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Crack-Up Capitalism
- Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 9 hrs
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Crack-Up Capitalism
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Publisher's Summary
Brought to you by Penguin.
Look at a map of the world and you'll see a neat patchwork of nation-states. But this is not where power actually resides. From the 1990s onwards, globalization has shattered the map, leading to an explosion of new legal entities: tax havens, free ports, city-states, gated enclaves and special economic zones. These new spaces are freed from ordinary forms of regulation, taxation and mutual obligation—and with them, ultracapitalists believe that it is possible to escape the bonds of democratic government and oversight altogether.
Historian Quinn Slobodian follows the most notorious radical libertarians—from Milton Friedman to Peter Thiel—around the globe as they search for the perfect home for their free market fantasy. The hunt leads from Hong Kong in the 1970s to South Africa in the late days of apartheid, from the neo-Confederate South to the medieval City of London, and finally into the world's oceans and war zones, charting the relentless quest for a blank slate where capitalism and democracy can be finally uncoupled.
Crack-Up Capitalism is a propulsive history of the recent past, and an alarming view of our near future.
Critic Reviews
"Ranging from Liechtenstein to Somalia, and from Hong Kong to Silicon Valley, Quinn Slobodian's Crack-Up Capitalism exposes how zones of exception promise capitalism an escape from the confines of the modern state and the constraints of democracy. Revelatory reading. A worthy successor to Slobodian's brilliant Globalists." (Adam Tooze, author of Crashed)
"Excellent... A new generation of swashbuckling billionaires entertain the prospect of secession, using their money to realize fantasies of escape, whether through seasteading or spaceships." (Jennifer Szalai)
"Slobodian has written a fascinating account of the sheer hubris of the market radicals who have sought to free capitalism from democracy first by transforming the world's political geography and now by abandoning the material world. He tells this important story with verve and considerable insight." (Helen Thompson)