Collective Courage

Collective Courage: a history of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice  
by Jessica Gordon Nembhard, 311 pages.

Jessica Gordon Nembhard uncovers Black cooperative thought and practice in the United States: cooperation in farming, land, housing and grocery stores; these along with burial societies are the shared labor and economies that have been overlooked by historians but vibrant in the experience and oral traditions in many black communities. Collective economic organizing has contributed to the survival and prosperity of African Americans and their poor neighbors, but these have often been met with lynchings and death threats -- as in the case of the murdered owners of the Memphis grocery cooperative, and the accompanying death threat to Ida. B. Wells who left subsequently fled the city. Their collectiveity has been a courageous threat to the U.S. capitalistic economy that uses black labor and economic servitude to bolster profits. Rooted in collective experience, African Americans have also significantly contributed to visioning, theorizing and thinking about cooperative economies. And important book not only for history but also because black collective practices and theories are increasingly modifying, and may eventually help to replace, the present economic system.

Collective Courage

Collective Courage: a history of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice  by Jessica, 311 pages.

Nembhard reviews Black economic cooperation in farming, land, housing, grocery stores and; these and burial societies. These shared labor and economies have been overlooked by historians but have been crucial in the traditions, stories and experience of many black communities. Collective economic organizing has contributed to the survival and prosperity of African Americans but have often been met with local resistance, even death threats and lynchings -- as in the case of the murdered owners of the Memphis grocery cooperative, and the accompanying death threat to Ida. B. Wells who reported on the lynchings, was threatened and then fled the city to save her life. Black collectivity has been a courageous threat to the U.S. capitalistic economy that has otherwise used black labor and servitude to bolster profits. African Americans have also significantly contributed to visioning, theorizing and thinking about cooperative economies. Collective Courage is an important book not only for history but also because these collective practices and contemporary adaptations may eventually help to replace, the present exploitative economic system.

-- CraigSL

Aquinas and the Market

Aquinas and the Market: Toward a Humane Economy by Mary L Hirschfeld, 217 pages

In this intriguing book, Mary Hirschfeld argues that economics and Thomist theology share considerable common ground, beginning with their understanding of man as fundamentally motivated by his quest for happiness.  Unfortunately, she claims, a barrier has been constructed to insulate supposedly value-neutral scientific economics from the ethical and metaphysical dimensions of human existence, but the resulting "rational" approach is itself both the product and the perpetuator of hidden (and erroneous) anthropological assumptions made all the more pernicious as the result of their invisibility.  At the same time, drawing upon her experience as a trained economist, she demonstrates that mainstream economics is not as narrow as theologians are apt to believe, and has much to teach about prudential planning and living under the limitations of finite human understanding.

Battle of Bretton Woods

The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order by Benn Steil, 348 pages

In July of 1944, even as American and British troops fought side-by-side through the hedgerows of Normandy, representatives of the two governments squared off against each other in a resort hotel overlooking the small town of Bretton Woods, New Hampshire.  They were gathered there, along with over 700 delegates from 42 other nations, to begin to construct a postwar international economic system.   Attention was centered on Lord John Maynard Keynes, the most famous economist in the world and the head of the British delegation.  As a result of the war the United Kingdom was "mortgaged to America", a situation their delegation was eager to mitigate or escape.  The US delegation, meanwhile, saw the British Empire as a potential postwar rival, and would pursue an economic strategy designed to promote its dismemberment and assure postwar American dominance.  The architect of this American strategy was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Harry Dexter White, who organized and manipulated the conference, and who was also, unbeknownst to both his American and British peers, a Soviet agent.

Although the story of what happened at Bretton Woods - how it both succeeded and failed - is doubtlessly an important one, it mostly takes the form of interminable committee meetings and memoranda exchanges in which the most abstruse minutiae of international finance are discussed.  Somehow, Steil finds enough interest in the characters and enough humor in the proceedings to keep the reader awake despite these handicaps.

