What It Really Takes to Change the World | Anand Giridharadas | RSA Replay

well good afternoon everyone welcome my name is Hakeem Singh I'm director of the RSA is research program on the economy Enterprise and manufacturing it's my great pleasure to welcome you all here today for today's special event I'm just little bit of housekeeping before we begin could I ask you to make sure that your phones are turned to silent we're filming today's event live streaming over the web so big welcome to everyone who's joining us online and reminded the hashtag is RSA change if you'd like to get involved in the conversation on Twitter please do it's a real privilege to be in the chair today as it's the opening event of the RSA 2019 calendar and I think we're getting off to a cracking start with our first guest of this year Armand give Havas is a political analyst for NBC News having been a foreign correspondent and columnist for The New York Times for many years he is the author of the true American and India calling and he joins us today to talk about his new book a New York Times best-selling book winners take all the elites charade of changing the world which I think it's fair to say has caused a bit of a sensation in change-making circles the book tells the JIT the story of Carmen's journey from insider to truth teller of how having worked as a McKinsey analyst and then as an Aspen Institute fellow he began to feel like an accomplice to the actions of a global elite who are actually hijacking the very meaning of social change so if you join me in giving and a round of applause so I feel like you guys do very you do intimidating rooms well in this country I mean if this country is good at anything it is intimidating rooms I just had in a chair that I was not supposed to sit on that was for Prince Philip and at a sign saying do not sit in Prince Philip's chair so I just did that also so that was that was great after watching the crown I felt no compunction about oh so we're gonna do this am I gonna have a bit of a conversation about his book about some of the ideas behind the books and what we'll do is we'll open it out to questions thereafter so perhaps um if I could kick off by ask you to tell us a little bit about the time that you found yourself on a stage at Aspen in 2015 about to tell a roomful of rich and powerful people including many of your own friends and colleagues that they weren't necessarily the saviors that they think they were I I'm a writer and I've been a writer for a while and I had been a writer for a while at that moment and as some kind of cosmic accident that I'm sure the Aspen Institute has never repeated they invited so they have this fellowship called the Henry Crowne fellowship and it's it's real purpose is to kind of civilize business people that's the idea they use so they take mid-career young leaders businesspeople they now have replicas of this fellowship in other countries who are kind of focused on business success and they intervene in their late 30s or 40s to try to help them see social problems the larger needs of the world and to try to make them read Plato and Gandhi we also read Jack Welsh which should have been a warning sign and to try to kind of deploy them to educate them in these larger social issues to work on these big problems but in a you know a class of 20 business people alone deliberating may be a little boring so into every class of 20 or so people they throw in an artist a writer I'm not sure if they still do this but they did and I was you know one of these kind of side people and so I've been in this fellowship a few years and at first it was great and really fun and Aspen if you've been there as one of the loveliest places on earth and it's very easy to feel like you're on this gorgeous Mountain and this gorgeous Chalet and you really are making the world a better place just by being there and I began to have misgivings about the place which led to giving that speech and the misgivings were I think at the heart of what the book became about years later which is that it seemed to me first of all I mean the period of my being in that in that place in the early 2010's was a period of staggering inequality of an America was still that much of the world limping back to life after the Great Recession people were in pain most people were being you know left out of what we kind of quaintly call the American Dream still even though it exists more in other countries than in the America in America and here were all these wealthy powerful people entrepreneurs people from big companies big Facebook fine it big finance gathering to celebrate the idea that they are the ones gonna change the world and with every passing year and this had actually started to seem to me that the very people gathering in Aspen to talk about changing the world were the people who when they were not in Aspen were causing the problems they were flying to Aspen to solve they were prosecuting big finance in ways that led to the kind of crisis that knocked millions of people off their feet in the financial crisis they were prosecuting the kind of big tech revolution that has allowed the Cambridge analytical stuff to happen here that allowed Facebook to basically compromise American democracy and possibly tip a federal election result they were producing monopolies like Amazon that basically lead to a world in which there's no stores anymore and we all have to buy everything from one place that owns everything and then they were flying to Aspen and not only talking about giving back there by scrubbing their reputation but actually taking charge rhetorically and actually of social change running organizations putting themselves on the boards you buy it you do a donation you're now in charge deciding how our public school should be deciding you know reshaping the conversation around how we empower women so that we kind of stop talking about maternity leave and social policy and rights and we started talking about lean in which is basically I think telling women to make sexism their problem by raising their hand higher as though sexism more like a posture problem but this is what happens when a billionaire becomes in charge of the conversation about feminism for example and that example that we may laugh at on lean in is I think of microcosm for what I saw happening across that space but also just across a lot of the world which is when that rich and powerful take involve themselves and take leadership of change they change change they change the conversation we have about change they change the kind of changes that are acceptable and I began to realize I was part of what felt like this kind of sweet lipped lie and so sorry long answer to your question when I was asked to give a speech I was actually asked to give a speech about a previous book I'd written about a hate crime I said yes and I decided to commit a bit of a crime by giving a speech about something else entirely without really telling them and I decided to speak to this room of a few hundred people who were in this kind of philanthropy list complex and say well I think you guys are fighting