What is the main message of The Raging 2020s?

The main message of The Raging 2020s is to understand and navigate the digital and technological revolution of this decade.

How long does it take to read The Raging 2020s?

The reading time for The Raging 2020s varies, but it would take several hours. The Blinkist summary can be read in just 15 minutes.

Who is the author of The Raging 2020s?

The author of The Raging 2020s is Alec Ross.

Economics

The Raging 2020s Book Summary - The Raging 2020s Book explained in key points

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The Raging 2020s summary

Name: The Raging 2020s
Rating: 3.8 (96 reviews)
Author: Alec Ross

Alec Ross

Companies, Countries, People – and the Fight for Our Future

3.8 (96 ratings)

28 mins

Brief summary

The Raging 2020s by Alec Ross is a thought-provoking book that explores the disruptive forces shaping the current decade. He discusses tech advancements, politics, and social change and how they are impacting the world's economic, social, and political landscape.

Topics

US Politics Socialism & Capitalist Critique US Economics International Economics

Table of Contents

The Raging 2020s
Summary of 8 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 8

What’s in it for me? Understand why the social contract is broken and how it can be fixed.

Consider a simple, everyday commute.

Say you’re living in the US. When you step out the door, you hop into a car that may have been designed in Japan or Germany and manufactured in Alabama. The government constructed both the roads you drive on⁠ and the laws that ensure everyone drives safely. If you get into an accident, you’re protected by airbags that a car company developed in accordance with US government mandates.

This example illustrates the complex yet seamless web of connections and collaborations among individuals, businesses, and governments that make our lives simpler and better. But in recent years, that web has frayed. Now, incentives are warped, infrastructure falls by the wayside, and everyone is losing out. That problem –⁠ and how it can be fixed –⁠ is what these blinks are all about.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

which economist you can blame for the current predicament;
what a Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich has to do with taxes; and
how China’s government provides fodder for artificial intelligence.

Social contracts keep societies functioning,⁠ but sometimes they break.

What’s the one thing that glues together all societies, past and present? It isn’t religion, culture, or written laws, but a social contract.

A social contract encompasses all the written and unwritten rules at play in a society. It’s what balances the rights and powers of citizens, government, and businesses. It outlines which duties belong to each sphere.

A strong social contract enables humanity to live and work together in harmony. But social contracts are always being tested and renegotiated as societies change and new technologies develop. Sometimes, there’s a long pause when a society is still using an old, broken social contract and hasn’t yet come up with one to replace it. Right now, that’s exactly where the United States and other developed nations find themselves.

The key message here is: Social contracts keep societies functioning,⁠ but sometimes they break.

The most recent American social contract was developed during the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s, when manufacturing boomed and new technologies developed at a breakneck pace. During this time, Western economies transformed from agricultural to industrial societies and the previous social contract became obsolete.

This early stage of industrialization became known as Engels’ Pause, after the Marxist philosopher Friedrich Engels. Engels’ Pause was characterized by inequality and squalor. The social contract hadn’t yet caught up. Benefits like worker’s pensions, antitrust protections, income tax, child-labor laws, and the minimum wage were still years away.

Once societies introduced these improvements, citizens finally began to flourish. An equilibrium was established, balancing the powers of governments, corporations, and individuals.

Developed societies now find themselves in a second Engels’ Pause. After the end of the Cold War, it seemed that capitalism was victorious once and for all. As a result, government went on a deregulation spree, giving businesses greater and greater power,⁠ which they’re now abusing.

Companies are free to make irresponsible decisions knowing that the government will always be there to bail them out –⁠ with taxpayer money, of course. Multinational corporations are as big as countries, and they often have an outsized influence in geopolitics. Over the last thirty years, inequality has skyrocketed: the top 1 percent have grown $21 trillion richer, while the bottom 50 percent are $900 billion poorer.

These are just a few of the problems caused by the fraying of a social contract that’s in desperate need of mending.

Today’s companies care about little other than shareholder profit.

For most of human history, Type 1 diabetes was a death sentence. The condition is one where a person’s body can’t produce enough insulin, which can lead to a coma and even death. Fortunately, in 1922, scientists discovered a way to extract insulin from cows and administer it to humans to control the condition.

Those scientists realized they’d created a life-saving miracle drug. So they decided to sell their patent to the University of Toronto, for a grand total of. . . three dollars.

Governments have become weak and ineffective as companies have grown stronger.

Hurricane Maria struck the island of Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017. The storm’s winds reached a fearful 150 miles per hour, and it brought destruction to match. Just under two million citizens were abruptly left without access to drinkable water, the island’s power grid was knocked completely out of commission, and people were dying.

