'The Elite Charade of Changing the World'

The modern elites seem to be broken. The fundament of those elites and their reproduction principles seem to be widely rejected. But this rejection means also directing votes towards anti-elites, populist candidates, such Donald Trump of America, who in fact altough a counter-elite is nevertheless also part of the upper - money-fuelled - class. 

Anand Giridharadas' Winners Take All. The Elite Charade of Chaging the World is focused on the American case - with its high concentration of wealth and prestige among the elites - but it can easily serve as a guide for any other developed country. 

The situation, according to Giridharadas: the gap between the upper and lower layers of the society only gets bigger; winners know the problem but want to preserve their status quo; instead of trying to change the system, the member of the elites are trying to rather redistribute their wealth through charities instead of putting more efforts into redesigning the system completely. 

Is it a sign of a failure of participatory democracy? Or rather there is a need to reinvigorate citizenship? Or to improve the level of trust into public intellectuals whose ideas seem to be often subsidized by the same members of the establishment they are supposed to criticize?

The book is very interesting for the detailed landscape offered and the overview of various aspects related to the lack of balance of the system of distribution of wealth and power nowadays. It questions this system by simply displaying its failures. But when thoughts are changed into commodities - part of the ways in which the system reproduces itself at the intellectual elites level - it is hard to hope in a due change.

This book is a warning of how far things are in terms of resistance to genuine change. The fact that the priviledged few are throwing up some crumbles of money to the many unpriviledged is sometimes a simple PR spin that doesn't bring social justice, it rather confirms an inequality status. In the American case, donations for charity involve tax exemptions therefore paying for generous causes is done for a very specific non-charitable reason. 

It is a good start if you want to understand the map of intentions and interests among elites nowadays. How the change may actually occur is a topic for another book, maybe.