America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the 21st Century—Why America’s Greatest Days Are Yet to Come

by James C. Bennett, Michael J. Lotus

America 1.0 was the combination of America's English cultural and institutional roots with American frontier conditions. It was a world of animal and muscle power, difficult transportation over continental distances, family farms and small businesses with limited market participation, and governance that was limited, local, and face-to-face. America 1.0 set the trajectory for American life, and it has never lost its grip on the American imagination.

America 2.0 was the transformation of American life by powered machinery. The shift toward corporate labor, and away from individual and family autonomy, led to economic insecurity for families and tradespeople. Americans demanded protections they had not needed in the past. At the same time, face-to-face local governance was replaced with increasingly distant and unaccountable bureaucracies, difficult-to-manage large cities, and the entanglement of government power with private business. The costs and burdens of this powerful, centralized state are becoming ever clearer. We are living in a period of crisis, as America 2.0 collapses around us.

Yet America 3.0 is already emerging. We have already begun to adapt our institutions and to forge new arrangements that are appropriate for a post-industrial, networked, decentralized society. The transition will not be smooth, but it is the only path forward. This book provides a roadmap to the American future, illuminated by fundamental insights into our deeply-rooted underlying culture of freedom and liberty.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, History, American, Historical

370 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[John Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Contrasted to the review above, I found the beginning of the book very interesting and the end rather plodding and sophomoric. I was fascinated by the study of the Germanic family structure as opposed to the Roman/European structure. I also liked the general description of America 1.0 and 2.0. I thought that the predictive 3.0 was rather simplistic and neat. I especially took issue with the "haircut," a prediction of economic near-collapse and eventural rebirth.
I'm also an urbanist. I feel that the obsolescing of our cities is the result of poor and misguided public policy, not a natural phenomenon. So I don't feel that our future lies in people scattered about the countryside, with primary human interactions conducted via electronic means. If that is the future, I believe we will all be poorer, and the truly poor will really be in trouble.
Rather naturally, people gather together and find that together they can create more wealth than when they are apart. People also enjoy and thrive on close relationships.
Regardless of my criticisms, I think the book is very stimulating and a good source for discussion - presumably at a good bar, talking it over face-to-face with good friends.

[Daniel Vaughan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I struggled to give this book 2 or 4 stars. After much thought, I’m going with 2 because the authors never live up to their hype, and don’t deliver on a coherent vision for a future America (2040 is the year they focus on). American 3.0 as they define it is a fantasy.

This is a supremely frustrating book. On the one hand, it actually does have 4-5 star moments. In outlining their narrative history of the USA (America 1.0), they weave a wonderful story of themes, ideas, and culture through hundreds of years (they go back to the Saxons). America 2.0 is a discussion of similar themes from essentially the Civil War through the present day (the book was published in 2013).

All the themes and ideas they construct, and academic research they rely on, is extraordinary and effective at making their points.

The above discussion takes up 3/4’s of the book. The last two chapters are their blueprints for America 3.0, and it’s here where the wheels fall off the cart.

America 3.0 is essentially “reform conservatism”/Paul Ryan and Jack Kemp-style policies. The last two chapters are split into domestic and foreign policy. The domestic policy section is 50 pages, and the foreign policy is 31. It’s an 81 page pamphlet for why we have to make debt reduction the primary focus for America.

Their entire domestic policy involves “The Big Haircut,” where America essentially declares bankruptcy and a dramatic slashing or eradication of all entitlement spending occurs. When faced with the idea that maybe people wouldn’t like this — which they rarely address, and seem in utter denial that New Deal liberals exist — they simply say, “Americans have always accepted some level of personal risk, they’ll go along with it.”

It’s shocking to hit these two chapters because the setup is so well done. And then you read their ideas and predictions for the future and it’s like conservatives obsessed with debt came up with their version of unicorn legislation like the Green New Deal, something that will never happen. The book was written in 2013. They seem unaware of political history.

