Product Description

In The Virtue of Prosperity, Dinesh D'Souza examines the spiritual and social crisis spawned by the new economy and new technologies of the last ten years. D'Souza questions the basic premise of the American dream that prosperity and "progress" will better the human condition. Anchored in history, rich in anecdote, and supported by state-of-the-art data, The Virtue of Prosperity is a tough-minded critique of our high-tech culture, with a surprising prescription for doing well and doing good.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #235573 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-30
• Released on: 2001-10-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Amazon.com Review
The chief problem societies have faced "since the time of the Babylonians," writes Dinesh D'Souza, has been the problem of scarcity. "But now that age has passed, and America has a new problem: coping with prosperity." It's a good problem to have, but also a serious, even debilitating, one. "The moral conundrum of success," the author continues, means that all too often, "the body is flourishing, but somehow the soul still feels malnourished." D'Souza is well known for his bestselling conservative books Illiberal Education, The End of Racism, and Ronald Reagan. On these pages, however, he seems to set politics aside to ask deep questions about the meaning of life in a world of material abundance:

What is my life for? As affluence spreads ... hundreds of millions of people will be asking just this question. That they can ask it is in and of itself a great moral achievement, because it opens up to innumerable ordinary people the avenues of human fulfillment that were previously open only to aristocrats. Yet at the same time it is a strangely disquieting question, because there is no complete answer to it within the modern techno-capitalist framework.

The Founders promised "the pursuit of happiness," but they didn't explain where happiness can be found, or even what it is. D'Souza argues that it must not be found in materialism--in both the consumerist sense of the word as well as the philosophical one. In a time of unprecedented prosperity, of course, the temptation is to find happiness exactly there, and the threat is profound: materialism may "transform our very nature as human beings and possibly introduce a new species in the world, the posthuman." D'Souza does not welcome this prospect (and consequently sounds very conservative indeed). The Virtue of Prosperity is a bold and thoroughly engrossing book. Readers won't need to agree with every one of D'Souza's points to find his many digressions fascinating. Whether he's writing about an extravagant Silicon Valley party, describing the ideas of Richard Dawkins, or making a casual reference to Marcus Aurelius, he's at once erudite and accessible. It's not always clear where he's going with his ideas until he gets there, but he makes the journey a pure joy. --John J. Miller

From Publishers Weekly
This latest work may mark D'Souza's graduation from a promising to an important writer, a possible heir to Michael Lewis's role as an insightful chronicler of our times. After serving a year in the Reagan White House, he wrote two conservative tracts, Illiberal Education (1991) and The End of Racism (1995). These well-argued, one-sided books established D'Souza as a B-list conservative commentator. In 1997, his political biography of Ronald Reagan achieved acclaim for its nuanced insights, even from some who didn't agree with D'Souza's politics. The new volume finds D'Souza wandering around the country discussing how to be hip, rich and wired with Internet billionaires, street people and regular folks. He wants to know if the techno-rich are different from other rich, whether the superrich act like the merely rich and whether most rich people are guilty, driven, shallow or happy. Lengthy discussions ensue on the meaning of inequality, who gets rich and how, the history of wealth in the world and what the future holds for the wealthy and the wired. Some Reagan-style homilies lead into predictable philosophical essays that may interest intellectual Republicans. But other stories show a sharp pen and sharper eye that transcends polarized politics, leading to philosophical reflections that are much deeperDor at least less predictableDthan in D'Souza's first two works, and delivered in a unique voice and with an unusually light touch. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
D'Souza won fame for his critique of political correctness, Illiberal Education (1992). Now an American Enterprise Institute research scholar, he turns his attention here to the "new economy," particularly the new culture and ideology he sees taking shape in places like Silicon Valley. D'Souza spends a chapter defining the nation's new class structure but then ignores 95 percent of it. He repeatedly praises capitalism and technology for producing, for the first time in history, "mass affluence," but his focus quickly becomes what he labels "the Overclass": households with incomes of $150,000 or more and assets of at least $1 million, roughly 5 percent of the population. The newly rich are ambivalent about their fortunes ("guilt-trip wealth"), and critics on both left and right attack capitalism and technology for destroying family, nature, and community. D'Souza offers an explanation in "Why Science and Capitalism Won," and explores the debate over further extensions of technology, particularly biotechnology, including the potential for a "post-human" era. Not an essential acquisition, but a strong promotional campaign suggests many libraries will receive requests. Mary Whaley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Customer Reviews

Serious work on the stuff which really matters
It is an extremely good book. It does not make for casual bed-time reading as it discusses involved and abstruse concepts in a thoughtful, nuanced manner and consequently demands our full attention. No sooner had I finished the book the first time around, I picked it up again and leaved through it for the nuggets of wisdom.

