{"id":378,"date":"2014-02-18T09:59:34","date_gmt":"2014-02-18T09:59:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.timwyatt.ca\/test\/?p=378"},"modified":"2014-02-18T21:39:22","modified_gmt":"2014-02-18T21:39:22","slug":"book-review-the-great-degeneration-how-institutions-decay-and-economies-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.timwyatt.ca\/test\/?p=378","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Great Degeneration &ndash; How Institutions Decay and Economies Die"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/The-Great-Degeneration-Institutions-Economies\/dp\/1594205450\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1392731922&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=The+Great+Degeneration+%E2%80%93+How+Institutions+Decay+and+Economies+Die\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\"><b>The Great Degeneration \u2013 How Institutions Decay and Economies Die<\/b><\/a>, by Niall Ferguson, 2012, Penguin Press.<b>\u00a0\u00a0 <\/b>Having read some of Ferguson\u2019s other works (Civilization, Colossus, and others) this book is not a shock.\u00a0 His ideas are honed and rounded, and very much up to date.\u00a0 If you do not know his \u2018history\u2019, this book might shock you.\u00a0 \u201cPublic debt\u2026has become a way for the older generation to live at the expense of the young and unborn.\u00a0 Regulation has become dysfunctional to the point of increasing the fragility of the system.\u00a0 And civil society withers into a mere no man\u2019s land between corporate interests and big government.\u201d\u00a0 These three threads, debt, regulation\/state, and civil society, are all in the wrong place and Ferguson explores history (Adam Smiths\u2019 stationary state, Alexis de Tocqueville, and more) very well to show where this pattern has been seen before.\u00a0 From a political perspective this book, only 153 pages long, is scary.\u00a0 There are virtually no signs of any public body that is able to argue the case, let alone begin the change needed to \u201cfix\u201d our ills.\u00a0 We, the people, have become accustomed to the drug (we might call \u201cstatism\u201d) and we are hooked.\u00a0 I wish the book had been longer; I enjoy listening to Ferguson\u2019s ideas.\u00a0 But I guess his point is, at last, simple and does not need much more.\u00a0 If you have an interest in the economic, political and institutional malaise that we experience, you have to read this book.\u00a0 Maybe when enough of us have, we can start a new civil movement.\u00a0 More than recommended.\u00a0 15 out of 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Great Degeneration \u2013 How Institutions Decay and Economies Die, by Niall Ferguson, 2012, Penguin Press.\u00a0\u00a0 Having read some of Ferguson\u2019s other works (Civilization, Colossus, and others) this book is not a shock.\u00a0 His ideas&hellip;<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"readmore\" href=\"https:\/\/www.timwyatt.ca\/test\/?p=378\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pipes","comments-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timwyatt.ca\/test\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timwyatt.ca\/test\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timwyatt.ca\/test\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timwyatt.ca\/test\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timwyatt.ca\/test\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.timwyatt.ca\/test\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":379,"href":"https:\/\/www.timwyatt.ca\/test\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions\/379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timwyatt.ca\/test\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timwyatt.ca\/test\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timwyatt.ca\/test\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}