Anand Giridharadas, "Winners Take All"

all around us the winners in our highly equitable status quo declared themselves partisans of change they know the problem and they want to be part of the solution actually they want to lead the search for solutions they believe that their solutions deserve to be at the forefront of social change they may join or support movements initiated by ordinary people looking to fix expects of their society more often though these elites start initiatives of their own taking on social change as though it were just another stock in their portfolio or corporation to restructure because they are in charge of these attempts at social change the attempts naturally reflect their biases the initiatives are mostly aren't democratic nor do they reflect collective problem solving or universal solutions rather they favor the use of the private sector and its charitable spoils the market way of looking at things and the bypassing of government they reflect a highly influential view that the winner of an unjust status quo and the tools and the mentalities and values that help them win are the secret to redress alien justices those at the greatest risk of being resented in an age of inequality are thereby recast as our saviors from an age of inequality summit at sea was a four day long maritime bacchanal honoring the credo of using business to change the world and perhaps of using changing the world to prosper in business it brought together a great many entrepreneurs and Finance ears who invest in entrepreneurs some artists and yoga teachers to keep things interesting and healthy and various others who tend to run in those circles and whose BIOS refer to them using terms like influencer thought leader curator convener connector and community manager once you believe that business is how you change things these days a conference of entrepreneurs offers unlimited possibilities indeed many boarding the ship had recently received an inspirational message from one of the conference's organized that framed summits mission in world historical terms the winds are picking up in the east and in six short days something transformational is going to be born from the sky and the moon and it might just change history we may not see the full effect now but that's the case with any great shift in culture any great seismic shift amongst the plates of planet Earth for a long time as I wrote this book I grappled with the strangeness of indited the practices and beliefs of a group of people among whom I have many friends I felt an instantaneous recognition when I came upon an old phrase from the poet Czeslaw Milosz in 1953 he published a book called the captive mind about his dismay at so many of his fellow polish thinkers succumbing one rationalization and excuse at a time to the hypocrisy zand repressions of Stalinism he described his book as a debate with those of my friends who were yielding little by little to the magic influence of the new faith that helped me greatly for my book too is among other things a debate with my friends it is a letter written with love and concern to people whom I see yielding to a new faith many of whom I know to be decent of course it is also a letter to the public urging them to reclaim were changing from those who have co-opted it if anyone truly believes the same ski town conferences and fellowship programs the same politicians and policies the same entrepreneurs and small and social businesses the same campaign donors the same thought leaders the same consulting firms and protocols the same philanthropist and reformed Goldman Sachs executives the same win-wins and doing well by doing good initiatives and private solutions to public problems that had promised grandly if superficially to change the world if anyone thinks the market world complex of people and institutions and ideas that for that failed to prevent this mess even as it harped on making a difference and whose neglect fueled populism flames is also the solution wake them up by tapping them gently with this book for the inescapable answer to the overwhelming question where do we go from here if somewhere other than where we have been going led by people other than the people who have been leading us good evening everybody that was a few expert excerpts from the book by the author's friends and family today we welcome Anand get edad us back to politics and prose for his latest book winners take all Anand is a former McKinsey analyst and Aspen Institute Fellow and author previously of the true American argues in his new book that we shouldn't entrust the common good to an unelected set of elites but need to look to our public institutions instead that true change can't rely on charity which strings attached but must come through decency democracy and people working together as a journalist and in some ways a swamp creature myself with friends who work for organizations mentioned in this book I can tell you it provides a critical self examining lens on many of the prominent idealistic players and organizations that run this town he delves into the subject that strikes almost too close to home for many in DC the at times he says hypocritical charade of changing the world Kitty Dada's his book is a bracing call to action that starts with the plea to the global elite to practice followership rather than leadership and simply stay out of the way of those trying to resolve the problems the wealthy have in many cases caused and are likely to perpetuate tonight he will be joined in conversation by David Dooley and heart op-ed columnist and associate editorial page editor at The New York Times mr leonhardt has also served as Washington bureau chief and wrote the economic scene a weekly economics column for the business section in some ways tangentially related to the topic of this book in 2005 he was one of the reporters who produced class matters the paper serial on social class in the United States and he was part of a team of times reporters whose coverage of corporate scandals was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 please welcome me in joining Anand and David [Applause] thank you all Thank You Neil I'm pretty sure that sets a record for the two most difficult last names to pronounce ever at a politics enterprise avail don't try to get in on that okay that's that's just totally my territory when it comes to difficult last names thank you all for showing up what attorney well we actually had not met until 10 minutes ago just correct sharing a New York Times history we've met up we met online which is the yeah just the way you do it now correct and yet when Anand asked me to come do this I was really excited because this is an important book and it's an important book because it's an original book and it's an uncomfortable book for for many of us and so I'm really looking forward to this conversation to asking you a bunch of questions we're gonna leave time at the end for all of your questions I'm just gonna ever so briefly set the scene for why I think this book is so important so to me the central problem of our age is the stagnation of living standards for the masses of American people it's a problem in its own right many Americans aren't living much longer than their parents did they aren't healthier than their parents were they aren't wealthier than their parents were they are more educated and their parents were and that is deeply unusual for a modern society I'm going to quote the book right now there is one really wonderful sentence that makes this point a successful society is a progress machine which is absolutely true and our society has not been a progress machine not only is it a problem in its own right but it feeds essentially every other problem as we have learned all too well over the last few years it feeds racism both here and in Europe makes it harder to solve our other problems like climate change and so while we are talking about an argument here that is sharp and original and something