Book Review: "Winners Take All" by Anand Giridharadas

Winners Take All
by Anand Giridharadas
Vintage Books, NY
2018

This is an excellent book, written well, researched well, and with a much needed message, namely, elite corporate philanthropy is basically only interested, whether consciously or unconsciously, in putting Band-Aids over the wounds that they have caused. They like to gather and give money away, but never think of changing the structures of society by which they continue to benefit and by which inequality and misery are increased.

An example of this is Robert F. Smith, the richest African-American in the United States. During his speech as commencement speaker at an historically black college, Morehouse College in Atlanta, he announced to the delight of the graduating class that he was going to pay off all the student debt of the graduates. Smith, however, continues to profit from structures that keep him rich while others remain poor. He has made a fortune with the help of the carried-interest regulation that keeps his taxes low. What if he paid his fair share of taxes--Wouldn't there be more money in government coffers so programs could be funded that prevented students from taking on so much debt?

In Baltimore, not far from my home, there is a mansion operated  by a ladies club. I'm sure they gather together and do "do-goody" projects; I'm also sure that they have no objections to the devious ways some of their husbands made their money. You can also be sure that membership to their group is quite restrictive. (The club is a relic from the past when women didn't work. It will soon be obsolete, but the spirit of privilege and exploitation will live on).

Let's face it: These major philanthropists from corporations such as Pepsico, Exxon Mobil, Walmart and IBM are interested in themselves more than anything else. They gloss over the harm they are doing to society by their greed. How to help the poor? Start a business!

They are market-oriented and globalists, seemingly unaware of or ignoring the fact that globalization has made them unbelievably rich while a worsening inequality remains the lot of most of humanity. They obviously like to keep it that way.

Giridharadas makes a useful distinction between critic and thought leaders. Critics challenge the system and are thus very unpopular with the elites. Thought leaders give the elites assurance and the self-satisfaction they crave; they provide the comforting knowledge that they are doing some good, while not challenging the system that allows them to become very rich and which maintains inequality. They do this by following, without knowing it, these three principles:

1. They reduce structural problems to the personal. For instance, they might provide grants to some women to start a small business, and ignore what keeps them poor in the first place.

2. They provide a "zooming in" focus on  individuals without "zooming out," that is, seeing the whole picture.

3. They provide interventions that are demonstrable, that is, apply Band-Aids to various societal wounds. 

If the elites can profit by their interventions, all the better. For instance, one proposed empowering women by setting some up with beauty salons. The person who proposed this just happened to be the CEO of a cosmetics company.

It is also highly undemocratic that elites get to decide what the poor need, without any representation from the poor themselves--the ladies club model.
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Giridharadas advocates that democracy, as messy as it is, should decide where funds are allocated. This might be a bit too optimistic, given the rise of populism around the world--an angry reaction to globalization. The poor know that the system is rigged against them. They are angry. What do they do with their anger? Elect Donald Trump. That politics is especially messy these days is obvious.

Giridharadas quotes an actual critic at the end of the book, Chiari Cordelli: "You can't speak in their name. I can speak in the name of my child, but other people are not your children."

The only thing we can do, I suppose, is to remain politically active and vote. We must work toward the goal of the eventual "Finlandiziton" of America, that is, where wages are fair, schools are good, health care is universal, opportunities to live the "American dream" exist for all, etc.--a difficult endeavor, but perhaps not a Sisyphus task. If we work together, many improvements in our society can be made, no doubt about that. "It seems to me that you (the elites) might owe a responsibility or duty to return to others what they have been unfairly deprived of by your common institutions." Thus Cordelli sums up the theme of the book.

Read it!

