The Complacent Class

Economist Tyler Cowen argues that Americans, long known for restlessness, now work hard to avoid change. People move house less often, marry partners more like themselves and choose music and mates through matching services such as Match.com and Spotify that screen out the unfamiliar. Cowen grants that this matching culture brings comfort, but links it to greater inequality and segregation and to weaker incentives to innovate. Putting change off, he contends, will only make it harder when it arrives, and he expects the Great Stagnation to bring costly rents in the most attractive cities, deeper residential segregation and a weaker work ethic. His remedy is a return to the country's restless tradition.

Ryan Holiday counted it among the best books he read in 2017 and called Cowen one of his favorite authors and a personal hero.