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Aaron Swartz's Profile
Customer Reviews: 43
New Reviewer Rank: 7,377
Classic Reviewer Rank: 22,003
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Reviews Written by
Aaron Swartz
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Evidence for a whole new understanding of inequality, October 27, 2009
This is not an easy book -- it's a collection of technical academic papers -- but it is an important one, using sound science to overturn all the conventional wisdom about the macroeconomics of inequality. The book starts off with an incredible chapter summarizing a great deal of post-Keynesian work about income distribution. For those who have only been exposed to the theories of mainstream economics, the chapter is an eye-opener -- here's a theory of macroeconomics that's not only consistent with reality, but actually makes sense!
From there, the book consists of a series of papers applying a new kind of analysis to inequality in different countries. This gets a little repetitive, since each paper return tends to explain the method again, but some of the chapters are really impressive. The chapter in Europe, in particular, makes clear that the conventional wisdom that Europe's high social safety net causes its unemployment is completely backwards -- in fact, it's quite the reverse: social safety nets reduce unemployment.
Here's the gist: People don't get paid based on how their personal contributions, they get paid based on how much of a monopolist their employer is -- the receptionist at Google is a millionaire, while even an important expert at a struggling firm has trouble making ends meet. Why? Because companies need people to stay in their jobs and work hard and not constantly worry about going off someplace else. The more inequality there is in a society, the more people are running off to go someplace else, and the more unemployment there is. By providing social services and progressive taxes so that a waitress at McDonald's isn't doing so badly compared to a powerful lawyer, people feel better about the jobs they have. It's also more fair: there's nothing special about the one receptionist who happened to be hired by Google; why should she get all that monopoly money?
I'm probably mangling some of the details, but it's a fascinating argument. Readers should also check out this paper by Galbraith based on the research: [...]
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An eye-opening guide to effective ways to make change, October 27, 2009
Bill Domhoff has spent his career trying to figure out how America really works. Unlike other scholars, he's never been satisfied with just a good story -- he's always been eager to put different theories to test and figure out which is really right. In this book, he uses that lifetime of knowledge to answer a crucial question for anyone who wants a better world: how do we make a difference in politics.
I thought I knew a lot about this subject -- and indeed, he ends up coming to the same basic conclusion I did -- but Domhoff challenges some of the basic assumptions of the left, including that the biased media is a practical problem.
For those who want to take a look, much of the book is available from Domhoff's website at [...]
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A small piece reveals the whole, September 8, 2009
_Suburb_ is a remarkable little book. It is, on the one hand, simply a history of Forest Hills, Ohio, a tiny town outside Cincinatti. And yet, at the same time, it ends up being a microcosm of American history, a chance to watch all the struggles that racked our nation play out in the picayune concerns of a town of just thousands.
_Suburb_ narrates the story of Forest Hills, from its creation out of leftover land from the New Deal town of Greenhills, Ohio, to its becoming an incorporated city in its own right. Some of this is fairly boring stuff -- there are several pages of jockeying over where to zone the industrial district -- but most of it has larger resonances. You get to see the town grow local politicians, start a little league team, and create a fire department. You see it wrestle with the concerns of race, class, and corporate power. You see it try to plan and assert an identity.
But, most strikingly, you see the nation's political issues played out -- like a miniature version of Rick Perlstein's national histories (Before the Storm, Nixonland). It goes from a world obsessed by nonpartisan consensus in the 1950s, to one wracked by the politics of race in the 1960s (pace Perlstein, a Goldwaterite even tries to take control of town politics!) , to one turning itself inward in the 1970s. It is the postwar politics of American, playing out in a tiny town. As I say, a remarkable little book.
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A brilliant new way to look at cities, June 5, 2009
Who rules cities? Logan and Molotch have a theory. This book lays it out, in fairly simple terms. It argues that landowners have a shared interest in "growth", i.e. increased property values (land's exchange-value), and are willing to do whatever it takes to get them, including taking over government. This puts them in conflict with residents who care about their neighborhoods (land's use-value) and don't want growth's unstoppable engine.
It's a brilliant book, with insights on every page and some poignant stories as well. Logan and Molotch are sociologists, not writers, so the book drags at points, but it's well worth it for anyone who's interested in the subject. My major critique is that it underplays the importance of planning and doesn't provide a good explanation for it, but that's a rather minor criticism, all things considered. Highly recommended.
