Reviews for False dawn

The average rating for False dawn based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-11-29 00:00:00 Eric Lambert At times it can be hard to take John Gray seriously: he is prone to overstating his case, stretching a well-constructed and reasoned proposition to the very limits, making categorical contrarian rebuttals without fleshing them out with enough substance to allow them to compete beyond mere averment, and he repeats himself almost to the point of self-hypnosis'but when the man is on'which comprises a majority of this jeremiad'he is on, delivering a bracing and pertinacious polemic with which I often find myself in agreement, or at least strongly persuaded. I am a solid supporter of a market economy'I am more tentative about the free market implementations that have arisen again with the advent of globalized capitalism. When I see how many partisans of the free market treat it as either an economic element of natural law, a free-standing constituent component of the material universe that is meant to be, or with the fervid zeal of an acolyte who has found a religion of production and consumption that upholds the very heavens with the purity and sanctity of its revealed dogma, I become apprehensive and wary; Gray provides here a firm confirmation that such apprehension and wariness are quite appropriate responses. As anyone who has read John Gray knows, the primary target for his ire is the Enlightenment by way of what he has determined to be its transmitted and unflagging belief in both the improvability of the species and the inevitability of the progression of our disparate and variegated institutions into a cohesive, universal whole'the entire world dipping oars in rhythmic and measured strokes as we glide smoothly towards the Big U of whatever the field in question. Gray spies this Enlightenment strain within the newly arisen and spread Free Market and the Washington Consensus that upholds its implementation whenever an opening for such presents itself'usually by means of the implosion of a country's economic system, a crisis that allows the shock therapy of deregulation, tax cutting, union busting, privatization and reduced wages to be grafted into place. Gray repeatedly points out that the Free Market, no matter what its proponents might believe or proclaim, has never arisen naturally'an economic evolutionary endpoint, if you will'but rather been a purposeful experiment in social engineering that can only be implanted by the firm and reliant hand of a strong, centralized government'the very thing the adherents of the Free Market believe their ideal exchange institution allows them to keep from forcing its will upon its citizens. The government is required because no national populace would ever choose the Free Market on their own: although it has shown itself to be a wealth creator par excellence, it is very socially disruptive, requiring workers to forever labor in insecurity and be prepared to uproot their family and move to where the work is, the free flow of capital can hobble a business through no incompetence of its own, and the manner in which technology is harnessed and implemented by its racing engines works all manner of transformative memes upon the culture and politics and familial norms of a given society. What's more, because such a market structure encourages, even thrives upon speculative finance, its life-cycle is ever one of great booms and inflated values preceding devastating busts that destroy a significant portion of the wealth previously amassed, leaving families and communities in financial ruin. History has shown that wherever this Anglo-American creation has been implemented, it always engenders concerted efforts to bring it to bay, to increasing measures of control through regulation and reform. Another thing that regular readers of John Gray understand is that he is a promoter of and believer in value pluralism, that freedom and the good life can be realized under a variety of societal systems operating across a multitude of differing cultures; that there is no need for the adoption of an American style free market liberalism by the entire globe in pursuit of some chimeric civilizational acme. He writes at length about the home-grown flavors of capitalism that have developed in Japan, China, Singapore, Indonesia, Chile, Germany, and such, noting how they have adapted themselves to suit the particular realities and problems faced by each of these differing cultures. What's more, most of Europe resolutely rejects the neo-liberal marketization mania, preferring their modulated forms of social democracy. However, when Anglo-American style free markets have proliferated and are backed by the dominant global position of their chief proponent, Gray posits the occurrence of an economic version of Gresham's Law wherein bad capitalism tends to drive out good capitalism; that is, it proves increasingly difficult for these homogenized and socialized economies to compete with the ruthless down-spiral of the free market, and they end up distorted and/or displaced as certain free market memes are put into place. It is difficult to compete in a globalized market of deregulation, cheap taxes, and free-flowing capital and labour without adopting to their presence, and this adoption will drive out the beneficial components of the infiltrated system. This applies even to the original neo-liberals: Gray believes that a free market economy is ever evolving, changing, in flux, altering the society in which it operates and, though it produces great efficiencies and productivity levels, and generates vast reams of wealth, it distributes it ever more unequally'destroying healthy middle-classes by re-proletarianizing them while developing a sizable underclass of poverty-level workers and the unemployed/unemployable and producing an engorged criminal element housed within an expanded prison industry, creating terrible wealth