"Can Society Fall Apart So Quickly?"
937299
This is a very worthy short story that everyone should read -- most definitely.  In an unnamed city, Matthew Avery has been a market analyst for Simmons Marketing for 8 years.  One of his co-workers, Daniel Kepler, has been there almost as long.  Daniel is a little rough-edged, always rubbing Matthew the wrong way, but they do have to get along on the job.  With a power outage again, the two of them decide to take an early lunch break.  During the last few weeks, the city has been experiencing numerous rolling black-outs.  The summer heat is increasing, and with no air conditioning, tempers would also flare.  Matt has tried to call his wife at home while he and Daniel sit in his car in heavy traffic.  However, the cell phone networks are all down, and his cell phone is useless.  Gangs carrying baseball bats are starting to form in front of small business stores.  Eventually, getting back to their building, they find the place empty.  Matt, with his handy flashlight returns to his cubical and accesses his personal emergency kit.  Turning on his emergency radio, he learns the blackout is city wide, with looters and rioting as well as motorcycle gangs. There is no estimated time in which the power will be restored.  Matt and Daniel head out on foot, cross town, to Matt's home as Matt's main concern is the safety of his wife and daughter.  But, will Daniel be a trustworthy partner in their trek cross town?  Will Matt find his wife and daughter safe?  This is a really thought-provoking story that all people can relate to regarding emergency plans of survival during times of catastrophes.  The author has done his preparedness, you can almost use his techniques and ideas for your own family's safety.  Highly, highly recommend this story.
722376
Wilson examines the state of marriage in the US, and what he finds has terrifying implications for our future.  Marriage is collapsing.  Of the women in the US who are under 30, over 50% of their children are illegitimate.

For decades, many in the chattering classes have been proposing that marriage is merely mutating to a broader definition of what makes up a family.  Besides, argue many, "marriage as conventionally defined has harmed women by restricting their talents...The enemy...is the Ozzie-and-Harriet family of a bygone...era" (p 14).

Yet the research, from every country and over the last 50 years, shows that;
Children of divorced parents have a lower IQ than children with married parents.
Children of single mothers have an even lower IQ than that.
And here is a really depressing finding: the children who have lived with a stepfather or stepmother do even worse than either the children of divorced or illegitimate children.
Children raised by a single parent are much more likely to be emotionally disturbed (especially boys), and, alarmingly, this continues throughout their lives.
Children raised by a single parent graduate from both high school and college in much smaller numbers, and, once again, especially boys.
Children of single mothers experience reading and school problems in much much higher numbers, especially boys.
Children of single mothers are far less likely to take advanced classes.
Children of single mothers have more problems with drugs and alcohol and sexual promiscuity.
Children of single mothers are much less likely to experience success in later jobs.
Children of single mothers rarely qualify for gifted classes. And when they do, it is usually at a much lower level than those children from married parents.
Children of single mothers are all too likely to end up in 'problem' kid classes or remedial classes and twice as likely to be suspended or expelled from school, especially boys
Children of single mothers cause nearly all the disturbances in school, especially boys.
Children of single parent households are twice as likely to be arrested, and comprise some 85% of the prison population.
Children of single mothers are twice likely to be treated for emotional and behavioral problems
Children of single mothers are twice as likely to drop out of high school.

The fact is we are simply ignoring the serious, terrible harm our culture is doing to young children. We all have a right to live the lives we want to live, but we have no right to harm small children. And when we harm the vast majority of our children--today, only about 45% of our children grow up in intact homes--you can be sure we have caused severe damage to the future of this nation.

That Americans are divided now into two castes, the upper class being comprised of the children of married parents and the lower class comprised of those of single households. This was even the subject of a recent book by Hymowitz "Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age". Here are some other books on the subject: "The Marriage-go-round", "Fatherless America" and "The Abolition of Marriage".

They make for grim reading.
4691996
Mark Steyn has written a book that should be read by everyone in this post 9/11 world.  He poses the question: What will the world be like when Muslims represent the major population centers around the planet.  He points out that in Europe, they already have.  The French riots, bombings in Madrid and London, and Danish embassies going ablaze over cartoons of the prophet indicate that it will not be a pretty world.

