
Corporate America's 'Elite Charade' - aaronbrethorst
https://fortune.com/longform/anand-giridharadas-winners-take-all/
======
Despegar
The big takeaway for me is that fundamentally tax policy needs to be
redistributive. That idea has been under assault in America for decades, along
with the idea of government itself, and it's been very successful. Both
parties are effectively on board with that. But that is what real change would
be.

It's not something small like a basic income, which has become popular for
certain VCs and people in Silicon Valley to promote, but real massive and
transformational programs that would actually cost those people something.
Frankly I think UBI is a cynical ploy to give people some nominal amount to
avert something more substantial like Medicare For All (or some other
universal healthcare system).

My own politics was pretty neoliberal until a few years ago (markets,
globalization, free trade!) but now I'd say I'm firmly in the Elizabeth
Warren/Bernie Sanders camp. I will vote for anyone that wants universal
healthcare, puts a price on carbon emissions, strengthens labor, and takes on
monopoly (in the tech industry but other sectors as well).

~~~
coffeecat
> It's not something small like a basic income, which has become popular for
> certain VCs and people in Silicon Valley to promote, but real massive and
> transformational programs that would actually cost those people something.
> Frankly I think UBI is a cynical ploy to give people some nominal amount to
> avert something more substantial like Medicare For All (or some other
> universal healthcare system).

I hear this sentiment a lot from people on the left, and I don't understand
it. A fairly modest UBI of $1,000 per month (the basis of Yang's campaign) for
adult citizens would cost $3 trillion, which is about 14% of the US' GDP.
That's a bit less than healthcare as a fraction of the nation's GDP, but it's
also a historically unprecedented amount of wealth being directly
redistributed. How can one seriously argue that this is not a "massive and
transformational" program?

~~~
Despegar
Medicare For All would cost $32 trillion over 10 years [1].

[1] [https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2018/7/30/17631240/m...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2018/7/30/17631240/medicare-for-all-bernie-sanders-32-trillion-cost-
voxcare)

~~~
jandrese
Compared to the $40 Trillion we are going to spend on private insurance over
10 years that's a bargain.

[https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-
systems/sta...](https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-
systems/statistics-trends-and-
reports/nationalhealthexpenddata/nationalhealthaccountshistorical.html)

~~~
Despegar
I don't personally care about the cost because I think it's a moral
imperative, but yes it'd actually save money if a single payer were
negotiating with all the providers and drug companies.

------
mncharity
Some years back, I talked with someone who had research funding from the Gates
Foundation. The were almost apologetic about it. It seems they felt
compromised; that they were serving as cover and cog for a patent generation
scheme.

So if the video's argument vis Google doesn't resonate, perhaps that's a
simpler example. It's a reoccurring critique of GF in global public health,
especially when it's working with Intellectual Ventures, that... it has a
strong preference for approaches that generate patents, and profit large
incumbents, over approaches without those properties.

In contrasting Tesla vs old-auto engineering culture, someone described an
old-auto engineering design career/car decision matrix. If something is good
for both career and car, great, do it. If bad and good, drop it. If good and
bad, pursue it anyway. So regards engineering social change, it would seem
unsurprising to find a variety of engineering cultures present, perhaps with a
variety of properties.

------
Despegar
His talk at Google was great:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_zt3kGW1NM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_zt3kGW1NM)

~~~
pklee
great talk.. !!

------
tempsy
Aren’t we seeing how this is already backfiring in some ways? I think Google
is a good example. This is a company that seemed to stoke socially progressive
ideals among employees and then created this environment where employees are
protesting the company’s involvement with the military, more conservative
employees accusing the company of bias, the company now saying political
discussion is frowned upon at work, etc.

~~~
devoply
Because it's all sophistry. The elite or corporations have no ideology or
principles with which they are operating. They are machines that will say
anything anyone wants to hear to make more money. And then they will stop
saying it once it no longer works. Same goes with the freedom of speech
rhetoric when it was found what it actually means, the elites agreed to put a
kibosh on it even if the government can't.

------
devoply
Another thing I hate is all these places asking for additional money to give
to charity. So they can engage in corporate giving. If they are so interested
in corporate giving why don't they give from their profits?

------
wallace_f
Why not move social policy to the states? Scotus justices have said that, and
that's what the constitution directs.

