26 ms·

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World [video]

265 points by espeed 8y ago

Jesus3000 8y ago
I like the concept! Kudos!
- baal666 8y ago
  The elites of HN are not interested...end of story
  - glitchc 8y ago
    Not an elite, but videos are hard to consume. An article is something I can read on the bus.
Jedi72 8y ago
"We do giving in ways that protect the opportunity to keep taking." Although he meant it in terms of philathropy, this is the Google business model in one sentence.
- titzer 8y ago
  s/Google/Tech/ ftfy
  - platz 8y ago
    What 'giving' exactly?
- the_snooze 8y ago
  See: Facebook's Free Basics, where they offer "free" "Internet" to developing countries, limited to Facebook properties and a handful of non-competing websites like Wikipedia.
edraferi 8y ago
Ezra Kline interviewed Anand Giridharadas for the Ezra Kline Show podcast back in September[0]. Very interesting. Anand basically argued that the global elite spends a lot of time looking for ways to help the global impoverished, but fails to make an impact because they never consider solutions that would erode their own wealth/status. [0] https://www.vox.com/2018/9/5/17821522/anand-giridharadas-winner-take-all-ezra-klein-podcast https://www.vox.com/2018/9/5/17821522/anand-giridharadas-win...
- JacobJans 8y ago
  Progress is real. https://www.gatesnotes.com/2017-Annual-Letter?WT.mc_id=02_14_2017_02_AL2017GFO_GF-GFO_&WT.tsrc=GFGFO https://www.gatesnotes.com/2017-Annual-Letter?WT.mc_id=02_14... > the number of childhood deaths per year has been cut in half since 1990. > Extreme poverty has been cut in half over the last 25 years. > In 1988, when the global campaign was launched to end polio, there were 350,000 new cases each year. > Last year, there were 37.
  - EliRivers 8y ago
    Progress is real. Who is driving that progress? Is it the global elite in general, is it a handful of rich people who do actually make a difference, or are their efforts just noise and something else is driving the progress? I genuinely don't know; hoping someone has the data.
    - Cthulhu_ 8y ago
      I'm thinking it's a mix of government action, organizations like the UN / UNESCO and the Red Cross, and both governments and donators that donate to said organizations so that they can do their work without needing to scrounge for money.
      - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
        Many of these large governmental or bureaucratic organizations suffer from extreme inefficiency and ineptitude. The Red Cross's complete failings in Haiti have been widely reported. NPR ran a particularly scathing report [1] on it that includes nothing short of quite forward allegations of fraud. The Red Cross, for their part, make claims about what they did and provide extremely high level claimed expenditures, but then refuse to provide specific details of programs and costs. As the article mentions when you donate to the Red Cross first they immediately take a cut of that money for themselves. Then its distributed to other charities which then take an administrative cut. And then in carrying out the program there are more 'administrative' cuts. In one program NPR reviewed, administrative costs alone ate up 1/3rd of all donations. Later in the article the Red Cross, upon discovering NPR is investigating their efforts, sends an email to NPR suggesting that, 'NPR and ProPublica were "creating ill will in the community, which may give rise to a security incident.. We will hold you and your news organizations fully responsible." When the Red Cross says things like it "provided homes" for more than 130,000 Haitians - they include among those 130,000 "people who went to a seminar on how to fix their own homes, people who received temporary rental assistance, and thousands of people who received temporary shelters — which start to disintegrate after three to five years." In total the Red Cross's half a billion dollars in Haiti ended up creating 6 permanent homes. And this sort of inaction is not an isolated incident. [1] - https://www.npr.org/2015/06/03/411524156/in-search-of-the-red-cross-500-million-in-haiti-relief https://www.npr.org/2015/06/03/411524156/in-search-of-the-re...
