Jackson: Here’s a wild statistic for you. In the last 30 years, the top one percent of Americans got $21 trillion richer. The bottom fifty percent? They got $900 billion poorer. Olivia: Wow. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a seismic shift. Jackson: Exactly. And the scary part is, that’s not a glitch in the system. That's the system working as designed. Today, we're exploring the blueprint of that design. Olivia: That staggering statistic comes right from the heart of the book we’re diving into today: The Raging 2020s: Companies, Countries, People—and the Fight for Our Future by Alec Ross. Jackson: And Ross isn't just an academic pontificating from an ivory tower. This is a guy who was the Senior Advisor for Innovation to Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State. He's been inside the rooms where these global policies are shaped, which gives his analysis a really sharp, insider edge. Olivia: Precisely. He’s seen firsthand how the gears of global power work, and in this book, he’s basically opening up the machine to show us why it's grinding to a halt and spitting out so much inequality and anger. He argues this imbalance starts with something we all rely on but almost never see: the social contract. Jackson: Okay, ‘social contract’ sounds like something I snoozed through in a college lecture. What does it actually mean in real life? Is it just a dusty philosophy term?

Olivia: Not at all. Ross brings it to life with a beautiful, simple story about his own morning routine. Think about it, Jackson. He wakes up, makes coffee with water from a public utility, using beans that got to him through complex international trade agreements. His wife drives their kids to school on government-built roads, in a foreign-made car, navigating with GPS, a technology originally funded by the US military. Jackson: Right, and he calls a rideshare to the airport, goes through TSA security using barcode tech that was also government-funded, and gets on a plane run by a massive private corporation. Olivia: Exactly. He calls this the "everyday magic." It's this invisible web of collaboration between us as individuals, the government, and businesses. It’s the operating system of our society. The social contract is what makes all of that possible. It’s the set of written and unwritten rules that define our rights and responsibilities to each other. Jackson: I like that. The operating system for society. But if it's so magical, why does the book have a title like The Raging 2020s? It sounds like the magic is failing. Olivia: It is. And that's the core of his argument. The magic is breaking down, and the consequences are devastating. He tells the story of the discovery of insulin in the 1920s. The scientists who found it were so focused on public good that they sold the patent for just three dollars to ensure it would be affordable for everyone. It was a miracle for humanity. Jackson: A true act of public service. Olivia: Now, fast forward a century. Ross tells the story of Alec Smith, a 26-year-old in Minneapolis who aged off his parents' health insurance. He was a restaurant manager, making a decent wage, but he couldn't afford the $1,300 a month for his insulin. So he started rationing it, trying to make it last until his next paycheck. Jackson: Oh, no. I think I know where this is going. Olivia: He was found dead in his apartment, less than a month after he lost his insurance. He died from diabetic ketoacidosis. His mother, Nicole, said it perfectly: "Pharmaceutical companies can get away with it because we don’t have any laws in place that restrict them... When you’re presented with a pay-or-die situation... Just because the companies can, they do." Jackson: Wow. That's just heartbreaking. It’s not a market failure; it's a moral failure. The 'everyday magic' only works if you can afford the subscription. It’s a system with a paywall for survival. Olivia: That’s a perfect way to put it. And it’s not just in healthcare. It's the public water systems from the 1920s that are now crumbling. It's the under-resourced public schools. It's the defective airbags in cars that kill people because a company cut corners. The delicate balance that created the magic is gone. The system is no longer designed for the well-being of the many. Jackson: So if the contract is broken, who broke it? Was it a hostile takeover? This feels like a whodunit.

Olivia: It was. Ross frames it as a two-part heist that happened over the last fifty years. The first culprit was a fundamental shift in the purpose of business. For a long time, there was a sense that companies had a responsibility to their workers, their communities, and the country. Think of the old quote from the president of Merck: "We try never to forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits." Jackson: That sounds like a quote from a different planet compared to the insulin story. Olivia: It is. The change really kicked into high gear with the economist Milton Friedman, who famously declared in 1970 that the one and only social responsibility of business is to increase its profits for its shareholders. This idea, shareholder primacy, took over corporate America. Jackson: The "Greed is good" era. Olivia: Exactly. And it led directly to what Ross calls "corporate socialism." Take the major airlines. In the decade before the pandemic, they spent 96% of their free cash flow on stock buybacks to enrich executives and shareholders. They didn't save for a rainy day. Then, when the pandemic hit and travel stopped, who bailed them out? Jackson: The taxpayers. Us. Olivia: To the tune of tens of billions of dollars. Ross has this killer line: "This is corporate socialism for the 2020s: we socialize costs to taxpayers and privatize gains to shareholders." The corporation's responsibility to society was severed. Their only duty became enriching the people who owned stock. Jackson: So on one hand, you have corporations that are more powerful and less responsible than ever. But that's only half the story, right? Where was the government in all this? Weren't they supposed to be the referee? Olivia: That's the second part of the heist: the government retreated. It became weaker, more polarized, and less effective. Ross uses the government's response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico in 2017 as a brutal case study. Jackson: I remember the images. It was catastrophic. Olivia: A Category 4 storm that knocked out the entire power grid. Millions of American citizens were without water, food, or power. And the federal response was shockingly slow and incompetent. It took days for significant aid to arrive. FEMA was tangled in bureaucracy. The official death toll was first reported as 64. A year later, the government revised it to nearly 3,000 people. Jackson: Three thousand people. That’s staggering. Olivia: And into this vacuum of government failure stepped a private citizen: the chef José Andrés. He flew to Puerto Rico on his own dime, organized local chefs and volunteers, and started cooking. His organization, World Central Kitchen, ended up serving over 3.6 million meals. They were faster, more agile, and more effective than the massive federal agency designed for this exact purpose. Jackson: That's both an incredible story of heroism and a damning indictment of the government. Olivia: It is. It shows the power vacuum perfectly. On one hand, you have corporations that have abandoned their social duty for pure profit. On the other, you have a government that's become too hollowed out or captured by special interests to effectively serve its people. Jackson: So our well-being is what's getting sucked out of that vacuum. That explains the "rage" in the book's title. It’s the feeling that the game is rigged, and the people who are supposed to be looking out for us are either unable or unwilling to do so.