Utopia for Realists

Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World by Rutger Bregman, 319 pages

Bregman starts by describing what Miedieval Europeans considered a Utopia. In most of the world, humanity has achieved that Utopia. By multiple metrics, most people in the world have good living conditions. So, how can we make things even better (especially when people may not have to work as much because of robots and AI)? Bregman's answer is a Universal Basic Income(UBI).

UBI is self-descriptive. Everyone would be guaranteed a basic income so they wouldn't have to work but if they wanted to.

To make his argument, Bregman cites several experiments with UBI. A compelling argument in favor of UBI is that it could save governments money by eliminating bureaucracy and the need for some social services. He makes some arguments that could appeal to liberals and conservatives.

Underlying Bregman's arguments is the idea that economies will continue to prosper. He isn't alone in this assumption but since populations continue to increase and the Earth has limited resources it may a bad assumption to make.

I had heard of UBI along with some of arguments in favor of it and found this in-depth analysis of the idea to be engaging. Bregman's writing style and the translation made for an easy read.

The Economists’ Diet

The Economists’ Diet: The Surprising Formula For Losing Weight and Keeping It Off by Christopher Payne, PhD. And Rob Barnett Two Formerly Obese Economists       Audio Book:  6hrs., 30 mins         Hardback Book:  320 pages

Great book.   The writers are as mentioned after their names two formerly obese economists.    Each topped 200lbs at one time in their lives.    Each ate with abandon and never passed on supersizing their fast food orders until friendly interventions began good naturedly from family members, colleagues and friends.   That was the first nudge but it took really experiencing not being able to do what they once could due to their weight and lack of any kind of exertion on their parts.   To this day neither man cares for formalized exercise and both say if you follow their diet based on economic theorems you too, will lose weight whether you ever exercise or not.   Both men came to the conclusion it was perhaps time to do something about their weight, both men refused to exercise to do it because frankly it was just too uncomfortable.  They began to work on a formula that would prove the answer for them and afterward many other people to get the weight off and keep it off.   They determined that from a  health factor standpoint it was reasonable to take off the weight but none of that extreme crash diet stuff.   They decided to work on their weight problem as an economic equation.    Whatever they did had to be something they would stay with and also something that would give them significant returns for their investment of time, foregoing snacks and calorie laden treats, no more supersizing their meals.   Together they worked from the supposition that working  from economic principles and keeping data on their progress they could beat their personal battles with their bulges.   When it worked, people began asking them how they did it.    They decided to lay it out in book format and share their successful plan with the world.   Their principles let you eat your favorite foods – you don’t have to give them up you will learn how to equate what you indulge in today with pulling back a little tomorrow.    They call it a feast and fast mentality.      They teach the reader how to maintain your own data and how to maneuver the data to make weight loss happen for you.  They offer a list of behavioral best practices.   The 6 core habits they recommend:  1.) Weigh every day – it keeps you on track and if you keep a food diary along with it – you will learn what foods cause a weight gain from the night before and which ones don’t.   2.) Eat one square meal everyday.   This is your full on eat what you want meal of your choosing be it breakfast lunch or dinner but for your other 2 meals eat moderately.    Fruit or whole grain cereals for breakfast, salad for lunch then your favorite for dinner or eat a big breakfast, light lunch, light dinner or light breakfast hit the buffet for lunch then have a light dinner.    3.)  They do recommend being calorie conscious so on the 2 light meals, you truly are eating light.     4.) They tell the reader do not spend money on fad diets nor diet food.   You’ve got this and you can keep better control fixing your own food (and save money, too).  5.)   They do add that you should limit the variety of food you eat.     You know what you like stick to that – don’t vary a lot – this will also save time on grocery shopping.   Perimeter shop – everything you really need to eat will be along the perimeter of the store – trouble comes in those inside aisles.   6.)  Adopt a mini-feast, mini fast lifestyle.    Sure you can go feast at your Uncle’s Barbecue, next day, hop on the scale check out what adjustments if any you have to make on your food intake that day.    Sure you can go out for beers and burgers with your friends after work, just hop on the scale the next day, maybe 3 light meals that day if you really splurged.   Also they recommend the reader learns the terms, light, square and splurge so you know where you are in your food journal and can adjust accordingly.    They give 25 additional microhabits to make your own like listening to your body’s signals are you still hungry or are you really full but like the taste so much you think you want more?   Stop making excuses as to why you are overweight – if you are ready do something about it.   Don’t drink your calories.   Keep yourself motivated with one reachable realistic long term weight loss goals and several short term ones.   Prepare to spend about 18 months to lose 50lbs.   When you go out eat what you want but opt for the smaller size – no supersizing.   Be skeptical of any food that has the word light listed on the packaging.   And their basic truth is ignore all quick fixes be prepared to eat less food forever.    No splurges at every meal – splurges are for special occasions,   2 light one square every day is the way.  But when you do splurge make sure it is on something you really like don’t waste your splurge on food you don’t really enjoy.   (Not always easy in social situations but work around it.)    Funny, insightful, inspiring and very educational.   These guys are good. 

