YouSaid · the spoken record

Anand Giridharadas

lines on the record: 88
first: 2024-05-23
most recent: 2024-05-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Familiarity of the New Hampshire primary and this and that and all these kind of rites and rituals that we recognize while in fact what's going on under the hood is barbarism and I think that's going to be a decisive choice Country faces later this year.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The system has been sturdy in that it's held, but under the system, awful things have been able to happen in this country. You know, slavery was a legal constitutional part of this system until it wasn't. Internment was a legal part of this country and part of the system until it wasn't. Segregation was a part of this country until it wasn't. Criminalization of homosexuality was part of the system. So the system has held, but the system can tolerate a great deal of barbarism. And I think we've, what we're learning now is that We just have to make sure that our definition of the system holding is not having some kind of formal”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wish that I knew how fragile. The American system is. I grew up on a myth of how Utterly durable. It is. And it turned out not to be. And I wish I had seen that earlier and been able to see those cracks earlier. There were always people all along telling us about those things. Sometimes we don't listen to those people early enough. And I've tried to become a better listener to the people telling us things before everybody else.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really interesting. You will love what you do and believe in what you do and know that you're doing something that is good for the world.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's tough. The business model, in many ways, is gone. I go to parties every month and meet people do all kinds of things. And 95% of people I meet. Believe in what they do Think it's socially important. It wasn't the thing that they promised themselves they'd be doing when they were 20. And if you become a journalist and stick with it and find a way through all the ups and downs, you will not be one of those people.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm reading this book that everybody was talking about a couple years ago called A Little Life and Novel. It's the most wrenching, searing, awfully painful but brilliant novel by Hanya Yana Gihara. So, so good. And then, you know, in terms of the books that have been most important to me historically, I would say my genre of narrative nonfiction, some of the most important books behind the beautiful forevers by Catherine Boo, Random Family. You know, I'm really interested in these books that kind of do this. Deep immersive work, following people through. Their lives, and that's the kind of work that I dedicated myself to doing.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I talked about her a little bit. Jilly Abrams since she got me into journalism, gave me a chance, advocated for me, and I don't think I'd be a journalist if it wasn't for her.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My daughter and I are watching Is It Cake? When I watch with something with the two of them together, Great British Baking Show, I watch Atlanta by myself. That's my solo show. And I'm watching Veep right now with my wife.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Watching, you know, like you have joint bank accounts and individual bank accounts, I have shows for myself and shows for everyone, my family. So my son and I are watching Seinfeld. He's almost nine. We're starting from episode one, season one, and trying to go all the way through”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is it even a deeper thing there? Like their parents, if you're 25, your parents are telling you how much they love you every day if you're lucky. Your parents are leaving you a dying world while telling you they love you. That's really confusing, right? So if you are a pro-democracy leader who's trying to build coalitions around climate, around honest history, whatever else, I just think the essay was a plea to understand those depths. It doesn't mean the policy issues are not important. It means that if you are not speaking to people at the level at which they're actually living these things and understanding those dynamics, you're leaving them open to authoritarians who are always good at speaking to emotions.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think about the kids who are so incredibly articulate and visionary and climate, the Gen Z climate people. First of all, they're absolutely right on the policy, and they're the only people who might save us. But I think when I even talk to them,”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People feel invaded psychologically by the era we live in. People feel like there's not enough for me. I don't know if I can get ahead. Like the whole world's coming in, right? That's just like a deep emotional experience that then shows up in a, oh yeah, the border, that sounds like what may be responsible for the way I'm feeling, right?”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Will make them think differently from you. Your kids are going to know a different story about the country than the one you know. Your kids maybe will be turned a gender according to this fantasy that is not the gender you knew them to be. It is all weaponizing, this completely human thing of my kids are going to grow up and leave me, right? My kids are going to become out of my control. And I think I'm just taking that one issue. When we actually start, you could do that analysis. Any issue Think this border things about you think anyone in the country understands the actual nuances of immigration policy on the border?”