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| Book cover for "Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World" by Anand Giridharadas. |
Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World is a book about how rich and powerful people want to make the world better, but only in ways that don't threaten the systems that made them rich/powerful in the first place.
This is a good book, though it kind of made me feel overwhelmed and pessimistic about the state of the world. But it's important to be aware that this is how the world works.
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Overall message
You always hear ambitious and successful people talking about how they want to make the world a better place. And in particular, nowadays people talk about using tools from the business world for this (whereas in the past, people were more likely to view political activism as the way to do it). The book refers to this culture of people who want to use business strategies to solve the world's problems as "MarketWorld."
Basically, there are people who really genuinely do want to make the world better, but they find that in reality, they need to limit their efforts to only things that rich people will accept. Things that make rich business types feel like they're doing something good, without changing the overall systems that gave those people their success in the first place.
Before I read this book, I was looking at the summary and I thought, "oh... well I've never thought about it that way before, but yes, that must be true. That's... disappointing..." Powerful people want to help others, but only in ways that allow themselves to continue being the powerful people in the world. Not in ways that actually make society truly fair for everyone. When you think about it, you realize it must be true. There's something kind of survival-of-the-fittest about it. Whatever works to give people more money and power, they will continue to do, not because it's "right" or "fair" or "good", but because it gets them more money and power. And even in the realm of charity and changing the world, that still applies.
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Win-win vs win-lose
The book talks about how entrepreneurs trying to solve society's problems have a "win-win" mindset, but what is really needed is "win-lose."
"Win-win", in this case, means you see a problem in the world, and you find an aspect of it that can be a business opportunity for you. (The book talks about finding the part of the "venn diagram" where there's money to be made from helping people.) You start a startup that will address the problem. You make money from your startup, and other people benefit from the work that your startup is doing.
The example from the book that really stuck out to me was the "Even" app. The book describes it as an app created to address the difficulties that workers have if they are paid on irregular schedules. Sometimes they get a large paycheck, but in a different season of the year they might get a much smaller paycheck, and this makes it difficult to manage their money. So, the Even app puts their paychecks into a virtual account, and then transfers a fixed amount of money from that account to their actual bank account at regular intervals. So they get paid the same amount every time.
When I read this, I was like, "WTF, can't you like, just set up 2 bank accounts that literally do that exact thing for you? Instead of paying money for this Even app. This is a scam."
I've googled it and found the website for the Even app, and it turns out it also has some features about keeping track of what bills need to be paid and when, how to take those things into account when figuring out how much extra money you have, etc. It seems like it could be a useful budgeting tool. (I personally wouldn't pay money for it though.)
So I think if you view it as "this app going to solve the world's problems" then it's awful. Clearly, the actual problem here is that people's wages are too low, so they aren't able to save up extra money to deal with the irregularities of their payment schedule, and/or the problem is that companies should be paying people more stable wages instead of having weird payment schedules in the first place- the employees shouldn't have to be the ones directly affected by the fluctuations in seasonal demand for things. The app doesn't have any effect on the companies that are not paying their workers well. It lets them continue to do that, while trying to make things at least a little better for the workers.
But if you view it like "for people who are in that situation, this is a useful tool to have" then it seems good in my opinion.
But anyway, yeah, it seems obvious to me that looking for "win-win" opportunities and thinking that's going to be an effective way of bringing real change is just ridiculous. No, that will never work.
The book says that instead, we need "win-lose." This means, for example, that companies who have gotten rich off of exploiting workers need to STOP EXPLOITING WORKERS. This is a "lose" for the company, so obviously a company will never agree to it. So you can't get there through business practices; the only way to get there is if the government makes laws forcing companies to change.
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Trump supporters, and the idea that companies should be invested in the local town
There's also a section in the book about businesses that have a "globalist" mindset, and therefore believe they have no responsibility toward the people who live near them. In the past, businesses didn't have access to international markets or the ability to outsource labor to other countries, and so they really had to focus on their own local area. If they didn't help make people's lives better in their own local area, it would affect their potential customers and employees, which would end up being bad for the business itself. But nowadays, companies can calculate the costs of producing part of their product in one country and part of it in some other country, and expanding to markets in even more countries, and it's all about what makes more money for the company, rather than having a responsibility toward the people near you/ people affected by you.
