Making Globalization Work — Joseph Stiglitz
Caring deeply about the problems of the world is the first step. Not everyone cares to care.
Understanding thoroughly these problems comes next. They are wide and deep.
Being able to suggest solutions based on the best of human knowledge is the rarest skill of all. Very few people are in a position to do this.
A brief bio: Stiglitz has been Clinton’s economic advisor, the chief economist president of the World Bank, and a recipient of the Nobel Prize for economics in 2001. Not only this, but he actually seems to travel extensively throughout the, shall we say, less privileged countries. This combination of technical expertise, political savvy, and hands-on experience is exceedingly rare. His basic position is accordingly very interesting. Along with standard neocon doctrine, he maintains that globalization in some form is good for the world. However, in line with the typical leftist counter-story (which I believe I have traced, oddly enough, to Marxist doctrine, see here) he is very critical of the way that international trade agreements are currently conducted. Where he differs from both is in informed and detailed analyses of the problems, and very specific suggestions for systemic fixes at the level of national and international governance.
This is the book I wish I had had during the peak of the anti-Globalization protests in the late 90’s/early ‘naughts. At that time I was frustrated with both sides of the protest; I knew enough to want to yell, “stop! you’re both wrong!” but could offer little in the way of concrete suggestions.
If you have any interest in globalization, or even if you just like talking about it at parties, you need to read this book. Globalization as a topic has the misfortune of being politically sensitive, ideologically driven, globally important, and technically complex. It’s high time we started talking intelligently about the possible solutions. As best as I can tell with my admittedly non-professional background (self-study of econ plus world travel) this book is solid. It is impassioned, readable, deep, and concrete.
March 25th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
[...] textbook (covering both micro- and macro-economics) and several other interesting books (1,2,3) on how markets work or don’t. In short I have been the model of a concerned citizen, and I [...]