The fact is that Western culture is in decline and the Islamo-world of polygamy, pedophilia, high birth rates, violence, and the culture of death it promotes; is going to represent the majority of humanity in 50 years.  This Muslim demographic timebomb will go KABOOM.  And Al Gore is still worried about the weather...
3836345
The author of The Great Disruption, Paul Gilding, is a hard-headed realist and a utopian starry-eyed dreamer, all at the same time.  He predicts that a "great disruption" will occur sometime in the next few decades (due to resource shortages and global warming causing wide-spread famine), with this disruption being so massive, and so catastrophic, that the global economy will collapse and everybody will know something has happened that just can't be denied any longer (I'm with him so far on this one).  Gilding suggests that one way the great disruption will be realized is from repeated food harvest failures around the world, implying that perhaps billions of people will die.

Where the author leaves me behind is his next premise; that this "great disruption", will lead to a "great awakening", where we, as a human species, will begin to cooperate globally, cutting carbon emissions close to zero, re-working the global economy, and largely abandoning the overtly capitalistic models we are currently using.  I hope he's right, I really do, but I just do not envision this happening.  As the author states in the book "We may be slow, but we're not stupid".  I disagree, I think that as a species, we are both slow and stupid.

Still, the author does bring up some great points that historically, we have pulled together in order to fight a common enemy, and it is quite possible that we can pull together in the future against a common enemy of resource scarcity and global warming.  I just wonder how many Americans would have to personally suffer before we, as an American people, really "get what's happening".  I suspect that if Americans personally lost all their financial holdings, then we might understand.  I can envision a scenario where billions of third-world citizen starve to death, and we would still have people in America saying things like `well, those people weren't very good at their long-range planning for agricultural productivity anyways, I'm sure that the last 30 years of hot weather is just a natural phase".

Here's the deal - not all cultures have survived climate change.  According to the excellent non-fiction book "Collapse", by Jared Diamond, every single last Norwegian who lived in Greenland in the Middle Ages died of starvation when things cooled down, while apparently, the native Greenlanders survived.  Nobody really knows why, but it could be as simple as the apparent inability of the transplanted Norwegians to find and catch fish.  Additionally, around 1300, all the Anasazi left their homes in the American southwest after a decades-long drought.  Perhaps some survived, we don't really know, but we do know their entire culture died.

So, it's really up to us to decide whether to live or die as a species.  This book is great food for thought, and I really hope the author is right, when he states "We may be slow, but we're not stupid".
4725943
Searching for Stability, written by an Octogenarian, takes a hard look at many of our imperfect world's seemingly insoluble problems in the 21st Century, and tells us what we should do about them.  It's a very thought provoking book, but he eventually concludes that the prospects for a more stable world are not bright.
709943
Ha-Joon Chang's iconoclastic book on the follies of untrammelled free-market economics was published shortly after the financial meltdown of 2008, but its messages remain relevant today: we still live in a world that teeters on the brink of monetary collapse. The damage wrought by the global crash was second only to the Great Depression, and its legacy - in terms of poverty, social stability and the impact on economic growth - may last for decades.

The author's premise is that thirty years of free-market ideology was at the root of the catastrophe and that, worryingly, the world has not learned from the experience. The next disaster may be just around the corner.

In spite of what the title suggests, "23 Things" is not a rabid attack on capitalism itself. There is much here to anger those from both the Political Left and the Political Right. It is more a thoughtful analysis of some of the underlying assumptions relating to the American 'brand' of capitalism, how they have spread across the globe and how such underpinning philosophies can be short-sighted and dangerous.

Ha-Joon Chang (who teaches at the Faculty of Economics at Cambridge, if you're interested) slices and dices economic statistics from the 1960s to the present day to show us that many of our deeply-held beliefs about education, the world's poor and the so-called 'post-industrial age' contain fatal flaws. Tellingly, he points out that the very free-market policies being forced on the developing nations are precisely NOT the policies pursued by the developed countries of the world while they were building their wealth.

