10 results for "Public Policy"

The great transformation: the political and economic origins of our time

Polanyi, Karl
"In this classic work of economic history and social theory, Karl Polanyi tracks the economic and social changes brought about by the "great transformation" of the Industrial Revolution. He pays particular attention to capitalism's rise and its role in fundamentally altering life after the Industrial Revolution. This seminal analysis explains not only the deficiencies of the self-regulating market, but the potentially dire social consequences of untempered market capitalism"-- Provided by publisher.
Beacon Press 2025-07-08 360 pages

Manipulation: what it is, why it's bad, what to do about it

Sunstein, Cass R.
"New technologies are offering companies, politicians, and others unprecedented opportunity to manipulate us. Sometimes we are given the illusion of power - of freedom - through choice, yet the game is rigged, pushing us in specific directions that lead to less wealth, worse health, and weaker democracy. In, Manipulation, nudge theory pioneer and New York Times bestselling author, Cass Sunstein, offers a new definition of manipulation for the digital age, explains why it is wrong; and shows what we can do about it. He reveals how manipulation compromises freedom and personal agency, while threatening to reduce our well-being; he explains the difference between manipulation and unobjectionable forms of influence, including 'nudges'; and he lifts the lid on online manipulation and manipulation by artificial intelligence, algorithms, and generative AI, as well as threats posed by deepfakes, social media, and 'dark patterns,' which can trick people into giving up time and money. Drawing on decades of groundbreaking research in behavioral science, this landmark book outlines steps we can take to counteract manipulation in our daily lives and offers guidance to protect consumers, investors, and workers." --
Cambridge University Press 2025-08-28 219 pages

Climate justice: what rich nations owe the world - and the future

Sunstein, Cass R.
The social cost of carbon: The most important number you've never heard of—and what it means. If you’re injuring someone, you should stop—and pay for the damage you’ve caused. Why does this simple proposition, generally accepted, not apply to climate change? In Climate Justice , a bracing challenge to status quo thinking on the ethics of climate change, renowned author and legal scholar Cass Sunstein clearly frames what’s at stake and lays out the moral imperative: When it comes to climate change, everyone must be counted equally, regardless of when they live or where they live—which means that wealthy nations, which have disproportionately benefited from greenhouse gas emissions, are obliged to help future generations and people in poor nations that are particularly vulnerable.
The MIT Press 2025 195 pages

Envisioning Real Utopias

Wright, Erik Olin
Rising inequality of income and power, along with the recent convulsions in the finance sector, have made the search for alternatives to unbridled capitalism more urgent than ever. Yet there has been a global retreat by the Left: on the assumption that liberal capitalism is the only game in town, political theorists tend to dismiss as utopian any attempt to rethink our social and economic relations. As Fredric Jameson first argued, it is now easier for us to imagine the end of the world than an alternative to capitalism. Erik Olin Wright’s Envisioning Real Utopias is a comprehensive assault on the quietism of contemporary social theory. Building on a lifetime’s work analyzing the class system in the developed world, as well as exploring the problem of the transition to a socialist alternative, Wright has now completed a systematic reconstruction of the core values and feasible goals for Left theorists and political actors. Envisioning Real Utopias aims to put the social back into socialism, laying the foundations for a set of concrete, emancipatory alternatives to the capitalist system. Characteristically rigorous and engaging, this will become a landmark of social thought for the twenty-first century.
Verso Books 2010-06-14 416 pages

The Making of Global Capitalism The Political Economy of American Empire

Sam Gindin,Leo Panitch
The all-encompassing embrace of world capitalism at the beginning of the twenty-first century was generally attributed to the superiority of competitive markets. Globalization had appeared to be the natural outcome of this unstoppable process. But today, with global markets roiling and increasingly reliant on state intervention to stay afloat, it has become clear that markets and states aren’t straightforwardly opposing forces. In this groundbreaking work, Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin demonstrate the intimate relationship between modern capitalism and the American state, including its role as an “informal empire” promoting free trade and capital movements. Through a powerful historical survey, they show how the US has superintended the restructuring of other states in favor of competitive markets and coordinated the management of increasingly frequent financial crises. The Making of Global Capitalism , through its highly original analysis of the first great economic crisis of the twenty-first century, identifies the centrality of the social conflicts that occur within states rather than between them. These emerging fault lines hold out the possibility of new political movements transforming nation states and transcending global markets.
Verso Books 2025-08-05 480 pages

The reproach of hunger: food, justice, and money in the twenty-first century

Rieff, David
"In a groundbreaking book based on six years of reporting, leading expert on humanitarian aid and development David Rieff offers a review of whether the end of extreme poverty and widespread hunger are within our reach. Some of the most brilliant scientists, world politicians, and development experts agree that the eradication of hunger is an essential task for the new millennium. Yet in the last decade, the prices of wheat, soy and rice have soared. This has condemned the hundreds of millions of the world's population who live on less than one dollar per day to a state of hunger and insecurity. Rieff searches for the causes of this food security crisis, as well as what lies behind the failures to respond to disaster: failures to address climate change, poor governance, and misguided optimism. Rieff cautions against the increased privatization of aid, as well as the interventions of celebrity campaigners, whose business-led solutions rob development of political urgency. He dismisses the idle hope of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett that food scarcity can be solved by technological innovation alone. The path ahead, Rieff reminds us, demands we rethink the fundamental causes of the world's grotesque inequalities and understand that what is at stake is a political challenge we are failing to confront".
Simon & Schuster 2015-10-06 402 pages

Making Economic Sense

Rothbard, Murray N.
Do you ever watch the business news and think: what would Murray Rothbard say about this? He remained a news junky all his life, even while working on his grand scholarly treatises. He was no academic snob; he believed, like Mises, that economics was the business of everyone. It is in this book that you find his running commentary on all the economic issues that vexed the world between 1982 and 1995. They are the same issues in the headlines today! The goal of this hefty tome (551pp) by this master economist is to communicate with the public about economic theory and policy, in the form of articles that appeared in the Mises Institute's monthly .This is the expanded Second Edition, and it includes 117 articles--several additional ones that were left out of the original. It includes "Taking Money Back," a 25-page populist case for the gold standard, his famous "Protectionism and the Destruction of Prosperity," along with a new essay on fixed-exchange rates, and an obituary of Ludwig von Mises. It also has a new introduction by Robert Murphy. For this reason, it is nearly 100 pages longer.No economist has ever written so clearly about subjects usually wrapped in mystery. Even when discussing exchange rates, interest rates, and central banking, Rothbard is clear and persuasive. That's what makes this book so wonderful, and so dangerous to the purveyors of economic fallacy and those who enforce their ideas on the public. Robert Murphy has written that it was this book that is most likely to get people interested in economic issues. Rothbard's prose is witty and strong, and his logic is compelling at every step. "Divided up topically, the book touches upon almost every important policy issue that has been before the public during the last decade... Reading through these over 100 articles reminded me just how deep my intellectual debt to him really was, and how richer the cause of freedom has been because of his writings over the decades." Richard Ebeling, Foundation for Economic Education. With a new introduction by Robert Murphy
Ludwig von Mises Institute 2006-01-01 534 pages