By Greg Beatty, on September 6th, 2008
The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth With Innovation. By A. G. Lafley & Ram Charan. Crown Business, 2008. 352 pages. $27.50.
As the subtitle (How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth) of The Game-Changer indicates, this recent volume by A. G. Lafley and Ram Charan is meant more as a business book, even a business how-to manual, than as an economics text. The stature of the two authors may make this a moot point; Charan is a highly influential analyst of corporate America, corporate consultant and author of books such as Boards That Deliver (2005) and Execution (2002), while Lafley is chairman and CEO of Proctor & Gamble (P & G). Between the two of them, these men regularly make decisions that fundamentally affect the economy. However, that’s not why this book was selected. Rather, The Game-Changer will be discussed for what it shows about the nature of the corporation in a changing economy.
The Game-Changer blends two distinct purposes. It tells how Lafley turned Proctor & Gamble around after being appointed CEO in 2000. The Game-Changer also explains how to innovate, and, as the subtitle suggests, how to use innovation to transform a business and make it more profitable. Since Lafley sees innovation as central to the transformation executed, these two purposes are definitely linked. Often, a challenge at P & G is used as a platform to develop general principles of innovation. What’s more, since Lafley is exceptionally open about how decisions were made, how ideas are developed and what mistakes were made, the sections on P & G are a worthy extended case study in themselves.
The Game-Changer has a number of strengths and weaknesses; like its purposes, these are often interwoven. The co-authorship provides an example. On one hand, it provides opportunities to switch perspectives usefully, moving from inside P & G to outside. On the other, switching points of view from chapter to chapter can be jarring, and it isn’t always clear why the switches occur as they do. (In some cases, I was more interested in the other perspective than the one given. This is especially true when Lafley was discussing things like P & G’s values; he was so caught up in emotionally charged language that he drifted away from reality.) The text doesn’t limit itself to P & G but gives examples from numerous companies—a definite plus. On the other hand, they aren’t as fully realized, and so they become mere sketches or hints at times.Central to the multi-faceted value The Game-Changer offers readers are two definitions. The first is the definition of “game-changer” itself, found on page vii. “Game-changer” is defined seven different ways. All are positive, and it’s clear the definition is meant to be sweeping. However, it also reveals the many potential paradoxes in their endeavor. Are these authors discussing the work of “a visionary strategist” who would reshape things unilaterally? Or the “hardheaded humanist” of the seventh definition “who sees innovation as a social process”? The tension between these two is part of what fascinates about this book and about innovation today; who controls the changing game? The economy?
The second essential definition is of innovation: “An innovation is the conversion of a new idea into revenues and profits” (21). The book goes to draw the distinction between invention and innovation and to explain that, without customers and success in the market, an innovation “is, at best, a curiosity.” From a business standpoint, that sounds pragmatic and perhaps even self-evident. However, notice what this does; it focuses solely on the successful innovations. It removes the learning process, and, because no time scale is provided, is likely to pressure firms to focus on the short-term.
Other tensions define the book and P & G’s struggle. On one hand, Lafley can sum up situations simply, saying, “P & G prices were too high” (9). On another hand, he can discuss his organization’s corporate cultures with phrases that are so cliché they are almost dim. What does it mean to say “P & G is purpose-lead and values-driven” (11)? Seriously. Are their organizations out there that are saying, “We’re proudly purpose-free”? And yet, there’s the much needed third hand on which we must recount the intense complexity of reorganizing an entire corporation, one with highly profitable brands, and realigning how business is done. There is a tremendous gap between the overly simple statements and the deeply complicated information sorting P & G, or any innovative company, must engage in. If you read The Game-Changer, you won’t just be studying Proctor & Gamble or innovation. You’ll get a glimpse at how an organization, even an immensely successful organization, must redefine itself as the economy shifts.
