Future of Capitalism by Paul Collier

This book’s full title is Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties. I found a new interesting acronym of WEIRD – western, educated, industrial, rich, and developed. He talks about the huge divides in our society between the well-educated and less educated and between the metro areas and the hinterland outside the metro areas. I always love reading books by Paul Collier because he always brings up quite a different point of view.

I had a cottage north of Napanee in the 1980’s and 1990’s. They had a very different world view than me. I always thought it interesting that they thought of Toronto as a big scary city and said that they would never like to live there. Personally, I love Toronto and have always loved to live in this city. It has so much to offer in opportunity and in the variety of activities available and its wonderful parks.

Paul Collier seems to be able to identify a lot of the problems of our current world. However, I do not think that he has the solutions or solutions that people will run with. We need plans to move forward, not go backwards. I agree that who benefits most from firms is the top management. They talk about only making profit for the shareholders. However, they are the ones who benefits the most. Most investors I have talked with do not think of themselves as shareholders of the companies they invest in. I think that is a big mistake.

We boomers started out as flower children, but it seems we did not build a better and fairer society. Of course, there was also drugs, sex and rock and roll. Does history repeat? We seem today to be back to robber barons (FAANG) and revolt (people protesting inequality). We would all be happier and more prosperous if everyone could contribute to and benefit from our society.

I think that the answer lies in better education (in poor areas) and less red tape. The government should get out of the way of people trying to better themselves. We also need to stop the bobber barons from taking over everything in sight.

Martin Wolf on Financial Times did a great review of this book and its message. Bill Gates writes an interesting review of this book on his site of Gates Notes. Steven Pearlstein writes an interesting review in the Washington Post. There is also a wonderful review by Branko Milanovic at Global Policy Journal. With the second part of Branko Milanovic’s review at Brave New Europe.

Daniela Arregui Coka interviews Paul Collier on Global Economics Dynamics Project. There is a panel discussion of this book, with Paul Collier at Policy Exchange. Paul Collier is the second speaker on this panel. Paul Collier gives a lecture on how capitalism has derailed in the past the and present in Oslo. He speaks for almost 40 minutes and this is worthwhile to listen to as he talks about problems and solutions to the current form of capitalism. This last video is the best, so if you only watch one, watch this one.

An index of the books I have reviewed are on my website at Books. I have three blogs. The first talks only about specific stocks and is called Investment Talk . The second one contains information on mostly investing and is called Investing Economics Mostly. My last blog is for my book reviews and it is called Non-Fiction Mostly. Follow me on Twitter.