Title of Book – Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and The Durable Future

Author – Bill McKibben

Publisher – Times Books

Publishing Date – 2007

Want more about Bill McKibben? Go here > http://www.billmckibben.com/

What is the book about? – In this novel, McKibben goes through our everyday lives (such as the food we eat, the energy we use, our culture, and our entertainment) and explains ways that we could create more of a sustainable economy in our everyday activities.  He also talks about how ‘more’ and ‘better’ do not exactly go hand in hand anymore. He talks about how money can only buy happiness up to $10,000 per capita income, explaining why America is so often looking for something more then we have now, and therefore explains why we are turning ourselves into this economic downfall.

The author looks at each subject individually and goes into detail. He explains firstly that the food we eat everyday has traveled hundreds of miles before it has even touched our lips, we don’t eat locally grown food anymore but instead we trade those local foods for foods that have been grown in huge, industrial farms. This is bad in a lot of ways because this means that local, smaller farms are going out of business because the big farms are taking over. This also means that we are using a crazy amount of oil (that we will never get back) just to get this food. Instead of man or animal power, we are now depending on power that comes from the earth; oil. It also means that we are turning our bodies into useless, lazy objects by eating the junk that is mass produced to feed the over whelming number of people needing more and more food everyday. He goes into each subject with this kind of detail and looks into every aspect.

The points that McKibben is trying to make is simple; we need to chance our ways or else. We do not know what is coming next and we need to start preparing. Small changes will help our economy but we just have to know where to start.

He also states that the richer America and the World in general gets, the sadder we get. He admits that it is true that happiness does in fact come from wealth but only to an extent, and that extent is about $10,000 per capita income. He constantly relates back to the fact that we need to ‘back up’ it seems to get back to where we were because we are not headed in the right direction,.

MY opinion? – I have always believed the way that McKibben does so I often agreed with his arguments. Often times i feel like we are constantly being clouded by this sort of ‘ doom’ and we need to make immense changes if we would like to see our society continue on a better path.

All together, I love the points he made and the way that he could so accurately describe the complex ideas that he was writing about. It was a fantastic read and very interesting!

Want more info still?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Economy

http://www.billmckibben.com/deep-economy.html

http://www.billmckibben.com/deep-economy-excerpt.html

"At first we all felt he was frightfully exaggerating and even offensive in tone. You see, he hurt all our deepest feelings, but gradually he won us around" Hayek, the free-market man who we learned influenced Margaret Thatcher’s opinions on politics, spoke these words in an interview. Hayek used to be a democratic socialist; but, like many others, he radically changed his views to become a free market capitalist after reading Mises’ work.

Ludwig Von Mises was born in Austria in 1881, and served as Austria’s top public economic adviser during the 1920’s, and effectively controlled Austria’s inflation rate. During this time, Mises organized economic seminars that drew people throughout Europe. Mises founded the “Austrian school of economics,” and he came to the United States in 1940. To offer a perspective on the paradigm shift brought upon by the resurgence of neoliberal ideas in the 1980’s; Mises had extreme difficulty finding a paid academic position at any university when he moved to the United States in the 1940’s due to his free market capitalist views.

Mises wrote Liberalism: A Classical Tradition to provide a sweeping argument supporting liberal policy. It is important to understand that the term “liberal” Mises used when he wrote this book in 1929 means something very different than what it means to Americans today. When he wrote this text, the word “liberal” meant someone who supported a small government, similar to how modern day “libertarians” want to reduce the size of the government. Nowadays, those who identify as liberals in the United States tend to support concepts such as social justice or equality of opportunity.

This book is composed of five separate chapters:

1. The Foundations of Liberal Policy- Mises seeks to provide a compelling base that supports liberalism for not only its economic significance, but also on the basis of human rights and culture.

2. Liberal Economic Policy- Mises points out the central tenants of liberal economic policy, providing strong support for private property, private ownership of capital, and the undesirability of socialism.

3. Liberal Foreign Policy- (I had to grab some popcorn for this chapter; it was quite interesting) Mises uses a single word to describe liberal foreign policy: peace. In addition, he provides convincing economic arguments supporting peace and explains that liberal societies will produce a peaceful world due to economic interdependence.

4. Liberalism and Political Parties- Mises outlines the significance that political parties will have in a liberal society, mentioning that current political parties are composed of special groups that have a vested interest in fighting liberalism.

5. The Future of Liberalism- Mises makes some wishes for the future, stating that although liberalism misses the colors and culture associated with political parties, the liberals still have arguments on their side.

