Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

so many people end up trapped in local maxima. The argument of Book II is that the machinery of consumer capitalism is designed to keep us stuck here, that the moat is only ever getting wider, and this is compounded by the fact that we suck at making trade-offs across time—at weighing the second, third and nth-order consequences of our actions. Thi

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Alienation has become a plague: Many Americans no longer believe in America. That’s largely because, I argue here, they no longer have the freedom to take responsibility in their daily choices. Persistent failures feed the frustration and seed a culture of distrust. Instead of focusing on how to make things work, Americans obsess about what might g

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From this point on, growth was not just good, but the primary aim of political and social systems. We all know now where that has taken us, but some saw it early, including the economist and retail analyst Victor Lebow in 1955: Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of

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