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23 rzeczy, których nie mówią ci o kapitalizmie
Czy lepiej opłacany dyrektor osiągnie lepsze wyniki?
A. Tak B. Nie
Czy ludzie w krajach rozwijających się nie są przedsiębiorczy?
A. Tak B. Nie
Czy reputacja gospodarki planowej runęła wraz z komunizmem?
A. Tak B. Nie
Jaki wynalazek miał większy wpływ na gospodarkę?
A. Internet B. Lodówka
Jeśli na wszystkie te pytania udzieliliście odpowiedzi „A”, nie mieliście racji. Koniecznie sięgnijcie po tę książkę, zaskoczy was bardziej niż inwazja Marsjan. Jeśli wybieraliście poprawne odpowiedzi, gratulujemy. W 23 rzeczach znajdziecie jeszcze wiele innych dowodów na to, że to wy macie rację, a mainstreamowa ekonomia nie.
To książka dla tych z nas, którzy dekadę czy dwie temu uwierzyli, że ekonomia jest nauką ścisłą, po czym zajęliśmy się swoimi sprawami, potulnie uznając w sferze gospodarczej monopol ekspertów od wolnego rynku. Teraz czujemy, że coś tu nie gra, że trzeba było lepiej pilnować interesu. Ta książka, napisana ze swadą, humorem i całą masą barwnych przykładów, pokazuje jak bardzo zostaliśmy zmanipulowani i wzywa do samodzielnego myślenia o rynku. Mamy prawo mieć na kapitalizm inne poglądy od neoliberałów, co nie znaczy, że staniemy się przeciwnikami samego kapitalizmu.
23 rzeczy polecam też feministkom – jest tu rozdział poświęcony kobietom (choć dla niepoznaki ma w tytule pralkę i internet). Jest też wyjaśnienie, dlaczego mikrokredyty (rzekomy dowód na to, że wolny rynek służy kobietom) okazały się niewypałem.
Agnieszka Graff
Ha-Joon prosto, zabawnie i zrozumiale mówi, co medialni ekonomiści owijają w bawełnę, dlaczego to robią i jak świat naprawdę się kręci. Dzięki niemu nie będziecie już więcej bezradni wobec głupstw, które wmawiają nam wyznawcy neoliberalizamu.
Jacek Żakowski
Książka jest swoistym vademecum, które powinno stać się orężem w dyskusji myślącego czytelnika z wyznawcami neoliberalnej wersji turbo-kapitalizmu. Przez główny nurt będzie czytana z wypiekami na twarzy w poszukiwaniu luk w rozumowaniu, których tam nie ma. Pozycja dla każdego – potrzebne jest tylko logiczne myślenie.
Piotr Kuczyński
Autor sprytnie obala największe mity na temat światowej gospodarki.
„Observer”
Ważna książka przekonująca do bardziej świadomej globalizacji.
„Financial Times”
Wyrazista, odważna i coraz bardziej wpływowa książka, która w świecie finansjery wywołuje nieżyt żołądka.
„The Guardian”
Ha-Joon Chang to nowa gwiazda ekonomii.
„Independent on Sunday”
O AUTORZE
Ha-Joon Chang (1963) – ekonomista, docent na Wydziale Ekonomii Uniwersytetu Cambridge. Autor popularnych książek ekonomicznych: Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (2002) i Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism (2008). W tym roku znalazł się na osiemnastym miejscu renomowanej listy Światowych Intelektualistów (World Thinkers) Magazynu Prospect.
A. Tak B. Nie
Czy ludzie w krajach rozwijających się nie są przedsiębiorczy?
A. Tak B. Nie
Czy reputacja gospodarki planowej runęła wraz z komunizmem?
A. Tak B. Nie
Jaki wynalazek miał większy wpływ na gospodarkę?
A. Internet B. Lodówka
Jeśli na wszystkie te pytania udzieliliście odpowiedzi „A”, nie mieliście racji. Koniecznie sięgnijcie po tę książkę, zaskoczy was bardziej niż inwazja Marsjan. Jeśli wybieraliście poprawne odpowiedzi, gratulujemy. W 23 rzeczach znajdziecie jeszcze wiele innych dowodów na to, że to wy macie rację, a mainstreamowa ekonomia nie.
To książka dla tych z nas, którzy dekadę czy dwie temu uwierzyli, że ekonomia jest nauką ścisłą, po czym zajęliśmy się swoimi sprawami, potulnie uznając w sferze gospodarczej monopol ekspertów od wolnego rynku. Teraz czujemy, że coś tu nie gra, że trzeba było lepiej pilnować interesu. Ta książka, napisana ze swadą, humorem i całą masą barwnych przykładów, pokazuje jak bardzo zostaliśmy zmanipulowani i wzywa do samodzielnego myślenia o rynku. Mamy prawo mieć na kapitalizm inne poglądy od neoliberałów, co nie znaczy, że staniemy się przeciwnikami samego kapitalizmu.
23 rzeczy polecam też feministkom – jest tu rozdział poświęcony kobietom (choć dla niepoznaki ma w tytule pralkę i internet). Jest też wyjaśnienie, dlaczego mikrokredyty (rzekomy dowód na to, że wolny rynek służy kobietom) okazały się niewypałem.
Agnieszka Graff
Ha-Joon prosto, zabawnie i zrozumiale mówi, co medialni ekonomiści owijają w bawełnę, dlaczego to robią i jak świat naprawdę się kręci. Dzięki niemu nie będziecie już więcej bezradni wobec głupstw, które wmawiają nam wyznawcy neoliberalizamu.
Jacek Żakowski
Książka jest swoistym vademecum, które powinno stać się orężem w dyskusji myślącego czytelnika z wyznawcami neoliberalnej wersji turbo-kapitalizmu. Przez główny nurt będzie czytana z wypiekami na twarzy w poszukiwaniu luk w rozumowaniu, których tam nie ma. Pozycja dla każdego – potrzebne jest tylko logiczne myślenie.
Piotr Kuczyński
Autor sprytnie obala największe mity na temat światowej gospodarki.
„Observer”
Ważna książka przekonująca do bardziej świadomej globalizacji.
„Financial Times”
Wyrazista, odważna i coraz bardziej wpływowa książka, która w świecie finansjery wywołuje nieżyt żołądka.
„The Guardian”
Ha-Joon Chang to nowa gwiazda ekonomii.
„Independent on Sunday”
O AUTORZE
Ha-Joon Chang (1963) – ekonomista, docent na Wydziale Ekonomii Uniwersytetu Cambridge. Autor popularnych książek ekonomicznych: Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (2002) i Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism (2008). W tym roku znalazł się na osiemnastym miejscu renomowanej listy Światowych Intelektualistów (World Thinkers) Magazynu Prospect.
352 pages, Paperback
First published March 10, 2010
1855 people are currently reading
24933 people want to read
About the author
Ha-Joon Chang
30 books1,622 followersHa-Joon Chang is a South Korean institutional economist, specializing in development economics. Currently he is a reader in the Political Economy of Development at the University of Cambridge.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,200 reviews
June 11, 2012
"23 Things" (for short) purports to be a rebuttal of commonly held views about the free market, capitalism and the science and profession of economics. Chang's position is pro government action and intervention (left wing, if you will), and he seeks to back it up with evidence and arguments.
I find it rather disappointing. It often addresses straw men and commonly held misconceptions about how economists think (rather than how economists actually think), and often fails to present opposing arguments fairly.
For instance, in Thing 1, "There is no such thing as a free market", Chang writes "Every market has some rules and boundaries that restrict freedom of choice". No shit, Sherlock? One rule which pro-market types are very much in favour of is (some form of) property rights. I think he either doesn't know the true position he's opposing or is choosing to not present it fairly. I don't know which of those explanations tars him the worst.
Later in Thing 1, Chang talks about child labour laws: "If you believe that the right of children not to have to work is more important than the right of factory owners to be able to hire whoever they find most profitable, you will not see a ban on child labour as an infringement on the freedom of the labour market".
Oh boy, where to start? First off, I personally find the phrase "the freedom of the labour market" grating---markets aren't a thing, in that they don't have agency. What's in question is the freedom of persons. (The phrase "only individuals act" might spring to mind, especially if you pronounce it "in-dee-vee-doo-als".) But I'll presume that the underlying definition of "freedom of markets" is "freedom of persons" and I'm just fussy about terminology.
Next, "the right of factory owners to be able to hire [...]". This makes the act of entering into an employment contract unilateral when it is really bilateral: it's not a contract unless you're allowed to not sign it.
Penultimately, "the right of children not to have to work" is just flat out mischaracterizing the situation: being forced to work, being allowed to work and being prohibited from working are three different things. Child labour laws in general are those which move children from being allowed to work (not forced to work) to(wards) being prohibited from working.
You might argue that if their alternative is to go unemployed and starve to death, they don't have any real alternatives and they're forced by necessity into the contract. If so, how does prohibiting them from entering into the contract help them? By the very assumptions, it starves them to death.
What makes children not have to work is wealth---being able to afford not to without starving---which cannot be regulated into existence out of the thin air. If child labour laws help children, why not prohibit all labour? Wouldn't that help everybody?
In Thing 4, he claims that the labour-saving nature of the washing machine has had greater impact than the internet. I'm not completely sure how those two effects are commensurate, but that in turn means I don't have any measure which proves the author wrong. What do find objectionable is that while he acknowledges some of the qualitative impacts of the internet, Chang emphasizes the change in point-to-point text transfer speeds as the One True Measure of the impact of the internet. Even *if* we limit ourselves to one-to-one communication, which I think is a serious mistake (would you be writing reviews on Goodreads if only one other person could read it?), other measures such as latency and price are surely relevant too. Also, given that the internet piggybacks on computers one-to-one communication enables many-to-many communication (e.g. by each of us communicating one-to-one with Goodreads) in ways that are mindbogglingly cheaper than with faxes (what the internet replaces, according to Chang).
Last point from me: in Thing 20, "Equal opportunity may not be fair", Chang makes the point that when children of poor parents can't concentrate in school because they're hungry, that's not equal opportunities. While true, the unfairness is the absence of equal opportunities, in direct contradiction of the chapter heading. My mind got boggled.
Chang goes on to write: "Fair competition can only be achieved when the child is given enough food---at home through family income support and at school through a free school meals programme." If I grant Chang the first part, that fair competition can only be achieved when children have enough food*, it doesn't necessarily follow that his way of doing it is the right way. Parents who can afford food for their kids might be neglectful and not provide it, and free school food might be insufficiently nutritious and sating that it helps the child concentrate. Home-made lunches, lunches bought and paid for at school or lunches bought elsewhere (in the---gasp!---market) are alternatives which Chang doesn't compare to his suggestion.
If I wanted to spend the time (I don't), I could find many more examples where Chang is slanting his presentation. In addition to arguments like the ones I quoted, he provides some statistics to back up some of his claims. I haven't checked those. However, they're all about extrapolating regressions, which I have some suspicion about if there's not also a solid theoretic underpinning leading you in the same direction. See also The Pretence of Knowledge.
While I would love to study and understand a coherent and evidence-backed theory that's less pro-market than my current position, I haven't found it yet. In particular, I haven't found it in 23 Things.
I find it rather disappointing. It often addresses straw men and commonly held misconceptions about how economists think (rather than how economists actually think), and often fails to present opposing arguments fairly.
For instance, in Thing 1, "There is no such thing as a free market", Chang writes "Every market has some rules and boundaries that restrict freedom of choice". No shit, Sherlock? One rule which pro-market types are very much in favour of is (some form of) property rights. I think he either doesn't know the true position he's opposing or is choosing to not present it fairly. I don't know which of those explanations tars him the worst.
Later in Thing 1, Chang talks about child labour laws: "If you believe that the right of children not to have to work is more important than the right of factory owners to be able to hire whoever they find most profitable, you will not see a ban on child labour as an infringement on the freedom of the labour market".
Oh boy, where to start? First off, I personally find the phrase "the freedom of the labour market" grating---markets aren't a thing, in that they don't have agency. What's in question is the freedom of persons. (The phrase "only individuals act" might spring to mind, especially if you pronounce it "in-dee-vee-doo-als".) But I'll presume that the underlying definition of "freedom of markets" is "freedom of persons" and I'm just fussy about terminology.
Next, "the right of factory owners to be able to hire [...]". This makes the act of entering into an employment contract unilateral when it is really bilateral: it's not a contract unless you're allowed to not sign it.
Penultimately, "the right of children not to have to work" is just flat out mischaracterizing the situation: being forced to work, being allowed to work and being prohibited from working are three different things. Child labour laws in general are those which move children from being allowed to work (not forced to work) to(wards) being prohibited from working.
You might argue that if their alternative is to go unemployed and starve to death, they don't have any real alternatives and they're forced by necessity into the contract. If so, how does prohibiting them from entering into the contract help them? By the very assumptions, it starves them to death.
What makes children not have to work is wealth---being able to afford not to without starving---which cannot be regulated into existence out of the thin air. If child labour laws help children, why not prohibit all labour? Wouldn't that help everybody?
In Thing 4, he claims that the labour-saving nature of the washing machine has had greater impact than the internet. I'm not completely sure how those two effects are commensurate, but that in turn means I don't have any measure which proves the author wrong. What do find objectionable is that while he acknowledges some of the qualitative impacts of the internet, Chang emphasizes the change in point-to-point text transfer speeds as the One True Measure of the impact of the internet. Even *if* we limit ourselves to one-to-one communication, which I think is a serious mistake (would you be writing reviews on Goodreads if only one other person could read it?), other measures such as latency and price are surely relevant too. Also, given that the internet piggybacks on computers one-to-one communication enables many-to-many communication (e.g. by each of us communicating one-to-one with Goodreads) in ways that are mindbogglingly cheaper than with faxes (what the internet replaces, according to Chang).
Last point from me: in Thing 20, "Equal opportunity may not be fair", Chang makes the point that when children of poor parents can't concentrate in school because they're hungry, that's not equal opportunities. While true, the unfairness is the absence of equal opportunities, in direct contradiction of the chapter heading. My mind got boggled.
Chang goes on to write: "Fair competition can only be achieved when the child is given enough food---at home through family income support and at school through a free school meals programme." If I grant Chang the first part, that fair competition can only be achieved when children have enough food*, it doesn't necessarily follow that his way of doing it is the right way. Parents who can afford food for their kids might be neglectful and not provide it, and free school food might be insufficiently nutritious and sating that it helps the child concentrate. Home-made lunches, lunches bought and paid for at school or lunches bought elsewhere (in the---gasp!---market) are alternatives which Chang doesn't compare to his suggestion.
