The Future of Capitalism

Economist Paul Collier diagnoses why Western societies have split along three lines: thriving cities against rural counties, a highly skilled elite against the less educated, and rich countries against developing ones. He argues that as these rifts deepened, the sense of duty to others behind postwar social democracy was lost, and that the responses so far, populism and socialism, are revivalist ideologies behind upheavals such as Trump, Brexit and the far right's return in Germany. Collier proposes pragmatic remedies grounded in communitarian ethics, drawing on his own ideas and those of other social scientists. He also describes crossing these divides himself, from working-class Sheffield to Oxford and between Britain and Africa, and acknowledges some failings of his own profession.

Bill Gates put it on a 2019 summer reading list, calling it thought-provoking and saying Collier's experience as a development economist lends him a sharp view of where capitalism is heading, though he judged the diagnosis stronger than the proposed fixes.