Review of "23 things they don't tell you about capitalism" on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
People tend to rate books of this kind according to whether or not they agree with what they imagine to be their underlying politics--that is, instead of evaluating the book, they vote for or against the writer as a candidate. This is less a matter of capitalism, since the votes don't actually count for anything, than a matter of identity--one identifies with certain points of view and doesn't want to be seen as an advocate of certain other points of view. That makes both the ratings and the accompanying reviews of these books less than useful. I would like to promise you that this review would not be one of those and indeed I will do my best to avoid it but I also fear I may not succeed but maybe that isn't my call to make.
I was suspicious of the title because it seemed very conspiracy theory-ish. Who, …
People tend to rate books of this kind according to whether or not they agree with what they imagine to be their underlying politics--that is, instead of evaluating the book, they vote for or against the writer as a candidate. This is less a matter of capitalism, since the votes don't actually count for anything, than a matter of identity--one identifies with certain points of view and doesn't want to be seen as an advocate of certain other points of view. That makes both the ratings and the accompanying reviews of these books less than useful. I would like to promise you that this review would not be one of those and indeed I will do my best to avoid it but I also fear I may not succeed but maybe that isn't my call to make.
I was suspicious of the title because it seemed very conspiracy theory-ish. Who, after all, is the "they" that isn't telling you? But the first few "things" were explained so well and not steeped in ideology that I relaxed. In fact it made it extra clear that poor explanation is the rule outside of this book—that the every day language of economics is often set up to force a conclusion that has more to do with politics than with logic. The very term "free market" makes it sound as if the only alternative is authoritarian. (It is also interesting to see how the highly authoritarian China manages to make capitalism work very well indeed all the while pretending it's communist.)
I found some of the later chapters harder to follow (too technical for the level of study I was willing to put in) and some arguments less compelling than they might be. An example of the latter was the one (#20) about equality of outcome needing to be pursued rather than stopping at equality of opportunity. His argument is that equality of opportunity doesn't really work the way we think.
Actually, his examples show something a bit different. The way I would explain it is that equality of opportunity is difficult to measure because of hard to quantify (or agree upon) lumps in the presumed to be level playing field. To put it another way, privilege (and its opposite) exist. For me, this would translate into doing better to implement equality of opportunity rather than jumping to equality of outcome, reserving the latter more as just one more test of how well you're doing in implementing the former. My phrasing also makes the conclusions less contentious.
The "things" that I found most relatable were: 5 and 16 because they were the most psychological. 5 asserts that people behave in accordance to how they're expected to, and 16 asserts that they're not as rational as they think they are. Number 5 was meant to argue that treating people as greedy makes them greedier and I believe this has a lot of truth to it but I feel it's even more applicable in general. If you have low expectations for people and communicate that to them, they're not likely to be ambitious, for example. The culture tends to be self-perpetuating because of its feedback. My own experience of this phenomenon is that I found that treating me as a criminal (giving me a $100 fine) when I improperly recycled my refuse actually turned me into a criminal. In practice I found it easier to violate the law deliberately and not get caught than to attempt further to comply and get hit with fines (sometimes incorrectly!) when I was judged to have failed. That is, treated as a criminal, I became one. Number 16 was meant to support some kind of limitation to how incomprehensible economic instruments could be, but I also think there's a general tendency for people to not notice the limits of their abilities to understand the universe and behave accordingly. In addition they are unaware of emotional forces warping their ability to be logical. This is part of why people argue ideologically in the first place. They start from the premise that they sufficiently understand what they don't but really are just stuck defending a simplified version which resonates with them and which they find too scary to abandon because then they will have to feel stupid.
For someone who slept through his economics classes (they met at 8AM!) this book is close enough to what I needed to read and you may find that true for you too if you're trying to get beyond the climate of ideology-based logic. It may help to understand that this guy is a capitalist and he's trying to fix capitalism, not instigate a proletarian revolution like some other reviewers seem to think. One of his more startling conclusions is that there might be a place for tax breaks for the rich if they are then legally compelled to reinvest the money they are getting back. (In other words, trickle-down economics might be made to work--but it sure isn't working now.)
