The argument is that we let a market economy turn into a market society, where price ends up standing in for worth. Once that happens, anything without a price tag gets treated as though it has no value at all.
He builds the alternative around seven values: dynamism, resilience, sustainability, fairness, responsibility, solidarity and humility. The book moves between the 2008 financial crisis, the pandemic and climate, and he had a front row seat for the first two as governor of the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada.
The part that stayed with me is the measurement problem. Things get optimised because they are measurable, not because they matter, and the unmeasured thing erodes without anyone deciding to let it go.
I run into the same pattern in technology work. Dashboards drift toward whatever is easy to count. I read this in March 2026, by which point Carney was Prime Minister, which makes it a more interesting document than it was when it came out.