If I wanted to spend the time (I don't), I could find many more examples where Chang is slanting his presentation. In addition to arguments like the ones I quoted, he provides some statistics to back up some of his claims. I haven't checked those. However, they're all about extrapolating regressions, which I have some suspicion about if there's not also a solid theoretic underpinning leading you in the same direction. See also The Pretence of Knowledge.
While I would love to study and understand a coherent and evidence-backed theory that's less pro-market than my current position, I haven't found it yet. In particular, I haven't found it in 23 Things.
Read
November 15, 2018At first I turned my nose up at this book. I couldn't imagine that it would have anything interesting to say to me. Indeed but for the personal recommendation of the author I would have passed over this book altogether. Well, I say personal recommendation but what I mean is that I listened to this podcast in which Ha-Joon Chang talks through three of the twenty-three things that he discusses in this book. Anyhow the author's presentation convinced me and I seized a copy of the whole book at the next opportunity.
Ha-Joon Chang has two objectives for this book. First he says in the introduction that he seeks to promote what he calls 'active economic citizens' - people who know enough about economics - in the broadest possible sense - "to demand the right courses of action from those in decision-making positions" (pxvi). By the end of the book, however, he is talking in terms of the need to rebuild the world economy. In either case his first recommendation to the remove the rose tinted glasses of neo-liberal economic thinking.
In this the book reminded me of From Eden to Exile: Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible. Both are carefully written, grounded in evidence, driven by a desire to change public discourse, but precisely because of that missing the target. The irrationally exuberant people convinced by their own exuberance plainly are not convinced by reasoned evidence that neo-liberal policies work or that it is reasonable to look for Noah's Arc. If I were cynical I might be so bold as to venture to suggest that a fair few of those who espouse neo-liberal economic policies would themselves be beneficiaries , or at least perceive themselves as being of that party. On the other hand if you do not believe that people are purely rational beings then we can see this as an issue of faith.
Ha-Joon Chang tries to prise off those neo-liberal sunglasses by looking at twenty-three things asserted by people with a neo-liberal economic viewpoint and discusses each in turn over about ten pages. This plus an introduction and a conclusion gives us his book. In passing, let it be said more clearly that this is not a book that is critical about Capitalism, but rather one that is critical of the way in which Capitalism is talked about, in particular a neo-Liberal, or simply a Liberal way which he argues is only part of the picture
You could point out that none of the things he discusses is an actual quote or even a précis of some neo-liberal economist or other. That didn't bother me, the things are the kind of things that do crop up in public discourse - and that is part of Chang's point. His explicit purpose is to create a counterpoint to the ideas that are so commonplace in public discourse that we accept them as facts rather than seeing them as theories, and theories that he shows have no or very little basis in facts. The problem is that the idea of the entrepreneur - for example - has its power not because it is based on facts, but because it is a simple story that explains how we got from our economic past to our economic present. Do awkward facts dispel convenient fictions - perhaps not if we want to believe in free markets, free trade, the transformative power of the internet, the inevitability of Africa's poverty, that we should all be post-industrial now, and so on.
It seems unwise to imagine that people who believe that humans are rational self-seekers interacting through the market will allow a few facts to challenge their worldview. Ha-Joon Chang writes : "even though they were not trained as economists, the economic officials of East Asia knew some economics. However, especially until the 1970s, the economics they knew was not of the free-market variety...It was the recognition that capitalism develops through long-term investments & technological innovations that transform the productive structures, & not merely an expansion of existing structures like inflating a balloon. Many of the things that the East Asian government officials did in the miracle years - protecting infant industries, forcefully mobilizing resources away from technologically stagnant agriculture into the dynamic industrial sector...derive from such economic views, rather than the free market view...The economics of Herbert Simon & his followers has really changed the way we understand modern firms, and, more broadly the modern economy...When we understand that the modern economy is populated by people with limited rationality & complex motives, who are organised in a complex way, combining markets, (public and private) bureaucracies & networks, we begin to understand that our economy cannot be run according to free-market economics (pp249-250)
The choice of twenty-three things feels as a result a little arbitrary, there seemed to be no reason why he could not continue & discuss even more. In recent years many blogs have been turned into books, this might be a case in which a book could be best turned into an ongoing and open-ended blog series.
Above all this is an entertaining read with some lively examples of real world economics - the importance of co-operation between firms in developed countries, the Military Dictatorship in South-Korea brow beating organisations and people to develop new industrial undertakings (an approach that worked out with surprisingly success), General Motors undertaking a piratical policy of buying up smaller competitors to exploit their technology while investing nothing in improving and developing its core manufacturing business - instead making money through its financing arm because, after all, making better cars that people might actually want to buy was too much like hard work, and the increasing extent that our economies are planned because of the increasing role played by larger and larger corporations.
Ha-Joon Chang's position is that of a supporter of capitalism, but - shocking to imagine - someone whose understanding of economics has been influenced by history - real things that actually happen to actual economies as opposed to lovely yet unearthly models. His recommendations for rebuilding the world economy are:
(1) capitalism is the worst economic system except for all the others
(2) we should build our new economic system on the recognition that human rationality is severely limited
(3) we should build a system that brings out the best, rather than the worst, in people
(4) we should stop believing that people are always paid what they 'deserve'
(5) we need to take 'making things' more seriously
(6) we need to strike a better balance between finance and 'real' activities
(7) government needs to become bigger and more active
(8) the world economic system needs to 'unfairly' favour developing countries
(pp253-262)
Whether or not we will see a trend towards reality impinging upon the study of economics and upon economics in public discourse is something that will emerge in time "but unless we now abandon the the principles that have failed us & that are continuing to hold us back, we will meet similar disasters down the road" (p263). In the meantime if the sentiments of Brecht's Die Loesung can be read across across to the study of economics then these words can close off this review:
...Wäre es da
Nicht doch einfacher, die Regierung
Löste das Volk auf und
Wählte ein anderes?
Ha-Joon Chang has two objectives for this book. First he says in the introduction that he seeks to promote what he calls 'active economic citizens' - people who know enough about economics - in the broadest possible sense - "to demand the right courses of action from those in decision-making positions" (pxvi). By the end of the book, however, he is talking in terms of the need to rebuild the world economy. In either case his first recommendation to the remove the rose tinted glasses of neo-liberal economic thinking.
In this the book reminded me of From Eden to Exile: Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible. Both are carefully written, grounded in evidence, driven by a desire to change public discourse, but precisely because of that missing the target. The irrationally exuberant people convinced by their own exuberance plainly are not convinced by reasoned evidence that neo-liberal policies work or that it is reasonable to look for Noah's Arc. If I were cynical I might be so bold as to venture to suggest that a fair few of those who espouse neo-liberal economic policies would themselves be beneficiaries , or at least perceive themselves as being of that party. On the other hand if you do not believe that people are purely rational beings then we can see this as an issue of faith.
Ha-Joon Chang tries to prise off those neo-liberal sunglasses by looking at twenty-three things asserted by people with a neo-liberal economic viewpoint and discusses each in turn over about ten pages. This plus an introduction and a conclusion gives us his book. In passing, let it be said more clearly that this is not a book that is critical about Capitalism, but rather one that is critical of the way in which Capitalism is talked about, in particular a neo-Liberal, or simply a Liberal way which he argues is only part of the picture
You could point out that none of the things he discusses is an actual quote or even a précis of some neo-liberal economist or other. That didn't bother me, the things are the kind of things that do crop up in public discourse - and that is part of Chang's point. His explicit purpose is to create a counterpoint to the ideas that are so commonplace in public discourse that we accept them as facts rather than seeing them as theories, and theories that he shows have no or very little basis in facts. The problem is that the idea of the entrepreneur - for example - has its power not because it is based on facts, but because it is a simple story that explains how we got from our economic past to our economic present. Do awkward facts dispel convenient fictions - perhaps not if we want to believe in free markets, free trade, the transformative power of the internet, the inevitability of Africa's poverty, that we should all be post-industrial now, and so on.
It seems unwise to imagine that people who believe that humans are rational self-seekers interacting through the market will allow a few facts to challenge their worldview. Ha-Joon Chang writes : "even though they were not trained as economists, the economic officials of East Asia knew some economics. However, especially until the 1970s, the economics they knew was not of the free-market variety...It was the recognition that capitalism develops through long-term investments & technological innovations that transform the productive structures, & not merely an expansion of existing structures like inflating a balloon. Many of the things that the East Asian government officials did in the miracle years - protecting infant industries, forcefully mobilizing resources away from technologically stagnant agriculture into the dynamic industrial sector...derive from such economic views, rather than the free market view...The economics of Herbert Simon & his followers has really changed the way we understand modern firms, and, more broadly the modern economy...When we understand that the modern economy is populated by people with limited rationality & complex motives, who are organised in a complex way, combining markets, (public and private) bureaucracies & networks, we begin to understand that our economy cannot be run according to free-market economics (pp249-250)
The choice of twenty-three things feels as a result a little arbitrary, there seemed to be no reason why he could not continue & discuss even more. In recent years many blogs have been turned into books, this might be a case in which a book could be best turned into an ongoing and open-ended blog series.
Above all this is an entertaining read with some lively examples of real world economics - the importance of co-operation between firms in developed countries, the Military Dictatorship in South-Korea brow beating organisations and people to develop new industrial undertakings (an approach that worked out with surprisingly success), General Motors undertaking a piratical policy of buying up smaller competitors to exploit their technology while investing nothing in improving and developing its core manufacturing business - instead making money through its financing arm because, after all, making better cars that people might actually want to buy was too much like hard work, and the increasing extent that our economies are planned because of the increasing role played by larger and larger corporations.
Ha-Joon Chang's position is that of a supporter of capitalism, but - shocking to imagine - someone whose understanding of economics has been influenced by history - real things that actually happen to actual economies as opposed to lovely yet unearthly models. His recommendations for rebuilding the world economy are:
(1) capitalism is the worst economic system except for all the others
(2) we should build our new economic system on the recognition that human rationality is severely limited
(3) we should build a system that brings out the best, rather than the worst, in people
(4) we should stop believing that people are always paid what they 'deserve'
(5) we need to take 'making things' more seriously
(6) we need to strike a better balance between finance and 'real' activities
(7) government needs to become bigger and more active
(8) the world economic system needs to 'unfairly' favour developing countries
(pp253-262)
Whether or not we will see a trend towards reality impinging upon the study of economics and upon economics in public discourse is something that will emerge in time "but unless we now abandon the the principles that have failed us & that are continuing to hold us back, we will meet similar disasters down the road" (p263). In the meantime if the sentiments of Brecht's Die Loesung can be read across across to the study of economics then these words can close off this review:
...Wäre es da
Nicht doch einfacher, die Regierung
Löste das Volk auf und
Wählte ein anderes?
November 17, 2023
Not THE Guide to Critiques of Capitalism (but still useful)...
Preamble:
1) Top (negative) review: [2022 Update] I was made aware of this book's top review, where a Free market fundamentalist wandered into this messy book and left an even bigger mess. Hopefully my review will provide better context; I'll directly address the mess in the comments section below my review...
2) Contextualizing this book: Chang's background is on real-world observations (history/policies) of economic development, which he contrasts with conveniently-abstract theories of mainstream economists. However, Chang is a capitalist reformer and hardly someone who will write a comprehensive guide to anti-capitalism!
3) Critiques of capitalism: the most accessible guides:
-intro to real-world capitalism and applicable theories: Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails
-global conditions: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
-alternatives to real-world capitalism: Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present
-alternatives to mainstream economics: Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist
The Good:
--Chang is a “heterodox” economist in that he is not restricted to the narrow, conveniently-abstract theorizing by mainstream economics (i.e. Neoclassical school, featuring “free market”/“free trade”). His strengths shine brightest in his other books:
i) Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism: a popular version of Chang's Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective; history-driven observations to debunk mainstream “free trade” theories. Chang's focus is on “Development” economics, which Chang suggests is mostly an array of pragmatic, social (often involving but not solely State) planning throughout history rather than a formalized “school” of economic theory; his methodology is thus rooted in observations of real-world material conditions rather than Neoclassical abstractions (with convenient boundary assumptions/externalities).
ii) Economics: The User's Guide: a better-organized intro than 23 Things, which makes the most of Chang's other major strength: accessibility. This strength comes from Chang's easy writing style combined with his methodological focus on real-world application (influenced by his upraising in South Korea's rapid industrialization) rather than ivory tower abstract theologizing (dominated by Global North intelligentsia).
--Highlights from 23 Things:
i) "Thing 2: Companies should not be run in the interest of their owners": my first reading was too distracted by the messy "Thing 1: There is no such thing as a free market" to realize how foundational "Thing 2" is. For an overview, see Comment #12 below this review.
ii) The speed gap between finance (the most liquid to trade) and industry (requires long-term investment), a useful perspective on the Financial sector's tendency to become detached from the real economy and profit from speculative bubbles/rent-seeking. Marxist geographer David Harvey has a great clip on this (https://youtu.be/qOP2V_np2c0) and Michael Hudson is a wizard with Finance capitalism: The Bubble and Beyond and https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS...
iii) Our limited rationality and thus the dangers of complexity (esp. overly-complex financial instruments)... Interestingly, the frequent reformist buzz-phrase “more transparency” is not an adequate solution here. We do not need more information as we are limited in processing such information; we need to ban such instruments of systemic risk/mass destruction...
The Mediocre:
1) Capitalism's peculiar markets?:
--Establishing context (definitions of terms, historical/global scope, etc.) is crucial to introducing real-world economics, given its inherent real-world abstractions and further distractions due to propagandized theorizing.
