AE

This was a really interesting book that discusses how much planning and cooperation goes into the operations of mega-corporations like Walmart & Amazon. It shows that “ruthless market competition” is far less relevant in our current corporate capitalist system than we've been led to believe. It discusses the dichotomy of planned economies vs anarchic markets and the viability of leveraging modern computing for planning.

It takes a critical, rational look at the Soviet Union's system and gleans valuable insight from what they accomplished and where they erred.

It also discusses something I didn't know anything about before: Chile's “Project Cybersyn”, a precursor to the internet tasked with economic planning. “...management cybernetics could serve Allende's vision of an anti-bureaucratic democratic socialism in which workers participated in management and that would defend individual civil liberties.” That was a great success until the US-backed fascist coup in 1973, which resulted in the dismantling of “Project Cybersyn”. I've now renamed my router to “Cybersyn” in solidarity.

This book says what I've been saying for years now: Capitalism cannot fix the climate crisis. Caputalism caused the climate crisis. The profit motive and endless growth caused climate change. No amount of regressive Pigovian flat taxes on carbon will solve this crisis. “The market's profit motive—not growth or industrial civilization, as some environmentalists have argued—caused our climate calamity and the larger bio-crisis. The market is amoral, not immoral. It is directionless, with its own internal logic that is independent of human command.”
Massive economic planning already exists in various siloed systems, but with tyrannical capitalists as the decision makers. The goal is to democratize the process and prioritize humanity instead of the profit motive.

It pairs well with “The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs Private Sector Myths “ by Mariana mazzucato (2013), which shows that innovation is far more prevalent in state-backed research, not profit-based enterprises. I highly recommend that book. The concept of anarchist markets is covered deeper in “Markets Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism Against Bosses, Inequality, Corporate Power, and Structural Poverty” Edited by Gary Chartier & Charles W. Johnson (2011) , I mildly recommend this book.

Great book. Highly recommended

My interest in M4A started like a lot of people's: In 2016 with the campaign of Bernie Sanders. As I slowly evolved beyond my progressive/neoliberal upbringing, I learned more about it and about the complete failure of the US Healthcare system.

As I learned more about the proposal, the more I liked it. But when pressed on specifics, I would hand-wave and away that Bernard had it covered in his bill. This book gets deep into the specifics, along with the 100+ year history of healthcare law reform in the US.

The overarching theme is clear: In this country, healthcare is a commodity in a market. M4A seeks to turn it into a public good. That is the only solution to eliminate the complexities, the bureaucratic muck, the highway robbery pricing, the insecurity the false choices. Every other effort is a half-measure that does not solve the underlying problem:
Healthcare should be a public good, not a commodity, and not attached to your employment. It does not operate like a commodity, nor do the “consumers” operate as such. M4A would be cheaper and more efficient than the status quo, resulting in a healthier, more productive society.

Basically every single argument for and against M4A is discussed here with citations to studies that back up their claims. This will be my go-to book for all future discussions on the matter, and if you have any fleeting interest in the policy at all, you should read this book.

My only issue is that this book was published at the beginning of the year and didn't include updated plague deaths or results of the presidential election (or even the Democratic Primary). It's in need of an updated edition, though given how things are going with the plague, it'll probably be quite out of date the instant it's published.

Highly highly highly recommended.

This is a short book about how armed resistance against reactionaries is necessary and can be more effective than nonviolent resistance. Violent resistance was erased from US history by liberals who don't want real material change and by reactionaries who think they invented it.

This book was cited a lot in the book I read last year about the subject “In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action” by Vicky Osterwell (2019), which I highly recommend.

Robert F. Williams' thesis was that in societies where the state does not protect victims of oppression, violent resistance may be needed in order to achieve equal protection under the law. Is it always necessary? No. Does it always work? No. But to take it off the table is to fight injustice with one arm tied behind our backs. We must learn our history. We must not fall for the whitewashed propaganda. Reactionaries, conservatives, fascists, they all understand this. They are ready for mass unrest. They are ready for civil war. We must not go looking for violence but we must be prepared in the event of violence. We must not assume the state will protect us from itself or our fellow man.

Short book. Pretty good.