Two details of this redefinition deserve special attention, both for their centrality to the process and because the authors deal with them explicitly: unlike many of us, Lafley & Charan recognize the forces at work on them. The first is a push towards commoditization, a transformation that has blindsided too many firms who thought they’d differentiated themselves in the market. The Game-Changer explains how P & G used innovation to differentiate themselves in a market defined by commoditization. Second, and perhaps the most fascinating part of the book, Lafley describes the lengths to which researchers at P & G go to understand their customers. My favorite is “Living It,” a program developed after 2001 as part of P & G’s “consumer closeness program” (38), in which employees actually live with customers. The description of what they learned from living with lower-income customers in Mexico is striking, and it’s hard to imagine learning such a visceral respect for these specific values any other way. It’s clear that in an information economy, successful organizations may have to become economic anthropologists to get the information they need, and that is changing the game indeed.
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By Greg Beatty, on July 27th, 2008
As anyone fond of “truthiness,” humor, or television knows, long time Daily Show member Stephen Colbert has, since October 2005, had his own show: The Colbert Report.
Where Daily Show anchor John Stewart plays it in some ways more conservatively, holding to a tradition of fake news and riffing on the real news that’s been part of comedy for a long time, Colbert’s a bit further out there. He’s constructed an entire seamless persona, one he calls a “well-intentioned, poorly informed, high status idiot.” In other words, he’s only half a twist further along the spiral of self-parody from half a dozen talk show hosts who take themselves seriously (and don’t know they’re parodies of themselves).
On June 23, Colbert hosted Barbara Ehrenreich. You can watch the entire episode online here. (And if you just want the Ehrenreich segment, you could go here.)
Ehrenreich came on to promote her new book This Land is Their Land, an analysis of the extreme economic divide in America. Ehrenreich’s message is familiar to those who have read her work before. For years she has been advocating for greater social and economic equality, investigating circumstances that go underreported (often through living them), and analyzing the social forces at work.
Despite Ehrenreich’s practice skill and focus, it is Colbert’s willingness to play the fool during their exchange that exposes so many of the economic attitudes coursing through the American body politic. Most people express them in a shaded or hesitant form, coding them, or leaving them implied.
Colbert does not. He flatly asks what is wrong with a divided country, with massive inequality, and why the poor can’t work harder. He even suggests that the lottery be embraced as a way of tricking the poor into thinking they have a chance, so they’ll get back to work.
His bald satire is shocking. It made me wince. And yet, and yet, and yet…he’s only saying directly what a lot of other people are insinuating. He’s trotting out free market aphorisms at their most social Darwinist.
And, again, yet…for all that Ehrenreich was very clear about what she thought was wrong with the situation, the solutions she mentioned during this encounter were…dubious. Taxing the rich was the main one articulated, but that was suggested without much more context than Colbert’s satire.
Perhaps solutions are proposed in more detail in This Land is Their Land. Perhaps her sound bite solutions were the result of the sound bit situation. And perhaps the situation is so complex that identifying any working situation is simply very difficult.
By Greg Beatty, on July 26th, 2008
An interview with George Soros appeared in the June 2008 edition of Money magazine. Though brief, the interview was both fascinating and useful, as Soros explained why the current financial crisis is so bad and what it means for, well, everyone.
What’s striking, though, is a phrase Soros introduces midway through the interview. He says that since the eighties, “the global financial system has been dominated by an ideology I call ‘market fundamentalism.’” Soros goes on to explain what he means by this—the idea that markets run perfectly, that government interference will always impair them, and so on. In short, he uses it to refer to a consciously committed laissez-faire capitalism.
It’s a beautiful phrase because it damns the position in two words. Just as no one would doubt the commitment of religious fundamentalists but might doubt their grasp of history, scripture, etc., so no one would doubt the commitment of market fundamentalists. However, one might well doubt how well-informed they are, if their interpretations are based on reality rather than ideology, and so on.
