy made me chuckle, but it doesn't exactly name the new thing, rather it just pokes fun at it and highlights its Orwellian doublespeak nature. Pseudo-philanthropic ego-tripping / ego-washing? Obviously too wordy, but I feel that's at least some chunk of the essence of the thing.