Let people have real democracy, and get what they vote for and experiment with
what works and not. Move with your feet if you have to.

The whole world doesn't need to be united under the same social policy. People
are also very bad at figuring things out without experimentation.

------
newen
America as an organization exists to leech money from poor and middle class
people, from medical costs for people with crappy insurance to traffic fines
concentrated in poor areas.

------
balt_s
Double irony: this article appears in Fortune magazine.

------
malandrew
While the article was addressing more than just elite philanthropy, it was one
of the issues touched upon here and this post is highly relevant reading every
time criticism of billionaire philanthropy comes up:

[https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/29/against-against-
billio...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/29/against-against-billionaire-
philanthropy/)

------
areoform
This article reminded me of Napoleon, who was a smarter and wiser man than
most anglophones give him credit for;

> There is no such thing as an absolute despotism; it is only relative. A man
> cannot wholly free himself from obligation to his fellows. A sultan who cut
> off heads from caprice, would quickly lose his own in the same way. Excesses
> tend to check themselves by reason of their own violence. What the ocean
> gains in one place it loses in another.

The part that sticks out for me is, "A man cannot wholly free himself from
obligation to his fellows." It's a simple statement, a simpler lesson, but a
profound statement that we've forgotten. Society wouldn't exist if it weren't
for the consent of those around us. Society wouldn't exist without the
agreement of those with us. Society is in its essence a bond and a privilege -
it gives us the permission to do more and ask for more by the virtue of its
existence. We have mutually agreed to not rape and kill each other for scraps,
but to let each other do their own thing unless it hurts others (or abrogates
their contract with one another).

That's why taxes exist. For me, they're the subscription fee for civilization.
There has never been a civilization that hasn't had some form of governemnt.
There has never been a civilization that has acted and organized purely on
"self interest." Someone has to dig the ditches, run the sewer lines, lay the
roads, and stop people with a crowbar from coming into your house and killing
you in your bed. Someone has to pay the fee that allows the contract to exist.

Each time this covenant has been breached, it has been met with a short and
bloody end. No despot has ever been absolute. Stalin couldn't get out of bed
without fearing a gun to his head -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Kirov#Assassination_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Kirov#Assassination_and_aftermath)
. Pol Pot might have met an ignominious end -
[https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/jan/21/cambodia](https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/jan/21/cambodia)
[https://web.archive.org/web/20110918095455/http://articles.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20110918095455/http://articles.cnn.com/1997-06-21/world/9706_21_pol.pot_1_khieu-
samphan-anlong-veng-fields-reign?_s=PM:WORLD) . And Hitler died alone after
putting a gun to his head.

If _they_ couldn't rid themselves of their obligations, how can we?

~~~
hogFeast
Historical note: it has always been true that the rulers have an obligation to
the ruled. A fact often totally forgotten these days.

Even kings and queens that subscribed to the notion of divine right,
recognised that they had an obligation to the people they ruled over.

This exchange of power was often codified. The relationship wasn't one group
of people ruling with an iron fist over another. If you were a serf, you had
to provide labour but you received rights and benefits in exchange.

That system often broke down in periods of population growth (a common example
is vagrancy laws in the late 16th century) but even there was an established
right to riot and dissent as a way of pressing claims.

It was only during the Cold War that we really saw this understanding of
dictatorship/monarchy/whatever completely break down (imo, there are a ton of
books on the above i.e. Polyani but I am speculating now) as dictators were
able to maintain power through their allegiance to the US/Soviet power (and
changes in technology made this easier too).

And, of course, our notions of community/society have totally changed too.
Substantial reductions in economic and physical uncertainty has made most
people unwilling to live in a system in which another person has dominion over
you.

But this doesn't change the fact that this is why these systems existed in the
first place. And, in most cases, people who have tried to rise up and create
systems in which the bottom class rise up and have found themselves crushed
under the weight of the obligations they are forced to assume (they do not
disappear, risk has to be assumed by someone).

~~~
a3n
> Even kings and queens that subscribed to the notion of divine right,
> recognised that they had an obligation to the people they ruled over.

"Divine right of kings" is the fig leaf. The "obligation" comes not from the
divine, but from the threat of pitchforks and torches.