that we haven't debated I think it's just as important in addition to acknowledging the originality of the argument to think about just how important this is because it connects really to the biggest topic that they're at is out there in society and so you all didn't come to hear me you came to hear him so let's get to it what led you to write this book it's a fascinating story there's a song yeah there is a there kind of two things that intersected a personal experience and an observation of society first I just want to say thank you all for being here this is like a crazy crowd and this is my hometown my parents are here so many old friends are here and it's just so such a pleasure to be here and thank you for doing this at the intersection of an observation and an experience the observation was much as you say a sense that the American Dream was dying and I think this was particularly stark for me because I was a foreign correspondent for the times in India and I moved back here in 2009 right as that story really got even worse and the a simple way to summarize the story that I told in India first four and a half years was the American dream coming to India and when I got back here I did a book on India and John Stewart in his elegant brilliant way actually captured the kind of thesis of my life he said so basically saying the American Dream is alive and well but only in India and that kind of summarizes what I've been doing for the last twelve years like that's true and but what struck me was that this country was not devoid of innovate it wasn't devoid of great companies it wasn't devoid of money it wasn't devoid of forward motion it's just that when the future rained on America the very few harvested all the rainwater there was a lot of future just not enough to go around or it was being hoarded and so that was kind of the one observation the other observation was we also live in this age of historic generosity every elite graduate wants to change the world and is in Africa or has a social enterprise that recycles poop into coffee or whatever and you know the 884 people have signed The Giving Pledge more in a four hundred and ten billion dollars given away last year the year before which is starting to approach the amount of non military you know discretionary government spending right was a parallel fourth branch of government just rich people deciding what to do so an age of generosity an age that as you say has been utterly punishing to regular people how do you square those and is it just that the generosity isn't working fast enough or is the generosity part of what is actually sustaining the cruelty and that was that that was the question that the the personal experience was and there's some folks here today from who had this experience with me I see one of them um I was invited in to this benevolent secret society called the Aspen Institute to be a fellow and it's this really wonderful place that brings people together to talk about all kinds of issues and I was brought into a fellowship that was about taking business people and getting them to step up dream big or solve some of these social problems and part of the theory is which is a theory that I actually don't agree with but the problems these days are too big and complicated for government to solve that entrepreneurs need to kind of step up and this is when these programs that tries to groom entrepreneurs to do so and the program was lovely I bought it with my classmates one of who was over there and we had a great time but as I got deeper in his Aspen world and went to the Aspen ideas festival which some of you may have gone to and got my you know umbrella sponsored by Monsanto and the Pepsi Pepsi booth and had conversations in the coke seminar building not the drink with the brother about making the world a better place and you know and and goldman sachs was sponsoring our summer reunion and it started to feel like when rich and powerful people get together in aspen to talk about making the world a better place number one they're not succeeding because of all the numbers you talked about and number two they may be part of what is upholding a system that they actually refuse to change but make gestures toward changing in order to not have to change it and i started to realize that a lot of these things that seem good in our time social enterprise big philanthropy you know doing good by doing well win win this win win that that there was this whole rhetoric that was actually about the rich and powerful changing the world in ways that didn't require their world to change making a difference in ways that protected their right to keep making a killing that allowed them to give without having to take less that allowed them to do more good without having to stop doing the harm that they were doing by not paying people enough with their companies by building predatory monopolies in Silicon Valley by having business models in private equity that were based on stripping value out of pensions and American workers paychecks and and that you had this entire complex of essentially using apparent kindness to launder a crappy economy and I began to investigate it and I have no friends left ok can connect the dots for us right you lay out two scenarios one scenario is these efforts to improve the world just aren't sufficient to the problem right there a rounding error drop in the bucket drop in the bucket the other is actually they are protecting the people doing them in some direct or indirect ways from having to take less can you tell me why you think the evidence is that it's the second what do we see in our society that makes you think it's really the second one okay so let's take let's take an example that I think in many of our world and I know in this city is a is a is a big example so I think we all have a sense that if mobility is suffering the way it is in America education is one issue where a lot of people think like that's where that if you could pick one issue that's a place where you could really make a lot of difference right public education a lot of people work on that issue I would say in many of these circles that's the private plurality in terms of like when people want to take on something that's a place they go what do people do in these elite spheres when they take on that issue and this city is a very prime example of that they create charter schools often right now is there anything bad about creating a charter school no is is that charters well that that's a whole different issue but like at the March don't worry I'm coming there I'm getting there I'm getting there don't worry this train is definitely coming to that station are there kids in that neighborhood who are better off because you did that than if you didn't of course at the margin it's always better right there very few of these programs I write about that actually like are actually hurting people at the mark like people are helped lives are saved but why is it that they like charter schools why is it that you know in New York City people who live in in Greenwich commute to New York for their hedge fund perhaps contributed to the housing crisis that cost a lot of people their homes then adopt like one charter school in bed-stuy in Brooklyn and tell all their friends that they help three black boys go to Yale why why are they doing that what do they not want to happen equal public school equally funded public schools for everybody do you ever hear any rich people talk about that issue great do you ever hear people talking about actually why is it that Chevy Chase has better public schools than any other district in America why is that aye aye sir Tinley can't explain it to a six-year-old why mommy and daddy's home value is the basis for the quality of their education it's a system that we all know none of us could defend but we all I there very there are people work fighting cases on this issue but in general when elites take on the issue of Education they take it on in