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“kid will drift away from you, which by the way. They will. That's the meaning of. Life of parents. Your kid will drift away from you. Once they come out, no going back in, right? It's awful for us parents. You hug your kids close. One day they stop wanting as many hugs, right? One day they don't come into bed and cuddle anymore too old for that. One day, you know, mom, I'm fine, right? The whole process of parenting is like losing your kids slowly into their own life. And what is the CRT stuff but weaponizing that fear? Your kids are gonna learn stuff.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But what is actually motivating voters, not motivating voters, riling people up, not riling people up, leading to certain kinds of candidates versus others being attractive to people, is often deeper stuff, right? And I think those of us who talk and think about politics for a living are often quite blind to that because we are quite interested in policy. We think Medicare for all is an interesting idea to talk about. But I think what I've learned spending most of my life writing about regular people dealing with the big forces of the world is that for most people, the things that really animate them, the questions that really animate them, are much more in the kind of emotional terrain. So take an issue like CRT, critical race theory, honest history in schools, all this stuff, right? I don't think any of that is about the stuff that it's formally about. I think that is about the universal dread that every parent has that you're”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think when we talk about politics, we're often talking about the wrong thing. We talk about policies, right? Or we talk about crises like the border, or we talk about issues like critical race theory, the agenda issue like that, or issues like Climate change, and what do we do about that”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, emotion is the new Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin. It's the swing state. It's the swing state. And what I mean by that is”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Services and actually reclaim this notion that people can change people's minds can change. It's the only thing that has ever changed societies. It happens all the time. It happens every day. It still is happening right now. And we have to kind of, you know, pull up our bridges and get back to the work of persuasion if we're going to save this country.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Me thinking you're just some money guy And you'll never listen to reason. You don't care about, right? That is really different than you and I having a different number in mind for a top tax rate. And what I realized looking at the Russian thing is that they're big, but in some ways modest in terms of the scope of the American conversation, their effort was to turn us fatalistic about each other, pessimistic about the possibility that we can evolve, change, grow, learn. And we have been playing so brilliantly into their plan. And the book, The Persuaders is an attempt. Say, we got to get off this track. We have to stop being useful idiots for the Russian intelligence.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And for anyone who's ever been in a relationship or had relationship counseling, you know, fights are not actually dangerous in a relationship. It's actually couples who don't fight. You got to worry about contempt. Fatal in a relationship. Can't come back from contempt. Very hard to come back from contempt. That kind of writing off. Oh, you are just always that way. You've always been that way. Ugh. I couldn't, why do I even bother? That is when couples don't really have much of a shit. That's when it's dead. And I realized the specific attitude they were trying to cultivate in us was not division, which is you and I believing in a different tax rate. You and I believing in a tax rate 80% apart from each other.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all, I read them with this kind of weird. Hate admiration. Right, they, I don't know, it's like when you're in a breakup with someone and they say something so mean to you, but it's so insightful. You know, and it's like, wow, you really get me. And I never want to be with you ever again I feel like they saw the truth of us. This mission, and their ability to poke at certain trigger points, it was just a really astute, well-informed effort. And I should understand, so what are they getting out of? If one's trying to get Trump elected, the other's not, what is the project? And I think the project, as I started to interpret it, was less about a particular outcome and less even just about fomenting division, which was the other thing people said. I think it was about promoting a fatalism. Americans about other kinds of Americans.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you know, I barry, like whenever I can't figure something out, I try to go to the text, go to the original source material, go talk to people with this Russian thing, there was so much stuff, they were trying to get Trump elected. I was like, let me read this stuff myself, right? So I downloaded, I picked two of the most prominent. The Russian effort, and I downloaded thousands of each of their tweets, and I just read through them, almost like a book, like read them like a story, started classifying them at this crazy spreadsheet where I was analyzing them. And when I realized, I mean, one of them was trying to get Trump elected, the other one was like a pro-Black Lives Matter left.