on two sides of a war and I think what you do by operational daylight often impacts the world negatively in ways that what you do by philanthropic moonlight can never compensate for there is no philanthropy Mark Zuckerberg can do in his young in the many decades he has ahead of him that will undo what he did to American democracy simply because of the scale of what happens when you undermine a democracy of a country as large and powerful as you in states what philanthropy could have an effect that Dwarfs the effect possibly of making Donald Trump president right what philanthropy can Goldman Sachs do that will repay all those people who lost their homes their jobs their marriages in some cases their lives as a consequence of second and third order effects because of reckless speculation the financial crisis for which no one went to jail no one and so I decided to speak my truth to that group and it was a very complicated moment some people to my surprise gave me a standing ovation other people sat on their hands looking angry and some people did something where their face looked angry but they gave me a standing ovation and then later at the bar the whole thing was captured the response was captured by a private equity man who came up to me and he put his hand up shake my hand and he says you're an which may be the first time that word has been said in front of these paintings possibly yeah possibly not plus it's fascinating and it seemed it seems to me than what you're alluding to here is that these elites have created if you like a phony consensus or a status quo about what change looks like there's somehow at odds - what change actually looks like on the ground and in the book which I read the book I read the book of boxing they actually with my leftover turkey in there and it was a great afternoon at Sharon great time I always wonder what people do on Boxing Day now read read winners take over New York Times best-selling book and I you have this lovely phrase in the book where this this collection of elites are going are quote guided by the light by light facsimile as of change which i think is absolutely right and I guess I wanted to find out what you thought is motivating up here you know is it just that they want to make more money is that they're deluded about the effect that they have is it that they simply don't know how else to get involved in the world what is what is the motivation there you know I begin the book with a quote from Tolstoy which is always a strong move instead of starting with your own paltry words and he says something to the effect of I sit on a man's I stand on a man's back choking him asking him to carry me and I think to help him in any way I can except by getting off his back and I think the position of many of the winners of our age of the last 30 40 years this period of time that is somewhat unique in being a period defined by hyper technology change hyper kind of globalization change also you know sort of coincidentally to those things not really related but equally cataclysmic in many places demographic change I mean if you think about for a moment in the last 30 40 years we've basically done the rise of women the rise of ethnic minorities and empower in many places the of LGBT people in addition to the digital revolution and globalization so there are some people who are on the right side of all of those changes and it's just been you know helium balloons but there's many people who have received all five of those as headwinds and then there's many of us in between and the result is that those elites who have been the winners of that period I think recognize that we live in an age of inequality recognized yesterday I was lucky enough to be in the House of Commons during the vote and listened to every every MP regardless of how they voted telling a three-minute story about what was actually going on in their constituency regardless of how they ended up the stories were all stories of ache of jobs lost of uncertainty of people unable to see a future that they can run into and I think the winners of our age knowing that that's happening knowing the inequality data knowing from Oxfam that 82 percent of new wealth generated in 2017 went to the global 1% which means that we're not only not fixing historical legacies we're literally making it worse now knowing all of that have been determined to help to change to make a difference that's why you see every banks got an impact investment fund every rich guy is doing a Giving Pledge financial thing you know giving away lots of money Flint the philanthropic thing every you know Silicon Valley business claims it's a humanitarian project you know every ice cream company is like giving back and 3% of your you know chocolate chips and yet what I think in general the winners of our age are unwilling to do is get off the man's back so they're willing to do anything and everything like the things I described but they're not willing so what would get on off the back be they're not willing to pay higher taxes or just stop avoiding them they're not willing to let go of their double-dutch with an irish sandwich tax maneuver they all use they're not willing to pay people more to do their jobs they're not willing to stop lobbying against austerity and the kinds of public policies that we know are going to hurt people but benefit financially leads they're not willing to actually commit to the communities that have made them as companies and which they can now effortlessly abandon by sourcing here and selling there and I think the conversation that I am have been trying to force with this book is what does it look like to imagine the kind of change that would involve the winners of our age stepping off that guys back or being made to step off that guy's back yeah and and the language that and what's ironic about what you've just said is the winners of our rage in your vernacular are taking more and more from the common stock from the Commonwealth and yet the language they used to describe their action is the language of win width so you and you and all of these investment this is quite a difficult conversation for a social change making organization that has many you know we have many projects and have had many projects over the last few years have looked at some of these movements like impact investment philanthropy tourism venture philanthropy where the language of change is couched in this non radical non confrontational what's good for me is good for my neighbor if I do like if I do well it means I can do some good thereby and your argument soomi's that's an incredibly corrosive way of looking at the world it is so beautifully seductive so I'm gonna ask you with no embarrassment how many of you have used the phrase win-win on ironically in the last year look at look around for a second keep your hands up now what could be wrong I mean win-win sounds so great right because it's like taking one victory and then just doubling it and you don't have to be a math major to know that that's you know two is better than one and what could be wrong with doing well by doing good what could be