mistersquid 8y ago
Giridharadas talk is explosive in terms of its ideas. From what I can tell, he's not pulling any punches even though he's been invited to speak on a Google campus (Boston). At 29:03 Giridharadas challenges his audience to demand that Google (and other Silicon Valley companies) generate an annual political disclosure to its employees, the very people in his audience. [0] As a side note, Giridharadas is very clear and measured in his articulation, and I found that speeding the video to 1.5 times normal rate to be a good delivery speed (YMMV). What Giridharadas says prior to the timecode I referenced is also provocative and politically risky. I can't yet comment on his entire talk, but the quality of the first half the video is superb. [0] https://youtu.be/d_zt3kGW1NM?t=1743 https://youtu.be/d_zt3kGW1NM?t=1743
- pjc50 8y ago
  > generate an annual political disclosure to its employees Even disclosing to their employees who they're giving money to as campaign contributions would be a start. At the moment they have to find this out from @pinboard: https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1053804655602528256 https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1053804655602528256 It's one thing to issue a statement supporting LGBT+ rights (cost: $0) but donating $5000 to a Republican candidate is a much more significant action in terms of making the world worse for trans people.
  - justicezyx 8y ago
    > issue a statement supporting That statement needs multiple hours of writing from VP level approval etc. The cost is not 0.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - marknutter 8y ago
    They donate to Democratic candidates at roughly the same rate. Does that counterbalance the harm done to trans people?
frafart 8y ago
Here's a podcast interview to the author of Winners Take All Anand Giridharadas about the damage philanthropists do to public education https://soundcloud.com/haveyouheardpodcast/win-win https://soundcloud.com/haveyouheardpodcast/win-win
ada1981 8y ago
The current game being played is a race to acquire as many resources as nessesssry to live forever and escape planet earth. This is will be a small subset of the species. The planet is fruiting.
40acres 8y ago
This is not just a problem among "elites", every class in society down to the bottom rung shows the shame characteristics of the elite that Giridharadas lays out. The clearest example you can see is with NIMBYs, especially those in liberal leaning cities. These are people who vote blue, champion diversity, and have generally progressive views. But when push comes to shove they circle the wagons to defend their interests just like the billionaires do. Take a look at your local school board meeting or a city council session where some new development is on the docket.
- wycs 8y ago
  Our revealed preferences often paint a bleak portrait.
- electricslpnsld 8y ago
  > These are people who vote blue, champion diversity, and have generally progressive views. But when push comes to shove they circle the wagons to defend their interests just like the billionaires do. My favorite example in the Bay Area is the San Francisco Sierra Club fighting to preserve a parking garage [1], which is, by and large, the exact opposite of environmental advocacy. [1] https://www.thebaycitybeacon.com/politics/the-sierra-club-fights-to-save-a-parking-garage/article_93ff9084-3be7-11e7-a3a8-17f11f24db6e.html https://www.thebaycitybeacon.com/politics/the-sierra-club-fi...
  - mshenfield 8y ago
    The way environmental concerns have been corrupted into institutional delay levers is sad. "How Burrowing Owls Lead To Vomiting Anarchists" is one of the few (and best) explanation of the impacts of these kinds of tactics that I've read [0] [0] https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/