When I was in high school, I saw a quote attributed to Morgan Freeman claiming he said that he “didn't see race”, wanted to eliminate the idea of race from our thinking, and to treat everyone equally. In my immature liberal high schooler brain, that resonated with me and I wanted to adhere to that ideology as well. It didn't take long to see how incredibly illogical the idea of ignoring race is in this highly racialized world.

You can't ignore race because when those in power don't also ignore race, race continues to be a material reality. If I look at data about how many people get pulled over by police, but I've ignored their perceived race, I am blinding myself to reality. If I ignore race and see injustice, I may fail to identify it.

And yet a large portion of white folk in this country, especially self-described “progressives” and “liberals” adhere to this foolish idea, helping to reinforce unjust systems of power that coincidentally benefit those same people.

This book does an excellent job showcasing those who hold these beliefs and how to counteract them. The basis of its thesis is based on conversations with college kids and adults in like 1999. I wish they would redo the interviews with more people. Also I love any author or book who criticizes Obama from the left. That was a great chapter.

There was a great theory about what the future racial order might look like in the USA as we get closer to becoming a majority minority country. Instead of having a biracial order, it will be more like South & Central Americas' tri-racial order. The way he described it made my skin crawl because, ya know, the idea of racial hierarchies is gross and wrong. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I'll post a link to his theory in the comments.

I also found out there's a 6th edition coming out in October, which is lame. But it'll probably just be more appended chapters like this edition.

I would recommend this book to every white person and/or anyone interested in expanding their understanding about race and racism in the USA and/or anyone who thinks that they couldn't be racist because they...like...don't say the N word or voted for Obama or something.

Great book

I like reading books about anarchism & left-libertarian ideology. I don't necessarily agree with everything they strive to achieve, but the philosophy is really interesting and they help me see things from a new perspective.
This book really helped me better ground my understanding of how the state is necessary for all forms of corporate systems. Even the corporate structure leftists oppose can only exist with the express approval of the state. (This was covered in Joel Bakan's two books: “The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power” (2003) and “The New Corporation: How ‘Good' Corporations Are Bad for Democracy” (2020). Both of which I highly recommend.)

It's also got a great section on why US libertarians (right-libertarians) and “Anarcho”-Capitalists (Neo-Feudalists) are so often seen as corporate shills. Which was fun.

Do I want all aspects of our world dictated by “market forces?” No.

Do I want all aspects of our world dictated by centralized state powers? No.

This book did make me roll my eyes from time to time that since no state coercion is acceptable, supposedly all the world's woes (corporations dumping poison, systematic racism, etc) can be solved with market forces and contracts just comes across as far fetched.

If you think you're a libertarian, read this book so you can either learn about the ideology you claim to support, or learn that you're really just a conservative who's obsessed with guns and/or weed.

If you're a liberal who thinks anarchism means chaos, or think capitalism and markets are synonymous (Warrenites where you at?), read this book to correct your misunderstandings.

If you're a leftist, check it out if it interests you.

If you're interested in environmental justice, sustainability, environmental engineering, or fighting poverty criminalization, then this book is for you.
It was part autobiography, which was more interesting than some autobiographical books I've read, but still not something I'm very interested in ever, about anyone.

The crux of the book is about failing wastewater infrastructure in rural Alabama and one woman's journey to try and stop cops from throwing people in jail for being too poor to fix the problems, and instead getting money to fix the problems.
We claim to be the richest, most powerful country on earth. And yet we literally have people who live next to open sewage, and are too poor to fix the problem. For some reason, this country thinks throwing poor people in prison for being poor is somehow a solution.

A good country, a civilized country would create a universal floor of basic services (UBS) for every person living in the country. That way we don't have things like people living next to open sewage and getting infected with hookworm, a tropical parasite that was previously thought to have been eradicated in the mid 1900's.

While the previous president was trying to stop immigration from “shithole countries” we have people in this country literally living next to shit holes.
Good book. Fairly short. Extremely important. Highly recommended.

This book serves as a history of class warfare.

The state has always served at the behest of capital over the interests of the working class. Every inch of dignity won over the decades, centuries has been won with worker blood and sweat. Capitalists leverage the state's monopoly on violence as a literal bludgeon against workers fighting for a better life.