And of course, the term cries out for a counterpart, something like market Satanism or, to be kinder, market atheism: a range of positions held by some on the left that all hinge on the belief that market forces cannot solve social problems and that government solutions are always better (and necessary). Both positions fire at one another or, rather, past one another during debates over things like minimum wage laws. Do they ever find a shared reality? Do they ever look for one?
Thank you, Mr. Soros, for this fine phrase.
By Greg Beatty, on July 20th, 2008
I don’t know about you, but I grew up reading children’s books. I loved them. From Curious George’s adventures with the man in the yellow hat to cheering for Max in Where the Wild Things Are (let the wild rumpus begin!), I lived and died with these characters. When I got older, I graduated to what are now called young adult (YA) books. These were more serious and ambitious, and some of them were pretty brutal (To Kill a Mockingbird, anyone?).
However, none of these prepared me for the harsh economic realities of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by M. T. Anderson. This is supposedly a YA novel—it won the National Book Award in that category in 2006—but to be honest, I wonder how many kids would willingly read this.
Why? Because Octavian is a slave, and this book hammers home what it means to be a thing rather than a person. This isn’t totally an economic matter; it is also a scientific matter, as Octavian is being raised as part of a scientific experiment to see just how smart Africans are (through how they respond to Western education).
Most of the book’s told from Octavian’s perspective, and it is, to be frank, both heartbreaking and hard to read. Octavian’s tutored into an elevated style from a young age and to reason and logic. If he cannot rationally justify a claim, it is given no weight. At one point, for example, Octavian discovers he has poisoned a dog he loved; he poisoned it accidentally from his perspective but as part of a scientific experiment on the part of his masters. He is then reasoned through his tears rather than being consoled.
The men running these experiments on Octavian measure every part of him, down to weighing his feces. Octavian’s life is completely rationalized. If he weren’t a thing—a slave—he would be the perfect economic man. That this scientific endeavor rests upon an economic base is brought home when the Earl of Cheldthorpe, patron of the entire experiment, dies. The new earl doesn’t have the same interest in abstract science, and the entire college is redirected to practical studies. Each science must justify its existence economically just as Octavian must do so rationally. As for Octavian, his study is redirected to serve the interests of those new backers now funding the investigation. This means he is turned from showpiece to house servant, that they try to hire him out (he’s a musician) to nearby parties, and that his education is reworked. It also means that the one possible justification (even in the period) of his treatment disappears. He’s no longer being raised for pure science. He’s being raised in a biased fashion, to fail in order to justify the economic interests of the slaveholding class.
There’s a lot more to The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing—the sub-economy of slaves in which personal energy is secreted away, the use of sexual desire as an economic counter—but Octavian’s position’s at the core of it. If you want to glimpse the dark side of economic forces (and get a sense of how much kids’ books have changed), you might dip in to The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing.
Editor’s note: Think slavery is no longer a part of today’s world? Read Mary Nichols’ report on human trafficking and how ineffective governments’ efforts are to stop it.
By Greg Beatty, on July 20th, 2008
The Red Queen among Organizations: How Competitiveness Evolves. By William P. Barnett. Princeton University Press, 2008. 296 pages. $29.95.
 There are several pillars to free market economics. Among these are private ownership of property, price regulation though market action and competition among firms for profit. Given the centrality of competition, one would expect many works out there on how it functions, but the truth is, there are relatively few. Oh, there are tons on how to become more competitive, either overall or in specific areas, and there are countless justifications of the need for competition. But actual examinations of competition per se?
The Red Queen among Organizations: How Competitiveness Evolves is one such book. In it, author William P. Barnett examines competition among organizations. One of his central tenets is implied in the metaphor that provides his title: as the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland ran faster and faster to stay in the same place, so firms must compete more and more intensely to stay even with their competition. On one hand, that sounds frustrating, but on the other, this continual attempt to accelerate is, quite literally, the price of doing business.
