The Great Degeneration
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Narrated by:
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Paul Slack
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By:
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Niall Ferguson
About this listen
Symptoms of decline are all around us today, it seems: slowing growth, crushing debts, aging populations, anti-social behaviour. But what exactly is amiss with Western civilization? The answer, Niall Ferguson argues, is that our institutions - the intricate frameworks within which a society can flourish or fail - are degenerating. To arrest the degeneration of the West's civilization, Ferguson warns, will take heroic leadership and radical reform.
The Great Degeneration is the latest, provocative work from Niall Ferguson, best-selling author of The Ascent of Money.
©2012 Niall Ferguson (P)2013 W F Howes LtdListeners also enjoyed...
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Dead Aid
- Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa
- By: Dambisa Moyo, Niall Ferguson - foreword
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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A national best-seller, Dead Aid unflinchingly confronts one of the greatest myths of our time: that billions of dollars in aid sent from wealthy countries to developing African nations has helped to reduce poverty and increase growth. In fact, poverty levels continue to escalate and growth rates have steadily declined - and millions continue to suffer. Debunking the current model of international aid promoted by both Hollywood celebrities and policy makers, Dambisa Moyo offers a bold new road map for financing the development of the world's poorest countries.
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Dangerous / Right Wing US view
- By David O'Donovan on 03-05-19
By: Dambisa Moyo, and others
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Free to Choose
- A Personal Statement
- By: Milton Friedman, Rose Friedman
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Milton Friedman and his wife, Rose, teamed up to write this most convincing and readable guide, which illustrates the crucial link between Adam Smith's capitalism and the free society. They show how freedom has been eroded and prosperity undermined through the rapid growth of governmental agencies, laws, and regulations.
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Fantastic
- By Erik on 01-21-08
By: Milton Friedman, and others
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Radical Markets
- Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society
- By: Eric A. Posner, E. Glen Weyl
- Narrated by: James Conlan
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Many blame today's economic inequality, stagnation, and political instability on the free market. The solution is to rein in the market, right? Radical Markets turns this thinking - and pretty much all conventional thinking about markets, both for and against - on its head. The book reveals bold new ways to organize markets for the good of everyone.
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Terrible Reader ruins this book
- By Brian W. Veit on 10-30-18
By: Eric A. Posner, and others
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Why Save the Bankers?
- And Other Essays on Our Economic and Political Crisis
- By: Thomas Piketty, Seth Ackerman - translator
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Thomas Piketty's work has proved that unfettered markets lead to increasing inequality. Without meaningful regulation, capitalist economies will concentrate wealth in an ever smaller number of hands. Armed with this knowledge, democratic societies face a defining challenge: fending off a new aristocracy. For years Piketty has wrestled with this problem in his monthly newspaper column, which pierces the surface of current events to reveal the economic forces underneath.
By: Thomas Piketty, and others
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The Sovereign Individual
- Mastering the Transition to the Information Age
- By: James Dale Davidson, Peter Thiel - preface, William Rees-Mogg
- Narrated by: Michael David Axtell
- Length: 19 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Two renowned investment advisors and authors of the best seller The Great Reckoning bring to light both currents of disaster and the potential for prosperity and renewal in the face of radical changes in human history as we move into the next century. The Sovereign Individual details strategies necessary for adapting financially to the next phase of Western civilization.
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Unfortunately distopian for mosty of humanity
- By Phil on 09-29-20
By: James Dale Davidson, and others
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The Fourth Revolution
- The Global Race to Reinvent the State
- By: John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge
- Narrated by: Chris Sorensen
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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From the best-selling authors of The Right Nation, a visionary argument that our current crisis in government is nothing less than the fourth radical transition in the history of the nation-state. Dysfunctional government: It' s become a cliché, and most of us are resigned to the fact that nothing is ever going to change. As John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge show us, that is a seriously limited view of things. In fact, there have been three great revolutions in government in the history of the modern world.
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A must read for everyone wondering whats going?
- By Truth-be-told on 03-30-15
By: John Micklethwait, and others
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Right Here, Right Now
- Politics and Leadership in the Age of Disruption
- By: Stephen J. Harper
- Narrated by: Stephen J. Harper
- Length: 6 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The world is in flux. Disruptive technologies, ideas, and politicians are challenging business models, norms, and political conventions everywhere. How we, as leaders in business and politics, choose to respond matters greatly. Right Here, Right Now sets out a pragmatic, forward-looking vision for leaders in business and politics by analyzing how economic, social, and public policy trends - including globalized movements of capital, goods, and services, and labor - have affected our economies, communities, and governments.
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Excellent book on Politics for Canadians AND Americans
- By John Fernandes on 10-19-18
What listeners say about The Great Degeneration
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jerry
- 07-10-13
Great description of what ails America & the West
With reservations this is one of the best short listens you can make. Those limits relate to Ferguson's history and his place therein. In short, his model of the future means an extension of the past, by better management of the present. For example he believes that the world will become more urbanized because cities are essentially more culturally diverse and therefore better places to live. Except—he assumes we will have no problem feeding 9 billion souls, in whatever urban utopia we may choose.
Outside his bubble, in the present future, usable water and agriculture to feed the masses, are areas where Ferguson has a significant blind spot.
That being said, the collapse of historic local community structures is an awesome addition to the discussion, but again Niall seems to miss the connection with a rural economy in the good old days; for they don't really fit within the present urban culture, which perhaps fits a violent jungle mentality, rather than a cohesive human community.
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- Ray
- 06-22-13
Definite Must Read
My only complaint is that it wasn't longer.
Anyone that has seriously given thought to the modern problem of bread and circuses needs to listen to this. If the other cited authors are not familiar, then this book can serve as a primer and some of those other books can be read as a follow up.
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- Lance
- 08-30-13
Ferguson Hits His Stride
I really enjoy listening to the author on the news and talk shows. Very interesting guy who doesn't overreach in the interest of getting air time. From what I can tell he works hard and has mastered a fairly rare combination of fields. History, economics, and writing, to name three. This is a gentleman who beyond the pedigree has written books that survey in sometimes painful depth his field of study. I have tried to read his prior books and just couldn't get through them. Great material, great writing, but really boring tedious stuff to listen to. This book, however, I could not put down.
I think the author has some very good points. You'll find a bunch of negative reviews because of the last few pages of the book, he gives a rather hefty slam of Obama's "you didn't build that" speech. He really could have done without those few pages and I think you would find Republicans and Democrats interested in finding a solution to our country and world's problems finding common ground with many of the ideas in this book.
I am somewhat off-putted by the frameworks that the author uses. I am used to more of the more systematic Stuart Mill, etc frameworks and he always seems to have some rather higher level "fresher" way of reframing what are probably issues that could fit within these other frameworks. Interesting, refreshing, thought provoking but leaves me wondering how this lines up to historical methods of analysis. And where did the ideas come for these nouveau analyses? Might be footnoted, but that is a hazard of audio books. Anyway, many of the reviews at Amazon capture the specifics. I enjoyed this book and if you haven't read the author yet, would highly recommend starting here. If you have like me tried an not been able to get through the prior works, perhaps like me you'll find a gem here. If you're reading and listening to the author right now, you may be a little disappointed as the book is a bit of an overview of a number of speeches / discussions he has had recently. Might not be enough new material to interest. I really enjoyed it.
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