Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 330
EAN num: 9780609610831
ISBN number: 060961083X
Label: Three Rivers Press
Manufacturer: Three Rivers Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 386
Printing Date: August 14, 2001
Publishing house: Three Rivers Press
Release Date: August 14, 2001
Sale Popularity Level: 2443470
Studio: Three Rivers Press
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A Future Perfect is the very first comprehensive examination of the most important revolution of our time--globalization--and how it will continue to change our lives. The authors, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, correspondents for The Economist, won the Financial Times/Booz Allen Hamilton Global Business Book Award on Strategy and Leadership for their previous collaboration, The Witch Doctors. In A Future Perfect, Micklethwait and Wooldridge expand their field of vision in order to analyze, demystify, and expose the global forces reshaping our world, and they detail both the challenge and the hidden promise those forces hold for individuals, businesses, and governments.
Do businesses benefit from going global? Are we creating winner-take-all societies? Will globalization seal the triumph of junk culture? What will happen to individual careers? Gathering evidence from the shantytowns of São Paolo to the boardroom of General Electric, from the troubled Russia-Estonia border to the booming San Fernando Valley sex industry, Micklethwait and Wooldridge mount a powerful, witty, levelheaded defense of globalization.
Along the way, the authors introduce us to the cosmocrats--the members of the elite business, information, and diplomatic class who are creating the new world order. They also identify the three engines of globalization and describe how people are managing and governing in an increasingly global era. As they did in The Witch Doctors, the authors also brilliantly puncture myths and conventional wisdom, separating false hopes from emerging realities.
Incisive, expansive, and optimistic, A Future Perfect is an illuminating tour of the global economy and a fascinating assessment of its potential impact.
From the Hardcover edition.
Amazon.com Review:
Globalization is the single most important force in the world today, write journalists John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, both of The Economist (and coauthors of The Witch Doctors):
The integration of the world economy is not only reshaping business but also reordering the lives of individuals, creating new social classes, different jobs, unimaginable wealth, and, occasionally, wretched poverty. From Washington to Beijing, politicians are increasingly defined in terms of their attitudes toward globalization. The key political arguments of the subsequent few years--between Islam and the West, Euroskeptics and Europhiles, the new left and the old--will all be variations arising from one underlying conflict: the one between globalizers who want to see the world reshaped in their own image and traditionalists who want to preserve fragments of traditional culture and local independence.
Micklethwait and Wooldridge are advocates of the former, not the latter. In A Future Perfect--a rich synthesis of anecdote, analysis, and argument--they make a strong case both for globalization's economic benefits and its classically liberal underpinnings. They acknowledge frustration with public debates over globalization that 'always seem to involve a shuttered textile factory in South Carolina, never a young African child sitting at a computer; always a burning Amazonian forest, never a young Brazilian investment banker; always The Lion King or the Spice Girls, never the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.' A Future Perfect relentlessly reports the upside of globalization--the book is full of stories--and makes the vital point that more than economics is at stake. At bottom, write Micklethwait and Wooldridge, the issue is freedom. They bemoan 'restrictions on where people can go, what they can buy, where they can invest, and what they can read, hear, or see. Globalization by its nature brings down these barriers, and it helps to hand the power to choose to the individual.' Like a good article in The Economist, A Future Perfect is well written and concise. It also renders complicated subjects understandable, and has the welcome effect of making readers feel smarter for having cracked its spine. Much has been written about globalization; this book may be the best of the bunch thus far. --John J. Miller
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Rated by buyers -
Okay, if you want a book with lots of anecdotes and quotations that try to prove that globalization is this uncontrollable process that must be accepted on its terms by individuals and governments, read Tom Friedman's "Lexus and Olive Tree" . If you want a more nuanced view, and a more critical examination of different aspects of globalization, read this book by Micklethwait and Aldridge.
"Future Perfect" also has lots of anecdotes , but somehow it feels like these anecdotes fit into an intelligent discussion, rather than being part of some breathless voyage of discovery like in Friedman's book.
Another difference is in coining of new terms. Friedman has a tedious list of terms like DOSKapital, glocalism etc . Micklethwait and ALdridge also coin terms. But more often they borrow refreshing terms from other authors and thinkers - and the result is much better. This also means that these authors are able to draw on the history of ideas , especially since the Enlightenment. And they do so by making these ideas extremely germane to the current discussion.
For instance, one of the great examples in the book is that of John Maynard Keynes who went from being an unmitigated free-trader to a proponent of protectionism and back to free trade again. This short but brilliant biographical sketch helps illustrate how fickle the world of ideas can sometimes be, and how the pendulum can swing in the other direction. This is to remind the "inevitability" school of thought that politics and local issues matter a LOT. Technological determinism is but a small part of the story. Globalization is not irreversible. Globalization appeared irreversible earlier too, and it was reversed quite easily by protectionst barriers and World Wars.