wrong with all these kind of philanthropy lism you know double bottom line triple bottom line I have a one-year-old she also has a triple bottom line and I think what I discovered as I started reporting the book you know cuz a book I mean hopefully you don't start a book knowing what you think you I wanted a journey of reporting and spent time in these worlds interviewing people understanding the rich and powerful in our age as they seek to do good but refuse to get off the man's back and engaging with them that mean that's the kind of work that I do and one of things I learned was a lot of this is you say couched in this language of win-win and I couldn't quite figure out what was a problem with it and obviously many of you can't either because you've used it on ironically and it seems good and as I thought about it it seemed to me what when the win-win does is it takes a a concept that's actually derived from the world of trade like you have ice cream I have money I want ice cream you want money and we do a deal and in that narrow case that actually is a win-win that's exchange that's marketing that's correct use of win-win what has happened is that this concept of the win-win has been kind of jammed into the sphere of social change and making the world better and actually solving our biggest public problems where it has no business okay so an ice cream trade is actual win-win situation and thinking about like to go back to the Sheryl Sandberg example feminism is not a win-win problem a lot of men are going to have to lose a lot of power and privilege and the right to grow people at the office and have positions that their mediocrity did not actually entitle them to for that revolution to succeed the right thing to do I mean by the way it's like maternity leave is expensive it's actually expensive either we pay for it in society or comfort someone's gonna pay for and it's expensive it's worth it but it's expensive when everything is couched as a win-win what you are really saying is that the kinds of social change that actually cost the winner something are ruled out what you're really saying is the best kind of solutions don't ask anybody to get off anybody's back what you're really saying is yeah tell women the problem is their posture they should lean forward and raise their hand more that way we don't have to actually pay them equally because that would hurt shareholder value what you're really saying is yeah let's have charter schools and you know let's have Mark Zuckerberg give some money to a school because what you really don't want to do in the United States I know this is a lien here is end the unbelievably barbaric system we have a funding public education by your local property taxes so basically then nicer your house the better the education you get in America which is obviously crazy we don't want to end that and so what do we do we offer if you just say well I'm not touching the education system you're gonna lose your next election or you're gonna be have a pitchfork in your stomach so what the winners of our age do is get out in front of it by saying no no I didn't I recognize the desire for more equity in education system let's do charter schools let's do lean in let's do let's not do higher taxes of public education but let's do this new thing that they're promoting in Silicon Valley where Silicon Valley companies pay for you to go to college and then you pay them a percentage of your income which used to be called taxation but is now down as an app only for the luckiest students with the highest likelihood of repayment and so I believe that this win-win thing although it sounds so good is actually part of the privatization of the solution of public problems I don't think all problems are need to be solved by the public eye hope my phone's continued to be built by the private sector I hope my airplanes continued to be built by the private sector I think frankly most things that occur in this society or any society in the modern world will be privately built and arranged but when you look at a problem like social mobility like the empowerment of women like what trade has done to communities in this country and the anger that it is aroused those are the kinds of problems that cannot be solved by really clever businesses or really fun apps or rich people who happen to be feeling generous on a particular day those are the kind of problems we can only solve together and those kinds of solutions have been discredited by the fantasy of the win-win that allows the winners to keep standing on people's backs I think I think it seems to me than what you're alluding to there is the idea that across the social change space there's been almost a mass financialization an incursion of financial norms of mores and you have a term for this in the book market world that we are living over than some of us anyway the win winners if you like the elites are living in a market world paradigm a way of thinking about the world the books no other way of thinking about change other than the rules the norms the measurements of the market and it seems to me that yeah the journey you've taken takes you in sort of I'm picking the four corners of market world it takes you right across the public space it takes you from kind of tedtalk evangelists who have one solution that they preach with with rare sort of passion to you know to the Goldman Sachs McKinsey complex you remain very influential at the heart of American government after of the various journeys that you took through market world which seemed to you to be the most absurd pernicious that's a good question you know I think a market world which by the way since you're only listening this is like one word capital m capital W you visualize it you know it's sometimes useful to coin something that describes a complex of things this book is not about philanthropy well it's not a it's about I actually tried to assemble many different things that I think are part of the same cultural tendency philanthropy is one of them when when businesses are different from philanthropy but they're another that kind of TED talk circuit where people pay ten thousand dollars sitting in audience and hear ideas that don't tell them that there's anything wrong with that what they do in the world is another part of the enabling of that market world circuit a fourth thing is the people as you say from Goldman Sachs and the idea that in the nonprofit world or the anti-poverty world that you need to have study we need to have trained at Goldman Sachs or McKinsey to really understand and be able to help poor people thereby rebranding out arsonists as firefighters this takes a second right all of those things kind of go together and so yeah you say I went on a journey I mean so one part of the journey is I I went to the final Clinton Global Initiative which is Bill Clinton's big plutocratic save the world confab that he had every year and he ended it in 2016 September 2016 was the last one during UN Week in New York and what was so significant about that moment as you'll appreciate is it was what three months after Briggs it and two months