Ryan Avent – författare

'Ryan Avent is a superb writer ... highly readable and lively' Thomas PikettyTo work is human. It puts food on the table, meaningfully structures our days, and strengthens our social ties. When work works, it provides the basis for a stable social order.Yet the world of work is changing fast, and in unexpected ways. With rapid advances in information technology, huge swathes of the job market - from cleaners and drivers to journalists and doctors - are being automated, or soon will be: a staggering 47% of American employment is at risk of automation within the next two to three decades. Yet at the same time millions more jobs are being created. What does the future of work hold?In this illuminating new investigation of what this revolution in work means for us, Ryan Avent lays bare the contradictions in today's global labour market. From Volvo's operations in Sweden to the vast 'Factory Asia' hub in China, via Indian development economists and Silicon Valley venture capitalists, he offers the first clear explanation of the state we're in-and how we could get out of it.With an ever-increasing divide between the rich and the rest, Avent states, something has got to give. The traditional escape routes - improved education, wage subsidies, and new industries built by entrepreneurs-will no longer work as they once did. In order to navigate our way across today's rapidly transforming economic landscape, he argues, we must revisit our previous experiences of massive technological change - and radically reassess the very idea of how, and why, we work.

How a society’s capacity for belief forms the foundation of its successDo you struggle to find reasons to feel optimistic about the future? Are you trying to understand the creeping institutional dysfunction we see the world over? In this book, Ryan Avent explores how an unswerving confidence in systems of liberal democracy and free market capitalism—which he terms the “Modern Faith”—has left many Western countries struggling to deal with democratic backsliding and social dysfunction. Those seeking the certainty of another technocratic solution, however, are searching in the wrong place. The true foundation of our prosperity, Avent argues, is not in an ability to reason our way to better policies and institutions but rather lies in the nature and distribution of our beliefs.Drawing from economics, history, philosophy, biology, and much else besides, Avent shows that our capacity for belief is what connects us, guides our behavior moment by moment and year by year, and determines how well we cooperate in the production of social and economic complexity. Far from standing in opposition to science and reason, faith is central to the human endeavor. By understanding the nature of faith and how it forms the fabric of our society, we can better find ways to come together to tackle the global crises of rising authoritarianism and climate change that threaten us all, and find hope within one another.