What are you reading in 2025?

[overgeeked]

Ha-Joon Chang

23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism is good up to a point but he doesn’t go anywhere close to far enough in his critique. And the notion that capitalism can be reformed into anything other than a malignant death cult is beyond naive.

 

[jian]

23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism is good up to a point but he doesn’t go anywhere close to far enough in his critique. And the notion that capitalism can be reformed into anything other than a malignant death cult is beyond naive.

I think the problem is that capitalism is so deeply embedded in the global economy that it’s hard to replace it with anything without some sort of cataclysm (which is basically what WW2 did - capitalism wasn’t replaced, of course, but was significantly reformed and worked better for many people for a few years). And cataclysms are terrible for everyone.

Now that the gilded age is global and many (most?) countries are basically flailing around trying to find a settlement that keeps donor money and investment while not excessively oppressing 99% of their population, we may see changes that make life more bearable or sustainable for most people. That would certainly be nice. But the level of regulatory and cognitive capture (Freeland has good examples here about how billionaires basically have no empathy or understanding of the rest of humanity and how bankers should not be Treasury secretaries, because they assume what’s good for Wall Street is good for the country and the world) in most governments makes that very hard to do.

(Another nice example or insight by Freeland is a close look at Zappos, the shoe retailer that was generally hailed at the time as one of the best places to work in the US. And it does sound nice, and the founders sound nice, and make nice noises about equality and employee rights and flat management structures. But it’s still clearly grossly unequal, with employees being forced to come in randomly on weekends or get fired, and the founders becoming billionaires when they sell to Amazon. Capitalism, like feudalism, can never be nice, however much the king pretends to himself that he’s a good king.)

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I finished reading Womack's Ambient. It's a challenging dystopian read, but really good. It's a bit like putting Riddley Walker, A Clockwork Orange and Naked Lunch in a blender. Only, someone else also snuck the works of Shakespeare into it.

Now I'm reading the double novel of The Girl Who Was Plugged In/Screwtop by James Tiptree Jr. and Vonda N. McIntyre respectively.

 

[Autumnal]

The next Dryco book, Terraplane, has the post-Soviet Union with a lot of Big Boy merchandizing. That is, Stalin as a ubiquitous mascot. Also, how about the stuff in Dryden’s safe? Womack really, really knows his esoterica.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

I think the problem is that capitalism is so deeply embedded in the global economy that it’s hard to replace it with anything without some sort of cataclysm (which is basically what WW2 did - capitalism wasn’t replaced, of course, but was significantly reformed and worked better for many people for a few years). And cataclysms are terrible for everyone.

Mark Blyth at Brown (Austerity: the History of a Dangerous Idea, Angrynomics) has some interesting ideas along these lines with agreements like Bretton Woods or the Jamaica Accords being essentially OSs for the economy. I don't think we can get too much farther down that line without veering into politics, but I don't think he'd disagree with your assessment broadly.

 

[jian]

Mark Blyth at Brown (Austerity: the History of a Dangerous Idea, Angrynomics) has some interesting ideas along these lines with agreements like Bretton Woods or the Jamaica Accords being essentially OSs for the economy. I don't think we can get too much farther down that line without veering into politics, but I don't think he'd disagree with your assessment broadly.

Yes, that sounds right. Freeland puts much stock by the Treaty of Detroit in 1950, which she marks as the end of the first gilded age.

Reuther's Treaty of Detroit - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

The next Dryco book, Terraplane, has the post-Soviet Union with a lot of Big Boy merchandizing. That is, Stalin as a ubiquitous mascot. Also, how about the stuff in Dryden’s safe? Womack really, really knows his esoterica.

Ooh, that sounds up my alley.

Yeah, that safe stuff had some serious deep cuts. And it was written before the internet of today would've made research easy.