before Hillary lost and Sadiq Khan was there on stage with with President Clinton so yeah so you everybody in the room was like processing brexit which was kind of the first thing that year they made everybody in that room realized they had no idea what was going on and then there were two months away from again realizing that they had no idea what was going on although they didn't learn anything between June and November but it was like it was like being I mean it must have been what it was like to be in Merion to Annette's makeup room right before the Revolution right it's just like no things are gonna be fine right I mean there was a little blip things are gonna be fine and you know things were not fine and so after that I in a kind of redrafting of the book I this is a long way to get to it but I wrote a version of the book and it didn't quite work and we didn't know why and a friend of mine finally diagnosed it and he said you got to find the love in this book got to find the love in it and it's obviously a critical book I mean as the word charade in the subtitle but yeah and I went back and I redid the whole book trying to find the love in it which is to say it's not doesn't mean it's not fierce but to actually engage with people who I was critiquing and understand so instead of just writing about my CGI for days at CGI is a fly on the wall I say I should interview Bill Clinton about I should try to interview Bill Clinton about his journey because no one better captures actually the arc that I'm describing in the book which I think would be familiar from this country's politics also the arc from in 1964 when Bill Clinton was a college student at Georgetown I don't think you could find anybody who believed more than him that the way you changed the world his politics his movements his political life Lyndon Johnson was his hero big government liberalism solving problems civil rights etc fast forward 50 some years I don't think you could find anybody in the world who believed more than Bill Clinton did and what is now the reigning theory of change which is you make change by getting a bunch of rich people in a room and having the Rockefeller Foundation partner with McDonald's and goldman sachs to help 30 fat kids in some neighborhood that those companies helped be in that situation and so I sat down with I requested this interview and we had like an hour conversation 90 minute conversation and Bill Clinton said some things that were just so staggering to me there and it's in the book where he said you know it's always better if you can solve problems in the private sector why you know kind of why why bother government and he had said this line in his speech that I asked him about which is you know this kind of plutocratic private-public thing he said this is all that works in the modern world and I thought for a man who commanded the most powerful machinery of state in history of human civilization to think that only by getting like Goldman Sachs and the Rockefeller Foundation together can you solve problems it just is so manifestly untrue and so we got an argument about let's take particular case that an issue that he had worked on which is this childhood obesity issue big part of the problem in the u.s. I don't know if it's the same degree here is you have these beverage companies Coke and Pepsi that use their political connections and lobbying to get vending machines into public schools our schools write these so it I constructed this case because it and he's worked on this issue but he worked on it by getting Pepsi and Coke to make smaller cans and he said you know well you have to work with them because you have to you know if you get rid of this they have to still have a business model I remember thinking why is it your problem that they still have to have a business model they're doing something they're shortening children's lives why do you worry why do you be solicitous of their needs so we had this argument and it just seemed to me such a clear-cut case of like it's children they can't vote they can't sue they literally have no recourse to these powerful companies putting these products in their schools it is public schools we own the schools we own the real estate so the companies have no right to be there it's not a market transaction and still you can't just say I'm the former president of United States I'm gonna lead a movement a Citizens movement using my power and popularity which he has a lot of to say no Pepsi or coke vending machine in any public school in America you could get that done couldn't you said no but you gotta you gotta work with the private sector because they have to innovate so that they have a business model and I just picked that example because it struck me as such a compelling and sad tale if even he who knows the power of the law who knows what movements and politics can do even he has capitulated to this view then his generation of change makers I think needs to yield to a younger generation that is coming up and we are seeing come up that actually believes what he believed a long time ago which is it the way you change the world is from below through movements and policy politics and and and the law so that's really interesting um market world has a concept I mean you say this explicitly in the book actually it aligns broadly with the critique that many give a society which is this idea of neoliberalism market world as a fuel its material manifestation in our world and when I think about sort of the economic origins of neoliberalism alexander rüstow who is writing in the early twentieth century he defined the liberalism I think in the seminal definition was unfettered market underpinned by all intrusive states and it seems to me that what you're alluding to there is that there's been a degree of collusion on the part of government and the current status quo is I mean would you agree I think collusion is a little bit off to me just because I think it's more of a capture you know I think things again I I try to speak only to the American system and depth because I just don't know other systems and I think there's been a bit of capture and Breton ISM right but I think your Lobby I mean someone was telling you know telling me today take seventy five thousand pounds to run for Parliament here and I was thinking wow that's really a lot of money and it takes about a few million dollars to run for like the merest congressional seat in the US and a billion dollars to run for president so I think we have some much worse problems there's money in politics but capture takes many forms lobbying is capture campaign contributions are capture but also like there's a lot of capture of our politics through the intellectual sphere right and that's why the win-win thing is so important one of my notions is that a lot of how the kind of cruelties of this neoliberal period have been have been perpetrated is through something as simple as language right I mean it's not power is not only exerted through you know through tanks and bank vaults I mean power is often exerted through just distorting people's sense of the possible and