- mshenfield 8y ago
  > These are people who vote blue, champion diversity, and have generally progressive views. But when push comes to shove they circle the wagons to defend their interests A specific example in the city of Seattle - a neighborhood group sued to delay increasing housing density (read: make housing more affordable). While the suit called for an environmental study, you can easily read between the lines and see that homeowners in the area do not want change, and view increased density as a threat to the character of their neighborhoods. The lawsuit has already delayed a significant increase to the housing stock for the entire city by 2 years. [0] [0] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/queen-anne-group-again-challenges-plan-to-ease-restrictions-on-backyard-cottages-in-seattle/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/queen-ann...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
eriken 8y ago
Is posing guilt on an audience a good way to make them agree with you? I honestly want to go the other way in situations like these.
- woogiewonka 8y ago
  I don't think he was trying to make them feel guilty, rather just pointing to the awkward fact that the situations and people he is talking about are the ones like those in the audience. I haven't read the book but I reckon he talks a lot about Google based on how many times he mentioned monopolies and anticompetitiveness.
ctchocula 8y ago
I heard this guy on "Your Call" which is produced by NPR yesterday. One of the things he said that really got my attention is that he said to get a seat at a TED talk, you need to pay $5000, which really limits the attendance at TED talks to the wealthy. Another thing was, the speaker is censored--he or she cannot use the word "inequality", but can only use the word "poverty". That just blows my mind. Inequality is one of the ways economics is changing with Thomas Piketty who points out how inequality has increased way more in United States than in Europe since the 1970s. To not be able to point to that as one of the problems facing the world and to claim you want to change the world is madness.
- dllthomas 8y ago
  https://www.ted.com/topics/inequality https://www.ted.com/topics/inequality I'm not saying there's no valid criticisms of TED, or even really endorsing it, but the claim you report clearly can't be strictly true - there are TED talks with "inequality" in the title.
  - ctchocula 8y ago
    I haven't watched the video myself, but he could be referencing Nick Hanauer, a venture capitalist from Seattle, whose speech at the TED University conference titled "Rich people don't create jobs" was deemed "too politically controversial" to post on their web site. I clicked your link. Even though there is an article at the bottom with "inequality" in the title, I tried doing a search but couldn't find a single talk with "inequality" in the title. It is a possible tag, but cannot be found in the title. Edit: Snopes says the story of "censorship" was disseminated by Nick Hanauer's PR team after TED decided not to promote the story: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/banned-ted-talk-nick-hanauer/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/banned-ted-talk-nick-hanau...
    - tomasdore 8y ago
      On finding talks with "inequality" in the title: they do not show on the first page, but I found two by clicking 'See all 114 talks on Inequality' and then clicking on through the results pages; ie "A visual history of inequality in industrial America", and "How economic inequality harms societies", so two of that 114 search results.
pl0x 8y ago
What about hiring minorities in the US from HBCU's? I came here on an HB1 myself but they are so many talented diverse candidates that could be hired in the US.