The greatest economic boom in this country coincided with the only 30 year period in US history where rising wages trended alongside productivity (1948-1979). What went wrong? The Red Scares nuked the real organizers and those still in charge became fat & happy without focusing on what their jobs actually were: To make sure workers have a seat at the table in deciding how the work gets done.

Then what happened? Ronald Reagan, NAFTA, outsourcing, deindustrialization, and the hollowing out of the working class. Now we have a larger wealth gap than before the Great Depression.

The most powerful tool the working class has to make change is revoking their labor. Those who seek to sabotage such efforts are not allies of the working class.

“Intersectionality without class consciousness is just Identity politics. Class consciousness without intersectionality is class reductionism. We need both. We have the same enemy.”

This isn't a review, this is a rant. Anyway, great book! Highly recommended.

This book argues that gender should be eliminated from all aspects of modern society, including in bathrooms, sports, drivers licenses, etc.
I thought it was interesting. I couldn't do a full review justice so I didn't write one. If you're interested in trans issues, check it out. I want to read more books about trans folk and trans issues. Drop those recs

It's interesting to read this book and think about the media trying to scare us about China's “oppressive social credit score” system.

Meanwhile we have a patchwork of far less transparent black box systems that control...
• if you get into college
• if you get offered a job
• If you get a mortgage
• If you get targeted by scam universities or scam credit systems
• if you get approve to rent a home
• if you get fired or promoted
• if you get stopped by the police
• if you get bail
• if you get a longer criminal sentence
• if you get probation

And more. Existing systemic bias is coded into these algorithms, resulting in a venire of “science” and “objectivity” used to justify further systemic oppression.
Racist cops find more crime in poor non-white neighborhoods → algorithms designed to find “where crime might happen” takes this garbage data and outputs garbage results → Cops further oppress these neighborhoods, locking up more poor people → An algorithm looks at the material conditions of a defendant and determines that since he's poor, his friends and family are and have had run-ins with the law, and he has few professional prospects, he is likely to reoffend and gets a more stringent sentence.

This feedback loop reinforces our racist, classist criminal justice system while claiming to use “scientific, non-biased” tools. This is just one of the many examples of “big data” run amuck outlined in ths book.

Many more include leveraging big data to suck as much money out of poor people as they can possibly get away with. Because when we have a global economic system primarily driven by profit instead of helping people, the newest technological revolutionary tools will be used not to push humanity forward, but to suck up all our personal information to serve us targeted ads, many of which include ads to scam us.

Great book. highly recommended

I never really knew much about the Hollywood blacklist, the Red Scare, and the House Un-American Activities Committee (fascist witch-hunt) of the 1940's & 1950's. I also never heard of this movie before but this was pretty interesting. 3/5ths of it was about the making of this movie and the lives & drama of the people involved in its making. The rest was a more over-arching story about the blacklist. Honestly, I wish I had just read a book about the black list because the story about the movie was not that enthralling.

I watched the movie halfway through reading the book because one chapter was just explaining the plot and I thought watching it myself might be better than having it completely spoiled. The movie was...fine. The movie's clever style of making the entire movie real-time with no time skips was really neat. Someone quoted in the book described this movie as “the favorite Western for people who hate Westerns.” Which I can definitely understand. But trying to discern this as an allegory for the Hollywood blacklist and HUAC is very much not obvious in 2021.

I'm not big on biographical books, and this was about half biography of men I did not find very interesting. So I'd say this wasn't my favorite book, but it wasn't bad. If you're interested in old Hollywood, Gary Cooper, Westerns, High Noon the movie, and/or the Hollywood blacklist, check it out. If you're JUST interested in learning more about the fascistic Hollywood blacklist and HUAC witch-hunt, probably check out another book about it.

This is a great history of the ever evolving category of “white people” and its ties to “race science”/“scientific racism” (white supremacy masquerading as science), class, beauty, nationalism, evolution, and more.

It shows the fascinating historical lockstep of US nationalism, anti-immigrant sentiment, white supremacy, controlling the bodily autonomy of women, and anti-labor sentiment. (Why does this all sound so familiar?)

