Did Jeff Bezos' Ex-Wife Solve the World's Problems?

In January 2019, Amazon's Jeff Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie Scott, announced their divorce after 25 years of marriage. Scott received almost 20 million Amazon shares, valued at approximately $38 billion at the time. She pledged to give much of the fortune away to philanthropic endeavors. Through her donations to organizations like the Translatinx Network and Donors of Color Network, did Jeff Bezos' ex-wife make any meaningful difference seven years later?

Jeff Bezos’ Ex-Wife Versus the World

When Elon Musk was crowned the world's wealthiest person in October 2021, everyone clutched their pearls and began yelling at the clouds. David Beasley, head of the United Nations World Food Program at the time, suggested that he donate $6.6 billion to save 42 million people, effectively solving world hunger. Musk asked how, and the UN individual presented a plan: $3.5 billion for food procurement and delivery, $2 billion for vouchers, $700 million for country-specific initiatives, and $400 million for administration.

Progressives laughed collectively, thinking Beasley had made Musk look foolish. However, it was the step-by-step proposal that was the joke, considering that the agency's annual food budget is approximately $13 billion. Since the turn of the century, the UN has spent at least $200 billion on food assistance, and yet world hunger has not been resolved.

Enter: Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife.

To date, Scott has given more than $26.3 billion to charity. These contributions have made her one of the largest individual donors in history. She has dedicated her fortune to various groups, including the Cankdeska Cikana Community College, Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh Fund, Interfaith America, and Yee Ha'oolnii Doo - Navajo & Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Fund.

If the United Nations could permanently solve world hunger, then why did Scott not write a check for $6.6 billion? It is her money, so she can do whatever she wants. But one possible reason is that she realizes it is a one-time fix that would bandage a never-ending issue.

USAID What?

A 2024 investigation by Reuters, citing an internal World Food Program report, uncovered "industrial level" theft of food assistance. Fifty-kilo bags of grain stamped USAID (US Agency for International Development) were supposed to help millions of people in Ethiopia. Instead, the aid was sent to black marketeers and Ethiopian and Tigrayan armies.

USAID's Office of the Inspector General released a report in June that determined the agency failed to monitor almost $1 billion in humanitarian assistance for Sudan, resulting in unresolved fraud and other allegations.

It has been more than a year since the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) took an axe to USAID. Since then, academics and media outlets have claimed that USAID’s shutdown has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, citing Atul Gawande, who served in the Biden administration as the assistant administrator for global health at USAID.

Whether food or medicine, the argument is that removing the US agency would have devastated Africa, causing millions of deaths. However, a new analysis posted on Substack suggests South Africa, for example, has been surviving and thriving without USAID. For example, one year after the USAID budget cuts, there have been 30,000 fewer AIDS deaths and 100,000 fewer new HIV infections.

Indeed, there has not been a flood of body bags across the continent as “The Experts” had prognosticated last year. While the agency had dedicated a significant chunk of its taxpayer resources toward odd causes – transgender opera in Colombia, a DEI musical in Ireland, and tourism in Egypt – not everything was wasteful (at least not directly).

Foreign aid, no matter how it is distributed by the government, is inherently wasteful. The funds are transferred from poor people in rich countries to affluent regimes in impoverished nations. It enhances the iron grip of corrupt leaders and stifles market-oriented solutions.

Eminent economist Milton Friedman wrote in an April 1962 op-ed for The Wall Street Journal:

"The fundamental objection to our foreign aid program is that rather than assisting the foreign countries to develop more rapidly economically, to develop a free economy or a free society, it is working in exactly the other direction. The foreign aid program in the long run will tend, I would argue, to strengthen governments in the foreign countries relative to the private sector, to promote centralized planning and socialist methods of control, and to reduce the strength and the force of the free enterprise sector, political democracy and freedom."

If We Had a Trillion Dollars

If Elon Musk suddenly liquidated a trillion dollars in assets, progressives claim he would save the planet. Yet for reasons that defy basic arithmetic, some on the left insist that handing that money to the government would magically solve every systemic problem. In this view, redirecting capital away from building companies, creating jobs, and expanding the economic pie is somehow preferable to productive investment. Eight billion people would walk away with a one‑time payment of approximately $125.

Jeff Bezos’ ex‑wife is free to direct her fortune however she chooses, whether to the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice or the Emerging LGBTQ Leaders of Color Fund at Borealis Philanthropy. Treating philanthropy as a moral panacea misses the point. Altruism can be admirable (Ayn Rand would disagree!), but it is not a substitute for the strategy that actually generates prosperity and eradicates poverty.

In the end, capitalism is the answer.