language does a lot there I think what has happened is government has been captured and government has failed let's be clear I mean I the argument of my book is that we need to go back to political this political sphere broadly defined not just government but the whole political sphere public sphere as the place we go to really change the world but I have no illusions about the fact that the public sphere as it is right now is disappointing I was in the House of Commons last night and with all respect to your leaders although I'm sure many of you would agree that I'm about to say watching the Prime Minister and the opposition leader then on a night that was you know one of the most kind of pregnant nights in the history of politics in this country in recent times honestly it felt like watching a competition of two people each trying to be the more uninspiring figure from the 1970s like who could be the more uninspiring 1970s person I knew I was gonna be trouble ever since i sat on Prince Philip's chair this is why I only got invited places once but it just seemed to me I was really moved by the all the MP speeches not the part where they you know explain their vote but the part where they just give the Anthropology of their constituency what was happening and for me that's what this whole represented democracy thing is for just actually revealing that information up to us and it struck me that if you took a collage of all the different things that were being said by people from all the different parties it was a collage of pain and fear and some of that fear leads people to vote for Corbin and some of that fear leads people to want to get out of the heat but forget that for a second it was just this collage of like people who felt who feel that this place doesn't work for them they don't know how to operate their lives that they're unsure of what they're gonna be able to give to their children it's basic human things we should all have empathy for regardless of where you go and it just honestly struck me listening to those - as the choices as the as the as the kind of depositories we're all this feeling could go as just being like really inadequate to all that sentiment and you could imagine on the other hand a charismatic person who could speak to that moment speak to the pain in this country speak of the experiences people have lead it in a hopeful way to what a vision whether it's in Europe or out of Europe but just you could imagine something that was inspiring and you know we will fight on the beaches but for this situation and it was so lacking and and so I think I don't want to let politics off the hook I am advocating for us solving more of our problems in politics but politics has to get a lot better and win and win people back and convince young people in particular the dogma they've been sold that if you want to make the world better start an ice cream company that gives back five percent that's clearly wrong and has been the dogma of our time but I think we need to convince those young people that politics is a more exciting way to make the world better and politics is running for office but it's also creating the conditions for a better politics which means working in journalism which means working in think tanks which means community organizing which means actually you know doing the kind of work that is now growing in the US I don't know if it's happening here also where you have organizations like the arena and the u.s. is one that does like candidate training and recruitment so you actually proactively go out and recruit people to run for office who are from backgrounds where they might not otherwise Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is his star young congresswoman in the US was recruited by this group called Justice Democrats who saw her as a a mere organizer for Bernie Sanders among thousands of organizers for Bernie Sanders saw her talent asked her to run for office helped her supported her and now there's one woman's basically changing the Democratic Party through a Twitter account so change takes a long time but when it happens it actually happens pretty quickly and you know they're now suggestions at every presidential candidate and there's going to be like thirty on the Democratic side in the u.s. in this coming election is basically being asked out of the gate do you agree with a Oh C on this do you agree with a like one person recruited to run by one fringe movement is now kind of the head of the fish of this entire party that for 30 years has totally been captured by neoliberal Dogma so it can happen I have a bunch of all the question that I want to ask you but I think it's I've been hogging hogging you for far too long [Laughter] so what I'd like to do now is I'd like to open it out to your questions there are some roving mics welders I'll take three at a time if you could just say your name and then make your point or ask your question so we've got gentlemen in the front I'm David wood fellow of the society what's going to prevent the likes of ALC that you mentioned in admiring terms going the same route of Bill Clinton in the future what's going to allow the inspiring political trains that you admire to succeed rather than being captured yeah it's a great question I mean I think the simple answer there is that and this may be very specific to US politics but a lot of this depends on where your money comes from and Bill Clinton was you know born poor one of the poorest people to ever become president however his path into office was really shaped by a group called the DLC the Democratic Leadership Council which was essentially I mean quite someone what happened here with labor under Blair but was kind of a group that pushed for a more corporate version of the Democratic Party away from being a trade union party towards being a more corporate you know I sometimes joke but it's sort of true that the distinction now between the American parties is like there's kind of a party of money that hates gay people and a party of money that doesn't hate gay people you know there's like a white party of money and there's like a diverse party of money things like two different parties and money and so Bill Clinton's money delimited his possibilities so one of the things that Ocasio has done maybe she changes her mind I don't know but I doubt it she's committed to only small dollar contributions and she's put her time where her mouth is so for example one of the little-known things that actually not a lot of people knew about in the u.s. until she exposed it recently well that all these members of Congress spend much of their day doing call time which is sitting there office calling donors what's actually ridiculous that that's even allowed but that's what they do well she announced that she won't be doing call time you can send her a small donation to this website that's it well that's pretty interesting and that means that Goldman Sachs when they want a meeting with her she has no obligation to go to a meeting where as you look at obama and clinton and i you know i think obama is incorruptible them compared to bill clinton