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blrobin2's Reviews (550)
This book is a labyrinth presented as a learning path. It has multiple dead ends and frustrating skims over material that made me rage quit. The authors do not expect the reader to understand everything the first time read the book. They do not expect you to finish every exercise (they state this much from the outset). The authors, though, do not state WHICH things they do not expect you to understand the first time or WHICH exercises you won’t be able to complete. Sure, that will vary from reader to reader, but if you don’t heed this warning, you will waste too much time spinning out over trivial bits.
My recommendation is this: if you don’t understand something by the end of the chapter, Google it. You might end up ahead of the game sometimes, but you may find another explanation that may better suit your learning style.
Don’t sweat needing a break here and there. I took several throughout, and I came back to the book ready to take on another part.
Overall, the book is one whose approach I could not appreciate until I had finished it. In later sections, the book explained most frustrations I experienced. The book knows this and tries to tell you this. But being a 1200+ page book, you will have doubts. Yes, you need to wait until the end to understand I/O and Exceptions. I appreciated the prior chapters’ knowledge when digging into those monsters.
My recommendation is this: if you don’t understand something by the end of the chapter, Google it. You might end up ahead of the game sometimes, but you may find another explanation that may better suit your learning style.
Don’t sweat needing a break here and there. I took several throughout, and I came back to the book ready to take on another part.
Overall, the book is one whose approach I could not appreciate until I had finished it. In later sections, the book explained most frustrations I experienced. The book knows this and tries to tell you this. But being a 1200+ page book, you will have doubts. Yes, you need to wait until the end to understand I/O and Exceptions. I appreciated the prior chapters’ knowledge when digging into those monsters.
A comprehensive attempt at writing out how a socialist economy could look in the 20th century. Being now in the 21st century, where we feel the pains of capitalism on people and the environment as strongly as ever, this book would need few updates. You should go into this book recognizing that this framework is not a set of minor revisions, but a complete overhaul of how a government would operate and how people would live within it. It is, in some ways, ideological and may feel impossible to implement in a country like the United States (the author is British and focuses on England). But idealism has always been at the heart of socialism, along with the belief that such widespread change is possible.
I do have questions and criticisms, mostly pertaining to the implementation details:
1. I believe the author is too confident in algorithms as the great mediators and managers of the economy. Algorithms are incredible in theory, but as with all software, are left to human hands to implement and therefore subject to human error.
2. The book does little to outright address the existence of people who cannot perform labor due to disability, limiting such provisioning to the elderly and children. That said, their framework can easily be adapted to accommodate them, and perhaps this is one area where the book could be updated for today.
3. How do we accurately report labor performed? In theory, we can adapt time cards and other methods used currently but all of those are subject to "fudging". I suppose there would be some oversight over this, but we don't get a good idea of what this looks like.
I imagine a more economically-minded person reading this may not share the same questions I do, and may see more wrong with its proposals. Overall, the book is a refreshing attempt to go beyond the theory where so much Leftist ideology exists and into the realm of possible implementations.
I do have questions and criticisms, mostly pertaining to the implementation details:
1. I believe the author is too confident in algorithms as the great mediators and managers of the economy. Algorithms are incredible in theory, but as with all software, are left to human hands to implement and therefore subject to human error.
2. The book does little to outright address the existence of people who cannot perform labor due to disability, limiting such provisioning to the elderly and children. That said, their framework can easily be adapted to accommodate them, and perhaps this is one area where the book could be updated for today.
3. How do we accurately report labor performed? In theory, we can adapt time cards and other methods used currently but all of those are subject to "fudging". I suppose there would be some oversight over this, but we don't get a good idea of what this looks like.
I imagine a more economically-minded person reading this may not share the same questions I do, and may see more wrong with its proposals. Overall, the book is a refreshing attempt to go beyond the theory where so much Leftist ideology exists and into the realm of possible implementations.
I came into the book with no knowledge of the book, the author, or the subject material. I found myself laughing in places, disgusted in others. The humor is gallows humor, and the subject matter throughout is so bleak that it must have satirical intent. It's one of those books where it took getting to the end for me to have an idea of the author's intent. I think that struggle is part of the experience, so I won't muse on what I think that might be.
Maybe one of the most essential sci-fi reads for today's political climate, where the pains of capitalism are more strongly felt, and people's misunderstandings about communism/socialism keep basic conversations at a stand-still. It would be hard to call this book an outright argument for communism, but it does provide some perspective in a way few non-fiction books seem able to.
From a narrative standpoint, the book lags in places, mostly where the plot has to make advances that aren't backed by particular ideas. And like many of Le Guin's books, the characters themselves are not particularly complex, as the story is all in service to the ideas discussed. Still, this shouldn't dissuade anyone from enjoying the book.
From a narrative standpoint, the book lags in places, mostly where the plot has to make advances that aren't backed by particular ideas. And like many of Le Guin's books, the characters themselves are not particularly complex, as the story is all in service to the ideas discussed. Still, this shouldn't dissuade anyone from enjoying the book.