265 points by espeed 8y ago

Jesus3000 8y ago

I like the concept! Kudos!

baal666 8y ago
The elites of HN are not interested...end of story
- glitchc 8y ago
  Not an elite, but videos are hard to consume. An article is something I can read on the bus.

Jedi72 8y ago

"We do giving in ways that protect the opportunity to keep taking." Although he meant it in terms of philathropy, this is the Google business model in one sentence.

titzer 8y ago
s/Google/Tech/ ftfy
- platz 8y ago
  What 'giving' exactly?
the_snooze 8y ago
See: Facebook's Free Basics, where they offer "free" "Internet" to developing countries, limited to Facebook properties and a handful of non-competing websites like Wikipedia.

edraferi 8y ago

Ezra Kline interviewed Anand Giridharadas for the Ezra Kline Show podcast back in September[0]. Very interesting. Anand basically argued that the global elite spends a lot of time looking for ways to help the global impoverished, but fails to make an impact because they never consider solutions that would erode their own wealth/status. [0] https://www.vox.com/2018/9/5/17821522/anand-giridharadas-winner-take-all-ezra-klein-podcast https://www.vox.com/2018/9/5/17821522/anand-giridharadas-win...

JacobJans 8y ago
Progress is real. https://www.gatesnotes.com/2017-Annual-Letter?WT.mc_id=02_14_2017_02_AL2017GFO_GF-GFO_&WT.tsrc=GFGFO https://www.gatesnotes.com/2017-Annual-Letter?WT.mc_id=02_14... > the number of childhood deaths per year has been cut in half since 1990. > Extreme poverty has been cut in half over the last 25 years. > In 1988, when the global campaign was launched to end polio, there were 350,000 new cases each year. > Last year, there were 37.
- EliRivers 8y ago
  Progress is real. Who is driving that progress? Is it the global elite in general, is it a handful of rich people who do actually make a difference, or are their efforts just noise and something else is driving the progress? I genuinely don't know; hoping someone has the data.
  - Cthulhu_ 8y ago
    I'm thinking it's a mix of government action, organizations like the UN / UNESCO and the Red Cross, and both governments and donators that donate to said organizations so that they can do their work without needing to scrounge for money.
    - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
      Many of these large governmental or bureaucratic organizations suffer from extreme inefficiency and ineptitude. The Red Cross's complete failings in Haiti have been widely reported. NPR ran a particularly scathing report [1] on it that includes nothing short of quite forward allegations of fraud. The Red Cross, for their part, make claims about what they did and provide extremely high level claimed expenditures, but then refuse to provide specific details of programs and costs. As the article mentions when you donate to the Red Cross first they immediately take a cut of that money for themselves. Then its distributed to other charities which then take an administrative cut. And then in carrying out the program there are more 'administrative' cuts. In one program NPR reviewed, administrative costs alone ate up 1/3rd of all donations. Later in the article the Red Cross, upon discovering NPR is investigating their efforts, sends an email to NPR suggesting that, 'NPR and ProPublica were "creating ill will in the community, which may give rise to a security incident.. We will hold you and your news organizations fully responsible." When the Red Cross says things like it "provided homes" for more than 130,000 Haitians - they include among those 130,000 "people who went to a seminar on how to fix their own homes, people who received temporary rental assistance, and thousands of people who received temporary shelters — which start to disintegrate after three to five years." In total the Red Cross's half a billion dollars in Haiti ended up creating 6 permanent homes. And this sort of inaction is not an isolated incident. [1] - https://www.npr.org/2015/06/03/411524156/in-search-of-the-red-cross-500-million-in-haiti-relief https://www.npr.org/2015/06/03/411524156/in-search-of-the-re...

mistersquid 8y ago

Giridharadas talk is explosive in terms of its ideas. From what I can tell, he's not pulling any punches even though he's been invited to speak on a Google campus (Boston). At 29:03 Giridharadas challenges his audience to demand that Google (and other Silicon Valley companies) generate an annual political disclosure to its employees, the very people in his audience. [0] As a side note, Giridharadas is very clear and measured in his articulation, and I found that speeding the video to 1.5 times normal rate to be a good delivery speed (YMMV). What Giridharadas says prior to the timecode I referenced is also provocative and politically risky. I can't yet comment on his entire talk, but the quality of the first half the video is superb. [0] https://youtu.be/d_zt3kGW1NM?t=1743 https://youtu.be/d_zt3kGW1NM?t=1743

pjc50 8y ago
> generate an annual political disclosure to its employees Even disclosing to their employees who they're giving money to as campaign contributions would be a start. At the moment they have to find this out from @pinboard: https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1053804655602528256 https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1053804655602528256 It's one thing to issue a statement supporting LGBT+ rights (cost: $0) but donating $5000 to a Republican candidate is a much more significant action in terms of making the world worse for trans people.
- justicezyx 8y ago
  > issue a statement supporting That statement needs multiple hours of writing from VP level approval etc. The cost is not 0.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- marknutter 8y ago
  They donate to Democratic candidates at roughly the same rate. Does that counterbalance the harm done to trans people?

frafart 8y ago

Here's a podcast interview to the author of Winners Take All Anand Giridharadas about the damage philanthropists do to public education https://soundcloud.com/haveyouheardpodcast/win-win https://soundcloud.com/haveyouheardpodcast/win-win

ada1981 8y ago

The current game being played is a race to acquire as many resources as nessesssry to live forever and escape planet earth. This is will be a small subset of the species. The planet is fruiting.

