The Knowledge Corrupters: Hidden Consequences of the Financial Takeover of Public Life

In principle the advanced, market-driven world in which we now live is fuelled by knowledge, information and transparency, but in practice the processes that produce this world systematically corrupt and denigrate knowledge: this is the powerful and provocative argument advanced by Colin Crouch in his latest exploration of societies on the road to post-democracy.

Crouch shows that executives in profit-maximizing corporations have incentives to ignore or distort knowledge, especially firms i...