Challenges to the proactive society

This chapter investigates the main economic, social, and cognitive challenges capable of stopping the transition from the managerial society to the proactive society in its tracks or even reversing it. By the same token, it attempts to identify the “allies” of the latter, that is, the beliefs, attitudes, expectations, and values whose widespread adoption is essential in fostering the proactive mindset together with the recognition of both its opportunities and demands. More specifically, it points out that cultivating the mindset in question requires, among others, resisting both the utopianism of “post-scarcity” and the misguided “realism” of anti-globalization, thereby necessitating opposition both to the allure of “technological emancipation” from labor and to the blandishments of “protection” from the vagaries of international trade.