--Listing “23 Things” is too haphazard; many start off as provocative detours (ex. "Thing 4: The washing machine has changed the world more than the internet has") which may (or may not) circle back to foundational economic points. In this example, there is an important point buried: the peculiar “labour market” and how the essential labour of social reproduction (household work/care-work needed to reproduce the wage labourer, let alone reproduce family/community) is often externalized (excluded) from market prices/wages: Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto
--Indeed, the very foundations are rushed (i.e. "Thing 1: There is no such thing as a free market"), which a market fundamentalist like the top reviewer will immediately spin until dizzy enough to claim victory! Without taking time to unpack the definitions/assumptions of "market", "commodities", "capitalism", etc., there is too much room for misunderstanding:
i) If there were "markets" before "capitalism", then what makes "capitalism" special? Without such context, we just assume markets are merely to exchange everyday goods, and capitalism is eternal to human nature (ex. barter myth: Debt: The First 5,000 Years). To answer this, we must define the peculiar markets of capitalism (labour/land/money) and their formation in history/social struggles.
ii) We must distinguish "markets" as a social relation where two sides make an instantaneous exchange, effectively between strangers, each seeking to maximize personal gain (thus, there have been many alternatives to distributing goods, let alone building community).
iii) "Commodities" are goods/services produced solely for market exchange. The producer has no personal need for it (personal "use-value"), as the goal is to sell it on the market for "exchange-value".
iv) "Capitalism" is not a "society with markets" (pre-capitalist), but a "market society" with the peculiar markets of labour/land/money. Historically, the land market was created by violent dispossession (where the State played a key role) of "Enclosures" in England, where the dispossessed must sell their labour to survive, forming the labour market. This pattern of dispossession and dependency built global capitalism, i.e. the global division of labour/resource distribution of colonialism/imperialism: Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present
v) This is the materialist/political economy foundation for critiques of capitalism: what are the consequences/contradictions of treating humans/nature/purchasing power as "commodities" when they are clearly not "produced" for market "exchange-value" (thus they are "fictitious commodities")? Classic tomes:
-Marx's Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1
-Polanyi's The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time
-For a synthesis of Marx and Polanyi, see Nancy Fraser's working paper “Why Two Karls are Better than One: Integrating Polanyi and Marx in a Critical Theory of the Current Crisis”, which I summarize in the comments of reviewing The Old is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born: From Progressive Neoliberalism to Trump and Beyond
...Maybe Chang wasn't comfortable translating the above to fit his easy writing style? This is why I prefer Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails, which provides an elegant intro/update to many classics.
2) Corporations as market-free islands?
--While Chang misses out on distinguishing capitalism's peculiar markets, another useful concept eventually pops up in "Thing 19: Despite the fall of communism, we are still living in planned economies", where Chang references Herbert A. Simon [bold emphasis added]:
--Note: we are here talking about work (i.e. production, how things get done), not distribution of rewards (where further critiques target, i.e. capitalist property rights directs profits to the absentee ownership of speculative shareholders rather than the genuine stakeholders of workers/local community).
--Simon's point is the economic space “internal” to corporations is massive, considering the centralization of multinational corporations (The People’s Republic of Walmart: How the World’s Biggest Corporations are Laying the Foundation for Socialism). Indeed, this is the “socialized production” and “centralization of capital” that Marx saw capitalism forcing (via commodification of everything, wage labour dependency, and competition between capitalists wrecking many), growing to contradict the profit-seeking interests of the few major capitalist property holders.
--This view highlighting organizational cooperation is in contrast to the market fundamentalist illusion of an economy of self-interested individuals all connected by market exchange, as if the world is simply a collection of individual shopkeepers/Robinson Crusoes, each owning their own means of production (what a convenient assumption by capitalists, to erase wage labour dependency) and bartering their products with each other. This is the same illusion plaguing Adam Smith's 1776 "invisible hand" depictions of a capitalist society featuring "the butcher, the brewer, [and] the baker" driven by self-interest to peddle their meager goods, while in reality Britain was already "innovating" capitalist property rights (i.e. joint-stock companies and limited liability shareholding) culminating in behemoths like the East India Company (1600) terrorizing entire continents.
--Varoufakis' must-read Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present [emphases added, where "liberalism" is cosmopolitan capitalism]:
The Bad:
1) Free Market economists are just useful idiots:
--Seriously, how long must we run in circles playing their game? The capitalists behind Neoliberalism know they are engaged in a class war that requires state force to beat down alternatives (The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World). The more pragmatic ones know the volatility and social dislocation of short-term profit-seeking, thus support certain state spending (esp. police/prisons/courts/military, which preserves capitalist property rights). Elsewhere, Chang acknowledges the methodology of always considering “cui bono?” (“to whom is it a benefit?”), but he is often surprisingly timid in implementing this.
2) Capitalism's dynamism is at the same time its volatility towards crises, not to mention such dynamic (and wasteful) growth is not sustainable on a finite planet:
-Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
-Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System
--Even worse, social dislocation is a feature of capitalism as both booms and busts are disruptive! Booms bring gentrifying forces dictated by speculative "hot money" bubbles seeking instant profits (And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future) which communities cannot cope with (ex. rapid urbanization creating slums: Planet of Slums). Given how abstract the "creative destruction" of capital is, resentment is re-directed towards scapegoating, thus the history of fascism responding to capitalist crashes: Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
--Of course there are market zealots who can conveniently blame any economic issue as “State intervention” and thus the solution is more “free market”, once again relying on the false assumption of capitalist “free market” vs. State (when real-world capitalism = state capitalism).
3) Chang's solution: return to the “Golden Age of Capitalism” (post-WWII 1950 to 1973, before the rise of Neoliberlalism)... What was the context of “Enlightened Capitalism”? The greater redistribution in Western capitalism was actually a compromise premised on:
i) High growth (so more lenient with redistribution) from the utter ruins of WWII, the greatest war in human history which was the “creative destruction” to wipe away global capitalism's endless Great Depression and innovate the US's military industrial complex/post-WWII mass consumerism.
ii) International ideological competition with the rise of socialism and decolonization.
iii) Domestic labour/socialist/communist parties having stronger bargaining power from leading the fight against fascism during WWII. We can see this public power when "war hero" Conservative PM Churchill immediately lost post-war election due to British voters' fear of returning to Depression.
...If we look into the “enlightened” redistribution, how “enlightened” was the US aid for rapid (re)industrialization of Japan and South Korea, when these were financed by military contracts from US's genocidal bombings on Korea and Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia, respectively? (Drums of War, Drums of Development: The Formation of a Pacific Ruling Class and Industrial Transformation in East and Southeast Asia, 1945-1980)
--As I contextualized at the start, Chang is a capitalist reformer. For anti-capitalist guides/alternatives, see the earlier list.
Preamble:
1) Top (negative) review: [2022 Update] I was made aware of this book's top review, where a Free market fundamentalist wandered into this messy book and left an even bigger mess. Hopefully my review will provide better context; I'll directly address the mess in the comments section below my review...
2) Contextualizing this book: Chang's background is on real-world observations (history/policies) of economic development, which he contrasts with conveniently-abstract theories of mainstream economists. However, Chang is a capitalist reformer and hardly someone who will write a comprehensive guide to anti-capitalism!
3) Critiques of capitalism: the most accessible guides:
-intro to real-world capitalism and applicable theories: Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails
-global conditions: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
-alternatives to real-world capitalism: Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present
-alternatives to mainstream economics: Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist
The Good:
--Chang is a “heterodox” economist in that he is not restricted to the narrow, conveniently-abstract theorizing by mainstream economics (i.e. Neoclassical school, featuring “free market”/“free trade”). His strengths shine brightest in his other books:
i) Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism: a popular version of Chang's Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective; history-driven observations to debunk mainstream “free trade” theories. Chang's focus is on “Development” economics, which Chang suggests is mostly an array of pragmatic, social (often involving but not solely State) planning throughout history rather than a formalized “school” of economic theory; his methodology is thus rooted in observations of real-world material conditions rather than Neoclassical abstractions (with convenient boundary assumptions/externalities).
ii) Economics: The User's Guide: a better-organized intro than 23 Things, which makes the most of Chang's other major strength: accessibility. This strength comes from Chang's easy writing style combined with his methodological focus on real-world application (influenced by his upraising in South Korea's rapid industrialization) rather than ivory tower abstract theologizing (dominated by Global North intelligentsia).
--Highlights from 23 Things:
i) "Thing 2: Companies should not be run in the interest of their owners": my first reading was too distracted by the messy "Thing 1: There is no such thing as a free market" to realize how foundational "Thing 2" is. For an overview, see Comment #12 below this review.
ii) The speed gap between finance (the most liquid to trade) and industry (requires long-term investment), a useful perspective on the Financial sector's tendency to become detached from the real economy and profit from speculative bubbles/rent-seeking. Marxist geographer David Harvey has a great clip on this (https://youtu.be/qOP2V_np2c0) and Michael Hudson is a wizard with Finance capitalism: The Bubble and Beyond and https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS...
iii) Our limited rationality and thus the dangers of complexity (esp. overly-complex financial instruments)... Interestingly, the frequent reformist buzz-phrase “more transparency” is not an adequate solution here. We do not need more information as we are limited in processing such information; we need to ban such instruments of systemic risk/mass destruction...
The Mediocre:
1) Capitalism's peculiar markets?:
--Establishing context (definitions of terms, historical/global scope, etc.) is crucial to introducing real-world economics, given its inherent real-world abstractions and further distractions due to propagandized theorizing.
--Listing “23 Things” is too haphazard; many start off as provocative detours (ex. "Thing 4: The washing machine has changed the world more than the internet has") which may (or may not) circle back to foundational economic points. In this example, there is an important point buried: the peculiar “labour market” and how the essential labour of social reproduction (household work/care-work needed to reproduce the wage labourer, let alone reproduce family/community) is often externalized (excluded) from market prices/wages: Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto
--Indeed, the very foundations are rushed (i.e. "Thing 1: There is no such thing as a free market"), which a market fundamentalist like the top reviewer will immediately spin until dizzy enough to claim victory! Without taking time to unpack the definitions/assumptions of "market", "commodities", "capitalism", etc., there is too much room for misunderstanding:
i) If there were "markets" before "capitalism", then what makes "capitalism" special? Without such context, we just assume markets are merely to exchange everyday goods, and capitalism is eternal to human nature (ex. barter myth: Debt: The First 5,000 Years). To answer this, we must define the peculiar markets of capitalism (labour/land/money) and their formation in history/social struggles.
ii) We must distinguish "markets" as a social relation where two sides make an instantaneous exchange, effectively between strangers, each seeking to maximize personal gain (thus, there have been many alternatives to distributing goods, let alone building community).
iii) "Commodities" are goods/services produced solely for market exchange. The producer has no personal need for it (personal "use-value"), as the goal is to sell it on the market for "exchange-value".
iv) "Capitalism" is not a "society with markets" (pre-capitalist), but a "market society" with the peculiar markets of labour/land/money. Historically, the land market was created by violent dispossession (where the State played a key role) of "Enclosures" in England, where the dispossessed must sell their labour to survive, forming the labour market. This pattern of dispossession and dependency built global capitalism, i.e. the global division of labour/resource distribution of colonialism/imperialism: Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present
v) This is the materialist/political economy foundation for critiques of capitalism: what are the consequences/contradictions of treating humans/nature/purchasing power as "commodities" when they are clearly not "produced" for market "exchange-value" (thus they are "fictitious commodities")? Classic tomes:
-Marx's Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1
-Polanyi's The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time
-For a synthesis of Marx and Polanyi, see Nancy Fraser's working paper “Why Two Karls are Better than One: Integrating Polanyi and Marx in a Critical Theory of the Current Crisis”, which I summarize in the comments of reviewing The Old is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born: From Progressive Neoliberalism to Trump and Beyond
...Maybe Chang wasn't comfortable translating the above to fit his easy writing style? This is why I prefer Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails, which provides an elegant intro/update to many classics.
2) Corporations as market-free islands?
--While Chang misses out on distinguishing capitalism's peculiar markets, another useful concept eventually pops up in "Thing 19: Despite the fall of communism, we are still living in planned economies", where Chang references Herbert A. Simon [bold emphasis added]:
If a Martian, with no preconceptions, came to Earth and observed our economy, Simon mused, would he conclude that Earthlings live in a market economy? No, Simon said, he would almost certainly have concluded that Earthlings live in an organizational economy in the sense that the bulk of earth’s economic activities is coordinated within the boundaries of firms (organizations), rather than through market transactions between those firms. If firms were represented by green and markets by red, Simon argued, the Martian would see ‘large green areas interconnected by red lines’, rather than ‘a network of red lines connecting green spots’....Indeed, the capitalist triumph of the corporation itself does not operate using market mechanisms internally, when you enter into it! Work by employees is done in this mass social mobilization by what David Graeber (RIP; Debt: The First 5,000 Years) provocatively calls “baseline communism” (from each according to their ability, to each according to their need), i.e. cooperation/teamwork with all its messy human qualities, under the discipline (indeed restriction, as start-up culture recognizes) of corporate hierarchy. None of this relies on market exchange, i.e. sellers/buyers seeking to maximize immediate individual returns.
--Note: we are here talking about work (i.e. production, how things get done), not distribution of rewards (where further critiques target, i.e. capitalist property rights directs profits to the absentee ownership of speculative shareholders rather than the genuine stakeholders of workers/local community).
--Simon's point is the economic space “internal” to corporations is massive, considering the centralization of multinational corporations (The People’s Republic of Walmart: How the World’s Biggest Corporations are Laying the Foundation for Socialism). Indeed, this is the “socialized production” and “centralization of capital” that Marx saw capitalism forcing (via commodification of everything, wage labour dependency, and competition between capitalists wrecking many), growing to contradict the profit-seeking interests of the few major capitalist property holders.
--This view highlighting organizational cooperation is in contrast to the market fundamentalist illusion of an economy of self-interested individuals all connected by market exchange, as if the world is simply a collection of individual shopkeepers/Robinson Crusoes, each owning their own means of production (what a convenient assumption by capitalists, to erase wage labour dependency) and bartering their products with each other. This is the same illusion plaguing Adam Smith's 1776 "invisible hand" depictions of a capitalist society featuring "the butcher, the brewer, [and] the baker" driven by self-interest to peddle their meager goods, while in reality Britain was already "innovating" capitalist property rights (i.e. joint-stock companies and limited liability shareholding) culminating in behemoths like the East India Company (1600) terrorizing entire continents.
--Varoufakis' must-read Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present [emphases added, where "liberalism" is cosmopolitan capitalism]:
Liberalism’s fatal hypocrisy [...] was to rejoice in the virtuous Jills and Jacks, the neighbourhood butchers, bakers and brewers, so as to defend the vile East India Companies, the Facebooks and the Amazons, which know no neighbours, have no partners, respect no moral sentiments [Adam Smith's other book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments] and stop at nothing to destroy their competitors. By replacing partnerships with anonymous shareholders, we created Leviathans that end up undermining and defying all the values that liberals [...] claim to cherish.
The Bad:
1) Free Market economists are just useful idiots:
--Seriously, how long must we run in circles playing their game? The capitalists behind Neoliberalism know they are engaged in a class war that requires state force to beat down alternatives (The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World). The more pragmatic ones know the volatility and social dislocation of short-term profit-seeking, thus support certain state spending (esp. police/prisons/courts/military, which preserves capitalist property rights). Elsewhere, Chang acknowledges the methodology of always considering “cui bono?” (“to whom is it a benefit?”), but he is often surprisingly timid in implementing this.
