The Trap

by James Goldsmith

Book Overview

Increasing violence, growing poverty in urban slums, environmental deterioration and a general realization that something fundamental has gone wrong.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786701854
• ISBN13: 9780786701858
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers
• Length: 207 Pages
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.7" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

James Goldsmith Rocks

Sir James explains the way the world economy should run.Read his ideas and see if you agree.

How our Values have been turned upside down by industrial society

Mr. Goldsmith was a private equity billionaire who made his fortune buying companies and assets from developed and developing countries around the world. Yet despite this success, his book openly questions the notion of unfettered global markets. He describes how the shift from locally produced goods to goods produced anywhere in the world could destroy the prosperous economies of the developed world that were built up over centuries. This will happen, according to him, because global free trade will create unbridgeable divide between the rich over the ordinary people. The rich will stay rich by investing their capital into Multinational Companies. In order to compete and make profits, these companies will exploiting ever cheaper sources of labour in developing countries. In the other hand, the ordinary people in developed countries will lose their jobs because the cost of their salaries are too expensive in a global economy that include 4 billion people wiling to work for "almost nothing". Mr. Goldsmith not only lays out arguments against global free trade. He also gives his rationale for why industrial agriculture and nuclear power are bad ideas. While many see these three issues as defining visions of modern progress, Mr. Goldsmith, suggests that there is a dangerous "inversion of values" behind these three issues. Instead of measuring progress in term of mankind's well-being and social stability, our modern industrial society has made economic growth and the development of new technologies the key goals for society. This "inversion of values" is the root cause for modern problems such as urban slums and enviromental deterioration. "Rising long-term unemployment, increasing violence, growing proverty in urban slums, environmental deterioration and a general realization that something fundamental has gone wrong..." Despite the gloominess of the message, reading Sir James Goldsmith's book, The Trap, originally published 1993 is both an educational and entertaining experience. Check out this Charlie Rose interview with James Goldmith on Youtube, which including a lively debate with Laura Tyson, President Clinton's Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, and I think you'll see why! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdwmI9O4LEA

A must read for subcribers to 'conventonal wisdom'

An excellent format where conventional wisdom on many of our society's complex problems and their popular solutions are de-bunked by an eloquent criti