The author is an economist who knows the limitations of economics as a means of building a world fit for people to live in. He echoes Winston Churchill's view on democracy by asserting, "Capitalism is the worst economic system except for all the others", but unlike many merchants of doom he offers eight concrete suggestions on how to rebuild the world economy.

All in all, "23 Things" is a thought-provoking book and one which is written in a style that makes it accessible to the general reader not just to the disciples of the 'dismal science' of economics.
839996
a brief history of the future
 a brave and controversial look at the
Twenty-first century
Jacques Attali
Arcade Publishing, Inc.
$25.00 - Hardback
ISBN: 978-1-55970-879-1
278 pages
Reviewer:  Annie Slessman

I have to say that I spent more time reading this work than usual.  A brief history of the future, a brave and controversial look at the twenty-first century by Jacques Attali is a compelling work that requires thought and time to process.

Attali predicts that urban growth will be phenomenal everywhere.  In 2008, half of the world's population lived in cities;  twenty-six of which boasted populations of ten million.  By 2025 (according to Attali), the planet will accommodate thirty cities with more than ten million inhabitants, and four agglomerations with more than twenty million.  Ouch!  This, Attali suggests, will require these areas to ripple or quadruple urban infrastructures within thirty years.  This will create even more of an emissions into our stratosphere than we are currently experiencing.  Which could signal even more volatility of our weather systems?

He states that the human race has already consumed eighty percent of its natural freshwater resources.  These unpredictable weather systems could bring on droughts, which would lessen what we have left of these resources.

Our current financial crisis is explained thus, "The first financial crisis of the age of globalization can largely be explained by the inability of American society to provide decent salaries to its middle-class; this is what forced them into debt to purchase their homes, which caused an artificial increase in the value of capital and the economy."
As Americans, are we seeing this developing before our eyes today?

Ultimately, he foresees the formation of a super empire.  "I want to believe that one day - well before the end of the twenty-first century and in the wake of so many obstacles, dizzying precipices, and caricatures - super empire will be sufficiently advanced to demonstrate the world's unity without destroying human identity," says Attali.

If you want to inform yourself about our current state of affairs - worldwide - this is a good source to utilize.  While it may disturb you, it will certainly provide food for thought and perhaps, a motive to change things that you can change.
462903
I had the privilege of hearing Daniel Pink speak at the Pershing Insite conference this year (2010).  What he said at that conference was one of the most remarkable insights I have ever heard from a conference speaker.  And it takes us, as a developed society and economy, to a core issue - who are we?  Are we the industrial manufacturing power of the past, our heyday gone, to be supplanted by a new manufacturing powerhouse, be it China or India?  Are our best days as a nation and society in our past?  Or, might this be a transitional era, pregnant with possibility if we can master the new landscape.

While Mr. Pink does not directly answer those questions (for that matter, who could at this point) he does point the way.  In a truly flattened world, those algorithmic tasks that are the staple of manufacturing economies will migrate to where they can be done at the least expense.  Where does that leave the United States and the western world?  In a place where they must transition from builders to planners, for in this flattened environment the most valuable commodity is creativity and vision, the ability to forge the way forward.

Unfortunately, our business and education systems are still preparing people for the way the world was vs. the way it is and will be.  But the contribution this book makes is to show that in spite of these failings in our society some are adapting to this new reality and how as individuals we can adapt to it as well.  I have barely scratched the surface of the content of this book, which is extremely well researched and provides a great deal of psychological studies to back up the assertions made.  And, perhaps the best part of the book is the final section that provides resources to turn to to put into practice what you have learned.  That section alone is worth the price of the book.
4387395
The conceptual dog race running through this book is between traditional 'sound' money, exemplified by the gold standard, and 'flexible' money, or money worth what society says it is worth (the kind we have today).  The author favors the second kind of money, but more so, as he sees it as being amenable to manipulation for social justice ends.