2) Capitalism's dynamism is at the same time its volatility towards crises, not to mention such dynamic (and wasteful) growth is not sustainable on a finite planet:
-Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
-Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System
--Even worse, social dislocation is a feature of capitalism as both booms and busts are disruptive! Booms bring gentrifying forces dictated by speculative "hot money" bubbles seeking instant profits (And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future) which communities cannot cope with (ex. rapid urbanization creating slums: Planet of Slums). Given how abstract the "creative destruction" of capital is, resentment is re-directed towards scapegoating, thus the history of fascism responding to capitalist crashes: Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
--Of course there are market zealots who can conveniently blame any economic issue as “State intervention” and thus the solution is more “free market”, once again relying on the false assumption of capitalist “free market” vs. State (when real-world capitalism = state capitalism).
3) Chang's solution: return to the “Golden Age of Capitalism” (post-WWII 1950 to 1973, before the rise of Neoliberlalism)... What was the context of “Enlightened Capitalism”? The greater redistribution in Western capitalism was actually a compromise premised on:
i) High growth (so more lenient with redistribution) from the utter ruins of WWII, the greatest war in human history which was the “creative destruction” to wipe away global capitalism's endless Great Depression and innovate the US's military industrial complex/post-WWII mass consumerism.
ii) International ideological competition with the rise of socialism and decolonization.
iii) Domestic labour/socialist/communist parties having stronger bargaining power from leading the fight against fascism during WWII. We can see this public power when "war hero" Conservative PM Churchill immediately lost post-war election due to British voters' fear of returning to Depression.
...If we look into the “enlightened” redistribution, how “enlightened” was the US aid for rapid (re)industrialization of Japan and South Korea, when these were financed by military contracts from US's genocidal bombings on Korea and Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia, respectively? (Drums of War, Drums of Development: The Formation of a Pacific Ruling Class and Industrial Transformation in East and Southeast Asia, 1945-1980)
--As I contextualized at the start, Chang is a capitalist reformer. For anti-capitalist guides/alternatives, see the earlier list.
November 4, 2015
As someone who knows nothing about economics, but is finding herself more and more interested in the subject - this was an excellent read. Ha-Joon Chang is an economist/reader at Cambridge University, but he writes with the simplicity and clarity of a high school teacher, illustrating his arguments superbly well with anecdotes and examples that are entertaining, gripping and easy to understand.
He has been writing for The Guardian since 2008.
The basic tenet of the book is that the USA and UK have been practising free market capitalism (neo-liberal policies) for the last 30 years, and whilst he supports economies based on capitalism, he feels that the free market version has done much to lower people's quality of life, both in Western countries that practice it, and in developing countries, who have it foisted upon them by the IMF and World Bank, (and the wealthy countries behind these institutions.)
The biggest surprise in the book for me? It was learning about the size and complexity of financial markets and their products. Here is Chang's description of the tangled web of gobbledegook behind the sub-prime mortgage fiasco of 2008. It really is mind-boggling...... No wonder Chang argues for government regulations to simplify financial dealings.
Rather than trying to provide any sort of overall synopsis of the book and his arguments, I will just list some of Chang's ideas that I found interesting. I am not sure I agree with all of them, but it was fascinating to hear them discussed. What follows at the end of my review are copious notes for my own records - often just taken straight from the book. I certainly don't expect anyone else to read them. Much better to read the book, which explains Chang's ideas quite brilliantly.
I thought this book was a marvellous introduction to left-of-centre ideas in economics. It gave me a lot to think about. Highly recommended.
Ha-Joon Chang (Wikipedia) (Heh heh, I am only posting this 'cos he looks an absolute sweetie....)
`
He has been writing for The Guardian since 2008.
The basic tenet of the book is that the USA and UK have been practising free market capitalism (neo-liberal policies) for the last 30 years, and whilst he supports economies based on capitalism, he feels that the free market version has done much to lower people's quality of life, both in Western countries that practice it, and in developing countries, who have it foisted upon them by the IMF and World Bank, (and the wealthy countries behind these institutions.)
The biggest surprise in the book for me? It was learning about the size and complexity of financial markets and their products. Here is Chang's description of the tangled web of gobbledegook behind the sub-prime mortgage fiasco of 2008. It really is mind-boggling...... No wonder Chang argues for government regulations to simplify financial dealings.
Rather than trying to provide any sort of overall synopsis of the book and his arguments, I will just list some of Chang's ideas that I found interesting. I am not sure I agree with all of them, but it was fascinating to hear them discussed. What follows at the end of my review are copious notes for my own records - often just taken straight from the book. I certainly don't expect anyone else to read them. Much better to read the book, which explains Chang's ideas quite brilliantly.
I thought this book was a marvellous introduction to left-of-centre ideas in economics. It gave me a lot to think about. Highly recommended.
Ha-Joon Chang (Wikipedia) (Heh heh, I am only posting this 'cos he looks an absolute sweetie....)
`
August 27, 2015
This is a book that systematically takes apart neoliberal economic assumptions – the ‘things’ here are all nicely summed up in an opening paragraph per chapter where they are stated in the standard, unforgiving terms of neoliberal ideology. This is a book that really does deserve to be read. This guy is so clear he is a joy to read. Not only that, he also opens up the possibility of understanding what is far too often presented as only available to the expert and in impenetrable jargon. You actually get to see the simplicity of the ideas underpinning so much of economics talk. He considers capitalism to be the only workable economic system – so this really isn’t about praising Caesar or even about burying him, this is someone that loves economics showing that it needs to be understood within its own domain and in more nuanced ways than is generally attempted for a lay audience. That’s two of this man’s books I’ve read now – eventually I ought to get around to reading Bad Samaritans. If you are after a quick overview that will help you understand a bit more when people start doing eco-speak – this is as good a place to start as any.
March 9, 2016
In recent years I've come to accept the fact that I forget most of what I read and that there is very little I can do to change this. Even when I re-read, I forget again. Economics is a topic that excites me as much as doing the ironing, but I am compelled to keep trying to educate myself in the field by rage and disgust. Since I forget things, I force myself to keep reading books like this so that, hopefully, when I need them, I'll be able to pull a few concepts and examples out of my back pocket. I could have just re-read Economix: How and Why Our Economy Works (and Doesn't Work), in Words and Pictures, but updates are always needed, and besides I like to think throwing fresh ideas at my brain might help something stick.
I have to thank Ha-Joon Chang for writing such a painless book. It's really quite friendly to people who'd rather be reading, say, Octavia Butler, with just the right amount of reiteration and elaboration. On the rare occasions where I caught myself wondering what the hell he was talking about, I was able to go back a few paragraphs and locate the explanation I'd snoozed through and instantly reorient myself. Extra props for making hypothetical people 'she' by default more often than 'he'. It's not just language either – there is evidence of woman-oriented perspectives in some of the Things. Funnily enough, I remember talking with a die-hard capitalists about the question of the most revolutionary invention ever, and he, although he's much older than me, said 'the internet' while I said 'the washing machine'. Now I feel really smug, but seriously, spending 3 months living in hostels with no washing machine taught me well – I must have spent a few hundred hours hand washing and of course I didn't iron anything. I remember my mum giving the same answer to that question once as well.
From my perspective this is a disappointingly conservative book, it doesn't even question the centrality of growth, which anyone who wants humans to survive en masse should surely be doing? This is not an anti-capitalist book at all, it's merely reformist, and all the people hailing it as 'shocking' 'revelatory' etc should be ashamed of themselves, because what's shocking is the insane dogmatic neo-liberal/free market orthodoxy that Ha-Joon Chang so forcefully critiques. He is merely making good use of data to demonstrate that the orthodoxy is wrong on every count, that it's employed to maintain and accelerate the flow of money upwards – the ever intensifying concentration of wealth.
If anything though, the conservatism makes the book more useful to me, because I need to be able to discuss with people who refuse point blank to countenance alternatives to capitalism, and those conversations usually go badly for me. Here's Ha-Joon Chang to the rescue with solid examples statistics and arguments to show that there's no such thing as a free market (immigration controls), that there's nothing weird about regulating to uphold workers' rights (child labour) or products (complex financial derivatives with unpredictable effects should be treated like pharmaceuticals and other things that could cause harm*), that making the rich richer definitely will not benefit anyone else, that protectionist and nationalist policies and government investiment have helped all rich countries to become rich and that forcing free market policies onto poor countries is a terrible idea (in rich countries any growth effects of such policies are often just the cashing out of state investment and can't last long – in poor countries with nothing to cash out it can't even get started). Repeatedly Ha-Joon Chang demonstrates and explains why free market policies are not just bad for workers and people who cannot work; they are bad for everyone but the super-rich elite.
There are lots of useful insights I hadn't thought of, for example, corporations do planning, vigorously, and often in an authoritarian style, so the neo-liberal horror of 'state planning' is ideological. He also points out some things that might be unexpected, such as the fact that higher education enrollment doesn't correllate with a country's economic 'success' (ie in terms of growth). The perspective is thoroughly global, and the unspecified 'they' of the title can be understood broadly as policy makers + mainstream media, though there is no discussion of how these have come to be in service of the elite who prosper from neo-liberal practice. The author sticks humbly to his area of expertise, and strives for its 'objectivity'. This misnamed 'objectivity' means that there are a lot of things Ha-Joon Chang doesn't tell you about capitalism or skims over blithely 'land in the US was almost free (if you didn't mind kicking out a few Native Americans, that is)'. The environment also gets mere passing references.
In short, I can recommend this book for its comprehensive refutation of the claims of neo-liberal ideology on their own terms, within a capitalist framework and using the concepts and data of economics. For help thinking outside that box, look elsewhere.
I have to thank Ha-Joon Chang for writing such a painless book. It's really quite friendly to people who'd rather be reading, say, Octavia Butler, with just the right amount of reiteration and elaboration. On the rare occasions where I caught myself wondering what the hell he was talking about, I was able to go back a few paragraphs and locate the explanation I'd snoozed through and instantly reorient myself. Extra props for making hypothetical people 'she' by default more often than 'he'. It's not just language either – there is evidence of woman-oriented perspectives in some of the Things. Funnily enough, I remember talking with a die-hard capitalists about the question of the most revolutionary invention ever, and he, although he's much older than me, said 'the internet' while I said 'the washing machine'. Now I feel really smug, but seriously, spending 3 months living in hostels with no washing machine taught me well – I must have spent a few hundred hours hand washing and of course I didn't iron anything. I remember my mum giving the same answer to that question once as well.
From my perspective this is a disappointingly conservative book, it doesn't even question the centrality of growth, which anyone who wants humans to survive en masse should surely be doing? This is not an anti-capitalist book at all, it's merely reformist, and all the people hailing it as 'shocking' 'revelatory' etc should be ashamed of themselves, because what's shocking is the insane dogmatic neo-liberal/free market orthodoxy that Ha-Joon Chang so forcefully critiques. He is merely making good use of data to demonstrate that the orthodoxy is wrong on every count, that it's employed to maintain and accelerate the flow of money upwards – the ever intensifying concentration of wealth.
If anything though, the conservatism makes the book more useful to me, because I need to be able to discuss with people who refuse point blank to countenance alternatives to capitalism, and those conversations usually go badly for me. Here's Ha-Joon Chang to the rescue with solid examples statistics and arguments to show that there's no such thing as a free market (immigration controls), that there's nothing weird about regulating to uphold workers' rights (child labour) or products (complex financial derivatives with unpredictable effects should be treated like pharmaceuticals and other things that could cause harm*), that making the rich richer definitely will not benefit anyone else, that protectionist and nationalist policies and government investiment have helped all rich countries to become rich and that forcing free market policies onto poor countries is a terrible idea (in rich countries any growth effects of such policies are often just the cashing out of state investment and can't last long – in poor countries with nothing to cash out it can't even get started). Repeatedly Ha-Joon Chang demonstrates and explains why free market policies are not just bad for workers and people who cannot work; they are bad for everyone but the super-rich elite.
There are lots of useful insights I hadn't thought of, for example, corporations do planning, vigorously, and often in an authoritarian style, so the neo-liberal horror of 'state planning' is ideological. He also points out some things that might be unexpected, such as the fact that higher education enrollment doesn't correllate with a country's economic 'success' (ie in terms of growth). The perspective is thoroughly global, and the unspecified 'they' of the title can be understood broadly as policy makers + mainstream media, though there is no discussion of how these have come to be in service of the elite who prosper from neo-liberal practice. The author sticks humbly to his area of expertise, and strives for its 'objectivity'. This misnamed 'objectivity' means that there are a lot of things Ha-Joon Chang doesn't tell you about capitalism or skims over blithely 'land in the US was almost free (if you didn't mind kicking out a few Native Americans, that is)'. The environment also gets mere passing references.
In short, I can recommend this book for its comprehensive refutation of the claims of neo-liberal ideology on their own terms, within a capitalist framework and using the concepts and data of economics. For help thinking outside that box, look elsewhere.
December 14, 2025
Brilliantly simple yet effective fare which a wide variety on the political compass can digest.
Admittedly not revolutionary. Pure reformist stuff. But makes very important observations on how destructive free-market economics are and have been. One doesn't have to agree with Chang's argument that capitalism itself is not necessarily a bad thing to appreciate his well-founded critisms of the free market.
It debunks the very possibility of the existence of a a free market, it elaborates why owners cannot be trusted. IT shatters the post-modernist and pretentiously revolutionary avant-garde idea that we live in a post-industrial age. Chang illustrates convincingly that without industry there is no healthy economy. And perhaps most importantly, he proves that the 3rd world is not doomed to eternal underdevelopment, that they have been deliberately underdeveloped by the 1st world.
Taking all this into account, and if you can get over the left's overly dramatized dichotomy between reform and revolution, this book should be considered as important for leftists as it is for doubting rightists.
Is it necessary to be so puritanically left as to not be able to appreciate this kind of literature? From my point of view, a little Keynesian economics would go a long way in our hyper-free market world and let's face it - that worldwide revolution is not happening anytime soon. We must have some protection from full-on free-market dog-eat-dog neo-liberalism in the meantime...It is not a bad strategy, and a far easier one to digest for a mostly pro-capitalist 1st world to at least survive with a little more dignity through state help, until what we can only hope is the inevitable revolution.
Rome never fell in a day, so I think this kind of book is a sorely needed (and very important) exposure of mainstream economists' ideological errors and a very important step from the right leftwards.
