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stargirlx14's review against another edition
1.0
I would not have read this book if it wasn't for the class I am currently taking. His writing style, grandiose theories, and white washed conclusions were not it for me.
lpm100's review against another edition
5.0
Murray is a first rate thinker and scholar
Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2019
I'm not really sure what to think about this book.
On the one hand, I completely agree with what the author says. And it is good that he took the trouble to put the events in order in order to construct a narrative of how government power has become so overweening. Also, he does a good job with providing examples of the scale of the size of government over time. But on the other hand, it's not like the United States is really a unique or special case. A brilliant (but not well read) book by Joseph Tainter ("The Collapse of Complex Societies") details just even such as these.
On the other:
If you find an elderly man who happens to be dead in a hospital somewhere, there was a long mechanistic process that can explain the corpse that you would see in front of you. But, does it really matter?
In the same way that everybody ends up dead, a country or society or government will just make mistakes over time just by happenstance. And the net result is either collapse or some other type of diminishment. (China has been through multiple cycles of this, and they STILL have not found a way to get it right.)
I think that this general principle has been illustrated by Eric Hoffer. The True Believer. ("The preliminary work of undermining existing institutions, of familiarizing the masses with the idea of change, and of creating a receptivity to a new faith, can be done only by men who are, first and foremost, talkers or writers and are recognized as such by all.")
The stretched beyond recognition Interstate Commerce Clause makes an appearance, of course.
Much of this feels like an updating of Thomas Sowell's book ("Knowledge and Decisions," with better and more current data). A lot of the same time independent arguments, such as.... Just how far can the Interstate Commerce Clause be stretched? Or, what does it mean to say that someone bears responsibility only for a bad outcome and not only for an act that happens under their watch that they could not have predicted. Lots of discussions of regulatory agencies.
There is reification / expansion of the concept that *what* gets decided is no more important than *who* decides it. If you have legislators that are mainly attorneys, whom else do you think laws will benefit?
He didn't correctly predict the Trump Administration, but he did correctly predict that a Republican president and Congress-- would not be any more helpful in rolling back the regulatory state.
Old wine in new bottles, for this reader.
We do get to learn / review a good number of technical terms. (Negligence vs. Strict liability. Private enforcement regime.) And the author is a good thinker. Who is this book for?
There is also a lot of overlap with a book by Kevin Williamson, ("The End is Near And It's Going to Be Awesome.") Murray talks about many of the same endpoints, but with slightly different spins. Williamson says to wait for the entire system to collapse under its own weight, and Charles Murray suggests that some of the obstructive Regulatory Agencies can be rolled back with enough strategy.
The way that this book differs from the other *titanic* texts on the subject is it the author proposes more concrete and workable solutions.
Very well-thought-out solutions.
Another interesting concept that this book brings is the fact that English people who came to the United States were from different parts of England and different periods in time and therefore very different people.
This was touched on in a way by Thomas Sowell in his "Black Rednecks and White Liberals," but a very terse and forceful description was given in this book around page 192. (Puritans. Cavaliers. Quakers. Scots-irish.)
It's also interesting that Murray has argued in "Coming Apart" that the large Latino underclass could make it such that the United States becomes another Argentina or Brazil. But then, in this book he argues that the diversity of the nation is the same way that it was before the WWI with large numbers of heterogeneous peoples that need to be left alone. He does put paid to the myth that the United States was ever culturally homogeneous.
I also wonder if he is being a bit optimistic in that more people will figure this out. The first point is that he noted that the television is on in the house of working-class people 32 hours per week. The second point is that I live in Michigan, where the price for automobile insurance is about 4 times what it is any place else in the country. And that situation has persisted since even before I could drive, and decades later it doesn't look like it's going to change-- in spite of the fact that *everybody* knows that they're suffering when they pay car insurance.
The book is in three parts:
1. Defining the problem
2. Proposing a solution
3. Why this time is propitious
There are several mentions of books that are helpful in passing, and I don't see why somebody could not pick up any four or five of them and read them. (Especially the Mancur Olson book.)
Verdict: Recommended at the new price.
Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2019
I'm not really sure what to think about this book.
On the one hand, I completely agree with what the author says. And it is good that he took the trouble to put the events in order in order to construct a narrative of how government power has become so overweening. Also, he does a good job with providing examples of the scale of the size of government over time. But on the other hand, it's not like the United States is really a unique or special case. A brilliant (but not well read) book by Joseph Tainter ("The Collapse of Complex Societies") details just even such as these.
On the other:
If you find an elderly man who happens to be dead in a hospital somewhere, there was a long mechanistic process that can explain the corpse that you would see in front of you. But, does it really matter?
In the same way that everybody ends up dead, a country or society or government will just make mistakes over time just by happenstance. And the net result is either collapse or some other type of diminishment. (China has been through multiple cycles of this, and they STILL have not found a way to get it right.)