The book brings to light a wide mélange of insights from a range of thinkers across the ideological spectrum on issues which ought to matter to modern humanity, at least in the developed world. Among other things, it deals with issues around the sanctity of life and why there ought to be a fine balance between experimenting with biotechnology and playing God, trying to create and mould a new life form outside of the normal conception process. While Dinesh presents arguments from both the nay-sayers who he calls the Party of Nah, and the enthusiasts who he calls the Party of Yeah, he also eventually doesn't hesitate to offer his own perspective on the matter and similar such matters. At the end of the day, given that much of the industrialized world (that includes the U.S. and Western Europe) has largely been able to conquer absolute poverty (poverty in which people are starving/ cannot clothe themselves), the public policy space ought to have discussions on issues that relate to the higher meaning of life beyond the humdrum of the day-to-day existence. As Dinesh puts it best, "The old debate- over the size and role of government- is largely obsolete. The new debate is over the moral legitimacy of the new economy powered by technology and capitalism. .. in the prosperous West, we have the luxury of debating the critiques offered on the left and on the right. And we should debate them, because the concerns being raised are entirely appropriate for a wealthy society."

In addition, something which I have personally liked about the book is that it offers an underpinning for capitalist ideas and principles like no other with the possible exception of Ayn Rand. It traces the evolution of technological capitalism not just to Adam Smith and his seminal work, "The Wealth of Nations", but also to other philosophers and thinkers such as Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, Bernard Mandeville, Francis Bacon and John Locke. I strongly believe having read this book will give me more intellectual ammunition as I defend the logic and rationale of capitalism to my socialist, left-leaning friends. For instance while talking about his adopted homeland, the United States, he says, "...the United States, can, in terms of material or moral excellence, hold its own against any contemporary society, even any ancient society. If it falls short, it is not by standards of ancient practice, only by the standards of ancient principle. Thus I conclude that while the United States may not be the best conceivable society, it is probably the best society that now exists or has ever existed." Bravo! Well said.

Pre-9-11 & Enron; Falls Short. But Still Worth a Read
Bear in mind that Mr. D'Souza's book was written a year or so before the double horrors of 9-11 and Enron. Ever since then, the market has largely stagnated although it is gradually making a rebound after a three-year hiatus. D'Souza's exhaustive survey and analysis of the American economic landscape is commendable. He bases his resulting ideas on a thoughtful synthesis of the clash of economic cultures in America today. However, his work stills fall short. It has not taken into account the factors of greed in our country, and reactionary forces outside of our society. So even as he has put together a broad, all-encompassing view of the effects of prosperity here in this country, he has failed to put in perspective what happens when the effects of that prosperity creep outside and into our volatile world today.

First, with regards to Enron - and recall, they were only one of several large corporations to be involved in such a scandal - people, including the intelligentsia (on both sides) did not anticipate that even one CEO or group of businessmen would go so far as to enriching themselves, at the expense of consumers, investors, and employees. It is here that D'Souza and other conservatives miss the point: It is not so much that the "have-nots" want an equal share of the pie, or even an equal opportunity to be able to achieve what executives have; it is merely protection against the injustices that may happen. Inequality is a given, of course; but what happens when one person screws up the fragile order of things? The rich may suffer only a sting; the middle class may lose a little, but it's the working class and below that have the most to lose. Who speaks for them? Not businesses, unfortunately - if we are to trust what he has said, that in a meritocracy, businesses have no further obligation to the people it purportedly serves. It is left to the government to watch out for the lesser of our brethren. However, D'Souza does make a good point in saying that the "technorati" would do wise NOT to forget the wisdom of the past, and although I think he could have made a better argument here, it seems sufficient that he has mentioned it at all. It could be that a reader may get lost in all the talk about the virtues of technology, that the talk of "intangibles" gets lost in the shuffle. D'Souza tries hard to balance those two sides fairly, to a good degree.

