Bøker av Fred Harrison

Western civilisation is threatened by the cannibalistic phase of what economists call free riding (or rent seeking), and which the author characterises as the culture of cheating. This culture was the source of the social pathologies that caused the collapse of the civilisations of antiquity, and the Fall of Rome. Fred Harrison explains that the global house price peak in 2026 will provoke the Great Convergence of four existential crises - social, economic, climatic and demographic. That convergence will overwhelm governments and result in the collapse of western civilisation, and may even threaten the viability of humanity itself. But there is just enough time to mobilise people''s understanding of the driving force behind this cataclysm, and to institute the financial reforms that would rebuild social resilience. The democracies, however, will have to overcome the continuing threat from Donald Trump - the arch rent seeker - and the policy paralysis that afflicts governance today. The Westminster model is interrogated to reveal how the aristocracy of old, who grabbed the commons and turned the peasants into hostages, produced a political system that is not fit to meet the needs of the 21st century. The author deconstructs the history of the Mother of Parliaments to lay bare the character of the power that inflicts poverty and premature death on millions of people in the rich nations. That politics, he claims, is guilty of the greatest crime against humanity.

There are few books that can claim to have changed the transport policy for London and the UK. Don Riley's Taken for a Ride is one such book. First published in 2001, a year after the opening of the then controversial Jubilee Line Extension, in London, Riley documented how new transport systems deliver extraordinary profits. As Taken for a Ride explains, taxpayers provide the funds from which private landowners profit. Taken for a Ride has been fully updated with a new introduction by Fred Harrison, one of the world's top economists, a postscript by Dave Wetzel, former vice chair of Transport for London, and an in-depth interview with Steve Norris, the transport minister who gained approval for the Jubilee Line Extension. Crossrail data demonstrates that Don Riley was right 20 years ago, and that we, as taxpayers, are being robbed of the gains that come from well-designed transport projects. Riley knew of the extraordinary gains available from good transport projects because he made massive profits on his properties. In this quietly revolutionary book, Riley lays out a case for unleashing an revolution by changing the tax system so that people are rewarded for their efforts

The author was the first to forecast (in 1997) the events that ruptured the global economy in 2008 by applying an analysis that exposes the fault lines in the structure of the market economy. Now, he extends his analysis to the future of the West, to evaluate fears from distinguished commentators who claim that European civilisation is in danger of being eclipsed. He concludes that the West is at a dangerous tipping point and provides empirical and theoretical evidence to warrant such an alarming conclusion. But he also explains why it is not too late to prevent the looming social catastrophe. Attributing the present crisis to a social process of cheating, he develops a synthesis of the social and natural sciences to show how the market system can be reformed. He introduces the concept of organic finance, which prescribes reforms capable of delivering both sustainable growth, with a more equitable distribution of wealth, and respect for other life forms. To explain the persistent failure to resolve protracted social and environmental crises, the author introduces a theory of social trauma. Populations have been destabilised by the coercive loss of land to the point where they have lost their traditional reference points. No longer able to live by the laws of nature, they are forced to conform to laws that consolidate the privileges of those who had cheated them of their birthright: access to nature's resources. Many pathological consequences flow from this tearing of people from their social and ecological habitats. To recover from this state of trauma, the author argues, people need to use the new tools of communication, such as social media, to regain control over their future destiny through a kind of collective psychosocial therapy. The author challenges the view that the West can climb out of depression by applying the financial measures known as "austerity". He outlines a new strategy that would restore full employment and reverse the decline in middle class living standards in Europe and North America.

To overcome the economic aftermath of Covid-19 and empower people to "build back better", our world needs a new social paradigm. That model would need to launch humanity on to a moral growth path by enabling societies to survive the looming existential crises which, Fred Harrison reveals, will converge as a result of the peak in house prices in 2026. That paradigm exists, explains the author, in the form of a financial anti-dote to what economists call "rent seeking". In testing his thesis, the author discovered that the world''s systemic crises originated in a single cause. Free riding is an anti-social form of behaviour that incubated the social, demographic and environmental threats to life on Earth. A single financial reform would deliver the synergy to simultaneously neutralise the cannibalistic phase into which free riding has consigned our world. It would do so by transforming governance to serve the common good. The author provides an enriched theory of evolution, which reveals the blueprint that would empower people to reframe behaviour and heal the damage inflicted on nature and society.

Shows that large scale infrastructure projects can be made self-funding. This book suggests that infrastructure projects bring about a large increase in the value of adjoining land. It argues that a fairer and more efficient means to fund infrastructure projects is to capture and use the increases in land values that they bring.