a way that protects their right to keep living as they do so what's the evidence that the generosity is upholding the thing if you do the charter school right you create enough of a sense things are being taken care of you can kind of dampen the public's anger people that were on it we're on it we're helping we're helping and what you can do is you can actually soften the pressure to do actually justice and a lot of what I read about in the book is acts of generosity that seek to masquerade as justice but generosity and justice are not the same I don't want to take us down into education anyone's welcome to ask about it because I want to keep on the themes of the book how much of this do you think is witting how much of this do you think on some sense is strategic and how much of this is naivete or something more innocent that's a great it's a great question something I've thought about a lot so I spent time you know I want to convey to you like this is a book and this is why we sort of had these readings to start this is a book with ideas in it but we're talking about the ideas but this is really actually a book about people let me echo that this is a book of stories about human beings and it's all portraits of you know eight or nine people who are actually struggling with the issues we're talking about tonight so the book is not like me lecturing it he was actually these stories of people sitting on a limousine sitting on a cruise ship conference you know grappling with this stuff as much as one can grapple in a cruise ship conference of entrepreneurs with yoga teachers and and they needed gender balance and so one of things I've found is that there's a spectrum in this kind of elite do-gooding from the naive to the shrewd I'm borrowing that phrase from Paulo Ferreira the naive and the shrewd kind of can both end up participating this so let me give you the stereotype some of this I mean there's many variations of this but the stereotype that I think we'd recognize a lot of that like finance people I know in New York are more on the shrewd end of the spectrum right so if you think about how Goldman Sachs does giving G s gives 10,000 women green bonds Social Impact those kind of things I think it's fairly clear what Goldman Sachs intends for the world I think it's fairly clear that it is very motivated by money it's not trying to make the world a better place as a primary goal and that those giving activities are kind of lubricants in the engine of taking I think that's reasonably obvious to us and the people I know in candid moments will be fairly clear that they know that you know and there's emails that surfaced during the financial crisis that make clear like ooh bad story coming tomorrow about the mortgage thing like let's announce the giving thing right so I think there it's like that's the the shrewd end of the spectrum but one of things I want to be really clear on is I actually don't think that's the dominant tendency and most of the people I write in the book about in the book are not quite like that I think I got a very good piece of advice as I was starting the book that what would be most interesting is to understand how decent people uphold an indecent system and the bridge between decent people and an indecent system is bad beliefs as rationalizations as excuses and so this is a book about the excuses what Paquette e calls the apparatus of justification and so on the naive end of the spectrum the stereotype but a really true one is Silicon Valley it is very very different in my experience from Wall Street yeah they maybe want their trillion dollar valuations but most of the people I spend time with there are actually I think genuinely motivated by something other than money that doesn't actually make that any safer to me and makes them a little more dangerous in certain ways but they I think they're sincere about trying to make the world a better place in a way that hedge fund people are often not I think they have a vision and a theory if if I can only do this or if we could get every user on Facebook X Y Z if and I think to actually understand them and maybe defang them you actually have to understand the sincerity but the sincerity becomes its own problem we actually this may be sound counterintuitive but I actually think as a society we know what to do with straightforwardly greedy people I mean we we screw up every now and then but like we think about Goldman I mean it's very regulated SEC like any weird trades before a major announcement they're on it like we miss things but in general we are all up in Goldman's grille Silicon Valley there's like we don't even know where the girl is right and we basically don't regulate it i mean i sat with a u.s. senator a year ago who said i am probably the most anti facebook like wanted to the antitrust thing i literally don't know i'm a u.s. senator 100 people working for me i can't get a clear answer on whether i had the authority to look into that question and because they and it's not his fault like they have spent so much money lobbying to confuse that question that and so that's the naive end of the spectrum so i think you have a whole bunch of people who are using the idea of doing good in a very cynical way but i think more often than not you have people who have bought into a culture and this book in some ways is an attempt to dismantle a culture a set of ideas that I think are just phony ideas that I think if we could actually see through if we the next look what I want is for you read this book and the next time you hear win win to be like yeah right instead of wow so cool you know and the next time you hear thought leader to be like Oh instead of like who sounds so smart you know and I actually think it's these very subtle things in language and culture like is anyone here European lives you live in Europe or from Europe or okay does anybody in Europe think Mark Zuckerberg changing the world correct this is a cultural idea that we have like Mark Zuckerberg is not responsible for he's not solely responsible for the idea that Mark Zuckerberg changing the world there is enablement in the culture that makes us look at him that way even those of us who don't like him and in Europe he's like a guy with a company that should probably be regulated in antitrust let's talk in his book right yeah so when I asked you about the opening character in your book Hillary Cohen who is a great example of a decent person my guess is many people who read the book will be reminded of someone when they read her story maybe themselves maybe their kid in my case it was my wife who when she got out of law school and she said she wanted to work in non-profit law people said to her condescendingly that's great you just gotta go to a firm first right you can't go to nonprofit well you gotta learn the real hard stuff at a firm which my wife did not do but but but a lot of people feel that kind of pressure so tell us the story of Hillary Cohen and about this whole kind of factory of what we do with young idealistic people yeah so one of the things that happened as I was writing the book I did a lot of different reporting exercises and there were moments in the write in a three-year journey where the book could have a kind of mean quality in certain parts of it and but mean can be kind of fun and and I was helped by my wife and and and my editor and then a friend of mine named Casey Gerald was a great memoir coming out in October and Casey said to me you got to find the love in it and so part so I actually had submitted the book I took it back redid threw out half of it redid it found and Hilary's one of the new characters she did it like two pages before and I should realize her story and the reason I started with Hillary is the way this culture starts is not with a billionaire with 50 billion dollars to spend the way this culture starts is when a senior in college is 21 or 22 maybe has debt maybe doesn't has big dreams of changing the world is about to make that decision