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is a kind of Russian Thalma and Luis story, these two intelligence analysts arrive. They travel around the country. We don't know exactly who they met with, but they kind of went around, went to probably rallies or it kind of took in the political scene, maybe met with people all around the country. And we do know that what they were doing was gathering, not Intel in the cloak and dagger sense. Not covert stuff. Just like.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Complain about it and then complain about it. And again, I think people. I think voters are often wrong about when they kind of try to diagnose what the actual issue is or what the best policy solution would be. But I think voters are very intelligent. About Do they feel like the people who are in charge? Care about them and are kind of Making their life better in a material way. And part of the puzzle of the Republican Party in recent decades has been its ability to win sometimes, although not often. While not materially delivering for people. And the way it is done that is by kind of weaponizing these social changes we were talking about.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we are in this very Complicated Moment and situation in which We have to kind of, there's a circular problem of we have to. Show people, prove to people that democracy can make their lives better, as you and I were talking about before. But we need them to trust us to even have the authority to make people's lives better, right? In other words, With the kind of Senate that President Biden has, these kind of razor thin margins, a hostile house, He can't do a lot of things that would make people's lives better. And so then people's lives don't get better. And then people don't vote for you to have more authority, give you a bigger house margin, give you a bigger Senate margin.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. And it's becoming more and more the norm. My only point is some places have solved this problem. And we should look at it, right? I think you could have conferences of ideas. That's fine. Take money from rich people, and you could create some kind of firewall norms, whatever, and learn from the New York Times. I don't think people have figured out how to do that. But the answer is there. I'm just suggesting Look, I would prefer to live in a world in which these fortunes were not so gigantic to begin with and didn't have this influence. But even in the world we live in, there are thoughtful ways to say you could take the money, but you don't get to decide what's on stage. You don't get to decide what opera we do.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a firewall. It's a pretty well established firewall. These universities, right? Even the best universities. I mean, There are issues with donors and these centers. But like the average professor We've built a pretty good system of the average professor being relatively insulated from what donors want. Part of what is so bizarre right now with the Bill Ackmans of the world is like they're trying to maybe. In other words, we have institutions that have a pretty good record of being able to take money, whether you think about that, and building some culture and norms. I never met an advertiser once or spoke to an advertiser once or spoke to anybody in the advertising department of the New York Times once when I worked there for 11 years. Those are just not conversations that happen.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Take money from wealthy people and somehow have some norms around protecting the integrity of the work, right? I mean, the New York Times has advertising. You know, I think you could make some comments at the margins that, you know, the housing section has more about fancy life than it does about. But in general, I think most people who advertise the New York Times who work in the New York Times, who read the New York Times, would generally understand that Gucci, just because it buys an ad is not placing a call to an editor and saying, I want this story. Like, that's not how the New York Times works. People are going to listen to this thinking, I'm crazy.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there is actually, and I think this is not as hard a problem as it seems like. I mean, we have lots of institutions.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, what do you think is going to be on the main stage of Ted Which talks do you think are going to be given? You think that the Clinton Global Initiative, there's going to be a talk about how the kinds of wealthy donors that donate to the Clinton Foundation?”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As like, wow, that is costless empowerment of women. That is a way of empowering women that literally would cost Wealthy establishment, nothing”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cheryl Sandberg's book, right? And what was the argument that actually very much within this system we have, if women just leaned in, raised their hand more, tried to be more assertive at the meeting?”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think about the Elizabeth Warren campaign two cent wealth tax to fund precisely those kinds of things. Well, that's a kind of empowering women. Does not thrill the plutocrats. Here's another something they like more. Lean in, right? I mean, one of them, a Plutocrat herself wrote Lou.