When Trump supporters complain about "globalism" and "taking away American jobs", well my first instinct is to roll my eyes at it (please note that I'm an immigrant in China)- but actually, there's something to this. If "globalism" means changing from "you have a responsibility to care about and benefit the city that your business is located in" to "you have a responsibility to no one, just do whatever makes the most money for you" then yeah that is NOT COOL. (Or, perhaps in reality, it would be "do whatever makes the most money, and then sponsor some charity project that makes you look good." Also NOT COOL.)
And the existence of very powerful businesses can undermine local government. It can undermine democracy. This is a problem.
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Hooters and the excuses that we make
The book talks about a woman named Kat Cole, who worked at Hooters. She started out as a waitress when she was in high school, and says she found it "empowering" to be making money. Eventually she moved up to a management role. She believes Hooters supports and benefits its female employees, and she rejects the idea that they "exploit" women. She knows many women who have successful careers in management for Hooters. (Important background info: Hooters is a restaurant that is known for having waitresses with big breasts. Like that's their whole company image. Like men should come and enjoy staring at the waitresses.)
So, the book says this is an example of the "rationalizations" that people make for participating in harmful systems. And... yeah... I don't know what to think about this, because I have also thought along similar lines. Like you recognize that the larger system that you're in is doing harm in the world, so why are you letting yourself be part of it? Because you need a job? Because there's no alternative- all companies have their flaws? Because if it wasn't you doing it, it would be someone else who is less moral than you? Because you are donating some of your income to charity?
How much of that is valid, and how much is not?
The writer, Anand Giridharadas, seems to have a very negative view of these "rationalizations." He seems to be saying that the only moral thing to do is just completely refuse to participate in these systems at all. However, in the "Acknowledgements" section at the end, he talks about his own experiences in this "MarketWorld" culture, and how he also thought along the same lines as many of the ambitious would-be world-changers he mentions in the book. Many of them are his friends or people he knows personally.
So I feel like, I don't necessarily think we can dismiss Cole's views (for example) as just "rationalizations" that are automatically wrong. I think it's a hard question. And I think the author, Giridharadas, has also struggled with this.
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"Power pose" / changing your message so people can accept it
The book talks about Amy Cuddy, a "social psychologist at Harvard Business School who had spent more than a decade publishing papers on the workings of prejudice, discrimination, and systems of power." She was invited to give a talk, and chose to pick 1 small thing related to her research, which she could easily convey to an audience. She talked about the "power pose"- women can stand like Wonder Woman for a few seconds in order to give themselves more confidence before going into a big meeting or something like that.
Well, people loved this "power pose" thing, and she was later invited to give a TED talk about it. Powerful businesspeople loved the idea that individual women could just do 1 little thing differently, rather than challenging the big overall systems of sexism and the real reasons why men don't listen to women in business meetings. I think eventually Cuddy was unhappy with this, because she is a feminist and a researcher and she knows the problems go much deeper than that- but this 1 simple "power pose" trick was what everyone wanted to talk about.
And there were a few other examples in the book of people who knew they had to say things in a certain way to get powerful businesspeople to accept them. Don't talk about how your audience played a role in creating the problems. Don't blame them. There's a certain kind of story they want to hear, and if you tell a different story, and they don't like it, they won't fund your charity project.
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So what's the answer?
The book doesn't really give a solution for this problem. There are a few times that it hints that big government is the solution- it mentions that in the past, people would have viewed political activism as the way to solve problems, it says that the problem with democrats is they view big government as a bad thing, etc. Probably this is right- businesses aren't going to choose to do things that benefit society and make themselves less money- it will only happen if the government forces them to.
At the same time, though, government also has problems. I don't think it's the magic solution. I'm sure government also has a lot of the same survival-of-the-fittest dynamics which incentivize people to do things which give themselves the most power, rather than things that benefit society (though it would play out in different ways than the business world).
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Summary
The book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World is about how people try to make the world better using the tools of the business world, but this can never really work. I think it's important that we are aware of this dynamic. Even though it's really discouraging. I felt like a lot of it was very relateable- about people who are trying to make a difference, but keep running into the reality of how things really work in the world. How some solutions aren't even going to be tried because rich people don't want to try them.
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