I’m over half way through reading Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams. I think the book is really important if it’s broadly true.
It’s by a former Facebook executive (who worked on international policy and dealt with foreign governments) who was a diplomat before that and worked at the UN. She’s from New Zealand. She talks about what the world’s elites are like. She presents them as careless people and social climbers. She presents social hierarchies as being a huge deal to a lot of the worlds’ rich and powerful people (including heads of state). She presents a lot of elites as focused on image and appearances and as being petty and superficial. She talks about how private deals are made between businesses and politicians. She talks about corruption. She also talks about sexual harassment and disregard for the physical safety and health of employees at Facebook.
I find the book plausible, not full of internal contradictions, but it fits some of my preexisting beliefs or biases.
Facebook sued and says the book is false and defamatory.
If anyone does research and has useful information about whether the claims in this book are actually true or not, I’d be very interested.