Reading Log

Hitchens provides a history and context for Paine’s famous political writings, including Common Sense, Rights of Man and Age of Reason.

Harris’ short book providing a layperson’s introduction to consciousness as a target for philosophical thought. Discussing the arguments for panpsychism and the illusion of self and free will.

Again prompted by the discussion in Making Sense #159 - Conscious and Making Sense #178 - The Reality Illusion.

McAfee makes a good case for his “Four Horsemen of the Optimist” being the prime drivers of the substantial and material improvement in our lives over the past two centuries. Those four are Capitalism, Technological Progress, Responsive Government and… Honestly I’ve forgotten the fourth (edit Public Awareness, apparently). The weight of the argument sits mostly with the first two, and as Dambisa Moyo of the New York Times put it, it is sadly refreshing to read an optimistic case-for and defence-of capitalism. McAfee champions markets and the price system as great drivers of progress and optimisation, whilst attention is duly given to the problem of negative externalities.

My only sticking point is that he denotes the first Earth Day in 1970 as the turning point in our attitudes - I’m a little unconvinced of that absent further evidence. As important an event as it was, those in attendance were hardly the big-hitters from Government or Business. Still, it is perhaps a useful line in the sand.

I ended up reading this one in large-part because of McAfee’s appearance on Sam Harris’ Waking Up Podcast #170 of October 2nd 2019.

Hitchens’ case against religion, a damning and harsh indictment

A short political essay by Bastiat, on effectively double-entry accounting for economics and monetary policy, and some of the economical fallacies that those who ignore “that which is not seen” fall afoul of. Similar to The Law also by Bastiat, I found this generally convincing and well-reasoned, but again with the occasional argument that was too idealistic and did leave itself open to questioning.

Presenting the argument in favour of UBI and then arguing the case against, and the offering a more Libertarian perspective on alternatives to the UBI.

Embellished Transcript of the 2019 BBC Reith Lecture series by former UK Supreme Court Judge Lord Sumption, wherein he discusses the relationship between Law and Politics, and the comparative benefits and downsides to both written and unwritten constitutions. The series has become increasingly relevant to the events of August through October 2019, surrounding Brexit, the UK Government, Parliament and Prorogation, and has been widely referenced.

Cody Wilson of Defense Distributed, the gun-printing cryptoanarchist behind The Liberator 3D Printed pistol, the 3D Printed AR-15 lower receiver and the Ghost Gunner tells the story of how he and his collaborators came to create The Liberator.

I like Greta – she’s dry, pithy and direct. Be more like Greta. The heat she gets from (mostly) conservatives is largely unwarranted – if a schoolgirl telling it like it is offends your sensibilities, it may be time to re-evaluate. This neat little book is a collection of transcripts from her various speeches.

Murray presents a policy proposition for a $10,000 per-annum grant, a so-called “Universal Basic Income”, to entirely replace existing selective state welfare systems, touting t as a cheaper, more effective and socially desirable system.

The UBI is becoming a hot-topic in 2019 as a version of it is central to 2020 Democratic Presidential-Nominee hopeful Andrew Yang’s platform. I find the arguments in this book somewhat convincing, at least from a cost and fairness perspective, however it leaves many important questions open and unanswered, and has a fair few sloppy arguments. Universal Basic Income - For and Against - Antony Sammeroff provides a good companion counterpoint book. Yang has also written a book on the topic, titled The War on Normal People.

Bastiat provides an argument regarding the proper domain of law, and against late 19th Century socialism the use of the law coercively, to enforce an involuntary philanthropism and mould society to the lawmaker’s ideals. A hardcore libertarian will find this text friendly, but for me it strays perhaps a little too close to ancap territory - Bastiat perhaps over-constrains law to the domain of solely protection of property and person against violence - this would of course exclude the vast majority of today’s statutes, including all taxation. It’s short, witty like Voltaire, and worth a read.

Just a delightfully funny, candid and often bemused account of Voltaire’s interactions with Englishmen from all walks of life during his time in England, 1726 - 1729.

(Also called Letters on the English or Letters on the English Nation)

Varoufakis presents a more distilled view of Europe than that given in his memoir Aduts in the Room, and broadens his arguments for Europe’s reform as well as presenting an analysis of what exactly went wrong with the post-war Uropean economy, American interventions in it, and the EU, all leading up to the 2008 crash.

If you like Rockets or Chemistry, this is a great account of experimentation with ‘splodey chemicals and of the history of the race for ever-better rocket fuels.

A short little book (more of an essay), Lying provides a well reasoned argument for never lying, not even those tempting ‘white lies’, but is perhaps a little thin on what could have been a broader and deeper philosophical discussion.

This book is fantastic - Marr writes British History from 1945 onwards in a convincing, gripping, clear yet funny analysis. A big book but surely essential reading.

Re-read 2019-10-26

(Later republished as Talking to My Daughter: A Brief History of Capitalism)

Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis lays bare Greece’s struggle with the EU, or ‘Troika’ as he calls it, in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crash and Greek debt crisis. Despite being a self-professed Europhile and Socialist (though his grip on economics suggests otherwise) – or at-least a European Unity optimist – this book has had a great deal of influence on my Euroscepticism, and that of prominent Eurosceptics such as Michael Gove - perhaps it’s one of the only economic memoirs ever written to receive praise from both Conservatives and those from Socialist and Neo-Marxist school such as Chomsky and Žižek.

Though it’s a hefty book, I’d thoroughly recommend it to anyone wanting to lift the rug of European Union politics - remainers and leavers alike.