A Little History of Economics

A Little History of Economics by Niall Kishtainy        Audio Book:  9 hours, 52 minutes   Hardback Book:  256 pages            

My Economics teacher would be so proud of me for reading up on the subject, I have to confess though, this is no lofty tome, this is enjoyable learning presented in story form.    While everything in the book is historical/economics fact Niall Kishtainy presents the subject in such an enjoyable way that you learn so much more because you literally want to know what comes next.    He would make an excellent teacher because like my economics professor/mentor he makes hard stuff understandable.   He begins at the beginning when humans learned if one person has something and another wants it they could barter, or trade or work out some amenicable transaction to the satisfaction of each party.   Kishtainy goes from there all the way through history to current times discussing so many things along the way, Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand,” theory,  the stock market crashes, the Great Depression, Black Monday, inflation, recessions, how global warming is effecting global economies, etc. but he covers all that like your best buddy sharing his thoughts with you.    Well done!  I highly recommend this book for anyone considering or currently taking economics classes to give you a foot up and for anyone who has an interest economics.  

Bonds of Debt

The Bonds of Debt: Borrowing Against the Common Good by Richard Dienst, 186 pages

As Richard Dienst explains, while capitalism has always been based upon debt, since the '70s debt, both public and private, has increasingly served not only as the primary motor driving the global economy, but an elaborate system of social and political control binding debtors to creditors on the personal, national, and international levels.  That such an arrangement is unsustainable seems to have been proven by the financial crises of the last decade, yet the debt regime continues its unquestioned ascendancy.  Unfortunately, Dienst's narrow materialism blinds him to any real alternative to this system, despite his appropriation of terms such as "common good", "jubilee", and "solidarity" which he clearly does not understand.

The Bonds of Debt is enlivened by Dienst's playfulness with language, as evidenced not only by the title but by formulations such as "insecure securities". Unfortunately, his inventiveness is more often demonstrated in his deployment of jargon as a tool of obfuscation - a kind of Dodgsonian rhetorical strategy is necessary to maintain his looking-glass view of the world, wherein, for example, the starvation and violent repression of the Venezuelan people somehow represent prosperity and liberation.

Earning It

Earning It by Joann S. Lublin        Audio Book:  8 hours, 15 mins     Hardback Book:  304 pages  

