P. Cohen

Great Presentation

Revisado: 05-04-25

In college (about sixty years ago) I took the basic two-semester introduction to economics. I do wish the material had been presented as well as in this audio-book. This presentation is easy to listen to and it provides a lot of interesting examples.

I did want to find out how this material was now being presented, however, and that was my reason for buying the audio book and listening to it. As I suspected, the neo-con revolution has had its impact on education in this arena. To the author's credit, he does have a chapter on big business and even touch briefly on the market inefficiencies that monopolies, oligopolies and cartels can introduce and disrupt the free market. However, by way of omission, he intimates (without any outright statement) that monopoly is surely a consequence of government regulations.

This is a big change from what I recall learning in my economics classes long ago. At that time, the conventional understanding was that monopolies were simply what happens naturally in an unregulated market economy. In fact the very definition of a free market then included a requirement that there was freedom of entry for competitors, and it was clearly explained that meant the market had no monopoly or oligopoly. It was explained clearly that successful companies by nature tend to become bigger and bigger. They surely don't want competition either they work to avoid that. They cut prices to drive the competition out of business or they buy the competition. During the highly prosperous economy of the 1960's and 70's it was generally considered the responsibility of government to prevent these anti-competitive practices and sure, one option was to establish the industry as a regulated monopoly. The other solution was to break up the monopoly so as to re-establish competition.

Times have changed I suppose and politically correct thinking is now that government is bad and can''t do anything right.

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Interesting Narrative

Revisado: 04-14-24

The book begins by noting that the federal government is locked into inaction by the presence of so many checks on power that it cannot accomplish anything. It promotes the idea that polarization is a root cause, but it fails to consider that the two-party system may be what is at the root of this polarization; instead he tracks down the real problem to be solved which is campaign financing.

The solution is therefore to reform campaign financing somehow. Presumably this is something hat the gridlocked federal government must carry out.

It occurs to me that a more promising possibility would be to reform the way we vote so that the two-party system would be undermined. This would have to happen state by state, but given the gridlocked federal government it might be a better approach. Lessig doe make a short pitch for ranked-choice voting, but there is little reason to think that would end the two-party duopoly; at least the example of Australia suggests otherwise.

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Everyone needs to read this book

Revisado: 12-31-23

The book does cover all that is wrong with neoliberal thinking and the experiences with neoliberal thinking. But what seems missing is any plausible explanation of how anyone, much less trained economists, could find to support such a crazy scheme. What kind of argument could possibly be developed for it ever to have seemed to make economic sense. Maybe that is for a sequel.

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Informative

Revisado: 11-22-23

The author saves the best parts for last, providing in the last couple chapters details about a number of popular conspiracy theories. But I found the initial chapters, on the theory of conspiracy theories less convincing, often relying on false dichotomies to offer as proof of their falsity. For example, giving as proof that 9-11 must have been, as the Bush administration claimed,have been the work of the 19 hijackers' under the direction of OBL because a government plot would have to involve too many people for it to be kept secret. There surely are other possibilities such as one or two high government officials cooperating with the plan or perhaps that there were other governments involved. .

I've long been troubled by the terminology of "conspiracy theories". The author does claim the terminology has a longer history but I never heard the term used before the Kennedy assassination where the official theory was of a lone gunman acting alone. S the crazy theories were any theory that involved more than a single culprit, a conspiracy theory. Even the author readily admits that conspiracies are real and do happen, however. It would seem to me that the significant issue in general is not whether there is a conspiracy but whether there is sufficient skepticism applied to a claim; and usually the answer is no.

Regarding any major event, we do read or hear many reports and, unless we are vitally involved in the investigation or reporting we are not likely to have time or energy to do serious fact-checking. The most we can reasonably do is file these claims in our memory as unproven possibilities, possibly with some reasons to trust or not. Over time we may find confirming claims or claims that contradict and we can do little but file these away as well. Gradually we may find a few threads among what we have heard that seem particularly plausible but it will rarely be enough to promote to being a belief.

Belief is something children are taught to do in Sunday school, often without any evidence; it seems likely that there is significant correlation between early religious indoctrination and the harboring strong misplaced beliefs by adults. Whether such a belief involves just a single actor or many is immaterial; the question should be whether there really is enough evidence justified to promote a conjecture to the status of a belief. Almost always the answer is no; Generally we are best advised to maintain skepticism.

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Interesting in an unexpected way

Revisado: 06-10-23

At the very start of this book you learn that the author is a conservative and elaboration of that fact comes quickly. It is hard for him to find any fault with Trump or anything his administration, He clearly admires Trump very much; much the same can be said about Reagan and his administration. He clearly detested Obama and his administration and he has strong objections to George Soros and Nancy Pelosi. Oh and he is a convicted gangster who spent years in prison.

In reading or listening to this book you should expect to be subjected to a barrage of partisan opinions; that happens throughout the book but mostly in the last few chapters. If you live in the FOX bubble then no doubt you will eat all of this up.

On the other hand if you live outside of that bubble you have probably wondered where these people in that bubble are coming from. You are curious but you don't want to waste very much time in trying to understand the answer. This book gives you an opportunity to gain some insight about that. It's less than six hours of your time and even less if you skip over much of the last few chapters.

In the earlier chapters you can get some insight into the author's thinking, along with some tidbits about his Mafia past. He is troubled by a lot that is wrong in America and especially in it government and you may find you broadly agree with that assessment. His solutions are standard Republican prescriptions are for cutting taxes and regulations, a smaller government and the like, but there is a surprising amount of agreement about what the problems are.

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