The moment both WWI and II ended, Republicans swept out Democrats and those transformative eras ended. The Great Recession, which dealt directly with debt, led to outrage on all sides of political aisle when bailouts and bankruptcies occurred. Americans didn’t like being the losers to bad policy. Saying that they’ll go along with that and accept the political calculations of think tank eggheads is a level of political naivety that is shocking.

The foreign policy is 30 pages of empty platitudes. They don’t have a plan here. If you want what that looks like, read the novel GHOST FLEET, you’ll be better informed.

To summarize: the lead up is great. But they present a fantasy for what America 3.0 could be, while never touching how to maneuver the political backlash their plan would inevitably bring (“everyone will just accept the rational choice because there will be no other choice due to the circumstances” is barely a paraphrase). And how that backlash would prevent their haircut from occurring. And to that, they essentially say, if their future doesn’t take place, we’ll become the second Austria-Hungarian empire in a similar collapse.

It’s an excellent history followed comically bad political analysis. Germany/the EU tried this after 2008. Everyone hated it and it didn’t work.

[Evan Leister · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent optimistic political tract from the right of center in the USA; see One Billion Americans by Matt Yglesias as the left of center counterpart. America 3.0 carefully builds out an argument that the defining cultural principle of the USA is the nuclear family structure. There's a few chapters of great historical and cultural reading describing why this is the case (germanic heritage) along with the common law tradition (English heritage). A brief survey of cultural, industrial, and military affairs in America 1.0 (founding to roughly 1913) and America 2.0 (1913 - ~present) follow. The authors describe what they call America 3.0 by way of recommendations for domestic and foreign American policy. There's also an extended bibliographic essay that I'm looking forward to consulting for further reading on the reform questions.

The only thing I'm not really that optimistic about is the social cohesion made by voluntary associations in the USA. Many organizations are strong but there is a vast sea of young people shaped by the brawling public square of Twitter, the carnally driven dating market in Tinder, and the proliferation of entire universes of conspiracy and rumor that erode trust.

This book was published in 2013 and two large events have changed the specific recommendations in some instances but not the overall thrust of the argument. (Maybe I would sub out the technocratic 3D printing revolution with the YIMBY housing reforms and demographic aid from Matt Yglesias but that's marginal to the argument. )

1. The current Republican adminstration and party base has not spent this period in actual reform but in a kind of civil war. Many of the reforms they suggest are still important here and should be done but the specific recommendations here are somewhat dated by the healthcare shock in the coronavirus pandemic, the growth of the "creepy state" that might occur under a Biden-Harris admin., and the cultural power growth of the radical right and left domestic elements of the nation.

2. China (particularly the communist party within) has emerged as suggested as the most credible threat to American interests for the next generation. However this book claims well that sequestering China into a bloc is not feasible and our prime objective should be ensuring an open world market (implied run primarily run on American terms). This is totally consistent with the objectives described in the recent Daniel Tobin congressional testimony.

In sum, this book is great and I highly recommend it as a frame of reference even in our current state of malaise. Knowing where we have come from is very important for understanding what we might build together.

[Kevin · Rating 1 out of 5]

It starts with a libertarian's pipe dream, and does not improve from there. The one interesting idea is the basis of American culture being family composition, but you would most likely be better served to go to the source material on that. (Todd and Macfarlane are the respective authors cited) The authors have a clear political view of the world and force everything to match that view. It is not just the libertarianism, it's the middle class-everybody can and wants to move to further themselves-viewpoint that does not match broad swathes of the country. (most people outside the middle class/middle management upbringing) Their history is suspect, or at least how they portray it in the book. Their arguments about equality before the law in Norman England ignores for example that law was practiced not in English, which cut it off from the majority of the populace. Or pointedly commenting on the USSR propping up authoritarian regimes while glossing over the same behavior in the United States. (Also not mentioning all the times a section would end with 'and such and such is a fact' or something similar, which might have been the most wrong parts of the book) If this is supposed to be the best portrayal of serious thought on the Right, than the Right needs to take a good long think because this is garbage.

