Common Wealth
Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet Jeffrey D. Sachs,
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
ISBN: 1594201277
DDC: 338
Edition: Hardcover; 2008-01-29
Summary:
From one of the world's greatest economic minds, author of The New
York Times bestseller The End of Poverty, a clear and vivid map of
the road to sustainable and equitable global prosperity and an augury
of the global economic collapse that lies ahead if we don't follow it
The global economic system now faces a sustainability crisis, Jeffrey
Sachs argues, one that will overturn many of our basic assumptions
about economic life. The changes will be deeper than a rebalancing of
economics and politics among different parts of the world; the very
idea of competing nation-states scrambling for power, resources, and
markets will in some crucial respects become passĀ. The only question
is how bad it will have to get before we face the unavoidable. We
will have to learn on a global scale some of the hard lessons that
successful societies have gradually and grudgingly learned within
national borders: that there must be common ground between rich and
poor, among competing ethnic groups, and between society and nature.
The central theme of Jeffrey Sachs's new book is that we need a new
economic paradigm-global, inclusive, cooperative, environmentally
aware, science-based-because we are running up against the realities
of a crowded planet. The alternative is a worldwide economic collapse
of unprecedented severity. Prosperity will have to be sustained
through more cooperative processes, relying as much on public policy
as on market forces to spread technology, address the needs of the
poor, and to husband threatened resources of water, air, energy,
land, and biodiversity. The "soft issues" of the environment, public
health, and population will become the hard issues of geopolitics.
New forms of global politics will in important ways replace
capital-city-dominated national diplomacy and intrigue. National
governments, even the U.S., will become much weaker actors as
scientific networks and socially responsible investors and
foundations become the more powerful actors. If we do the right
things, there is room for all on the planet. We can achieve the four
key goals of a global society: prosperity for all, the end of extreme
poverty, stabilization of the global population, and environmental
sustainability. These are not utopian goals or pipedreams, yet they
are far from automatic. Indeed, we are not on a successful trajectory
now to achieve these goals. Common Wealth points the way to the
course correction we must embrace for the sake of our common future.
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