This is not just a problem among "elites", every class in society down to the bottom rung shows the shame characteristics of the elite that Giridharadas lays out.
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.
>The clearest example you can see is with NIMBYs, especially those in liberal leaning cities.
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...)
> 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.
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.
> 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
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]
I don't agree with them, but increased density is absolutely a "threat" to the character of any neighborhood, not just something they "view" as such. Having more people live in a neighborhood changes everything about it, I don't understand why people neglect this point, like it isn't real or maybe doesn't count because everything NIMBYs say is invalid because we all want cheaper rent. But I am not saying you're doing this, it's just what I see when people talk about NIMBY.
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.)
You're absolutely right, it would change the character of the neighborhoods. But the argument you present is exposes the hypocrisy at the center of people in these neighborhoods and hits at some of what Giridharadas is getting at.
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."
Don't forget they also only like it as long as the value of their properties continues to raise. Can't be going underwater on your mortgage from buying in a bubble in the name of cultural diversity or fighting poverty.
Increasing the supply of housing should lower prices, yes. In nearly every neighborhood, single family, detached homes are the most expensive form of housing.
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.
Possibly what the grandparent was thinking of is land values. If a neighbourhood is rezoned to allow more density, one would be able to build a duplex or low-rise condo/apartment building where there used to be a single family home. This makes the underlying land more valuable, while probably also making the per-square-foot cost of housing go down. I also suspect as more SFHs get turned into more dense housing, the scarcity of SFHs would make their value jump up as well. One thing that could counteract this would be if property value assessments rose enough such that it became very expensive to own a SFH on land zoned for density, which would encourage most owners to turn them into more dense housing. Though possible one house in a 'hood of low-rise buildings would be less desirable and would only be sold as a teardown. Either way I figure more density would overall be a windfall for landowners (read: homeowners) even as housing prices drop.
People in small neighborhoods tend to value the charm, convenience, and connection they have with their communities. I don't want to pretend things won't change, but those qualities can be preserved even as a neighborhood gets dense (Brooklyn might be a good example). Plus, there are additional benefits (transit, shops, services) that tend to come with density.
When I was little I remember my parents getting us hyped up to go around the neighborhood to get signatures for a town vote which would protect the area due to wetlands. We were middle class and Democrat - but certainly not rich and not environmentalists. I cannot remember my parents ever saying anything about wetlands after that. It's clear it was all motivated by property issues, but I didn't realize that until years later.
I suspect there are many people in Seattle who recognize the need for more housing and more affordable housing, given the number of neighborhoods that are tipping over the million dollar mark. That said, where I get flustered is the number of new housing units with inadequate parking or where perfectly good houses are being torn down. Case in point: corner of Market and Phinney. Cute, well-maintained craftsman with a land-use sign in front of it indicating it will be torn down and replaced with a multi-plex unit with only two parking spots. It's likely already an $800K house in that neighborhood, but due to pure greed will become a 5x $800K property for someone. And therein lies an unfortunate twist on the Seattle market: at the moment, supply and demand are not in balance, so even as supply increases, housing still isn't affordable for many.
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.
> but due to pure greed will become a 5x $800K property for someone.
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.
>When you put 5 units where there was 1, the value generally doesn't multiply like that
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.
I have seen $K single-family homes get replaced by $K condos in SF, but only because the original home was uninhabitable (ie property value discounted to offset demolition/construction) while the new condos were legitimately luxurious...
How do you reconcile being "flustered" that housing density is being increased, and at the same time acknowledging the need for much more housing? And you claim have no problem with greater density and incentivizing public transportation, but still want to use up valuable space for parking?
Because I'd rather that density increase by replacing dilapidated buildings or ones that are actually in need of improvement rather than perfectly good ones. I don't know how to actually enforce that in any way, but it's a nuance that is one reason why it sticks in people's craw to see new housing units built.
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.
Do you want to live in LA? Because that's how you get LA traffic.
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.
> Because I'd rather that density increase by replacing dilapidated buildings or ones that are actually in need of improvement.
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.
This is why I think much of Christian thought is actually quite intelligent.
(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.
I would say it is a wish for spiritual insight into the nature of self-ishness, how it is a root cause of evil in the world, and presumably the related Christian tenet that it's not a 'fixable' problem without cultivating a divine relationship to the creator or source.
