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The Permanent Problem: The Uncertain Transition from Mass Plenty to Mass Flourishing
In The Permanent Problem, Brink Lindsey reshapes our understanding of the vital but complex relationship between material prosperity and human flourishing.
The advanced capitalist democracies of the 21st century are the richest, freest, healthiest, best educated, and best governed societies in history. Why then does it seem like everything is falling apart? Economic stagnation is spreading, class divisions are deepening, birth rates are collapsing, mental health problems are on the rise, faith in democracy is in decline, and pessimism about the future abounds.
In The Permanent Problem, Brink Lindsey argues that these gathering difficulties reflect the stresses and strains of a great and uncompleted historical transition-from mass material prosperity to mass human flourishing. Capitalism's immense productive powers have raised our expectations of what life can be, but for most of us reality is coming up short. What's more, the arrival of mass prosperity has pushed both economic and cultural change in directions that make the transition to mass flourishing much harder to achieve.
According to Lindsey, 21st century capitalism is in the grip of three interrelated a crisis of inclusion, as vital social ties and personal connections are breaking down; a crisis of dynamism, as capitalism's engines of innovation and wealth creation have begun to sputter and seize; and a crisis of politics, as the mechanisms for collective decision-making needed to address capitalism's growing problems have been degraded by the very same dynamics that underlie those problems.
A much brighter future is possible, and Lindsey charts an intriguing path to get there. There is no need to concoct a radical new social system. Instead, capitalism needs to be refocused on its core mission of extending the technological frontier, and rebalanced through the revitalization of face-to-face communities. Weaving together insights from history, economics, sociology, and philosophy, The Permanent Problem offers a synoptic overview of our fateful present moment and a provocative glimpse at what may lie ahead.
The advanced capitalist democracies of the 21st century are the richest, freest, healthiest, best educated, and best governed societies in history. Why then does it seem like everything is falling apart? Economic stagnation is spreading, class divisions are deepening, birth rates are collapsing, mental health problems are on the rise, faith in democracy is in decline, and pessimism about the future abounds.
In The Permanent Problem, Brink Lindsey argues that these gathering difficulties reflect the stresses and strains of a great and uncompleted historical transition-from mass material prosperity to mass human flourishing. Capitalism's immense productive powers have raised our expectations of what life can be, but for most of us reality is coming up short. What's more, the arrival of mass prosperity has pushed both economic and cultural change in directions that make the transition to mass flourishing much harder to achieve.
According to Lindsey, 21st century capitalism is in the grip of three interrelated a crisis of inclusion, as vital social ties and personal connections are breaking down; a crisis of dynamism, as capitalism's engines of innovation and wealth creation have begun to sputter and seize; and a crisis of politics, as the mechanisms for collective decision-making needed to address capitalism's growing problems have been degraded by the very same dynamics that underlie those problems.
A much brighter future is possible, and Lindsey charts an intriguing path to get there. There is no need to concoct a radical new social system. Instead, capitalism needs to be refocused on its core mission of extending the technological frontier, and rebalanced through the revitalization of face-to-face communities. Weaving together insights from history, economics, sociology, and philosophy, The Permanent Problem offers a synoptic overview of our fateful present moment and a provocative glimpse at what may lie ahead.
- GenresNonfictionEconomics
249 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 4, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 9, 2026
This is a thought-provoking, idiosyncratic, and sometimes frustrating book. I've been a fan of Lindsey's ever since his liberaltarian days with Will Wilkinson at the Cato Institute. I love what he's doing at the Niskanen Center, and eagerly awaited this book.
The title is drawn from Keynes' essay, "Economic Possibilities from Our Grandchildren." Keynes though that we basically had the economic productivity problem licked, and now the problem - the permanent problem of mankind - is to learn how to use that productivity to live "wisely, agreeably, and well."
A good chunk of Lindsey's book is devoted to his own particular answer to that challenge. Perhaps not quite as much as you'd expect, given the title. Lindsey also worries that maybe we don't have the productivity problem licked after all, and that (largely following the logic he set out with Teles in The Captured Economy) a lack of inclusivity in our economy is going to put a significant damper on future economic growth. Many of the solutions he proposes to this challenge are ones that will sit well with classical liberals - tear down government regulations that hamper innovation and production in housing, agriculture, medicine, and finance, and let the market work. But Lindsey is also attracted to the idea, popular with many left-leaning abundance theorists like Ezra Klein, that we should tear down the restraints on *government* and let it do what it can to facilitate innovation as well. As I expressed in my EconLib review of Klein and Dunkelman's books, I think there are some serious public choice concerns with that approach. In theory, a less restrained government can give us more of the things we want. But it can also give us more of the things we don't want, or more of the things that powerful special interests want, and others don't.
