Read Winners Take All The Elite Charade of Changing the World Audible Audio Edition Anand Giridharadas Random House Audio Books
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A New York Times Best Seller
Named one of The New York Times "100 Notable Books of 2018″
Named one of NPR's "Best Books of 2018"
Named one of the Financial Times "Books of the Year"
Named one of The Washington Post's "50 Notable Works of Nonfiction"
One of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's "Best International Nonfiction" books of 2018
One of the GreenBiz "10 Best Climate and Business Books of 2018"
800-CEO-READ Business Book of the Year
An insider's groundbreaking investigation of how the global elite's efforts to "change the world" preserve the status quo and obscure their role in causing the problems they later seek to solve.Â
Former New York Times columnist Anand Giridharadas takes us into the inner sanctums of a new gilded age, where the rich and powerful fight for equality and justice any way they can - except ways that threaten the social order and their position atop it. We see how they rebrand themselves as saviors of the poor; how they lavishly reward "thought leaders" who redefine "change" in winner-friendly ways; and how they constantly seek to do more good, but never less harm. We hear the limousine confessions of a celebrated foundation boss; witness an American president hem and haw about his plutocratic benefactors; and attend a cruise-ship conference where entrepreneurs celebrate their own self-interested magnanimity. Â
Giridharadas asks hard questions Why, for example, should our gravest problems be solved by the unelected upper crust instead of the public institutions it erodes by lobbying and dodging taxes? He also points toward an answer Rather than rely on scraps from the winners, we must take on the grueling democratic work of building more robust, egalitarian institutions and truly changing the world. A call to action for elites and everyday citizens alike.
Read Winners Take All The Elite Charade of Changing the World Audible Audio Edition Anand Giridharadas Random House Audio Books
"Winners Take All is a self-help book for the uber wealthy. I say this somewhat in jest, but, as Anand Giridharadas writes in his acknowledgements, his purpose for writing this book was as an “inquiry into the apparatus of justification†that permits the wealthy to win at all costs, including extractive business practices that result in growing inequality and environmental damage, only to position themselves as having the answers to the problems that they have contributed to creating and accelerating. While his focus is on the uber wealthy, Giridharadas tenaciously exposes a universal human deficit: We all struggle to recognize our two selves—the person we aspire to be and the person we are. What continuously came up for me as I read Winners Take All is the need people have to be seen as good, but not being able to make the personal sacrifices (i.e. not winning) that real goodness demands.
This is, by far, one of the most important books published in the 21st century. Giridharadas articulates, with great storytelling, the illusion that has gripped us—particularly Americans,—allowing, if not engineering, injustice and inequality into our way of life: There are several ways to define it, including market mindset or really materialism where money elevates the monied by virtue of their market acumen to rule. He calls them MarketWorlders—people who apply a market perspective to solving social issues. Winners Take All offers all of us who have ever dreamt of changing the world to interrogate our motives, to think about who we are inviting to the table, and to understand that who we are, the experiences we’ve had, and the questions we ask or don’t ask determine the who, what, when, where and how of change. And if the only change we can imagine insists on us not losing comfort, reputation, influence, power, and so on, then we’ve already limited the change that is possible."
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Winners Take All The Elite Charade of Changing the World Audible Audio Edition Anand Giridharadas Random House Audio Books Reviews :
Winners Take All The Elite Charade of Changing the World Audible Audio Edition Anand Giridharadas Random House Audio Books Reviews
- As someone who has spent many years seeking/securing grants from foundations, and almost 12 years working as a senior program officer at a large community and large private foundation, I believe my "headline," while humorous, sums up my understanding of philanthropy and one of the major themes of Winners Take All. I share another concern well described by Anand, namely, the extremely serious abdication of public responsibility for basic human needs. In large part, this is because the very rich, the gatekeepers they employ, and their political allies have intentionally worked to limit the viability of our public sector since the Reagan presidency. In fact, as Anand also notes, this has been done in various ways since the early part of the 20th century when the first large foundations were created by Rockefeller and Carnegie. I believe Anand would agree with my view that the rich use philanthropy and the entire nonprofit sector as a diversion from a strong public sector which, in these times, would be at least some form of American social democracy. If I could afford it, I would buy copies of Winners Take All for anyone who wants to understand the role of charity and philanthropy in maintaining existing power relations by limiting the power and effectiveness of a viable, democratic public sector. We must address the dominance of unaccountable, self-serving elites with democratic, public alternatives as Anand so brilliantly, courageously, and elegantly elucidates in Winners Take All.
