The Tyranny Dead Ideas: Revolutionary Thinking for a New Age of Prosperity

Written by Matt Miller

Narrated by Matt Miller

“Offers the most plausible way to renovate our political and policy thinking to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century.”-Joe Klein, Time

America is at a crossroads. The global economic downturn that began in 2008 has laid bare the structural weakness of our economy, putting the country through its most severe test since the Great Depression. Yet our political and business leaders have failed to prepare us because they are in the grip of a set of “dead ideas” about how a modern economy should work. Even the proponents of “change” in the Obama administration remain tentative in pushing the boundaries of the conventional wisdom.

But as Matt Miller shows in this provocative and influential analysis, the American economy will turn the corner only if we move beyond these outdated ways of thinking and recognize the ascendance of a new set of “destined ideas” that will reinvigorate our economy, our politics, and our day-to-day lives. And in a new preface, Miller shows how today's financial crisis has finally stripped these dead ideas of their power, offering hope for a durable recovery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ascent Audio
• Release date: Jan 20, 2010
• ISBN: 9781596595156

Matt Miller

Matt Miller is the author of The Two Percent Solution: Fixing America’s Problems in Ways Liberals and Conservatives Can Love, which was a Los Angeles Times bestseller. He is a contributing editor at Fortune; a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress; the host of public radio’s popular week-in-review program Left, Right & Center; and a consultant to corporations, governments, and nonprofits. He lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews for The Tyranny Dead Ideas

[bakudreamer · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Interesting, and very well written.

[smhilgert · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed this book very much and would recommend it to anyone willing to think "outside the box" about public policy. I especially appreciated the historical evolution of these dead ideas. My feeling is that not many people are aware of their evolution. I would like to see ore elected officials read this book. I read it because it was being read and recommended by the mayor of Minneapolis, R.T. Rybak. It is definitely a discussion starter.

[oreillynsf_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book and am hopeful that many will read it. There are so many huge issues facing our government and society, and our perspective on them is vividly colored by past experiences and situations. Reality is that so much of our society and economy has changed that we need to test the veracity of many of the ideas that guide public policy today.

[ambookgeek · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A quick and very engaging read that (to my mind at least) brings some thought provoking context to the current state of political discourse in the America.

[dmcolon · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I saw Matt Miller on a Big Think video a few weeks back and was immediately taken with his theories on "dead ideas". It's not a complex concept and it is what you think it is -- ideas whose shelf-life has expired. And yet, people tend to cling to these ideas despite the fact that this act leads to some pretty nasty consequences. Miller tackles lots of these ideas in the political realm and discusses such things as health care, free-trade, education, taxes, and the like. The book takes an informative, if also somewhat cursory, look at the history of each of the "dead ideas" and proposes a whole new set of ideas we ought to adopt. On the whole, the book is fairly standard stuff and amounts to a litany of liberal-leaning solutions to today's problems (not that that's a problem for me). Where the book shines out is the call for "court-jesters" who take a withering look at assumptions in a given organization. We so often look at these critics as trouble -- not as team players. But Miller rightly points out how necessary these types are. These people are not your toxically inclined colleagues who carp all day, but are instead people who make hard, but constructive critiques of the organization.As we move into a new political era, all of the old assumptions that us into the current crisis are coming under the microscope. The Tyranny of Dead Ideas' prescriptions may not be for every person, but the method of radical critique seems to be more relevant than it has in my lifetime. It's easy to say that Miller's methods are necessary, but few people or organizations actually turn the ideas into reality. Now that we live in "interesting times", I don't know that we have any option but to proceed critically.