ISBN 978-1-846-14328-1. "23 things they don't tell you about Capitalism" by Ha-Joon Chang was published in 2010 by Penguin. This hardback has 286 pages with Acknowledgements, Introduction, twenty-three "things" as Chapters, a Conclusion, Notes and an Index. "This book is not an anti-capitalist manifesto" states the author right up front. This is probably a good thing as we probably wouldn't have it on our pages if it was. This is a follow up to Chang's successful 2007 book "Bad Samaritans" which we also reviewed here as a timely reminder (since the crash of 2008) of just how far neo-conservative economic dogma has held us back from building a sustainable economic system. Without a said system we will not have the capital to build sustainable homes, energy infrastructure and food systems. Economics is at the heart of it all. Since the environmental movement arose in the early 1970's it has proudly touted its achievements in winning a battle here and there but it lost the war on the one front that REALLY mattered: economics. The conservatives won. The Chicago School won and it has lead us down a path that cannot be sustained. We learnt that greed was good and short term profits were all that mattered as the free market would sort everything else out. Come the dawn of an era of peaking energy supplies and climate chaos and we had a demonstration of what many came to call "market failures".

Despite these obvious failures the market still dominates the ideology of modern Government. Chang tears this apart and asks the questions that very few even ask these days. As with "Bad Samaritans" we get a well researched slice of work but overall this is a weaker effort. The strength of "Bad Samaritans" was that it was based ...   more »