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

So, I read this one along with "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" (reviewed last week) and found an exciting connection. Both books are optimistic about the future. Both books advocate the urgency of the “new-ness” required in the world and pave a new path for the existing world.

"A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Net Carbon Emissions", a book by the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Muhammad Yunus, presents the case for social business with lots of examples and proposals for economic reform, far from impractical and a thought-cum-action provoking book.

The book widely dictates the successful economic experiments done by the writer and others, especially in Bangladesh's Grameen Bank, to offer a framework for using human capital to solve problems such as poverty, environmental degradation and unemployment. The exciting part is when he questions Adam Smith’s assumption that a “human being is basically a personal-gain-seeking being” and asks us to consider the social dimension of our decisions and investments.

“For too long, we’ve tolerated the persistence of poverty, unemployment, and environmental destruction as if these are natural calamities completely out of human control or, at best, unavoidable costs of economic growth. They are not. They are failures of our economic system.”

I agree with the thoughts in the book because we are the generation fortunate enough to have been born in an age of great possibilities—an era of remarkable technologies, great wealth, and limitless human potential. Thus, now, the solutions to many of our world’s pressing problems—including problems like hunger, poverty, and disease that have plagued humankind since before the dawn of history—are within reach and are our core responsibility.

The topic and the engaging stories of success should interest all types of readers. I suggest this book be read by the young lot especially. (By young, I mean a person with an open mind and heart, regardless of age!)

“If we can imagine something, there is a good chance that it will happen. If we don’t imagine it, there is almost no chance of it happening.”