A reader can succinctly narrow this text into a few points:

–  Liberalism seeks to minimize human misery while maximizing human happiness

–  Liberal policies aren’t only the most morally justifiable, but they produce the best results

Mises covers the topics of standard of living and income inequality, which we’ve also learned about in class:

Mises blames the variance of the standard of living between countries on trade barriers and immigration controls. He goes on to explain that more European workers (in 1929) would like to move to the U.S. to increase their wages, but the U.S.’s strict immigration laws make this very difficult. Therefore, Mises believes that the U.S. has strict immigration laws to serve to increase their own wages at the expense of European workers’ wages. I agree with Mises’ view that immigration should have minimal regulation, but I disagree with his assertion that allowing more immigrants will decrease an area’s wages. His assertion assumes that allowing more immigrants will increase the labor supply and decrease wages. This assertion ignores that immigrants not only take employment, but immigrants are also business owners and provide employment.

When we read or hear about income inequality, we often hear about how much better off the poor would be if we only redistributed wealth from the rich to the less fortunate. While I still believe that income inequality is an imperative problem, Mises offers information on this issue that most people ignore when discussing income inequality. He points out that economists cannot assume that wealth in a society will remain constant after modification in the economy. It is difficult to accurately calculate how much better off a section of society would be after redistribution, because this distribution modifies the incentives present within the society.

One thing Mises could have included in this book is his view on intellectual property. He effectively defends the right for private property in this text, but he fails to mention intellectual property. I was hoping for Mises to offer his view on IP because (at least, from what I have read) he doesn’t offer his viewpoint on intellectual property in any of his other texts. He discusses it, but doesn’t offer his perspective. This would have been an excellent addition to this text because intellectual property is something that divides Austrian economists and is one of the questions that needs answering in a liberal society.

This book changed some of my views, because Mises expressed some opinions in this book that I was surprised to hear. One of these is his opinion on democracy. Many liberals usually reject the concept of democracy, believing that a person’s rights are not something that should be determined by a vote. Instead, these liberals favor a constitutional republic or constitutional monarchy that guarantees the rights of citizens. Mises states that democracy is a means of decision-making that controls dissatisfaction or the uprising of the citizens, and can have a place in a liberal society. Although this text didn’t change my view on fascism, he took a neutral tone when describing fascist leaders in Europe. He described fascism as a last resort against the threat of the violent spread of communism.

Bibliography:

Photo of Mises from: Wikimedia Commons

Introductory quote borrowed from: Internet Archive

Biographical information from: Mises Biography

The entire text for this book can be found here: Liberalism: In the Classical Tradition

The Bottom Billion : By Paul Collier

The Book the Bottom Billion explains the plight of the poorest undeveloped countries in the World. Out of one billion people, 70 percent of the people belong to Africa. Africa is one of the fifty poorest countries in the world.  With virtually no growth and always seemingly to be on the heels of the rest of developed countries. Collier explains the danger of developed countries looking the other way and not embracing a critical cause for change.

Collier uses an example of living in the fourteenth-century where conditions were less than desirable. Where war, and disease plagued the era. Another issue Collier discusses is the large amount of aid given to countries. Even though large amounts of aid are a good effort to a solution to the problem; one has to be mindful of mass corruption within countries that receive this aid. Large aid increases risk of coup, and plentiful natural resources are economically damaging to a poorer country. Collier believes Aid can be an overemphasized solution.

The main points of the book deal with the four traps related to conflict, natural resources, geographical disadvantages and poor governance. The countries have in common one or more debilitating factors, which left unchecked define their future. He goes on to say if a country escapes a particular trap they have a 1.6 percent chance of staying out. No landlocked country has ever made it to middle income status and the average civil war lasts seven years at a cost of 64 billion.

There is hope as well as despair within this book, Collier believes efforts that have aided these countries are misguided and futile. He thinks most of the world is already better off than a hundred years ago but not for the poorer nations discussed the book. In conclusion Collier believes landlocked countries are at geographical disadvantage, therefore cash should be channeled to help these countries with long term aid to build effective infrastructure links. Countries of the bottom billion need to be given preferential access to the global marketplace if they are ever to compete with the export powerhouses of China and India. Lastly, Collier wants citizens of G8 countries to fight for change. Whether this change actually occurs still remains to be seen.

For the most I agreed with the author of this book and enjoyed reading it.  I thought it was a good read that gave insight to the problems concerning the bottom billion. The book did not make me angry or bored. I just felt why have privileged nations ignored this problem for so long; maybe more could have been done sooner. Some may say the book may have had to much dreariness to it. I didn’t think so, it’s not meant to be a feel good book. It deals with issues of the bottom billion. The questions I have for the author would be. What motivated you to write this book? Was it compassion for the bottom billion or some other reason?

This is just a test post to make sure I’ve got the categories correct.  — Jim