Joann S. Lublin shares her trials and tribulations as a woman working to achieve her career goals.    She is honest in describing not just her personal journey up the corporate ladder but also the stories of about 50 or more other women working at the CEO level in a number of fields.   The copyright on this book is 2016, I had to check that date because so many of the stories involve women in corporate America who are still being treated as underlings.    While I realize there is still a glass ceiling to a large degree (yes girls there honestly is still an old boys network out there),  I was surprised that women are still being ogled, pawed,  asked to get coffee,  and asked to step out of photos of their male colleagues because the wives aren’t in this shot.    People, this is 2017 not 1964!    Whaaaaat?    Truly, I was surprised.    Women CEOs are not new they have held the helm of major corporations for a long time now so how anyone can think such unconscionable behavior could be ignored or accepted is beyond belief.   Oh, there will always be someone who has questionable ethics regardless the field,  and now and then some “player” who feels he is the office Cassanova who might see how far he can push the boundaries but, when a woman who has earned her position through diligence in pursuing her education and/or working her way up the levels to achieve the top spot running an organization is treated with such a dismissive attitude on the parts of the males in the room I have to ask, “How can that be in this day and age?”   While there is still somewhat of an equality imbalance and the stereotypical “suits rule” remains imbedded in the social psyche (think “Mad Men”) isn’t there at least a crack in the glass ceiling by now?    Not shattered, not gone, but a definite crack should be felt.    Women still have to prove themselves capable and work harder, put up with more b.s. and no matter how good they do their job are still made to feel less than their male counterparts.     The book ends with the hope that by the time the daughters of the current female CEOs come of age the stories they tell them of what they had to endure will sound like something so foreign they just might not believe them.    Very well written.   This book gives you insight into just how difficult and how much of an uphill battle women still struggle as suffragettes in the board rooms across the world.    

Buying Time

Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism by Wolfgang Streeck, translated by Patrick Camiller, 189 pages

In this short book, adapted from the author's 2012 Adorno Lectures, Wolfgang Streeck asserts that the Marxist analysis of the crisis threatening capitalist democracy in the 1970s was fundamentally correct, only the crisis was delayed by factors the analysts had not considered.  In his view, the critics correctly understood that the pending crisis involved the legitimacy of capitalism and its cultural contradictions with a democratic society, but what they had not grasped was the extent to which it would be the forces of capital which challenged democracy, eroding the postwar welfare state in favor of neoliberal free markets.  This was accompanied by an explosion of consumerism driven by easy credit, with private debt supplementing the  of public debt.  This, in turn, has lead to the rise of a globalized creditor class - what Streeck calls the Marktvolk - whose interests differ markedly from those of the ordinary citizens - the Staatsvolk.

In Streeck's view, the economic crisis which began in 2008 exposed the manifold ways in which capitalism has subverted democracy.  Insisting on the distinction between market justice and social justice, Streeck demonstrates how neoliberalism has managed to promote the former over and against the latter, primarily by the delegation of authority to international bodies, especially the European Union, which serve to shield the market from popular political pressure.  A correction, if it is to come, must therefore take the form derided by the elites as populism - an assertion of national sovereignty placing the needs of the Staatsvolk over those of the Marktvolk.

Buying Time is a short book that necessarily presents a simplified view of a complicated matter - although this simplification has the virtue of clarity.  Streeck's Marxist background causes him to treat the Marktvolk as a self-conscious body, and his analysis overestimates their commitment to laissez faire by treating it as an ideological matter rather than one of practical convenience.  He also underestimates the extent to which today's workers are themselves capitalists, especially through their pension plans.  Finally, and most obviously, there is the difficulty of the once-failed prophet assuring his listeners that this time he's right.  At the same time, whether or not the cultural contradictions of capitalism are now approaching their climax, it would be foolish to disagree with Streeck's thesis that they are more glaring now than ever before.

Illiberal Reformers

Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era by Thomas C Leonard, 191 pages

Thomas Leonard defines Progressivism as "first and foremost, an attitude about the proper relationship of science (personified in the scientific expert) to the state, and of the state to the economy and polity."  Its chief principles he enumerates as "anti-individualism, social control, efficiency, and the authority of scientific experts".  This, in turn, explains its paradoxical tendency to treat the poor and marginalized simultaneously as "helpless victims in need of state uplift and as dangerous threats requiring state restraint."  In Illiberal Reformers, he demonstrates how these tensions played out in the early progressive enthusiasm for eugenics, prohibition, and even the minimum wage, which was initially supported as much as a prophylactic against cheap, "inferior" immigrant labor as a boon to "superior" native-born workers.

