Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World [video]
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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.
I don't think it's accurate to classify property owners in some of the world's most expensive real-estate markets as "the bottom rungs of society."
And my experience with local city council and school board sessions aren't that different. It's usually the same sorts of people. They're not billionaires, but they're usually pretty materially comfortable. I'd categorize them as being "dream hoarder" types. (https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/06/the-hoa...)
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-fi...
"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]
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-ann...
As a result of denser housing, rent should go down N%, but your quality of life (if you're not fooling yourself) will also go down slightly as you have to deal with the reality of living near more people. (Longer waits at local stores, more crowded sidewalks, etc. We can pretend this is a "good" thing and that humans are social creatures, but there is a point where it becomes less tolerable to most people.)
I suspect many of the generalized Seattle NIMBY's champion affordable housing and decry gentrification, but when the rubber hits the road and they are asked to give up something (neighborhood charm) to actually do something about these problems (increase density to lower housing costs), they actively fight against it.
"I like affordable housing as long as I can still live in the same neighborhood and don't have to give anything up."
There is an effect where improving the consumption benefits of the city may draw new migration from other parts of the country, but it is generally accepted that this effect is much smaller than the effect of increased competition between landlords and developers.
If you think that housing somehow operates differently from a normal market - increasing supply will not change the price - it is incumbent on you to explain why you think this might be true.
I have no problem with creating greater density. I have no problem with incentivizing public transportation. But, when you tear down perfectly charming houses in already very crowded neighborhoods, it's just annoying on so many levels.
When you put 5 units where there was 1, the value generally doesn't multiply like that. The individual units aren't worth the same as the single original, assuming the same time frame, comparable features and condition. And going from 1 to 5 units seems like a pretty incremental change - it's not like a house being converted to a high-rise building.
> But, when you tear down perfectly charming houses
Given that the project fits local zoning laws, I don't see what the relevance of the existing house's "charm" is. Unless the house is of local historical or cultural importance - which planning commissions consider - it's nobody's right to prevent its replacement on the basis of such a perception.
If opinions on the charm are important, one should advocate their planning commission to establish aesthetic guidelines.
But it does in Seattle. Have you looked at any of those new units they've put in through Phinney ridge and Ballard? That's exactly how it works - tear out one, put up X, and sell at a multiple of what the original would have gained.
Regarding parking - the problem is, you put up a new space, but only provide parking for maybe 10% of the occupancy (which matches my casual observation of numerous land-use billboards). Ok - the problem is, there isn't enough public transportation for the other 90% of people. So we're creating a problem where we still have way too many cars, people, etc, we're just kicking the problem off into the distance.
Or maybe said another way -- it's a perverse incentive, because it lets the land developer off the hook while creating greater strain on streets, parking, IE: it's adding density but not actually planning ahead to accommodate that density.
People own cars for convenience. If they have to pay $$$ for garage parking or deal with limited street parking, many of those people will stop owning a car.
Sure, then public transportation sucks... but that's also good! When enough people depend on an inconvenient publicly funded service, that service magically improves after a couple election cycles. Then more people use it, creating support for further improvements, etc.
But that's not all!
More people on the sidewalks creates opportunities for small businesses to bring services closer to where people live (reducing demand without diminishing support for public transportation). Those businesses tend to pay workers better, which enables some to move into the city instead of driving from cheaper areas.
The end result, a decade or two down the line, is a vibrant urban community. A region where the idea of even 10% parking spaces is absurd because friends and family, work and pleasure, everything can be accessed with some walking and public transportation...
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Our car culture is a social addiction. Cars seem convenient in an environment shaped around cars... but if we step back and question the environment, the alternatives are much more attractive.
People looking for housing in dense cities value location and access. Sometimes that means a house gets replaced.
Dilapidated buildings are replaced with housing all the time, but only when the land they occupy is desirable for housing due to its desirable location. Just think of all the old centrally located decaying warehouses converted into condos in your city of choice.
The alternative, building in areas people don't want to live, isn't going to happen soon. It was tried, most recently in the years before 2008.
(Summary by a very intellectually and spiritually deficient moron): I am pathetic, my desires are all almost certainly evil, I can probably not even think one good thought let alone have a good intention without divine help. God, please please please please have mercy and grant me some very much needed horror of self and conformity to your will and help me to not become a puffed up moron who is full of himself if one seemingly desirable thing happens to me, which is certainly what is going to happen unless the literal creator of the universe helps me to do it a little bit less.
Of course none of the American Protestant Christians I know will like it if you say that since they seem to think Christianity is about being a millionaire who gives 30% to charity and doesn’t have premarital sex too much
The "your will" is the part that gets interpreted, either by the individual, often with the help of an outside institution, to serve whatever objective they seek.