Italians, Jews, Irish, Germans, and other groups of people were, at one point or another, considered “not white” or “not members of the white races” at some points over the last ~300 years by the leading thinkers of the time.

When the white supremacists in power wanted to keep down labor movements, they blamed it on immigrants, immigrants who were not, at the time, considered white. When those in power wanted to “quantify” beauty and intelligence, they conveniently designed their standards in a way that validated their racist beliefs. The women they like were “objectively” the most beautiful. The people like them (those with power) were considered intelligent and those without power were considered “imbeciles” or “feeble minded.”

“Inferior” races are dehumanized, compared to animals. “Superior” races (whatever Western European countries the specific author at the time likes the most) are considered superhuman, divine.

And we can see this in the present when ultra-nationalist former President Trump said in Mexico City while meeting with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador after first visiting Guatemala “I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border: Do not come. Do not come.” ...oh...wait.........

The book shows where this always ends up: Eugenics, forced sterilization, genocide. We can see the modern versions of this “race science” as perpetuated by far right extremists like Jordan Peterson a perpetuator of the Bell Curve (a modern racist theory of white supremacy) and “cultural Marxism”, a nonsense phrase literally created by literal nazis.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about their cultural history or want to have a better historical understanding of our modern issues with race, class, and power.

My only criticism is the middle part was a bit of a slog.

For most of my adult life, I was one of those liberals who didn't really try to understand the complex histories of the Israel-Palestine conflict. I just threw up my hands in indifference and said “I don't know. Seems messed up. Hope they work it out.”
Since then, I've learned a lot about this issue. The last month, I've learned a whole lot more. This book popped up on my recommended list, and it couldn't have come during a more apt time. It has really helped me understand. I don't claim to be an expert.
What I do know a lot about is US Imperialism, colonialism, domination, and the strong controlling the weak. It's clear to me now that this issue is far less complicated than I previously thought.
One side has all the power, is the strongest country in the region, and has unquestionable support from the most powerful country on earth, which provides more aid than to any other country. This side commits undeniable human rights violations and war crimes against the other with impunity.
I have members of my own family, self-ascribed “progressives” who to this day refuse to say Isreal is an Apartheid state, even after the Human Rights Watch report came out this year, after the 2017 UN report, and after AOC said so too.
I will no longer remain ignorant or neutral to this issue. I will not stand with a government committing countless crimes against humanity against a far weaker opponent. I will not support the ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and settler colonialism of Israel.
I implore every self-identified “progressive” to read this book and take a stand against this injustice.

This is a good book to introduce the concepts of Social Democracy, and how the science & evidence strongly supports the efficacy of such proposals: UBI, reducing the work week, less hindered international migration, striving toward an actual meritocracy instead of focusing on bullshit jobs and the stupid GDP.

Pretty much everything this guy talks about is stuff I already know and support. Though he claims to be the guy who brought the concept of UBI into the zeitgeist in the 21st century. (His original version was published in 2014).

I've got my own gripes about SocDem, which I've complained about before, but I'll be taking his suggestion:
“The Overton window can shift. A classic strategy for achieving this is to proclaim ideas so shocking and subversive that anything less radical suddenly sounds sensible. In other words, to make the radical reasonable, you merely have to stretch the bounds of the radical.”

I'll be the radical making his ideas seem sensible.

If you're to the right of SocDem, read this. If you're SocDem, read it to learn more.

If you're on the left, you probably already know about all this and can skip it.

Very interesting stuff. Fascinating how the most advanced techniques for psychoanalysis in the late 1940s were Rorschach tests, which are now considered highly antiquated. But even with these tests, their results couldn't be differentiated by unbiased 3rd-party experts when compared to Unitarian ministers. There's just not a lot that can be objectively gleaned from the results beyond being a high/low-functioning person.

I was highly disappointed with the chapter that repeated the same old social psychology anecdotes, myths, & legends that, coincidentally, my previous book thoroughly debunked (Stanford Prison Experiment, Kitty Genovese, etc). Also I liked the melodrama surrounding the psychiatrists and their competing philosophies & books after&during the trials.