but was even he was swept up in i mean obama is the top donor once there was goldman sachs right i don't think he is not personally profiting from it but I think he it shapes a worldview he hired a lot of goldman sachs people you know so i think a lot of who your friends are who you party with and where you get your money shape a lot of your outlook and actually having those sources change and having the kinds of movements I mean the organization that really catapulted AOC is called justice Democrats I would look at them and there's small outfit it's at a pretty great bang for its buck in terms of changing the nation's conversation with I don't think they spent more than a few million dollars while other people spent billions achieving nothing do you think we need a new cultural narrative is it the fact that taxation and some of these things which contribute to the public space have been over the last 3040 years devalued nocked being something that people don't see the benefits from and doing is someone to stand up and speak for them in the same way as people need to speak up for Europe yeah I think that's I think that's right and it's I can actually to my mind as an outsider very analogous of the Europe thing which is I think sometimes there's this problem of things that are good that we feel are good are noble we don't feel the need to sell to people I mean Europe to me is like such an amazing example of this like it that's probably it certainly you know however you feel about it i think its in arguable that it has the EU as probably saved more live if you just look at the trajectory like save more lives than maybe any innovation in the history of the world and I think it deserved the Nobel Prize and yet there was always a smugness to the EU of like something that didn't need to make people love it and didn't need to make people feel citizenship I mean I've never met anybody who liked felt like a citizen of the EU more than they felt as like a citizen of somewhere else well it didn't have to be that way and they feel like in evident what it wasn't inevitable I mean the the United States people used to once feel more loyal to their states than the country that chained and now maybe changing back and reverse but I think that was a real failing I always felt that you know that it as an outsider it always seemed to me there was a smugness to like this project is good it's self-evidently good and it didn't need to be sold well turns out it really did need to be sold and actually no one loved it everyone knew it was important but no one loved it and I think government is sort of like that in general you know like you can't I met someone from the Cabinet Office this morning I was saying you know we don't give government anything any problem that government decisively solves once and for all goes into a bucket of things we no longer feel grateful for this is the problem with government right like if you eat in a restaurant in this country the chances of you getting sick are basically zero there's something occasionally but when was the last time you got food poisoning in a restaurant now you all know that when you go to many countries in the world even countries that have great universities and it's not it's a you get sick almost every time you eat out in a restaurant there are many places like that well it is a massive civilizational accomplishment that may be boring but is actually not to have created a country where like you can't get sick when you eat out just and I'm picking one little thing but the roads driving air travel these are all miracles and they're miracles that were enabled by public systems and infrastructure that we built that just hums along like do you understand how amazing it is you can just fly from one country you understand what went into that and it wasn't just building an airplane the afford ination all of that the court with the courts to do you understand like the amount of infrastructure that allows one person to have a business in this country see a number of things that are working right just so you can have your business and have electricity and the Internet and if someone steals your you know supplies you can take them to court and like and we don't appreciate any of that because it's just in the bucket of things we're not grateful for any more because it's solved so I think part of it is that as with Europe a storytelling challenge of like making people appreciate government making people appreciate I mean I you know you see all these gripes about the NHS but you had this counter movement recently on social media like people telling NHS stories and it was very moving because it's just so easy to forget how important government is in it and I think we're ripe for a new story of like screw the narrative of like Mark Zuckerberg as a hero I'm not sure what kind of hero ruins everything you know we need to tell the story of how we built these societies that are actually little miracles or big miracles and and and have young people see themselves in roles of upkeep of these amazing projects and not have them feel like homework was it there's a gentleman over there I think speaking to the microphone when you said about my name is Andy Hicks when you said about the House of Commons and if only there was a charismatic leader it automatically made me think of Obama and I'm interested to know more about what you thought of his presidency you know his his tag line very similar to your title change you can believe in and and yet he gave birth to Trump in some way so interested and also there was a huge grassroots movement in getting him elected I think both times so I'm interested to know more about what you think about his presidency in relation to really changing the world look I I will say I think Barack Obama is probably one of the best human beings to ever govern any country in the world probably one of the best most intelligent people to ever govern any place anywhere in the world I think he I mean I think he transformed the idea of who could have power through that kind of grassroots stuff he also had some very serious handicaps number one he took over right in the moment of a kind of Great Depression light number two he was a black man in a country that does not allow black men the kind of same right of anger and of using the kind of language that FDR used during the Great Depression of malefactors of well I mean if if Barack Obama had gone after the people who caused the financial crisis as I think he should have with the same language that FDR did as a white aristocrat from New York versus an african-american president I think Barack Obama would have had even bigger problems than he did I think he was limited because of our racial politics in his ability to speak certain truths about our time that said I think he is also temperamental II one of the most conservative people just that's who he is aside from the race stuff in the context he's not a flame thrower I also don't think he'd become the first black president United States of America if you're a flamethrower so I don't think it's a surprise that he it was him and not