A Future Perfect: The Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalization (Paperback)

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 next 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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
Despite the virtual blizzard of political rhetoric, statistics and rumors surrounding the topic of globalization, Micklethwait and Wooldridge (The Witch Doctors) wade into the fray and emerge with an accessible, up-to-the-minute report. In the tradition of classical laissez-faire economic philosophers Adam Smith, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill, they portray globalization as a savage but beneficial process that has already led to greater economic efficiency and individual freedom of choice. "Business people are the most obvious beneficiaries," Micklethwait and Wooldridge acknowledge, but they also argue that consumers profit from variety, innovation and lower prices. With a vast array of anecdotal evidence, they point out that the cheaper materials and labor and faster distribution now available in the global marketplace mean that innovative goods and services can come from an entrepreneur like Charlie Woo of Los Angeles (who created a niche in the highly lucrative toy market), from the startups of Silicon Valley and from Hollywood, which they praise for its flexibility, innovation and hyper competition. Yet in their impassioned advocacy of globalization, Micklethwait and Wooldridge do not allow themselves sufficient space to systematically address the extent of its destabilizing economic effects or the havoc it has wreaked on many countries--a significant flaw in what is otherwise an estimable effort. Agent, Sarah Chalfant, Andrew Wylie Literary Agency. Major ad/promo; 7-city author tour. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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