Perhaps that objective is a good one, or maybe it's horrifying. Such a professed humility to a God's will could also just be serving as a cover for whatever else the person is doing. History is replete with examples of that.
But at that point, you are back to where we started: needing to understand and judge the intent of people and the institutions that they take guidance from.
EDIT: wording clarification
Not being obtuse: what do you mean here?
But I would just be guessing.
I think internet555 was trying to suggest something about the duality of man, sir.
most people generally admire jesus's moral philosophy, but non-religious folks (e.g., humanists) find the various religions and sub-sects to be distasteful because, while there are some good people within, those organizations largely exist to concentrate and perpetuate power (which religious leaders would argue helps them with their mission of salvation).
(For the record, I don't like NIMBY's)
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.
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
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.
The only solution would be comprehensive campaign finance reform. And due to Supreme Court precedent that would probably require a Constitutional amendment (not likely to happen).
But I think it's more proactive than "donating to whatever candidate supports a piece of legislation favorable to them as an enterprise". I think it's more like "donating so that the candidate will support legislation (not just one piece!) favorable to Google as an enterprise". That is, I think it's more proactive than reactive. Google wants politicians to like Google before they're deciding which legislation to support.
I'm definitely willing to concede that in many cases it's a little bit of column A, and a little bit of column B. Probably.
That statement needs multiple hours of writing from VP level approval etc. The cost is not 0.
Two comments: I think it showed real fairness invited him to give a talk at Google; someone probably read his book and wanted to promote change within. The second comment is trivial: watching this talk reminds me that arguably the best perk when I worked at Google as a contractor was the invited talks (yes, even better than the food: I can buy my own food but hearing very interesting people talk in person is an experience more difficult to buy).
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-win...
That explains why everybody is talking about philanthropy, LGBT, women's rights, diversity, racism and whatever instead of maybe paying their janitors and other low ranking staff a living wage.
And I'd say the reason for this is twofold:
1. Making social issues the big topic of discussion means millionaires, celebrities and companies can pretend to be 'progressive' while not actually doing anything meaningful to make the world better or help people escape poverty.
2. Stuff like Occupy likely scared the hell out of those with power/property/whatever, which led to a mission to get people fighting among themselves rather than against those with actual power.
Today, nationalist groups and media in the US receive millions of dollars in support.
I can't help but think someone took a look over at how Europeans neutralized dissent and thought they had a good thing going.
But that might impact revenue.
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.
The villagers go from earning "nothing" to earning $1/day according to our money system. They have been "lifted out of poverty," despite now living in disgusting slums in a city as foreign to them as it would be to us. Their culture (and perhaps knowledge of regenerative agriculture) are lost forever. We don't measure the carbon sequestration capacity lost by the now-inundated land, or the huge amounts of methane that the swamped vegetation releases. We just know we created "green energy." The villagers' risk of dying in those slums from many awful diseases has thankfully plummeted, but their profound communal loss will likely manifest in the form of depression or anxiety -- which are on the rise globally. Could that rise be a symptom of our realizing that while the "numbers" get better and better, it's occurring at the cost of obliterating the planet in possibly irreparable ways?
Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of good, too. But there's a lot that gets missed in choosing what and how we measure.
[1] This example is lifted largely from a favorite author, Charles Eisenstein, from his new book "Climate: A New Story." You can read up on the Tehri dam. If it breaks (and some seismologists think it's a real possibility), it will cause untold more devastation.
Things don’t happen in a vacuum. Some things are much better, some are much worse.
But Gates doesn’t have stats on the concentration of ownership of global resources in that post because it’s not a KPI for him.
You may want to revisit your statement. This kind of trend (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8f/Ag...) is not what you call "skyrocketting". Of course every suicide is one too much, but let's go easy on the hyperbole.
Suicides and opiates are. (and if you are a maslow hierarchy fan, you will notice that life has gotten extremely good for these problems to exist)
Things are much much better, equating these is irresponsible.
EDIT: Lets not overthink the very obvious intention and meaning behind my comment.
This confuses proximate and root causes. Someone may "choose" to pull the trigger and end their life, or choose to swallow one more blissful pill to avoid confronting their miserable existence, but they probably would not have knowingly chosen the circumstances that now leave them with that horrible choice.
Oopiates where prescribed in huge numbers knowing that many people would become addicted to them.
Disease vectors are often under peoples control. Do you hike in the woods and risk lime disease?
Poverty is often a little of everything. It's far easier to become poor than stop being poor, but it's not some inescapable prison.
Further, there are huge differences between poor and extreme poverty. Reaching say 20$/day is a vast step up for many people.