Then again, if everyone were selfish in a cat-like way that everyone else can fuck off, we wouldn't have wars, genocide, slavery, abuse of power, or terrorism. So there's something more to it than just being selfish. Something to do with our tribal, hierarchal tendencies where one alpha ape can convince the rest of us to do violence against those other groups, who get blamed for all our problems.
to help make sense of this apparent contradiction, i'd suggest separating christianity the religion from the underlying philosophy of jesus.
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).
It's almost as if democracy is about balancing competing self-interests. It's also easier be more enlightened, as long as it's not impacting one's own self-interest.
False comparison because billionaire has a lot more money compared to your typical middle-class NIMBY. Even if quite a bit of the billionaire's wealth vanishes, it won't impact his lifestyle much. Not so with NIMBY.
Giridharadas talk is explosive in terms of its ideas. From what I can tell, he's not pulling any punches even though he's been invited to speak on a Google campus (Boston).
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.
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.
Most large companies spread their donations around to every major candidate or incumbent politician. They frequently bet on both sides of the race. This is just a matter of buying access so that they have a seat at the table and can possibly call in a favor later.
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).
That raises more questions than it answers; are they donating to both sides of the same race, or just candidates in different locations? For what purpose? Is this kind of "guilt offset" valid, can you just buy off harm while continuing to do it?
Simpler possibility: they're donating to whatever candidate supports a piece of legislation favorable to them as an enterprise regardless of party affiliation because that's how rent seeking and regulatory capture works?
Right - they're donating to help Google, not to help or harm trans people. They're a business, not an activist non-profit.
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 totally agree, he brings up things that challenge my ‘priors’ and shifted my views - in a 1 hour talk. Excellent talk.
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).
I agree about watching it at 1.5x speed. Even slightly faster would be nice. Definitely a lot of food for thought. The question & answer near the end was fantastic, I loved hearing the Googlers responding positively and talking about taking action.
Ezra Kline interviewed Anand Giridharadas for the Ezra Kline Show podcast back in September[0]. Very interesting.
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.
"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."
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.
Yeah. Though it's just about how they avoid talking about liveable wages, but also how issues related to economic inequality in general seems to have quietly shuffled away by lots of politicians and political figures, or how so much political talk in general seems to be about 'social' issues now.
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.
Or, in between lamenting the state of politics, maybe taking a look at the polarization machine they've built with youtube recommendations, facebook/twitter feed, etc etc..
There is real progress, but it also matters what we measure. A good example[1] is India building hydroelectric dams, which often submerge fragile ecosystems and displace their agrarian societies of sometimes hundreds of thousands.
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.
Meanwhile suicides and death by opiates have skyrocketed across the actual country Gates lives in, exacerbated by the incredible increase in inequality that Gates actively helped create.
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.
What? Opiate abuse is caused by pharma companies and complicit doctors and hateful governments and law enforcement, not operating systems and office suites and xboxes.
Mental illness increases propensity for substance abuse. Gates, Bezos, et alls wealth accumulation increases mental illness by robbing opportunity from those displaced by their businesses accomplishments. Increase in mental illness leads to an increase in suicide, violence, and substance abuse.
> Starvation and disease is not chosen. Suicides and opiates are.
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.
Many people have escaped 3rd world poverty. It generally means starting young and walking somewhere else, but poor at 16 is a different situation than poor at 60.
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.
Progress is real. Who is driving that progress? Is it the global elite in general, is it a handful of rich people who do actually make a difference, or are their efforts just noise and something else is driving the progress?
I genuinely don't know; hoping someone has the data.
I don't think there is any one-size-fits-all answer, but one major contributor is rarely given credit -- nuclear weapons. Bear with me, I'm serious. When you look back at our history war is nearly always the cause for the greatest suffering. It causes starvation, 'involuntary migration', and so many other things. Whatever has been built up in an area, it does a wonderful job of tearing down. Look at Libya for one of the most stark contemporary examples. Libya was steadily developing and seeing increased prosperity as a model of what Africa could become. Now, it's been reduced to neglected, unstable, and impoverished rubble since we 'freed' them.
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.
Wrt polio, that's a Rotary International led effort, which is a very dispersed organization with 1.2 million members around the world contributing time and money to various causes.
"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."
I'm thinking it's a mix of government action, organizations like the UN / UNESCO and the Red Cross, and both governments and donators that donate to said organizations so that they can do their work without needing to scrounge for money.