The narrative of Illiberal Reformers spans the Progressive Era (1890-1930) and the focus is on economics - Leonard rarely strays outside of these frames.  Unfortunately, his work sometimes gives the impression of being rather more comprehensive than it is.  Within the limits it sets for itself, Illiberal Reformers profoundly illuminates a vitally important moment and movement that are often fundamentally misunderstood, and lays bare the troubled history of certain basic assumptions that continue to shape our political debate, but it should be clear that the motives of the reformers of a century ago cannot be reflexively ascribed to their contemporary counterparts, nor can man be reduced to a mere homo economicus.

Time and Tide

Time and Tide, By Weare and Tyne: Twenty-Five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work by John Ruskin, 195 pages

In this collection of his correspondence with a working class admirer, Ruskin summarizes and continues the social teaching he previously expounded in Munera Pulveris and Sesame and Lilies, while pulling in ideas he developed in works such as The Stones of Venice.  A large part of Ruskin's appeal lies in precisely this comprehensive consistency, uniting ethics, economics, and aesthetics.  Time and Tide calls for a comprehensive reform of society, beginning at the bottom.  As always, Ruskin's central concern is to guard against the emergence of a mass society, and he is equally opposed to mass production and mass democracy.

There is much in Time and Tide that is rationally prescriptive and therefore entirely inorganic and ultimately impractical - Ruskin himself concedes it is "too large to receive at present any deliberate execution" and denies that he maintains "any idea of its appearing, to our present public mind, practicable even at a remote period."  Taken at a slight distance, however, in the same light as Plato's Republic, there is a great deal of value in Ruskin's criticisms.  The epistolary nature of the book allows the author to range freely over a wide variety of topics but also results in him changing subjects haphazardly.  The end product is sometimes frustrating, often charming, and frequently insightful.

Too Big To Fail

Too Big To Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin, 539 pages

Too Big To Fail is the definitive journalistic account of the financial crisis of 2008. as seen through the eyes of the bankers and brokers as they tried desperately to find a solution to the problems they themselves had created.  Their efforts range from the almost heroic - in one thirteen hour workday, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson was involved in no fewer than sixty-nine phone calls and meetings - to the comic - an AIG vice president hustling through the streets of New York carrying a briefcase stuffed with $14 billion in bonds - to the entirely absurd - several dozen Goldman Sachs traders reacting to the news that the UK had imposed a moratorium on short-selling their company's stock by rising to their feet and singing "The Star-Spangled Banner".  Sorkin, who covered the meltdown for The New York Times, goes into truly impressive, almost overwhelming detail about the events of September 2008.

The book is badly organized at times - Sorkin first tells the story of John Thain's overhaul of the New York Stock Exchange, then his life story up until became CEO of NYSE, and then continues with his later leadership of Merrill Lynch.  This further confuses a narrative already burdened by hundreds of characters and dozens of companies and government agencies.  Sorkin also - whether through journalistic objectivity or simple myopia - seems blind to the absurdity of some of the situations he describes, like AIG's scramble to ensure that the brokers who lost 5 billion dollars of the company's money wouldn't leave for their competitors.  Perspective is easy to lose - Sorkin is so engaging in his description of the titanic struggle to save Wall Street that it is easy to forget that even the failures wound up wealthy far beyond most people's imagining.

Too Big To Fail is a tremendous accomplishment within the limits it sets for itself.  The story of what happened as the 2008 crisis climaxed is covered exhaustively.  How it happened, how it affected ordinary people, and what it ultimately cost is outside its scope - for that, we must turn to books like Madrick's Age of Greed, Stockman's The Great Deformation, or Barofsky's Bailout.  The occasional mention of how the unfolding of the crisis might affect ordinary Americans only serves to underscore how little such concerns matter on the highest levels of our political and economic systems.

Little Rice: Smartphones, Xiaomi and the Chinese Dream

Little Rice: Smartphones, Xiaomi and the Chinese Dream by Clay Shirky.  128 pages.

