Name: The post-American world
ISBN: 9780393334807

The post-American world

"This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else." So begins Fareed Zakaria's important new work on the era we are now entering. Following on the success of his best-selling The Future of Freedom, Zakaria describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the "rise of the rest"—the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others—as the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world. The tallest buildings, biggest dams, largest-selling movies, and most advanced cell phones are all being built outside the United States. This economic growth is producing political confidence, national pride, and potentially international problems. How should the United States understand and thrive in this rapidly changing international climate? What does it mean to live in a truly global era? Zakaria answers these questions with his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination.

What Hacker News says

ldboothMar 2021

In Fareed Zakaria's book The Post American World Order, he makes a great point that India (services) and China (goods) have been deflationary for certain goods/services in expensive economies. If you think of CPI as an average of deflationary and (local, expensive) inflationary products, the trend we are seeing in the US of large local assets (with local cost basis) versus a cellphone (Chinese cost basis), the stagnant measure of CPI versus the increases we see in local costs of living is better explained. All these metrics are faulted and manipulated.

The underlying desire of capitalist institutions making a markup on every possible local market ("rents") in is inflationary to local costs and when the external markets costs go up, that's when total inflation will go 'shazam'.

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michaelchisariMar 2011

If you haven't read Zakaria's "The Post-American World", I highly recommend it.

I agree with his assessment that the landscape is changing rapidly and profoundly, although I don't know if the resultant loss of economic and political weight means that we can't still have our best days ahead of us.

All that's necessary, I think, is the political will to move forward in the right direction. I would argue that large infrastructure projects in telecommunication and energy, and shifting education goals towards an information economy and away from it's Taylorist origins are most important to be able to compete in the future.

Although even with that, we will probably never have the kind of political dominance we've had in the past. I don't think I've ever had a problem with that.

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jpcx01Nov 2009

Bit overstated, but he raises good points. I'd highly recommend Zakaria's book, "The Post-American World". Really a great book.

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railsjediOct 2008

I'd highly recommend Fareed Zakaria's "Post American World". Give gives good insight into how America rose to power. WWII helped, but it wasn't the defining moment. It was the huge industrial advances at the end of the 19th century that shaped our economic leadership in the world. Before even WWI, we were the top producing nation in the world, with double digit growth rates year after year.

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orionblastarApr 2024

Our economy is in a bubble like everything else. In the 1960s a Big Mac meal cost under a dollar, now in California it is $18. We are headed for a Great Depression as AI and innovation eats jobs, and people will have to learn new skills to find a job.

There is an article called The Rise of the Rest: https://fareedzakaria.com/columns/2008/05/12/the-rise-of-the... that talked about Russia getting more aggressive, and everyone else growing their economies and competing with the USA and Europe. It is a global economy and a global war. It is from this book: https://www.amazon.com/Post-American-World-Rise-Rest/dp/0241...

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gautamnarulaJun 2013

"I believe the world is more dangerous than it used to be, and that as technology develops things generally get more dangerous."

I don't think this is true. A great book that discusses this is Stephen Pinker's "The Better Angels of our Nature," which essentially shows that we're living in the least violent, most peaceful era of human history. Fareed Zakaria's "The Post-American World" also discusses how we're currently in the most peaceful, economically prosperous time in world history. Despite the violence and unrest presented daily in news media, life is far better now than it used to be by almost any metric.

That's why I agree with the people referenced in Sam's second footnote, who believe "the amount of effort spent on the war on terror is disproportionate to the actual risk." As terrible as the September 11 attacks were, ten times as many people die in car accidents every year. David Foster Wallace's brief essay, "Just Asking," really hits this point [1].

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/just-ask...;

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