Before I go on, let me be clear on one all too painful subject: Barnett is an academic. While this means he engages in careful research and took the time to let his theories evolve, this means several things for potential readers of Red Queen. First, know that the book is difficult to read. These difficulties range from (unnecessarily) dense prose delivered in smallish font to curious organizational choices in manuscript organization—referring readers in Chapter 3 back to a diagram in Chapter 1 rather than replicating it, for example. Second, Barnett examines two fields in meticulous detail: the commercial banking industry and computer manufacturers. From a learning perspective, I welcome Barnett testing his concepts so thoroughly; as a reader, I got bogged down. Third, the balance is off. At various points Barnett touches on genuine breakthroughs, but he stays so wedded to working out his core ideas that he doesn’t follow them up in the detail they deserve. A prime example of this is Barnett’s discussion of organizational learning. He argues that organizational learning occurs through competition and that individual members of the organization need not be consciously aware of what was learned so long as organizational behavior changes to match market pressures.
That extended caveat out of the way, there are a number of useful points about Barnett’s study. He approaches market competition through an extended ecological metaphor and treats market niches like ecological niches. An advantage here is that it frees you up from overly limited understandings of your competition. Firms don’t just compete against firms in industries formally named as the same; niches shift and blend as the new forces move through the economy.
Second, Barnett’s emphasis on competition as (among other things) a form of learning means that there is a limit to how completely a firm can research a market niche before it enters. Economic action is a kind of study and leads to the purest form of market learning. Though he does not explore it in detail, this suggests the limits to economic intervention by the government. It also suggests that, as in ecological matters, there will always be unexpected side effects to economic intervention. Barnett also sketches in how organizational actions that are justified in terms of learning, such as a firm forming partnerships with others, may actually thwart organizational learning. (If you don’t compete, you don’t have to develop the capacities competition would force you to.) He spends more time on competition works to create economic/ecological fitness.
Third, his discussions of the “logics of competition” of individual markets and his insistence that competition is always multiple and changing rather than binary and fixed provides a much richer and more accurate framework for understanding competition.
Fourth, these combine via Barnett’s ecological thinking: just as a successful organism changes its surrounding environment and so changes the pressures on it, so organizations change their markets and the logics that run through them. Whether they win or lose, their actions in turn change their market.
Fifth and finally, throughout the book, in approaches ranging from the schematic and theoretical to the historical and specific, Barnett discusses, describes, and analyzes not just how competition works on organizations when they are competing against one another, but also how competition functions within organizations. He shows how this competition drives innovation—this is especially clear in the discussion of the computer industry—and change the economy. All this is very useful even if it only allows readers to better understand the effort involved in…standing still.
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By Greg Beatty, on July 15th, 2008
The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. By Barack Obama. Crown Publishers, 2006 (Hardcover) and Random House Audio, 2006 (CD). 384 pages. $25.00 (Hardcover) and $29.95 (CD).
 In 2006, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama published The Audacity of Hope. I first encountered The Audacity of Hope as an audiobook read by Obama himself. I listened to it as I drove back and forth on errands, and, to be frank, I loved the experience. I also enjoyed many aspects of the book itself, which blends personal memoir with an account of Obama’s political development. It is at once a statement of who Obama is and how he became the political figure he is.
In retrospect, it is the personal details that stand out. Obama’s discussion of his courtship of his wife Michelle is rich with affection and respect. Even though they were second-hand and filtered through her husband, her will and independent judgment come through clearly. Should Obama be elected, this will be a First Lady to be reckoned with. The descriptions of his wife’s father (in Chapter 9, “Family”) are heartbreaking in their respectful precision. Michelle Obama’s father was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when he was just 30 but fought the disease for decades. Obama’s discussion of his father-in-law show a great deal about both men’s character. His father-in-law embodies domestic duty; Obama clearly understands just how precious such duty is.