pull the trigger on a future do you do this or do you do that's where it happens right and we and and if you've been through that moment you know what a fraught moment that is so Hillary but she really could be thousands of young graduates today arrives at Georgetown in 2010 full of idealism wanting to change the world she wants that you know she's very aware I mean this generation is like you know the woke astir generation ever she's very aware of these issues of inequality you know that there's an she's a Georgetown so the new pope is like a big deal for at Georgetown and the fact that it's like this radical anti inequality Pope is a big deal and and piketty's book lands and this time black lives matter is in this time this is a time when the Tea Party which is kind of right-wing critique of this of this feeling of the American Dream slipping away that's at this time so she that discourse of inequalities everywhere and she decides I want to change the world I wanna change the lives of millions of people and then the story of the chapter is how Hillary ends up at Goldman Sachs first and then McKinsey fueled by that desire and what happens to her that makes her make that choice and then come to regret that choice and then come to regret her regret and and and the short answer is these firms have done an amazing job of reaching down into campus and getting these kids when they're vulnerable when they don't know what's ahead when they're uncertain and offering them certainty at moments when no one else is on the scene right I don't know if this is true now but I'm sure the New York Times doesn't have like campus information sessions it does not correct right it also doesn't like have that many jobs to offer and but I don't think legal aid has information sessions I don't there's a whole bunch of professions that just don't show up and a handful of these firms show up and and what they've done is they they offer a sense that you can change the world they sharpen their pitch this is not what they used to do 20 years ago but it's you know change the world improve lives invent something it's it's it's this kind of and and the pitch is actually that if you don't apprentice here if you don't learn the Goldman way one day you're gonna be in Africa trying to help some people and you're only gonna be able to help a hundred instead of a million because you don't know how to make a spreadsheet and do you want that on your conscience because you were so hoity-toity about not working at Goldman Sachs now look at all these people dying because of your your purism that's the that's not what they say but that's like that's the subliminal pitch and and and Hillary really bought and Hillary's like when I most thoughtful mean her other professional option was being a rabbi right she's probably the most thoughtful like analytical person I've met of that generation and she she went to Goldman didn't didn't like that went to McKinsey thought that was more for her as soon as she got there she realizes like totally fine place but it's not this is not like world-changing and this is like helping businesses save money but that's not what I wanted to do and I got and she's about to quit and she gets a phone call or email or whatever it is these days a snapchat saying you know new project President Obama is about to leave office he's trying to revitalize democracy move power back to the people in his post presidential life and he needs advice so he's hiring a McKinsey to fyz him on how to hand power back to the people and so now Hillary is like really confused she's about to quit and she thinks well if Barack Obama thinks that we should be redesigning democracy maybe I'm in the right place maybe I don't know and she said you know it was the it was the silencer of my doubts and the conjurer of many new doubts when he called and so she ended up working on that project advising Barack Obama on how to revitalize democracy and then she ended up leaving and kind of working for Obama directly and then she even found that a little bit much and she ended up going to Stanford and studying ethics and you know kind of going back to the stuff she'd studied in college and but the story as I've been touring one of the things that's so interesting is and I get lettered I'm now getting like ten letters a day from college students and recent graduates talking about the crazy pressure they feel under to basically do these things that they don't want to do because they're told that they can't do any of the other things they do want to do if they don't do these things and I just look the last thing I want to say on that is like I actually you know I spent a year plus as a very unless Trias McKinsey consultant my father was a McKinsey consultant for many years had a great career there unlike me like I think it's a totally fine institution but I just think there's a lot of fine institutions that would be great grooming mechanisms and every profession has a bunch of competencies that are useful I think pilots who are very good at managing risk and whatever like should we all be a pilot before we go help people maybe like should we I don't know should we all learn espionage before we help people and figure out who you can trust like I think journalists have very interesting skills we listen to a lot of people and we kind of like to figure out where the truth is and a mushy cloud of words like every profession has interesting useful skills my only beef is how a couple of professions manage to convince all these young people that unless you learn those professions you can't be a capable person in the modern world I do think some of its pressure and and the prestige they've built around themselves and that others and I think some of it as you suggested is just lack of knowing what else kids could do right other places don't show up and scheduled interview sessions on it last thing before I turn it over to everyone else other end of the kind of power and experience spectrum let's imagine you could time travel and go back to 2001 Bill Clinton has gotten out of office he's another character in your book and instead of setting up the Clinton Global Initiative what should he have done instead and that's obviously a broader question right there are people with money and power and resources and most don't have as much as Bill Clinton but who do actually honestly want to make a difference right and don't want to do it as some sort of strategic way to protect their own advantage what should those be correct that's a great question and so let me deal with that in two parts one Bill Clinton and and second what can people do I spent time I spent he's like I reported from the last CGI that he did the reason it was the last was they thought Hillary was going to win so they couldn't keep having CG guys every year but we know how that went and so I reported from that and then I spent 90 minutes with him about six months after the election and we basically had a kind of contentious 90 minute argument about my curiosity was in 1964 when he was at Georgetown the book is kind of bookended by these to Georgetown students Hilary Cohen now and Bill Cohen when he when he was at Georgetown 1964 who believed more than Bill Clinton in changing the world through politics through movements through policy through real change that actually changes things at the root and for everybody right who I mean that guy could have had any opportunity on earth he chose to go back to Arkansas lose an election like fight in those trenches right today who believes more than Bill Clinton in this alternate theory of change that I'm writing about which is that you change the world through kind of plutocratic partnerships and if you go to CGI it's like Goldman Sachs and McDonald's will build eight playgrounds with like a Canadian mining billionaire and and like and like some official from this Labor Department will supervise it and Palantir will evaluate it and and and he said at the final CGI in one of his final