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stevencmoeller 's review for:
I love David Graeber. Given all my other attitudes about the world, he might have found that alarming. But Graeber’s sharp, funny, and sometimes profound. He actually got his hands dirty in the real world. I almost always learn something from him. And whenever I read Graeber I think for a moment about converting to fanatical Graeberism. “I should be more like this man,” I think.
All of which is why I report with reluctance that I did not like this book. Oh, the first section is great. I was stoked. But in time I found my enthusiasm growing insincere and eventually, despite some effort to browbeat myself into liking the book, disappearing altogether. In the middle of this book is an extended riff to the effect that the financialization of the American economy has empowered bureaucrats to smother necessary, ambitious research and development (Graber’s argument that the tax laws encourage this is more right than he knows), and that the government encouraged the reorientation of the economy away from manufacturing and consumer goods and towards finance, telecommunications, and advertising for generally terrible reasons.
I’m not sure what to do with this. I agree that in various ways the government encourages corporations to do stock buybacks and pursue other schemes for boosting quarterly earnings at the corporation’s, and society’s, expense. And the tech industry’s sweaty obsession with presenting itself as morally evolved almost perfectly mirrors the extent to which so many of its most prominent companies are really just defense contractors or, like SpaceX, defense-adjacent government contractors. But I am no closer to understanding why bureaucracy as such is responsible for these developments than I was when I began the book. Much simpler to say that we elected the wrong leaders who enacted bad policies and that it turned out flying cars were a terrible idea.
I was rolling my eyes at the appendix, which is really a kind of angry rant about Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, which Graeber characterizes as a fascist attack on him and Occupy Wall Street. Nolan said it was vaguely inspired by the French Revolution, but Graeber literally accuses Nolan of lying about this. I guess I’d be mad if I thought a movie was about me, specifically. And yeah, sure, the movie’s politics—like those of every other comic book story—are a mess. But I couldn’t help but think of the great philosopher, dril: “and another thing: im not mad. please dont put in the newspaper that i got mad.”
If you want some lighter Graeber, read Bullshit Jobs, which I loved.
All of which is why I report with reluctance that I did not like this book. Oh, the first section is great. I was stoked. But in time I found my enthusiasm growing insincere and eventually, despite some effort to browbeat myself into liking the book, disappearing altogether. In the middle of this book is an extended riff to the effect that the financialization of the American economy has empowered bureaucrats to smother necessary, ambitious research and development (Graber’s argument that the tax laws encourage this is more right than he knows), and that the government encouraged the reorientation of the economy away from manufacturing and consumer goods and towards finance, telecommunications, and advertising for generally terrible reasons.
I’m not sure what to do with this. I agree that in various ways the government encourages corporations to do stock buybacks and pursue other schemes for boosting quarterly earnings at the corporation’s, and society’s, expense. And the tech industry’s sweaty obsession with presenting itself as morally evolved almost perfectly mirrors the extent to which so many of its most prominent companies are really just defense contractors or, like SpaceX, defense-adjacent government contractors. But I am no closer to understanding why bureaucracy as such is responsible for these developments than I was when I began the book. Much simpler to say that we elected the wrong leaders who enacted bad policies and that it turned out flying cars were a terrible idea.
I was rolling my eyes at the appendix, which is really a kind of angry rant about Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, which Graeber characterizes as a fascist attack on him and Occupy Wall Street. Nolan said it was vaguely inspired by the French Revolution, but Graeber literally accuses Nolan of lying about this. I guess I’d be mad if I thought a movie was about me, specifically. And yeah, sure, the movie’s politics—like those of every other comic book story—are a mess. But I couldn’t help but think of the great philosopher, dril: “and another thing: im not mad. please dont put in the newspaper that i got mad.”
If you want some lighter Graeber, read Bullshit Jobs, which I loved.