The last time we underestimated the importance of Keynesian principles in staving off hyper-capitalism we caused the advent of neo-liberalism and financial capitalism as we know it today. Something very few economists will tell you. Ha-Joon Chang is one of them.
Now if you are ready to move even more left, ready for more revolutionary fare, may I suggest we move on to A Brief History of Neo-liberalism by the marxist David Harvey?
Admittedly not revolutionary. Pure reformist stuff. But makes very important observations on how destructive free-market economics are and have been. One doesn't have to agree with Chang's argument that capitalism itself is not necessarily a bad thing to appreciate his well-founded critisms of the free market.
It debunks the very possibility of the existence of a a free market, it elaborates why owners cannot be trusted. IT shatters the post-modernist and pretentiously revolutionary avant-garde idea that we live in a post-industrial age. Chang illustrates convincingly that without industry there is no healthy economy. And perhaps most importantly, he proves that the 3rd world is not doomed to eternal underdevelopment, that they have been deliberately underdeveloped by the 1st world.
Taking all this into account, and if you can get over the left's overly dramatized dichotomy between reform and revolution, this book should be considered as important for leftists as it is for doubting rightists.
Is it necessary to be so puritanically left as to not be able to appreciate this kind of literature? From my point of view, a little Keynesian economics would go a long way in our hyper-free market world and let's face it - that worldwide revolution is not happening anytime soon. We must have some protection from full-on free-market dog-eat-dog neo-liberalism in the meantime...It is not a bad strategy, and a far easier one to digest for a mostly pro-capitalist 1st world to at least survive with a little more dignity through state help, until what we can only hope is the inevitable revolution.
Rome never fell in a day, so I think this kind of book is a sorely needed (and very important) exposure of mainstream economists' ideological errors and a very important step from the right leftwards.
The last time we underestimated the importance of Keynesian principles in staving off hyper-capitalism we caused the advent of neo-liberalism and financial capitalism as we know it today. Something very few economists will tell you. Ha-Joon Chang is one of them.
Now if you are ready to move even more left, ready for more revolutionary fare, may I suggest we move on to A Brief History of Neo-liberalism by the marxist David Harvey?
October 23, 2024
أشياء قد لا تعرفها عن هذ الكتاب:
1- الكتاب ليس ضد الرأسمالية
عكس ما يقترحه عنوان الكتاب، فهو ليس مخصصاً للهجوم على الرأسمالية. لن تجد هنا مبشراً شيوعياً ولا مروجاً لنظرية المؤامرة. في الحقيقة، يخبرك الكاتب في المقدمة أنه يعتقد بأن الرأسمالية هي أفضل نظام اقتصادي متوفر. النقد هنا مٌنصب على سياسات السوق الحرة ومالها من آثار سلبية على الدول والأفراد.
2- الكتاب قد يطلعك على فوائد السوق الحرة
على النقيض من النقطة المطروحة أعلاه ومن الهدف الرئيسي للنص، فإن المحتوى قد يجعلك تتأمل في مَنطق المتحمسين للسوق الحرة. كل فصل بالكتاب يبدأ بأحد مبادئ ذلك التيار، ومن ثم يناقضه الكاتب بالمنطق والأدلة. أحياناً، أقول أحياناً، كنت أشعر أن حجة منظريّ السوق الحر أكثر متانة من رد الأكاديمي الكوري.
3- الكتاب موجه للقارئ العادي
المحتوى عميق ولكنه مبسط لدرجة أنني –كقارئ ليس لديه خلفية عن علم الاقتصاد- استوعبت محتواه بسهولة. قد يرى البعض التبسيط الزائد عيباً، وهذا رأي. فقط وجدت أن الكتاب افتقر لبعض الإحصائيات والأرقام والمراجع في بعض فصوله، مما يضعف حجته في النقد.
4- قد لا تتفق مع كل النقاط
حتى لو كنتَ من مناهضي السوق الحرة، فقد تجد بعض أن بعض الفصول تطرح أفكاراً لا تتفق مع مسلماتك. من وجهة نظري، هذا لا يعتبر عيبًا، فكل ما يستفز الذهن للتفكير باتجاه آخر هو رياضة مفيدة. من النقاط التي تجادلت مع الكاتب حولها: أهمية التعليم في النهضة الاقتصادية وأن ثورة الاتصالات لم تحدث الفرق الجوهري في الاقتصاد كما يظن الجميع.
5- الكتاب يستحق القراءة
بالطبع هو كذلك. هو ممتع في طرحه، تفاصيله سهلة ويبني استنباطاته على معلومات تاريخية واقتصادية مثيرة للاهتمام. ستعرف شيئاً أو اثنين عن أثر قانون حماية السوق من المهاجرين، الأزمة 2008 المالية و تجارب اقتصادية معينة نجحت وأخرى فشلت. إلى جانب العديد من القصص والأمثلة الشيقة.
1- الكتاب ليس ضد الرأسمالية
عكس ما يقترحه عنوان الكتاب، فهو ليس مخصصاً للهجوم على الرأسمالية. لن تجد هنا مبشراً شيوعياً ولا مروجاً لنظرية المؤامرة. في الحقيقة، يخبرك الكاتب في المقدمة أنه يعتقد بأن الرأسمالية هي أفضل نظام اقتصادي متوفر. النقد هنا مٌنصب على سياسات السوق الحرة ومالها من آثار سلبية على الدول والأفراد.
2- الكتاب قد يطلعك على فوائد السوق الحرة
على النقيض من النقطة المطروحة أعلاه ومن الهدف الرئيسي للنص، فإن المحتوى قد يجعلك تتأمل في مَنطق المتحمسين للسوق الحرة. كل فصل بالكتاب يبدأ بأحد مبادئ ذلك التيار، ومن ثم يناقضه الكاتب بالمنطق والأدلة. أحياناً، أقول أحياناً، كنت أشعر أن حجة منظريّ السوق الحر أكثر متانة من رد الأكاديمي الكوري.
3- الكتاب موجه للقارئ العادي
المحتوى عميق ولكنه مبسط لدرجة أنني –كقارئ ليس لديه خلفية عن علم الاقتصاد- استوعبت محتواه بسهولة. قد يرى البعض التبسيط الزائد عيباً، وهذا رأي. فقط وجدت أن الكتاب افتقر لبعض الإحصائيات والأرقام والمراجع في بعض فصوله، مما يضعف حجته في النقد.
4- قد لا تتفق مع كل النقاط
حتى لو كنتَ من مناهضي السوق الحرة، فقد تجد بعض أن بعض الفصول تطرح أفكاراً لا تتفق مع مسلماتك. من وجهة نظري، هذا لا يعتبر عيبًا، فكل ما يستفز الذهن للتفكير باتجاه آخر هو رياضة مفيدة. من النقاط التي تجادلت مع الكاتب حولها: أهمية التعليم في النهضة الاقتصادية وأن ثورة الاتصالات لم تحدث الفرق الجوهري في الاقتصاد كما يظن الجميع.
5- الكتاب يستحق القراءة
بالطبع هو كذلك. هو ممتع في طرحه، تفاصيله سهلة ويبني استنباطاته على معلومات تاريخية واقتصادية مثيرة للاهتمام. ستعرف شيئاً أو اثنين عن أثر قانون حماية السوق من المهاجرين، الأزمة 2008 المالية و تجارب اقتصادية معينة نجحت وأخرى فشلت. إلى جانب العديد من القصص والأمثلة الشيقة.
January 22, 2016
Ha-Joon Chang is one of the few economists who you can actually trust to tell the truth as he sees it based on objective evidence. Shiller and Stiglitz are also rare exceptions among economists as both are in this same category.
This book is a great antidote to the free market propaganda that passes for economic analysis these days. A good example is the section on the birth of the South Korean steel industry. Despite the predictions of every free-market economist worth his Heritage Foundation research grant that government sponsored South Korean entry into the world steel market would be disaster, Korea went on to dominate the steel industry for decades.
This recent article by Chang on the market turmoil in early 2015 is also well worth reading. Don't blame China alone for the world's economic problems; the failure of governments to take any steps to reform the economies of the US and UK in particular (but also of other Western powers) after the crash of 2008/2009 and instead maintain their economies with asset bubbles fueled by quantitative easing is now going to pay us all back in spades at what is politically a very bad time for the world. From the article:
The problem is that while much of Ha-Joon Chang's analysis is borne out by events his remedies, such as stated above, are not acceptable in political systems like those of the US or UK that do not reflect the will of the majority of the people. We are left with politicians who only want to hear the opinions of economists who have either been bought or brainwashed by vested interests that support the status quo.
This book is a great antidote to the free market propaganda that passes for economic analysis these days. A good example is the section on the birth of the South Korean steel industry. Despite the predictions of every free-market economist worth his Heritage Foundation research grant that government sponsored South Korean entry into the world steel market would be disaster, Korea went on to dominate the steel industry for decades.
This recent article by Chang on the market turmoil in early 2015 is also well worth reading. Don't blame China alone for the world's economic problems; the failure of governments to take any steps to reform the economies of the US and UK in particular (but also of other Western powers) after the crash of 2008/2009 and instead maintain their economies with asset bubbles fueled by quantitative easing is now going to pay us all back in spades at what is politically a very bad time for the world. From the article:
"...Whether or not the recent market turmoil leads to a protracted slide or a violent crash, it is proof that we have wasted the past seven years propping up a bankrupt economic model. Before things get any worse, we need to replace it with one in which the financial sector is made less complex and more patient, investment in the real economy is encouraged by fiscal and technological incentives, and measures are brought in to reduce inequality so that demand can be maintained without creating more debts..."
The problem is that while much of Ha-Joon Chang's analysis is borne out by events his remedies, such as stated above, are not acceptable in political systems like those of the US or UK that do not reflect the will of the majority of the people. We are left with politicians who only want to hear the opinions of economists who have either been bought or brainwashed by vested interests that support the status quo.
February 19, 2022
کتابهای زیادی در نقد لیبرالیسم و سرمایه داری نوشته شده است. چرا باید کتاب دیگری را هم مدنظر قرار داد؟ و چرا من چنین کتابی را توصیه می کنم؟ معیار اول این است که نویسنده باید بداند دقیقا چه چیزی را نقد می کند و چرا نقد می کند؛ یعنی اصلا چرا جای نقد وجود دارد. اما مهمتر از آن معیار دوم است که نویسنده آلترناتیو یا گزینه جایگزین معرفی می کند. بعبارت دیگر بعد از اتمام کتاب مهمترین روشنگری که حاصل می شود این است که بیخود و بیجهت نه سرمایه داری را نقد کنیم و نه صرفا به نقد اکتفا کنیم. بر این اساس عبارت کلیدی نویسنده، کارآفرینی جمعی برای منفعت اقتصادی عمومی است، چیزی که نه خود به خود با سرمایه داری و لیبرالیسم به دست می آید و نه مدیریت متمرکز اقتصادی بر ضد آن عمل می کند. باقی کتاب نقدهای عمده ای هستند که به اهمیت این مفهوم توجه ندارند یا پرداختن بیشتر به سازوکارهای لازم برای شکل گیری چنین مفهومی می باشند. من شخصا از بسیاری لذت بردم و برخی را هم ناکافی دانستم و شاید قانع نشدم
از میان نقدها یا اصلاح باورهای غلط می توان به خود تعریف اقتصاد آزاد اشاره کرد که به بیان نویسنده وقتی نیروی کار بعنوان یک عامل کلیدی آزاد نیست، یعنی مهاجرت کاری، حرف از بازار آزاد به صورت مطلق بی معناست. یا این عبارت جالب که اصلا مارکس بود که از مسئولیت محدود حمایت کرد، زمانی که اقتصاددانان آزاد آن را قبول نداشتند، اما الان مبنای اصلی سرمایه داری است. یا اشاره می کند که فرق جامعه غنی و فقیر را لزوما فقرا رقم نمی زنند، بلکه ثروتمندان و نحوه استفاده از ثروتشان یکی از تفاوتهای کلیدی بین جوامع است، یا این ایده بازار آزاد را که هر کس باید دنبال نفع شخصی باشد را اصلاح می کند بدین صورت که در شرایطی این فرض کار می کند که چنین منفعتی تمایلات دیگر، و اخلاقی تر را به جریان درآورد. یا به این باور می پردازد که بجای فکر کردن به تورم در سطح اقتصاد کلان برای ثبات اقتصادی، باید توجه را به ثبات شغلی و بحرانهای مالی معطوف کرد
کمی به اختصار درباره ایده اصلی که در ابتدا اشاره کردم. یعنی کارآفرینی جمعی و سازوکارهای آن بعنوان مهمترین عامل شکوفایی اقتصادی ملتها که در همین جا ارتباطش با سیستم سرمایه داری را هم عیان می بینیم. یعنی سیستمی که بر تجمیع سرمایه و نیروی فکری تاکید می کند و احتمال چنین کارآفرینی جمعی را افزایش می دهد. بنابراین، نمی توان این کتاب را ضدسرمایه داری دانست بلکه همان طور که از عنوان برمی آید، در پی اصلاح باورهای نادرست است. بر اساس همین ایده، سایر ایده ها هم مطرح می شوند که چرا آموزش عالی لزوما برای موفقیت اقتصادی کفایت نمی کند، یا دولت تا چه اندازه می تواند در ایجاد بستری برای کارآفرینی در سطح جمعی کارگشا باشد.
از میان نقدها یا اصلاح باورهای غلط می توان به خود تعریف اقتصاد آزاد اشاره کرد که به بیان نویسنده وقتی نیروی کار بعنوان یک عامل کلیدی آزاد نیست، یعنی مهاجرت کاری، حرف از بازار آزاد به صورت مطلق بی معناست. یا این عبارت جالب که اصلا مارکس بود که از مسئولیت محدود حمایت کرد، زمانی که اقتصاددانان آزاد آن را قبول نداشتند، اما الان مبنای اصلی سرمایه داری است. یا اشاره می کند که فرق جامعه غنی و فقیر را لزوما فقرا رقم نمی زنند، بلکه ثروتمندان و نحوه استفاده از ثروتشان یکی از تفاوتهای کلیدی بین جوامع است، یا این ایده بازار آزاد را که هر کس باید دنبال نفع شخصی باشد را اصلاح می کند بدین صورت که در شرایطی این فرض کار می کند که چنین منفعتی تمایلات دیگر، و اخلاقی تر را به جریان درآورد. یا به این باور می پردازد که بجای فکر کردن به تورم در سطح اقتصاد کلان برای ثبات اقتصادی، باید توجه را به ثبات شغلی و بحرانهای مالی معطوف کرد
کمی به اختصار درباره ایده اصلی که در ابتدا اشاره کردم. یعنی کارآفرینی جمعی و سازوکارهای آن بعنوان مهمترین عامل شکوفایی اقتصادی ملتها که در همین جا ارتباطش با سیستم سرمایه داری را هم عیان می بینیم. یعنی سیستمی که بر تجمیع سرمایه و نیروی فکری تاکید می کند و احتمال چنین کارآفرینی جمعی را افزایش می دهد. بنابراین، نمی توان این کتاب را ضدسرمایه داری دانست بلکه همان طور که از عنوان برمی آید، در پی اصلاح باورهای نادرست است. بر اساس همین ایده، سایر ایده ها هم مطرح می شوند که چرا آموزش عالی لزوما برای موفقیت اقتصادی کفایت نمی کند، یا دولت تا چه اندازه می تواند در ایجاد بستری برای کارآفرینی در سطح جمعی کارگشا باشد.