It's clear that no one think's they're the villain, and no one thinks they're capable of evil acts, but our material conditions shape our world. We can objectively look at our own government's policies and see the malice clearly. But our government doesn't get put on trial. We've been conditioned to assume that we're “the good guys,” incapable of diabolical evil. Alas.

For those who have internalized the myth that “human beings are fundamentally greedy, selfish, & cruel, this book will set them straight. The “studies” and anecdotes people often cited by people claiming otherwise are all bullshit: “Stanford-Prison Experiment”, “Milgram Shock Experiment”, Easter Island, “Lord of the Flies”, all hoaxes, myths, and tall tales. There was a real “Lord of the Flies” incident and the children were quite peaceable. The 1914 Christmas Peace is another great example.

What this book shows is that humans are sociable creatures who want to help others, do a good job, and work toward a common goal. Sometimes they get misguided in believing a truly evil goal is for the greater good. The further the people are away from the actual acts, the more zealous and extreme they become.

This book has confirmed to me that we must flatten hierarchies, encourage autonomy, eliminate the useless managerial class, encourage direct democracy, encourage commons.

This book covers a lot and I am definitely not doing it justice. I highly recommend this book to anyone who thinks “humans are inherently greedy/cruel/evil”. Maybe you'll learn something.

Too short.

This book was really different in a surprising way. I came across the author because of a Washington Post article she wrote in 2016 titled “The U.S. tried to change other countries' governments 72 times during the Cold War”. I figured any book written by her about regime change is gonna be awesome. What I didn't expect was how the book is designed...

This book is written as a long-form scientific research paper trying to determine the reasons behind the US's regime change efforts, their efficacy, etc. via the scientific method. It sort of throws into question my main theory of the reason behind regime change (draining wealth from weaker countries into stronger ones). But it strengthens my other prevailing theory as to the reasons behind US regime change: centralizing power.

If a nation dares goes against US hegemony, it is swiftly brought into line via covert (and sometimes overt) intervention. We've overthrown democracies, dictatorships, capitalist countries, and communist ones. Sometimes for the benefit of corporations, but usually not.

It is clear from this very thorough, cold, dry analysis that regime change is ultimately counter-productive and indefensible. If you want the cold, hard, apolitical, scientific facts of US-led regime change, read this book and you will see the truth: Don't do it.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding US foreign policy in the past, present, and future.

I was really eager to listen to this audiobook because it's a history book written from a Marxist perspective and about an area of history I know very little about.
Unfortunately, it was really hard to follow because every character has a French name, every city or region has a French name and is phrased in a way focusing on individual action, not on groups of people. It was quite confusing as an audiobook for me.
Maybe could have been easier to follow as a regular book or if I had some basic understanding of the names and places and people from my schooling. But proletariat slave revolts don't seem important enough to mention.
The most compelling quote I found in the book was: “The race question is subsidiary to the class question in politics, and to think of imperialism in terms of race is disastrous. But to neglect the racial factor as merely incidental is an error only less grave than to make it fundamental.” This is similar to another quote I read as a tweet a few months ago: “Intersectionality without class consciousness is just Identity politics. Class consciousness without intersectionality is class reductionism. We need both. We have the same enemy.”
I would only recommend this book to someone who's got some surface-level understanding of what happened and doesn't mind listening to French names nonstop.