When Obama discusses politics, it is, again, the personal and interpersonal that sounds out. He manages to sound savvy, political and still genuine, whether he’s describing meeting George Bush or discussing his travels through Illinois as he campaigned. I can imagine the union workers or inhabitants of Cairo, Illinois, feeling like someone really listened to them after they’ve met with Obama, for there’s a definite sense of heightened attention to the book. Obama is listening to the people he meets. Likewise, whether you’re listening to the audio version or reading the book, a sense of broad compassion comes through. To be blunt, I found myself liking Obama the man as I listened to the book.
However, when I read the book, I found a curious thing happened. Policies that had been enhanced by his delivery in the audio format fell more than a little flat on the page. I found myself flipping from chapter to chapter, wondering if I had remembered the policy discussions as occurring different places in the text than they had. I had not. I had allowed myself to be lulled by my affection for Obama and by his skill as a speaker.
I like the man. I trust the man, at least his intentions. I recognize that the symbolic value he carries due to his race is immense and should not be discounted. However, his vision of America is…well, let me be kind. His character is superior to his vision.
To be specific, when he’s discussing economic history, his summation of the free market and the American economy are pretty standard. He positions himself smartly, indicating that neither the Republican version of the free market nor the Democratic defense of pre-Bush social programs is sufficient. However, when he calls for a pragmatic solution, saying, “We should be guided by what works” (159), it is not yet clear that he (or, to be fair, anyone else) knows what that is. Obama calls for fairly predictable solutions: for government and parents to improve education and for public money and personal responsibility to be used there. He calls for more basic scientific research, a lowered dependence on foreign oil and so on. All good, yes, but the visions come without much foundation.
When Obama moves on to addressing policies specific to the U.S. economy, he’s specific about the flaws with existing plans, like privatizing Social Security, and strong about the values and emotions that lead him to oppose it and accent the flaws in such a plan. However, simply labeling Social Security’s problems as “real but manageable” (182) does not make them so, and no concrete solutions to the funding crises that take America’s demographic bulge into account are provided. If I had to sum up the picture of the world that’s painted in this book, I’d say it is fairly realistic. Obama knows that globalization is sweeping through the economy, realigning every economy relationship. His discussions of American founding documents, the media and special interests show he knows that American politics are a mash of glorious ideals, distortion and positional obligations. However, his solutions are less practical than he (or I) might wish. They show a man whose heart and character are worthy but whose policies are comparatively mundane. There are worse things in a president, but it does take a certain audacity to hope for better results without providing a solid foundation for them.
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By Greg Beatty, on July 13th, 2008
If you imagine the economy as an animal, the characters in Jim Thompson’s The Grifters are either the parasites that leech on that beast or its masters. You may have to read the book to decide.
Yes, you can catch a glimpse of Thompson’s world by watching the movie version starring John Cusack, Angelica Huston, and Annette Bening, each in some of their more disturbing roles. However, the movie’s feel is off. It came out in 1990 while the novel was published in 1963, and Thompson’s sensibilities were really formed decades earlier. It’s worth watching, but director Stephen Frears doesn’t really capture the…texture of the novel: half gloss, half grit, all tawdry and addictive.
Grifters are con men, or con men and women in this case. The novel follows three of them: Roy Dillon, a young man raised in the trade by Lilly Dillon, his grifter mother who gave birth to him when she was but a teenager. Roy’s involved with another grifter, Moira Langtry, one who’s so good at the con, he doesn’t really even know she’s in the game until she outs herself in an attempt to join forces with him.
The novel’s plot is minimal. It’s more of a careening string of events: Roy gets injured during a con (a shop owner smashes him in the belly with a bat) and ends up in the hospital. His mother, who’s in Los Angeles on business (a moderately complex race track scam), takes care of him while he’s sick. She wants to drive Moira away and goes as far as to hire an innocent nurse to care for him. When Roy goes back to his cover job—one that gives him lots of time for the con—there’s been a shake-up, and the new boss wants to make him a supervisor. Roy goes away with Moira for a romantic getaway; she tries to get him to work cons with her. When they go home, the police contact him, telling him his mother’s been found dead. When he identifies the body, he finds it is Moira. His mother shows up at his hotel room, tries to scam some money from him, and ends up slicing his throat.