The argument is, in a nutshell, that sound money inexorably leads to inequality (therefore bad) while flexible money allows for creation of new 'wealth' to give to the poor (therefore good).  Leaving aside the truth value of this set up, the reader may be pulled along with Mr. Martin's argument for a while, as flexibility would seem a nice option at our current, difficult historical moment.  Such thinking, while seductive in its promise of something-for-nothing, is blind to the very trust in money which was and is a precondition for creating and maintaining wealth.

As difficult as it might be to believe, the asymptotic rise in Western wealth that began during the Industrial Revolution was largely the result of gold-backed money, creditor-friendly laws, and the pooling of capital these social arrangements encouraged.  If money had been 'flexible' and debts discharged painlessly via social transfers, the entire foundation of modern capitalism could never have arisen.

Long-term investment capital forms in proportion to how well a society provides 1) a stable currency, and 2) a trusted framework backing up the enforceability of contracts.  These unnatural states of affairs need constant guard if they are to endure, because human nature, here well-embodied by Mr. Martin, will always want to borrow as much as possible if there is a reasonable shot of not having to repay one's debts.  A 'flexible' currency, always a weak one, lowers the real value of debt and therefore achieves much the same end as an explicit abrogation of a loan contract.

Mr. Martin's 'cure' for our economic trouble, therefore, is currency debasement and wealth redistribution.  I thought we were doing a lot of both already . . .  Centuries of trust in sound money and laws, mostly confined to memory at this point, would be irretrievably lost if the future favored by the author comes to pass.  And political trends suggests such a future is likely.  Latin America, that beacon on the hill of social justice, here we come!
2867031
Can a democracy really survive?  This book reminds us what the experiment in democracy cost our founders.  The next few years should tell us whether the concept can even loosely survive power seeking narcissism in its leaders and a huge population.
3342685
In my opinion, anti-climactic. However, at the very least it's a fascinating dissertation on societies and economies.  I appreciate that the "Utopia" is not presented in an idyllic fashion and is far from perfect.
1144886
Mason makes a solid argument that capitalism has passed its sell by date and now we have to confront whats on the horizon. Its wild to think that it's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. I think thats the reason dystopian shows like The Walking Dead have struck such a chord.

Considering the subject matter, Postcapitalism is an easy read. And we need to start this conversation before capitalism consumes us(the 99%).
1883166
I found this book to be a thought provoking and powerful discussion of how the world has changed so quickly and why old standbys are not working predictably.  This book has a lot of material in it that was sometimes difficult to follow but worth every effort.  The explosion of information is just incredible and worth thinking about.

Any one sentence in this book can set up a discussion.  One thing I found funny is that the Internet only adds 1.1% to the GDP in Africa.  Of course, that reminded me immediately of my long lost Uncle who has raided a treasury and plans to send me the money for safe keeping.  Ordos, in Inner Mongolia, is a better investment for capital and attracts more than Detroit.  (Perhaps that isn't as surprising.)  Any given section of this book leads to interpretation.

The four forces of change were entirely predictable: Urbanization, technology, old people, and the small world syndrome.  I kind of think technology and small world syndrome are pretty much the same thing.  When I lived in Pakistan in the late 90s, it took up to a week to get an email to me.  Not so, now.  I can email friends in Pakistan and it is instantaneous, not waiting for the a full night after a full moon passed during the work week, for an email to get sent through a server in Wherever.
2464639
Granted, the divorce rate is at 50% in our country, but what is it in other countries? It's easier here to give up, or to make a hasty decision to get married.  The institution of marriage isn't what's wrong, it's the people who use bad judgement and who don't believe in having to work for something worthwhile.  Nothing worthwhile comes easy, and I for one, believe that Kipnis advocates the easy way out - she is a proponent of succumbing to lust and desire over deeper more meaningful states of loyalty and commitment which sustain the longevity of a relationship.  She fails to address what happens when children come into the equation, and what happens to the family as an institution when monogamy is thrown aside.  What then? What kind of society would this be if parents were free to pursue a better sex life and abandon the responsibility of providing an emotionally stable household structure? Though she poses interesting questions that elicit strong reactions in both directions, she fails to propose a viable solution, and her polemic only results in coming off as more of a rant than a productive piece of literature.
2318522
This Book is a must in our current Melt Down Times, where the DEBT SYSTEM is failing rapidly, with all Their DEBTORS worldwide. Is there a DEBT Amnesty coming up ? Interesting how history repeats itself and it does have its own Universe's timing, we as humans tend to forget that over and over again, as smaller than Ants creatures of the Universe. Perhaps a reintroduction of the Gold Standart might be a way to get away from the "Fiat Money" Legal Tender, with the Asset backing of very thin Air, which has rapidly run out of the Ability to form "Bubbles". And all the Politicians are running around and barking up the (wrong ?) "Tree", at least they are doing something for their Salaries, creating more Carbon Emmissions, well someone's got to do it, to look good, isn't it ?