Yet, despite that extraordinary need, it took the United States government four whole days to send shipments of food, water, and equipment. It took almost two weeks for a navy hospital ship to arrive. And within a month, a government agency calculated that it needed to be distributing 2.2 million meals a day but it was only doing two hundred thousand.

Employees must have a greater say in the workplace.

On December 30, 1936, workers at the GM automotive production facility in Flint, Michigan, locked themselves inside their factory. Production suddenly came to a standstill. Within days, strikes had spread to other nearby factories.

GM was in a panic. They tried cutting the heat to the Flint plant, hoping that the cold would drive the workers out –⁠ yet they stayed put. Ditto when the Flint police stormed the facility and sprayed tear gas at the strikers.

Corporations engage in highly complex tax avoidance schemes.

Imagine you’re a pizza delivery driver. Whenever you get a tip, you have to share 20 percent with the owner of the pizza place. Any job-related costs –⁠ like gas money –⁠ can be taken out of the total before your boss takes her cut. So say you make 25 dollars in tips one night and spend 5 dollars on gas. You get back that 5 dollars first, then your boss takes 20 percent of the remaining 20. She ends the night with 4 dollars and you get 16.

Now extrapolate. Imagine you’re a multinational corporation and your boss, the pizza shop owner, is the government. This is how taxes work in an ideal world. But multinational corporations don’t tend to play by the rules.

The global tax system can and should be reformed.

In 2014, Ireland closed one of the tax loopholes that enabled the Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich. And what happened to Google as a result? Well, countries that had been cheated out of their taxes were mad. Italy and France both launched tax fraud investigations against Google, which ultimately resulted in the company paying over a billion euros in back taxes.

Yet we can’t quite say that the “good side” ultimately won. Because for every Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich that comes to light and makes headlines, there are countless other tax-related schemes that enable the world’s wealthiest companies and individuals to store their taxes offshore. Solving this problem will require a coordinated global effort.

Businesses and governments need to work together to develop digital power.

Chris Lynch never envisioned himself working for the US government. Like many in the tech industry, he was skeptical of state authority. But after he spent a month and a half with the USDS –⁠ the United States Digital Services –⁠ everything changed.

The first problem Lynch worked on involved the way veterans’ medical records were shared. The Veterans Affairs Department could only accept records in PDF format, but sometimes the Pentagon sent them as JPEGs. This meant that certain patients wound up with incomplete records, which sometimes caused doctors to mistreat them.

Countries across the world must decide whether they’ll adopt closed or open social contracts.

In the wake of the Cold War, the United States became a beacon of stability and prosperity – for a time. But it ultimately failed to change and adapt its social contract for the twenty-first century. The problems that have resulted from that,⁠ such as growing inequality and the rise of populism,⁠ mean the US is no longer a model society.

Two alternate models have risen in its place, and countries must decide which they’ll choose. On the one hand, there is the open model, which welcomes innovation, investment, and free speech and offers public benefits. And on the other, there is the closed model, in which governments are authoritarian and discourage dissent in an effort to quickly amass greater geopolitical power.

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What is The Raging 2020s about?

The Raging 2020s (2021) is an autopsy of the American social contract, which once kept companies, governments, and individuals in stable harmony but has since broken down. In particular, it describes how the power of corporations has expanded in recent years while federal might has waned –⁠ and how the result is that companies have more control over people’s lives than ever before. We must work to restore the balance and write a new social contract for the modern age.

The Raging 2020s Review

The Raging 2020s (2022) is an insightful book that examines the unprecedented challenges and transformations of our current era. Here's why this book is worth reading:

It offers a fresh perspective on key issues such as technology, geopolitics, and social movements, helping readers understand the complex dynamics of our time.
Through a combination of in-depth research, expert analysis, and compelling anecdotes, the book provides a comprehensive understanding of the forces shaping our world.
With its provocative insights and thought-provoking arguments, it sparks critical thinking and prompts readers to reevaluate their assumptions about the future.

Who should read The Raging 2020s?

Citizens concerned about the increasing power of corporations
Current or aspiring politicians and activists
Anyone who sees the value in capitalism but thinks it can be improved

About the Author

Alec Ross is an entrepreneur, professor, and former technology policy advisor for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the Obama administration. He is a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Bologna in Italy and a Board Partner at the venture capital firm Amplo. His 2016 book Industries of the Future is a New York Times best seller and was named Book of the Year by the TriBeCa Film Festival’s Disruptive Innovation Foundation.

Categories with The Raging 2020s

Economics Politics

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