December 22, 2011
I am a free-market advocate and read this book to examine opposing arguments. I tried to be open-minded, but ultimately found most of the arguments in this book unpersuasive. He makes a few good points, but he also sets up many straw men to tear down positions that nobody holds, and he imbues many of his arguments with abstract plausibilites rather than with logic and empirical evidence. Some of his arguments border on the absurd, such as his claim that the welfare state facilitates economic growth, or his position that economic conditions around the world have gone downhill since the early 1980s and that free-market economics is to blame. His borderline apologia for Stalin and his friendly treatment of Marx were downright disturbing, and his praise for Keynes and Galbraith flies in the face of economic history during the twentieth century. Keynesian economics is bunk, and logical thinkers like Henry Hazlitt and Friedrich Hayek saw that clearly from the outset. It is sad to see how some economists cling to that nonsense because of their leftist political inclinations. The Phillips curve died more than three decades ago! This book has strengthened my confidence in the soundness of free-market economics.
November 2, 2014
This is a really accessible book on economics and capitalism. It may not sound like the most fun book to read but Chang actually writes this for the "common person" to use somewhat problematic phrase. He uses many references to pop culture and film in order to get his points across as easily as he can. This also contains a good history of economics and mentions many famous economists (Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, John Maynard Keynes, and the such) which is interesting if you are new to economics. At points is can be very dry and wearisome but that doesn't really affect Chang's overall point. Since I studied Economics for two years in high school I may have had a greater understanding of what Chang was talking about in this but I do feel that this would be a great place to start if you are interesting in reading some economic non-fiction.
June 6, 2018
An incredibly useful read for those who want to challenge their own beliefs, no matter how strongly they adhere to them. Chang is not against capitalism - far from it, actually. He believes, using the words of Churchill, that capitalism is the worst economic system - except for all others. Chang is specifically against free-market capitalism, which has done so much damage to the world economy. The writing is clear, concise and funny at times, managing to treat a difficult topic using the vocabulary we all share. I would totally recommend it to any curious reader.
February 2, 2019
The book is full of information, and it's written very clearly. That's a plus, because you can use your spare mental capacity to process this information properly while the author is busy making a terrible hash of it.
I'll be upfront here and admit I come from very similar leanings as the author. But that's precisely why I'm angry with the book. How can somebody so educated and so concerned about the issues allocate the time to write a book and come up so short?
One extremely annoying thing about the book is that the author is so consumed with "debunking myths" that he totally misses the forest for the trees.
Like, he has an entire chapter where he's so consumed with debunking the link between education and income (a common excuse in America for why the poor are in trouble) that he forgets where his average reader is coming from. I, for one, am quite happy that more people are going to college. If they got tricked into doing so thinking it's some sort of ticket to prospertiy, hey, whatever works!
Or he has another chapter where he rehashes the questionable argument that the washing machine is a bigger invention than the computer. This is a building block toward later saying we don't live in the post-industrial age and you should not have to go to college, I guess. But the truth is it's way way way too early to judge. As I'm writing this, my wife is at home working from her computer. Yeah, maybe she has the washing machine on. But my shirts are at the cleaners'. Jury's out, basically, and the credibility of all people in my camp goes down with the rest of this book.
Or he says capital is not international, it's national. Well, we now all know the truth is ten times more nuanced. GM designs its small cars in South Korea, for example, but if it ever goes to die again, it will die again in America. Capital always DIES at home (or asks for help at home). Yes, the arguments the author makes can also be valid. But for goodness' sake, you are destroying their credibility if you don't present the other side.
The second thing I don't like about the book is the author needs to man up.
For example, he goes telling us the US is doing things poorly, maintains a third world country within it (all of it true stuff, and I wholeheartedly agree) but then when he goes to pick the opposite, the prime example of how thigs are meant to be done, it turns out he likes, get ready for this... Norway. Or Finland. News flash: Norway is rich for the same reason Kuwait is rich. Not because they run the system you and I like. And let's talk about Finland in a couple years' time when no ten-year-old knows what a Nokia phone is. If you really want to build the case for the prosecution, there is no way round explaining FRANCE. The government there is bigger than 50% of GDP, they do loads of planning, they graduate people from the ENA and the other Grandes Ecoles, they are self-sufficient in power because they went nuclear, it should be your paradise. Man up and tell us why you like France. Or Germany. I don't care. But spare us the Scandies. They all fit in my living room.
Or he goes telling us that the industrial jobs are just as important as they used to be. A lie. Yes, we use twice as many things as we used to, but we have the way to make them with less input from labor. It's just how it is. If the author had the courage, he'd admit that there are people who for better or for worse will never be able to become "ideas people" like engineers or doctors or paper pushers and who are also not suited to the services industry and we can either pay for them from the dole or we can pay for them to go to work. Germany understands this so Germany subsidizes their employers. That's how the author needs to build the argument. Or, alternatively, follow the line of argument which states that you cannot expect to design well if you put distance between design and production. Not give us the mumbo jumbo about how we are still an industrial society.
THE most annoying thing in this book, however, and by a country mile, is that for 90% of the arguments the author uses the same proof: So-and-so country (dunno, the US, the UK, all of Africa) was on some massive path to prosperity right after the Great Depression and the Second World War and in the past 30 years things are no longer so hot. So it must be because we put taxes down on the guys who pay them (i.e. the rich) Well, let me tell you something, my Freshman Year in college I missed 17 crew practices due to mononucleosis, and my progress when I got back was truly enormous, but then I reached some type of plateau. You need to do better.
And you can do better, if you go into the nitty-gritty of the arguments. But it takes courage to say you like France because its marcroeconomic numbers currently reflect that the "automatic stabilizers" are working overtime. It takes courage to say that Apple / Foxconn might lose to Samsung because you could get the principle right and the example wrong. It takes courage to risk losing your reader. And, most importantly, it takes courage to concede points to the other side.
So I was very disappointed by this book. It's a laundry list and nothing more. And by lacking honesty and proof for its arguments, it's a failure.
I'll be upfront here and admit I come from very similar leanings as the author. But that's precisely why I'm angry with the book. How can somebody so educated and so concerned about the issues allocate the time to write a book and come up so short?
One extremely annoying thing about the book is that the author is so consumed with "debunking myths" that he totally misses the forest for the trees.
Like, he has an entire chapter where he's so consumed with debunking the link between education and income (a common excuse in America for why the poor are in trouble) that he forgets where his average reader is coming from. I, for one, am quite happy that more people are going to college. If they got tricked into doing so thinking it's some sort of ticket to prospertiy, hey, whatever works!
Or he has another chapter where he rehashes the questionable argument that the washing machine is a bigger invention than the computer. This is a building block toward later saying we don't live in the post-industrial age and you should not have to go to college, I guess. But the truth is it's way way way too early to judge. As I'm writing this, my wife is at home working from her computer. Yeah, maybe she has the washing machine on. But my shirts are at the cleaners'. Jury's out, basically, and the credibility of all people in my camp goes down with the rest of this book.
Or he says capital is not international, it's national. Well, we now all know the truth is ten times more nuanced. GM designs its small cars in South Korea, for example, but if it ever goes to die again, it will die again in America. Capital always DIES at home (or asks for help at home). Yes, the arguments the author makes can also be valid. But for goodness' sake, you are destroying their credibility if you don't present the other side.
The second thing I don't like about the book is the author needs to man up.
For example, he goes telling us the US is doing things poorly, maintains a third world country within it (all of it true stuff, and I wholeheartedly agree) but then when he goes to pick the opposite, the prime example of how thigs are meant to be done, it turns out he likes, get ready for this... Norway. Or Finland. News flash: Norway is rich for the same reason Kuwait is rich. Not because they run the system you and I like. And let's talk about Finland in a couple years' time when no ten-year-old knows what a Nokia phone is. If you really want to build the case for the prosecution, there is no way round explaining FRANCE. The government there is bigger than 50% of GDP, they do loads of planning, they graduate people from the ENA and the other Grandes Ecoles, they are self-sufficient in power because they went nuclear, it should be your paradise. Man up and tell us why you like France. Or Germany. I don't care. But spare us the Scandies. They all fit in my living room.
Or he goes telling us that the industrial jobs are just as important as they used to be. A lie. Yes, we use twice as many things as we used to, but we have the way to make them with less input from labor. It's just how it is. If the author had the courage, he'd admit that there are people who for better or for worse will never be able to become "ideas people" like engineers or doctors or paper pushers and who are also not suited to the services industry and we can either pay for them from the dole or we can pay for them to go to work. Germany understands this so Germany subsidizes their employers. That's how the author needs to build the argument. Or, alternatively, follow the line of argument which states that you cannot expect to design well if you put distance between design and production. Not give us the mumbo jumbo about how we are still an industrial society.
THE most annoying thing in this book, however, and by a country mile, is that for 90% of the arguments the author uses the same proof: So-and-so country (dunno, the US, the UK, all of Africa) was on some massive path to prosperity right after the Great Depression and the Second World War and in the past 30 years things are no longer so hot. So it must be because we put taxes down on the guys who pay them (i.e. the rich) Well, let me tell you something, my Freshman Year in college I missed 17 crew practices due to mononucleosis, and my progress when I got back was truly enormous, but then I reached some type of plateau. You need to do better.
And you can do better, if you go into the nitty-gritty of the arguments. But it takes courage to say you like France because its marcroeconomic numbers currently reflect that the "automatic stabilizers" are working overtime. It takes courage to say that Apple / Foxconn might lose to Samsung because you could get the principle right and the example wrong. It takes courage to risk losing your reader. And, most importantly, it takes courage to concede points to the other side.
So I was very disappointed by this book. It's a laundry list and nothing more. And by lacking honesty and proof for its arguments, it's a failure.
December 5, 2017
موقع خوندنش خیلی اذیت شدم، پنبه کرد بعضی چیزهایی که رشته کرده بودم
کتاب درست حسابیه نگاه به اسمش که شبیه پروپاگانداست نکنید، تصمیم گرفتم کتاب دیگه ی نویسنده رو هم بخونم
این کتاب رو از تویه کتاب های
Yuval Noah Harari
پیدا کردم
خیلی جالبه که من کتاب اقتصاد در یک درس رو هم خوندم، به نظر من با هم خوندن این دو کتاب معجون جالبی میتونه باشه
کتاب درست حسابیه نگاه به اسمش که شبیه پروپاگانداست نکنید، تصمیم گرفتم کتاب دیگه ی نویسنده رو هم بخونم
این کتاب رو از تویه کتاب های
Yuval Noah Harari
پیدا کردم
خیلی جالبه که من کتاب اقتصاد در یک درس رو هم خوندم، به نظر من با هم خوندن این دو کتاب معجون جالبی میتونه باشه
July 18, 2011
Plain talk about capitalism - from a Cambridge economist who believes in it, but not in the free market ideology which has surrounded it for the last thirty years. Required reading for anyone who wants a grip on what's actually going on with the global economy, and anyone who likes to kid themselves they vote rationally...
November 10, 2017
الكتاب عظيم جدًّا من وجهة نظري، فكرني بكتاب (كيف تعمل الماركسية) لـ‘‘كريس هيرمان’’ واللي حوالي 40% منه نقد حاد للرأسمالية، بس الكتاب ده مُخصَّص لنقد الرأسمالية، ودحض أكاذيبها زي ما بيقولوا.
وميزة الكتاب كمان هو التنوّع الكبير والضخم في الأمثلة على كل نقطة، والقدرة على الربط ببعضه، عن دور الفرد ورؤية الرأسمالية للفرد الواحد، وعن أهمية التعليم ودوره، أهمية وجود عدد من رواد الأعمال في البلاد النامية، ضرر المؤسسات الرأسمالية الكبرى زي البنك الدولي وصندق النقد. وغيره من الأمثلة المهمة جدًّا، واللي بتفتح مجالات وأفكار حلوة .. عامة هو مشروع كامل لنقد الرأسمالية والقذرين متبعي الرأسمالية؛ سواء أشخاص أو حاجات كبيرة.
الكتاب اتكتب بعض أزمة 2008 المالية العالمية فكان في تركيز على كم الكوارث اللي ممكن تؤديها الرأسمالية، وخاصةً رأسمالية حرية السوق، أو أتباع سياسيات الأسواق الحرة المفتوحة؛ وده فإنه مؤمن بنوع معيّن من الرأسمالية، واللي أقرب لنُظم الدول الإسكندنافية زي السويد كده.
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ممتن جدًّا للكتاب ده والله في حياتي، رغم إني كالعادة والطبيعي نسيت أغلبه بس فتحلي دماغي في طرق تفكير ورد على حاجات كتير.
وميزة الكتاب كمان هو التنوّع الكبير والضخم في الأمثلة على كل نقطة، والقدرة على الربط ببعضه، عن دور الفرد ورؤية الرأسمالية للفرد الواحد، وعن أهمية التعليم ودوره، أهمية وجود عدد من رواد الأعمال في البلاد النامية، ضرر المؤسسات الرأسمالية الكبرى زي البنك الدولي وصندق النقد. وغيره من الأمثلة المهمة جدًّا، واللي بتفتح مجالات وأفكار حلوة .. عامة هو مشروع كامل لنقد الرأسمالية والقذرين متبعي الرأسمالية؛ سواء أشخاص أو حاجات كبيرة.
الكتاب اتكتب بعض أزمة 2008 المالية العالمية فكان في تركيز على كم الكوارث اللي ممكن تؤديها الرأسمالية، وخاصةً رأسمالية حرية السوق، أو أتباع سياسيات الأسواق الحرة المفتوحة؛ وده فإنه مؤمن بنوع معيّن من الرأسمالية، واللي أقرب لنُظم الدول الإسكندنافية زي السويد كده.