speeches to the world in that kind of forum he said this is all that works in the modern world this is all that works in the modern world right again going back to the aspect as part of this fantasy of problems are too big for government now and so we this argument about it and so I guess to invert the argument is to answer your question which is what could he have done well I think given that what turned out to be the big issue in American life which he knew was coming was angry white working-class people feeling mocked by the future because of demographic change and because of economic change who could have spoken to them better who could have built movements who could have actually you know tried to affect policy and tell us that you know what all the rich splaining that happened about trade benefiting everybody that was just wrong I mean everybody like all the think tanks in Washington they're just kept lecturing people in America that what they were experiencing they were not actually experiencing trade was working for everybody you know Tom Friedman's world was succeeding and then globalization was working and working working working well Bill Clinton could have called BS on that he could have traveled around this country he could like he could have actually worked politically even as a former president and the place that we had this weird argument about was he got into this issue of childhood obesity because of his heart trouble and he worked on how do you get that you get these kids to stop having so much soda and I said to him this seems like the paradigm case for government action you have the most well-connected corporations entering public schools our schools using their lobbying power to prevent regulation of it kids cannot vote to block it so they have no remedy they can't sue to block it and we know these kids have obesity at alarming rates particularly in certain communities we know that that shortens their lives by a lot like isn't this the clearest cut why didn't like he worked with the companies on this I was like why didn't you build a movement around this why didn't you get a law passed why don't just why don't we get all of those drinks out of all of those schools that's what we would have done in the New Deal that's what Lyndon Johnson look why and he said something to me that just took the wind out of me he said well it's always better if you can make things work just in the private sector and not involve the government and he said and he said the thing is you got to innovate we innovated smaller cans because you know the company's the company still has to have a business model and I thought you were the former president of United States why did who says the company still has to have a business model why is that your problem of my problem let them figure out their business model let's just stop killing the kids and if that is not a clear-cut case in our day and age from someone who once marshaled the full power of the United States government it tells you not about him it tells you how much our culture has changed so what could he have done build those movements and work in the rest of us do I think my simple answer is because there is this I mean in an ideal world I think there'd be less billions laying around for rich people to allocate by their whims but we're in the world we are in now and so what do you do if you're in that position I think the simple answer and this is a complex issue but my simple answer would be to shift your giving from giving back to giving up and from crowding government out to crowding it in just a word on each giving back is keeping the system that you're standing on top of it's keeping unequal public schools it's keeping a world in which women have no maternity leave but it's throwing some scraps it's telling women to lean in here and there it's you know it's a building that one charter school it's essentially solving the problem just enough to have to not solve it giving up would be solving some of these problems in a way that hurts you I would love to see a movement of billionaires I'd love to see a billionaire give me a billion dollar donation to an organization trying to figure out how to crack down on global tax havens that'd be that'd be giving up right I don't see a lot of that I don't see that foundation there's some but not a lot mean there's not that that's a great example Warren Buffett is advocating for higher taxes but you you are right there is not much a billion dollars to out where the money is to bribe some Swiss officials to leak something I mean like you could do some real yeah if they're able to do it they're done on AIDS like they could do some real work on this issue and then four and then from from lastly from crowding government Alec Ratigan instead of creating your own private thing with your own name on it you're on the board you run it like Center communities are helping and and and mainstream what you figure out privately through experimentation mainstreaming into government headstart started as the Rockefellers innovating in the University of Iowa child welfare station figuring out privately how to help how to help kids from disadvantaged environments by improving the environment but then they didn't keep it in a little program in the University of Iowa they mainstreamed it in the US government every one business people loved scale you know there's a lot of scale the government and the first class of headstart had half a million children right one of whom is a character in the book Darren Walker who would not was the head of the Ford Foundation today and would not have had that role and wouldn't be one of the leaders of social justice in the world today had that program had five hundred students in Iowa instead of five hundred thousand around the country it's fascinating me how much your answer is the alternative is politics right it's building small D Democratic movements that can pass laws that increase taxes and and increase public education I think tell me yes but and but I one thing the easy pushback that well we got Paul Ryan Congress is dysfunctional you know you know how many government entities we have in the u.s. eighty nine thousand okay the House and Senate are two of them the White House is a third you don't feel you can influence those three okay that's fair you got eighty nine thousand others not enough of us run for local things not enough of us seek to influence local things I mean one simple example of this is this issue of dynamic scheduling for working-class Americans as one of the like horrors of working-class Americans lives schedules changing every week extreme having to drop your kids at daycare at 3:00 a.m. because a company now says you have to come at 5:00 a.m. instead of seven it happened this is something that you talk to any working-class community this is like a big big issue you don't need the federal government to fix this any city can require one month notice the change people's schedules any city do you know how few cities have done that cities totally run by liberals cities ratings have done it like very few yeah Philadelphia is considering it now so part of this is you can't just keep blaming Republicans in Congress because there's a lot like New York City is like a liberal paradise and it's it's also a paradise of inequality one of things with the reckon with is the the neglect of regular people in American life is a bipartisan consensus and and I completely agree with your point about local politics it's also the case that the house has elections every two years and a lot of Americans don't vote and it seems to me if there is one silver lining to the current political I hope it's a mini era era that we're living through it's the reengagement of people in life and as I was reading your book I was thinking about just how much it's happening I know it doesn't need my book to make it happen I mean I I think I actually feel a lot of hope these days because I think Donald Trump has so exposed and we