I think that this general principle has been illustrated by Eric Hoffer. The True Believer. ("The preliminary work of undermining existing institutions, of familiarizing the masses with the idea of change, and of creating a receptivity to a new faith, can be done only by men who are, first and foremost, talkers or writers and are recognized as such by all.")
The stretched beyond recognition Interstate Commerce Clause makes an appearance, of course.
Much of this feels like an updating of Thomas Sowell's book ("Knowledge and Decisions," with better and more current data). A lot of the same time independent arguments, such as.... Just how far can the Interstate Commerce Clause be stretched? Or, what does it mean to say that someone bears responsibility only for a bad outcome and not only for an act that happens under their watch that they could not have predicted. Lots of discussions of regulatory agencies.
There is reification / expansion of the concept that *what* gets decided is no more important than *who* decides it. If you have legislators that are mainly attorneys, whom else do you think laws will benefit?
He didn't correctly predict the Trump Administration, but he did correctly predict that a Republican president and Congress-- would not be any more helpful in rolling back the regulatory state.
Old wine in new bottles, for this reader.
We do get to learn / review a good number of technical terms. (Negligence vs. Strict liability. Private enforcement regime.) And the author is a good thinker. Who is this book for?
There is also a lot of overlap with a book by Kevin Williamson, ("The End is Near And It's Going to Be Awesome.") Murray talks about many of the same endpoints, but with slightly different spins. Williamson says to wait for the entire system to collapse under its own weight, and Charles Murray suggests that some of the obstructive Regulatory Agencies can be rolled back with enough strategy.
The way that this book differs from the other *titanic* texts on the subject is it the author proposes more concrete and workable solutions.
Very well-thought-out solutions.
Another interesting concept that this book brings is the fact that English people who came to the United States were from different parts of England and different periods in time and therefore very different people.
This was touched on in a way by Thomas Sowell in his "Black Rednecks and White Liberals," but a very terse and forceful description was given in this book around page 192. (Puritans. Cavaliers. Quakers. Scots-irish.)
It's also interesting that Murray has argued in "Coming Apart" that the large Latino underclass could make it such that the United States becomes another Argentina or Brazil. But then, in this book he argues that the diversity of the nation is the same way that it was before the WWI with large numbers of heterogeneous peoples that need to be left alone. He does put paid to the myth that the United States was ever culturally homogeneous.
I also wonder if he is being a bit optimistic in that more people will figure this out. The first point is that he noted that the television is on in the house of working-class people 32 hours per week. The second point is that I live in Michigan, where the price for automobile insurance is about 4 times what it is any place else in the country. And that situation has persisted since even before I could drive, and decades later it doesn't look like it's going to change-- in spite of the fact that *everybody* knows that they're suffering when they pay car insurance.
The book is in three parts:
1. Defining the problem
2. Proposing a solution
3. Why this time is propitious
There are several mentions of books that are helpful in passing, and I don't see why somebody could not pick up any four or five of them and read them. (Especially the Mancur Olson book.)
Verdict: Recommended at the new price.
rpmiller's review against another edition
5.0
In "By the People", Charles Murray lays out where we stand as a country in the second decade of the twenty first century after several defining changes in the twentieth century, including reinterpretation of the general welfare and commerce clauses of the constitution (late 1937 to 1942), the lawless legal system (1950 to 1970), systematic corruption of political system (1970 to 1975) and finally institutional sclerosis. He presents a potential new front in moving forward from our current circumstances and describes how that and other forces could result in a broad rebuilding of individual liberty in the future of America. Well thought out with exceptional references, this book is worth reading.
xmastaflex's review
2.0
Trying to get outside my bubble. There are some valid arguments in here especially those about the legalized corruption in our government. However, many other arguments are either strawmen or they are completely anecdotal evidence.
Overall the book is well argued even if most of Murray's conclusions are incorrect.
Also, the middle of the book gets fairly boring because he talks for nearly more than a third of the book about government regulations. Murray's argument can be summed up by this: https://i.redd.it/yro4sbwviy201.jpg
Overall the book is well argued even if most of Murray's conclusions are incorrect.
Also, the middle of the book gets fairly boring because he talks for nearly more than a third of the book about government regulations. Murray's argument can be summed up by this: https://i.redd.it/yro4sbwviy201.jpg
derekdavis31's review against another edition
2.0
I'll make this simple in the way that Charles Murray did in this book. The pros and cons of the book balance each other out. While Murray has a clear writing style and writes under the premise that not everyone reading has a political science degree, his views are rather faulty and border on racism and homophobia, despite the surface level he presents in this book. His perspective gives a seemingly strong argument on the need for diversity and rebuilding liberty, but he fails to see the impact of diversity in this country and attempts to find excuses for supporting systemic racism and homophobia.
I'm being generous with my rating. The only thing I enjoyed was the writing style.
I'm being generous with my rating. The only thing I enjoyed was the writing style.
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