Is Capitalism Obsolete?: A Journey through Alternative Economic Systems

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Description

After communism collapsed in the former Soviet Union, capitalism appeared to many observers like the only game on the town, and questioning it became taboo for academic economists. But the financial crisis, chronic unemployment, and the inexorable rise of inequality have resurrected the question of whether there’s a feasible and desirable alternative to capitalism. Against this backdrop of growing disenchantment, Giacomo Corneo presents a refreshingly antidogmatic review of economic systems, taking as his launching point a fictional argument between a daughter indignant about economic injustice and her father, a professor of economics.

Is Capitalism Obsolete? begins when the daughter’s angry complaints prompt her father to reply that capitalism cannot responsibly be abolished without an alternative in mind. He invites her on a tour of tried and proposed economic systems in which production and consumption obey noncapitalistic rules. These range from Plato’s Republic to diverse modern models, including anarchic communism, central planning, and a stakeholder society. A few of these alternatives have considerable strengths. But daunting problems arise when the basic institutions of capitalism―markets and private property―are suppressed. In the end, the father argues, all serious counterproposals to capitalism fail to pass the test of economic feasibility. Then the story takes an unexpected turn. Father and daughter jointly get a hold of a proposal to progressively turn out to be the current economic system so that you could share prosperity and foster democratic participation.

An exceptional combination of creativity and rigor, Is Capitalism Obsolete? is a sorely needed work about probably the most core questions of our times.

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