Capitalism in crisis: U.S. billionaires worry about the survival of the system that made them rich
One of the most popular classes at Harvard Business School, home to the next generation of Fortune 500 executives, was a class on “reimagining capitalism.” Seven years ago, the elective started with 28 students. Now there were nearly 300 taking it. During that period the students had grown increasingly cynical about corporations and the government, said Rebecca Henderson, the Harvard economist who teaches the course.
“What the trust surveys say is what I see,” she said. “They are really worried about the direction in which the U.S. and the world is heading.”
A few dozen of those students spent their winter break reading “Winners Take All,” a book by Anand Giridharadas, a journalist and former McKinsey consultant, that had hit the bestseller list and was provoking heated arguments in places like Silicon Valley, Davos and Harvard Business School. Giridharadas’s book was a withering attack on America’s billionaire class and the notion that America’s iconic capitalists could use their wealth and creativity to solve big social and economic problems that have eluded a plodding and divided government.
This spring, Giridharadas took his argument to Klarman Hall [at Harvard Business School]. He slammed Mark Zuckerberg, taking aim at the Facebook founder’s $100 million effort to fix Newark’s faltering schools and his $3 billion push to end disease in a generation. “I’m glad he’s trying to get rid of all the diseases, [but] I wish Facebook wasn’t a plague,” Giridharadas said.
He trashed Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s independent presidential run as an effort to protect the interests of the uber-wealthy. And he lambasted the notion, frequently championed by the likes of Bill Gates and Barack Obama, that Silicon Valley’s innovations would disrupt old hierarchies and spread capitalism’s rewards. “Really?” Giridharadas asked. “Now five companies control America, instead of 100! And a lot of those companies are whiter and more male than the ones they disrupted.”
For many of the students, schooled in the notion that business could make a profit while making the world a better place, Giridharadas’s ideas were both energizing and disorienting. [Continue reading…]