That race through the gutter doesn’t really give a sense of Thompson’s wonderful seediness. For example, the women look a lot alike and are close to the same age, giving the book one of many perverse twists. However, fun though the portrait of degradation is, that’s not the real attraction for me here. Instead, it’s the portrayal of the capitalist economic world. The grifters look on anyone who works an honest job with a horror that makes them almost physically ill. It is literally less repellent for Lilly to think of sleeping with her son than it is to consider taking a straight job.
It’s also one of the novels that gives the most naked looks at how people become commodities in a capitalist economy, and how economic forces distort things. The best example of this is when the manager of Moira’s apartment building comes by to collect the rent. She offers him the rent or sex. That in itself isn’t that strange. What’s amazing is how she loathes him but sleeps with him anyway, while phrases from ads and menus tumble through her head. She knows she’s packaging herself for sale, and yet somehow, she thinks it is better than working.
The grifters loath the straights but depend on them. The straights would jail the grifters, but they all desire them. It’s the American economy as one big red-light district… and who is in charge, really?
By Greg Beatty, on July 9th, 2008
Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge. By Cass R. Sunstein. Oxford University Press, USA, 2008. 304 pages. $15.95.
 If you’re interested in how organizations and societies process knowledge or how what one individual knows diffuses through a larger social matrix, read Cass Sunstein’s Infotopia. It’s not perfect, but it does a fine job of analyzing a range of possibilities for aggregating individual knowledge—and it’s fun.
That Sunstein’s perspective is largely positive is indicated through the title; “infotopia” resonates with “utopia,” and there’s more of a trace of the hope that through collective understanding, we might shape a perfect society. There’s also a nice play on words here. “Utopia” can mean either “eu-topos,” the good place, or “ou-topos,” a place that does not exist, and so allows for ambiguity and hypotheticals. Well, Sunstein describes an ideal society whose place is in information and which is accessed via information and constructed upon information. To learn and discourse is to become a citizen of Infotopia.
Sunstein’s core problem is this: how do we aggregate dispersed knowledge? Or how do we as a group come to know what distinct individuals know? Sunstein follows two interweaving strands of analysis. One examines how groups actually do aggregate information known by individuals; the other strand examines how groups should do so. He pursues both analytical paths through discussing several areas of communal knowledge processing.
He starts with a, yes, utopian vision of what might happen if information aggregation worked everywhere as promised, then moves into discussions of numerous failures. From there, Sunstein spends a chapter each on major approaches to aggregation: statistical combinations, deliberation, markets and via the Internet. Examples are given in each case—often first hand and/or amusing examples—and general principles are derived from them. A historical and theoretical frame is given in each case though the natures of these frames vary widely. For example, when discussing deliberation, which has a long history in both practice and philosophy, Sunstein necessarily skips from high point to high point in this complex account, touching on Aristotle, Rawls, Habermas, etc. By contrast, when discussing electronic methods of aggregation, there’s comparatively little theory and considerable discussion of practice.
In all cases, however, the discussions of contemporary understanding of these methods of information aggregation were both intriguing and exciting. In particular, Sunstein’s discussion of the myriad ways prediction markets can be applied—and the fact that they outperform experts in many areas—was worthy of serious consideration. That a single mechanism is used for predicting events as diverse as presidential elections and internal product launches is intriguing. I found myself wanting to harness prediction markets for new areas in the arts or even in social and personal arenas. Likewise, the possibilities inherent in what Sunstein called “collaborative filtering”—finding parallels between books purchased or movies watched, as Amazon and Netflix do—have clearly just begun to be tapped. Such associational thinking could be used to multiply potential for product innovation or even to craft narratives within an art form.