Millions of people have escaped 3rd world poverty. It’s vastly easier for you people who can often relocate to more prosperous areas and or gain more valuable skills. Further when you talk about poverty it’s critical to understand the vast difference in living on ~2$ a day and 20$ a day in the same areas. 20$ a day can mean the ability to invest in their and their child’s future. That jump in many ways is the first rung on the ladder of prosperity, but it it a very meaningful step up.
That said, it’s very easy for people to fall into poverty. War, famine, disease, accident, etc all push people down.
I’d consider suicide and addiction more of a context than a “choice”.
I genuinely don't know; hoping someone has the data.
And this didn't used to just be a story of Mideastern nations. This was the story of the world. The one thing that changed this was nukes. Mutually assured destruction is why the Cold War is now called the Cold War, and not World War 3. And it's why direct unrestrained confrontation between developed nations has really become a thing of the past. Countries like China would never have been able to develop if not for the peace and stability that nuclear weapons have enabled. We can even look to nations like India. It's surreal to imagine that until 1947 that entire nation was just a property of the British Empire. Even the notion of a British Empire is surreal! But now that they have gained their independence and are a nuclear nation, they are also gradually increasing in prosperity as Indian decisions are being made to put Indians first. And as a nuclear power their decisions, independence, and developments are all effectively guaranteed, at least until we develop technology that can effectively render nukes harmless.
Like so many things in life, some of the greatest progress comes not from directed efforts, but from paradoxical places you would never even imagine to look in the pursuit of your goal.
"Rotary, along with our partners, has reduced polio cases by 99.9 percent worldwide since our first project to vaccinate children in the Philippines in 1979. We are close to eradicating polio, but we need your help. Whether you have a few minutes or a few hours, here are some ways to make a global impact and protect children against polio forever."
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-re...
Just look at China and South-East Asia in general. They are coming out of poverty by becoming rich, not because someone is parachuting goods every day.
Charity of that sort arguably undermines local economies and makes people dependent on future charity. That's why poverty is better addressed by supporting free markets.
>Some progress is real.
Let me similarly point three cherry-picked stats that show the world is getting worse, to point out how flawed that reasoning is.
* The percentage of the population living under democracies has gone down since 2000.
* Wealth concentration and income inequality have risen since the 1970s.
* Suicides have gone up.
If there is one thing I realise is that only technological progress marches on. The rest of "progress" (social, political) almost never goes unequivocally "forwards", and is subject to setbacks and upturns and reversals of previously achieved progress.
Have you seen some of the industrial cities in India and China?
I think I'd rather check out at 30 in a world where I could actually breathe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_New_York_City_smog
And I have never seen this in the USA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmryr65iTwM
It is all so unnecessary. Meanwhile, our elites will not abide a blow to their quarterly earnings for anyone, so the formula is: make money polluting China, go live in Canada; make money polluting India, go live in the USA.
For my taste, Anand Giridharadas mixes those things a bit too loosely. One moment he is talking about the elite that is fighting for a better future in Africa and the next minute he talks about how the funding of public schools in the US is organized.
Sure, his point is that the US elites are helping Africa because (it is cheaper and) it doesn't endanger the system of their wealth in the US, but I wonder if helping the people in Africa isn't more urgent than the ones in the developed part of the world.
That said, I like how he presents and explains his view to the audience at Google.
It's really not that different. The inequality in conditions between poor public schools and wealthier schools (public and private) is dangerous for the future of American productivity, causing gainful participation in the economy to become ever more correlated with prior socioeconomic privilege.
If that productivity growth runs out, and the relative conditions worsen for non-wealthy people in the US, there will be no more helping Africa, due to economic decline, or domestic political instability.
Basically, these aren't independent problems. Increasing inequality at home makes it harder to help people elsewhere. Spiraling poverty elsewhere results in conflicts in those places, and we eventually experience the effects of those conflicts one way or another.
I don't think that the current system of funding public schools in the US is good. The opposite is the case. Yes, I do believe that education is a critical instrument to fight inequality and racism and that every human should have free access to high-quality education (which is not that difficult to achieve with modern technologies).
By the way, your argument is missing a decisive point: The help for Africa is done by the elite, not by the broad population. Therefore, even if the inequality in the US would rise, it would take a while before there would be 'no help for Africa' anymore (until it would be politically problematic).
Given the speed of information dispersal, it might become politically problematic quickly, especially once a narrative is established.
However, due to the length of election cycles, it may not be an electoral issue as quickly.
No.
You either don't know what 'social upheaval' means in the minds of nationalists or I wonder why you would judge it as 'rightfully'. There is absolutely nothing rightful about killing people.
