143. Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas: A book review

This week let’s chat about Winners Take All: the Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas. Published in 2018, this book became a New York Times Bestseller and fired off a conversation about whether powerful elites really want to change the root causes of the social problems they claim to care about.

Endlessly quotable, provocative, interesting…this book just might be what you need for your next flight. Check out today’s episode to help you decide.

Links from today’s episode:

NY Mag interview with Anand Giridharadas in 2018

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/08/anand-giridharadas-on-winners-take-all.html 

Anand Giridharadas on the elite charade of changing the world | Vox 2018

https://www.vox.com/2018/9/5/17821522/anand-giridharadas-winner-take-all-ezra-klein-podcast 

Aspen Institute

https://www.aspeninstitute.org/ 

ICYMI another episode you might enjoy:

Episode#69 Women, Sex and Socialism (recorded before the 2024 rebranding of this show)

Connect With Genet “GG” Gimja:

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Transcript

Welcome to Progressive Pockets! I go by GG, that’s short for Genet Gimja. This is a show about a feeling that I can’t shake, that we’re leaving some of our power on the table. We vote, some of us might even protest, but I’m curious about our wallets. On this show you’ll hear practical suggestions about how we might give, bank, shop, and even earn our money in ways that match up with our societal values.

I’ve gotten some requests to suggest books to add to your reading lists. I’m always happy to do that for you.

Today’s episode is about a book called Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas. Actually the full title is Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.

Anand Giridharadas is an American journalist, he writes about democracy and the threats to it. One fun fact about him is that he is married to Priya Parker, her field is conflict resolution and she wrote that book The Art of Gathering.

Anand Giridharadas himself is an interesting person. To be human is to bring your identities to your understanding of the world and you can see the fingerprints of his background in his writing. His dad was a director at McKinsey Consulting company. Anand Giridharadas himself worked as a management consultant before he became a journalist. You’re going to see why that’s important in just a minute. But you know, his persona, at least publicly, is very much the edgy journalist, he’s wearing a leather jacket in a lot of his photos, he wears leather jackets to a lot of his appearances. There’s something a little Anthony Bourdain about his public persona, a little like he’s trying to come across as the bad boy, willing to say what no one else will say, willing to say that the emperor doesn’t have any clothes on.

If I had to say what this book is about in one sentence, this probably gets at it: Wealthy powerful people kind of try to address social issues, usually through philanthropy, without actually changing the fundamental systems that created those social issues to begin with. 

If I could add a second sentence to synthesize the point he’s making in this book. The second sentence would be: and wealthy people do this so they can still be rich and powerful and appear to be altruistic.

He definitely brings the heat and has plenty of criticism for these wealthy elites as he calls them, but you know, to some degree it feels sometimes like he’s talking to the man in the mirror. He comes from the communities that he is criticizing. At a minimum, he’s a second generation wealthy elite, maybe it goes back farther, I don’t know his family history. He’s a graduate of Harvard and Oxford. He was a New York Times columnist. I mean it just doesn’t get much more intellectually elite than that. So, in a way, maybe he’s a great person to provide this feedback. Maybe having all of those exclusive badges and the experience of coming from those wealthy elite communities means that his community will listen to what he has to say and hear him out.

I appreciate the way he writes, in this book, about the difference between generosity and justice. I appreciate the points he makes about how flawed it is to rely on corporations to be the ones to dominate the discussion on how to solve society’s problems.

I appreciate that he encourages us to always question philanthropy, that this is a good and healthy practice.

There’s something else he says in this book that I found interesting and frankly, even though it has been years now and there have been other books corroborating this idea, I’m still processing, but the idea is that these elite institutions whether they are the elite management consulting companies or the elite foundations or elite think thanks, they change people. That some of these wealthy elites actually come in as wide eyed and bushy tailed young people who really want to make a difference, but these institutions change them, disappoint them. I’m still thinking about this and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it dear listener.

Apparently this book came about after a shocking speech he made at the Aspen Institute. The Aspen Institute is a think tank, a nonprofit that brings thinkers together to come up with good ideas, do research in all sorts of fields- the environment, technology, government, you name it. They want to support experts from all fields who are trying to do good in the world. It’s about 75 years old, lots of very wealthy people are members. There was a brief scandal during the pandemic when they received a covid loan despite having a huge endowment and literal billionaires that are members. But you know, they were open to feedback. One of their members is Nigerian journalist Dele Olojede and he called them out, the Washington Post called them out, and they returned the loan very quickly.

So this is where Anand Giridharadas was a fellow and stood up to give sort of like a TED talk where he just ripped the audience to shreds. 

He said that the wealthy elite, or as he addressed them in that speech, “the winners of our age” are engaged in hypocrisy, in the way that they are always pushing each other to do more good, but never ever to do less harm.

By all accounts of this speech, it was a big mic drop moment for that particular crowd. He pissed off a lot of people with that, because remember these are very wealthy and successful leaders from all kinds of experts who have gathered to figure out how to give back to society.

And here Anand Giridharadas, one of the fellows of their program is essentially saying “you’re actually the problem, and you’re not really trying to help because you will always try to preserve the system that created your power and wealth.”

This speech turned into the book. Which was a NY Times best seller, which you know, is funny because if anything that success just further entrenches him into the wealthy elite.

The book is repetitive. You can get the main points within the first half for sure. But still, I would suggest checking it out from the library and skimming it.

I do appreciate that he is asking us to rethink this “win-win” approach, this idea that we can create meaningful change without actually giving up any of our power or our wealth or our privilege.

And he’s just a very quotable guy. I remember one interview where he talked about how women can’t lean their way into equal pay, that we have to actually change the systems and stop blaming individuals for problems that are way bigger than them.

There’s a quote in the book where he says that leaning on business tycoons to solve social problems is like believing that "arsonists make the best firefighters" LOL I mean the guy knows how to communicate provocatively. 

I appreciate his discussion of how the wealthiest Americans have used their power and wealth to lobby our government which has made our government less effective in solving the same problems they claim to care about and donate towards. He’s absolutely correct in that. I can think of 3 billionaires immediately who are currently lobbying the government to weaken regulations that will create more of the problems that they publicly stand against.

Now where the book is a lot lighter is in solutions. So I am looking forward to reading his book Persuaders, that is on my reading list. My understanding is that book is about how to change minds in a divided society and includes an analysis of how different activists and organizers are successfully doing that work.

If you read Winners Take All or you’ve read the Persuaders please reach out to me and let me know what you thought. If there’s another book you’d like me to discuss, shoot me an email any time. You can reach me at progressive pockets at gmail dot com.

So to recap, here’s what we covered today:

• Winners Take All: the Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas came out in 2018 and created a huge buzz.
• It was a NY Times best seller.
• The premise of the book is that our wealthy elites aren’t really addressing root causes in their philanthropy or efforts to give back. He says that the wealthy and powerful don’t want to actually change the systems that allowed them to become so wealthy and powerful.

If you have more time today, here’s another episode to check out, that’s episode 69 and it was another edgy book review. It was called Women, Sex and Socialism. Very interesting research, I hope you enjoy the review.

Please do me a favor and leave a 5 star review for this show. That’s how other listeners decide whether or not to take a chance on this show and take a listen. So please take a moment to do that today if you can.

Let’s end with a quote…

“It doesn’t matter how strong your opinions are. If you don’t use your power for positive change, you are, indeed, part of the problem.” Coretta Scott King

Let’s talk again soon!