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navyasinha 's review for:
Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto
by Aaron Bastani
3.5 stars
A very interesting and informative read. Bastani starts with the assumption (fact?) that the rapid changes in technologies will render capitalism, and even basic economics as we understand it, useless, and a new economic and political paradigm must soon take its place. His answer is fully automated luxury communism.
The book was a quick read - a manifesto more than a guide book (as the name suggests), with half of it dedicated to discussing disruptions in technologies that are leading towards a post-scarcity world and the other half laying the blueprint for an economic order that can cope with it and deliver maximum benefits.
Personally, I have mixed feelings about Bastani's core arguments. On one hand, some of his insights are very useful in describing some economic problems of even the present (market imposed rather than inevitable scarcity, the break-down of price mechanism when marginal cost of production starts to become negligible etc.) On the other, I don't fully buy a lot of beliefs that underpin his vision of the future. Particularly, I think that a reliance on techno-solutionism, with timely development in technology solving literally all problems, may be misguided.
But then, maybe I am suffering from what Bastani labels a 'constraint of imagination'. Which is also where I found this book the most interesting. While individual opinions about the exact solution may differ, Bastani convinced me that at least a radical re-imagination of the present order is necessary (and inevitable). We live in a different world, and we will live in a very different one still. Our method to understand and construct it also needs to be very different.
For that reason alone (though there are many more), I would recommend this book for everyone.
A very interesting and informative read. Bastani starts with the assumption (fact?) that the rapid changes in technologies will render capitalism, and even basic economics as we understand it, useless, and a new economic and political paradigm must soon take its place. His answer is fully automated luxury communism.
The book was a quick read - a manifesto more than a guide book (as the name suggests), with half of it dedicated to discussing disruptions in technologies that are leading towards a post-scarcity world and the other half laying the blueprint for an economic order that can cope with it and deliver maximum benefits.
Personally, I have mixed feelings about Bastani's core arguments. On one hand, some of his insights are very useful in describing some economic problems of even the present (market imposed rather than inevitable scarcity, the break-down of price mechanism when marginal cost of production starts to become negligible etc.) On the other, I don't fully buy a lot of beliefs that underpin his vision of the future. Particularly, I think that a reliance on techno-solutionism, with timely development in technology solving literally all problems, may be misguided.
But then, maybe I am suffering from what Bastani labels a 'constraint of imagination'. Which is also where I found this book the most interesting. While individual opinions about the exact solution may differ, Bastani convinced me that at least a radical re-imagination of the present order is necessary (and inevitable). We live in a different world, and we will live in a very different one still. Our method to understand and construct it also needs to be very different.
For that reason alone (though there are many more), I would recommend this book for everyone.