Sunstein is clearly both committed to the potential inherent in collective understanding and excited by the revolution he sees unfolding in cyberspace or in prediction markets. However, he’s not blindly carried away by these processes. The chapter on deliberation is titled “The Surprising Failure of Deliberating Groups,” and the following chapter is called simply “Four Big Problems.” The gaffes, gaps and biases described there are deeply daunting and almost universally human. Other related failings are detailed in the discussion of the blogosphere, with the result being a book that works hard to be balanced.
While I trust Sunstein’s intent, I do not always trust his success rate. One of the potential failings he describes in deliberation is what he calls a “reputational cascade” in which people agree on a specific answer or point because they are part of a group and want to retain their social standing in it and essentially smother their objections or contradictory knowledge. Sunstein also describes the sort of cascade that follows a successful political movement and how blind people are to how they’re being carried along by the crowd. To a certain degree, I think that’s happening here. Sunstein sees so much rich potential in these emerging practices that even when he’s trying to see the objections, he fails to do so fully. What effect does Wikipedia have on creativity or does Google have on memory? What happens to older forms of collective knowledge transfer such as tradition? I would have loved to see more on areas like these as well as sharper distinctions about just what knowledge is.
However, those objections and desires don’t take anything away from Infotopia, which should start you speculating on what might be and reflecting on how the groups you belong to make decisions.
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By Greg Beatty, on July 8th, 2008
Revolutionary Wealth: How It Will Be Created and How It Will Change Our Lives. By Alvin and Heidi Toffler. Knopf, 2006. 512 pages. $15.95.
 In 1970, Alvin Toffler published Future Shock, an analysis of the accelerating waves of change moving through society. Toffler built on a number of movements already underway both social (the changes he discusses) and conceptual. His analyses of change fit well with other works theorizing change like Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Toffler helped create the profession of futurist and, after 30 years, remains one of our primary futurists.
That said, he strikes a decidedly different emotional tone in Revolutionary Wealth than he did in Future Shock where the term “future shock” itself refers to a baffled and overwhelmed state, close to alienation, that strikes people when they experience too much change too fast. In that early groundbreaking book, Toffler analyzed the changes, explained the accelerating rate of change and warned about the possible effects on humanity. In Revolutionary Wealth, the Tofflers again analyze and explain, but this time, while many individual challenges are identified, the tone is much sunnier. This really is a book about how immense and widespread wealth is moving through global society.
Revolutionary Wealth is an immensely ambitious book. It covers its topic from many different angles, and just about any reader will likely find something of value in its ten sections. These range from discussions of the changing nature of time to how knowledge should be evaluated. Each of these sections is divided into further sub-sections each of which is in turn marked by useful analogies, engaging narratives and schemas that can be applied usefully elsewhere. For example, section 19, “Filtering Truth,” includes a discussion of the “six filters” people use to sift information for credibility. The history and nature of each is explained along with brief illustrations of their relative value and validity (with the Tofflers ending by coming down squarely on the side of the scientific method).
Their embrace of science is part of their larger trumpet call of techno-economic triumph. The core of their claim is that the possibilities offered by information technology multiply the positive effects of all other efforts—that knowledge can be transferred more easily, problems tracked and responded to more promptly, solutions spread across the globe almost instantly and wealth first multiplied, then distributed, in an exhilarating and accelerating wave across the globe. Related technological advances, like mapping the genome (something made possible only through intense computing power), will attack other problems like world hunger through generated genetically modified plants that allow scientists to design crops rather than discover them through slow experimentation.
This integration of information technology is producing, the Tofflers claim, a marked change in the nature of wealth. Wealth had once been primarily tangible: land, gold, etc. It is becoming primarily intangible: knowledge, services, etc. This change is crucial because it becomes “non-rival.” Tangible goods are used up; if one person eats an apple, no one else can. However, intangible goods, like software files, can be used without consuming them. As more of our wealth moves into this category, it becomes “more inexhaustible.”