- I picked up this book thinking it was about me and my friends. It's not, though. Despite the subtitle, Winners Take All is not about the entrepreneurs and investors who are involved in socially responsible businesses whose mission is to change the world. The sole exception is the author's brief excursion in the epilogue into the B Corporation movement, in which I've been involved since the beginning. And he appears not to understand what B Corps are about.
"Elite-led, market-friendly, winner-safe social change"
In Winners Take All, author Anand Giridharadas zeroes in on growing economic inequality in America. As he notes at the outset, "When the fruits of change have fallen on the United States in recent decades, the very fortunate have basketed almost all of them." His culprit? "Elite-led, market-friendly, winner-safe social change." This is the set of beliefs held by the people who attend the World Economic Forum at Davos and gather at such other places as Aspen and the Clinton Global Initiative. In reviewing this book for the New York Times, Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stieglitz described them as "an elite that, rather than pushing for systemic change, only reinforces our lopsided economic reality—all while hobnobbing on the conference circuit and trafficking in platitudes." Giridharadas calls their mindset MarketWorld.
"An ascendant power elite" that seeks to do good by doing well
"MarketWorld," he explains, "is an ascendant power elite that is defined by the concurrent drives to do well and do good, to change the world while also profiting from the status quo. It consists of enlightened businesspeople and their collaborators in the worlds of charity, academia, media government, and think tanks."
Giridharadas takes on the elite consulting firms as well, citing McKinsey and its peers in the industry as among the culprits. The values they all promote are those of the marketplace; its proponents always talk about opportunities to solve problems, never about those who are responsible for creating the problems in the first place. The author distinguishes between public intellectuals (good) and thought leaders (bad). In his view, the former are primarily academics free of commercial influences. The latter have fallen for MarketWorld values, hook, line, and sinker. And that strikes me as simplistic. It would be naive to imply that major corporations haven't made inroads into academia.
The eight billionaires who own half the world's wealth are an easy target
Author Anand Giridharadas aims his most powerful broadsides at easy targets such as the multimillionaire and billionaire leaders of the tech and financial industries. Can anyone seriously argue that , Google, Facebook, and Goldman Sachs are addressing the economic inequality that Giridharadas identifies as the central issue? No matter what their leaders say, they're clearly part of the problem, not the solution.
As I write today, Jeff Bezos of can claim a net worth of $162.9 billion. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is "worth" $60.4 billion. The Google guys, Larry Page and Sergei Brin, weigh in at $54.1 billion and $52.7 billion, respectively. These four men are among the eight billionaires whose collective net worth is equal to all the wealth of half of the world's population. Yes, just eight billionaires. And Goldman Sachs possesses assets of nearly $1 trillion. How could anyone suggest that these people would even consider lobbying the federal government to adopt policies that would lessen economic inequality in America? Yet Giridharadas complains that they don't.
Winners Take All is based on the premise that these would-be do-gooders call the shots in the American economy and dominate the political debate. The author implies that economic inequality would quickly shrink if these folks were to work for genuine social change. However, this is far from the truth. Most wealthy people in the United States are conservative Republicans who do not pretend to be change agents. And they exert far greater power and influence in American society than the Davos and Aspen set. In today's political discourse, the Heritage Foundation and its peers among Right-Wing think tanks and the institutions of the Christian Right wield far more power in setting government policy at both the federal and state levels than the "enlightened elite" Giridharadas writes about.
