The Legacy of Karl Polanyi Book

"So what you have to consider is not whether there will be great changes or not (for changes there certainly will be) but what changes you and your friends think, after consideration and discussion, would make the world a better place to live in, and what changes you ought to resist as disastrous to yourself and everyone else."

What to say about this behemoth? There's lots of good stuff in here, but you have to wade through quite a bit of Pygmalion-like condescension and out-of-date examples. I think we need a new version. It should be written by a woman, and be called "The Compassionate Man's Guide to Social Justice."

Still, Shaw made many excellent points. He's approaching this as a thinker, not as a politician. While plenty of his economic discussions were more in-depth than I had the patience to follow, I think we can all benefit from thinking these things through intellectually to hopefully keep from being carried away by agenda-filled political soundbites.

"I strongly advise you not to wait for a readymade answer from me or anyone else, but to try first to solve the problem for yourself in your own way. For even if you solve it all wrong, you will become not only intensely interested in it, but much better able to understand and appreciate the right solution when it comes along."

I loved the timely discussion about privatizing the post office, how currently they average out the costs of the very expensive services (like delivering a letter deep into a rural area) with the very cheap, and how a private company would come in with the promise of doing it cheaper, but since they couldn't do the expensive stuff any cheaper, once they put the post office out of business the services would go down and/or the prices go up.

Personally, I believe some things should not be privatized. I'm old enough to remember when utilities were municipal services and not money-making operations beholden to shareholders instead of to citizens, and I sorely miss both the attitude and the reasonable prices.

Throughout the book, he references subjects currently in the news, like universal basic income and the monetary value of taking care of children.

"The most important and indispensable work of women, that of bearing and rearing children, and keeping house for them, was never paid for directly to the woman but always through the man; and so many foolish people came to forget that it was work at all, and spoke of Man as The Breadwinner. This was nonsense."

He ends by mentioning that good will come from the people who believe in leaving this world a better place than they found it. Now really, isn't that something that we should all be able to agree upon?