This book’s full title is Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century. It is an interesting read and I found the book quite fascinating. He has some interesting points of view and the book is well worth reading. I have read a lot, but Karl Polanyi is new person to me. He has interesting views and I believe a very good understanding of humans.
However, I do not understand why it should be thought that just because we have enough resources to satisfy everyone that we did not do that. That is our society should be a utopia. Humans throughout history has always been ruled by elites. When we got lots of resources we were still ruled by elites. We are today, still ruled by elites.
I also do not think that Utopia is good. Utopia will produce bored people. Bored people are dangerous people. They will find lots of stupid things to do. You can produce a satisfactory life or society for most people. I think that is possible.
There is a Lecture by Brad DeLong at Peterson Institute. His lecture starts almost 5 minutes into the video and stops around 26 minutes. This is an interview by Gillian Tett on YouTube by RSA. Bradford DeLong talks about this book at Fordham Gabelli School of Business. Lecture stops around 35 minutes and then he answers questions.
There is a short review at Kirkus. Joel Mokyr on Economic History Association has a great review of this book. Rohit Krishnan from Substack gives a review of this book. . .
An index of the books I have reviewed are on my website at Books. I have three blogs. The first talks only about specific stocks and is called Investment Talk . The second one contains information on mostly investing and is called Investing Economics Mostly. My last blog is for my book reviews and it is called Non-Fiction Mostly. Follow me on Twitter.
