The latest work from Niall Ferguson, bestselling author of Empire, The Great Degneration is based on his 2012 BBC Reith Lectures 'The Rule of Law and Its Enemies'
The decline of the West is something that has long been prophesied. Symptoms of decline are all around us today, it seems: slowing growth, crushing debts, aging populations, anti-social behaviour. But what exactly is ...
The latest work from Niall Ferguson, bestselling author of Empire, The Great Degneration is based on his 2012 BBC Reith Lectures 'The Rule of Law and Its Enemies'
The decline of the West is something that has long been prophesied. 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.
Representative government, the free market, the rule of law and civil society: these were once the four pillars of West European and North American societies. It was these institutions, rather than any geographical or climatic advantages, that set the West on the path to global dominance after around 1500. In our time, however, these institutions have deteriorated in disturbing ways.
Our democracies have broken the contract between the generations by heaping IOUs on our children and grandchildren. Our markets are increasingly distorted by over-complex regulations that are in fact the disease of which they purport to be the cure. The rule of law has metamorphosed into the rule of lawyers. And civil society has degenerated into uncivil society, where we lazily expect all our problems to be solved by the state.
The Degeneration of the West a powerful - and in places polemical - indictment of an era of negligence and complacency. While the Arab world struggles to adopt democracy, and while China struggles to move from economic liberalization to the rule of law, Europeans and Americans alike are frittering away the institutional inheritance of centuries. To arrest the degeneration of the West's once dominant civilization, Ferguson warns, will take heroic leadership and radical reform.
作者简介
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Niall Ferguson is one of Britain's most renowned historians.He is the author of Paper and Iron, The House of Rothschild, The Pity of War, The Cash Nexus, Empire, Colossus, The War of the World, The Ascent of Money, High Financier and Civilization. He has written and presented six highly successful television series for Channel Four: Empire, American Colossus, The War of the Wor...
Niall Ferguson is one of Britain's most renowned historians.He is the author of Paper and Iron, The House of Rothschild, The Pity of War, The Cash Nexus, Empire, Colossus, The War of the World, The Ascent of Money, High Financier and Civilization. He has written and presented six highly successful television series for Channel Four: Empire, American Colossus, The War of the World, The Ascent of Money, Civilization and China: Triumph and Turmoil.
Adam Smith described what he called ‘the stationary state’: the condition of a formerly wealthy country that had ceased to grow. … He singled out its socially regressive character. First, wages for the majority of people were miserably low. … Second, the ability of a corrupt and monopolistic elite to exploit the system of law and administration to their own advantage. … (查看原文)
In Smith’s day, of course, it was China that had been ‘long stationary’: a once ‘opulent’ country that had simply ceased to grow. Smith blamed China’s defective ‘laws and institutions’ — including its bureaucracy — for the stasis. More free trade, more encouragement for small business, less bureaucracy and less crony capitalism: these were Smith’s prescriptions to cure Chinese stasis. … (查看原文)
游似
中信出版社2013版
山人
中信出版社2013版
陆吴双
中信出版社2013版
0 有用 丸子(^.^)v 2019-10-13 06:50:44
这种书看概要就可以了 西方为什么没落？ 想做一点事 这个review 那个application 时不时还来audit一把 让人感觉特别想放弃。 这还只是一点事， 不是类似SPACE X或者TESLA那种大事 很多次我都在想， 老子不做了还不行嘛…… 呐 让公民产生这样想法的社会体制 还想怎么样？