'We're all passengers in a billionaire hijacking'

[Anais_nin]

'We're all passengers in a billionaire hijacking' says the critic who has the world's richest people buzzing

Richard Feloni 

Feb 1, 2019, 3:19 PM

 

 

Anand Giridharadas.  Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images

• Anand Giridharadas is an author and professor whose book "Winners Take All" is a scathing critique of the way elites treat philanthropy.
• He said Western elites have cloaked themselves in "changing the world" to protect their interests and reduce the efficacy of democratic change.
• He's critical of Davos, corporate proclamations of solving societal problems, and Howard Schultz and Michael Bloomberg as presidential candidates.
• The only way destabilizing inequality can be meaningfully addressed in the United States needs to come from public policy, he said, with increased taxes on the wealthiest of prime importance.
• This article is part of Business Insider's ongoing series on Better Capitalism.

By 2015, Anand Giridharadas felt that the world he was inhabiting was built on a charade.

As an Aspen Institute fellow for five years and a former McKinsey analyst, he lived and worked among a collection of elites who believed their exchange of ideas, philanthropy, and so-called conscious capitalism could "save the world." But it began to feel like "MarketWorld," a term he coined for the bubble where it's accepted that the private sector can fix anything with enough money.

He decided he would be transparent with the rest of the Aspen crowd, and gave a speech where he declared that, "we may not always be the leaders we think we are," which brought a mixture of praise and outrage.

Giridharadas has written for the New York Times and taught journalism at New York University, and late last year, he published his book "Winners Take All." It's a thorough, nuanced takedown of MarketWorld that declares companies should work to do less harm, but that systemic changes must come from policy changes. Giridharadas's thesis is therefore not only a cultural critique but a political one, with a progressive lens.

The book is currently in a second wave of popularity in the wake of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting at Davos, Switzerland, where it came up in conversation, and with the official start of the 2020 presidential race.

Giridharadas spoke with Business Insider about Davos, the idea of "better capitalism," why he's so avidly against Howard Schultz and Michael Bloomberg as presidential candidates, and why he wants Americans to take back their country from billionaires.