Reviews

Rigged: How Networks of Powerful Mates Rip Off Everyday Australians by Cameron Murray, Paul Frijters

jakepasseri's review

dark hopeful informative inspiring slow-paced

3.75

I thought the content concerning how the 'James' of Australia have ripped off the 'Sam's' was extremely high quality, I was overall disappointed in the solutions. While I thought it was good to point out how things like transparency won't be effective, but the actual reforms 'needed' were bad.

It references other countries and States where these reforms have been implemented, but often ignores the nuances of the reality within these countries. In it's most egregious, it somewhat contradicts itself and directly says breaking the law is good if the outcome is what the authors like. Furthermore, especially when talking about Uber and Supermarkets, many of these have become outdated, with Uber being co-opted into the 'Game of Mates' and Aldi also contributing to the current cost of living crisis in Australia.

For example, the book talks about how randomised 'citizens juries' would be extremely good because the 'James' of the world cannot co-opt them, but also tries to argue that the 'Game of Mates' is a natural tendency and, if given a chance, nearly everyone would join in (and show results from a test they performed, which I will admit was high quality). Surely, if you believe the latter, why wouldn't these random people also join in on this Game? 

In addition, the stuff about COVID (which was a shameless plug for another book) and immigrants (which was some weird push about how 'economically well off' immigrants won't join the Game, never mind that a lot of immigrants go into manual labour e.g. fruit-picking), felt extremely tacked on.

Overall, the book is extremely good at telling me the problems in current Australian society, but does a poor job at providing solutions.