This book is a fantastic and thorough explanation to what we mean when we say “defund the police.” The duties of the modern police have expanded well beyond what can be reasonably handled. Dumping all this government funding into them is demonstrably counter-productive and makes us less safe, not more.
His suggestions are, unsurprisingly, similar to the things I've been harping on and on about for years:
• More funding for affordable housing, drug treatment, community development, not cops
• End the failed “War on Drugs”: Legalize marijuana, decriminalize drug use and possession. Treat drug addiction as a health problem, not a crime or moral failure.
• Decriminalize, Legalize & Unionize sex work.
• Get cops out of schools, get psychologists and counselors in instead.
• Abolish Civil Asset Forfeiture
• End the militarization of police
• “Broken Windows” policing does not work
• We must abolish ICE and slowly move toward a European-style border policy for North America, investing in the countries victimized by US Imperialism and Globalist Neoliberal economic policies that resulted in mass emigration.
• Joe Biden & Bill Clinton's Crime Bill was one of the absolute worst things this country has ever done, and that's saying a lot.
No amount of propagandistic clips of cops playing basketball with black children or anecdotes of cops being lenient to speeders or singular examples of cops not being completely horrible will change the fact that the institute of the police, in its current form, is inherently unjust, unaccountable, outright criminal, and an upholder of the largest societal failings facing us today.
Historically, the police upheld white supremacy, corporate interests, and imperialist interests. They infiltrate, subvert, and (in some cases) murdered left-wing political organizations ranging from unionization efforts to the black panthers to gay rights activists to Occupy Wall Street. Their purpose is to uphold entrenched power structures, not justice. No amount of training or body cameras or calls for “community policing” will fix these problems.
We must fight for a more fair and just society. To do that, we must defund the police and invest their bloated budgets into restorative institutions that actually help people. We must limit their scope and shift their burdens to institutions more capable to handle such issues. We must prioritize human rights, accountability, and community.
The author's proposed reforms are smarter, more sustainable, and (coincidentally) save taxpayer money compared to the status quo.
I highly recommend this book to everyone.

Are prisons obsolete? The answer may surprise you!
...
It's ‘YES'. Yes, prisons ARE obsolete.
More specifically, prisons are a societal failure. Our punitive justice system is built not on justice, but on cruelty and slavery. Slavery was never abolished in the USA, it was merely nationalized. Read that 13th amendment a little closer.
The US prison system is a crime against humanity. It is a violation of human rights. Solitary confinement is state-sanctioned torture. Both solitary confinement and the death penalty are cruel and unusual punishments that must be outlawed.
We must evolve beyond a society that requires prisons. This starts by improving the material conditions of the impoverished (the people most likely to be imprisoned for committing crimes). Then we must demilitarize and revitalize our schooling system. We must provide universal basic services like Single-Payer Healthcare, free higher education, universal housing, public banking, and more. Doing this will drastically reduce the crime rate, and (in time) the prison population.
We must legalize marijuana and decriminalize both drug use & prostitution, providing drug treatment to those who need it instead of prison sentences. We don't treat alcoholics like we do drug addicts. That is another societal failure. We must abolish for-profit prisons, which have directly led to LESS FREEDOM by incentivizing corporations to get more people in jail.
We must strive for a more nuanced approach to criminal justice, with a spectrum of possible punishments. We must make sure whatever systems we have result in human beings LESS likely to commit crimes afterward. Every released prisoner who reoffends is a societal failure. Reducing recidivism rates must be priority number 1 in a restorative criminal justice system.
This book lights the fire to understand why our prison system is obsolete and lays a groundwork on how we can evolve beyond it. I've provided a short explanation of what needs to happen. This book was short and sparse on systemic improvements. I intend on finding more contemporary books that cover this subject in more detail.

Bakan's original book “The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power” (2003) helped me start down the path in 2019. So when I saw he had a sequel out, I was pretty stoked. My last book's eye-rolling final chapters about moving toward “ethical capitalism” was succeeded by someone trying to personally convince me that “ethical capitalism” is cool and good and totally not a con. Thus, this book immediately shot up to first in my to-read list and provided much more succinct retorts than I could muster.

The gist is short and simple: Corporations (even B-Corps) are capable of being mildly less evil, but the core of the system is still profit maximization above all else. Their efforts to be less exploitative will inevitably run into the profit motive, making substantive changes intrinsically impossible.

Corporations propagandize their meager good actions (real or often fabricated) to lobby for further deregulations, privatization, destruction of labor movements, and a reputation boost. This ultimately services their bottom line.

There is no such thing as “ethical capitalism.” It is an oxymoron. When the ultimate goal is profit maximization, every seemingly good action is done to serve that goal, or at least to not harm it. There is no morality, no altruism, only selfishness and greed with a shiny new veneer. No amount of regulations or ‘corporate social responsibility' programs will ever result in “ethical capitalism.” It is rotten to the core.

The solution is Democracy. Direct & electoral, workplace & municipal, liberation from the legal corruption of the US corporatocracy. The solution is direct action, protest, and mutual aid instead of charity. The solution is....

