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An entertaining and original introduction to the debate over globalization through the history of six well-known pieces of sports equipment
“Each ball reveals a different aspect of today’s economy, its history, its rewards and its challenges. Roll them together and one gets a story about the prospects that globalized production poses for our economic future.” —from Bounce
Globalization is the central economic issue of our time. It is tied to everything we buy; it impacts who wins elections; and it can lead to the wholesale collapse (or revitalization) of towns, cities, and countries. And yet, for all its significance, globalization is still widely misunderstood—or just not understood at all. What’s been missing is a way in.
In Bounce, William Milberg, a professor of economics at the New School for Social Research, takes the game balls used in six popular sports—golf, baseball, football, soccer, tennis, and basketball—and goes deep into their complex and fascinating history, which is also the history of globalization. Each ball tells us unique and vital things about this evolution: the golf ball, for instance, uncovers the dynamics of the first wave of globalization, with colonial powers seeking rubber in the plantations of Africa, Asia, and South America, and the importance of machine technology and innovation. The football, on the other hand, shows how labor unions provided the “countervailing power” that workers needed against growing industrial corporations, prompting steady growth in pay and economic security for the average worker.
Globalization has been a series of choices, in other words—by individuals, corporations, and governments. In the vein of Simon Kuper’s Soccernomics and Franklin Foer’s How Soccer Explains the World, Bounce shows us how the history of these game balls helps us to understand the consequences of those choices and where we want the economy to go.
Praise for Bounce:
“Milberg combines sports and international economics to come up with a nifty way of understanding the knotty concept of globalization and supply chains. . . . A novel approach to understanding economic activity.”—Kirkus Reviews
“In Bounce, William Milberg turns six ordinary sports balls inside out and finds the whole arc of globalization inside them: empire and innovation, countervailing power and tax havens, value created in one place and captured in another. A delightful book with a serious argument—globalization should be redesigned, not reversed.”—Mariana Mazzucato, professor at University College London and author of The Common Good Economy: A New Compass
“Rolling, bouncing, and flying through the ages, this fascinating book tells us how the global economy has been shaped by the struggle between profit-seeking corporations and ordinary citizens (as workers, consumers, and voters). While being serious in intent and erudite in understanding, the book’s narrative is so relatable, as it is rooted in our everyday experiences. Read this book if you want to make globalization serve the majority, rather than narrow corporate elite.”—Ha-Joon Chang, author of 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism and Edible Economics
“Bounce immerses us in the history of economic ideas using the unlikely lens of balls used in professional sports. Milberg explores changes in the way the balls have been used and manufactured to give the reader an understanding of the complexities of the world economic system, including the impact of colonialism, gender differences in labor supply chains, and the move to shareholder value capitalism. This is a must-read for sports fans, and for anyone who wants an accessible entry into understanding the international economy, how it has changed over time, and how we can develop more comprehensive solutions to the challenges of globalization.”—Radhika Balakrishnan, former director, Center for Women’s Global Leadership, Rutgers University
“In Bounce, William Milberg achieves the near-impossible: he describes how our current era of economic globalization functions and malfunctions in a narrative that is, at once, historically grounded, analytically sophisticated, and still fully accessible and even fun to read. Milberg pulls this off by focusing on the manifold ways that the balls everybody uses to play golf, football, baseball, soccer, tennis, and basketball get manufactured, shipped, marketed, and finally, delivered to the world’s fields and courts. Milberg is both an outstanding economist and writer as well as a serious sports fan. The combination works. ”—Robert Pollin, Distinguished Professor of Economics and Co-Director, Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
“A brilliant, accessible tour of how rules and power, not ‘the market,’ decide who gets paid.”—Nick Hanauer, co-author of Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposign the Lies and Half-Truths that Protect Profit, Power, and Wealth in America
William Milberg is a professor of economics at the New School for Social Research, where he also directs the Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies. He has written extensively on global value chains and their implications for economic development, jobs, finance and intellectual property. The author lives in New York.