Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World (edição 2018)

Successful business people often like to use the phrase “doing well by doing good”. Whether they are designing new apps and software that create a new market and so increasing the size of the pie (think Uber and Airbnb), or supporting philanthropic work, the author argues that the financial elites are able to look good without truly doing well by society.

He gives the example of those paying very low wages to their workers and denying them health benefits, but donating very large amounts to medical projects such as a new hospital wing or clean water in Africa.

He differentiates between critics whose demands for change tend to make business leaders shut down and ‘thought leaders’ who advocate small changes withing the system that make no fundamental changes – ie teaching women to use more assertive body language while speaking to men.

He also tackles globalization, which creates businesses without local taxes to support education, infrastructure and hospitals within a community.

This was a selection for my Real Life Book Club, and it gave lots of food for thought and great discussion. Not an easy read in such a politically divided time, but it definitely expanded the way I view many current topics.

” Talking about the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) and using philanthropic solutions rather than political solutions: “One could forget, watching such a civilized group, that traditional politics is argumentative for a reason. It isn’t that politicians don’t know how to be nice, but rather that politics is rooted in the idea of a big, motley people taking their fate into their own hands. Politics is the inherently messy busines of negotiating and reconciling incompatible interests and coming up with a decent plan, designed to be liked but difficult to love. It solves problems in a context in which everyone is invited to the table and everyone is equal and everyone has the right to complain about being unserved and unseen. Politics, in bringing together people of divergent interests, necessarily puts sacrifice on the table. It is easier to conjure win-wins in forums like this one, where everyone is a winner. The consensus was a reminder of all the kinds of people and perspectives that had not been invited in. “ p220 ( )

No idea what point the book is trying to make. It's a criticism of rich people acting in their self-interest (what a shocker). I don't really disagree with anything written I just don't think I learned anything or read any novel ideas that made me think. ( )

I read most of this title on a substitute flight from San Francisco after my original one was cancelled, so I was in an uncomfortable seat and trying to zone out. I say this because it was an apt setting, as the very frequent flyer next to me flirted with the flight attendant and they each tried to one-up the other in their respective knowledge of the American Airlines fleet. The premise is that we have no good reason to assume that the most wealthy in our society should have taken charge of all that they do, too often try to use philanthropy as a substitute for real problem solving, and aren't even very skilled at what they rule over. And the fact that this small group has largely segregated themselves from the rest of us is a corollary, enforcing further his main point. If you want the public sector to be strengthened and reclaim its work that has been contracted out, Giridharadas has the ideas for you. ( )

“The only thing better than controlling money and power is to control the efforts to question the distribution of money and power. The only thing better than being a fox is being a fox asked to watch over hens.”

We live in a world where most large societal problems only seem solvable by somebody who possesses endless resources. So when that man (it’s almost always a man) comes riding down on his horse, offering help, we rarely stop and question his motivations, or how he got all of that power in the first place.

This book, by Anand Giridharadas, is an excellent analysis of how our capitalist society has created inequalities, and how the very people who have historically benefitted from this divide are working hard to paint themselves as the people who can solve the inequality. The author puts it well when he says that you cannot use the master’s tools to take apart his own house; i.e., you cannot use the byproducts of capitalism to fix the problems of the free market.

The venture capitalists who invest in fancy Silicon Valley start-ups don’t see themselves as powerful parts of systemic oppression, they see themselves as rebels against “the man”. Elon Musk tells people that he’s only interested in advancing science, but does not acknowledge the dangers of privatizing space travel and rarely mentions the extent to which he profits off of these “common-good efforts”. For generations the innovation of society at large has only been helping those at the top of the totem pole, while the majority of Americans (and people in the world at large) have been fruitlessly attempting to catch up. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the wealthy trying to help, the problem comes when they do this in a direct attempt to keep people satisfied in the system that created these issues in the first place. Bill Gates is a great man, but the extent of his wealth is the byproduct of an unfair machine that needs to be fixed. So if his tens of millions of dollars given to charity make people feel less inclined to stand up and say “Hey, isn’t it messed up that he has that much money?” then it can be a reason for concern. Some corporations go out of their way to truly do good things (one example the book gives is the choice AirBnB made to reduce racial profiling, when it easily could have blamed the users and not the platform itself), but in order to properly respect these actions we must contextualize it by admitting that most businesses act solely out of their own interest of profits.

Especially in 2018, the conversation about corporate morality has pivoted towards social media. The book quotes French philosopher Foucault in regards to the “state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.” Our communications (and really, our lives) are being controlled by small groups, and their image as philanthropists has helped quell any call for transparency. ‘Zuckerberg isn’t a bad guy, he donated a bunch of money to a hospital in San Francisco!’ But now we learn that he made a lot of that money by overlooking Russian cybercrimes that contributed to the hijacking of our democracy. Is Zuckerberg’s donation still valid and helpful? Yes. But does this mean that he is a net positive to a system that has allowed him near limitless power over our lives? God, no.

This book is great. If you disagree with what I’ve said in this review, you should read it. If you agree with it, then you still should read it. Obviously it’s all opinion, but it’s a well-informed and researched stance that sheds a lot of light on how we got to where we are, and how this is not normal. We used to rely on a transparent and publicly funded government to help us, and now we look to independent agents who are profiting off of our suffering. Anand does more justice to the argument than I ever could, but I can promise that this book is worth your time.

Parts of it kind of dragged, hence the lack of a 5 star review. It took me a long time to finish because I had a crazy busy semester, but hot dog am I happy that I did finish it.

Another quote:
“Investing has become the genteel occupation… gentleman investors decide what ideas are worth pursuing, and the people pitching to them tailor their proposals accordingly. The companies that come out of this are no longer pursuing profit, or even revenue. Instead, the measure of their success is valuation- how much money they’ve convinced people to tell them they’re worth... They, too, honestly believed they were changing the world, and offered the same kinds of excuses about why our day-to-day life bore no relation to the shiny, beautiful world that was supposed to lie just around the corner.”
( )

A scathing indictment of the insane financial system our world seems to be at the mercy of. Giridharadas is a compelling author, this is meticulously researched and professionally argued. It's hard not to get angrier with each page and I know if a non-fiction book/movie/show gets me really angry, it's almost always because the product is good and the cause is just. It's surprising to me how thin skinned the elite are - they can't possibly swallow the fact that the way they made their money is immoral, the amount of money they have is immoral and that simply taxing them more and doing less harm would reduce much of the world's problems, instead of "side-hustle" B Corporation projects about "helping" people. Great book. ( )