Completed: 7/6/2024
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: I am not certain, but I think I read a review
Review:
The first half of this book is pretty harrowing describing the life and death struggle between technical progress and the underclasses. I almost stopped reading it. I was growing weary of hearing how poorly humans treat one-another. It is enough to say it happens and perhaps offer an example or two, but the endless litany was deadening. Fortunately we hit Malthus. I absolutely hate Malthus. These guys agree and demonstrated how wrong Malthus was and how harmful his concepts were to society in general (not to mention twentieth century debaters). I have to admit that I kind of reveled. Not a lot. Definitely some. That saved this book and kept me reading. The back portions of the book are pretty harrowing as well (they address Chinese monitoring and control policies that are terrible). At this point, though, they did not go into detailed examples and it was possible to accept without vomiting. The last few chapters offer some thoughts on where to go with progress so as not to destroy society including a discussion of UBI (which they, broadly, do not support). Interesting stuff that is a tad dated, but definitely not outdated.
