John
The low rating for this book is really an average, because there’s some five-star materials in here, and some one-star sections. Maybe there is simply no way to have a good Econ history book within the conventions of popular publishing, which says that anything that smacks of a text book costs you sales — so this book which is constantly making comparisons and drawing analogies, and comparing different eras and places is entirely devoid of graphics to make those things memorable. So it’s really a much harder read than it needs to be. And way longer than it needs to be.
Overall this book was a slog, but I think a slog worth making for some of the insights I just wish it has been boiled down to two or three long read articles and handed to a gifted graphic designer who could have done some explainers to go along with it.
This book is to Economic/world history what a chess book would have been with no chess diagrams and the moves all described in words, rather than in compact and standardized chess notation - bulks up the product considerably, and makes it a lot more work for the reader to identify the insights.
Should be turned into a documentary series and shown to members of the jury pools assembled in every court house in America before any criminal trial. Documents yet again that the criminal justice system cares little for truth or else it would concentrate on adopting systems to recognize and reduce errors, instead of doubling down on them. Given that this book comes decades after the Innocence Movement has gotten underway and prosecutors and judges (the only people who are immune from any accountability for their failings in the entire system) have not improved an iota on average, it is time to start figuring out ways to build accountability into the system, which starts with abolishing judicial and prosecutorial immunity to suits for violations of civil rights. The bar can be set high, but there needs to be a way for society to hold these actors accountable when their negligence or their unchecked and unconstrained biases and belief in their own righteousness (and refusal to recognize their own blind spots) results in wrongful convictions that result in felony sentences. America has gone berserk in trying to use the prison system as a replacement for offshored jobs, and it’s time that we got this system under control. We need the risks of errors in the criminal justice system to be recognized and addresses as seriously as we would systematic errors in jet airplanes or nuclear power plants —- and that will only start when the lead actors in the drama (prosecutors and judges — who are often of one mind, since so many judges are former prosecutors who have never represented a single defendant) are themselves exposed to the consequences of error. These powerful actors act every day as if the system is foolproof — well, then they don’t need immunity from liability and accountability for problems in the system.
Like the “second album” of a great new singer whose first hit was a smash out of nowhere, this book is a great disappointment after “The Color of Law” —but to be fair, the book faces a much greater challenge compared to a history — it’s a book of policy ideas and constantly has to struggle with trying to remain optimistic in the face of what it documents as pretty overwhelming structural forces cementing in place the segregated residential landscape created by expressly and consciously racist governmental policies during the greatest building boom in US history (and maybe world history up until post 2000 China).
Pretty repetitious in spots, but worth reading. Thing that stands out is the idea of shifting fines and enforcements into “daily” fines based on the offender’s wealth/income rather than fixed fines that are severely regressive. Also a lot about the importance of disconnecting sanctions for non-driving offenses from the right to drive. Failed to address the elephant in the room (uninsured drivers) which are a scourge.
Well written and keeps the reader engaged; could have lost some of the dad jokes but overall quite good, especially in an illuminating theme that carries throughout the book in terms of placing cemeteries as the places that became models for much of what America became, especially the grass-lawn suburbia of the post-war era.
Important albeit depressing book to read, especially for more context if you read “The Big Short.” The most important chapter is the last one where they actually provide an answer to the question about “How big should we let banks become.” Reading in 2023 right after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, I kept wanting to read an update — this was written in 2009 and it seems like the system has just shrugged it off and ignored every possible lesson from 2007-2009 collapse. One thing the book does a good job of is making clear that America’s banks are a huge part of what’s hurting America and the global future, because the banks have essentially become casino gamblers whose only function is to play games where the reward is a greater hoard of wealth rather than directing capital to solve any actual real-world problems.
A powerful book that I think anyone who wants to understand 21st C America should read — explains a ton about this mess we’re in.
“Freedom to Discriminate: How realtors conspired to segregate housing and divide America” by Gene Slater
https://www.powells.com/book/-9781597145435/1-0
This book is practically a landmark work on the scale of Darwin’s “Origin of Species” — only instead of showing how blind selection led to the evolution of the many species, “Freedom to Discriminate” is the story showing how millions upon millions of individual instances of selection pressure (segregation pressure in this case) caused a single species — the deeply entrenched pattern of strictly segregated residential neighborhoods — to dominate all of America.Slater starts with the history of how real estate men segregated America, changing from seeking pervasive governmental involvement in every real estate decision (redlining, racist covenants, zoning) to, as those activities were contested, to claiming that government had no proper role in addressing residential segregation, which was simply a matter of “freedom” — the freedom of individuals (who had all enjoyed and benefitted from the privileges and the economic gifts of all those state actions) to choose not to sell or rent to people of another race.The book follows the struggle up through the fair housing laws and decisions in the late 1960, and then how they have been progressively gutted, creating today’s America where we are even more residentially segregated than ever and where the wealth gap, which derives to a huge degree from the residential segregation described in the book, is growing ever wider.
Slater shows how a peculiar twist allowed the real estate industry to sell the idea of “freedom” as the freedom to exclude those who are unworthy of full citizenship (people of color, women, immigrants, etc.) rather than an inclusive freedom that accepts that all rights — including the rights of property — must be limited in a civil society in order that one person’s absolute rights not trounce others’ rights entirely.This book joins Kurt Andersen’s books “Fantasyland” and “Evil Geniuses” as the best, most clearly stated, readable explanations of how we got where we are and why it is so very likely that pluralism and basic democracy is on its last legs in the US, as our residential apartheid meshes perfectly with computer-aided gerrymandering tools to allow white minorities to seize electoral majorities and even supermajorities in state after state and then in the Congress.
Richard Rothstein’s “The Color of Law” showed how much government did in fact play a part in segregating America and creating our apartheid residential segregation pattern. “Freedom to Discriminate” goes much farther than Rothstein and carries the story further, showing how the technique that the realtors used to win the war — preserving residential segregation — while losing the legal battles (failing to stop passage of fair housing laws) was a technique that took root and had turbocharged the right wing takeover of America ever since.