Jesse Jackson right but he's just not like Barack Obama's the most 1950s family you could have right not for many people but actually you know and and so I just think he his heart is in the right place he had amazing political gifts but when it came to redistributing power and actually going after Wall Street or kind of advocating real shifts in who kind of monopolized progress and breaking up those monopolies I just think he wasn't it just it isn't who he is and he was handicapped in his ability to do so and and so I think what he did was I mean the health care thing like I'm on Obama care it's okay it's good I mean it's better than not having health insurance he'd made a real difference that Obama care stuff did move the needle a little bit on returning with me on the health care it was a needle on some larger things but he didn't really arrest the 40 year stagnation we can't arrest the stagnation he didn't reverse the 40 year stagnation of average people's fortunes and you know I think he was he was a limited figure and if you look at the people around him I mean he hired as many Goldman at Goldman Sachs and McKinsey people as anybody else and I start the book with actually someone who went to go work for his well she was I start the book with someone who went to work for McKinsey she was sold on the idea that that was how she was gonna learn to change the world and she's about to leave as soon as she realized obviously you don't go to McKinsey to learn how to change the world and she's about to leave and she gets a phone call saying hey we have a project for you Barack Obama's about to leave the presidency and he wants to start a foundation to reinvigorate democracy and restore power to the people and he wants to hire McKinsey to advise him on how to do so and part of her thinks well that's insane why would he call McKinsey to help him reinvigorate democracy and another part of her thinks well if he's calling maybe I should stay and so she stayed and she went to work for him anyway I'm that's a that's I'm giving you a lot of different perspectives on him but I I just think he's an example of how charismatic people is not enough you know if he had had a different movement behind him if he had had a different base of funders if he'd had you know real citizens armies out there able to push for something more like the NHS as opposed to this weird private health care thing we have it could have been very different okay we're gonna go for one more round of questions if you could ask you to keep it as brief as possible and what we'll do is we'll take the questions all at once and then we'll or disturbance and an algorithm will meld them into one absolutely as I am that algorithm right so we had a lady in front here we had a gentleman from there a lady over there thank you for speaking to Mike Thank You Angela Harvey what happened to American antitrust laws my only concern with what you've said is that it points a lot towards a Singapore model where there is a very transparent trade and constant sharing with people of what the benefit of the state is to the people they get great security they get great health care they're expected to contribute in that but what they're trading for it is obviously a lot of freedoms and true democracy in other words it walks against a true democratic model in if you follow the direction of what you're saying that's the lady over there so there's a mic coming your way from a business point of view first of all we pay all the tax and we treat our staff very well I really want to ask you because as we get more momentum we're only a business we're constantly getting invited to the government and even listening to our conference and we're really not experts and we in the situation where if we want to give the money to the charities we don't know how much you go to executive pays we don't know how much they're gonna really change and politics everyone's disillusioned so it's in and then as we become more successful people willing to listen to our stories yet we're not any experts so what's the solution for business really want to give something back what's your business um it's a fashion so we literally because for lots of young designer they have no way to market and PR so expensive so we actually give them all the data use algorithm we are actually tech company to give them for free and we charge B company money for that so you've got anteater whatever what the hell happened to empty troughs it's a great question basically I mean it's it's one of most urgent questions in the u.s. that would have huge implications to the rest of the world well the simple answer is like weird have just neglected to go after these big companies Facebook Google Amazon and it should be broken up immediately when I went to Google and give a talk suggesting that they break it into two companies called goo and go you've never said have you've ever seen 40 engineers look terrified that's what happened to my talk at Google which you can find online subtle bug it's less awkward online they tried to kill the talk and then and then we threatened them and then they put it online and because they own YouTube also because that's how monopolies work hey Google the more technical answer is that there is actually a problem with the law not being updated the law basically of monopolies at least in the US was was focused on whether the power console trust concentration results in higher prices for consumers that was used as the evidence of a monopoly the problem now is that monopolies have actually resulted because of how the dynamics of the internet works in lower prices or many of these businesses don't charge of money I mean like Facebook when Google don't charge consumers and they don't really fit the law so we basically need new laws and then we of course have not passed a new law in the United States of any note in a long time so so there's a new guy on Capitol Hill David Cicilline or something who's apparently Abuna he's just taken over this committee because Democrats won and he's apparently been studying antitrust law for the last two years there was a big story today and it's trying to go after them so I think that's a big exciting new area but frankly it's not just lobbying that they've avoided it we they're actually new questions here there are you know network effects are a new thing like Facebook also kind of wouldn't work if half your friends were on the other one and you know so we to figure out do we just not let them buy Instagram and whatsapp like how do we actually do it it's actually a hard it's a hard problem that we need really smart people to think about what I'm saying does not leave the Singapore model but that was a nice try the Singapore model is is pre-committed above all to authoritarianism the rest of it is just add-on I mean these societies are free societies are going to remain free societies and what I am talking about is in existence in pieces in many places in the world I mean you know that one of the fantasies in the United States I don't know if it's fantasy here is that like you know if you had a slightly more restrained version