Olivia: Exactly. And Ross argues this vacuum creates the rage. But his goal isn't just to diagnose the problem; it's to offer a cure. He says we're at a fork in the road, and the choices we make in this decade will define the rest of the century. Jackson: So what are the options? More rage or... something else? Olivia: He illustrates it with another powerful story, this time a projection into the year 2030. He asks us to imagine a young Filipino family whose rural home has been made uninhabitable by increasingly severe typhoons, a direct result of climate change. They have to migrate. But where do they go? Jackson: A story that's going to become reality for millions of people. Olivia: And their choices represent the two paths the world can take. Path one is the "Raging 2020s" continued. They could move to a Western country, but find it consumed by nativism, with weakened social safety nets and rising inequality. Jobs are automated and low-wage. The door is closing. Or, they could look to a country like China, which offers stability and work, but at the cost of living in a techno-authoritarian surveillance state with no real freedom. Jackson: A pretty bleak set of choices. What's the alternative? Olivia: That's path two: a renewed social contract. In this future, the family could migrate to a country that has learned from the Nordic model. A country that has embraced what's called "stakeholder capitalism," where companies are responsible not just to shareholders, but to their employees, customers, and the environment. Jackson: So, a place where a company wouldn't get a bailout after spending all its money on stock buybacks. Olivia: Precisely. It’s a world with a robust social safety net, funded by a reformed global tax system that actually makes multinational corporations pay their fair share, instead of using loopholes like the "Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich" to hide profits in Bermuda. Jackson: I love that name. It sounds delicious and deeply criminal. Olivia: It is! And Ross gives a real-world example of this second path in action: Denmark's response to the COVID pandemic. Instead of just sending out small checks and letting unemployment skyrocket like in the US, the Danish government, in partnership with unions and businesses, effectively nationalized private-sector payrolls. They paid up to 90% of workers' salaries to keep them employed and connected to their jobs. Jackson: So they froze the economy in place, essentially. Olivia: Yes. The result? Their unemployment barely budged, businesses stayed afloat, and the economy snapped back much faster. They prioritized labor over capital. They showed that a strong social contract isn't a drag on the economy; it's a source of resilience and stability. Jackson: That's a powerful frame. It’s not about left vs. right, but closed vs. open. Do we build walls and hoard what's left, or do we redesign the system so there's more to share? It feels like the entire book is building to that single choice.

Olivia: It is. The ultimate takeaway from The Raging 2020s is that the social contract isn't some abstract, academic concept. It's the source code that runs our society. And right now, that code is full of bugs, producing rage, inequality, and instability as its primary outputs. Jackson: And those bugs were intentionally programmed in over the last 50 years, by prioritizing shareholder profits above all else and defunding the public good. Olivia: Exactly. But the hopeful message of the book, which has been praised by many readers for its optimism, is that code can be rewritten. Ross argues that we—as citizens, as workers, even as consumers—have the power to demand a new social contract. One where companies like Patagonia, which prioritize sustainability, or even Walmart, which used its massive leverage to force harmful chemicals off shelves faster than any regulator could, become the norm, not the exception. Jackson: It's a call for a system reboot. But here's the final question for me. The book ends on this hopeful note, suggesting that even the smartest elites will eventually realize that it's in their own long-term self-interest to fix this. As he puts it, "Being elite in a world where there is more access to opportunity and greater well-being is better than being elite in a world burning around you." But is that realistic? Does change really come from the top down, or does it only ever come from the bottom up? Olivia: That is the billion-dollar question, isn't it? Is it enlightened self-interest or is it popular pressure? Ross seems to believe it has to be both. But I'm not sure. We'd love to hear what our listeners think. Find us on our socials and let us know your take on it. Do you buy the argument for elite-led reform, or is that just wishful thinking? Jackson: A great question to chew on. This was a fantastic breakdown of a really important book. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.