I would recommend both these books to anyone and everyone.

I really like this book. While I'm not a big fan of books written in first person, I'm well aware of the controversy surrounding the arguments he makes, and I'm not the biggest fan of autobiographies (especially about evil people doing evil things), the underlying point of the book is undeniably correct:

1: US-based international consulting corporations come into developing countries, create/over-exaggerate/outright fabricate sophisticated economic models predicting impossibly spectacular economic growth.

2: These predictions are used to justify taking criminally unfair loans from the IMF/World Bank with strings requiring the money to be spent in a way that would benefit wealthy families, US-based corporations, and corrupt politicians.

3: The country cannot pay back the loans that were offered under false pretenses. Thus the country is forced to shift funds away from things like healthcare, education, and other social services to pay down the blatantly usurious interest rates, ultimately shackling the country in debt. (This is the goal)

4: The IMF sends in goons to demand the country's government offer its natural resources at criminally discounted rates for the benefit of...you guessed it... US-based multinational corporations, and to privatize its institutions, selling them to other multinational corporations.

5: Any nation's leaders who resists in an effort to gasp use the wealth of their nation to benefit the people of that nation are dealt with by the CIA or other covert US government entities, either through intimidation, assassination, or coups. (See: Iran, Guatemala, most of south¢ral America)

6: If that doesn't work, we institute crippling sanctions against the country, leading to thousands, sometimes millions of civilians dying (Iraq - 1990's, DPRK)

7: If that doesn't work, the US military starts drone striking the country (we're currently drone striking 7 countries right now), or it invades and takes over the country (Panama, Hawaii, countless others). Ultimately, a fascist dictator is installed that is more amenable to US corporate interests.

8: begin again with step 1

The goal is always the same no matter the country and is very, very simple: Drain the wealth of weaker nations and funnel it into stronger nations through multi-national corporations. That's how the global capitalist system works. That's Neoliberalism, AKA Neocolonialism.

This book gets into the gritty detail of this system, told by a man directly involved with steps 1-4, and personally knew victims of step 6.

Step 7 is best epitomized by Major General Smedley Butler:
“I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. [...]
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.”

Nothing has changed in over 100 years. The only difference is now we just use drones more.

My only gripe with the book is how much the author goes on and on about all the tremendous guilt he feels for all his evil deeds, then the next chapter is him doing more evil deeds and feeling bad about it some more. While the first-person view of the book does make it seem a bit more authentic “I should know, I did it in 19whatever”, I do think it sort of derails the themes by focusing so much on his personal feelings and actions. I'd have liked more a 3rd person accounting of the long list of evils committed internationally by the corporatocracy.

The problem becomes finding enough people to go on record to fill a book devoid of unending details of the emotional baggage that comes with doing countless diabolical things to developing countries, and our own country. He does this more in the final section, which was my favorite part for that reason.

Read just Chapter 43 and the first appendix to explain why I complain so much about 21st-century capitalism.

Read just Chapter 44 to explain why I complain so much about US imperialism and the State.

I do think he fumbled the ending by claiming the solution is just start a revolution of ethical capitalism” which I do not believe is possible and is simply doubling down on the causes of the problems he outlines. “Here's a list of things you can do to be a more ethical psychopathic serial killer....” and “I know these problems are systemic and encompass our entire society, but one of the good solutions is to recycle and drive less and buy less stuff.” Just boilerplate hyper-individualist feel-good solutions that don't get to the core of the problem.

• It is not possible to oppose US imperialism without also opposing the capitalist global corporations that directly benefit from US imperialism.

• It is not possible to oppose the power and wealth of ‘The 1%' without also opposing the capitalist global corporatocracy that their power stems from.

• It is not possible to oppose “the deep state” without also opposing capitalism as it exists today.

• It is not possible to oppose corruption of our democracy without opposing capitalism as it exists today.

Despite my gripes and the greatly disappointing ending, I highly recommend this book and an excellent companion read that overviews this system: “Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism” by Ha-Joon Chang (2007)

When I first started this book, I was hoping it would be a thorough shellacking of our current economic system through the lens of historical context. There was a little bit of that, but I feel a bit short-changed (pun) by how little our present economic system was covered. He barely even mentioned modern credit scores. While he did lambast the evils of the IMF & World Bank, it left me wanting more, but that's because it's not that kind fo book. It's a history book by an anthropologist.

