Patrick Julius's Blog

A review of Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty

JDN 2456946 EDT 13:15.

I finished the book several days ago, but I wanted to give it a really thorough review because it is such an important book—and so closely linked to the kind of thing I do research on. I will abbreviate its name as Capital henceforth, which is also a nod to Marx’s Das Kapital. Many have accused Piketty of being Marxist, but actually most of what he says would draw agreement from Adam Smith. Competitive mark...

JDN 2456783 PDT 11:34.

A review of Extreme Money by Satyajit Das

I had high hopes for this book; I’ve read quite a few books about the Second Depression now, but this one promised to tie it all together into a coherent narrative about what is wrong with modern capitalism.

But the narrative it delivers is an unconvincing one, filled with cynicism and pessimism about how this is just the way things are and we will have to accept our fate. Das has a weird dissonance in his understanding of the rel...

A review of World War Z by Max Brooks

JDN 2456763 PDT 15:26.

Most media about zombies is relatively frivolous; it’s just there to scare you, or tell a good story, or even make you laugh (think Zombieland or Shawn of the Dead).

World War Z is not like that. World War Z is a very serious epistolary novel. The tale is told through a long serious of interviews with survivors of, well, “World War Z”, the war against the zombie menace. It could be called a “zombie apocalypse”, yet in its unrelenting...

JDN 2456722 PDT 15:29.

A review of Economical Writing by Deirdre McCloskey

There is a certain paradox inherent in the “style manual”: Legislating style is like legislating personality. If we all followed such manuals to the letter, we’d all sound alike, and the world would be a boring place indeed. There are on the other hand certain useful things one can say, just as there are certain personality types we can all agree are unhealthy (e.g. obsessive-compulsive, antisocial). There are certain wa...

JDN 2456705 PDT 12:31.

After the Music Stopped is the most comprehensive, detailed account of the Second Depression I have read thus far—and if you’ve been following my Goodreads you know I read quite a lot of these. Blinder does an excellent job of explaining not just what happened, but why it happened; not just who did what, but what motivated them to do it. He talks about how difficult some of these decisions were, and paints a very sympathetic portrayal of most of the policymakers involved...

I just came up with a model so elegant that it can be explained in a few minutes to just about anyone, but so powerful that it provides a compelling explanation of just about every major macroeconomic issue: Why depressions happen, how debt works, and what causes inflation. It’s so incredibly simple I at first thought I had to be missing something… but upon reflection, I don’t think I am. We had simply blinded ourselves with unnecessary complexity.

The model has four people in it (which you ca...

JDN 2456679 PDT 18:22.

End This Depression Now! is an excellent book, very easy to read, that gives clear and unambiguous explanations of how we could fix the economy in the US and Europe. I've recommended other books about the Second Depression in the past; even if you never get around to reading those ones, at least read Krugman.
Krugman is, without a doubt, the greatest economist alive today. Nor is it a coincidence that he derives most of his ideas from the greatest economist ever, namely...

JDN 2456679 PDT 18:22.

End This Depression Now! is an excellent book, very easy to read, that gives clear and unambiguous explanations of how we could fix the economy in the US and Europe. I’ve recommended other books about the Second Depression in the past; even if you never get around to reading those ones, at least read Krugman.

Krugman is, without a doubt, the greatest economist alive today. Nor is it a coincidence that he derives most of his ideas from the greatest economist ever, namely...

JDN 2456678 EDT 22:41.

Neptune's Brood by Charles Stross is an interesting book. It's oddly compelling, but for reasons I can't quite articulate. The world he builds is so odd and perverse—and yet as far as I can tell, absolutely nothing in it violates any known laws of nature. It is one of the hardest pieces of science fiction I have ever read, and yet it literally involves a mermaid being hunted by pirates as she searched for ancient treasure beneath the sea. (It makes sense in context......

JDN 2456678 EDT 22:41.

Neptune’s Brood by Charles Stross is an interesting book. It’s oddly compelling, but for reasons I can’t quite articulate. The world he builds is so odd and perverse—and yet as far as I can tell, absolutely nothing in it violates any known laws of nature. It is one of the hardest pieces of science fiction I have ever read, and yet it literally involves a mermaid being hunted by pirates as she searched for ancient treasure beneath the sea. (It makes sense in context… sort...