Heady stuff, and that’s just a bit of what the Tofflers tackle. Their discussion of prosumers (unpaid producers who make up an invisible part of the economy, like volunteers or the contributors to Wikipedia) casts light on just how much formal economics leaves out. Their discussion of the divergent rates of time—how different sections of society not only move at different speeds but also how those speeds are changing—is both intriguing and disturbing. The tensions and inevitable clashes between, say, business and technology surging ahead at one speed and lawmakers and public education system will only get worse.
Revolutionary Wealth is far from perfect. There are several core weaknesses. First, entire sections of this analysis is not particularly new and, in fact, has been made in more focused fashion by others. Second, Revolutionary Wealth is not integrated. An advantage of focusing now on time, now on wealth, now on politics, etc. is it allows one to focus; a disadvantage is that in the real world, all of this slams into one another, and the Tofflers really needed to discuss more explicitly how the myriad factors interact. Third, the optimism is refreshing, but at times it seems to come at the expense of really grappling with, to echo another book’s title, limits to growth. The Tofflers acknowledge dangers like pollution and the energy crisis, but their overwhelming faith in advancing scientific knowledge make these into simple challenges to be met rather than crises that might end the race.
That said, Revolutionary Wealth is a fun ride. It takes the reader into corners of economics that most haven’t visited, and it throws out new and/or useful ideas every few pages.
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By Greg Beatty, on July 8th, 2008
Though One of Ours won a Pulitzer Prize for Willa Cather when it first came out, it is not the best known of her works. Instead, Cather is known for works like O Pioneers! and My Antonia. It’s easy to see why Cather might have won a Pulitzer for One of Ours, but also why it might be forgotten. Published in 1922, One of Ours was a novel about World War I that tried to blend patriot idealism with realist treatments of violence, all the while evoking personal relationships in ways that are half realistic, half modern and alienated. The “one of ours” of the title is Claude Wheeler, who the novel follows from adolescence, to college and back home to the Nebraska farm again, through a brief disappointing marriage, and on to an untimely death in World War I.
While male writers like Hemingway attacked Cather’s treatment of the war, she’s vividly descriptive in many instances, and these would have brought the war home in sharp, bombshell flashes to her American readers. In fact, at times the mix of domestic elements, artistic and same sex longings, and damage done by the war is almost surreal. (Take a peek at the scenes of the amputee helping in the garden, or the corpse gas bubbling up from the swimming hole and you’ll see what I mean.) Despite this, some writers simply thought her too distant from the war to represent it well.
These days, though, there are other reasons why the novel’s faded. Most of these are simple: Cather’s power often comes from her vivid, intricate memories of her childhood on the Great Plains. She loved these people, these towns, this land, and it comes through. Strikingly, her portrait of these different locations and situations, one of the things that changes is her understanding of their economic structures.
Cather’s descriptions of her Nebraska roots show an economic understanding of the farmer’s world that runs so deep as to be intuitive. Rather than being some pure and Romantic retreat from the world, these farmers calculate at all times. They aren’t cold, and they are by no means purely rational; Claude Wheeler’s family is, without being seen through rose-colored glasses, often loving, especially the women. However, they know what the hired men cost, what it costs to go to school, to town, etc. One of Claude’s father’s first responses to news of the war is an awareness of what this will do to farm prices. He takes the different markets into account, and even, in his way, measures how the distance from the war (and the war’s staging areas in the U.S.) will affect markets, determining where they should ship their crops.
While economics are woven in with other factors—urban backgrounds versus farm, faith vs. reason, economics are always present when Cather’s discussing the Midwest. By contrast, later in the novel, her understanding of economic realities go in and out like a weak radio signal. When Claude’s traveling to Europe, there are vivid sketches of black market dealings among the military, but when he’s actually with his company and marching, Cather’s economic understanding essentially evaporates. She understands that war causes hardship, but there’s no intuitive feel of how this shapes people to match her understanding of the farm economy. In a way, this is what her critics are responding to. It’s a failure to understand specialized economic pressures, as much as a failure to capture violence, that makes the book’s ending unsatisfactory.
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