I found this small book to be entertaining, as well as quite informative.  Xiaomi has become the world's third-largest mobile phone carrier, with products tailored to the Chinese and emerging Markets (and yes, it even outsells Samsung).    Xiaomi (or "little rice") is more than a startup company that has risen to be a titan, but it's also representative of how mobile phones offer the kind of freedom and connectivity that autocratic countries fear.

It was really interesting to read about how this company started, and how they handle their business, especially in light of the fact that they are in China, a country notorious for clamping down on Internet access and the sharing of information.   Shirky has an engaging writing style, and is very well versed in the ins-and-outs of the Chinese market.    For example, on page 23, he writes, "China, remarkably, has managed to create an alternate path, building a country where information moves like people, in highly identified and constrained ways, with the government always reserving the right to refuse entry from elsewhere, along with the ability to apprehend rogue information locally."  The fact that Xiaomi has been able to thrive is really quite a feat and a demonstration of the fascinating balance between the company and the Chinese government.

Laudato Si'

Laudato Si'' by Pope Francis, 177 pages

Promulgated on the Feast of Pentecost this past May, Laudato Si' is Pope Francis' encyclical "On Care of Our Common Home", the Earth.  The title is, as is customary with papal pronouncements, taken from the first words of the document (usually Latin, in this case Italian), "Laudato Si', mi' Signore" - "Praise be to You, my Lord", a passage from "The Canticle of the Sun" written by the Pope's namesake, St Francis of Assisi, a celebration of the greatness of God and the kinship of all created things.

St Francis is sometimes deformed by ignorance or ideology into a free-spirited pantheist, and Laudato Si' can be oversimplified into an environmental manifesto or an "encyclical on global warming".  "The Canticle of the Sun" climaxes with a celebration of divine mercy and justice as the crowning features of providential Creation, which includes the reality of "Sister Death" alongside "Brother Sun" and "Sister Moon".  Laudato Si' is a call for a turn towards the nature of things - against a utilitarian focus on technique and the manipulation of reality, and towards a renewed respect for Creation as it is given to us.  This does not mean rejecting any sort of improvement of nature - to the contrary, productive labor is a fundamental need of man, a necessity of his nature.  What it does mean is ceasing to view the world as a neutral, passive object, and beginning to recognize the essences and ends of natural things, using them respectfully, instead of according to our own insatiable appetites.

Great Disruption

The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order by Francis Fukuyama, 282 pages

Beginning in the late '50s, a massive shift occurred across the western world.  Crime soared, the family disintegrated, and fertility plummeted.  These changes were not localized in a single nation, and so cannot be explained by local events or movements, but they did not take place in East Asia and were less potent in Latin America and Southern Europe, and so cannot be explained by purely technological or economic developments.  In the first half of The Great Disruption famed social theorist Fukuyama (The End of History and the Last Man) conducts a statistical investigation into the nature and causes - cultural, technological, economic and demographic - of these changes.  Central to his account is the dwindling supply of social capital, the faith people have in their neighbors and fellow citizens.

The second half of the book is more interesting.  Fukuyama sides with the sociologists over the economists to support a theory of social development that sees human beings as innately predisposed towards cooperation, rather than rational sociopaths.  Human nature's fundamentally social and political orientation encourages the emergence of cooperative structures to fill needs.  Technological and social change, Fukuyama suggests, now favor these emergent networks over less flexible hierarchies.

Ultimately, Fukuyama asserts that society will regenerate because it must.  Writing in the late '90s, he discerned a turn towards renewal - the fall of communism, the triumph of moderate liberalism with Clinton and Blair, an increasing recognition of the superiority of stable two parent families for child rearing, the upstart dotcoms challenging the old corporate giants.  The twenty-first century has thus far not continued those trends, from increasing political and economic centralization to a further decline of the family to growing tribalization.  There is an alternative to renewal Fukuyama does not consider: collapse.

