Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism
Author: George Soros
List Price: $26.00
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ISBN: 1586480197
Publisher: PublicAffairs (07 November, 2000)
Sales Rank: 67,124
Average Customer Rating: 3.74 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
Financial Speculators Against Libertarianism!
Here are two reasons to read this book -- 1) Learn why George Soros, one of the world's wealthiest men, a billionaire financial speculator, says that dogmatic belief in the so-called "free market" is every bit as dangerous as a comparably dogmatic belief in Marxism-Leninism (a topic Soros knows something about, given that he grew up under a Marxist-Leninist government in Eastern Europe).
2) Learn about the philosopher Karl Popper, a beacon of rationality in a tribalistic world. Soros is an intellectual follower of Popper, author of the renowned "The Open Society and Its Enemies," and Soros attempts to apply Popper's thinking to the current crisis of global capitalism. Whether he draws the correct conclusion in every case is less the point than the serious thinking involved. Popper is widely misunderstood to be an advocate of the free market. What he is actually in favor of is freedom of thought -- skepticism of any received dogma, including the dogma of the Free Market, to which many now say There Is No Alternative.
Rubbish, says Popper, and so says Soros. A legal, regulatory framework is required. Without the appropriate regulation, the result is the "gangster capitalism" of Russia, and of Enron. Along with Nobel Prize-winning economists Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz among others, Soros is absolutely right in his basic point, and is making a contribution to the construction of an appropriate institutional architecture for an increasingly global society.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Precarious and Fragile - our financial world is not a given
The real message here is that the our prosperity and our easy way of life is not guaranteed by our being members of a rich and productive society. There are real reasons, embedded in human nature, why our modern economy has teetered on the brink of collapse several times in the last fifteen years. Read this book together with "Maestro : Alan Greenspan's Fed and the American Economic Boom" to understand that it has been repeatedly left up to a small number of people to respond to genuine crises with risky fixes to keep our financial system from collapse. Soros' application of "reflexivity" to market behaviour helps us understand that this will happen again and again. Someday the right people won't be there or the risky fix will not work. Whether Soros' call for international banking authorities and guarantees is feasible is an important question that won't be answered until a lot more people understand that all it will take is time and normal human behaviour to bring it all crashing down.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Poor book, self-serving & convicted for insider trading
This book is self-serving. One must look at some of the people Soros funds with his money including the Democratic Party and people involved in gun control/confiscation in the United States. If you think gun control is a good idea, check out what has happened to the crime rate after guns were banned in the UK.Anyway, Soros was convicted of insider trading in France in late 2002. He is appealing and claims he is innocent. A lot of people in jail also claim they are innocent. Avoid this one.
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