Radical markets: uprooting capitalism and democracy for a just society

See Radical Exchange

This book was recommended to me to increase the variance of , which it did! The authors' thesis is that a couple of tweaks to markets (land, vote, immigration, data) could lead to a better, fairer, etc. world. During almost 3 hundred pages the authors walk the very perilous line that consists in acknowledging the markets' worst flaws while praising for more or the same to cure these ills.

This book can be neatly classified in the Economics as an ideology (EAAI) category. Devoid of historical perspective (beyond the history of economic thought) and desire to wrestle with the reality of culture, EAAI has this general approach of picking society's ills (poverty, typically) and provide a set of seemingly unrelated miracle solutions. Not without the arrogance that one can indulge in when the remedy they sell is currently inapplicable. This book is no exception.

Don't be deceived by the tone of the review, however, I typically enjoy these book for the new ideas, in the same way I always like a good science-fiction book.

The conflict of right and left is how history progresses in a democracy, torn between the progressives that are thinking about a better world and conservatives who do not want the good parts of the familiar to be forgotten. Democracies like the US set a stage where these two conflicting desires can fight, with a bias against change if not consensual. Democracies are biased towards conservatives.

This vision has plagued French politics for a while already.

As Marx himself wrote in a letter to the (communist) German politician Friedrich Sorge about Henry George;

He also has the repulsive presumption and arrogance which is displayed by all panacea-mongers without exception.

Devoid of historical perspective and desire to wrestle with the reality of culture, EAAI has this general approach of picking society's ills (poverty, typically) and provide a set of seemingly unrelated miracle solutions. Not without the arrogance that one can indulge in when the remedy they sell is currently inapplicable. This book is no exception. Don't be deceived by the tone of the review, however, I typically enjoy these book for the new ideas, in the same way I always like a good science-fiction book.