of lism you'd basically be living in you know the gulags of the 1960s and Soviet Union well that's just not true like I mean in the American imagination at least like Germany doesn't exist because the idea of place well you actually have quite a few businesses and quite a quite a lot of dynamism and quite high productivity and whatever there's also a place where people don't die in the street because they work twenty-nine hours a week at a company and therefore don't get health care instead of thirty right it's easy to take these choices that many of our societies have made that are actually very weird extreme dehumanizing choices and basically say if we solve them it's gonna be Tarun II it's just not true that that is a to my mind a billionaire talking point that has been discredited by the example of various places that have made their lives of their citizens more decent without becoming tyrannies right correct correct I don't really fully know the answer to your question but I I think what I would say is it is a common complaint that kind of business people have brought into part of what has happened is not just that business people push their way into the public sphere but the public sphere feeling increasingly unconfident or the NGOs fear these others actually feel like the only people who know how to solve anything are business people and so this is to wait I mean I know people who want to go work in social work who are told by Social Work organizations or NGOs whatever that you need to go work at like JP Morgan for a couple years to get some experience before you come here and help the poor right and that's how weird and pervasive this culture has been and I want to make that clear because it's not only business people from petrol ating this this is - you ever won a culture and I mean everybody participates in a culture right I think about it sometime does like capital supremacy right and like other supremacist it is all pervasive it touches everything and even those on the wrong end of it and I participate and upholding it sometimes in strange ways and I think the only way to eradicate it is by shifting the power structure through some of the things we've talked about but also through a tackling the culture and telling different stories and telling better stories about how we make things better I think that's a wonderful message on which to end because we are out of time I'm afraid can I ask them one thing go on then one thing one thing and I don't live here I don't know a lot of people here so you guys are my new friends here I would appreciate it if you'd let other people know about the book which is just coming out here now if you're on Twitter my my pinned tweet is just about the book and where they can find out more about the UK edition so spread the word if you wouldn't have be very grateful I think that's so you can take that as read i I think there's so much we didn't cover that's in the book there's some brilliant passages and chapters on where a bond meets some of the great American philanthropic families and puts to them some of the cognitive dissonance --is between what they do and and and then some of the folks from work they're doing some of the things that they're invest in it's really interesting stuff so it's all to read it amazes me to say thank you all for coming for your questions if you didn't get a chance to ask your question there will be a chance to meet Armand outside he'll be in the foyer for a bit signing a few books hanging out which is great thank you and if you'd like to know more about the RSA and keep up to date with our own efforts to change the world to really change the world do sign up via our website for our events and projects newsletters or head downstairs to our coffee house Roth Mills now for lunch or a coffee or a biscuit or barn whatever really takes your fancy you are very likely to bump into a fellow or staff member and find out a little bit more about current work and how you can get involved for now please join me once again in thanking our terrific speaker I don't go there [Applause] you you you

Channel: RSA

Views: 74,106

Rating: 4.8640776 out of 5

Keywords: changing the world, equality, justice, social order, thought leaders, change, citizens, elite, capitalism, Anand Giridharadas, rsa, rsa replay, rsa events, royal society of arts, talk, debate, lecture, event

Id: GpfqwAS8MhA

Length: 59min 37sec (3577 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 16 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/UmamiTofu]

The big tech revolution was generally good - why are people are increasingly sensitive and vocal about the downsides of new technologies while remaining equally ambivalent about the general value of progress per se? The same goes for recessions - recessions are part of the business cycle. Some parts of the finance industry can be blamed for 2008, but I'm not sure if he can identify who played benign roles and who played bad roles or if he's just equivocating into one big swathe of 'big finance'.

The Amazon comment is ridiculous - people who want to buy from stores, can buy from stores. Most people (like me) prefer to use Amazon, and our lives are better. Amazon can be considered a monopoly in the realm of online retail, but brick-and-mortar retail is just a different industry sector. It's like complaining that Henry Ford created a monopoly that made it impossible for people to buy horse-drawn carriages.

His comment on Lean In seems disingenuous - I doubt it was meant to "be" all of feminism, it was a guide for women to succeed in the workplace. This is like reading The Prince and then criticizing it because it doesn't tell you how to run the UN.

Cambridge Analytica had a tiny effect on people's attitudes in absolute terms, it was only chance that the election was close and even then Trump probably would have won without CA (https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17138854/cambridge-analytica-facebook-data-trump-campaign-psychographic-microtargeting, http://robblackie.com/did-cambridge-analytica-win-the-election-for-trump/). This speaker is also ignoring all the ways that big data gets used by left-wing political campaigns. It's a tool that can be used by anyone. Ex ante, there's no reason to expect systems like CA to benefit the left or the right; he's just making a cheap hindsight judgment that has more to do with happenstance than with real social and political mechanisms.

Facebook and Goldman Sachs have probably already produced social value exceeding their roles in elections and recessions just through their regular business practices. That's surely what the people at the Crown Fellowship actually believe: wealthy people don't imagine that they're doing some kind of social harm that they can "offset" with their philanthropy, they believe that their jobs are legitimately valuable, but then do some philanthropy on top of that.

I did not bother to listen further; it sounds like he gets his worldview from media headlines and isn't thinking about the actual mechanics of making the world a better or worse place. Is there a better/main point? TLDR?