Rolling With the Waves Instead of Trying to Stop the Ocean

I am currently reading "Winners Take All: the elite charade of changing the world"

It is life-changing - a critique on the very industry I most-often operate in: philanthropy & social benefit capitalism.

I think any of my peers would be defensive when presented with the ideas within this book - because it's hard to hear. Especially because the reality is: social entrepreneurship doesn't work...and worker's rights are being stripped more and more everyday due to the greed of silicon valley and the gig economy.

"Rolling with the waves instead of trying to stop the ocean" is a partial-tongue-in-cheek reference to our band-aid culture. We (thought leaders) are more likely to find and praise partial fixes (Uber and Airbnb) than to address the actual systemic issues (lack of reliable and equitable transportation infrastructure and affordable housing).

Here is a strong summation of ideas in this book with an excerpt from Ch. 5 - which talks about the growth of "thought leaders" during the downfall of the "public intellectual":

"It is the best of times for thought leaders, it is the worst of times for public intellectuals - declares Daniel Drezner, in his recent treatise, "The Ideas Industry" a part-academic, part-first person, account of how an age of inequality has distorted the work of thinking. Drezner starts out by defining two distinct kind of thinkers who share in common desire to develop important ideas and at the same reach a broad audience.

One of these types, the dying one, is the public intellectual whom Drezner describes as a wide ranging critic and foe of power. She stays aloof from the market, society, or the state and she proudly bears a duty to point out when an emperor has no clothes. The ascendant type is a thought leader who is more congenial to the plutocrats who sponsor so much intellectual production today. Thought leaders tend, Drezner says, to know one big thing and believe that their important idea will change the world - they are not skeptics but true believers - they are optimists telling uplifting stories - they reason inductively from their own experiences more than deductively from authority. They go easy on the powerful: Susan Sontag, William F. Buckley Jr, and Gore Vidal were public intellectuals. Thomas L. Friedman, Niall Furguson, and Parag Khanna are thought leaders.

Public intellectuals argue with each other in the pages of books and magazines. Thought leaders give TED talks that leave little space for criticism or rebuttal and emphasize hopeful solutions over systemic change. Public intellectuals pose a genuine threat to winners. Thought leaders promote the winners values talking up disruption, self-empowerment, and entrepreneuriability. Three factors contribute to the downfall of the public intellectual, and the rise of the thought leader, according to Drezner: one is political polarization. As American politics has grown more tribal, people have become more interested in hearing confirmation of their views by whoever will offer it than being challenged by interesting intellectually meandering thinkers.

Thought leaders give TED talks that leave little space for criticism or rebuttal and emphasize hopeful solutions over systemic change. Public intellectuals pose a genuine threat to winners.

Another factor is a generalized loss of trust in authority. In recent decades Americans have lost faith in virtually every institution in the country except for the military thanks in part to years of hard economic realities and dysfunctional public sphere. Journalists have come to be trusted less and this loss of faith has pulled public intellectuals down a few notches and created new space for the less-credentialed idea-generators to vie for attention."