Jeffrey D. Sachs

I voted for Hillary Clinton twice in 2016. She beat Bernie Sanders in the first race, only to lose to Donald Trump in the second in a close race. Bernie Sanders relied on Sachs' economics advice. Therefore, I find it important to educate myself on the issues in this democracy and to read this book to illuminate my ignorant mind.

Sachs lays out a powerful and persuasive case for engaging in new challenges for America. In particular, he suggests that we move investment away from the militarism show more that has consumed our deficit-laden budgets since 1980 and towards domestic challenges.

Some will surely label Sachs' plan as socialist. But if you get past that word and delve into the arguments and data, Sachs has very good points. In fact, the happiest and most prosperous countries today (and America is not among them) are socialist in their orientation. Surely, we in America can learn from these situations instead of engaging in a red fear.

My main concern with Sachs' plan is that it moves too quickly too soon. History teaches that too much reform can be the enemy of true reform as much as obstructionism. We must pick a few hard challenges to engage in and focus. Unfortunately, hyperpartisanship in Washington is crippling our national leadership. The easy part is identifying challenges. Even finding solutions is somewhat easy these days. The challenge is working together with the other, whether that other be a protester or an evangelical, someone who watches Fox News or someone who watches MSNBC. We must learn to work together again. I'm left wanting to hear Sachs' ideas on that. show less

Summary: A study of seven ages of globalization, in which geography, technology, and institutions result in scale-enlarging transformations with global impacts.

Jeffrey Sachs is one of those big picture thinkers one needs when tempted to focus in the minutiae of life. I first came across this in The End of Poverty, published in 2005, where Sachs wrestled with the steps needed to eliminate poverty throughout the world.

Here, he enlarges his focus to the whole 70,000 year expanse of human show more history. He traces seven ages of globalization, contending that the interplay of geography (including climate, natural resources, and biodiversity), technology (from hunting implements and stone tools to steam driven machinery to digital information systems), and institutions (religious, economic, and political) came together in each age to create scale enlarging transformations with global implications.

The seven ages through which he traces these interactions are:

1. The Paleolithic (70,000-10,000 bce): foragers arising from Africa to adapt to a variety of habitats, using tools to manipulate nature, and formal tribal societies.
2. The Neolithic ((10,000-3000 bce): The transition to agricultural societies across the temperate zones ("the Lucky Latitudes") allowing the rise of farming settlements with domesticated animals.
3. The Equestrian Age (3000-1000 bce): The domestication of the horse facilitating transport and travel, writing systems, accompanied by more sophisticated administrative institutions allowed for the first empires.
4. The Classical Age (1000 bce-1500 ce): The successive rise and fall of empires in Asia, the Fertile Crescent and the Mediterranean, all aligned on travel routes and the Lucky Latitudes, including the rise of Islam. This was the period of the rise of the major religions and the ideas and institutions multiplied the expansion of global reach.
5. The Ocean Age (1500-1800): The explosion of knowledge disseminated by the printing press, the development of sailing vessels into ocean-going ships led the most effective countries to extend their power into the Americas and East Asia, resulting in the expansion of capitalism.
6. The Industrial Age (1800-2000): The steam engine and then the internal combustion engine, the massive growth in food production resulting led to global population growth and increasingly sophisticated financial and political structures and a parade of successive global powers: Great Britain, the United States, China and other East Asian countries.
7. The Digital Age (Twenty-First Century): The shift to an age of global information systems, highly integrated economies, resulting both in political rivalries and the necessity of global political institutions to address global crises such as climate change.

Sachs combines description with quantitative tables and statistics to illustrate trends. His argument is that we have always been a global family (albeit the Americas and Australia and the Pacific Islands being isolated from Africa and Eurasia until the Ocean Age) and human migrations, technological innovations and ever-more sophisticated institutions facilitated global connections, and increasingly global empires and systems. He argues that all these have brought us to a place where we face three major challenges: rising inequality, massive environmental degradation, risks from major geopolitical changes, including the possibility of devastating conflict. He contends for working toward sustainable development with a dynamic and adaptive process of planning on a global scale. He argues for a social-democratic ethos as has contributed to the success of northern European countries. Most fascinating, and a check on the consolidation of power, is his discussion of the importance of subsidiarity, of moving tasks to the most local level compatible with effective management.

