A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Net Carbon Emissions

by Muhammad Yunus

Overview

A winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and bestselling author of Banker to the Poor offers his vision of an emerging new economic system that can save humankind and the planet

Muhammad Yunus, who created microcredit, invented social business, and earned a Nobel Peace Prize for his work in alleviating poverty, is one of today's most trenchant social critics. Now he declares it's time to admit that the capitalist engine is broken — that in its current form it inevitably leads to rampant inequality, massive unemployment, and environmental destruction. We need a new economic system that unleashes altruism as a creative force just as powerful as self-interest.

Is this a pipe dream? Not at all. In the last decade, thousands of people and organizations have already embraced Yunus's vision of a new form of capitalism, launching innovative social businesses designed to serve human needs rather than accumulate wealth. They are bringing solar energy to millions of homes in Bangladesh; turning thousands of unemployed young people into entrepreneurs through equity investments; financing female-owned businesses in cities across the United States; bringing mobility, shelter, and other services to the rural poor in France; and creating a global support network to help young entrepreneurs launch their start-ups.

In A World of Three Zeros, Yunus describes the new civilization emerging from the economic experiments his work has helped to inspire. He explains how global companies like McCain, Renault, Essilor, and Danone got involved with this new economic model through their own social action groups, describes the ingenious new financial tools now funding social businesses, and sketches the legal and regulatory changes needed to jumpstart the next wave of socially driven innovations. And he invites young people, business and political leaders, and ordinary citizens to join the movement and help create the better world we all dream of.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541742390
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	09/11/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	612,538
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Muhammad Yunus is the founder of Grameen Bank and more than fifty other companies in Bangladesh. He is widely known as both the father of microcredit and of the social business movement. In 2006, Professor Yunus and Grameen Bank were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He is one of only seven individuals to have received the Nobel Peace Prize, the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the United States Congressional Gold Medal. Yunus is the recipient of fifty-five honorary degrees from universities in twenty countries, and has received 112 awards from twenty-six countries, including state honors from ten countries.

Table of Contents

Part 1 The Challenge

1 The Failures of Capitalism 3

2 Creating a New Civilization: The Counter economics of Social Business 17

Part 2 The Three Zeros

3 Zero Poverty: Bringing an End to Income Inequality 35

4 Zero UN employment: We Are Not Job Seekers, We Are Job Creators 67

5 Zero Net Carbon: Creating an Economics of Sustainability 95

6 A Road Map to a Better Future 118

Part 3 Megapowers for Transforming the World

7 Youth: Energizing and Empowering the Young People of the World 146

8 Technology: Unleashing the Power of Technology to Liberate All People 173

9 Good Governance and Human Rights: Keys to Building a Society That Works for All 199

Part 4 Stepping Stones to the Future

10 The Legal and Financial Infrastructure We Need 229

11 Redesigning the World of Tomorrow 259

Notes 267

Index 273

Editorial Reviews

08/28/2017
Yunus (Banker to the Poor), a Noble Prize winner and founder of the Bangladesh-based Grameen Bank, which pioneered microcredit, describes himself as “fundamentally optimistic about the future.” That optimism permeates his argument that the capitalist system’s economic framework, driven by personal interest, is broken and must be redesigned so that “both personal and collective interests are recognized, promoted, and celebrated.” Yunus’s preferred vehicle for this redesigned economy is the so-called social business, which aims not to enrich investors but improve people’s lives and make the world better. Yunus explains how social businesses can help reduce poverty, unemployment, and environmental degradation. He then examines the “megapowers” that he believes are crucial to his vision of world transformation: young people, old people, technology, good governance, and human rights. Along the way, he expresses his support for fair, free global trade. The book is packed with true-life examples, many from Yunus’s own experiences with Grameen Bank. Though the sparseness of financial data in the text is a weakness, Yunus offers sound recommendations to distribute global wealth more equitably through individual and systemic support for small-scale entrepreneurship. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"A book to make Wall Street quake."—Kirkus Reviews

"With wealth disparity an ongoing global concern, Yunus's inspiring and hopeful message is a must-read for all readers with even a semblance of economic literacy."—Library Journal, starred

From the Publisher

★ 10/01/2017
Yunus, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and originator of microcredit, calls for capitalism to be more inclusive. He outlines a new economic system incorporating human selflessness, entrepreneurship, and opportunities for the poor. He espouses creating businesses that prioritize social outcomes over investor profits. In a social business, explains the author, the entrepreneur repays any invested capital within a period of time and then reinvests future profits to operate and expand the business. Yunus sets as goals eliminating poverty, unemployment, and environmental degradation. He demonstrates the possibilities of his vision with myriad examples including beekeeping in Kenya, industrial waste recycling in Japan, and solar energy in Bangladesh. Yunus further connects his work to the UN's global development goals and is optimistic that positive change will be accomplished by harnessing the enthusiasm of young people; redirecting technological innovation to meet social needs; and making governments stable, fair, and efficient. VERDICT With wealth disparity an ongoing global concern, Yunus's inspiring and hopeful message is a must-read for all readers with even a semblance of economic literacy.—Lawrence Maxted, Gannon Univ. Lib., Erie, PA

Library Journal

2017-07-17
A book to make Wall Street quake—if Wall Street paid attention to the developing world.The classic description of capitalism, writes Bangladeshi economist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Yunus (Building Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism that Serves Humanity's Most Pressing Needs, 2010, etc.), assumes that the free market imposes curbs on economic inequality. In fact, it does not work that way, and inequality is growing markedly across the world, requiring a rethinking of the tenets of not only free-market capitalism, but also the marketplace. Such a rethinking, by the author's account in this hortatory but accessible text, makes room for a hybrid "social business" that is not quite for-profit and not quite nonprofit but something that partakes of both while leveraging the human propensity for selflessness. In this regard, Yunus' experiments in microfinance and microcredit, loaning small sums of money to businesspeople actual and aspiring, are cases in point. At the same time, he adds, a re-envisioned economics will recognize that humans are naturally entrepreneurs, best served not by jobs as such but by opportunities to make their own ventures in the marketplace. Again, his microfinancial work "introduced a new program of offering new-entrepreneur loans from Grameen Bank to support…efforts to create businesses" on the part of young Bangladeshis. Entrepreneurship catering to the mass market, Yunus argues, will prove more sustainable in the end than "trying to sell a few more luxury goods to a handful of wealthy people who already have more things than they will ever need." A third plank of a revised economics includes sustainable, clean energy, which Yunus believes developing nations are better positioned to adapt than many advanced economies, precisely because they are more of a blank slate. While antithetical to the prevailing capitalism, the author's reforms, he insists, will yield an economic system that more closely corresponds to who humans really are: partners and not predators. The author's humane proposal for economic reform, far from impractical, makes for provocative reading for development specialists.

Kirkus Reviews