- The people most fit to lose from social change have put themselves in charge of it — new mission of the young to “Do well by doing good,” focus on building things up rather than tearing things down
- Rooted in neoliberalism, starting with Reagan and Thatcher (government is bad), enabled by attitudes on the left like Clinton (era of big government is over)
- Emphasis on making change through markets, not social or political action
- Firms like Goldman, McKinsey sell themselves as springboards and laboratories for change-makers; the whole B-corp thing — in reality, the solutions these orgs come up with are often common sense “back-filled” into a template to be marketed
- The irony behind the Obama Foundation asking McKinsey for help figuring out how to get people more involved with citizenship
- Whoever takes on a problem has the power to recast it with their own prescription, diagnosis, prognosis; gains the right to decide what does and doesn’t need to be solved: the market world doesn’t tend to look for blame or perpetrators, or solutions that dismantle the systems that got them where they are m
“Win-win” solutions: business & social change
- Vulture funds: buy “bad debt” from African countries, then sue governments to pay it back with tax-payer money
- Give one/get one things, double and triple bottom line, tapping into the bottom of the pyramid, etc.
- Major challenge: stagnant wages for most of Americans, despite almost 70% increase in productivity (gains captured by elite)… stricter regulations and stuff could address this, but elite change-makers (Justin Rosenstein, founder of Asana after making it big at Google and FB) propose measures to further boost productivity… which they can continue to benefit from.
- It is possible to do well by doing good only if you overlook unintended consequences: accumulation of power and information, social anxiety…
- Roots in Adam Smith; we don’t expect our dinner because of the benevolence of the butcher and the baker
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Humanitarianism <—> entrepreneurship: “win-win” is at the intersection, but focusing there also ignores all the other possible humanitarian solutions
- In Silicon Valley especially, the elite still see themselves as the underdog, the rebel, not powerful: “just a platform” or “technology company” idea about Uber, Lyft, FB that frees them of traditional responsibility to society and employees
- Idea that the world may be unfair, but sprinkling technology around will plant seeds of equality: connecting classrooms to the internet, giving people phones
- Tech industry = simultaneous diffusion of power to the people, and concentration of power in the companies, because as a network grows, each additional link can produce more value
- Venture capitalists are akin to central planners, yielding power that was never given to them, thinking they are changing the world
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The whole anarchist vibe (getting rid of government) of the tech industry = like getting rid of Hobbes’ Leviathan, but we forget the alternative is not good, but just replacing that central megapower with a many little ones, like feudal lords… we must remember that “the elite are equal to the common people, not representatives of them.” (or something like that)
- Rise of thought leaders instead of public intellectuals/critics: focus on offering quick solutions rather than serious critiques of systemic issues; focus on what the victim can do rather than the perpetrator; often supported by and funded by private things (write books, give speeches vs academic things)
- Counter to feminist idea that the “personal is political”, now making things that are clearly systemic into individual issues
- Some people try to maintain both identities (Charles Duhigg, Malcom Gladwell, Amy Cuddy) but really remembered only as thought leaders
- “The Ideas Industry”
- Can we convince the elite to support systemic change by starting at the micro level and then zooming out?
- Identifiable victim effect —> get people to care: ex. tell the story about sexism by talking about people’s daughters, rather than them as leaders. But… hard to get people to generalise from their kids to all women (subtyping)
- Assimilation effect —> the process of generalising to societal problems, without exasperating the contrast effect (my daughter is so different and special!)
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The use of “Pinkering”— taking Steven Pinker’s accurate observations about decrease in violence to solve interpersonal problems, or decreases in extreme poverty— to justify keeping social order the way it is, and “shame” people who say they have problems
- The problem with the system trying to solve the system’s problems… and the standard “protocols” used by external consultant places to break down a problem and offer simple fixes (following 80-20 principle, often overlooking many human elements and “native” knowledge):
- Globalisation —> Rather than focusing the business in one area and doing it all in the same community, each aspect and process goes to the place where it can be most effective (ex. manufacturing one place, selling one place, taxes another place, etc.), distancing from any relationship or loyalty to one community
- Optimization —> Similar to above; also just making decisions to maximize profit despite negative effects on employees (flexible work scheduling —> pay workers less, but no stability for them)
- Financialisation —> Focus on shareholder value over everything else, leads to decisions to maximize short-term gain and only based on the markets, rather than serving employees, community, and other stakeholders
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Overall, not engaging or involving the people they are trying to help
- Rise of private foundations in place of organised philanthropy (by the masses)
- Somewhat problematic in that how the super-rich actually made their money to give away was not accounted for in the new model
- Carnegie gospel: inequality is necessary for the rich/talented to make money in a market economy; they can then give back the money in large sums in a way that is more effective and better for the poor than if they got and spent it themselves in small amounts (AKA wages)
- Darren Walker = president of Ford Foundation, came up through the system of inequality, started talking and thinking about the fact that systemic changes are also critical; looking at the playing field that allowed the rich to make their money— may not be so equal
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Generosity does not equal justice
- Philanthropists and elites beginning to be known as globalists… as in Clinton Global Initiative
- CGI event during UN Week —> gave people a profile if they helped people, but this also clouded the motives of the whole week— blurred the lines further between public good and private gain; made it okay to pledge to donate/fix a problem caused by a system or business one was also investing in
- Election of Trump, Brexit —> the world revolting against elites, loss of trust in them: rejection of globalisation, market supremacy, technocratic progress, open borders
- Some globalists realising that they were pulling away from place, and thus away from democracy, which leads people to have less of a say in society, diminishes role of government; need to move away from “reflex internationalism” to “responsible nationalism”
- Jonathan Haidt —> essay on the topic, discussed that anti-globalism is rooted in the power of local community, religion, etc., cited the book Suicide which talked about how people more engaged in these things have lower suicide rates
- Both globalist and anti-globalist ideas have value, but globalists felt a sense of moral superiority that caused them to overlook the importance of stable, local community in addition to openness
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Resentment also comes from focus on far away problems (“Rwandan coffee plantations”) over problems close to home (rural America…)
- Fundamental question: Who should make change and where should they make it?
- Globalist initiatives don’t only ignore political, civil, democratic means of problem solving, but can also actively undermine them if they replace public services. On the other hand, philanthropy directed to provide services not provided by the government can bolster democratic systems.
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Loss of faith in democracy —> asymmetric effects on the two parties. For Republicans, conducive to their aims bc government not doing things is usually what they want. For Democrats, it’s a loss, bc their vision of good society has foundations in public goods and actions.
- Difference between trying to make it easier for businesses to do good (B-corps), or harder for them to do bad (systemic/govt regulation)… can you do both?
- Contradiction between elites believing they have no power or efficacy to effect systemic change— hard when it might have negative consequences on themselves! (Paying more taxes, etc.)