_
ممتن جدًّا للكتاب ده والله في حياتي، رغم إني كالعادة والطبيعي نسيت أغلبه بس فتحلي دماغي في طرق تفكير ورد على حاجات كتير.
March 1, 2020
الاقتصاد مذهلٌ ومزعج. مذهل في قدرته على تفسير الأحداث، وتبرير الخطط. لكنه مزعج لأنّه يستطيع فعل ذلك بذات المهارة مع "كل شيء"! بما في ذلك الشيء وضدّه!
هذا الكتاب الثاني المترجم للكاتب تشانج، وهو كوري الأصل. في كلا الكتابين يشنّ "تشانج" حربه على نظام السوق الحرّ في الرأسمالية. هذا النظام المعولم بأدوات القهر والفرض من الدول الكبرى، وأدواتها الاقتصادية كالبنك الدولي وصندوق "النكد" الدولي حسب تعبير الكاتب المصري "شادي عبد السلام".
يناقش الكاتب الافتراضات والأفكار الأساسية التي يقدّمها أنصار حرية السوق والنيوليبراليين. يطرح قولهم، ويبين حجّتهم ثمّ يقوم بنقض تلك الحجج، وبيان خطئها من حيث الواقع والتاريخ، وبعض "المنطق الاقتصادي" المراوغ.
تمتدّ تلك الأفكار المطروحة للنقاش والنقد في الكتاب من التعليم وحكومات الرفاه إلى أهمية الشركات وريادة الأعمال ودور الحكومات، وامتدادًا إلى ضرورة وجود الاقتصاديين أنفسهم. هي 23 فكرة أو فرضية على أية حال.
كتاب جيّد وممتع، وأسلوب "تشانج" وأمثلته جميلة وكثيرة، وتسهّل على القارئ استيعاب الأفكار الاقتصادية المجردة. ولكنّه لم يخلُ من تكرار ، وذلك بحكم الموضوع نفسه، فكل تلك الأفكار تعود إلى أساس واحد.
تظلّ النقاشات الاقتصادية كتمارين عقلية حرّة، كل جزئية منها تقبل النقاش والنقد والوصول إلى النقيض. لذا فعلى قارئ الكتاب ألا يتفاءل كثيرًا بحجج الكاتب على الرغم من صحتها الظاهرة.
ويظلّ إنكار أفكار السوق العالمية الحرة-كما يفعل الكاتب- مع الإيمان بالرأسمالية، وهي أمّها الطبيعية يحمل تناقضًا يورث الحيرة، ويسدّ أبواب البدائل.
ختامًا، تُبكينا –نحن العرب- مثل هذه الكتب. لأنّها تجعلنا نرى مقدار الاستعمار الدائم والموصول الذي تعيشه أمتنا، وندرك في ذات الوقت غيابنا "سياسيًا" عن ساحات الفهم والقرار معًا. فنخبنا تتعلم ما يريدون، وتكرّر ما يُعلّمون. وحكوماتنا تنفّذ الإملاءات ولا تملك القرارات، وأمّا الشعوب فتسير بالعناء والتعب في طريقٍ لا تبصره ولا ترى نهايته.
هذا الكتاب الثاني المترجم للكاتب تشانج، وهو كوري الأصل. في كلا الكتابين يشنّ "تشانج" حربه على نظام السوق الحرّ في الرأسمالية. هذا النظام المعولم بأدوات القهر والفرض من الدول الكبرى، وأدواتها الاقتصادية كالبنك الدولي وصندوق "النكد" الدولي حسب تعبير الكاتب المصري "شادي عبد السلام".
يناقش الكاتب الافتراضات والأفكار الأساسية التي يقدّمها أنصار حرية السوق والنيوليبراليين. يطرح قولهم، ويبين حجّتهم ثمّ يقوم بنقض تلك الحجج، وبيان خطئها من حيث الواقع والتاريخ، وبعض "المنطق الاقتصادي" المراوغ.
تمتدّ تلك الأفكار المطروحة للنقاش والنقد في الكتاب من التعليم وحكومات الرفاه إلى أهمية الشركات وريادة الأعمال ودور الحكومات، وامتدادًا إلى ضرورة وجود الاقتصاديين أنفسهم. هي 23 فكرة أو فرضية على أية حال.
كتاب جيّد وممتع، وأسلوب "تشانج" وأمثلته جميلة وكثيرة، وتسهّل على القارئ استيعاب الأفكار الاقتصادية المجردة. ولكنّه لم يخلُ من تكرار ، وذلك بحكم الموضوع نفسه، فكل تلك الأفكار تعود إلى أساس واحد.
تظلّ النقاشات الاقتصادية كتمارين عقلية حرّة، كل جزئية منها تقبل النقاش والنقد والوصول إلى النقيض. لذا فعلى قارئ الكتاب ألا يتفاءل كثيرًا بحجج الكاتب على الرغم من صحتها الظاهرة.
ويظلّ إنكار أفكار السوق العالمية الحرة-كما يفعل الكاتب- مع الإيمان بالرأسمالية، وهي أمّها الطبيعية يحمل تناقضًا يورث الحيرة، ويسدّ أبواب البدائل.
ختامًا، تُبكينا –نحن العرب- مثل هذه الكتب. لأنّها تجعلنا نرى مقدار الاستعمار الدائم والموصول الذي تعيشه أمتنا، وندرك في ذات الوقت غيابنا "سياسيًا" عن ساحات الفهم والقرار معًا. فنخبنا تتعلم ما يريدون، وتكرّر ما يُعلّمون. وحكوماتنا تنفّذ الإملاءات ولا تملك القرارات، وأمّا الشعوب فتسير بالعناء والتعب في طريقٍ لا تبصره ولا ترى نهايته.
August 16, 2017
Πολυ ουσιαστικό βιβλιο, καταφέρνει να εξηγήσει με απλά και μεστά παραδείγματα βασικές αλήθειες της σύγχρονης κοινωνίας.
Διαφορετικό απο το δόγμα του σοκ (που δε μου πολυαρεσε λόγω της σε εμμονής σε μια συγκεκριμένη θεωρία) αλλά με κοινό παρανομαστή τις θεωρίες της ελεύθερης αγοράς και τα πεπραγμενα των τελευταίων 60 ετών, παρουσιάζει την ομολογούμενη αλήθεια αλλά και όσα δε μας λένε αναφορικά με όσα παίζονται στην παγκόσμια οικονομική σκηνή.
Το καλό με αυτά τα βιβλία ειναι πως σε βάζουν να σκεφτείς. Συμφωνείς ή όχι με όσα γράφονται, τουλάχιστον σε βάζουν στην διαδικασία να ψάξεις, να ερμηνεύσεις και να αξιολογήσεις όσα παρουσιάζουν. Επίσης, ειναι βατό και για εμάς που δεν είμαστε οικονομολόγοι και που μαλλον δε θα γίνουμε και ποτέ.
Διαφορετικό απο το δόγμα του σοκ (που δε μου πολυαρεσε λόγω της σε εμμονής σε μια συγκεκριμένη θεωρία) αλλά με κοινό παρανομαστή τις θεωρίες της ελεύθερης αγοράς και τα πεπραγμενα των τελευταίων 60 ετών, παρουσιάζει την ομολογούμενη αλήθεια αλλά και όσα δε μας λένε αναφορικά με όσα παίζονται στην παγκόσμια οικονομική σκηνή.
Το καλό με αυτά τα βιβλία ειναι πως σε βάζουν να σκεφτείς. Συμφωνείς ή όχι με όσα γράφονται, τουλάχιστον σε βάζουν στην διαδικασία να ψάξεις, να ερμηνεύσεις και να αξιολογήσεις όσα παρουσιάζουν. Επίσης, ειναι βατό και για εμάς που δεν είμαστε οικονομολόγοι και που μαλλον δε θα γίνουμε και ποτέ.
June 29, 2020
Finally a book that says it like it is and decimates the neoliberalistic lies we've been touted with one by one. Written in a way that is easily understandable and readable regardless of your earlier insights into economics and the so-called free-market. Learn about how there is no such thing as a free market (thing 1), how companies should not be run in the interest of their owners (thing 2) and 21 other things that will make you understand the world we live in better. Deeply insightful and absolutely lacerating. Should be mandatory reading for politicians. I'm starting to wonder whether they are illiterate, ignorant or simply don't care. It's probably the last.
June 10, 2020
قليلة هي الكتب التي تتحدث عن الاقتصاد وتكون ممتعة وثرية بالمعلومات ومناسبة للمتخصص وغير المتخصص على السواء. في هذا الكتاب عظيم القيمة والفائدة وبترجمة سلسة ومتميزة للمترجم محمد فتحي كلفت يطرح الأكاديمي الكوري الجنوبي والأستاذ بجامعة كمبردج ها – جوون تشانج 23 حقيقة/فرضية يناقش في إطارها الكثير من المسلمات/الأوهام المرتبطة بفهمنا للرأسمالية كنظام اقتصادي، وتعاملنا معها، ومن ثم إيمان البعض المطلق بها وكفر البعض الآخر مع وجود مساحة في المنتصف للمواءمة ينتمي إليها المؤلف نفسه الذي يرى الرأسمالية كأفضل نظام اقتصادي متاح حتى اللحظة - وهو ما قد لا نقره لكن هذه مسألة أخرى- وإن نفى بشدة أن يكون ما يقصده هو رأسمالية السوق الحر التي يفند أوهامها هنا.
تطالعنا الصفحات الأولى للكتاب بمقدمة موجزة وداعمة لمفكرنا الكبير الراحل جلال أمين يثني فيها على طرح المؤلف مشيدا بذكائه وشجاعته، ومؤمِّنا على مجمل ما طرحه الكتاب من أفكار تتسق مع منجز أمين نفسه والذي كان في كتبه منحازا على الدوام للبعد الإنساني للسياسات الاقتصادية، وللتعامل مع الإنسان كإنسان أولا قبل أن يكون وحدة اقتصادية أو عاملا من عوامل الانتاج الخ.
يتبع تشانج في عرضه لأفكاره منهجا لطيفا ومبسطا هو ما يقولونه لك/ ما لا يقولونه لك ثم يستفيض في شرح ما يبدو بدهيا ومسلما به، ليكشف لنا عن كثير من زيفه وتناقضاته بمنطق يحتكم إلى فقه الأولويات وهو مصطلح قد تكون صبغته إسلامية إلا أنه يعبر بشكل دقيق عما يرمي إليه مؤلف الكتاب، الذي يستند في عرضه إلى حقائق الواقع والصيرورات التاريخية للنماذج الاقتصادية المختلفة لبيان وجاهة رأيه وخطأ الرأي المعارض. كما أن الغاية الأسمى للمؤلف هنا هي تفعيل ما أسماها "المواطنة الاقتصادية النشطة" أي أن يكون لكل مواطن القدرة على الإلمام با��قدر من المعلومات المعرفة الذي يسمح له بتكوين رأي في السياسات الاقتصادية المتبعة في محيطه والمؤثرة عليه بطبيعة الحال، وألا يعتبر هذا المواطن في أي مكان أن الاقتصاد علم رباني اختص به الله بعضا من البشر دون غيرهم فلا ينبغي له أن يفكر فيما يقولوه أو أن يعترض عليه ويختلف معهم، خصوصا وأن اللافت في الكتاب إجمالا مدى هشاشة الثقة التي يستند إليها الاقتصاديون في تطبيق نهج معين لتحقيق أهداف معينة، وأن كل رأي تقريبا يقف بالمرصاد له رأي مخالف يحمل ذات القدر تقريبا من الأسانيد والحجج التي تجعل تطبيقه منطقيا وقبولا ويبقى مدار الأمر هو انحياز نظام الحكم وتوجهاته ونحن نعلم في مصر مثلا ما هي هذه الانحيازات والتوجهات.
من العناوين اللافتة للفصول والتي رأيت أن أورد هنا بعضا منها لإعطاء لمحات عن المضمون:
"ليس هناك شيء اسمه حرية السوق/ لقد غيرت الغسالة العالم أكثر مما فعل الانترنت/ سياسات حرية السوق نادرا ما تغني البلدان الفقيرة/ رأس المال له جنسية/ التخلف ليس قدرا مكتوبا على أفريقيا/
جعل الأغنياء أغنى لا يجعل بقيتنا أغنى، تكافؤ الفرص قد لا يكون عادلا...
إجمالا يبين تشانج في هذا الكتاب وكتابه السابق – السامريون الأشرار بترجمة للمترجم الفاهم أحمد شافعي- الوجه الحقيقي للواقع الاقتصادي العالمي الحالي حيث الصراع على الثروات وتصدير الأزمات هو الجوهر مهما كانت الشعارات والمزاعم البراقة على السطح، وفي نهاية المطاف لا نهضة لدولة نامية أو متخلفة إلا بإرادتها، وباعتمادها على ذاتها وما يلائم وضعها وقدراتها الاقتصادية الآنية والمرحلية، وبطبيعة الحال بوجود سياسة اقتصادية لا تُملى عليها من الخارج ونحن والحمد لله في بلد مثل مصر لسنا كذلك بالمرة، فلعلنا نصبح ذات يوم.
مودتي
November 21, 2020
Kapitalizm veya liberal iktisatçıların deyimi ile serbest piyasa ekonomisi bizi kandırıyor mu? Bürokrasinin asıl amacının kendi güçlerini maksimize etmesi olduğunu düşünen liberal iktisatçılar ilk olarak işe devleti dışlayarak başladı. Adam Smith önderliğinde girişilen bu yolda en doğru kararı piyasanın vereceğini düşünenler, kararları tamamen arz-talep dengesine bıraktılar. Çünkü görünmeyen bir el vardı, ekonomi her zaman dengeye gelirdi. Herkes kendi çıkarlarını maksimize ederse toplumsal refah artardı, ancak devlet işin içine girer zenginden alır fakire verirse yatırımcılar gerekli teşviği almamış olurdu. Damlama ekonomisi böyle çalışıyordu. Ancak bu günümüz toplumuna baktığımızda özellikle serbest piyasa ekonomisinin lokomotif ABD’de gerçekten toplumsal refahtan bahsedebilir miyiz?
