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  • Mass Flourishing

  • How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge, and Change
  • By: Edmund Phelps
  • Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
  • Length: 16 hrs and 26 mins
  • 2.7 out of 5 stars (3 ratings)
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Mass Flourishing cover art

Mass Flourishing

By: Edmund Phelps
Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
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Summary

In this book, Nobel Prize-winning economist Edmund Phelps draws on a lifetime of thinking to make a sweeping new argument about what makes nations prosper--and why the sources of that prosperity are under threat today. Why did prosperity explode in some nations between the 1820s and 1960s, creating not just unprecedented material wealth but "flourishing"--meaningful work, self-expression, and personal growth for more people than ever before? Phelps makes the case that the wellspring of this flourishing was modern values such as the desire to create, explore, and meet challenges. These values fueled the grassroots dynamism that was necessary for widespread, indigenous innovation. Most innovation wasn't driven by a few isolated visionaries like Henry Ford; rather, it was driven by millions of people empowered to think of, develop, and market innumerable new products and processes, and improvements to existing ones. Mass flourishing--a combination of material well-being and the "good life" in a broader sense--was created by this mass innovation.

Yet indigenous innovation and flourishing weakened decades ago. In America, evidence indicates that innovation and job satisfaction have decreased since the late 1960s, while postwar Europe has never recaptured its former dynamism. The reason, Phelps argues, is that the modern values underlying the modern economy are under threat by a resurgence of traditional, corporatist values that put the community and state over the individual. The ultimate fate of modern values is now the most pressing question for the West: Will Western nations recommit themselves to modernity, grassroots dynamism, indigenous innovation, and widespread personal fulfillment, or will we go on with a narrowed innovation that limits flourishing to a few?

A book of immense practical and intellectual importance, Mass Flourishing is essential reading for anyone who cares about the sources of prosperity and the future of the West.

©2013 Edmund S. Phelps (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

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Cannot get engaged enough to complete the book

What disappointed you about Mass Flourishing?

I can’t help feeling that this is a waste of an opportunity for an intellectual and experienced professor to make an engaging narrative contribution to the economic debate. The narrative meanders without drawing you in to understanding the point and I found myself continually checking out and having to re-listen. This is the first book I will give up on just a quarter of the way in. There are so many others that I want to read and its simply not worth the effort. Having looked through other reviews I am still at pains to extract the key message. This is a great shame as I suspect there could be something of merit to glean. I disagree with other reviewers, I didn’t find the reading performance well done either.

What will your next listen be?

Hopes and Prospects by Noam Chomsky
or Brave New World

Would you be willing to try another one of Stephen Hoye’s performances?

It would depend on how important the book was but possibly not.

You didn’t love this book--but did it have any redeeming qualities?

not far enough in to comment

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Interesting but digressive

The central idea is interesting but the digressions wander too far. Good narration of difficult audio material.

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