Extreme Economies: What Life at the World's Margins Can Teach Us About Our Own Future

Economist Richard Davies examines extreme economies at the margins of the global system to understand what lies ahead for us all. He travels to diverse locations including a rural Louisiana prison where inmates use prepaid cash cards, the world's poorest major city where residents purchase water in plastic bags, the world's first digital state, and a Japanese prefecture with the world's oldest population. These economies, often operating outside official oversight, reveal how human resilience functions, what causes societal failure, and which forces will shape our future. Davies argues that outlier economies—rather than mainstream ones—offer crucial lessons about our own economic trajectory. He documents Punjabi migrants navigating the lawless Panamanian jungle and visits an elderly day-care modeled after a casino, among other settings. In places where economies have been destroyed, distorted, or accelerated, people have adapted and pioneered economic infrastructure relevant to our collective future. Combining personal narrative with economic analysis, the book addresses pressing contemporary economic questions through global travel and observation.