There is a lot of historic and other Information in that Book, what an Author ! I must say, to put it all together like that.
To him my highest respects and a big thank you.
Wasn't  Credit turned into DEBT, by the DEBT SYSTEM ?
Then....  DEBT must me Credit and vice versa
  Is there in reality something socalled Sovereign DEBT ? or is it another
  convenient human FICTION created ~1.5 years ago ?

Have a nice read dear Amazon Readers.

Kind regards
Ulrich Bethke
Down Under
1002397
"The Death of Expertise" is a timely and pretty harsh look at the reality of society that increasingly values feelings over knowledge about the subject. The Dunning-Kruger effect is reviewed at large here, and it is pretty infuriating to read about, as I'm sure many saw it in action and was flabbergasted as to how actually proceed. Tom Nichols covers general lack of intelligence, over-confidence that we know better than anyone, and resistance to not just learn but to even hear out the opposite side across all fields (the chapter on the modern education was especially engrossing). The author spares no one from his view on the matter, including the experts themselves. The general consensus is while experts do make mistakes, as all of us, they still have a much better rate of being right; and an opinion of a layperson simply cannot be equal to someone who spent his entire life studying the subject. With people's tendency to concentrate on the cases where experts went wrong, they tend to forget many more situations where they got things right (quite frequently in the fields like medicine, science etc. that helped us saved lives, eradicate diseases and generally function better as a society). He does not ask to trust experts blindly (and there are many examples in the book where he insists experts,indeed, should be examined more closely), but rather stop believing that personal uninformed opinion backed by some hours of Google research and TV watching can substitute that of an expert. He asks for more trust (not absolute trust), and  healthier, free from emotions dialogue between experts and laymen.

Here, perhaps, would be the only time I'd  like for the author to expand on the topic. While citing the widening gap between experts and non-experts  as a growing to dangerous proportions problem, Tom Nichols gives sound advice what can experts do to bridge it ( hold each other accountable, don't let overconfidence get in the way and lead them into giving advice in the fields they aren't experts, own and air out their mistakes etc.); however, when it comes down to laymen his advice largely reads like "stop being lazy, get informed". I would like more speculation on way of doing it exactly because most of the people I know (as I am myself) are working incredible hours just to stay on the treadmill of paying bills on time, and the amount of information they need to sort, read and process just to stay informed is astonishing. I'm not taking the blame away, I'm just saying that most of the people I know who work and have families aren't lazy, they just scrambling to find free time for any activities; and since the amount of information is virtually limitless and ever-changing, I'm having a hard time imagining them dedicating large amounts of time CONSISTENTLY  just to keep up with the politics race. More specific advice here would be very helpful.

"The Death of Expertise" is a very though-provoking and timely read. It looks at both sides of the problem doing it at a very harsh, but much needed angle. The conclusion isn't very bright, but realistic. I highly recommend this one, as it will make you ponder and contemplate some interesting topics and will most likely lead to more research on your own = ultimately, being more informed. Hopefully, in the right way.:)

Happy Reading!
4613217
Super depressing warning against letting the government try to "fix" everything that's "wrong" with society. But seriously, don't do it. It will wreck your life and take the significance out of everything you hold dear.