Summary of Ross Gregory Douthat's The Decadent Society

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 In 2015, a young man comes to New York City and starts a company that plans to host a music festival. The festival's online rollout is a success, but the entrepreneur has to keep inventing new perks to sell tickets to cover the costs of the ones that have already been purchased.

#2 A girl from Texas grows up wanting to be Steve Jobs, and she builds a company that revolutionizes the blood testing industry. But over time, as the company keeps expanding, it ceases to be an innovator and instead a fraud.

#3 Decadent economies are ones in which the cutting edge of capitalism is defined by let's-pretendism: technologies that have almost arrived, business models that are on their way to profitability, and runways that go on and on without ever achieving liftoff.

#4 Many people in Silicon Valley believe that the promise of Silicon Valley is still alive, and that the Internet economy is as real as it gets. But this tells us that twenty-first-century growth and innovation are not what we were promised.

© 2022 IRB Media (Ebook): 9781669377634

Release date

Ebook: 29 March 2022