Books
- Do fewer things
- Work at a natural pace
- Obsess over quality
CITED is back and taking on "economics"
The CITED podcast is back! It has been a few years. I’ve previously enjoyed their work on the reproducibility crisis in scientific publishing and many of their critical episodes on their original run in the 2015-2018 era. Gordon Katic and the CITED team have an engaging narrative technique for introducing listeners to complex topics, so I know this new series is going to be good.
This time they are taking on the issue of expertise in economics and how it is abused.
A quick, illustrative personal story: back in the early 2000s I met a professor at a tiny coffee shop tucked away behind an ivy wall north of my university in Kyoto. The flower print ceramics and doilies made me feel like I was taking tea at an English nan’s house. In this setting I asked for advice: “how can I prepare to study regional conflict in grad school?” He was quick with an answer: “Study economics.”
I did go on to study regional conflict and counter-terrorism in grad school, and encountered much economic thinking, including a prof who worked for NORAD using complex mathematical models to fight the Soviets during the arms race in the 1980s.
Economics is the science with an answer for everything. That does not mean those answers are right. In the past few years there have been a new raft of books challenging mainstream economics, and the power of economists and economic thinking in our political life. This is in some part due to society slowly coming out of four decades of neoliberalism. (I first came upon that word a decade ago reading things like Piketty’s Capitalism in the 21st Century and Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years — another pair of books that make you question economics as a field — but finally that word has entered the mainstream, even being denounced by global leaders like former Japan PM Kishida and US President Joe Biden. This just goes to show how things had evolved over the past few years).
One of my favourite recent books is The Economist’s Hour: The Rise of a Discipline, the Failures of Globalization, and the Road to Nationalism. That was my fav book of 2021. While that book exams how economistic thinking weaseled it’s way into our political system, I recently finished The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality which examines the legal methods used to prepare the soil for those seeds of thought.
In terms of what society reaps when you sow such seeds, I really recommend Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy (my GR Review and chapter notes) which very much brings this debate into today’s political reality. There are still reactionary elements out there, many active in my are of the internet and startup-land, so read Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy (my GR Review and chapter notes) to understand where they are coming from. And if you want to imagine an alternative to global capitalism as driven by the thinking of mainstream economic thinkers, take a walk into the forest and read The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins.
Okay, so this turned out to be a giant book recommendation post, but it is also a podcast recommendation. Check out CITED. I will be listening along. So far the first ep on Simon Kuznets and the history of the econometric measure of GDP already has me angry. Let me know what you think, and what we can do to have better ways to think about social political issues today and tomorrow.
Recognize the ills, let's do better — Short summary of
Imagination: A Manifesto (A Norton Short) by Ruha Benjamin 📚
In order to flourish as individuals and a society we must free ourselves from the strictures of standardized testing, industrialized education, “accelerated learning”, technocratic utopianism, solutionism, longtermism, white supremacy and eugenic thinking, the carceral state, credit scoring and the “ordinal society” (See Fourcade and Healy), and more! It is hard to be imaginative when we are oppressed… but we have to be imaginative to overthrow the oppressors. In an ultimately hopeful argument, Benjamin provides example after example of real projects where humans work together to protect one another and lift one another up. She argues for “radical interdependence” and building a safe, equitable society to further our collective “radical imagination.”
It could be better for everybody — a review of Limitarianism in just 335 words
📚 Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth by Ingrid Robeyns is an ethical framework advocating for limiting excess wealth and redistributing to the benefit of wider society. The book builds its case by historically analyzing the rise of inequality over the past 50 years through global neoliberal policy; the social problems that inequality cause or exacerbate; how taking a Limitarian stance could improve things for everyone including the wealthy; and what needs to be done to get there. She starts off the book with her proposal that there be a “political” wealth cap of 10mm $/€/£ per person, and an ethical limit of 1mm $/€/£ per person. Basically, she comes out of the book fighting. Then, throughout the author provides many shocking statistics and refers to many different academic studies. Furthermore, she runs though many of the counter arguments that have been posed to her by the public and the media, naming and taking apart each objection as a trained philosopher should. She brings a lot to the fight, and in the end settles basically on a strong welfare state (I would like to a see an anarchist argument). Altogether is a strong package. It is not the kind of thing you pass to the proverbial conservative uncle at the Thanksgiving dinner table. He will scoff, reject it outright, and recommend Thomas Sowell or some other ghoul. But for people who do not pray to Ludwig von Mises or one of the Mont Pelerin set, but do not necissarly have a strong critical bent or are not as politically aware, it might serve as a good catch-me-up and help them understand why they think we might be in the Bad Timeline. I really appreciate Robeyns’s call at the end for more political engagement by regular people. Our democratic muscles have atrophied in the decades of consumerist atomization. As the classic Graeber quote goes, “The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”
See my short chapter notes on Goodreads or Bookwyrm to get a peek into the details of the book.