I don't know if that movement is just a based on feeling 'left behind', maybe as a symptom. I mean, there are serious issues connected to all of this. For example, there are companies in Europe which systematically conquer specific African industries (e.g., milk products), which is one of the reasons why the Africans migrate (no job -> no food -> certain death). The worst about it is that the same industries receive EU subsidies.
So the European people pay money which causes the Africans to come to Europe (great job). After all, stopping the European companies from doing that wouldn't solve the problem as the US or the Chinese would just see the opportunity, but I doubt that shutting down the own country is a proper solution to that problem either (and nationalists don't stop there).
"
Just study the rise of the Nazi party or the Russian revolution or even the Iranian revolution. Ordinary citizens started to feel that the country is not working for them anymore and looked for somebody to change that. Maybe they picked the wrong leaders to make those changes but the trigger was dissatisfaction with the current state. So if our current elite focuses on helping other countries while enjoying tax cuts for themselves but decaying infrastructure and wage stagnation at home there will at some point be a movement to change peacefully or forcefully.
You wrote '[...] rightfully so' which I have to object clearly.
I am saying that what nationalists call 'social upheaval' is often against the law and therefore not rightful. So if you are using the established democratic processes (voting, demonstrating, etc.) to change the political situation that is okay. But if you do so forcefully, that is most likely not okay (depending on the law of the country you live in).
This happens when the general population decides that their leadership is not working for them anymore.
You are taking 'true' situations out of context and rearrange them so that they serve your purpose. For example, yes, what happened in East Germany before the wall fell was unlawful, but the context is, that East Germany was an occupied country which changes the whole situation and is not applicable to the modern US. Instead, the criminal deeds of that Nazis were what lead to the situation in East Germany in the first place.
Similarly, India wasn't a free country either at Gandhi's time, and France wasn't a democracy at the time. So even if you might find a few situations where unlawful behavior changes the world for the better, it doesn't mean that it is an appropriate tool to solve conflicts in general.
I doubt that I will change your mind, but you should seriously consider looking to the world from multiple perspectives.
I have a hard time believing this. The elite spend a lot of time looking for ways to help themselves. The elite spend a lot of time looking to enrich themselves. The elite didn't become the elite by being charitable or caring or thinking of others.
Also, I don't think this "nature" is just confined to the elite. Everyone is selfish.
> but fails to make an impact because they never consider solutions that would erode their own wealth/status.
People who love wealth and power don't want to diminish their wealth and power?
I basically agree with the guy but nothing he said is new or insightful.
A large portion of our conversations(as a 10%er) is about how we can create products, services, or nonprofit organizations that help people.
This also seems to neglect that Exchange has both parties benefiting.
Have they seen ONE such project from start to end that made real difference? Like I don't know, here's something egotistic: help one family -- buy them a beach house, supply them with tech and some financial reserves, AND help them build a profitable consultancy so they don't hang on your neck until you die?
Something communal: or just build a well-funded school where they personally pay the fair wages of the teachers? For 10 years?
I've been hearing a lot about the wealthy thinking of how to help. IMO it always stops at thinking only. At this point I've come to think they want to feel good about themselves but not really make a difference.
In any case, I've never seen somebody rich actually make a difference anywhere. I mean it's normal if they want to protect the sources of their wealth -- to an extent -- but there are many good deeds to be done that don't involve them sacrificing their wealth.
Hence I concluded the occasional charity tooting is just a feel-good factor for them.
And when populations hit a tipping point, the elite will start a big war to thin out a few hundred million people or maybe 3-4 billion this time.
It is the same as it ever was.
Google, Facebook, and all the other big tech companies could have helped liberate humanity--we were talking about privacy and open government in the late 1990s. It was all set to be implemented, then 9/11 happened and a new Iron Curtain fell on the US. All by design by those who can't allow the rabble to have any true freedom.
When I look at what Google and the others have become now, I just feel ill--this is a major power play where they are aiding and abetting outright tyranny in China and will happily aid and abet the same crimes in the West as long as it suits their goal of power consolidation. Worse, they are now aligned with the far left, which makes utterly no sense except from a "gaining total domination" mindset. It's sick. The left is not "for the people." Show me one historical example! That talk was always a false front for naked brutality.
Before you downvote me, realize what is at stake here. Read some damn history books and come to understand what happened to the Greeks and the Romans and why.
Although he meant it in terms of philathropy, this is the Google business model in one sentence.
ftfy
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.
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-hanau...
People tend to only care about the inequality where they stand the most to gain. Most US citizens would benefit from wealth redistribution in US, but unhappy with a global redistribution since they would average down.
In some ways globalization is causing both increasing economic equality for labor and increasing inequality for capital providers.
This is will be a small subset of the species.
The planet is fruiting.