All you can eat Book

All You Can Eat maintains that greed and selfishness trump all other motives, needs, and desires in our world. Homo sapiens has become "Homo economicus," with a voracious appetite for material gain. The advent of the New Capitalism has replaced religion, family, and every other compassionate force with greed and material acquisitiveness as the central and only organizing principles in our society, allowing society to serve the interests of the economy instead of the economy serving the interests of society. The North American Free Trade Agreement and the actions of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have turned all economic laws and regulations in favour of the unbridled capitalism of multinational corporations to the detriment of the poor and underprivileged everywhere. McQuaig backs up this assertion not only with economic analysis, but also with history, philosophy, religious thought, and sociology. The book has heroes and villains. The author bases her theories on the ideas of Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, and especially on work done by Karl Polanyi, an unheralded Hungarian-born economic historian who died in Canada in 1964. Stiglitz, former chief economist for the World Bank, was a vocal critic of American policy on free trade and its impact on developing countries, and has advised Paul Martin, Canada's minister of finance. Polyani's economic approach was developed in the 1920s and 1930s, but McQuaig feels it has special resonance now. On the other side are the champions of capitalism, Dinesh D'Souza, a research scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and Thomas Friedman, foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times and the author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization, a defence of the new economics McQuaig deplores. While D'Souza is the most ardent academic advocate of unfettered capitalism, Friedman's book eloquently articulates the case for the New Capitalism and has strongly influenced economic leaders in the U.S. The pervasiveness of the New Capitalism has led to the resolve of the anti-globalization activists to redress its abuses. McQuaig sees hopefulness in their struggles, echoing Polyani's view "that the elevation of greed and private profit-making to a position of dominance over all other human needs and environmental concerns is not some immutable fact of life. It's just the system we have in place now. And it can change." --Edward Trapunski