Selfishly Solving Problems

ANAND GIRIDHARADAS, whose very name is sufficient to inspire confusion and interest, has published a new monograph of immediate and pertinent interest: "Winners Take All; the elite Charade of Changing the World". The title itself portends a fascinating analysis of an ambient topic, but one largely ignored. A summary of the book goes something like this: everybody in the world who has not been living on Mars is aware that there is an enormous amount of work needing to be done to make this a more perfect world, or at least a reasonable facsimile of a civilized, sustainable, habitable one. The pervasive problems are self evident; global poverty on a massive scale, accompanied by hunger, despite the abundance of food and material wealth in the aggregate. A shortage of clean drinking water. The persistence of regional wars which always threaten to explode into world war. Rampant disease, much of which is curable but uncured because of socioeconomic and political factors, and many more. We are also aware that for every widespread human ailment, there are many highly organized enterprises ostensibly dedicated to their alleviation. Many of these organizations are put into motion from the top down; they are brought into being by the trust funds and donations of the very wealthy, the philanthropic donor class. This elite class of the extremely wealthy comprises a tiny percent of the world's population, and the needy comprise a huge part of humanity. The great amount that needs to be done is partly undertaken by national governments, but a large part of it by people like Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and others, who lend their names more than their personal wealth to the great cause of uplifting humanity. These private entities inevitably espouse the virtue of solving problems by using market forces, by using capitalism, and not with socialism. That these well funded private foundations seem to make more money than they distribute, and seem to do more for the reputations and legacies of their chief benefactors than for the folks intended to receive the help, is the theme of "Winner Take All". Over and over we hear the message that big problems are best solved by market principles, not government intervention, which, so the logic goes, only limits freedom and stifles innovation, somehow. The innovations it stifles turns out to be the business success of the charitable wealthy. even while giving, even while engaged in philanthropic problem solving, the rich get richer, and the poor never escape poverty, or get the clean air, food , water, and absence of war and disease so highly touted by the givers.