Inequal­i­ty and democ­ra­cy are the kind of top­ics you may expect to hear about at a polit­i­cal con­ven­tion, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly at a tech indus­try con­fer­ence. And so for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Al Gore’s dis­cus­sion at Nashville’s tech-focused South­land Con­fer­ence this week could be viewed in con­text as a jere­mi­ad spot­light­ing taboo truths about tech cul­ture and phil­an­thropic traditions.

To understand the conflict between democracy and this kind of philanthropy, remember that private donations typically come with conditions about how the money must be allocated.

Dis­cussing the econ­o­my, Gore lament­ed that ​“we have ris­ing lev­els of inequal­i­ty and chron­ic under­in­vest­ment” in pub­lic pro­grams. He remind­ed the crowd that when ​“95 per­cent of all the addi­tion­al nation­al income in the U.S., since the recov­ery began in ​’09, goes to the top 1%, that’s not an Occu­py Wall Street slo­gan, that’s a fact.”

Gore may have been allud­ing to the tech econ­o­my becom­ing a sig­nif­i­cant dri­ver of that inequality.

As Prince­ton econ­o­mist Alan Blind­er not­ed in a Jan­u­ary Wall Street Jour­nal op-ed, tech­nol­o­gy is ​“clear­ly the major vil­lain” in ris­ing eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty, as ​“e‑commerce elim­i­nat­ed many ​‘ordi­nary’ jobs (while) enhanc(ing) the oppor­tu­ni­ties and rewards for some ​‘extra­or­di­nary’ jobs.” One way to see this is in the app econ­o­my, which often rewards bil­lions to com­pa­nies with a rel­a­tive­ly few employ­ees, thus con­cen­trat­ing wealth in few­er hands.

Lat­er in his dis­cus­sion, Gore said that ​“democ­ra­cy has been hacked” by mon­eyed inter­ests. Then, in response to a ques­tion about tech bil­lion­aires spend­ing big on alleged­ly phil­an­thropic enter­pris­es, he said: ​“That’s a good thing, as long as the rest of us don’t ever fall prey to the illu­sion that char­i­ty is going to do the job of what democ­ra­cy needs to do.”

Those lat­ter com­ments come only a few weeks after Facebook’s Mark Zucker­berg announced a $120 mil­lion dona­tion to San Fran­cis­co-area schools. That dona­tion came only a few years after Cal­i­for­nia con­sid­ered a bal­lot mea­sure to increase fund­ing for its schools. Zucker­berg was notably absent from the cam­paign to pass the measure.

That detail is ger­mane to Gore’s point about char­i­ty and democ­ra­cy. Indeed, there seems to be a trend of bil­lion­aires and tech firms mak­ing pri­vate dona­tions to pub­lic insti­tu­tions osten­si­bly with the goal of improv­ing pub­lic ser­vices. Yet, many of these bil­lion­aires are absent from efforts to raise pub­lic resources for those same insti­tu­tions. Zucker­berg is only one example.

For instance, hedge fun­ders make big dona­tions to char­ter schools. Yet, the hedge fund indus­try lob­bies against high­er tax­es that would gen­er­ate new rev­enue for education.

Like­wise, there are the Koch Broth­ers, who simul­ta­ne­ous­ly finance the nation­wide anti-tax move­ment while mak­ing huge dona­tions to pub­lic institutions.

Mean­while, Microsoft boasts about mak­ing dona­tions to schools, while the com­pa­ny has opposed pro­pos­als to increase tax­es to fund those schools.

To under­stand the con­flict between democ­ra­cy and this kind of phil­an­thropy, remem­ber that pri­vate dona­tions typ­i­cal­ly come with con­di­tions about how the mon­ey must be allo­cat­ed. In edu­ca­tion, those con­di­tions can be about any­thing from cur­ricu­lum to test­ing stan­dards to school struc­ture. No mat­ter what the con­di­tions are, though, they effec­tive­ly cir­cum­vent the demo­c­ra­t­ic process and dic­tate pol­i­cy to pub­lic insti­tu­tions. While those insti­tu­tions can reject a pri­vate donor’s mon­ey, they are often des­per­ate for resources.

In this, we see a vicious cycle that under­mines demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol. Big mon­ey inter­ests use anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic cam­paign finance laws to fund anti-tax poli­cies that deprive pub­lic insti­tu­tions of resources. Those poli­cies make pub­lic insti­tu­tions des­per­ate for pri­vate resources. When phil­an­thropists offer those resources, they often make the mon­ey con­tin­gent on pub­lic offi­cials relin­quish­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol and acced­ing to ide­o­log­i­cal demands.

Dis­rup­tion the­o­ry is usu­al­ly the defense of all this — the hypoth­e­sis being that bil­lion­aire cash is the only way to force pub­lic insti­tu­tions to do what they sup­pos­ed­ly need to do. But whether or not you believe that the­o­ry, Gore is cor­rect: It isn’t demo­c­ra­t­ic. In fact, it is quite the opposite.