MIT Press
The Prosperity of Vice: A Worried View of Economics
Key Metrics
- Daniel Cohen
- MIT Press
- Hardcover
- 9780262017305
- 8.21 X 5.64 X 0.93 inches
- 0.84 pounds
- Business & Economics > Economic History
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
How violence, rather than peace, has historically accompanied prosperity; and why emerging nations seem poised to repeat the tragic history of the industrialized world.
What happened yesterday in the West is today being repeated on a global scale. Industrial society is replacing rural society: millions of peasants in China, India, and elsewhere are leaving the countryside and going to the city. New powers are emerging and rivalries are exacerbated as competition increases for control of raw materials. Contrary to what believers in the clash of civilizations maintain, the great risk of the twenty-first century is not a confrontation between cultures but a repetition of history. In The Prosperity of Vice, the influential French economist Daniel Cohen shows that violence, rather than peace, has been the historical accompaniment to prosperity. Peace in Europe came only after the barbaric wars of the twentieth century, not as the outcome of economic growth. What will happen this time for today's eagerly Westernizing emerging nations?
Cohen guides us through history, describing the European discovery of the philosopher's stone the possibility of perpetual growth. But the consequences of addiction to growth are dire in an era of globalization. If a billion Chinese consume a billion cars, the future of the planet is threatened. But, Cohen points out, there is another kind of globalization: the immaterial globalization enabled by the Internet. It is still possible, he argues, that the cyber-world will create a new awareness of global solidarity. It even may help us accomplish a formidable cognitive task, as immense as that realized during the Industrial Revolution--one that would allow us learn to live within the limits of a solitary planet.
Author Bio
Daniel Cohen is director of the Economics Department at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and a founding member of the Paris School of Economics.
A former adviser to the World Bank, Cohen was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 2001. His many books include Globalization and Its Enemies and The Prosperity of Vice.
Education
Ecole Normale Supérieure (1973-1976)
Agrégation de Mathématiques (1976)
Doctorat de 3° Cycle Sciences Economiques (1979)
Visiting scholar, Harvard (1981-82 et 1983-84)
Doctorat d'Etat ès Sciences Economiques (1986)
Agrégation des Facultés de Droit et de Sciences Economiques (1988)
Source: Paris School of Economics
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