Many of these large governmental or bureaucratic organizations suffer from extreme inefficiency and ineptitude. The Red Cross's complete failings in Haiti have been widely reported. NPR ran a particularly scathing report [1] on it that includes nothing short of quite forward allegations of fraud. The Red Cross, for their part, make claims about what they did and provide extremely high level claimed expenditures, but then refuse to provide specific details of programs and costs.
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.
You must be kidding. These elements are minor contributors. By far and large the opening of the world to free markets is what has solved many of these issues. If what you claim was true, then we would have solved poverty 40 years ago already.
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.
> 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.
In 1990, more than 60% of people in East Asia were in extreme poverty. The dramatic shift had little to do with the UN/UNESCO or Red Cross and a lot to do with local governments not failing as hard as they did 50 years ago.
Of course progress is real (even if sometimes exaggerated). But one of the things that annoy me most is that some people, ahemstevenpinkerahem, use it to shut up those who very often make it happen. Change is real, but it happens in large part due to whiners and their political action (who are then often rebutted with, yeah, that change we had a generation ago was necessary and important, but now you're going too far/just whining/we've "given" you enough).
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.
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.
I don't want to downplay the issues at hand, but when we talk about poverty and wealth, we should always be aware of the definition. AFAIK poverty is often defined as a relative ratio, leading to very different absolute conditions in different countries. For example, in the US or Europe, it is presumably something very different than in Africa.
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.
> the next minute he talks about how the funding of public schools in the US is organized.
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.
While I agree that there is a connection, those are extremely different issues. Not having food or water is entirely different from having a low-level education and being discriminated.
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).
> 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.
That's pretty problematic. A major reason for the rise of nationalistic movements in the US and Europe is that a lot of middle class people feel left behind. If people realize that the elites of their countries prefer to invest somewhere else while letting their own countries decay we will see a lot more social upheaval and rightfully so.
> we will see a lot more social upheaval and rightfully so.
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).
"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.
"
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.
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).
History is full of situations where people decided that the current environment is not working for them and changed them through unlawful actions. Gandhi did it, the French revolution, the USA was created by unlawful means, the civil Rights movement Al were unlawful, a lot of unlawful stuff happened in East Germany before the wall fell.
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.
> Anand basically argued that the global elite spends a lot of time looking for ways to help the global impoverished
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.
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.
We are living in another "Gilded Age" whether we realize it or not.
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.
I think I agree with you but you shouldn't make this into a left/right issue. It has nothing to do with this. It has all to do with elites pursuing their own interests at the expense of most everybody else.
See: Facebook's Free Basics, where they offer "free" "Internet" to developing countries, limited to Facebook properties and a handful of non-competing websites like Wikipedia.
I heard this guy on "Your Call" which is produced by NPR yesterday. One of the things he said that really got my attention is that he said to get a seat at a TED talk, you need to pay $5000, which really limits the attendance at TED talks to the wealthy. Another thing was, the speaker is censored--he or she cannot use the word "inequality", but can only use the word "poverty". That just blows my mind. Inequality is one of the ways economics is changing with Thomas Piketty who points out how inequality has increased way more in United States than in Europe since the 1970s. To not be able to point to that as one of the problems facing the world and to claim you want to change the world is madness.
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 haven't watched the video myself, but he could be referencing Nick Hanauer, a venture capitalist from Seattle, whose speech at the TED University conference titled "Rich people don't create jobs" was deemed "too politically controversial" to post on their web site.
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.
On finding talks with "inequality" in the title: they do not show on the first page, but I found two by clicking 'See all 114 talks on Inequality' and then clicking on through the results pages; ie "A visual history of inequality in industrial America", and "How economic inequality harms societies", so two of that 114 search results.
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.
Ted started off great and has turned into a complete joke. Got the money? Come and talk. Have a controversial idea - sure, it's worth spreading. I've come to accept TED as entertainment more so than anything factual. If facts are there, they have to be checked.
What about hiring minorities in the US from HBCU's? I came here on an HB1 myself but they are so many talented diverse candidates that could be hired in the US.
I don't think he was trying to make them feel guilty, rather just pointing to the awkward fact that the situations and people he is talking about are the ones like those in the audience. I haven't read the book but I reckon he talks a lot about Google based on how many times he mentioned monopolies and anticompetitiveness.
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.