Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World

In Winners Take All, Anand Giridharadas contends that, at this moment of profound global income inequality, we’re finding ourselves inclined to want to believe in the magnanimity of wealthy do-gooders who can turn their vast resources toward improving the wrongs and injustices that ail us. He furthermore argues that this, however reassuring–or perhaps because it is so reassuring, is dangerously optimistic, placing the power to change institutions in the hands of those made powerful by those same institutions and structures. Believing that our best hope for global economic and social reform lies with private corporations and powerful individuals not only assumes that those in power are genuinely motivated to create change in the world that currently favors them, but that those already in powerful positions deserve the additional power we give them in the form of our faith and trust. Giridharadas is skeptical of the Bill Gates, TED-talk, billionaire philanthropist model and sees it as rooted in fact in the same ideas that pushed Donald Trump into the presidency.

Giridharadas writes in an eloquent, enjoyable style that is smart without pretension. His support for his assessment of our current national and global socio-economic situation is incisive, well-supported, and ultimately quite convincing. Giridharadas makes the important and compelling point that we need to examine our willingness to believe that, when even the most charitable-seeming of the wealthy and powerful assure us they’re working to make the world a better place, we should believe them.