Globalization enabled COVID-19 to spread across the world in months, but also allowed scientists to develop vaccines in less than a year. The takeaway from Columbia University’s Jeffrey Sachs is that globalization has the capacity “to improve the human condition while bringing undoubted threats as well.” That “outsourcing” isn’t an entry in his index is a sign of his optimism about technology’s ability to end poverty. At the same time, he acknowledges that “inequality has soared alongside economic growth,” which he fears (with good reason) will be exacerbated by robotics, AI and other developments. One of the book’s strengths is its awareness that to some extent global economies have spanned portions of the globe since the Neolithic age.