disparities while undermining the freedoms and rights of those not located within the relatively small group of super-winners. Worst of all, the author holds that such free market economies are one-way engines. Those economic systems they have superseded or displaced, the managed social democracies that arose with the welfare state, cannot be returned to. One Enlightenment economic philosophy, Communism, has had its own utopian drive and stalled out and crashed along the way; Gray asserts that Capitalism, Communism's Enlightenment sibling, is heading down the same path and liable for the same breakdown long before its paradisiacal end goal has been glimpsed, let alone reached. Any attempt to implement one form of free market economy upon the nations of the world will only result in that form mutating into something unpredictably different while spreading anarchy through its creative-destructive processes. Having grown up in Canada and lived here my whole adult life, the free market in its American laissez-faire configuration has little appeal to me to begin with. I'm comfortable in a regulated market economy with secure safety nets, universal medical insurance, and a well-ordered banking system'and I've never viewed my own government, which has figured prominently within and throughout Canada's economic history, as some form of hostile institution mere degrees from tyranny. Hell, our national motto is Peace, Order, and Good Government and that's just fine with me. What's more, I have little time for ideology, rigidity and armchair philosophy: an economic system that is pragmatic, can adjust as the present situation itself changes, accommodate itself to new realities, bend where needed and stand firm where required, that takes account of and operates within the real existing world and not some rationalized ideal where all variables can be known or accounted for, that is what I favor. My experience is that free market economies are risky and unstable, great wealth creators and destroyers, and destruction and instability are not conducive to the formation of enduring peaceful and well-ordered polities. They incite radicalism and resentment, polarization and revolution, they tear things down in order to build them back up again'and the rebuilding can move in directions little anticipated. Furthermore, I am agnostic on the ability of a Free Market to self-regulate, as its historical existence has been one where insider trading, security manipulations, corporate monopolies, illegalities, political corruption, and so on have stamped their imprint firmly upon the system'so it provides its wave-form economic upheavals in some variety of tainted implementation, even at the best of times. If such is the case, it only makes sense that an ordered regulation should be imposed in lieu of leaving it at the mercy of connected manipulators who will distort it in their own favor. Thus, much of John Gray's educated polemic appeals to me where it counts, strikes me as wise and truthful and well worthy of being read and understood. However, I also understand that the man takes things to extremes and can be prone to overstatement and contradictory conclusions. He is given to absolute statements, fully at odds with his own disdain of the universal underpinnings of the Enlightenment. He repeatedly avers that, once the free market has been initiated, it permanently relegates the system it has ousted to the ashbin of history'a conviction unwarranted in the face of the unknowability of the future and the limitless potential of humanity to retool and reseed its organized systems of operation. He deprecates the free market economies erected upon the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand, and Mexico in the eighties and early nineties before admitting that the existing systems of managed economies were stagnant and broken, and little else could have viably been implemented at the level required to reinvigorate and restart these moribund nations. Like most First World critics of the globalized free market, he cannot seem to grasp the concept that denizens of formerly poverty stricken and undeveloped countries may not find the risks and instability associated with a free market economy an undesirable trade-off compared with the transformative increases to their living standards, access to a regular supply of food and medicine, educational opportunities and infrastructure developments; for, as Gray himself admits, once the free market has worked its tendrils into the societal base and elevated it from its horizontal starting point, the opportunity for harnessing its power via political reforms and regulations unique to that particular realm becomes more readily available and possible. With that said, these are problems in his presentation that could be addressed or revised with further publication runs; his core point, his central opposition to the neo-liberal wish to impress the free market across the globe, is powerfully and clearly made and resonates strongly with this reader. Prescient in several of his forecasts for how the globalized economy would play out in the new millennium, Gray's voice is definitely one that should be added to those hearkened to as we try to find our way out of the current slump that has spread its shadow around the world.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-02-18 00:00:00 Darrin Mcelroy I can't believe that this book is 15 years old. Nassim Taleb referred to this book as "prophetic" but Gray's penetrating insights go beyond his (now proven) main thesis that American-style unregulated capitalism cannot go global in its current form without severe consequences for sustainability. His peripheral analyses might be even more accurate. He destroys derivatives, the delusion of American secularism, and Newt Gingrich with what can best be described as "swagger." I feel like I've wasted years of my reading life by waiting until now to discover John Gray.