A Desultory Diary, Episode 9 The Make Russia Great Again Blues

At the end of Chekhov's 1901 drama, The Three Sisters, the lives of the three young ladies lie in ruins. The fiancé of  the youngest, Irina, has just been killed in a duel. The lover of the middle sister, Masha, has gone out of her life forever. Olga, the eldest, has never found anyone to love at all, and probably never will. At the end of the play, Irina lays her head on Olga's bosom and says the following:

A time will come when everyone will know what this is for, why there is this misery; there will be no mysteries, and, meanwhile we have got to live...

It's the old belief that progress, including progress of the soul, is inevitable. I wish I could be that sanguine. An old man, I have come to terms with my own mortality, but I didn't expect that the institutions that have made this country great--the separation of powers, free speech and a free press, etc--not only would grow weak with me, but, especially if our current president is elected for a second term, might even die before I do.

Old age often comes with an umbrella of serenity that protects and gives perspective while armies of angry passers-by struggle and fight in the rain. "We'll get over this," a woman older than I recently told me. I'd like to believe her, but I'm not so sure. My umbrella has holes.

On October 9, 2019, the day I turned 74, Fact Checker determined that Trump had made  13,435 lies or misleading statements since his inauguration. His partiality for Putin and other dictators is obvious. He is without a doubt a racist. The current treatment of refugees at the southern border is shameful.Trump has appointed greedy oligarchs, many of them good friends of Charles Koch and other billionaires, to serve in his cabinet. (This he calls "draining the swamp"). His administration has made what is the crisis of our time, climate change, significantly worse. Yes, this is only a partial list of the mess we are in. The oligarchs, thanks in part to the dreadful Citizens United ruling, have Uncle Sam in a choke hold. Will he survive?

I remember Watergate very well and assure you that the current political situation is much worse.

Trump is arguably the worst president in the history of the United States. I understand he can't help it. For him, that which is good is that which supports him--a textbook definition of an amoral person. He serves himself, not the United States or its people. Scandals and corruption--what else can one expect from a narcissist as needy as Trump?

As I wrote before, Trump, at the apex of a pyramid of power, would fall flat on his face if there were no bricks and mortar supporting him. Approximately the upper third of this pyramid consists of Republicans in the House and especially in the Senate, who continue to support this incompetent president. The lower part of the pyramid, the base, is supported by, well, his base.

Trump might well be too pathological to change; that the Republicans, who have a choice to serve the country or themselves have to date chosen the latter is truly appalling. Even more appalling is the behavior of Mitch McConnell, who has earned his sobriquet, Moscow Mitch.

The lower blocks, his supporters among the general population alas! still stand by their man. They are angry--as Bernie Sanders has stated, they have a right to be angry, but they are angry for the wrong reasons. Some can't be won over; many, however can. Hillary Clinton tried to convey this by her misguided "basket of deplorables" metaphor. She said that half of Trump's supporters fit into this category; the other half, however, consists of good people who have been led astray. They can be reached. (Clinton, however, made little effort to try to reach them).

Democracy to a large part depends on an informed populace; this brings me to a peeve of mine, the entertainment industry. I have seen interviews of passers-by, many of whom couldn't answer the most basic civics questions. Knowledge of history was in many cases woefully deficient. ("Who  won the Civil War?" "I dunno"). Yet everyone knew about the latest hit by Taylor Swift. Wouldn't it be nice if people stopped using social media so much and stopped watching cable so much and spent some of their day reading and thinking?

Our Constitution is under attack. It might take a generation to undo the damage that has already been done. When will this misery end?

Chekhov's three sisters were convinced that better times were coming. What actually came was World War l, which initiated fifty years of unprecedented brutality and destruction.

Martin Luther King believed that the long arc of history favors truth and decency. He might be right, but I don't think we'll see the pot of gold at the end of this rainbow any time soon, however. King believed he had "been to the mountaintop" and had seen "the Promised Land." "I might not get there with you," he said, but we as a people will get there.

I would like to believe it. Current events, however, have led me to a different mountaintop; chaos and dissolution lie on the other side. An old man, I might not get there with you--thank God!

Please do your very best to prove me wrong.