Revolutionary Wealth: How It Will Be Created And How It Will Change Our Lives, by Alvin And Heidi Toffler

Among the most idiotic people in existence are those who pretend to know the future and be able to predict it and lack any sort of understanding about what they are talking about while simultaneously seeking to undermine the ground upon which they stand as wannabe prophets. This book was written by two people who have to be among the most mind-numbingly ignorant people ever to seek (much less acquire) a reputation as being sages of the future who can predict future trends. There are at least two central follies that the authors fall into in this book that directly sabotage their efforts both to predict the future as well as provide the reader with worthwhile insight about the subject matter of the book. Ideally, people who write about the sort of wealth that can be provided by the information economy (which itself would be a worthwhile subject and what I thought that this work would be about) should have a firm foundation on the two bases upon which a sound understanding would rest. The first of these would, of course, be the foundations of economics themselves, in understanding what drives wealth in general, and the second of these would be an understanding of the way in which the knowledge economy, like all of the other waves that the authors have written about before, are based on previous achievements within a given society.

Unfortunately, despite being self-professed experts in both of these (and numerous other) areas, the authors show themselves to be entirely clueless about what they are talking about, and more interested in pandering to leftist occupy thinkers and showing themselves to be fashionably left-wing and anti-capitalist than they are interested in showing how it is that the knowledge economy can lead to genuine wealth in a way that does not require the sort of grifting that the authors engage in. Given that the authors are hostile towards markets and capitalism, viewing it as part of that “obsolete knowledge” that the authors harp on so often, it is an open question as to how anyone is to get wealth. Without firm understanding of and protection of property rights, no one will get any wealth aside from the corrupt wealth that comes from being a crony rentier connected to ruling elites, something that is far beyond the capabilities of common people, the sort of common people the authors claim–falsely–to celebrate as having the potential to profit off of the rise of knowledge as a means of production. The authors also stumble in not understanding that the sort of individual-focused knowledge-based production that is characteristic of what they view as the “third wave” of human society depends on the first and second waves also working well, since one cannot have personalized production without access to competent industrial production and agriculture as a whole. In the author’s rush to promote the politics of the new, they forget that human development stands on previous developments and that without making appropriate progress one does not reach the highest levels. At least the authors are wise to be suspicious of anti-globalist trends as well as dodgy Chinese corrupt practices, though not nearly suspicious enough.

In terms of its contents, this book is about 400 pages long, and is divided into ten parts and 50 short chapters. After an introduction, the book begins with a discussion about the supposed revolution (I) of contemporary wealth in intelligence (1), as well as the relationship between wealth and desire (2). The authors then try to look at deep fundamentals (II), including waves of wealth (3) as well as supposedly obsolete fundamentals (4). This is followed by a section of the book that talks about how different speeds of work rearrange time (5) and create problems in synchronized behavior inside and outside of organizations (III). The author then talks about the stretching place that results from dissolving borders and new labor relations (IV). The authors then discuss trusting knowledge as if they are providing trustworthy knowledge themselves (V), which is highly dubious. After that the authors talk about prosuming (VI), which the authors appear to think provides ways that businesses are getting a free lunch, completely misunderstanding and misapplying the term, since effort is clearly involved in prosuming, thus making it not free. The authors spend a few chapters talking about decadence, recognizing it as a problem but not really having anything worthwhile to say about it given their anti-moral perspective of viewing godly morality as obsolete (VII). This is followed by some terrible prognostications about capitalism’s supposed dark future (VIII), as well as some equally poor takes on poverty’s future (IX). The authors seem not to understand that without secure property rights that no one is going to make much money at all in a future knowledge economy aside from those with the power and their cronies, which is a dark future indeed. The authors attempt to close the book with prophecies about China, Japan, Europe, America, and the rest of the world (X), before ending with notes, a bibliography, acknowledgements, and an index.