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Yaa bu kitap inanılmaz. Annem bana yıllardır der oku bunu diye, hiç vakit ayırmamıştım. Şuan kendi ana dilimde böyle bir anlatıma denk gelmediğim için hiç bir kitaba başlarken hissetmediğim bir heyecan duyuyorum.

I'm going to finish this one but not entirely enjoyed the narrative. The somewhat random insights which were placed here and there were adequate to leave some sort of satisfaction but they were not enought to offer me a new perspective. However, his inclusion of exogenous events was a nice follow-up to Hirschman's narrative of emergence of capitalism and my the new perspectives I'm developping regarding history.

Most interesting subject, at least for me. The way nationalism has dominated the brains of the living for the past few centuries has been an utmost curiosity for me. Although it has started of with great foot, Anderson is too focused on trying to understand the way people thought back then. But i find this aproach counterintuitive. We read the past to understand the present, not to understand the past.

We are reading this with my study group and It is the best articulation of true vegan arguments that I have come across. It criticizes other “animal right” movements perfectly, and gives us a good legal background of animals as property from a law professor perspective. I especially enjoyed his inclusion of Locke and Bentham where-is the first thing after I finished Locke was veganism, an important inclusion.

We are reading this with my study group, and it has been the best articulation of veganism/speciesm that I have come across. Every arguement is spot on, and dissect other “animal right” movements incredibly. Especially I have enjoyed his law infrastructure as well as his inclusion of mainstream moral philosophy/animal rights arguments from the past.

I’m reading this incredibly slow because i’m enjoying so much. During my plane ride (which was an hour or so) I was able to crack only 12 pages but honestly this is one of the most enjoyful books I have read in a while and remind me of why I like economics and history. Thanks you Hirschman you are becoming one of my favorites.

It’s hard to not get angry and empty while reading this book. But in the end this is what capitalism creates. A whole society working so a few groups can get economic benefits. This is why most countries have hard time developing. Interest of a powerful group is hard to synthesize with the society. Few countries were able to align those interest. Still inequality haunts them regardless.

MSP->RP donumu uzerine; « Islami siyaset dinsel retorigi etil alaniyla sinirlamaya son verip sosyoekonomik kurumlari yeniden tasarlamaya girisince, dini kimlik bir iliski sermayesi halini aldi ve is dunyasinda yeni belirdn ittifaklari ve catismalari bicimlendiren bir unsur olarak ortaya cikti. »

« Toplumun sekurlerlesmesi ancak ondan sonra, devlet-toplum iliskilerini dinsel kimligin sinirlarinin disinda bicimlendirecek bir siyasi yurttaslik anlayisinin gelismesine yol acabilirdi. Ilk cumhuriyet hukumetlerinin aldigi onlemler, ... farkliliklarin esit yurttasliga engel olmayacagi modern bir toplumda bir arada yasamanin temeli haline getirme noktasinda kesinlikle yetersiz kalmistir. »

« It is more helpful to think of the CA balance as the independent variable,.... the aggregate result is determined outside America’s borders. » This presupposition haunts me, and one of the key insights from the book. It challenges the notion about how BW, American surplus cycle mechanism, got reversed and the dollars role in global financial system become more costly.

This in turn can be blamed on policies in surplus countries that steadily transfer income and wealth from workers to elites. Because the rich have higher savings rates, the effect has been to shift purchasing power away from goods and services to financial assets. Not finding enough additional financial asset to buy in their home country, the rich invest their additional wealth abroad.

Although some of this can be blamed on insufficient regulation in the countries on the receiving end of these financial flows, the bigger problem is that the flows are too large and go to the wrong places. Popular antipathy to trade therefore stems from the failure of international capital to go where it is needed in forms that are useful.

Two things determine whether an imbalance is healthy or dangerous:how the money is raised and how the money is spent. Ideally, richer countries make FDI in poorer ones with lots of potential. In the past few decades surplus countries have been lenders, rather than shareholders, while deficit countries have often been mature economies that lack useful projects in need of outside funding. The result: debt booms.

This book was what i needed! I recommend it to everyone, read this book to understand the dynamics between international credit flows, trade and inequality. A must read for conceptualizing a better and just world where all can prosper and develop. Our global system is bankrupt, we need to reestablish capital control, limit cross-country lending and allow rich countries to import more so that poor can make investment

Broo, third chapter gave me the chills when branko was talking about the third unbundling of labor, when i’m reading this book in middle of a pandemic which created a situation where labor can be putted into production without physical presence. Wish this book came out during the pandemic...

“The barbarous gold barons- they did not find the gold, they did not mine the gold, they did not mill the gold, but by some weird alchemy all the gold belonged to them.”

“Butun bu ornekler, var olan sosyal yardimlarin, bir vatandaslik hakki olarak degil sadaka olarak tanimlanmis olduguna isaret ediyor. Alan duaci olacak, alamayanin sikayete hakki yok.”

Just finished the first two parts. In my view unless you are interested or already knowledgable on history on a general basis, it is not entirely necessary considering it is 350 pages. I still enjoyed it a lot and few instances made it worth the stuff that i already know.
I don’t want to criticize the book just yet as i feel like the main part didn’t started.

This is an exceptional book. It could be considered an economic history book but (as the book tries to argue) inequality and therefore the political regime that tolerates it is not economical but mainly sociological. Therefore it should be seen as sociology book and a great one at that.
One of the key insights of the books so far was to drop liberalism (and neo-liberalism) for what they truly are: propertarianism.

I just started reading the book, finished the first chapter and it feels crazy to think that this books was written around 50’s or 60’s. The 100 years peace chapter which tries to explain the century prior to WW1 is so similar, in terms of mechanisms at play to today, it brings me the chilzz while i was reading. Not that i think a war is approaching, it just makes it much more clearer to see whats going on.

Empiracal work on inequality is important but every solution proposed (by zucman, piketty and so on) has been mainly about taxation. Few like philippon and mazzucato asked question about creation of value but redistribution element is impossible without reforming global and mainly Anglophesphere law system. This book highlight in what aspects government aid private elite in their pursuit of wealth accumulation.

This is a fundamental book to read. Even though there has been a lit of work, especially since the “elephant graph” and rise of populism due to low growth seen by the blue collars in developed world and the social distress that has been fueled since ‘08 crises, about the rise of inequality and its origin, it has been cared only by economist (in fact very few of them).