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An unenlightening study, June 5, 2009
This book is a quick read, but not a particularly enlightening one. It describes an empirical study of several Southern Californian cities that tried to put curbs on growth and sprawl. The upshot is that they weren't very serious about it and haven't done a very good job. The first chapter does provide a good introduction to the literature and there are a couple photos of some pretty hideous building developments, but not a lot more than that. Folks interested in the question referred to by the subtitle should read Molotch's brilliant Urban Fortunes instead.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Bossy states, from last names to land reform, June 5, 2009
_Seeing Like a State_ is a succession of stories on a simple theme: the dangers of trying to simplify people. There is a mindset that likes simplicity and order, that wants to sweep the mess of civilization away and make everything simple and clean. I see in myself some aspects of this mindset. Scott shows, again and again, why this is a really bad idea.
He shows how states forced everyone to take last names, so they could tax and track them. He shows how builders like Le Corbusier invented cities so clean that no one would ever want to live in them. He talks about how scientific foresters laid out forests so simple that all the trees died out. Each story is elegant and thought-provoking and just a fun read. Despite the title, this isn't a book arguing for or against government. It's a book about the fight between mess and order and the dangers of that fight.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Difficult book, important topic, June 5, 2009
This is not an easy book. Domhoff spends a lot of time talking about himself -- how his critics have mistreated, distorted, and ignored him; how he's changed his views since his last book; how his opponents are all wrong. But, on the whole, it seems Domhoff is right. Following not only the IEMP theory of Michael Mann (The Sources of Social Power: Vol. 1, A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760, Vol. 2: The Rise of Classes and Nation States, 1760-1914), but Mann's workaholic, just-the-facts style, Domhoff tries to get to the bottom of how policy is made. The result is usually a rather boring story -- a lot of business elites with names you don't recognize working on details you don't care about -- but Domhoff is trying to make the point that it is the business elites, after all, who call the shots. And he appears to do so convincingly. His brilliance is that he does not try to win by engaging in petty arguments with his intellectual opponents, but simply points out key facts they didn't mention, or even notice. Someone claims a government bureaucrat came up with a law and Domhoff shows that a business group sent them a similar proposal several months before. That sort of thing. The result is a convincing book, if not a fascinating one.
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Cultural history from Playboy to Phyllis Schafly, June 5, 2009
Barbara Ehrenreich was a prominent feminist author, who'd written books chronicling the way the culture has mistreated women, like For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts Advice to Women (with Deirdre English). But then she got interested in the notion that the culture was also mistreating men. At first, she says, she was skeptical. She intended to write a book mocking the idea. But the more she researched it, the more she realized the men had a point: patriarchy hurts them too.
The result is a book that's not only a brilliant chronicle of how the sexual revolution has changed men's lives, but an honest attempt to grapple with what it all means for women. It's a fascinating read -- her reinterpretation of Playboy alone is worth the work.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Totally worth it, June 5, 2009
Come on, I know what you're thinking. There's no way you'd want to read an 800-page book about parking, let alone pay $60 for it. That's what I thought too.
Amazingly, I was wrong. Shoup shows how the simple matter of providing some free parking kicks off a chain reaction that leads to disastrous effects. First there's just a little free parking space in front of your house. But then a store opens down the street and its customers start taking your spot. So you demand the store provide enough parking for its customers. Which means the store gets pushed back from the street by its huge new parking lot. Which means nobody wants to walk to it, so more people start driving. Which means it needs more parking and more roads and more traffic cops and more cruising for parking and more sprawl and more pollution and on and on.
Shoup provides a simple solution to this madness: performance parking. If you provided everyone with free ice cream, you'd always have lines around the block. You'd go bankrupt from trying to make sure you always had enough supplies. You'd reorient your whole economy around ice cream. But luckily, we don't do that. We charge the market rate for ice cream. Shoup's simple suggestion: do the same for parking. Install parking meters that talk to each other and figure out how much parking is available and automatically adjust the price to ensure that 15% of the spots are always free. Imagine: no more looking for parking, a parking space always available.
Shoup has a political plan for getting there as well, involving playing one neighborhood off another. But I've given enough away already; perhaps you should just read the book.
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On Directing Film
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by David Mamet
Edition: Paperback |
| Price: $9.89 |
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| Availability: In Stock |
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A guide to good writing, not just film directing, June 5, 2009
Mamet is a lot of fun. Here, in Socratic dialogues with students, he shows how you tell a story: One thing leads to another thing which leads to another. Pretty soon the audience is caught up in it with you. "We don't have to worry about making it interesting," Mamet says. "We just have to get rid of the pig."
This isn't, of course, all there is to writing, or even directing. But it's an important piece and Mamet lays it out brilliantly. I'd never even thought about the craft of directing before and now I can't stop thinking about it.
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