I suspect some version of what Sachs proposes may be right. Yet the rise of authoritarian movements, the denial or overly simple explanations of poverty or environmental issues, and the breakdown of international cooperation seems a cause of great concern for me. Sachs offers us a tour de force treatment of the development of globalization through human history. But it seems idealistic in a way that seems to rely on us heeding the "better angels of our nature" if there is such a thing. I wonder if the failure of such optimism to deliver on its promises contributes to the rise of authoritarianism. I wonder if the only hope is a somewhat pragmatic and proximate politics without grand schemes, tyrants or visionaries, a politics of adults who realize all solutions are proximate. Yet that doesn't mean resignation. We can come up with less than perfect political arrangements, less than perfect environmental solutions, and less than perfect economic arrangements. We might do something more sustainable, more just, and more equitable, and probably different than our plans. And reading Sachs, we may have a better sense of the connection of the local and the global, and the ways geography, technology, and our institutions link us together.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. The opinions I have expressed are my own. show less

A tangled mess of a book. It's not that I don't agree with Sachs' worldview, or that I don't find some things to really like about the book. But it just wasn't compelling, mostly because of his inability to go three consecutive paragraphs without introducing some list of 16 or so bullet points to illustrate the issue. You have to hack through these things with a machete, and by the time you do, there's not much left to care about. Add to that the fascinatingly fruity digression into The show more Mindful Economy, and you're bound to start feeling a bit dizzy.

Again, it's not that I disagree with him, even on that hippy-dippy pipe dream. But I would have loved some middle ground. Either we're hacking through a thicket of GDP percentages and 9-point plans, or we're floating in pink clouds of mindfulness. Occasionally he bounces from one to the other with whiplash-inducing speed. Somewhere in between is the book I wish I were reading. show less

This is a truly awful book. My ambitions in life revolve around designing for the developing world so I am extremely passionate about this area. In looking at design I look at many different areas. I look at anthropology, technology, geography, politics, etc. Economics alone cannot begin to describe poverty.

I suppose that maybe the target audience for this book is supposed to be those that are completely unaware of the economic situation involving the West and the rest. However, even in show more this case I think this book does a disservice to those readers because it simplifies everything. I understand some level of simplicity is needed to begin to tackle such a large issue but Sachs often misses the point.

With every chapter I wanted to read on even less. I did not make it past probably page 150. The book started going downhill after I saw the tables concerning Africa's GDP over the last hundred years. Sachs measures well-being solely by economics and this is absolutely ignorant. Growth is relative. It is possible for villages, towns or even countries to subsist rather well with low GDP. The real force at work is globablization. While I take a value-neutral stance on this term, it is evident that it onslaught--while largely poorly moderated by the IMF and World Bank--has devasted the LDCs. Sachs pays little attention to this.

The book is rife with ambiguous and vague language like "some parts of the world achieved modern economic growth while others did not" (pg. 29) What is 'modern growth'? He speaks of this as an achievement which is a bold assumption. Are we to believe that every country should strive for what the West has 'achieved'? A quick look at books like "Natural Capitalism" or anything discussing over-consumption, sustainability or the various other ignored forms of capital (i.e. social, natural, manufactured...) will reveal that Sachs gives a poor standard of achievement. On the same page, Sachs states that "all regions were poor in 1820." What?! That isn't possible. How can any 'economist' make such a claim? Are we now to believe that world was simply 'poor' before the industrial revolution? Again, he ignores the relativity of poverty. Of course all regions were poor by today's standards but is that a good comparison?

This book offers nothing. If one wants to learn about what he is feabily trying to illustrate, look at other books on development, globalization, sustainability and foreign aid. This is a highly subjective and poorly researched book. I suppose if you want the Al Gore, "Inconvenient Truth" approach to poverty then this will be good for you. Littered with misinformation, useless charts, subjective analyses and broad generalizations. But, I would like to think the average person can do better than this. Don't sell yourself short. show less