got quite a long time without saying him Donald Trump has so exposed the stupidity in bankruptcy a fake change by billionaires pretending to fight for the common good that I actually think there's a reasonable chance that what follows Donald Trump is not just some other president but a new age of reform in American life much like we had a hundred years ago where we actually work to repair the core social infrastructure of this society over a generation and we stop waiting for trickle-down change okay thank you so we want to go to you all we've got two microphones my goal is not to have questions only for men since I've done panels before that sometimes happens and you've just had to listen to tube and run on for the last so please use the microphones and we've got one here that is empty and waiting and let's get started your mention of Monsanto right off the bat brought me back to volunteer gig I did at the local NPR station a few years ago in which Melinda Gates happen to be in the studio and she's waxing enthusiastic about these sacred seats and these righteous seeds and instead of drilling down on that Diane Rehm throws one softball question to her after another asking her about how she met bill without drilling down on this as this effort by the Gates Foundation to bribe these leaders in Africa to impose these this neo-colonial form of Agriculture everybody so let's just do it short like someone said so much it causes cancer so I'm just wondering what your take is on the Gates Foundation the thing I'll just say on that is I think one of the sort of things we haven't talked about today is actually the media's role in giving people a pass I think if you run an aggressive fund the media goes after you relentlessly if you want to help people it's just a very different tone of piece but in my view because helping people also involves an exertion of power over them and and and involves in my view a potentially anti-democratic you know one person a million votes and the media should just be far more critical of that we should treat it the way we treat any other exertion of power all right speaking for the women in the room so first of all I'm just thrilled you wrote this book and particularly the last part on crowding government in and government as scale it's it's exactly right but let's let's forget the billionaires who are starting social enterprise and let's instead think about the number of people who go to Wasco go to business school but then do set up a civic organization or a social enterprise they don't have a lot of money they joined the rest of us in begging for money from rich people but why aren't they a thick civil society that we deeply need in addition to government what so I want you to address those absolutely why I live and I am good and I think of those people and I say government I think of those people as being government adjacent and being part of an infrastructure that holds government accountable files lawsuits I mean on the education issue I mentioned of unequal public school funding its organizations exactly like that that are actually leading some farming potentially hopefully some Supreme Court cases one day which I hope reaches the wonderful judge we have in the back there from the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit because I know he's a compassionate man and and you know I think one of the things that people in those spaces tell me and often privately for obvious reasons they are the people who come up as activists who come up as civil society people but as you say to raise money they they have to and they've tell me horror stories about if I get money from this billionaire I can't use the word inequality in any of my tweets I have to switch to opportunity this is real right if I want money from this thing I can't work on the tax issue I mean I heard someone was an arts organization that raises money but they can't like raise the issue of Taxation in their arts programming that was one like rich person's condition for donating to the Arts right and so my issue is not with those organization I think those people are doing the Lord's work I think one interesting remedy for that would be I think we could get much more creative about that charitable tax deduction I think we should only give it to you if your donation is public spirited and there's a couple things that I think would make it public spirited if your names on it not public spirited you're buying you're buying a plaque no deduction if your if you're sitting on the board of the initiative and you get to decide how it goes no deduction you're purchasing the right to like govern people do it but no deduction and if on the other hand you are donating the things in a way that put those activists in charge or put the public authorities in charge and let a library system make its own decisions then maybe we give you because you are essentially contributing to public goods I hear that makes me think we should just get rid of the deduction I think it would not be a terrible idea all of you work harder and longer hours to pay for billionaires to get a tax deduction for their donations seriously sixty sixty something billion dollars a year I mean other white dudes sorry I did want to return which i think is a really crucial question of the points you were making about culture and language and also the notion that the sort of organized Begaren of our political economy is a bipartisan projects all of that in my mind raises the question of ideology and you know what I I think and anyone watching you know the current calamity here and who's been paying attention to which claim that was not not that not the weather one let's just do a question short yeah yeah right there's a pattern whereby wrap-up you know right-wing ideologues get in the door I'm sorry no no no I never like a one-sentence yes okay just second one because I just want to comply we gets a lot of people ok what's the one sentence question there's an anti-government ideology on the right there's a neoliberal capitalist ideology that enables the destruction of government the idea of governing on the right and what value do you see in describing you know the liberal side of this problem as you know an ideology let me just say this there's no I think one of the interesting things in the book is that sometimes people are a little bit puzzled by is like why isn't this a book about the Koch brothers and and you know in part because Jane Mayer wrote that book and it's really good and you should all read it called dark money and I don't go wherever Jane Mayer goes but I think my book is the second half of a two piece puzzle the the first and in some ways the originator of this struggle was a 3040 year war initiated from the political right and the and business interests to frontally wage war on government make us all think government's the enemy and you know and and then and the Koch brothers kind of personify that right this book is not about that although that's a Jane Mayer's books a great book about that this book is about people generally on the other half of the aisle but not always who we're not trying to do that who were actually trying to help sometimes a little cynically but often in real ways who ended up being the enablers of that war on government continuing and this is a story about enablement and that's where the neoliberal thing comes in I think it is it is meaningfully different from the Koch brothers who intended to create the outcome they created I think the people I'm writing about actually didn't intend to create the things you started with in terms of what's happened to the average worker in America but ended up enabling it in ways that they couldn't anticipate and perhaps didn't mean to I might I might add it and even when some of those efforts actually did good those people were not joining the fundamental battle over the future of this country correct they were sort of off to the side correct correct hello yeah I think what you're raising is