Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity

TLDR

Fukuyama argues that the end of the Cold War heralds a struggle for position in 21st‑century capitalism and that economic life is deeply intertwined with cultural life, warning that unchecked individualism could harm the U.S. economy. The book aims to explain the social principles of economic life and provide guidance for winning the forthcoming struggle for world dominance. He analyzes diverse national cultures, challenging left and right orthodoxies, to uncover principles that foster social and economic prosperity.

Abstract

In his bestselling The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama argued that the end of the Cold War would also mean the beginning of a struggle for position in the rapidly emerging order of 21st-century capitalism. In Trust, a penetrating assessment of the emerging global economic order after History, he explains the social principles of economic life and tells us what we need to know to win the coming struggle for world dominance. Challenging orthodoxies of both the left and right, Fukuyama examines a wide range of national cultures in order to divine the underlying principles that foster social and economic prosperity. Insisting that we cannot divorce economic life from cultural life, he contends that in an era when social capital may be as important as physical capital, only those societies with a high degree of social trust will be able to create the flexible, large-scale business organizations that are needed to compete in the new global economy. A brilliant study of the interconnectedness of economic life with cultural life, Trust is also an essential antidote to the increasing drift of American culture into extreme forms of individualism, which, if unchecked, will have dire consequences for the nation's economic health.