Rethinking Economic Structure: Dreams, Nightmares, and Threats

Introduction

Any call for rethinking, reimagining, or restructuring must begin with an explanation of what is wrong today and a vision of a different world. The current situation is deeply worrying though there is much about the past that was good that we should try to retain or revive. I believe in (original sense) liberal democracy with its personal freedoms, its free markets, and the innovations that came with both. The past three centuries have brought immeasurable increases in human wellbeing, in the ability of people to lead their lives in ways that matter to them, unconstrained by misery, deprivation, and disease. We are enormously wealthier than were our ancestors, and these gifts have come, not just to a few in rich countries but, to a greater or lesser extent, to billions of people around the world. This took a long time, and there were many setbacks, some of them in living memory, and some of which cost millions of lives. History gives no warrant for uninterrupted improvement. Even so, the last thirty years, with its expanding trade and globalization, has seen the largest reduction in global poverty and global disease in world history. The world has become much less unequal; the benefits of wealth and health have been extended from a few to many. I start with this because I do not want the rest of this paper to be misunderstood. I want all of the good things to continue, but I believe that they are under serious threat, and that there is danger of losing them if we continue on the path of the last quarter century. With luck, good judgment, and better policies, it should be possible to turn today’s setbacks into temporary interruptions and not into a major derailment that could set us back for decades, or even centuries. The world is old, and there were many centuries of early death and deprivation before there was any sign of improvement; it is possible that the last three centuries were the exception, not the rule.

To read the article as it was published on the Princeton University webpage, click here.

To read the full article as a PDF, click here.