Walter Wagner's book is a philosophical essay/treatise that searches for, and proposes, a moral basis for today's global economy. Wagner, a scholarly expert on the history of economic thought, builds his case from Adam Smith's theory of moral sentiments through to current thinking about the virtues and shortcomings of free market economics. He writes in the style and with the broad perspective of Robert Heilbroner, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Lester Thurow.

Unlike many critical authors, he accepts the core function of free market economics but believes that massive scientific and technological impacts dictate a revision of the ideologies that support public policy and private decision making. The book's overall vision embraces and describes a new moral framework, and the means of developing it, suitable for the emerging global economy.

Chapter 1: The Quest

I initiate an inquiry into how economics can contribute to our understanding of the nature and causes of the well-being of humanity, provide guidance to progress, and calculate the costs of change. Mine is a quest to comprehend how economies go right, how they go wrong, and how to figure out what policies to follow.

Chapter 2: Adam Smith's Footprints

The discipline of economics has arisen in the Western world out of both moral philosophizing and natural science as they flourished in the Enlightenment. Adam Smith, as a moral philosopher, focused these leading ideas of the eighteenth century on the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. In doing so he established the discipline of economics as a moral enterprise.

Chapter 3: Insights, Oversights, Illusions

In seeking to reconstruct a combined theory and philosophy of economics, it is essential to confront the problems of theory construction itself. Traditional economic theory provides insights but also neglects and even overlooks (oversights) imperative conditions upon which human well-being is dependent. This chapter explores these conundrums.

Chapter 4: Free Market Theory, Touchstone of Ideology

In Western market economies, the theory that stands behind the public philosophy and supports the ideology of capitalism is Adam Smith's free-market competitive economic theory. This chapter tells some of the story of the Smithian tradition as it exists today: the central ideas, its strong public appeal, its shortcomings and failures, the illusions it fosters.

Chapter 5: The Essential Economy and A Workable Market

The basic causes of the wealth of nations and well-being of individuals are the functioning elements of the Essential Economy. The managing mechanism is the "workable market." The Essential Economy is the first-order cause of the wealth of nations. It includes the fundamental technology-driven production processes. The private-property market system is the second-order cause of the wealth of nations. Both perform necessary functions.

Chapter 6: The Organizing Animal

Kenneth Boulding's three major modes by which all humans transact with each other in all functioning social systems—Threat mode, Exchange mode, and Integrative mode—can elucidate the relationships among the Essential Economy, workable markets, and moral appraisal.

Chapter 7: Moral Sentiments and Economic Justice

Moral foundations differ among individuals and cultures. How can we find a basis for moral agreement and a sense of justice? It is the task of this chapter to explore further steps to develop a morality by which economic justice may be better perceived and more practically applied.

Chapter 8: The Meaning of Economic Progress

I contend that Western economies are materially, humanistically, and morally better than all others, past or present. This superiority is a product of progress which should be understood and perpetuated for the future well-being of all humanity. However, our understanding of modern complexities of progress is vague and is not well developed as moral guidance in the field of main core economics.

Chapter 9: Thinking About an Unknowable Future

Our major concern now is to develop strategy to cope with an uncertain future arising from progress and change. If we are to manage the prospects of progress and the pace, costs, and dangers of change, it is necessary to invent a vision of how to go about it. What strategies are we to follow about forming policies for an unknowable future?

Chapter 10: An Apollo Project for Humanitarian Economics

The proposed Apollo program's mission seeks to design a Humanitarian Research Institute that can construct a strategy for managing the pace of progress, including coping with the costs and dangers of change. The Institute must become a permanent means by which all nations identify the knowledge needed to provide humanity with practical moral guidance without the costs of change being more painful than its gains.