extremely important and historically speaking if we go back to the Roosevelt era we can see all that work out the same way okay so my point is so we have let's just do a simple question because I just want to make sure and not everything's that simple well well if you don't have a question yeah but if you keep interrupting then it even makes it even longer okay just do a quick question just because I want to be polite to the folks behind you so what I'm getting at is that this is human nature it's in all of us to some degree we're all protective how do we start to move forward in terms of intellectually getting ourselves focused on where we have to go instead of always and I'm not complaining but always making this a people-people problem because we've got to get beyond what is really human nature thank you thank you thank you for being here today so this book resonated with me with an experience I had over the summer so over the summer I taught a social enterprise course at Stanford University for high school students and they were really wealthy students and part of the program was for them to design a social enterprise that solves a problem overwhelmingly the students chose issues that that were outside of their realm of experience for example I had a student who wanted to solve food stamps and her her solution was to create a blue apron for food stamp providers and I had there were international students another group of students why do I never hear these examples while I'm still writing the books they wanted to solve immigration in Spain in Italy they were a group of Spanish and Italian students and their solution was to basically redistribute immigrants to the rest of Europe because that was their big concern to deport them yes essentially so I'm curious to know what you would suggest for the generation coming after us who strongly believe solving social problems is their responsibility and are essentially growing up to become the elite hijacking social changers that you talked about in your book thank you that's a great question and I actually think your question gives us a path forward to the whole consulting finance pipeline question which is it sounds like you're making a case implicitly for those students doing something other than going into consulting and finance after they graduate they should go have weird crazy experiences in the world that put them into other people's communities and actually educate them about what you don't learn in college right and they should actually go do jobs that the kinds of like normal job like I mean I don't know just like go run a hamburger joint in China right like you'd like know like people I mean somebody that kind of thing after college but like people with the best options generally don't like I just personally think that people should go have weird experience and and experiences that actually anchor you in community because these sound like the kind of ideas people have when they actually don't know anything about other people hello thank you for being here today thank you and I have two questions let's do one and then we'll pick your best one okay in a Darwinian fashion okay I work in education in Egypt and I there are some probe programs being implemented in Egypt that I am running and this made me like am i doing something bad for this country which is the USA because these programs are really working against some pushing against the power dynamics in my community back in Egypt but obviously they're supporting according to your argument the these people this elite here so this made me question show bias should I stop why is it supporting the elite here I don't understand because there are the people who are responsible for these programs the people funding your program in Egypt which is good in Egypt yeah I think that's a very interesting question a lot of people ask that I mean I think you know one of the like a take that's different from mine that a lot of people point out is like look if some of these American billionaires who've you know made money on the world for a while like funneling their money back to these countries great and I think there is a difference when some of this money is going to other countries and like there is a justice component to that money flow but I'm concerned about the power dynamic again like do these people get to decide how you do your program in Egypt do they get to decide who's good and who's bad who gets the money who doesn't are they on the board that power like what does the money buy them Italy just helping or are they running right and and so that's like that's one question it's often how you do something and not just like do I do it or not thank you so much on and for your book even though you say that you focus a lot of it on the United States in fact many of the issues you raise are quite broad I've worked on gender equality for 40 years now in in global context primarily in the global South and many of the same kinds of patterns you see there as well I would ask you one question I think that you know when you you classify corporates or the you know that sector government and civil society for example which is often done as these sort of these big entities I would argue that what I've seen anyway is that the same kinds of frames that you're talking about operated all three circles and those are the those are the ones who are at Aspen those are the ones who are at the Clinton Global Initiative those are the ones who are at the state of the world forum kind of stuff and so and what what I've seen is that there is a tendency in in this kind of corporate giving and and in the kinds of work that all three do to focus on the individual and to focus on individual change what do you call change at the margins right and let me and not to focus on any kind of structural change the reason why those kinds of organizations are not on the campuses is because they are being defunded correct so I think you're exactly right so a couple things one I think you are right that I'm what I'm describing here is really the the privatization of social change and and kind of philanthropic efforts of those kind of things but the story I'm not telling in this book but that's a very important story is the same thing happened to government right corporations and that was the kind of coke brothers thing we talked about but like companies run government as well and so one of the critiques that you could throw back at me as well you're saying solve more problems in the government but the government's totally captured and my argument is yet it absolutely is and we need to make that not the case and that's that maybe 50 years of work but I think it's it's it's the work so yes that those dynamics do exist in government but there's one difference with government at the end of the day when however corrupt are captured it is government speaks in all of our name in a way that no company does even when it's even when it's corrupt it still speaks in our name because that's just a matter of philosophy it's just it speaks for the whole and so to me it's a lot more important to clean that up because that we own in common I end the book by talking to an Italian political philosopher you should always end a book that way Chiara Cordelia the University of Chicago and she's sitting on there's a scene where she's sitting on a panel with Sandy Weill I used to run Citigroup didn't believe in government when he was at Citigroup hence financial crisis and then and then doesn't believe in government now that he's a philanthropist because he can solve problems better and he kept saying how great he is at solving problems and have government so bad government so bad government so bad and this like Italian political philosopher just looks at him after a while and says the government is us and he looked at her level what the government is us and he said what the government is us even when when you're when your family is dysfunctional you don't go to Thanksgiving a