The 9-11 schpiel is an unforeseen consequence of the drive to achieve prosperity. Because what America is, essentially, is a collective representation of its people's drive to excel and achieve a better life, to expand its borders. But what happens when we find ourselves treading on strange ground? Foreigners have a word for this: Imperialism. Surprisingly, D'Souza failed to take into account the extent that militant Islamic forces would go, to try to thwart our progress. Of course, they are not justified, nor do they represent the majority of their people's voices. However, they are there, and one way or another, as we would like to expand our borders in prosperity, we must also realize that as we are encroaching, the reactions from even just a few elements may be more violent (and larger in scale) than before (in electricity, this is known as "resistance"). 9-11 notwithstanding, this pursuit of prosperity seems to be present in all countries now, which should be a good sign.

Another omission and failure is D'Souza's silence on how the rich and the influential have been instrumental in changing the laws of this country, over the course of several hundred years. As a former policy advisor, he is very well aware of this. Regardless of administration, it has been tacitly implied that "those who have the gold make the rules." If the author is to indeed talk about the virtue of affluence and talk about the moral responsibility of the rich, and if he has rightly mentioned that the rich have more control over people than even the government does... then they have a moral as well as a practical obligation to push for laws and an environment where the general public - consumers, investors and employees - will be in an environment where everyone wins ("win-win"). Or at the very least, are protected - from adverse factors such as uncertainty from unemployment, as well as from stagnating in a dead-end job. At worst, it would be a form of feudalism; however, in this case, more enlightened.

Perhaps the most telling inadequacy that D'Souza fails to anticipate or discuss, however, is how the "end" of war (Afghanistan and Iraq, notwithstanding) has not only led to peace, prosperity, and more practical pursuits but also another looming headache: The Malthusian scenario of increasing population as resources dwindle. In America, the current sexual lifestyle among people is such that there has been less of a population growth as expected, which means that compared to most, it has not been such a problem here. What about the countries outside America? If their supplies run out, it would neither be appropriate nor sufficient to conclude that we can continue the economic progress in our country unimpeded. Indeed, our success has been contingent to that of other countries. And now that America is increasingly turning into a service-oriented economy, that dependence increases. Do we redistribute our resources for fear of a grand renormalization scheme? Or do we, by principle, sit tight and hope that the problems outside America can work themselves out? Not an easy question, and not one that can be addressed by any one book or philosopher. But as we continually get crowded in this world, and it gets smaller by the minute, it is a problem we must face. The sooner, the better.

Oh, and those hokey "Party of Yeah" and "Party of Nah" monikers are quite annoying. It may be to simplify the argument, but WHY is it that conservative writers have to resort to polar arguments (either/or), or lumping people into certain groups? Most people will probably be somewhere in between, falling in "Party of Either/Or" or "Party of Maybe/But Maybe Not." This sort of stupefies the argument, and assigns the weight of responsibility for ideas to other parties' and not his own. For goodness sake, if you are going to toss ideas around, have the chutzpah to adopt some of them as your own. Or at least, come up with better, more intelligent terms than "Party of Yeah"/"Party of Nah"! Geez!


In concluding, anything about the virtues of capitalism I think is worth a read, whether you are a liberal or conservative. D'Souza's work raises more than a few points and arguments, on both sides of the affluence fence. He shows us an organized, concise illustration on the evolution of America's economy, from the point of view of its citizens, not just the businessmen and the politicians. As a consequence, he also shows us, in passing, the virtues that are needed, for people who are striving to reach that part of their lives. I, too, like most Americans, want to have a share of the economic pie, and am willing to put in more than my share of hard work into it. At the same time, D'Souza's thoughtful insights about what could be the moral responsibilities of the rich, should be considered, on that road to prosperity. That goes for BOTH the ones who are working to achieve it AND those who have it. For anyone on either side of that fence, his ideas should be seen as a talking point for both where, hopefully, consensus could be achieved without conflict. Although there are some points (or omissions thereof) that I disagree with, I would definitely recommend reading this book for a history or economics class.

Reporting from the bubble - but still has much to offer
I like Dinesh D'Souza. If you don't you probably won't like this book because he writes from himself with passion for his topic and point of view. While I don't agree with every point he makes, I find him worth reading and enjoyable to read.

This book had the misfortune to come out just after the Internet Bubble burst. He had to go around trying to sell the idea that it didn't matter and that his views would come about anyway. At the time, no one wanted to listen because they were too worried about their 401ks evaporating.

Do his points make much sense in 2004? I would say that they do in many ways. However, it is clear from the writing that the author was firmly in the grip of the New Economy hoopla. So, if you can filter out some of the excesses, there is still quite a bit here worth considering.