[Beran Fisher · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was a mess. On the positive side, there was a fascinating dive into the history of where American culture comes from. Even that I am suspect of, as at one point they assert that “modern scholarship is wrong,” and get some basic historical facts wrong such as calling Prohibition a progressive movement and ignoring the main factors driving southern Democrats to become Republicans (according to them, they just started realizing that Republicans were closer to their conservative values. Which isn’t fully wrong, but they left out that southerners were punishing Democrats for the Civil Rights Act).

Other than that, the basic premise is that the solution to America’s woes is radical decentralization so that everyone can live in the type of America they choose. The authors assert that civil rights in their vision of the country will be safeguarded, ignoring that which civil rights are real or not is the main division in the U.S. They also ignore that it is not feasible for most Americans to just move to a state that they like better.

Overall, just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that in 2013 this may have appeared to be a better solution, and that nobody really expected the following twelve years to play out the way they did. But even so, it is an awfully simplistic solution.

[Vadim Polikov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book when it comes to history and tracing the line of American culture from Germanic Anglo Saxons through England to the colonies. However, the authors also have a political axe to grind. The political chapters are irrelevant to my interests and would be more interesting if they were tied to the history chapters. It's like two unrelated books in one. Reread, but skip America in 2040, the Great U Turn, and Domestic Policy.

[Roger Bass · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful view of the future... and role of families

The book's big picture view of a major impending transition in US society may be a new idea for many. I've been thinking about this for a while, however. It gets this right, I think. The bigger insight for me was the distinctiveness of the Anglo-American family structure as a root cause of their social evolution.

[Paul Sand · Rating 5 out of 5]

[Imported automatically from my blog. Some formatting there may not have translated here.]

I got this book, by James C. Bennett and Michael J. Lotus, on Interlibrary Loan from Boston College, due to many, many plugs from the Blogfather. And he's right, it's quite good.

Their thesis: America's best days could be ahead of us, if we (a) embrace the best bits of our Anglo-Saxon cultural heritage and (b) jettison the increasingly creaky and unsustainable misfeatures of overly-centralized government and other sclerotic institutions.

The authors jam a lot of history into a small number of pages to make their argument. And I'm going to simplify even further. "America 1.0" was the original US operating system, with a small Federal government, westward expansion, rural life, and a strong farm economy. "America 2.0" was the transition, starting around the Civil War, into a more centralized, bureaucratic, collectivist, paternalistic government, urbanization, industrialization, etc.

Our transition to America 3.0 [the authors claim] is in progress, and will undo many of the 2.0 features: decentralization, a return to individualism and voluntarism, strengthening of state and local government at the expense of the Federal.

This won't be without pain: most notably, what the authors term the "Big Haircut"—essentially bankruptcy proceedings—as Federal expenditures are brought into line with revenue, bondholders and pensioners get less than their "entitlements", and many of the functions run from D.C. are spun off to the states, localities, and individuals. The megacorporation would also become a (more) endangered species, as technology and innovation would give the advantage to more nimble and flexible entrepreneurs.

The central government still runs foreign policy and national defense, but with a more realistic goal: "maintaining the freedom of the global commons of air, sea and space." (The authors have little patience with nation-building adventures like Iraq and Afghanistan.)

The book seems a little repetitive in places, and can occasionally get bogged down in less-than-fascinating detail. (Defense procurement reform. Yes, I'm for it, can we move on?) But overall very worth reading.

I don't know if they're right, however. I hope they are. It sounds plausible. But as Neils Bohr said: predictions are difficult, especially about the future.