restaurant by yourself you fix your family you fix the dinner you stay and you make it better and that's what we have to do with our government regardless of how corrupt and capture this I hope you don't do that it takes hi myself and some other friends of Mines were a little surprised with Bill Gates being at the top of your blurbs and I understand that you had a kind of an evaluation questionnaire thing that you went over with different different foundations and different of the private that's what Lynn told me anyway dole mnek i interviewed i just interviewed people and met various no conditions yeah so i was gonna ask you what was your sort of key that or instrument that you used but i also want to give a shout out to and sort of on the other end of the spectrum ask you your experience with organizations you know smaller budgets that have direct contacts with community organizations the lobby fund of haiti is in the house the Global Fund for women is in the house the Global Fund for children and I'm sure a bunch of others but that's just who I happen to see if you could give us an example of you know what you've seen that you go like this is the way it should I mean one organization that I love that's my similar to the ones you mentioned is a National Domestic Workers Alliance right I mean and you know I Jen was another one of my blurbs and I want to talk about the gates a in a second cuz it's a funny story but she is not living in a silo like she raises money from I think the Ford Famine she raises like the big money and I act to be honest I don't know exactly how she does it but she has protected her work from the pressure I like I don't the impression I don't I don't know how structurally she did it and I'd be curious and maybe some of these organizations have done the same thing the same way newspapers actually are able to like raise advertising revenues and not have you know Piaget determine what the news coverage is I think there actually are organizations that raise money that managed to protect their work from rich donors and we should probably all study them and she's and she's one is absolutely thinking about the future of work in ways that are not win-win in ways that will involve sacrifice it's a great case study and how important norms are correct that's how the media does it it's about normal exercise and no one would think to ask no one would think to ask or when they do they're they're laughed out of the room I mean I think Arthur jr. today made an announcement the New York Times that they were working on like a Harvey Weinstein advertising deal when this when they the story broke and they were like we don't care like they didn't know one of the ad team knew and they just ran the story like that's the kind of ethic that I think actually allowed these organizations some had some do have and more could have the gates thing was funny I actually had a fear which play every author has but with this book it was particularly strong I really thought no one is gonna blurb this book and so I decided to pursue two tracks one was I sentence of people who I thought would be sympathetic like I gen and then I made a list of people who I thought would reject it and I my plan was we're gonna have like four blurbs on the back that were all rejection letters Lloyd Blankfein is unable to read this book office of Lloyd Blankfein you know just like four of those and I actually I thought that wasn't be so good I like my agent was like very nervous but I really I still think it may have been better and Bill Gates was the only one where I thought it could go either way so I did him first and it's it's a it's a parsed nuanced blurb I mean it directly necessarily about the book it's a complicated relation of the book in there but he did it and I think one of the things that I've been told that people who work for him is that he actually and I think there are legitimate issues around the amount of power he has as an individual no matter how good the work is but he doesn't like all these finance people who give like a million dollars to Ogawa and try to pass themselves off as being the same as him and that he kind of wanted to you know draw a little bit of a line between people who pursue transformational change in people who don't that's that's what I heard thank you last question so you talked a lot about the private sector and the government and how reforming the government is going to be a long process what role do you see nonprofits and philanthropy in that do you see them as an interim role where because you criticize Aspen but you also praise the Rockefeller Foundation for that's a great question it goes to that thing I said before which is in an ideal world there'd be less money to give away because more of that would have been paid out as wages more of that would be in public schools more of that would be you know in people's I mean I just look at the numbers today I think the 99% of Americans the bottom 99% are still 30% poorer than they were in 2007 the financial crisis the top 1% of Americans are like 30% richer I mean this is stuff you know so well like so in an ideal world like that wouldn't be the case and we would have done different policies to make that not the case and there'll be less money to give away but in the world we are now I think the transitional moment and it's gonna be a long transitional moment like it's this is not gonna happen before gates as fortunes gone and and maybe not before all of zux fortunes gone if he ever really gives it away to his LLC is for them to give better and for them to give in ways that you know so I talked about that giving back versus giving up and and and crowding out for Scrat again a simpler way to say it is I think for that generation of people there really is a new generation that will be interesting Bezos still hasn't decided how he's going to do it suck and the others is if they let's imagine I don't have that much hope for them but let's imagine what would it look like for them to give as trainers to their class because actually the people who can most afford to be traders of their class are people with like a hundred billion dollars right what would it look what would it mean let's just think about what that giving would look like right I mean someone in Chevy Chase may not be able to afford to fight for equal public schools for everybody but Elon Musk can afford to fight for that right and actually it would be amazing if some of those people would be giving would would commit to giving in ways that actually erode the very unfair platform that they're standing on top of right and do the things that actually a corrupt captured government can't do right now do the things that you know actually use their power to play an experiment and work outside the system but then bring it into the system and make the system better for everybody solve problems at the root and for all great closing questions I want to end of course by thanking Anand it's wonderful congratulations I want to thank all of you for coming out and I also just want to say a thanks to politics and prose I like many of you I'm a regular customer of this bookstore none of us being here tonight or sitting here helps them pay the bills or pay the electricity or pay their workers so if you're able and they didn't ask me to say this please buy a book on your way out thank you all thank you so much you

Channel: Politics and Prose

Views: 61,400

Keywords: Anand Giridharadas, Anand Giridharadas winners take all, Anand Giridhradas book, David Leonhardt, The New York Times, Anand Giridharadas interview, Anand Giri, Anand Giriharadas Aspen Institute speech, Anand Giriharadas google, economic inequality, Aspen Institute, charity, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, philantrophy, capitalism, global elite, Bill Clinton, Clinton Global Initiative, lobbying, tax shelters, tax havens, tax evasion

Id: Lirp7bQ8veQ

Length: 65min 20sec (3920 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 18 2018