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ECAL as the answer to Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas

An interesting attempt to explain some philanthropy and certain aspects of Trumpism, but I have to reframe it in terms of ECAL, which is derived from my my old idea that most people don't want to be too free or to do too much hard work for the sake of creativity. Also elements of the problems of scale, whereas the book incorrectly assumes scaleable solutions are actually solutions rather than new problems and the sources of more failure. In my frameworks, the basic idea of this book is that "successful" people think the solution to the world's problem is sharing the opportunity to be successful with more people, and the reason their approach failed so spectacularly in 2016 with the rise of Trumpism and in such cases as Brexit is simply that most people do not want that form of success.

Upon reflection, I would describe it as the ECAL problem. Yes, it's a constructed mnemonic device, easy to remember as "lace" backwards, but I think it captures the key problems. It stands for Effort, Creativity, Ambition, and Luck, and the successful philanthropists don't understand ECAL as the source of their "success" and especially don't understand why other people wouldn't want that. In the worst cases, they will even admit that they regard the less successful people as "losers" even if they have "good excuses" for wallowing around at the bottom.

A few clarifications seem necessary. Effort is intended broadly, but mostly as sustained effort to stay in the competition. Though Creativity may require effort, some people (maybe even including yours truly) can spawn new ideas easily and the new ideas are crucial to finding new ways to succeed, but there needs to be effort to work out the bugs. (This is actually a link to the idea of programming as meta-thinking.) The Ambition should probably go first, in accord with my old joke about "Knowing what you want and wanting it badly are much important than knowing how to get it." It could also be reworded as avarice, greed, or lust, but I went with Ambition because the connotations are more neutral. Finally, Luck is the one the successful people usually don't like to acknowledge because it negates everything else, including intelligence and good timing. There are always other people who failed even with ECA because the L went to someone else.

Anyway, it was a good book and I can recommend it. Quite thought provoking, but rather difficult to obtain around here.

Let me repeat that I currently regard this blog as a collection of random notes that no one reads. If anyone actually showed any interest (most obviously manifested as questions in the comments), I could flesh them out.

Part 2:

Important aspect I should have mentioned involves the scale of [social] critics to thought leaders. [At least I don't remember "social" being used in that context in the book.] Similarities, but the difference in attitude results in acceptance of the thought leaders (at places like TED), but with the risk of their ideas (about solutions to the problems) being diluted, subverted, or even polluted, while the critics get "not so much". In the form of a sad little rhyme, the social critics are abhorred (or ignored or both or worse) while the thought leaders are adored.

Then as I was finishing the book I realized there was a different model that should have been mentioned in the book. It's the indulgences, stupid! What the rich philanthropists are doing is basically identical with the purchase of indulgences from the Catholic Church. The giant and cancerous corporations have committed huge crimes, even sins, but the main beneficiaries are the rich (if transient) owners of the cancers who are seeking to buy redemption with minor donations to "good" causes.

Extreme example in the news recently (as of 2019-3-26) involves the incredibly rich family that owns, among other companies, Krispy Kreme Donuts. It is being reported that some of their seed capital turns out to be slightly tainted. Nazi money. Whoops, more than a slight taint, eh? So their solution is a charitable donation of $11 million. Sounds pretty great, huh? Not exactly when the family's wealth is in the billions of dollars.

In terms of solutions, the book talks about B (as in beneficial) corporations as a solution, but I think that is a kind of bandage on the cancer. The underlying problem remains that the corporate cancers are focused on the single dimension of profit, and reality must not and cannot be reduced to a single dimension. (Interesting parallel arguments in The Gene, which I'm also reading just now. Evolution is intrinsically multidimensional.) I'm not clear if charity share brokerages would offer a better solution approach, but I'm definitely not convinced that B corporations are helping. Just another form of indulgence, they seem to me.

Part 3 is just noting some names, since I have to return the book now.

Mostly Lynn Nesbitt the agent who might refer me to a beginning agent suiting my own status? Key philanthropists and thought leaders might be Sean Hinton, Amy Cuddy, Sonal Sha, Andrew Kassoy, and Laurie Tisch.

Part 4 to follow is about the obvious comparisons with what indulgences led to.