Alec Ross, Obama White House alum and New York Times bestselling author of The Industries of the Future, offers a gripping, accessible account of how huge corporations have started acting like nations and how everyday people can help repair the fragile power balance between government and business.
Starting with the industrial revolution, companies have held the power to shape our daily lives in ways both positive and negative, while the state held the power to make them fall in line, and the people held the power to choose their leaders. This compact, through ups and downs, stood firm for 150 years. But in the latest wave of globalization, the balance has shaken loose.
As the market consolidates under fewer and larger companies, the lines between Walmart and the Halls of Congress has become razor thin. It's in the interest of private companies to behave like nations-to invest in defense, foreign contracts, data mining, and intelligence. And when the government is bogged down in bureaucratic negotiations and partisan wars, unable to act on healthcare, wage increases, and climate change, people begin to look to nimble, powerful companies to solve these problems-and to be our moral standard-bearers. But all is not lost. As Walter Isaacson said about Ross's first book, "The future is already hitting us, and Ross shows how it can be exciting rather than frightening."
In The Raging 2020s: The Fight Between Countries, Companies, and People for a New Social Contract, Ross weaves interviews with the world's most influential thinkers-including Bill Gates, Samantha Powers, Fareed Zakaria, and Matteo Renzi-into fascinating stories of corporate activism and malfeasance, government failure and renewal, and innovative economic and political models being implemented around the world, to propose a new social contract-one that benefits workers and everyday citizens in the face of unprecedented global change.
