"People like to compare two major economic systems side by side. The victorious one, neoliberalism, and the inferior one, socialism. A third way is not or is only seldom spoken of. One can find it, however, in this book. This economic system is liberal, but its neoliberal teeth have been decidedly pulled out by for example, making speculation and dumping wages impossible. This makes it an extremely exciting manuscript, and extremely worthy of consideration. This book offers not superficial optimism but instead an utterly explosive vision to incite debate. It is possibly one of the most important works that has been published in recent years. Reading this book left me with the same feeling I had after reading Shakespeare's A Mid-summer Night's Dream." This was said by a member of German Council of Economic Experts. A global and universally just world economic system doesn't have to remain a mere utopian vision. What we need, however, is an economic paradigm shift no less radical than the shift from a geocentric to Copernican worldview. Coach and Change Manager Rainer Grunert characterizes himself as a "radical lateral thinker," and his essay as a necessary "heretical provocation" in these times of world economic crisis. In "The Third Way," he calls for an equalization of money and goods where instead of in-terest being paid; in the future fees should be paid for the storage of money - just as fees are paid for the storage of goods. From that basis, Rainer Grunert develops a model of world economy, which would very quickly make worldwide prosperity for all people possible and sustainable: The slow depreciation of money leads to a very active circulation of money worldwide, since saving it is no longer worthwhile. Land is the only thing that maintains its value over time since the earth has a limited surface area. Grunert's idea is that a world authority would buy real estate from its current owners and immediately lease it back to him. Everyone on earth would be paid an unconditional basic income from the revenue generated. That way, all people would share in an equal ownership of the world, and worldwide distributive justice would be established.
Rainer Grunert is one of Germany's new lateral thinker in nonfiction. Born in 1958, he began his professional life as a typesetter and later studied business economics and psy-chology. After several additional studies, travels abroad, and an internet start-up company, he joined an international consultancy firm. He specialized there in strategic financial restructuring and information technology. In 2000, he became a freelancer and worked for six years as a temporary manager and a consultant for the management of large corpora-tions. Since 2007, Rainer Grunert has worked as an author and a coach with a private prac-tice in Zurich.
