Future Economics

Sand, iron, salt, oil, copper and lithium. The struggle for these tiny, magical materials has razed empires, demolished civilizations, fed our greed and our ingenuity for thousands of years. But the story is not over. We are often told we now live in a weightless world of information but in fact we dug more stuff out of the earth in 2017 than in all of human history before 1950. And it's getting worse. To make one bar of gold, we now have to dig 5,000 tons of earth. For every tonne of fossil fuels, we extract six tonnes of other materials - from sand to stone to wood to metal.

Sometime around 1750, English entrepreneurs unleashed the astounding energies of steam and coal, and the world was forever changed. The emergence of factories, railroads, and gunboats propelled the West’s rise to power in the nineteenth century, and the development of computers and nuclear weapons in the 20th century secured its global supremacy.

The African future is bright and promising, a beacon of hope and inspiration for the world. With a unified vision and collective determination, the African continent stands at the cusp of a new era defined by continental unity, an empowered and competent African Union (AU) central governance, well-developed infrastructure, a first-class education system, and security and respect from the global community. In this future, continental unity is not just a concept but a lived reality. African nations, once fragmented by colonial borders, now embrace their shared history, culture, and destiny. ...

In a world of self-driving cars and big data, smart algorithms and Siri, we know that artificial intelligence is getting smarter every day. Though all these nifty devices and programs might make our lives easier, they're also well on their way to making "good" jobs obsolete. A computer winning Jeopardy might seem like a trivial, if impressive, feat, but the same technology is making paralegals redundant as it undertakes electronic discovery, and is soon to do the same for radiologists.

📘 The Future of Finance is Now The Most Important Trends in Finance for the Coming Decade Have Already Started By Jason Schenker — #1 Bestselling Author, Financial Futurist, and Bloomberg-Ranked Forecaster The future isn’t coming — it’s already here. And it’s transforming finance faster than most people realize. In The Future of Finance is Now, Jason Schenker delivers a gripping, expertly researched roadmap to the technologies, risks, and global forces reshaping the financial landscape. From blockchain and quantum computing to automation, cybersecurity, and the hunt for yield, ...

The Theft of a Decade is a contrarian, revelatory analysis of how one generation pulled the rug out from under another and the myriad consequences that has set in store for all of us. The millennial generation was the unfortunate victim of several generations of economic theories that made life harder for them than it was for their grandparents. Then came the crash of 2008, and the boomer generation's reaction to it was brutal: politicians and policymakers made deliberate decisions that favored the interests of the boomer generation over their heirs.

In Fashionopolis, Thomas sees renewal in a host of developments, including printing 3-D clothes, clean denim processing, smart manufacturing, hyperlocalism, fabric recycling - even lab-grown materials. From small-town makers and Silicon Valley whizzes to such household names as Stella McCartney, Levi’s, and Rent the Runway, Thomas highlights the companies big and small that are leading the crusade.

Over the past two centuries or so, capitalism has undergone profound changes - economic cycles that veer from boom to bust - from which it has always emerged transformed and strengthened. Surveying this turbulent history, Paul Mason's Postcapitalism argues that we are on the brink of a change so big and so profound that this time capitalism itself, the immensely complex system within which entire societies function, will mutate into something wholly new.

Tim Wise is one of America's most prolific public intellectuals. His critically acclaimed books, high-profile media interviews, and year-round speaking schedule have established him as an invaluable voice in any discussion on issues of race and multicultural democracy. In Under the Affluence, Wise discusses a related issue: economic inequality and the demonization of those in need.

The economy says we must always consume more. The planet says we consume too much. Addressing this paradox head-on, acclaimed journalist J. B. MacKinnon asks, What would really happen if we simply stopped shopping? Is there a way to reduce our consumption to Earth-saving levels without triggering economic collapse? Drawing from experts in fields ranging from climate change to economics, MacKinnon investigates how living with less would change our planet, our society, and ourselves. Along the way, he reveals just how much we stand to gain.

A Warning to Humanity: The Unchecked Rise of AGI AGI is not just another technological advancement—it is a deliberate economic upheaval being rushed into existence without safeguards. OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google are not building AGI to assist humanity; they are designing a system that replaces human labor while concentrating wealth and power in their hands.AGI as a Labor Replacement Engine OpenAI defines AGI by its ability to perform “economically valuable work” at human levels or beyond. This means AGI is explicitly built to replace human labor. Deep Research, a new AI agent, ...

Innovations rarely come from “experts.” Elon Musk was not an “electric car person” before he started Tesla. When it comes to improbable innovations, a legendary tech VC told Sebastian Mallaby, the future cannot be predicted, it can only be discovered. It is the nature of the venture-capital game that most attempts at discovery fail, but a very few succeed at such a scale that they more than make up for everything else. That extreme ratio of success and failure is the power law that drives the VC business, all of Silicon Valley, the wider tech sector, and, by extension, the world.

The world is changing drastically before our eyes - will you be prepared for what comes next? A groundbreaking analysis from one of the world's foremost experts on global trends, including analysis on how COVID-19 will amplify and accelerate each of these changes. By 2030: there will be more grandparents than grandchildren; the middle class in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa will outnumber the US and Europe combined; the global economy will be driven by the non-Western consumer for the first time in modern history; and much more....

The bestselling author of CRISIS ECONOMICS argues that we are heading toward the worst economic catastrophe of our lifetimes, unless we can defend against ten terrifying threats.

For over two-hundred years, capitalist systems have overtaken the global economy, spreading near-universal growth and opening the floodgates for limitless human potential. Yet something is going terribly wrong in the world economy. National bestselling author George Gilder explains how economics is not an incentive system but an information system. Redefining capitalism for the modern age, he reveals how free enterprise is a mind driven system, material resources are essentially as infinite as atoms, and what governs economic growth is human creativity.

Economic catastrophe has followed the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Historically, economic risks have been important contributing factors to revolt and revolution. Now, looking ahead, weakness in the economy and the labor market present broad-based risks to the future of society, national security, supply chain, technology, and politics. In The Economics of Revolt and Revolution, the top-ranked economist and futurist Jason Schenker shares his visions for the uncertain future ahead. Jason Schenker is the Chairman of The Futurist Institute and the President of Prestige Economics. He has ...

Something is wrong with our banking system. We all sense that, but Mervyn King knows it firsthand; his 10 years at the helm of the Bank of England, including at the height of the financial crisis, revealed profound truths about the mechanisms of our capitalist society. In The End of Alchemy, he offers us an essential work about the history and future of money and banking, the keys to modern finance.

Our world is being transformed by the Internet and the near limitless choice that it provides to consumers; tomorrow's markets belong to those who can take advantage of this. The Long Tail is really about the economics of abundance, an entirely new model for business that is just starting to show its power as unlimited selection reveals new truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it.

How will we live well in a super-networked, information-soaked, yet predictably irrational world? The only way to know is to understand how the way we think is changing. As economist Tyler Cowen boldly shows in Create Your Own Economy, the way we think now is changing more rapidly than it has in a very long time. Not since the Industrial Revolution has a man-made creation - in this case, the World Wide Web - so greatly influenced the way our minds work and our human potential.

A diverse and growing range of financial institutions and platforms—from PayPal and Venmo to WeChat, Alipay, and the brave new world of stablecoins—has harnessed new technology to disrupt the system of money and payments as we know it. Beyond Banks explains why this disruption holds out the promise of faster, cheaper, more convenient, and more secure payments, but also how it increasingly risks exposing consumers, businesses, and governments to the problem of bad money.