Oncle

Overview

This book was amazing. It was the most theory dense in the first chapter, which was pretty short. Here Anand talks about change-making as a system and goes into detail about how it has been co-opted and changed. All chapters after that are really just the same thing but more. We already understand the core of the argument from the first chapter, so he moves into telling stories of other people who have arrived at the same conclusions. These stories all go to point out specific aspects and dynamics that come with the theories of the first chapter, or natural extension and connections to the theory. This not only makes sure you thoroughly understand it by the end, but also makes it much more personal and entertaining.

I think what is most impressive about this book is that Anand Giridharadas seems to really know what books do. Harrison once posted an article that said books aren't information transfeer devices, but subjectivity merging devices. Anand keeps the strict facts to a small section at the start, then proceeds to give multiple extremely interesting and personal accounts of other people's subjective experiences that relate to the facts. This made it an absolute pleasure to read, and also made it so that if you have read this summary, which is just a quick list of some of the facts, most of the experience of the book is still left for you to discover by reading it.

Abridged

I'm just using my presentation notes so this will be chapter by chapter.

BUT HOW IS THE WORLD CHANGED?

The way we make change now has shifted from using central structures to create systemic change to using markets. All capitalist parties are complicit in this change. Capitalists who want to do good fund change and in return get good optics and more potential investors and workers who agree with it. This ignores that it now lets the wealthy decide what change can happen and more importantly what change cant happen. They fund change only as far as it doesn't go after them. It also puts change under the umbrella of business ontology. This business change and business optimization has led us to where workers don't see the positives from productivity gains and have no say to make that happen.

WIN-WIN

Business change happens in the context of win-wins. People make a positive impact, and as that positive impact spreads, their business grows. This fails when the positive impact is subjective and limited in scope, and the wins come out lopsided. Doing well by doing good tends towards more doing well than doing good. Many win-wins come out with workers as a whole seeing no win as the help for them only goes as far as what would make them more efficient for their employer who swallows the benefit.

REBEL-KINGS IN WORRISOME BERETS

Venture capitalists see themselves as people fighting the system when they are the system themselves. Since they all want to start their own ventures, they only manage to take on smaller issues without addressing their systemic roots where real change could be sustainably made.

THE CRITIC AND THE THOUGHT LEADER

There are thinkers and thought leaders. Thinkers do large-scale real analyses of conditions and reach conclusions that target why issues exist. Thought leaders take these issues and turn them into victim-focused, perpetrator light, issues. Feminism turns from how structures hold women down. Now it is how women can adapt to those structures.

Ththought leaders present ideas of change to marketworld. A mindset where only markets exist, only businesses can present the solutions, and everything must be done through business means. Everything melts into business/market speak, and if it doesn't appeal to that, it doesn't present itself as an investment, and it isn't worth time. Radical ideas get turned into a commodity that can be purchased in the marketplace of ideas.

Rich people who fund all change don't care to hear how they're the problem and don't pay to hear it. They don't want to hear about inequality, which relates to their extraction, but they want to focus on poverty, which they can donate to fix quickly. They constantly hear that they are fixing these things and turn to ignore people saying it is getting worse. The only way to get put on stage is to affirm them, and the only way to get heard at all is to get put on stage. Its a trap

Arsonists Make The Best Firefighters

Consultants hire people who are really well versed in trying to actually appreciate other cultures, which are people who struggle to find jobs elsewhere. From here, they give them a real cookie-cutter method of change-making that they then expect everyone to apply. This then turns the people most invested in culture and moulds them into people who push things toward capital. This creates a “Trying-to-Solve-the-Problem-with-the-Tools-That-Caused-It issue.”

There is also a problem with optimization. Companies try to optimize for profits, but in doing so only optimize to make the lives of the workers worse. They have completely forgotten that on the other end, there are real people. They want trained workers but refuse to train them. They are destroying the environment they need to proliferate. In growing globally, they forgot that people are spatial.

GENEROSITY AND JUSTICE

People used to be skeptical of giving because of the power and extraction that came with it, but the world has been deliberately pushed to accept it. Rich people have created an environment where they spend on poor people instead of letting poor people spend for themselves, which means poor people have their lives crafted by what the rich give to them.

There are people that try to get through to the rich, but they can only do it on the terms of the rich, who ignore all substance and just try to take notes on the core bits they want: where they can get tax discounts or improve productivity. Some rich people want to change but they're stuck in the current of their surroundings with no idea how to stop it, so they try to donate right and end up doing almost the exact same thing as all the others.

ALL THAT WORKS IN THE MODERN WORLD

Elites don't go to public change events but instead meet nearby public events behind closed doors. They are invite-only, and at least 3 steps removed from normal people. They meet to talk about issues like feminism and anti-globalist populism but don't invite feminists or the people they mock. They say everyone else just needs to be educated, but others know their lives are getting worse, and the elites don't.

There is a new class war. The global vs the locked-in-place. Bill Clinton and his CGI were a powerhouse of this trend. They pushed global change without consulting those impacted, creating the place to be for getting connections as the ultra-rich. People saw this and hated it, with it ultimately being a factor in Hillary Clinton's loss to Trump in 2016. People hated those making changes for them without having any say in the matter, and they rejected the embodiment of that in a candidate. When asked why they lost, the Clintons blamed the right and called them uneducated and dumb, not seeing what they saw. All this while the CGI never asked what the others saw.

“OTHER PEOPLE ARE NOT YOUR CHILDREN”

It usually takes a major event to make people want structural change. It is hard for wealthy people to have this because they moulded the world for them. Tying to push for change in the right way is just as hard as trying to push it worse. Paying taxes is easier than dodging them. They can do it, but when it pops up they just call it complicated.

B corps are an example of someone trying to make structural change. Creating a market of good companies within the market so people can see them and we can push for change so everyone would be like them. Despite having all the right people and all the capital, it has remained hundreds of companies in millions, a tiny amount. Something else will have to happen.

Acknowledgements

Anand takes some time here to express that the reason he knows all of this is that he at one point made a career out of being a marketworlder. He found himself more isolated from those he wanted to make change for, and more influenced by those he was trying to appeal to. That inspired him to find more people feeling similarly and to write this book.

Final thoughts

Anand Giridharadas is wild. He did the audiobook himself and is a great speaker. Good voice. Good looking. Smart. Some people just got it all.