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Borrowed this from my library after watching a video discussing links between wellness culture and eugenics that cited this book at several points. Ehrenreich's best and most interesting arguments are about how: - A fixation on prevention comes at little benefit at best and, at worst, can become a waste of physical, mental, and financial energy. - Many aspects of how medicine is practiced and administered is not based on evidence, but rather ritual. - Wellness culture and particularly the recently popularized practice of mindfulness is basically sanitized, gentrified Buddhism but with aspects critical of hoarding wealth conveniently filtered out

These arguments are in the first half of the book. The second half lost me a bit with several of the tangents. The most egregious was a half-baked one about smoking, where she criticizes anti-smoking campaigns as classist and points out how it helped with building relationships and reducing stress. These are all likely true to a certain extent. The argument seems to be that it may be "unhealthy" to smoke in a physical sense, but it can be "healthy" in a social sense. If smoking only affected the smoker and not the people around them, it'd be stronger. This tangent conveniently omits the impacts of secondhand smoke, however, which on its own is enough to justify the intensity of the anti-smoking campaign. And that's not to mention how god-awful the smell is.

The core argument, if you could say there is one, becomes reductive at points in seemingly criticizing any attempt to promote physical health that isn't in reaction to any immediate issue. It does have a point, however, in observing that it can hurt more than help to obsess over being "the healthiest," and scoffing at arrogant Silicon Valley entrepreneurs is never unwelcome.

Interesting book with strong and weak arguments. The chapter on happiness economics confirmed a lot of skepticism I had about being able to measure an emotional state as unclear and culturally-dependent as happiness. I'd add that these measurements are often designed around a Western frame where happiness tends to be defined as the ultimate good (which the authors also are critical of) and would therefore influence the responses people might give in non-trivial ways.

I also liked the authors' definition of their prescriptions as non-coercive paternalism. It puts into words the type of policy that would seem to bring about the most benefit without infringing on individual liberties.

This book also sharpened my frustration with neoliberalism in learning that for all the growth in GDP it brought, it still failed to translate that growth in any way towards access to basic goods. In retrospect, this is a pretty obvious point since I already knew trickle-down didn't work, but I figured that it had to have helped in some way towards the general well-being of the average person.

I think there is something to their argument that we have an acquisitory instinct, and that it is inflamed far beyond any reasonable level by our current iteration of capitalism and advertising. We talk about how important it is to keep growing, and the reason at this point is often a shrug of the shoulders and a "because... we gotta," which seems to be an artifact of a past when we did not yet have plenty. But now we do, and as the authors argue, we are long-overdue in moving our mindset past that of growth as an end in and of itself and towards growth as a byproduct of good policy that prioritizes everyone's needs being met.

This is probably a "no shit" level observation to many but this book also helped me see economics as less of a cold science of money and more of an applied philosophy.

Here's what brings my rating down, though:

1) Some questionable takes on religion and sexual minorities. For a book focused on infusing moral and ethical arguments it seemed pretty ambivalent towards the rights of queer people, treating gay marriage as some frivolous, destabilizing extravagance.

2) A whole chapter spent frothing at the mouth at environmentalists, who they dub "climate radicals," for being alarmist and pushing for governments to adapt for worst case scenarios, which the authors think can be put off until later for when we will surely have better technology to deal with it. This chapter can be skipped and not detract from the rest of the book's coherence.

3) The book has an arrogant tone that at times makes the reader feel spoken down to. There was an eyeroll-worthy segment of them going on about how much more important their work as economists is than others'.

Overall, not bad, but certainly flawed. The first half at times seems to get a little lost in philosophy to the point that you forget you're reading a book about economics, but the second half stays more on topic. I got something out of reading this.

I read this book since I was interested in learning more about the social dynamics around a lot of internet phenomena involving shunning after seeing it referenced in ContraPoints's video on cancelling.

There were some good insights in this book about the difference between conflict and abuse - one key distinction being that Abuse involves power over another. Another good one was that, when we are experiencing or witnessing Conflict, we need to move out of the tempting frame of determining who The Bad Guy is, and instead 1) look towards the situation in a more objective light, and 2) work towards mutual agreement of the Conflicted parties. Shunning while in conflict shuts the other party out as well as any potential for a fulfilling resolution.

Another key point was that, when attempting to resolve Conflict, it is a poor idea to use closed modes of communication like text messages or email. The loss of tone in these mediums makes it much easier for both parties to misinterpret each other and escalate tensions.

However, there were some parts of the book I found annoying. For instance, the chapter on queer family felt like a lot of weird conjecture with some kernels of truth. I don't get the criticisms she makes against what she calls "pro-natalists." Okay Sarah, you don't want kids, that's fine, but wanting kids or wanting to be a parent as a queer person doesn't mean you want the state to dom you. A lot of "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU SAYING🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥" in that chapter.

I also overall felt that the book could have been a lot shorter and not have missed out on much nuance.