Slouching Towards Utopia

What Hacker News says

1. throw0101dNov 2024
   If I had to pick one: The rise and fall of American growth: the U.S. standard of living since the Civil War by Robert Gordon. The gains that we have made in the (early) 20th century are unlikely to ever be repeated, and progress in many metrics has measurably slowed or even stalled since ~1970s (likely being asymptotic). And while the Internet (classified under the Information, Communication, Technology (ICT) chapters) gave a bump in the 1990s, it's mostly been flat since 2004.

   More economic history with Slouching towards Utopia: an economic history of the twentieth century by J. Bradford Delong. More economic ideas stuff in Value(s): building a better world for all by Mark Carney (ran the Banks of Canada and England). Also Waphsott's Keynes Hayek: the clash that defined modern economics and Samuelson Friedman: the battle over the free market.

   The currency of politics: the political theory of money from Aristotle to Keynes by Sefan Eich, Money: the true story of a made-up thing by Jacob Goldstein, and The power of gold: the history of an obsession by Peter Bernstein (also his Against the Gods on risk). Show how much of a human construct "money" is, how its meaning changes in different times and places/cultures. Should be required reading by all the 'hard money' folks (gold standard, BTC).

   The good life: lessons from the world's longest scientific study of happiness by Waldinger and Schultz (directors of the Harvard study). If there's one 'magic' thing for health and happiness it seems to be having good relationships (family, friends) in your life.

   Religion: what it is, how it works, and why it matters by Christian Smith and Strange rites: new religions for a godless world by Tara Burton. While many think that religion is in decline, the non-material/supernatural things that people believe in has actually shifted. And having beliefs in a super-human entity seems to be the basis of most societies and civilizations. Related, The warfare between science and religion : the idea that wouldn't die, a series of essays; the conflict thesis bunk, both historically and presently.

   The origins of Canadian and American political differences by Jason Kaufman, two seemingly-the-same neighbouring countries that have had different development paths when it comes to culture and government. (I'm Canadian.)

   Speaking of government: Civil resistance: what everyone needs to know by Erica Chenoweth. Seems violence/force is generally a less effective way to affect change in society than non-violence.

   The week: a history of the unnatural rhythms that made us who we are by David Henkin. Seems that while seven days has been around for a long while, making it a really 'hard' structure/schedule around it is a more recent phenomenon than you'd expect.

   If you have kids, Karen Le Billon's French kids eat everything (and yours can, too) and Getting to YUM: the 7 secrets of raising eager eaters, her husband is French and she lived there for a year and found many things done better there than US/CA. See also The happiest kids in the world: how Dutch parents help their kids and themselves by doing less by Acosta and Hutchison.

   Flying blind: the 737 MAX tragedy and the fall of Boeing by Peter Robison is an HN favourite. While we get a lot of engineer vs MBA comments, I think the bigger problem (associated with the MBA-types) is financialization, i.e., returns over everything else. Having non-engineers/MBAs can be 'fine' also long as trying to squeeze blood/money from a stone at the cost of everything else.

   Some philosophy with Alasdair C. MacIntyre: After Virtue is a good starting point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Virtue

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2. igor47Nov 2024
   The Deluge -- a darker take on climate change than Ministry for the Future, but also felt pretty realistic.

   This is how you lose the time war -- took me a long time to start this book, and then I couldn't put it down.

   Non fiction, I really enjoyed Slouching Towards Utopia. I'm a sucker for narrative history like that, and I got a few useful concepts from the book. I also really liked The Prince of Peace, a biography of Keynes.

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3. wannabebaristaJun 2024
   I write reading recommendations for books and articles at the end of each year and have some overlap in interests. Here's my books list from last year (with links to others therein): https://bcmullins.github.io/interesting-books-2023/.

   Here's a few books I think you'd be interested in:

   Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century (2022) by Brad DeLong

   The Open Society and Its Complexities (2021) by Jerry Gaus

   Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy: The Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism (2003) by S. M. Amadae

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4. wannabebaristaJan 2024
   Here's my list from 2023 (mostly history with some mythology):

   * Lost Continents by L. Sprague de Camp (1954)

   * Slouching Towards Utopia by J. Bradford DeLong (2022)

   * The Rise of Universities by Charles Homer Haskins (1923)

   * Colonial New England on 5 Shillings a Day by Bill Scheller (2010)

   * The Book of Yōkai by Michael Foster (2015)

   See here for some notes I wrote about these books: https://bcmullins.github.io/interesting-books-2023/

   I find that I am usually one year off when reading new books. I was really excited about Slouching Towards Utopia but didn't get to it until last Spring (though it came out in early Fall 2022).

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5. wannabebaristaDec 2023
   Each year, I put up a list of the books I've enjoyed during the year but haven't gotten this year's list up. Here are my lists from prior years: https://bcmullins.github.io/interesting-books-2022/

   Here are two I've enjoyed so far this year:

   "Slouching Towards Utopia" by J. Bradford DeLong (2022). This is a narrative economic history of the 20th century. It heavily focuses on the interaction between policy and economic thought.

   "Lost Continents" by L. Sprague de Camp (1954). This book looks at Atlantis and other lost continents as rhetorical devices in ancient history and philosophy, 20th century pseudoscience/pseudohistory, and science fiction.

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6. igor47Nov 2024
   This is an over statement. I, too, have read Slouching Towards Utopia and Steven Pinker. But (a) technology is not a monolith, it's clearly nice to have enough food and modern medicine while it's also terrible that we're destroying our biome or facing increased illiteracy due to social media. Also (b) technology, like beer, is both the cause of AND the solution to all problems. Harari and James C. Scott make compelling arguments about how agriculture, among the first widely adopted technologies, deprived us of a utopia that we're scrambling to recover with more technology ever since. I call this the Operation Cat Drop problem. See also Under a White Sky.
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