Cav's Place

More than simply not struggling and not being annoyed by this book, I surprisingly enjoyed most of it, especially the early chapters. Such excellent and thorough criticism of the economic system, also detailing how it corrupts politics, justice and various other aspects of society and behavior, making most even act against their own interests. There are too many good points to make a selection, but it was great to see it spelled out that the current system rewards those who are most predatory, best at exploiting the market, people and the environment, while progress is mainly owed to state involvement and those choosing to not profit from their breakthroughs, and also how the fact that businesses don’t pay in full for the environmental damage caused and the natural resources used constitutes subsidies, on top of the direct ones that even some of the worst polluters receive. Otherwise, notes are often lengthy comments that are well worth reading, though I spotted one with no correspondence in the text, and not fitting anywhere, making me wonder whether a bit of text was skipped in this edition.
Later chapters, especially the ninth, did become less enjoyable, however. Focusing in ever greater detail on the 2008 crisis in the United States and maybe the next few years makes it less interesting for me here and now, but worse is the firm stance against prioritizing low inflation, though inflation hurts those who aren’t wealthy more, and repeatedly stressing that full employment must be the target and unemployment is the biggest failure puts me completely at odds with the author, the biggest failure being that people still need jobs and to “earn a living” when they should be freed from this. And overall, despite going surprisingly far for someone who held such important positions within the system, aiming for continued growth and mere reforms, albeit major ones, instead of completely changing the system, makes the proposed solutions too little, too late, doing more harm than good by supporting the belief that such a fundamental and rapid shift and the end of growth aren’t desperately necessary.

Rating: 4/5