Also Micklethwait and Aldridge are too wise to indulge in the kind of exaggerated dramatization Tom Friedman indulges in. For instance, based on Intel's reluctance to enter France because of its restrictions on encryption technology, Friedman rushes to say - If France were a stock , I'd sell it. I am sure that if Micklethwait had dealt with the same question, he would have reached the more correct conclusion - yes, Intel's aversion to France is a problem for France, but not as big a problem as the technological determinists would have it.
This book examines almost every aspect of globalization critically. Is electronics responsible for the volatility of short-term capital? Yes and no. Is geography irrelevant in the global world? Yes and no. Is American culture really riding roughshod over local concerns? Yes and no. Is it really a winner-take-all world? Yes and no. And so on.....
Ultimately , for good understanding , you have to quantify, no matter how imprecisely. How interconnected are we really through trade? If Asia vanishes overnight, what effect will it have on the US economy? Once you start asking these questions, you reach a nuanced and mature understanding. Yes, trade as a share of GDP is rising. Yes, more globalization should mean more worldwide specialization and exchange, that is , more trade. Still there are important limits to this process, and domestic economies will remain extremely large. This book engages in this type of illuminating analysis , and does not rely on mere storytelling.
The book also spends lot of time addressing the critics and the sceptics of the globalization process. This is in contrast to Tom Friedman's book where his only (facetious)answer is something like - "Okay, the electronic herd is coming, if you don't heed its demands, you'll pay a heavy price".In this book, inequality, rich nations versus poor, shortterm capital flow versus capital controls, cultural hegemony versus cultural plurlaism - these are issues that are discussed in wonderfully more sophisticated fashion. The sceptics are met head on. Intelligent scepticism is countered. Stupid scepticism is dismissed. The authors offer their own answers and solutions, but they are wise enough to discuss all the caveats.
Also I haven't been able to spot any glaring mistakes in analysis in this book. As opposed to Tom Friedman's book, where he sometimes hopelessly mixes up chains of reasoning. For instance, Tom Friedman's book makes a weird connection between the winner-take-all phenomenon , and the fact that real incomes at the bottom are falling. Surely, technological change , and the resulting fall in demand for unskilled labor, is the strongest causal factor behind the falling wages. The winner-takes-all phenomenon can at best be a secondary factor. Micklethwait's book doesn't suffer from these kinds of bloopers.
Ultimately a good book, a complete book as far as coverage of topics go, and also entertaining reading.This may be the best book in its genre.... After reading this book , I am now terribly eager to read their earlier book about "Witch Doctors" .
Rated by buyers -
The main point of this book - with which I fully agree - is that globalization is hardly a new phenomenon. Most, if not even more, aspects of the current globalization also existed a century ago. Indeed, you might be forgiven for thinking that the free movement of people - emigration - in the world was arguably more global then than it is now. So the process is not new but it feels new, Why?. For starters it's only been slightly over ten years since the fall of Communism and the unfettered resurgence of the free market as the unquestionably dominant economic ideology. Nontheless, the process also feels new because most of us are still reluctant to concede authority to extranational bodies and institutions while national politics still operates in self contained systems. The main point is this, and it is my principal compalint about globalization, international or global power is still mostly limited to the financial markets and multinational corporations and less to supranational bodies like the EU. meanwhile, as we are ever in search of the best product and brand there is the job insecurity that results Fiom greater foreign competition and the cultural hegemony of the United States.
Rated by buyers 
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Exhaustively researched and thoroughly considered, A Future Perfect tries to communicate the "other view" of globalization, that of the economists and businesspeople who see its benefits to society. By presenting both sides of the story, then rebutting the anti-globalization viewpoint, Micklethwait and Woolridge nearly achieve their goal of proving globalization is a net positive to the world. Their understandable reluctance to prove many of the conclusions reached due to space and complexity considerations is the only frustrating aspect of this book -- the reader is ultimately left in the same position she started in: supportive of or repulsed by globalization.
That being said, the book is an incredibly rich discusion of the bewildering complexity of globalization. For someone not involved in the intimate details of the subject, the glimpses into the IMF, WTO, UN, national governments, and various other NGOs are fascinating, breathing life into a world only hinted at in news reports and magazine articles.
For anyone who really cares about the political and economic development path of the subsequent 20 years (especially in light of the recent WTC bombings), and has not kept up with the leading edge of debate on the subject, this book is indispensable.
Rated by buyers -
A splendid piece of art explaining the different phases of Globalization. The authors continue to preach the need for an open economy and ongoing entrepreneurial mindset open to innovation with boldness to dare tread the unbounding realms of the business sphere.Our world is only limited in our minds and the benefits of wealth is unbounding,and yields itself willingly to those that are hungry enough to seek better ways of tranforming the traditional business norms.
We are barely scratching surface and the cycle of change has only begun.The benefits of Globalisation are phenomenal.
Rated by buyers -
Reading this book is the closest experience to reading a 370-page Economist issue. It is more like a collection of essays than the ordinary book, yet the case presented is strong--take nothing for granted. It will be an interesting re-read in a few years.
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