Productivity aside, how do we use wealth to live more wisely, agreeable and well? Lindsey's answer is, in a nutshell, to stop outsourcing so much of our lives to markets and governments and start doing more things for ourselves. Grow your own vegetables. Put solar panels on your house. Maybe move to a self-sustaining pioneer community in the mountains. This is, as you might expect, the weirdest part of the book. And it's hard to see how it reflects much more than Lindsey's own idiosyncratic preferences about what makes life meaningful. What about those who don't share his views? How do we deal with the fact that many people *like* buying their vegetables from a store, or ordering in coffee via DoorDash? We don't have to assume that these people are *right* to like such things. Maybe they're misguided, and their life would be better and richer if they roasted their own coffee beans at home. But Lindsey doesn't have much to say about how we get from mass consumerism to independence beyond making people rich enough that independence is more of a feasible option. My own suspicion is that cost isn't the only or even the primary obstacle to most people's moving to communes in the mountains. So what then?
My own sense is that Jonathan Rauch was right in his Unpopulist review to claim that Lindsey has granted too much weight to the post-liberal critics of market liberalism. But even if he has, there's a lot for readers to learn from his explorations. The Permanent Problem is well worth a careful read.
The title is drawn from Keynes' essay, "Economic Possibilities from Our Grandchildren." Keynes though that we basically had the economic productivity problem licked, and now the problem - the permanent problem of mankind - is to learn how to use that productivity to live "wisely, agreeably, and well."
A good chunk of Lindsey's book is devoted to his own particular answer to that challenge. Perhaps not quite as much as you'd expect, given the title. Lindsey also worries that maybe we don't have the productivity problem licked after all, and that (largely following the logic he set out with Teles in The Captured Economy) a lack of inclusivity in our economy is going to put a significant damper on future economic growth. Many of the solutions he proposes to this challenge are ones that will sit well with classical liberals - tear down government regulations that hamper innovation and production in housing, agriculture, medicine, and finance, and let the market work. But Lindsey is also attracted to the idea, popular with many left-leaning abundance theorists like Ezra Klein, that we should tear down the restraints on *government* and let it do what it can to facilitate innovation as well. As I expressed in my EconLib review of Klein and Dunkelman's books, I think there are some serious public choice concerns with that approach. In theory, a less restrained government can give us more of the things we want. But it can also give us more of the things we don't want, or more of the things that powerful special interests want, and others don't.
Productivity aside, how do we use wealth to live more wisely, agreeable and well? Lindsey's answer is, in a nutshell, to stop outsourcing so much of our lives to markets and governments and start doing more things for ourselves. Grow your own vegetables. Put solar panels on your house. Maybe move to a self-sustaining pioneer community in the mountains. This is, as you might expect, the weirdest part of the book. And it's hard to see how it reflects much more than Lindsey's own idiosyncratic preferences about what makes life meaningful. What about those who don't share his views? How do we deal with the fact that many people *like* buying their vegetables from a store, or ordering in coffee via DoorDash? We don't have to assume that these people are *right* to like such things. Maybe they're misguided, and their life would be better and richer if they roasted their own coffee beans at home. But Lindsey doesn't have much to say about how we get from mass consumerism to independence beyond making people rich enough that independence is more of a feasible option. My own suspicion is that cost isn't the only or even the primary obstacle to most people's moving to communes in the mountains. So what then?
My own sense is that Jonathan Rauch was right in his Unpopulist review to claim that Lindsey has granted too much weight to the post-liberal critics of market liberalism. But even if he has, there's a lot for readers to learn from his explorations. The Permanent Problem is well worth a careful read.
March 9, 2026
Interesting ideas and the type of grand synthesis I usually like. Felt like it could have been longer or shorter. Might have been better if this expanded on the authors essays to give more economic background or more moral/philosophical/technological background, though im sure that was more the point. Would benefit a general reader to go a bit more into the ideas of Adam smith, Marx, Keynes, Hayek, or even Peter Theil and his contemporaries rather than all the wink and nods that will make a reader feel smart if they are already familiar with those thinkers.
January 26, 2026
Asks a lot of really big questions and has a very compelling broad story for why a handful of broad societal trends are connected. If you think about the main thesis of the book, a lot of things really click. As with any book this ambitious, I didn't agree with everything but it is worth the read.
March 7, 2026
A mishmash of ideas, few of them compelling. Lindsey’s effort to pull these threads together into a coherent book is commendable, given the complexity of the material, and his depth and breadth of knowledge are evident. I’m glad it was a short read.
April 27, 2026
Man. I really wanted some more about moral and spiritual problems of abundance. Instead there’s a somewhat creative economic policy proposal. But that’s in the last 10% of the book. First 90% is just modern economic history, which might make this a 3 star book if that’s all news to you.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews