Winners Take All: Modern philanthropy means that giving some away is more important than how you got it / Boing Boing
▻https://boingboing.net/2018/11/10/say-its-name.html
All through Giridharadas’s book, he meets people high and low, rich and powerful or poor and scrappy, who understand that we’re at a breaking point. Donald Trump campaigned on the idea that elite do-goodism was just cover for perpetuation of the system (nevermind that he also planned on perpetuating the system), and he resonated with people. Ever since late nineties, when Reagan-era deregulation had pervaded deeply into the system and wages started to stagnate, organized labor started to crumble, and policies like the WTO were consummated to the benefit of capital and the cost of the world, its climate and its people, there’s been a mounting sense that we are on a collision course with disaster.
As inequality mounts, our weakened governments are unable to enact policies that upset plutocrats’ apple carts. American health care, education, infrastructure, and (of course) its climate are unravelling so fast we can actually see it happen. People are turning to far-right movements and falling prey to charlatans as they seek a way out, or at least an explanation.
Giridharadas’s book comes at a timely moment, when the problem is being named: winner-take-all capitalism, untethered by democratic controls, where how you make your money isn’t as important as how you give some of it back. Giridharadas identifies a moment when we have to stop talking about “lack of opportunity” and start talking about oppression and inequality. To stop talking merely about solutions and start asking ourselves about causes.
Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World [Anand Giridharadas/Knopf]