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

The underlying theory of this book is the culture in the English speaking countries, originating with England and based on the absolute nuclear family (the authors' term). The chapters describing this theory and demonstrating some validity across 1500 years are quite interesting and should be examined in more detail by other researchers. The science fiction fantasy of the chapter describing America in 2040 merely shows the futility of projecting the trends of the past into the future, and to make matters worse, that was chapter 1. The authors failed to project the decline of large-scale industrial and regulatory bureaucracies when describing the current "great u-turn" or the recommendations for domestic and foreign policy changes to support their vision. Much of the domestic policy agenda requires a continuation of central planning with a slightly different direction. The lack of an economic background is exposed when the federal reserve and the US treasury roles are confused regarding who issues bonds and who buys them. The foreign policy chapter is especially disturbing and least developed, mostly ignoring the cultural foundation of the theory and the lack of analysis of other cultures. The idea that the founders of the US had individual rights in mind is preposterous, the bill of rights seems to me to be more about limitations of federal power, especially since those amendments did not apply to the states until much later, and not by consensus, but by a series of supreme court decisions.

There were some good points, although few. The cultural theory itself has merit. The concept of reducing the federal role in government, decentralizing and distributing that role among states and lower levels of government actually follows the theme of America 1.0 to 2.0 to 3.0. The organization of American history into those three phases is aligned with other contemporary thinking, although with different basis and boundaries. Chapters 2 to 6 are helpful in understanding our culture, while the rest could easily be skipped without much loss.

[Gregoresate · Rating 5 out of 5]

The authors are effective at establishing a framework to understanding the stages of American history. Described as 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0, each era is embodied by its distinct cultural, political, social, and economic conditions. The common threads that have propelled us through the first two eras are our Anglo-American heritage and our unique family structure. The authors argue convincingly that it is this foundation that is going to lead us into the next great era.

Other reviews have been spot on about the excellent, well researched analysis of our cultural heritage and history. The disagreements unsurprisingly arise over the authors' recommendations of how we can best transition to the future. No one is saying it's going to be easy. In fact the book states:

"Whatever travails may beset us in the years ahead, we believe that an attempt to "double down" on the Progressive vision will ultimately fail, if only because it cannot possibly be paid for. This failure may provoke the crisis that will complete the Great U-Turn."

However, they explain that just as the transitions to previous eras weren't forced on us but were a conscious, collective movement for positive change, so shall the next transition be driven by these same motives and desires.

And indeed the transition has already begun. I highly recommend this book especially for those who are wondering how America will ever rise out of the doldrums of the current stifling incrementalism and crisisism. America 3.0 has the answer.

[Nhu · Rating 4 out of 5]

quyển này đọc xong không dám bình luận gì, vì nhiều từ vựng khó.
Tác giả chia nước Mĩ thành 3 giai đoạn phát triển, American 1.0: từ năm 1603-1860 là thời kì thuộc địa Anh, America 2.0: thời đầu thế kỉ 19 với các bước phát triển vượt bậc ngành công nghiệp nặng, cùng 2 cuộc khủng hoảng 1837 và 1929. Còn America 3.0 chưa tới, tác giả dự tính là từ năm 2040. Năm này, được tác giả miêu tả xã hội Mĩ như phim sci-fi.
Mặc dù là nhà kinh doanh, nhưng ông Bennett có óc nhận xét sắc sảo khi dự đoán rằng năm 2020 Anh sẽ rời Liên hiệp Châu âu, mà Anh thì rời trước dự đoán 4 năm.
Tác giả dựa trên những đặc điểm ông cho là mang đến thành công của văn hóa Mĩ là: tự lập cao, bình đẳng, yêu tự do, tinh thần thiện nguyện, có tính di động, và gan dạ mà ông cho rằng thừa hưởng từ tộc người Saxons.
Phần thú vị, theo tôi, nằm ở các bài luận được tác giả tham khảo để viết nên nội dung ở cuối quyển sách.

[Low Keng onn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is not easy to read. You may say information overload. I lost my way , somewhere in the middle of the book, but nevertheless slogged to complete it. The book is deep ,analytical and wordy . If you are doing research, the info here would be useful.

[Chris Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

How not to fail as a country.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Civil peace is like oxygen: You only notice it when it is gone."
James C Bennett & Michael Lotus, America 3.0

I'm so glad I finally read this book.