Christopher Hayes: Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy (2012)
Filed under book | Tags: · business, corporatism, corruption, economy, egali, financial crisis, meritocracy, oligarchy, politics, power, united states
A powerful and original argument that traces the roots of our present crisis of authority to an unlikely source: the meritocracy.
Over the past decade, Americans watched in bafflement and rage as one institution after another – from Wall Street to Congress, the Catholic Church to corporate America, even Major League Baseball – imploded under the weight of corruption and incompetence. In the wake of the Fail Decade, Americans have historically low levels of trust in their institutions; the social contract between ordinary citizens and elites lies in tatters.
How did we get here? With Twilight of the Elites, Christopher Hayes offers a radically novel answer. Since the 1960s, as the meritocracy elevated a more diverse group of men and women into power, they learned to embrace the accelerating inequality that had placed them near the very top. Their ascension heightened social distance and spawned a new American elite–one more prone to failure and corruption than any that came before it.
Mixing deft political analysis, timely social commentary, and deep historical understanding, Twilight of the Elites describes how the society we have come to inhabit – utterly forgiving at the top and relentlessly punitive at the bottom – produces leaders who are out of touch with the people they have been trusted to govern. Hayes argues that the public’s failure to trust the federal government, corporate America, and the media has led to a crisis of authority that threatens to engulf not just our politics but our day-to-day lives.
Upending well-worn ideological and partisan categories, Hayes entirely reorients our perspective on our times. Twilight of the Elites is the defining work of social criticism for the post-bailout age.
Publisher Crown Publishers, a division of Random House, New York, June 2012
ISBN 0307720470, 9780307720474
320 pages
review (Glenn Greenwald, Salon)
review (Aaron Swartz)
review (David Brooks, The New York Times)
review (Hua Hsu, Slate)
wikipedia
publisher
google books
PDF (EPUB)
Comment (0)John Seely Brown, Paul Duguid: The Social Life of Information (2000)
Filed under book | Tags: · botnet, business, economy, information, knowledge, management, technology
“Drawing from recent research and practical examples across a range of organizations, The Social Life of Information dispels many of the futurists’ sweeping predictions that information technology will obliterate the need for everything from travel to supermarkets to business organizations to social life itself. The authors examine the potential and limitations of technology with regard to intelligent software agents, the automated home office, business reorganization for innovation, knowledge management and work practices, the paperless society, and the digital university. Arguing eloquently for the important role human sociability plays in the world of bits, Brown and Duguid present an optimistic look beyond the simplicities of information and individuals. They show how a better understanding of the contribution that communities, organizations, and institutions make to learning, knowledge, and judgment can lead to the richest possible use of technology in our work and everyday lives.”
Publisher Harvard Business Press, 2000
ISBN 0875847625, 9780875847627
256 pages
Lawrence H. White: The Clash of Economic Ideas: The Great Policy Debates and Experiments of the Last Hundred Years (2012)
Filed under book | Tags: · business, economics, economy, history, liberalism, market, money, production
The Clash of Economic Ideas interweaves the economic history of the last hundred years with the history of economic doctrines to understand how contrasting economic ideas have originated and developed over time to take their present forms. It traces the connections running from historical events to debates among economists, and from the ideas of academic writers to major experiments in economic policy. The treatment offers fresh perspectives on laissez faire, socialism and fascism; the Roaring Twenties, business cycle theories and the Great Depression; Institutionalism and the New Deal; the Keynesian Revolution; and war, nationalization and central planning. After 1945, the work explores the postwar revival of invisible-hand ideas; economic development and growth, with special attention to contrasting policies and thought in Germany and India; the gold standard, the interwar gold-exchange standard, the postwar Bretton Woods system and the Great Inflation; public goods and public choice; free trade versus protectionism; and finally fiscal policy and public debt.
Publisher Cambridge University Press, 2012
ISBN 1107012422, 9781107012424
440 pages
discussion with the author (with Russ Roberts, EconTalk)
review (Alberto Mingardi, The Washington Times)