Great Beanie Baby Bubble

The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute by Zac Bissonnette, 245 pages

Ty Warner had a difficult childhood.  His father was emotionally, and sometimes physically, distant, while his mother was a paranoid schizophrenic.  Extremely, even obsessively, detail-oriented, he was somehow able to be convincing without being likeable.  He struggled in business and life until he created a line of understuffed poseable plush animals - Beanie Babies.

Initially not a hit, Beanie Babies became the best-selling toy of the '90s after being repositioned as a collectors' item.  Warner's constant tweaking of his products led to multiple variants and retired pieces, which turned the collectors' market into a speculators' market.  Prices soared, with Warner deftly manipulating supply and demand.  Toys bought for $5 sold for $5000 a few years later.  Then, suddenly, inevitably, the craze ended, and those $5000 "investments" found their way into bargain bins at Goodwill.

Bissonnette's book is fast-moving, well-researched, and fun, despite being a little rough around the edges.  Considering that the central character refuses to be interviewed and some of the supporting cast were reluctant to say anything that could damage their relationship with a notoriously litigious billionaire, it's remarkable The Great Beanie Baby Bubble has any substance at all, affording a bit of insight into the formation and collapse not only of this specific fad, but of speculative bubbles generally.

Impulse Society

The Impulse Society: America in the Age of Instant Gratification by Paul Roberts, 266 pages

The character of Veruca Salt was first introduced in the 1964 book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but she received her definitive anthem: "Don't care how, I want it now!" in the 1971 film adaptation.  By then a whole generation of Verucas (and Verucos) had grown to adulthood.  The social changes that shaped their characters were chronicled by Lasch in The Culture of Narcissism and Rieff in Triumph of the Therapeutic.  It is now Paul Roberts' task to illuminate the world they have made.

Although Roberts touches on social and psychological developments, his primary focus is on the distortions impulsive consumerism produces in the economic and political spheres.  In the former, it is incarnate in the quick buck mentality of the financial sector (which trickled down into the subprime mortgage crisis), while in the latter it finds its natural home in a tribalized polity based on knee-jerk reactions rather than considered ideas, catered to by a media which feeds the audience a daily slate of news items on which they must form an opinion and take a stand, whether trivial or vital.

Roberts goes out of his way to attempt to be fair - he is clear that his loyalties lie left of center - but he fails, probably unconsciously - the left is considered reasonable even when wrong, while the right is caricatured.  This is ironic, considering that it is exactly the sort of bias that results from the kinds of epistemic bubbles he criticizes elsewhere.  A greater flaw lies in Roberts' shallow approach.  The book never faces the root of radical atomistic individualism in the Enlightenment idea of society as rules of engagement in a buried but ongoing war of all against all.  In a culture where morality has been reduced to questions of power relations, true community is impossible.  Problems based on philosophical presumptions cannot be solved by policy wonks. 

This is a good book, a part of an important ongoing conversation, but one that ultimately fails to contribute much of substance.

Munera Pulveris

Munera Pulveris: Six Essays on the Elements of Political Economy by John Ruskin, 218 pages

John Ruskin was many things - artist, philosopher, antiquarian - but he was not an academic economist.  Indeed, Ruskin held that greatest of economic heresies - that there is a difference between value and price, or, in PJ O'Rourke's words, "that a thing is worth something other than what someone is willing to pay for it."  His purpose in this short book is to establish economics as a moral rather than a practical science.  This economics is less concerned with media of exchange and more interested in things with intrinsic value - goods that sustain and enrich life.

Since Ruskin was writing in the late nineteenth century, there is a great deal of disconnect between the specific issues and debates of his day and ours - Keynes was only eight years old when the book was first published.  The greater issue, on the other hand, to what extent the world should be ruled by markets and to what extent by governments, endures.  Few of Ruskin's positive proposals can be taken seriously - it is unimaginable that we could realign the electoral system to give greater weight to votes based on age - and some passages might provoke outrage - particularly his discussion of slavery - but his contribution to the quest for a more human economy is significant nonetheless.