This is my favorite type of book because it gives me historical facts that actually go against our preconceived notions. That's why I read books: to add to my repertoire of fun facts that sound false, but are actually true.

For example: The myth of barter. There's this popular urban legend buried deep into the zeitgeist, invented by the hack Adam Smith, and perpetuated by economics textbooks that before the invention of money, societies operated on barter to buy and sell goods. That was made up by proto-economists and disproven by anthropologists.

The book also shows that the field of economics is closer to philosophy than to the hard sciences. That ties into the most important thing this book shows, which is exactly what I've been saying: Money is made up. Humans made it up. We can do whatever we want as long as it is within the real world, but money cannot hold humanity back because it is an artificial limitation. Anyone who claims we can't do things that help people because of “the economy” or “inflation” or some other nonsense, they either lack imagination or benefit from how the system is designed.

We can build a better world if we believe we can.

I figured I'd better read an official history book from a well-established & respected old white man. (Making father proud). It was interesting seeing how this war impacted every aspect of international development.

It's pretty appalling that he has all the time in the world to list every bad thing China & Russia did but only gave us 2 sentences about McCarthyism and not even a singular mention of COINTELPRO, or the fact that the US gave chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war, which were then used on civilians.

If the author was going for even-handed, I'd give him a C.

After reading way too damn many books about US imperialism during the 20th century and its connection to the Cold War, I've come to the conclusion that virtually none of our aggressive actions were at all justified and are completely indefensible.

Hiroshima&Nagasaki. Vietnam. Guatemala. Iran. MK Ultra. Red Scares. McCarthyism. Operation Cyclone. COINTELPRO. The Cuban Missile Crisis. Lumumba. Jakarta. The “War on Drugs”. Iraq.

It's all connected in this tangled web with one singular philosophy at its very core: the centralization of wealth and power. The most repugnant, immoral, insane things done by the US government under the guise of ‘protecting its citizens' were actually done to benefit and protect those in power at the expense to the powerless. Alas.

This was probably the most interesting book I've read in a long time. We often don't think about the horrible things our government has done in the past, or we just brush the atrocities aside as justifiable because “freedom isn't free” or some other hyper-nationalist thought-terminating cliché. But the more I read about this nation's history, the more I realize none of these atrocities are justifiable at all. They were all LITERALLY done for the benefit of the corporate elite. Literally.

We almost didn't even join WW2 because so many US corporations were tied to the Nazis. When we did join, we cut deals with Nazis and saved a bunch from being tried at Nuremberg. We turned over control of West Germany's CIA equivalent to former Nazis. Our government trusted (and pretty much still trusts) Nazis more than anyone remotely close to being a communist. Is that just a tad insane to anyone else or just me?

This book also makes a compelling argument that the CIA's former director Allen Dulles, with the help of CIA operatives, orchestrated the conspiracies to kill the Kennedy brothers. JFK refused to send in the Marines to overthrow Castro after the (deliberately sabotaged) Bay of Pigs . He didn't nuke Russia during Cuban Missile Crisis. He was against using the US government to dominate weaker nations for the benefits of mega-corporations. Thus, he had to be removed.

This book also talks about the “Power Elite” or the “Deep State”, which is the “subterranean network of financial, intelligence, and military interests that guided national policy no matter who occupied the White House.” It is very real. And you can see that when comparing how incredibly similar every president's foreign policy has been since WW2: sanctions, coups, assassination, invasions, regime change. Just one long conga line of men sticking their noses into other countries' business for one made up reason or another. Why? Because it serves the interest of capitalists. That was the whole point of the Cold War: to make sure rich assholes didn't lose a cent their wealth that was stolen off the back of the third world.

While some of my past books go over the history of these regime change efforts, this one talks more in depth about the mindset behind the operations and the people who made the decisions. And it went really deep into the Kennedy Assassination, which I previously knew little about.
Great book. Very long. Highly recommended.