Bill Clinton's central role in making the problem immeasurably worse
In the author's view, it's not just clueless businessmen or Republicans who are at fault. Bill Clinton also comes in for justifiable criticism. His "Third Way" between left and right effectively reversed the Democratic Party's commitment to helping the less fortunate in our society. Remember mass incarceration? Financial deregulation? So-called welfare "reform?" Bill Clinton institutionalized the neoliberal consensus that Ronald Reagan had brought to the White House a decade previously—and the consequences were devastating, years before Donald Trump entered the political scene. On this point, Giridharadas is right on the money. (Pun intended.)
Just for example, deregulation, including the repeal of Glass-Steagall, was among the root causes of the Great Recession that struck in 2008. Don't forget that millions lost their homes, and millions more lost their jobs, in that calamitous economic downturn. Democrat or Republican—it doesn't seem to matter. Not a single US President over the past half century has taken any significant step to address America’s growing inequality in wealth and income. Barack Obama was by far the best of them, but he also
** named as his top economic advisers many of the same people whose policies in the 90s brought down the economy in the 2000s;
** prevented the prosecution of the bankers who caused the crash; and
**failed to question the prevailing bipartisan love affair with Corporate America.
Who will lead society toward viable solutions?
Here's the crux of the matter, as Giridharadas sees it "What is at stake is whether the reform of our common life is led by governments elected by and accountable to the people, or rather by wealthy elites claiming to know our best interests." It doesn't matter how well-intentioned they might make themselves out to be. If they don't actively work to raise estate and income taxes, drive private money out of politics, provide universal free healthcare, and work to elect people committed to serving the majority of America's people, they're part of the problem. Nothing else they do can be a solution. And to that I say amen.
What other reviewers say about the book
** In his review of the book, Joseph Stieglitz notes that "Giridharadas is careful not to offend. He writes on two levels—seemingly tactful and subtle—but ultimately he presents a devastating portrait of a whole class, one easier to satirize than to reform."
** Kirkus Reviews leads its commentary with this "Give a hungry man a fish, and you get to pat yourself on the back—and take a tax deduction." The review concludes that Winners Take All is "A provocative critique of the kind of modern, feel-good giving that addresses symptoms and not causes."
** Writing in Forbes, B Lab co-founder and managing partner Jay Coen Gilbert terms Winners Take All a "new and important book." Before launching into a defense of Certified B Corporations, Gilbert notes that "In provocative style and with compelling substance, Giridharadas speaks truth to power, calling elites to account for giving so much lip service to 'changing the world,' while mostly upholding an unacceptable status quo." - Winners Take All is a self-help book for the uber wealthy. I say this somewhat in jest, but, as Anand Giridharadas writes in his acknowledgements, his purpose for writing this book was as an “inquiry into the apparatus of justification†that permits the wealthy to win at all costs, including extractive business practices that result in growing inequality and environmental damage, only to position themselves as having the answers to the problems that they have contributed to creating and accelerating. While his focus is on the uber wealthy, Giridharadas tenaciously exposes a universal human deficit We all struggle to recognize our two selves—the person we aspire to be and the person we are. What continuously came up for me as I read Winners Take All is the need people have to be seen as good, but not being able to make the personal sacrifices (i.e. not winning) that real goodness demands.
This is, by far, one of the most important books published in the 21st century. Giridharadas articulates, with great storytelling, the illusion that has gripped us—particularly Americans,—allowing, if not engineering, injustice and inequality into our way of life There are several ways to define it, including market mindset or really materialism where money elevates the monied by virtue of their market acumen to rule. He calls them MarketWorlders—people who apply a market perspective to solving social issues. Winners Take All offers all of us who have ever dreamt of changing the world to interrogate our motives, to think about who we are inviting to the table, and to understand that who we are, the experiences we’ve had, and the questions we ask or don’t ask determine the who, what, when, where and how of change. And if the only change we can imagine insists on us not losing comfort, reputation, influence, power, and so on, then we’ve already limited the change that is possible.
