The World in 2020 [antikvár]

Preface the impetus for writing this book came from a conversation at an Oxford conference in September 1991. I had been talking about future developments in international finance and was asked if I could recommend any good books on the subject. I couldn't . . . and so I thought I had better try and write one. What I have written differs from most exercises in futurology. These either take the form of scenario building, where different possibilities are outlined and the reader is left to choose between them, or they paint a picture of exaggerated optimism or pessimism. The first approach is a useful one for businesses as a way of outlining the range of possibilities for which they might plan - excellent work is done in this field by Shell, which pioneered the approach, and by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris, which held a conference in the summer of 1991 on long-range prospects for the world economy, and to whom I owe a considerable debt. But scenario-building is unsatisfying: some may well be more or less right, but others will be spectacularly wrong. The second approach is equally unsatisfactory because the authors tend to have a powerfully opinionated view of the future which readers are obliged to accept: the future will be wonderful, or it will be dreadful, and all the evidence is piled up to support the view. I recognize the genre - I have contributed to it myself in the past. I have tried to find a middle way, first by looking at the world as it is now, then by examining the various forces for change and trying to judge how these forces will alter the world over the next generation, and finally by drawing attention to some choices the industrial world in particular has to make. I know this book has weaknesses of its own - many of the details will turn out to be wrong, but it would worry me more if, through some flaw in the analysis, I had failed to spot some really big global change. I have focused principally on the present developed countries and those which are likely to become developed within the next thirty XJ