- Hardcover: 241 pages
- Publisher: Jonathan Cape, London; First Edition edition (9 Mar 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0224059378
- ISBN-13: 978-0224059374
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16 x 2.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 768,190 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
On The Edge
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Post Cold War-- with the triumph of western-style democracy and an explosion of powerful new technologies--it seems increasingly probable that we are living through the greatest of all revolutions, inexorably drawing in every corner of our once huge globe. So what are the implications? Global capitalism, as the title of On the Edge suggests, is "precarious and potentially dangerous", and when this sentiment is evinced by Will Hutton, author of the agenda-setting The State We're In, and Anthony Giddens, director of the London School of Economics and famously Tony Blair's most favoured "guru of the third way", it is to be taken seriously.
They bring together 10 original contributions by some of the leading thinkers of our day that shed light on various aspects of global capitalism and globalisation. Global finance, naturally, figures prominently: George Soros discusses the need for a new global financial architecture, Manuel Castells outlines his concept of the "Automaton", while Paul Volcker examines ways of mitigating the less desirable nature of the market. All of this is done in a style that will be accessible to the reasonably knowledgeable layman, though of course a doctorate in economics always helps when the figures and jargon do, unavoidably, creep in. Further contributions examine areas such as the effect of globalisation on regional and national cultures and on our own individual identities, just exactly what role democratically elected governments can find for themselves as more and more real power ebbs away from them, and the relationship between the haves and the have-nots, both countries and people, which tends to be increasingly iniquitous. All the contributors seem to agree in one respect--within global capitalism there is enormous capacity for good, for the betterment of all of humanity, but conversely, there is an inherent potential for outcomes that most would consider altogether disagreeable. For anyone interested in helping to guide us closer to the former--and we are all stakeholders now--this will be a valuable, thought-provoking resource. --Alisdair Bowles
Product Description
This collection of essays charts the contours of contemporary capitalism, analyses the role of the business firm in the new context of innovation and competitiveness, discuses the impact of globalisation, and considers new capitalism.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Although some of the essays are uneven - witness the confusing psycho-academic babble in one - in general this is a varied exploration from a variety of view points of the economic world and how it impacts the world the rest of us live in.
Witness such startling observations as 2% of the world population being in migration at any given time and the economic meaning of this given that doctors in third-world countries can get better paid work nannying in first world countries.
On a topical note, their is also a description of the creation of the 'Popstars' and 'Pop Idol' automata by the media group Bertlesmann. Will Young, one of the progeny spawned by this media conglomerate, is so talentless that the company have had to take Jim Morrison's Light My Fire out of retirement and I've been forced to listen to this travesty daily on the work radio. Nothing reveals the evil of corporate media like the raping of a dead man's memory by an obvious innocent like Mr. Young for corporate profit.
That and I have to listen to it...
15 of 29 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In this dreadful little potboiler, Anthony Giddens, LSE Director and Blair's favourite guru, ex-Observer editor Will Hutton and ten contributors, including gambler George Soros, tell us to live with global capitalism. To justify this absurd diktat, they put forward some remarkably untenable ideas.
Hutton claims that the USA has more class mobility than Europe. Wrong - Peter Gottschalk and Sheldon Danzinger showed that US workers are less socially mobile than low-paid workers in European countries. Hutton predicts, "the German economy will start to pick up quite smartly." Wrong - unemployment in Germany has now risen to more than four million.
Giddens writes that capitalism is 'fairer than most socialists tended to assume'. Wrong - 86% of Wall Street's gains go to the richest 10% in the US, and US Chief Executive Officers get on average 475 times what their blue-collar workers get. Poverty, he grandly proclaims, is no longer a condition, just the odd brief episode. Wrong - in Britain, three million old people live in poverty, and worldwide, ten million more people now live in poverty than in 1990. He writes, "capitalism has buried the working class." Wrong - worldwide, there are more workers than ever before.
Giddens tells the German government to reform its labour market and welfare system to make it more like the market, because "existing structures of the welfare state are no longer able to deliver". Wrong - it is the market that doesn't work: the average investing household in the USA, forced into stock market gambling to fund their health care, pensions and children's education, has lost $45,000 since the 2000 crash.
They tell us that after the coal-based industrial revolution, then the oil-fired economy, we are now in the third revolution, the third way of the 'knowledge-based', services economy. Wrong - Britain's decline in manufacturing is due to the dominance of finance capital, not to 'a worldwide trend towards a services economy'. Between 1973 and 1992 manufacturing output rose by 25% in Germany, 27% in France, 85% in Italy and 119% in Japan, while in Britain it rose by just 1%.
1 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
My girlfriend says that not only does this book rule but that Polly Toynbee kicks ass! Read this book and change your life. love Will and Kate.
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