40acres 8y ago

This is not just a problem among "elites", every class in society down to the bottom rung shows the shame characteristics of the elite that Giridharadas lays out. The clearest example you can see is with NIMBYs, especially those in liberal leaning cities. These are people who vote blue, champion diversity, and have generally progressive views. But when push comes to shove they circle the wagons to defend their interests just like the billionaires do. Take a look at your local school board meeting or a city council session where some new development is on the docket.

wycs 8y ago
Our revealed preferences often paint a bleak portrait.
electricslpnsld 8y ago
> These are people who vote blue, champion diversity, and have generally progressive views. But when push comes to shove they circle the wagons to defend their interests just like the billionaires do. My favorite example in the Bay Area is the San Francisco Sierra Club fighting to preserve a parking garage [1], which is, by and large, the exact opposite of environmental advocacy. [1] https://www.thebaycitybeacon.com/politics/the-sierra-club-fights-to-save-a-parking-garage/article_93ff9084-3be7-11e7-a3a8-17f11f24db6e.html https://www.thebaycitybeacon.com/politics/the-sierra-club-fi...
- mshenfield 8y ago
  The way environmental concerns have been corrupted into institutional delay levers is sad. "How Burrowing Owls Lead To Vomiting Anarchists" is one of the few (and best) explanation of the impacts of these kinds of tactics that I've read [0] [0] https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/
mshenfield 8y ago
> These are people who vote blue, champion diversity, and have generally progressive views. But when push comes to shove they circle the wagons to defend their interests A specific example in the city of Seattle - a neighborhood group sued to delay increasing housing density (read: make housing more affordable). While the suit called for an environmental study, you can easily read between the lines and see that homeowners in the area do not want change, and view increased density as a threat to the character of their neighborhoods. The lawsuit has already delayed a significant increase to the housing stock for the entire city by 2 years. [0] [0] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/queen-anne-group-again-challenges-plan-to-ease-restrictions-on-backyard-cottages-in-seattle/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/queen-ann...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

eriken 8y ago

Is posing guilt on an audience a good way to make them agree with you? I honestly want to go the other way in situations like these.

woogiewonka 8y ago
I don't think he was trying to make them feel guilty, rather just pointing to the awkward fact that the situations and people he is talking about are the ones like those in the audience. I haven't read the book but I reckon he talks a lot about Google based on how many times he mentioned monopolies and anticompetitiveness.

ctchocula 8y ago

I heard this guy on "Your Call" which is produced by NPR yesterday. One of the things he said that really got my attention is that he said to get a seat at a TED talk, you need to pay $5000, which really limits the attendance at TED talks to the wealthy. Another thing was, the speaker is censored--he or she cannot use the word "inequality", but can only use the word "poverty". That just blows my mind. Inequality is one of the ways economics is changing with Thomas Piketty who points out how inequality has increased way more in United States than in Europe since the 1970s. To not be able to point to that as one of the problems facing the world and to claim you want to change the world is madness.

dllthomas 8y ago
https://www.ted.com/topics/inequality https://www.ted.com/topics/inequality I'm not saying there's no valid criticisms of TED, or even really endorsing it, but the claim you report clearly can't be strictly true - there are TED talks with "inequality" in the title.
- ctchocula 8y ago
  I haven't watched the video myself, but he could be referencing Nick Hanauer, a venture capitalist from Seattle, whose speech at the TED University conference titled "Rich people don't create jobs" was deemed "too politically controversial" to post on their web site. I clicked your link. Even though there is an article at the bottom with "inequality" in the title, I tried doing a search but couldn't find a single talk with "inequality" in the title. It is a possible tag, but cannot be found in the title. Edit: Snopes says the story of "censorship" was disseminated by Nick Hanauer's PR team after TED decided not to promote the story: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/banned-ted-talk-nick-hanauer/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/banned-ted-talk-nick-hanau...
  - tomasdore 8y ago
    On finding talks with "inequality" in the title: they do not show on the first page, but I found two by clicking 'See all 114 talks on Inequality' and then clicking on through the results pages; ie "A visual history of inequality in industrial America", and "How economic inequality harms societies", so two of that 114 search results.

pl0x 8y ago

What about hiring minorities in the US from HBCU's? I came here on an HB1 myself but they are so many talented diverse candidates that could be hired in the US.