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Issues with the workplace and the way workplaces treat women, institutions treat women. There is a non plutocratic friendly way of talking about that issue and advocating about that issue. And there is a plutocratic-friendly version, right? So the non-plutocratic friendly one is like real structural change. Whether policy things like Paid family leave and medical leave, which so many Women in the political sphere have advocated for or universal pre-K and childcare and things like that that would make it easier for many, many women to. Juggle all their roles and obligations and aspirations. Kinds of ideas that would really empower women have been shown in other societies to have those effects but are expensive. The examples I just gave you are all things that would cost Company's money costs rich people money, right?”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I have a chapter on the rise of the critics called The Critic and the Thought Leader. And the rise of the thought leader, in the way that I define it in the book, a kind of thinker who is safe. Is deemed safe For the kind of plutocratic establishment. And so it goes back to that notion of ruling elites have to invent and nurture a story that justifies their rule. And part of that is that there are certain thinkers out there who are threatening to the official story of the time. And there's other people out there who are kind of willing to play ball and spread ideas that are helpful to the ruling story of the time, right? So if you think about, pick one realm that I write about in the book, telling the story of Amy Cuddy. If you think about the area of The empowerment of women, feminism”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No symmetry But the reality is what is done by operational daylight is just on a vaster scale, infinitely vaster scale than what can be cleaned up by philanthropic moonlight. However, The philanthropic moonlighting is marketed Much more heavily What is done in operational daylight, right? So we don't really know. Except when we get occasional glimpses”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Has kind of created these social problems. Phase one is why those kids don't have a good education five days a week. And then phase two, you might give them a boys and girls club to go to on Thursday afternoons, right? In phase one, you are creating a world in which there's not enough money for universal pre-K or there's not enough world for community college classes for people to reinvent themselves when they get laid off. And then in phase two, you're creating like a little program for like 100 people in Appalachia to, you know, Transition out of coal mining.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do that, right? Pay people as little as possible, take on as little as risk. There's a book called The Great Risk Shift. Shift as much risk onto workers and consumers as you can so the corporation is not bearing the risk. And then you'll make more money than you would make if you didn't do all those things. Okay, that's phase one. Phase two is now, phase two starts with workers being paid less than they would otherwise have been paid. The commons in many ways being kind of starved, but companies having more money. And then phase two is like, okay, now get back. Now that you've made all this money, maybe more money than you would have otherwise made, give back and give to after school programs for boys and girls. Here's the problem. Phase one of your life in that model.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And just imagine that writ large for the whole economy. Every piece optimized. So that happened. And the lesson, I think, for business people, the message of the post-Reagan era was cut every corner you can. You get legally or illegally in some cases. Pay as little as taxes in taxes as you can possibly do if you have to do double Dutch with an Irish sandwich or this and that.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, look, I think you have to look at the whole arc of this money. I think the American business model, kind of social business model we've ended up with, is telling business people In phase one of your life, you have to make as much money as possible. In as ruthless and corner cutting away as possible. That's just the norm, right? And a lot of the old kind of what is now thought of as inefficiencies that were in corporate America in the 50s, 60s, and 70s really got edged out by shareholder pressure, shareholder activism, the McKinsey kind of revolution, et cetera, where all slack was eliminated. And that your janitor, who might have been an employee of your company in the 50s and 60s, was now a contractor of a contractor of a contractor, no health insurance.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The needle. But you might, but you could also break the needle. You could also just lose the needle in your coat pocket. You could make the needle go backwards. If you had $50 billion and you know, and this is obviously a real example of people like Bill Gates, and you had Barry's thoughts about education. The possibility that you could make education better, and there's the possibility that you could become our unelected, unchosen, illegitimate czar of education creating new standards that are actually a mistake that have all these unintended consequences. It could work or it could not work. But the question is, who the heck is you? And the issue with modern billionaire philanthropy, even when it's well executed like Bill Gates's and certainly when it's not. Like others. Bill Gates really does want to get rid of polio.