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Hedge: A Greater Safety Net for the Entrepreneurial Age
by
For three decades we’ve been living through a paradigm shift. Our world is moving from the fading Fordist age to the ever-strengthening digital age. This shift is as unstoppable as the one that once brought us from railroads and steel mills to Fordist factories. And its impact on our lives is just as radical.
In this context, the lessons from history are clear: Providing
Kindle Edition, 398 pages
Published
July 2nd 2018
by Family Stories
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I should be upfront that I'm likely being harsh on this book. I'm a hardline, silicon valley Georgist crank, and I have very strong opinions about the ideas discussed. I think it's a good step in the correct direction, and many people would benefit from it. There is legitimately good content in this book. It is a bit hard to find though.
I think the biggest weak points are a lack of imagination about policy possibilities, several major blind spots with regards to the structure of American society ...more
I think the biggest weak points are a lack of imagination about policy possibilities, several major blind spots with regards to the structure of American society ...more

Aug 06, 2020
Moritz Mueller-Freitag
rated it
really liked it
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review of another edition
Shelves:
pandemic-book-club
Hedge is a book that surely hits a nerve in times of COVID-19. When the pandemic began throttling the global economy earlier this year, millions of workers suddenly found themselves unemployed and relying solely on state benefits. Governments across the world were forced to pass historic emergency relief packages to keep businesses and individuals afloat. In the US especially, the pandemic exposed serious gaps in the social safety net and reminded voters that even extreme precautions can’t fully
...more

“The new line is drawn between those who look back with nostalgia, trying to hold on to past practices, and those who embrace the new paradigm and propose new institutions to fit the new conditions. This blurs the previous connection between certain values and goals and the specific means of attaining to them. Though the goals may remain unchanged, the adequate and viable means to pursue them change with each paradigm shift.”
There are many things I disagree with the author of this book. Still, I ...more
There are many things I disagree with the author of this book. Still, I ...more

1. Well written economical history of how the safety net of yesterday was built and why.
2. Some good arguments why that won't work today.
3. A sketch on how we could build a new safety net.
I somehow expected more solutions and less backward-looking, but at the same time the problem is complex and I think Nicolas Colin did the best contribution we have at the moment. The sketch is all we have, and how we got here is needed to understand how to fix it.
The issue is pressing, and we see it in our ...more
2. Some good arguments why that won't work today.
3. A sketch on how we could build a new safety net.
I somehow expected more solutions and less backward-looking, but at the same time the problem is complex and I think Nicolas Colin did the best contribution we have at the moment. The sketch is all we have, and how we got here is needed to understand how to fix it.
The issue is pressing, and we see it in our ...more

The book aims to launch a global conversation to reinvent the "great safety net", as the one we know today (or let's say the ones, as the safety net varies from one region to another) is becoming obsolete due to the current paradigm shift - what Nicolas describes as the "Entrepreneurial Age".
The attempt is to build new conditions for prosperity and inclusion, as it has been accomplished with the current safety net for the previous era of automobile and mass consumption.
As we are all facing a p ...more
The attempt is to build new conditions for prosperity and inclusion, as it has been accomplished with the current safety net for the previous era of automobile and mass consumption.
As we are all facing a p ...more

Outstanding summary of the political-economic and technological transformations of the industrial age. Forward thinking; historically grounded; informed by a solid interdisciplinary foundation of readings derived from the worlds of academia, business, and journalism; and lucidly written with well chosen examples to illustrate abstract ideas and a refreshing avoidance of unnecessary jargon. Colin makes a strong case for a "Safety Net 2.0" that is suited to our Entrepreneurial Age of digital techn
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Read this book because the author is a co-founder of an investment firm "The Family", whose website contains a brilliant 12-chapter essay on entrepreneurship in general and in Europe in particular. I expected the book to be more of the same thing, and in a sense it was.
The key idea is that we are entering a new era - the Entrepreneurial age - when the typical economic interactions will shift. This will cause some turmoil, and in order to help its citizens succeed in new circumstances, government ...more
The key idea is that we are entering a new era - the Entrepreneurial age - when the typical economic interactions will shift. This will cause some turmoil, and in order to help its citizens succeed in new circumstances, government ...more

Interesting and timely book, and the first one that tries to propose a way for the new economy to work for everybody by implementing the "Great Safety Net 2.0". It proposes a world in which the "multitude" is the entity that dictates how business and society works. The book acknowledges that the old model of employees having permanent, secure jobs is mostly going away, but explains how that fact is not necessarily a bad thing if we as a society embrace the change. The main challeng is that this
...more
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“just another example of why no dominant tech company has ever grown out of there! Yes, we in Europe can be forced to defend ourselves in a criminal defamation case for publicly discussing questions like “What is innovation?” and “Couldn’t we do better than the existing taxi industry?”.”
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