Just enough capitalism – A quick review of Slow Productivity
Slow Productivity by Cal Newport 📚
Cal Newport’s latest advice book tackles the question of productivity in knowledge work. Factory work can much more easily be measured and systematized. Newport points out that office workers, writers, artists, and scholars are often assigned tasks and must come up with their own individual system to be productive. These systems are opaque to managers, who end up relying on “visible activity” (which many busy office workers are familiar with) as the proxy for productivity. Add in always-on email and instant messaging apps, plus a global pandemic and people trying to work from busy homes, and you end up with a lot of burnout.
The initial chapters of the book will have many knowledge workers nodding along empathetically, sharing in the sense of exhaustion and overload. Taking inspiration from the “slow food” movement Newport quickly moves into his three solutionary principles:
Each principle gets its own chapter full of tips in how you can step out of the hamster wheel of “psuedo-productivity”, take back your time from your employer, and focus on truly great work. Newport takes a lot of inspiration from classic figures like Isaac Newton, Copernicus, and Madame Curie. (Pretty intimidating for your average cubicle warrior…)
Ultimately, the book is not interested in deeper, critical questions of why we are burning out. Despite calling for a “revolution” in the conclusion, Newton drops some snide comments about Marx and leftists in the text. Challenging the system is not his job. Perhaps expected of a “productivity” blogger, he remains very much imprisoned in the self-exploitative work camp of the “late-modern achievement-subject” (see The Burnout Society by philosopher Byung Chul Han, an overview and link to my review here).
Maybe I am being too “obsessed over quality.” A cynic might say this is a short book that capitalizes on people’s dissatisfaction with their work life and then doles “life-changing” advice between mentions of all his other books (on sale at all fine bookstores! And I admit I would like to get at least one more!). The advice basically boils down to: get really good at something, raise your rates, and lower the amount of time you spend engaging in capitalism. It is burnout mitigation on the level of a corporate mindfulness retreat. But that’s okay. It is better than nothing, and sometimes a reader needs a bit of prodding to be self-reflective, and the book did spur me to think about my own working habits. And though I have my issues, it is much better than other “make your bed”-style self-help books. I enjoyed the first bit and there are a few good nuggets in there. I think it would be a good jumping off point for discussion in a book club or office setting. So if you need something to spark a little rethinking about how you are doing things, this could be a good quick and moderately stimulating read. 3 stars!
Finished Northern Ireland: The Fragile Peace by Feargal Cochrane 📚
A very readable, yet comprehensive, history of Northern Island over the past 100 years. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Perspective on Palestine — Review of The Hundred Years' War on Palestine
In The Hundred Years' War on Palestine Rashid Khalidi takes us through six turning points of modern Palestinian history woven with family and personal history, including his frontline experience escaping Beirut during the 1982 Lebanon War. Khalidi has a long history as an advocate and an academic and writes a highly detailed account with an insider view. He covers the early Zionist movement, the Nakba of 1948, the Six Day War of 1967, the Lebanon War, the Intifadas and the rise of Hamas, giving context throughout as to who the geostrategic players are and how they change.
The book ends in 2017, with Trump making promises for a new deal for peace. Things don’t look good for the Palestinians. Khalidi offers some ideas on how to proceed in a constructive manner, from first principles of equality for both Palestinians and Israelis. There is a lot in the book about crafting a more favourable public opinion of Palestinians around the world, from a few different angles. It certainly presented perspectives new to me. One key argument is that the world cannot afford to have the US continue as sole, self-selected guarantor of the peace process. That is borne not just of the evidence presented in the book, but of what we have seen in the past couple of months.
I listened to an interview with Khalidi on a podcast or on YouTube somewhere right after October 7th. Many people were giving this book plaudits, and since he was so well spoken I thought I would give it a try. I am no specialist, so I cannot recommend this book with any real authority. But I found it very readable, appreciated the occasional personal history elements sprinkled throughout, and came away with some new frames for thinking about the problem. But I didn’t have to read this detailed and complex book to know that they need to STOP.
Started reading The Hundred Years' War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi 📚
Only one chapter in and it’s more complex than I thought. Got new perspective on the “triple bind” of metropole (London) enabler (League of Nations) and settlers that don’t answer to the metropole. So much detail in this book.
Started listening to the full-cast audio of Good Omens by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett 👼😈 📚
Finished How Infrastructure Works by Deb Chachra 📚
Enjoyed it a lot. Full of wonder! See my chapter notes here: www.goodreads.com/review/sh…
Nice intro to an incisive book. End of the year is a time for reflection, but it is ALWAYS a good time to re-examine your inner work camp. #burnout
My review from 2017 here: chadkohalyk.com/2017/07/3…