A vigorous defense of democratic capitalism worthy of the name.
A close look at the push-and-pull, often dysfunctional workings of democracy and capitalism.
Distinguished financial journalist Wolf, author of The Shifts and the Shocks, opens by noting his generally pessimistic outlook, which enables him to be pleasantly surprised when things don’t go down in flames. “I have never taken peace, stability, or freedom for granted and regard those who do as fools,” he writes. Considering the rise of authoritarianism and the supremacy of predatory capitalism, he has reason to be glum, but while he seldom brightens from his starting point, neither does he write off the democratic experiment as dead. Even so, he notes, “a liberal democracy is a competition for power between parties that accept the legitimacy of defeat.” A healthy capitalist economy is one that values things other than profit, which, the author argues, should not be the sine qua non of the reigning ideology but instead “a by-product of pursuing other goals, such as making excellent cars or providing reliable advice.” While the autocracies of Orbán, Erdogan, Xi, Putin, and Trump are essentially mediocre, combining “the vices of populism with the evils of despotism,” they can still prevail. But as long as capitalism does not slide into autarky and democracy does not devolve into authoritarianism, the joined system of democratic capitalism has a chance of thwarting the ambitions of, say, China, which by Wolf’s account represents the greatest existential threat to the West. Chinese officials do not necessarily want military dominance; rather, they seek to “make trade, commerce, and investment the foundation of a Chinese-led global order.” In order to maintain a functioning system of democratic capitalism, Wolf argues for the renewal of a social contract that renounces nationalism and extends citizenship as “the tie that binds people together in a free and democratic society,” creating a true level playing field.
A vigorous defense of democratic capitalism worthy of the name.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780735224216
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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