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, like, if you have, you know, you're a successful guy, if you have a hundred thousand dollars you want to give to some cause, you're not affecting. Governance in New York City by doing that. You may help some people, you may not, right? But if you had like $50 billion to give away,”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fair statement? Yep. And I think, you know, going back 100 years when you really have the birth of modern philanthropy, as I talk about in the book, people have always given money. I mean, in the Islamic religion, Christian religion, there's been these commandments to give back, tithe, whatever, giving is an old concept. But when I'm talking about philanthropy in the way that you and I would think about Gates as philanthropy, that's a relatively new thing about 100 years old. And the way political scientists define it is kind of the birth with the Rockefellers and Carnegie's of others of fortunes that were so big that they were kind of, it was kind of like nation-state level money. First”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if you cramp my style, if you tax my wealth, if you come after Business through regulation. If you do X, Y, Z on the policy side, you are actually hurting the society. You are hurting regular people because you're cramping my ability to eradicate diseases, to help democracy, to go to the moon or Mars or whatever.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Had its store. Every ruling system has its story. The argument of this book is that, yes, that's a constant. And I'm trying to unpack what that story is now. And I think it's a different story than the past stories. It is not, this is natural. Not inequality is natural. You can't say that, right? No rich person can go out and say, I deserve to be here and you all deserve to be the poorest. That story is an old story wouldn't work now. So a lot of the old stories have gone out the window. You can't say them anymore. And so I was trying to explain what the news story is. And I think the news story is, yes, I may have more than everybody else. Yes, these inequalities may be savage and corrosive to the social order. However, I, as a rich person, have a unique ability to also heal this society by giving back.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About why it is best to let them continue being the ruling elite, right? So southern planters, plantation owners, and slave owners and enslavers of people in the 18th and 19th centuries couldn't just run their businesses. It was very, very important to invent a story of racism about the naturalness of white superiority and the naturalness of black inferiority. If you didn't invent that story, and by the way, convince a certain number of people who were not white of the truth of that story and a certain number of people who were not rich white people but were poor. If you didn't have lots of people believe the story about that ruling order being the best possible ruling order, it would fall apart, right? Racism had to be invented to help Crop up, that kind of regime. Well, the Indian caste system has its story, and the British feudal.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're absolutely right. And in fact, one of the, you know, I think there's something old and constant in the book and something new. I think the old and constant thing is there's always, as you say, Ruling elite financially. And what is also a constant throughout history is ruling elites always invent a story. By the way, has to be believed not just by them because then it wouldn't work. It has to be believed by everybody.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Using the appearance of giving back, of doing good, of making a difference, of philanthropy, of impact investing, of all these things that we talk about these days. The argument of the book is that the richest and most powerful people use giving back and taking care of society as a kind of ruse and a distraction to continue and intensify their grabbing of wealth and power. Essentially, have pulled off this brilliant trick of convincing lots of regular people that the billionaire class holds the answers to the problems they are still actively causing, that they are the solution to the problem that they represent.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. This is a book about people I would call plutocrats. And the word plutocrats is sort of, you know, the first part of the word is Pluto money rich wealth. And the second is ruling, like Democrat. Plutocrat is someone who rules, governs us through their wealth. And so this is a book about a class of very wealthy and powerful people, the billionaire class, you could say. And it's a story of how this billionaire class has amassed extraordinary wealth and power, which is something people know, in part, and this is the twist and what I tried to break some ground on, in part by”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From Obama, don't boo, vote, whatever, and who came out and did this and that. Okay? I think a lot of them would say, I have, what did I get? Look, I am my entire career from India onwards has been in and around the question of democracy. I read a lot about human beings and individual human stories, but it's all democracy is my great abiding subject. I believe in it. However, I think we have to reckon with the fact that if it is not a self-evident truth, but in fact Evidence based truth that needs to prove to people as the President said that it works, that it's superior to what the Chinese are doing or whatever, we have to make the case. And that case has to be felt deeply in people's lives. And you're in my lifetime, I think, a great Can't be faulted for feeling that when Things got dire and they needed help.”
2024-05-23 · Masters in Business · Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source