Review: 10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust Elites a Little More and the Masses a Little Less

10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust Elites a Little More and the Masses a Little Less by Garett Jones
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

During this whole book I found myself wondering:

A) What the author would make of Switzerland’s system, which is very different from what he is espousing, yet I think by any measure is a pretty successful one.

B) What Nassim Taleb would make of this book. I’m not 100% sure why, but I was very curious. 

The first part of the book was reminiscent of what Fareed Zakaria wrote about in an older book (I think “Future of Freedom”), wherein he shows how government bodies that are somewhat less democratic (the Fed, The court system, etc.) are more respected than, say, congress. The second part touched more on what the author calls an “epistocracy”. This sounds like one of those things that sound great in theory but are almost impossible to fulfill in reality. In fact, he seems short of details as to how to achieve this epistocracy. 

I found the chapter on Singapore quite interesting, as well as the fact that “The Italian law of June 30, 1912, granted the vote to illiterate people, but only on the condition that they had reached their thirtieth year or had fulfilled their military obligations.” (p. 107). 

View all my reviews

Review: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book should probably be translated for the US audience. It talks at great length about "Liberalism", which many Americans probably take to mean 'left-leaning', or 'democrat', while it is used in the sense (used outside the US) of Free markets, Democracies, Freedom of speech, etc. To be fair, he addresses this a little ways in, but it would have probably been more clear to just find another term for the US edition.

Once again, Harari's grasp of economics (or lack thereof) sort of annoys me. As an example of how humans may not be needed anymore, not even as consumers, he discusses how a mining company could be providing metals for a robotic company, which in turn produces robots for the same mining company, and so on back and forth. Obviously, if this were the whole sum of the economy then this economy wouldn't survive. It would basically be one giant ponzi scheme of an economy.

Aside from this, however, it was once again an excellent book. As with his others, it is fascinating, and it made me wish I could get everyone else to read it.

Some of my notes:
Democracy has learned, from communism, to take everyone into account. Before it only meant well to-do men from their general area. Example: The Netherlands fought for 3 years not to lose their freedom to the Nazis. As soon as they regained it, however, they fought for 30 years to take this freedom away from Indonesia.
The future will likely be much more similar to Huxley's Brave New World than to Orwell's 1984.
Terrorists are actually very bad at destruction. But they are very good, as the word suggests, at scaring people with as little destruction as possible (highly targeted, maximum impact). Reactions to terrorism often cause more damage and disruption than any attack itself.

I probably could've done without the final section about how he discovered Vipassana yoga, although I understand that's his conclusion to the whole book (more or less), in that we should understand ourselves better, since all the algorithms and bots are going to be understanding us very very well in the near future, and can easily gain an upper hand.

View all my reviews