Bir diğer konu ise, fakirler ülkeler tembel olduğu için fakirdir. Ancak bu konuda özellikle Ulusların Düşüsü kitabındaki görüşle paralel bir sonuç ortaya çıkıyor. Fakir ülkelerde yaşayan insanlar bu kaderi sistemin bir sonucu olabilir mi? Zengin ülkelerdeki insanlar daha yüksek refah seviyesinde yaşıyorlar, çünkü yatırım yaptıklarını teşvik edileceklerini biliyorlar, daha iyi kurumlara (en önemlisi), daha iyi teknolojilere sahipler. Aslında bu seviyeye gelebilmek tarihsel bir süreç. Bu konuda Asya Mucizesi önümüzde büyük bir örnek.
Daha fazla makroekonomik istikrarın dünyamıza daha fazla refah, eşitlik ve ekonomik büyüme getireceği yanılsamasıyla birlikte 1980’den sonra uygulanan enflasyon karşıtı politikalarla aslında özellikle gelişen ülkelerdeki işsizliği gözler önüne serdik. Enflasyon nedeniyle varlıklarının değeri düşen yatırımcıları korumak amacıyla geliştirilen serbest piyasa paketi ( düşük enflasyon, serbest sermaye hareketleri, işgücü esnekliği) sonucunda daha istikrarsız bir ekonomi, yüksek işsizlik ve bir gecede yabancı yatırımcılar sayesinde büyüyen/küçülen ülkelere sahip olduk.
Özetle serbest piyasa ekonomisinin özellikle 1980 sonra politikalarının vadettiği yüksek refah, daha eşit bir dünyaya sahip olamadık. Bu konuda yanlış düşünülen konuların altını çizebildiğimiz, hangi ülkeleri örnek almamız gerektiğini bize anlatan yararlı bir eserdi.
Bir diğer konu ise, fakirler ülkeler tembel olduğu için fakirdir. Ancak bu konuda özellikle Ulusların Düşüsü kitabındaki görüşle paralel bir sonuç ortaya çıkıyor. Fakir ülkelerde yaşayan insanlar bu kaderi sistemin bir sonucu olabilir mi? Zengin ülkelerdeki insanlar daha yüksek refah seviyesinde yaşıyorlar, çünkü yatırım yaptıklarını teşvik edileceklerini biliyorlar, daha iyi kurumlara (en önemlisi), daha iyi teknolojilere sahipler. Aslında bu seviyeye gelebilmek tarihsel bir süreç. Bu konuda Asya Mucizesi önümüzde büyük bir örnek.
Daha fazla makroekonomik istikrarın dünyamıza daha fazla refah, eşitlik ve ekonomik büyüme getireceği yanılsamasıyla birlikte 1980’den sonra uygulanan enflasyon karşıtı politikalarla aslında özellikle gelişen ülkelerdeki işsizliği gözler önüne serdik. Enflasyon nedeniyle varlıklarının değeri düşen yatırımcıları korumak amacıyla geliştirilen serbest piyasa paketi ( düşük enflasyon, serbest sermaye hareketleri, işgücü esnekliği) sonucunda daha istikrarsız bir ekonomi, yüksek işsizlik ve bir gecede yabancı yatırımcılar sayesinde büyüyen/küçülen ülkelere sahip olduk.
Özetle serbest piyasa ekonomisinin özellikle 1980 sonra politikalarının vadettiği yüksek refah, daha eşit bir dünyaya sahip olamadık. Bu konuda yanlış düşünülen konuların altını çizebildiğimiz, hangi ülkeleri örnek almamız gerektiğini bize anlatan yararlı bir eserdi.
February 19, 2021
February 2021
Rereading this for Economics of Economics of Policy paper.
"95 per cent of economics is common sense made complicated, and even the remaining 5 per cent, the essential reasoning, if not all the technical details, can be explained in plain terms." p. xviii.
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March 2020
If you're a proponent of the free-market economy, this book will challenge you to reconsider your position or, at the very least, to look more critically at the flaws of a free-market economy in practice across the globe. Prior to reading this book, I was exposed primarily to free-market economy literature, e.g., Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams and Adam Smith. IIn my humble assessment, the overall free-market economy had served humanity well. Still, the world is changing, hard to ignore the widening gap between the rich and poor, social inequality, income disparity and such. Ha-Joon Chang invites his readers to argue that the free-market economy is not the answer to the domestic, regional and global challenges of today. I think perhaps what we need is a mixed market economy. I don't even know what's that really entails--I'm still learning but reading this book certainly put things into perspective.
I agree with the author that "capitalism is the worst economic system except for all the others." p. 253.
Rereading this for Economics of Economics of Policy paper.
"95 per cent of economics is common sense made complicated, and even the remaining 5 per cent, the essential reasoning, if not all the technical details, can be explained in plain terms." p. xviii.
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March 2020
If you're a proponent of the free-market economy, this book will challenge you to reconsider your position or, at the very least, to look more critically at the flaws of a free-market economy in practice across the globe. Prior to reading this book, I was exposed primarily to free-market economy literature, e.g., Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams and Adam Smith. IIn my humble assessment, the overall free-market economy had served humanity well. Still, the world is changing, hard to ignore the widening gap between the rich and poor, social inequality, income disparity and such. Ha-Joon Chang invites his readers to argue that the free-market economy is not the answer to the domestic, regional and global challenges of today. I think perhaps what we need is a mixed market economy. I don't even know what's that really entails--I'm still learning but reading this book certainly put things into perspective.
I agree with the author that "capitalism is the worst economic system except for all the others." p. 253.
March 13, 2016
This book demolish with powerfull argumentations 23 dogmas of the dominant ultraliberal economical school of think,that that proclaim the virtues of absolutely desregulated free markets,the privatization of public services and corporations,the reduction of state structures ,the free dismissal and the disminution of welfare state.
The author give reasons that this theories prevalent in the last 30 years,drove in search of short time benefits maximizing to salary reductions of the workers while the corporations and financial capitalism earn progressively more money,the insecurity in the job,the growing of unenployement,the dissapereance of the middle class and in the end to the historic economic crash of 2008,when enormous amounts of public money were necesary for rescue banks and financial entities increasing public deficits and public debts that people will pay along generations.
The author is a capitalism defender,but a regulated capitalism and a rational one ,defended also by great economists to day silenced.
In a last chapter gives some adwices for a capitalism in the way make the people live secure ,happy and with dignity,in summary that benefits the majority .
The author give reasons that this theories prevalent in the last 30 years,drove in search of short time benefits maximizing to salary reductions of the workers while the corporations and financial capitalism earn progressively more money,the insecurity in the job,the growing of unenployement,the dissapereance of the middle class and in the end to the historic economic crash of 2008,when enormous amounts of public money were necesary for rescue banks and financial entities increasing public deficits and public debts that people will pay along generations.
The author is a capitalism defender,but a regulated capitalism and a rational one ,defended also by great economists to day silenced.
In a last chapter gives some adwices for a capitalism in the way make the people live secure ,happy and with dignity,in summary that benefits the majority .
December 9, 2021
An interesting analysis of the world economy arguing that the near total domination of free market economics over the course of decades has led to the wrong outcomes and that a newer paradigm needs to come into being. One thing the author got wrong in my books though is that the internet is less important than the washing machine - a view that is counter-acted in my works "Hyper Literacy in the Exponential Era" and "Optimism" which are pro-internet and can be found at tinyurl.com/yh6779c7 and tinyurl.com/xfh4kv76 (free with a 30 day trial at Scribd).
August 5, 2024
كتاب جميل وممتع في لغته المتبسطة، وأسلوب الكاتب اللاذع في سخريّته بتعليقاته وأمثلته اللي بيحاول يقرب بها فهم المسألة.. الكتاب في أغلبه بيُخبرنا أمور إحنا نعرفها بالفعل، ولكننا عاجزين عن تأطيرها أو بنخشى الكلام فيه بسبب تقديس علم الإقتصاد ومعاملته على أساس أنه الكأس المقدسة، وده اللي بيحاول الكاتب أنه يكسره في كتابه، ويقدم حلول وبدائل للأليات لإصلاح أخطاء الرأسمالية، وده طبعًا مُبرر لأنه كُتب في سياق متفائل بتغيير العالم بعد أزمة 2008، ولكن اتضح أنه لا شيء، ولن يتغير أي شيء في الطريقة التي تعمل بها الرأسمالية، لذلك أكثر الكلام المُحزن في الكتاب هو الكلام اللي يخص العالم النامي اللي بيُعامل كالمختبر الإقتصادي للعالم ونظريات صندوق النقد والبنك الدولي، لذلك لما تقرأ الكتاب ده في 2024 وأنت مصري الجنسية، فبلا شك هيسبب لك إحباط وحزن عظيمين
September 14, 2018
ها-جون چانگ بی آنکه با تخیلات سوسیالیستی در پی زیر سوآلبردن و برانداختن تمامیتِ سرمایهداری باشد، با ابزار علم اقتصاد، جدیترین نقدهای ممکن را بر بُت «بازار آزاد» وارد میکند. رویکرد مؤلف در بسیاری موارد اثبات این مطلب است که سیاستهای بازارآزادی فایدهی اقتصادی ادعایی را نیز در پی ندارند؛ مثلا به رشد اقتصادی و رفاه بیشتر منجر نمیشوند. از این نظر کتاب در پی طرح ایدههایی ست که نهایتا به اصلاح سرمایهداری متأخر، یا به اصطلاح «نولیبرالیسم» منجر شود
September 19, 2021
باختصار: كتابٌ عظيم! ومع أن كاتبه يرى بأن الرأسمالية "هي أفضل نظام اقتصادي توصل إليه البشر على الإطلاق"، إلا أنه، في هذا الكتاب، ينتقد نسخةً معينةً من الرأسمالية (وهي رأسمالية حرية السوق) انتقادات لاذعة، وقائمة على أدلة وبراهين كثيرة من الواقع العملي.
من الواضح أن للكاتب اطّلاعا كبيرا وعميقا جدا لا على علم الاقتصاد وحسب، بل وعلى التاريخ أيضا بشكل عام، وعلى التاريخ الاقتصادي بشكل خاص أيضا لدول العالم. ورغم عمق الكتاب والدسامة التي اتصف بها، وكثرة المعلومات فيه، إلا أنني وجدته ممتعا إلى أقصى حدود الإمتاع، ولم أشعر بأي ملل أثناء قراءته، بل تباطأت عمدا في قراءته لعلمي أنني سأفتقده بعدئذٍ ولشدة استمتاعي بقراءته.
إن الرأسمالية (ورأسمالية حرية السوق خصوصا، التي ينتقدها المؤلف) هي النظام الاقتصادي الحاكم والمهيمن على مفاصل الاقتصاد العالمي. وهذا الكتاب، بعمقه وسعة محتوياته، وبأسلوبه الفذ الممتع، يضع يده على مواضع الخلل في هذا النظام الاقتصادي الذي يحكمنا، ويعريها عن الأقنعة التي يحاول الاقتصاديون أن يحجبوها بها عنا.
من أراد أن يفهم كيف تعمل الرأسمالية، وكيف شكّلت وكوّنت عالمنا الذي نحن نعيشه، وكيف أنها ما زالت تحكمنا وتشكّل دولنا وعوالمنا، وما هي السياسات التي تتبعها، وما هي مواضع الخلل الفادحة فيها التي تسبب الأزمات الاقتصادية الكبيرة، فليقرأ هذا الكتاب العظيم.
خمسة من خمسة، وبكل جدارة. وإلى مراجعة مفصلة للكتاب في المستقبل.
من الواضح أن للكاتب اطّلاعا كبيرا وعميقا جدا لا على علم الاقتصاد وحسب، بل وعلى التاريخ أيضا بشكل عام، وعلى التاريخ الاقتصادي بشكل خاص أيضا لدول العالم. ورغم عمق الكتاب والدسامة التي اتصف بها، وكثرة المعلومات فيه، إلا أنني وجدته ممتعا إلى أقصى حدود الإمتاع، ولم أشعر بأي ملل أثناء قراءته، بل تباطأت عمدا في قراءته لعلمي أنني سأفتقده بعدئذٍ ولشدة استمتاعي بقراءته.
إن الرأسمالية (ورأسمالية حرية السوق خصوصا، التي ينتقدها المؤلف) هي النظام الاقتصادي الحاكم والمهيمن على مفاصل الاقتصاد العالمي. وهذا الكتاب، بعمقه وسعة محتوياته، وبأسلوبه الفذ الممتع، يضع يده على مواضع الخلل في هذا النظام الاقتصادي الذي يحكمنا، ويعريها عن الأقنعة التي يحاول الاقتصاديون أن يحجبوها بها عنا.
من أراد أن يفهم كيف تعمل الرأسمالية، وكيف شكّلت وكوّنت عالمنا الذي نحن نعيشه، وكيف أنها ما زالت تحكمنا وتشكّل دولنا وعوالمنا، وما هي السياسات التي تتبعها، وما هي مواضع الخلل الفادحة فيها التي تسبب الأزمات الاقتصادية الكبيرة، فليقرأ هذا الكتاب العظيم.
خمسة من خمسة، وبكل جدارة. وإلى مراجعة مفصلة للكتاب في المستقبل.
June 26, 2020
انهيت للتو قراءة كتاب "٢٣ حقيقة يخفونها عنك بخصوص الرأسمالية" للاقتصادي الكوري المشهور ها جون تشانج. في هذا الكتاب تعرض الكاتب لثلاثة وعشرين اطروحة اقتصادية ملأت كتب الاقتصاد الحديث وقام بمناصرتها الكثير من عمالقة الاقتصاد. كثير من هذه الاطروحات الاقتصادية وضعت حيز التنفيذ في دول شتى شرقا وغربا. لا يخفى على كل من قرأها الكتاب تعصب الكاتب الشديد ضد فكرة حرية السوق وهذا التعصب يكاد لا يخلو منه فصل في كتابه هذا. الكاتب تفرد في كتابه هذا بتبني تحليل اقتصادي يفيد بأن النظام الاقتصادي الرأسمالي في افضل احواله يقترب من النظام الاشتراكي المصغر. وهذا بالطبع لا ينطبق على كل الانماط الاقتصادية الرأسمالية المتعارف عليها الآن. الكتاب مليء بالامثلة في كل من الدول المتقدمة والدول النامية. الحقيقة كتاب رائع ويستحق القراءة.
February 13, 2021
Ha-Joon Chang has achieved what I previously thought impossible - stripping down economics and economic theory to its bare essentials. Chang expertly myth-busts, making what could be an excruciating experience for a reader like myself, into a mind expanding and captivating read. Not only did I find the book very smart and insightful, it has genuinely contributed to shaping my world view on several topics. Plus, it was fun! Well done Ha-Joon Chang!
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