Common Wealth
by Jeffrey Sachs
The Penguin Press, HK$320
The most accurate advance comment on Common Wealth described it as a 'field manual, a guide book'. That is an apt description. There is nothing ground-breaking here, Jeffrey Sachs avoiding the bombastic, jargon-laden prose favoured by many academics. Sachs, along with Paul Krugman, is among the most readable economists in print.
In clear, forcefully argued sentences he makes interesting yet hardly revolutionary points. In the past 200 years technological advances have far outstripped social advances. Technology has also increased society's impact, generally unfavourably, on the environment, often because of exploitation of resources by the private sector.
On the other hand, allowing common use of resources does not necessarily lead to better stewardship. 'An example of the global commons is the ocean floor beyond national borders, where fishing fleets are free to destroy natural ecosystems as they drag their trawls on the ocean bottom,' he writes.
He nails his colours to the mast when he defends countries with relatively high levels of government intervention. He says social-welfare states have higher living standards and lower poverty rates than those with so-called free-market economies.
