Take a photo of a barcode or cover
pascalthehoff 's review for:
The People's Republic of Walmart: How the World's Biggest Corporations are Laying the Foundation for Socialism
by Michal Rozworski, Leigh Phillips
informative
medium-paced
A planned economy is also just big data. This is the very compelling argument at the core of this book. Real socialist economies faltered because computing technology wasn’t on par with these nations’ ambitions yet. When you look at companies like Walmart or Amazon, this popular argument makes a lot of sense. The book shows how these national and global enterprises are basically their own self-contained nation-like institutions. Both in scale and in the versaility of things they produce and distribute.
Our modern reality is: Big Data is better at predicting and steering the economy than the invisible hand of the market. Even capitalist companies know this, when they try their utmost to analyse their own big data for business advantages. The question is: Will we leave big data in the hand of companies and create a more authoritarian capitalism in which companies know everything about every person’s actions and desires? Or will we use this knowledge to create a more democratic social and economic system?
As long as the book engages in these questions, it’s a very interesting read. Despite its title it goes beyond the confines of Walmart and explains these concepts in a larger context. If anything, there is not enough Walmart, Amazon and the likes in here.
There are too many passages where the book goes through the basic history of neoliberalism and real socialism again. Yes, this historical background info relates directly to the core topic of the book, but it makes the overall impression remain quite unfocused. This could have been better if it focused more on its core aspects with even more depth.
Our modern reality is: Big Data is better at predicting and steering the economy than the invisible hand of the market. Even capitalist companies know this, when they try their utmost to analyse their own big data for business advantages. The question is: Will we leave big data in the hand of companies and create a more authoritarian capitalism in which companies know everything about every person’s actions and desires? Or will we use this knowledge to create a more democratic social and economic system?
As long as the book engages in these questions, it’s a very interesting read. Despite its title it goes beyond the confines of Walmart and explains these concepts in a larger context. If anything, there is not enough Walmart, Amazon and the likes in here.
There are too many passages where the book goes through the basic history of neoliberalism and real socialism again. Yes, this historical background info relates directly to the core topic of the book, but it makes the overall impression remain quite unfocused. This could have been better if it focused more on its core aspects with even more depth.