Below are some of my favorite resources that try to make sense of our current historical moment, and suggest what investors and citizens should know to make sound financial, personal, and moral decisions in the years ahead.
Capitalism (1600-present)
Capitalism, despite its many benefits, is inherently exploitive. It always depends on genocide, slavery, war, and depletion of natural resources. Capitalism functions like a living organism, an addiction, or a crash-only software program. For capitalism to be viable, society and government must keep it in check.
Neoliberalism (1970s-present)
The Big Short, Michael Lewis
Hypernormalisation 2016, Adam Curtis
Requiem for the American Dream, Noam Chomsky
Literary Criticism: A Concise Political History, Joseph North
Crowds and Party, Jodi Dean
Farewell, neoliberalism: An interview with Wolfgang Streeck, Kingsreview
Neoliberalism was an experiment to see if aggressive globalization, financialization, and the willful destruction of the social safety net would lead to prosperity. It instead destroyed living standards across the globe to favor an elite financial class. The rise of identity politics and the social victories of minority groups during this period partially obscured the extent of the damage.
The California ideology (1990s-present)
Platform Capitalism, Nick Srnicek
Silicon Valley Is Turning Into Its Own Worst Fear, Ted Chiang
The Ecology of Attention, Yves Citton
Two-Faced: The culture of platform capitalism, Daniel Joseph
Malware is choking the world, Venkat Rao
The Rise of the Thought Leader, David Sessions
Tech and the Fake Market Tactic, Anil Dash
Freedom isn’t free, Wendy Liu
Cyber-Proletariat: Global Labour in the Digital Vortex, Nick Dyer-Witheford
The Californian ideology was a seductive conviction that networked technologies generally, and social media specifically, could foster prosperity outside of the consumerist paradigm. For the most part, these technologies instead have fueled and accelerated neoliberalism.
The everything bubble (now)
Average Stock Market Returns Aren’t Average, Alex Tabarrok
There They Go Again… Again, Howard Marks (July 2017)
Yet Again, Howard Marks (September 2017)
The Global Economy is Partying Like it’s 2008, Desmond Lachman
The Economy Is Humming. Bankers Are Cheering. What Could Go Wrong?, Landon Thomas
The ‘everything bubble’ is about to burst, but is the world prepared?, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The Stock Market is Shrinking…, Jeff Sommer, NYT (August 2018)
What Happens to Startups in the Next Recession?, John Loeber
How Western Civilization Could Collapse, Rachel Nuwer
The Seven Worst Words in the World, Howard Marks (September 2018)
China’s Empire of Money is Reshaping Global Trade, Bloomberg
Slowbalisation, The Economist (January 2019)
Weirding Diary, Venkat Rao (January 2019)
The Three-Body Problem, Ben Hunt
The economy today is due for both cyclic and structural corrections. Manipulated interest rates, a sociopathic tax bill in the US, the specter of a “bail-in” should financial institutions crash again, the lack of traditional asset diversification, rising geo-political tensions, and the shredding of the biome and social fabric have pushed the economy into a sub-critical state.
After neoliberalism (future)
Digital Proudhonism, Gavin Mueller
How Will Capitalism End?, Wolfgang Streek
Radical Markets, Eric A. Posner and E. Glen Weyl
Walkaway, Cory Doctorow
Investing Without People, Howard Marks (June 2018)
Jeremy Rifkin on How to Manage a Future of Abundance, Art Kleiner and Juliette Powell
Are We on the Verge of a New Golden Age?, Carlota Perez, Leo Johnson, and Art Kleiner
Whose Side Are We On? Liberalism and Socialism Are Not the Same, Wolfgang Streeck
Universal Basic Income is Silicon Valley’s Latest Scam, Douglas Rushkoff
Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work, Nick Srnicek & Alex Williams
The Courage of Hopelessness, Slavoj Žižek
The resources above inspire me. They disagree with each other about what’s worthy, but they provide some tentative answers about what might be next, or should be next. Imagining a new world is a vital part of bringing it to life.