From the Reviews

Every so often, I'll link to book reviews that have caught my eye and where the titles will join an already impossibly long Amazon wish list.  My first pick is The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth by Benjamin M.Friedman, reviewed in Foreign Affairs by Joseph Stiglitz.  The book has two targets.  On the one hand there are the proponents of the populist anti-growth literature who are sharply critical of the impact of growth on poverty and the environment. On the other hand there are the naive cheerleaders of hyper-globalization, such as the author's namesake, the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.  The book is about whether specific policies can produce a kind of sustainable growth whose benefits are more equitably shared.

In the New Statesman Edward Skidelsky reviews Earthly Powers: religion and politics in Europe from the French revolution to the Great War by Michael Burleigh (whose The Third Reich: A New History was quite brilliant).  The book tells the story of how the christian Churches in Europe were incapable of holding back the tide of secularism and the rise of powerful civic structures that ended the church's dominance in civil society.  Another strand in the narrative is how the major political movements of the 19th century, republicanism, nationalism, socialism, came to be imbued with a quasi-religious fervour. Much attention is given to how Catholicism tried to act as a bulwark against this type of "religious" secularism. 

Religious fanaticism of a different kind is the subject of a review by Paul Baumann of Opus Dei: The First Objective Look Behind the Myths and Reality of the Most Controversial Force in the Catholic Church that appears in the Washington Monthly.  I get the impression that the book would be a good source of information but is vitiated by trying too hard to be balanced and fair, which leads to a lot of reportage of the "he said, she said" variety.  This probably leads the author to be less critical of the organisation than would be warranted both by the facts and by the author's liberal Catholic stance.  Personally, I still cannot get over the fact that there is a member of Britain's Labour cabinet, Ruth Kelly, who is a supernumerary of the organisation. 

Comments

[Frank Neary]

Gerry,

this is a fine didactic blog, if I may say so.

On the topic of economic growth, have you a view on the idea that pursuit of economic growth as an end is accelerating global overpopulation; increasing the actual quantum of human misery; resulting in unquantifiable future risks and real environmental degradation.

If Malthus were theorising today, what might he be saying?

[Gerry]

Didactic eh? Well just so long as it's not sententious...

On your question, I'm critical of the view that growth is always good. We need to look at alternative economic indicators. I wouldn't describe myself as a card-carrying neo-Malthusian but I would be concerned with overpopulation. I have no time for the deep green, anti growth position. I'm an optimist in that I believe that better public policy in terms of regulating the market, especially at international level, will lead to a more sustainable type of growth. Good governance generally is the key to progress.

[Frank Neary]

Gerry,

sententious is a word I like but a quality that grates, and I don't believe it applies to you. However, the Freeman column in the Irish Independent Business Section on Thursday's is one feast of sententiousness I do enjoy, because it also contains a lot of very useful thoughts. I wonder would the Indo license Freeman's sentences for use on desk calendars, mugs or t-shirts.

I agree about good governance and regulated markets, though the issue of effective controls from above on sovereign governments arises. Will Hutton and Anthony Giddens put together a book a few years ago, called 'On The Edge', which discussed some of these things. A key point was that we are seeing not so much 'globalisation' as 'American globalisation'. I'm not sure that there's a difference, though lefties might choose the term 'American economic imperialism'.

One angle on growth and population is the apparent fact that affluence brings societies to a point where individuals reduce or abandon the reproductive urge. Coinciding with this is large-scale migration from poorer regions to fill the void, leaving behind a skewed and dependent demographic. At the same time, entrenched welfare and housing systems in the developed countries can also be 'supporting' an anomalous non-working sector of the population, as well as attracting migrants, some with spurious 'refugee' stories.