A thoughtful, if overextended, critique of big government.
A debut book presents a diagnosis of the U.S.’s current political ailments, coupled with a litany of suggested reforms.
Stockdell begins his study with a grim appraisal of America’s current state of health; it’s not merely that the economy is in tatters, but that the political class is no longer generally trusted to trigger a turnaround. The principal problem seems to be monstrously bloated government, practically ineffective, fiscally prodigal, and highly vulnerable to corruption. The author analyzes the inherent failings of a centralized bureaucracy while reflecting on his own experiences as a civil servant. Stockdell particularly objects to government’s heavy-handed attempts to either coerce behavior or provide the kinds of services best offered by the private sector. He discusses the psychological motivations behind big government ideology, which largely embrace the impatient impulse to technocratically solve every problem quickly, or the self-aggrandizement of government officials. The author also furnishes a broad historical context, detailing the way leftist politics in the U.S. has borrowed from the failed legacy of European political theory: “In recent years, the progressive ideology has morphed into a form of socialism, which believes in the absolute dominance of the government and radical redistribution of wealth.” Ultimately, the nation’s problems are so systemically deep, he recommends a Constitutional Convention that, among other things, makes it easier for the public to directly initiate Constitutional reform. He suggests some amendments, too: for example, term limits for members of Congress and federal judges and limits on campaign spending. This is a wide-ranging analysis that covers everything from gun control to the Electoral College. The author certainly has his political commitments (the book is inspired by Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, which advocates individualism), but each section is written with impressive bipartisan moderation. Stockdell often anticipates rational objections to his policy preferences and furnishes reasonable responses to them. The book covers far too much ground, and so the work turns out to be pithy rather than deep, something one might anticipate from the immodest title. It can also be delightfully quirky: there’s an extended aside on postmodern thought. There isn’t much new here philosophically, but the author contributes some concrete policy proposals worthy of consideration.
A thoughtful, if overextended, critique of big government.Pub Date: June 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5245-0817-3
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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