Societal Segmentation and the Savior Mentality

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Book Report
Summary 1: The new elite’s phoney crusade to save the world- without changing anything
The article is a summary of the book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade the World by Anand Giridharadas. It is a highlight of how the pursuit of effecting social change and how it has led to the pronounced social segmentation and the realization of little or no change. It covers how the situation has fared through time and provides the ways the elites get involved in social welfare to ensure they control society.
* The first idea that the article highlights is the level of societal segmentation with defined differences between the elites and the ignorant, left and right, rich and poor in all aspects of life, i.e. social, political and economic. The author notes the vast difference between the rich and the poor, with 10% of the population controlling 85% of the world's wealth. To elaborate on the differences, the author picks the health sectors and explains how Americans have the worst health compared to other developed nations despite having the best medical research scientists. The same can be seen in the business innovation sector with regress in youth entrepreneurship by two-thirds in 2019 compared to the 1980s. These differences continue to expand with the wealth channelled towards the rich people while the poor get poorer. This phenomenon, according to the author, is created by the elites who control 'the system' to work in their favour. The main question that arises with this analysis of the social structure and control of social change mechanism is that- can the poor only be passive recipients of social change effected and controlled by the rich or can they take affirmative action to be drivers of progress?
* The main reason for the participation in social welfare by the elites is to shield themselves from the perils of social change and to remain in control to ensure that the maintenance of the system that bred their success. The protection they seek is from the hatred of the public who are conscious of their actions. The book assumes a critical analysis of the involvement of the elite in ensuring social progress by noting that it is questionable to take an active role in changing the environment that facilitated their prosperity.
* About the participation of the privileged in social welfare programs, the publication terms it as a self-serving endeavour to maintain the system to work for them. The problems they set out to solve are the creation of their actions, and the corporate social responsibility rallies where they ‘give back’ to the society is to shift cover their actions. The existing social structure has prevailed because the drivers of social change focus on improving the status quo of people in a defective system rather than rooting the faults that lead to the defection. This is due to the focus on ensuring profitability as the primary driver of social change. The elites operate under a state of mind that improving social wellbeing can function in a free market module instated of an overhaul of the structural indifferences that have prevailed in the society. With this explanation of the elite approach on social change, one ...