Free and Equal – What Would a Fair Society Look Like?
By: Daniel Chandler – LSE
Taking Rawls’s humane and egalitarian liberalism as his starting point, Chandler builds a careful and ultimately irresistible case for a progressive agenda that would fundamentally reshape our societies for the better. He shows how we can protect free speech and transcend the culture wars; get money out of politics; and create an economy where everyone has the chance to fulfil their potential, where prosperity is widely shared, and which operates within the limits of our finite planet.
This is a book brimming with hope and possibility – a galvanising alternative to the cynicism that pervades our politics. Free and Equal has the potential not only to transform contemporary debate, but to offer a touchstone for a modern, egalitarian liberalism for many years to come, cementing Rawls’s place in political discourse, and firmly establishing Chandler as a vital new voice for our time.
Chandler has an excellent background on the philosophical issues that are central to practical policy making, and given the lucidity and reach of what he writes, this book will meet a very important need
Amartya Sen, Harvard University
Power and Progress – Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity
By: Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson – MIT
The wealth generated by technological improvements in agriculture during the European Middle Ages was captured by the nobility and used to build grand cathedrals while peasants remained on the edge of starvation. The first hundred years of industrialization in England delivered stagnant incomes for working people. And throughout the world today, digital technologies and artificial intelligence undermine jobs and democracy through excessive automation, massive data collection, and intrusive surveillance.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Power and Progress demonstrates that the path of technology was once—and may again be—brought under control. The tremendous computing advances of the last half century can become empowering and democratizing tools, but not if all major decisions remain in the hands of a few hubristic tech leaders.
With their breakthrough economic theory and manifesto for a better society, Acemoglu and Johnson provide the vision needed to reshape how we innovate and who really gains from technological advances.
Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World
By: Brett Christophers – Uppsala University
Banks have taken a backseat since the global financial crisis over a decade ago. Today, our new financial masters are asset managers, like Blackstone and BlackRock. And they don’t just own financial assets.
The roads we drive on; the pipes that supply our drinking water; the farmland that provides our food; energy systems for electricity and heat; hospitals, schools, and even the homes in which many of us live-all now swell asset managers’ bulging investment portfolios.
As the owners of more and more of the basic building blocks of everyday life, asset managers shape the lives of each and every one of us in profound and disturbing ways. In this eye-opening follow-up to Rentier Capitalism, Brett Christophers peels back the veil on “asset manager society.”
Asset managers, he shows, are unlike traditional owners of housing and other essential infrastructure. Buying and selling these life-supporting assets at a dizzying pace, the crux of their business model is not long-term investment and careful custodianship but making quick profits for themselves and the investors that back them.
The New China Playbook: Beyond Socialism and Capitalism
By: Keyu Jin – LSE
China’s economy has been booming for decades now. A formidable and emerging power on the world stage, the China that most Americans picture is only a rough sketch, based on American news coverage, policy, and ways of understanding.
Enter Keyu Jin: a world-renowned economist who was born in China, educated in the U.S., and is now a tenured professor at the London School of Economics. A person fluent in both Eastern and Western cultures, and a voice of the new generation of Chinese who represent a radical break from the past, Jin is uniquely poised to explain how China became the most successful economic story of our time, as it has shifted from primarily state-owned enterprise to an economy that is thriving in entrepreneurship, and participation in the global economy.
China’s economic realm is colorful and lively, filled with paradoxes and conundrums, and Jin believes that by understanding the Chinese model, the people, the culture and history in its true perspective, one can reconcile what may appear to be contradictions to the Western eye. What follows is an illuminating account of a burgeoning world power, its past, and its potential future.
The most important book on China in many years, written with stunning eloquence and clarity. Jin does not cover the warts, but insists on a holistic view. Anyone who want to understand China, and how to engage with it economically and politically, will greatly benefit from this deeply original book.
Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard University
