Book Reviews
In which I lambast the American idea that memoir shouldn’t be about how people fit in history, discuss how families shape destiny, and explain why celebrities make for terrible authors (it’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect, celeb-babies.)
The “economics eugenics movement” targeting firms perceived as “unfit to deserve industrial life” birthed the modern monopoly in America. It also brought about the laws that are supposed to govern the concentration of economic power in America. Tim Wu provides a rollicking history of what have often been bare-knuckle fights over political and economic power in the US.
The challenges around housing in urban areas are about NIMBY politics and the generation that owns everything, according to Randy Shaw. Stories from San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Austin, LA and Denver illuminate.
Pearlstein lays out the argument that societies with higher levels of cooperation and trust are more prosperous than those where legal mechanisms are needed to enforce good market behaviors. And more.
Economist Robert Frank is concerned. Concerned that not enough people recognize the role that good fortune and luck plays in their success, and that too many people attribute their success entirely to their own hard work and virtue.
There’s a gray area between the robots taking over and human labor, and a new class of worker bridging the gap between what Artificial Intelligence systems can and can not do. Enter the world of Ghost Work.
Meaning and purpose. David Graeber’s book is about the growth of jobs with neither.
A development economist moved by poverty at home revisits the ethical dimensions of capitalism.