Reading an ebook sample of Niall Ferguson's The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay And Economies Die. ~snip~
Have you started it?
Actually, I've not read that one, but I have read a number of his other works. Niall Ferguson actually writes well (and, unfortunately, not all economists, historians, economic historians do) and is usually an interesting and thought-provoking read.
One would also do well to bear in mind while reading that his perspective tends to be somewhat right wing, and filter for that, but that does not necessarily invalidate some of his arguments. ~snip~
I finished the sample and bought the thing. Ferguson is often pretty combative (vs. Krugman for instance) which can be annoying, and our political views are different. But Im interested in what hes writing about in
The Great Degeneration. He fears that reverting to a less active economic state, as we seem to be doing in the West now, can generate dangerous political dynamics. Wed probably not agree on exactly what behavior (and by whom) might take us there, but I have that concern as well. So Im up for the read and Ill make time for it after the holidays.
Probably I wont mind what Ferguson has to say on our institutions of democracy and rule of law. We share some alarm over their growing dysfunction now. His and my views may diverge more when it comes to rights/wrongs of unfettered markets. That could also be the case when I get to his take on the state of civil society.
Ive read some of his other books. I found
The Ascent of Money very much worth the read. His book on the British empire was interesting but too contrarian for my taste, maybe too focused on the benefits vs. the drawbacks of what is, after all, the essentially extractive nature of colonial occupations. Not that he failed to remark on the bad. I just felt like I was in a funhouse, where familiar things took on different shapes and relative sizes.
When
Colossus came out, I hesitated for some reason, and still havent read it. So many extraordinary events have occurred since it was written that the very phrase "American empire seems a misnomer to me. The decade in Afghanistan since
Colossus was published plus our (and everyone elses) experiences of post-war Iraq, plus all the fallout from the global financial collapse certainly add up to more than a speed bump for whatever trends of American empire Ferguson may have sketched out in
Colossus. Maybe Ill get that book from the local library sometime. Its not high on my list of might-reads, but of course I could be mistaken in having ignored it.
