Elite Capture, by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò

ehm.... it's bad when social benefits get captured by elites, and it would be better if they were distributed to the least-advantaged.

"Elite capture", as a general phrase, is when a small group capture benefits on behalf of a larger group whom they're seen to represent, but without responsibility or consent of the larger group, and generally unaligned with the larger groups interests. Táíwò specifically frames his book to say that what many people think they dislike about identity politics is nothing to do with true identity politics and everything to do with elite capture -- to quote the subtitle, "How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)".

Look: I have absolutely no idea what this book thought it was doing. I agree with the premise, I think elite capture is 1) prevalent 2) incredibly impactful 3) incredibly bad. I liked Táíwò as a person (to the extent you can meaningfully assess that through a book), but the book seemed to me to completely side-step the actual difficult question of elite capture: namely, how could you possibly stop it? Táíwò asserts (correctly!) that it is bad when elites corrupt society and organisations for their own benefits, and that it would be good if instead they truly acted in the benefit of the least-advantaged.

But... like.... the problem is exactly that people are (at least slightly) self-interested, and that once people acquire any amount of power they tend to use it (at least partly) to their own advantage, and since they have power they are able to shape the structures of society to give themselves more power (this is the meaning of having power!). People also like to feel good about themselves, and to not-feel like they're benefitting in life by screwing over other people, so they will generally frame their actions to themselves as In The Benefit Of Others in some way, regardless of whether that's true or not.

This... is... the entire problem, and I honestly don't think Táíwò says a single thing about how we would get around it? He gives some examples of people acting in a broader interest, but 1) by his own count many of them did not really succeed in achieving their things?, and 2) he doesn't seem to present a model of how/why these specific people acted against their own personal short-term interest? Which feels like the only interesting/relevant/important thing here -- how do you get people to act in the broader good even when it means less money/power/comfort for them and their immediate loved ones?

I truly felt like this book must be written for someone else, I just don't know who that someone-else would be, or what they'd be getting out of it. The topic feels really important! But I don't know what you get out of this book about it except a two-para description description of the problem spread out across the length of a book! Maybe there's more there and I just didn't see it.

p.s. one thing Táíwò mentions, that I appreciate, is that generally the most disadvantaged people are not "in the room" in the first place, such that deferring to the most disadvantaged person in the room as if they speak for the people not-in-the-room doesn't really work. I think this is fairly self-evident, but also I've never seen/heard someone say it explicitly, so it's nice to see it.