The Future Of Capitalism by Paul Collier
Dec. 24th, 2022 09:36 pmThe Blurb On The Back:
Deep new rifts are tearing apart the fabric of Britain and other Western societies: thriving cities versus the provinces, the highly skilled elite versus the less-educated, wealthy versus developing countries. So far these rifts have been answered only by the stale politics of left vs right. We have heard many critiques of capitalism but no one has laid out a realistic way to fix it, until now.
In this passionate and polemical book, Paul Collier outlines original and ethical ways of healing these rifts with the cool head of pragmatism, rather than the fervour of ideological revivalism. He reveals how he has personally lived across these three divides, moving from working class Sheffield to hyper-competitive Oxford, and working between Britain and Africa. Drawing on his own solutions as well as ideas from some of the world’s greatest social scientists, he shows us how to save capitalism from itself.
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
Paul Collier is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Oxford University. This centrist polemic is smug, politically naive and offers weirdly paternalistic “solutions” that fail to tackle the structural issues responsible for the rifts in society that he professes to want to resolve. As a lawyer, I also found his constant digs at lawyers to be dull and uninformed and I was really uncomfortable with the revelations about his family.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
Deep new rifts are tearing apart the fabric of Britain and other Western societies: thriving cities versus the provinces, the highly skilled elite versus the less-educated, wealthy versus developing countries. So far these rifts have been answered only by the stale politics of left vs right. We have heard many critiques of capitalism but no one has laid out a realistic way to fix it, until now.
In this passionate and polemical book, Paul Collier outlines original and ethical ways of healing these rifts with the cool head of pragmatism, rather than the fervour of ideological revivalism. He reveals how he has personally lived across these three divides, moving from working class Sheffield to hyper-competitive Oxford, and working between Britain and Africa. Drawing on his own solutions as well as ideas from some of the world’s greatest social scientists, he shows us how to save capitalism from itself.
The Verdict:
Paul Collier is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Oxford University. This centrist polemic is smug, politically naive and offers weirdly paternalistic “solutions” that fail to tackle the structural issues responsible for the rifts in society that he professes to want to resolve. As a lawyer, I also found his constant digs at lawyers to be dull and uninformed and I was really uncomfortable with the revelations about his family.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.