The Prosperity of Vice: A Worried View of Economics (Mit Press) - Hardcover

Cohen, Daniel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 026201730X ISBN 13: 9780262017305

Publisher: MIT Press, 2012

Synopsis

How violence, rather than peace, has historically accompanied prosperity; and why emerging nations seem poised to repeat the tragic history of the industrialized world.

What happened yesterday in the West is today being repeated on a global scale. Industrial society is replacing rural society: millions of peasants in China, India, and elsewhere are leaving the countryside and going to the city. New powers are emerging and rivalries are exacerbated as competition increases for control of raw materials. Contrary to what believers in the “clash of civilizations” maintain, the great risk of the twenty-first century is not a confrontation between cultures but a repetition of history. In The Prosperity of Vice, the influential French economist Daniel Cohen shows that violence, rather than peace, has been the historical accompaniment to prosperity. Peace in Europe came only after the barbaric wars of the twentieth century, not as the outcome of economic growth. What will happen this time for today's eagerly Westernizing emerging nations?

Cohen guides us through history, describing the European discovery of the “philosopher's stone”: the possibility of perpetual growth. But the consequences of addiction to growth are dire in an era of globalization. If a billion Chinese consume a billion cars, the future of the planet is threatened. But, Cohen points out, there is another kind of globalization: the immaterial globalization enabled by the Internet. It is still possible, he argues, that the cyber-world will create a new awareness of global solidarity. It even may help us accomplish a formidable cognitive task, as immense as that realized during the Industrial Revolution―one that would allow us learn to live within the limits of a solitary planet.

About this title

About the Author:

Daniel Cohen is Professor of Economics at the École Normale Supérieure and the Université de Paris-I. A member of the Council of Economic Analysis of the French Prime Minister, he is the author of The Wealth of the World and the Poverty of Nations, Our Modern Times: The Nature of Capitalism in the Information Age, Globalization and Its Enemies, and Three Lectures on Post-Industrial Society, all published by the MIT Press.

Review:

Daniel Cohen has done it again. Be ready for an amazing intellectual and historical journey, from the Neolithic period to the subprime crisis. You will learn. You will be enormously challenged. You will agree with some arguments, disagree with others. But, most of all, you will enjoy the ride.

―Olivier Blanchard, Economic Counsellor and Research Department Director, International Monetary Fund, and Class of 1941 Professor, MIT

About this edition

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 026201730X
• ISBN 13: 9780262017305
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 216