Frank Hecker - Interests - Nonfiction Read
In the past I didn't read a lot of nonfiction,
but have been reading a great deal over the past few years.
Some of the things I'd read and enjoyed the last time I updated this
page (several years ago):
- Virginia Postrel, The Future and its Enemies.
An attempt to generalize aspects of classical liberalism and modern
libertarianism into an overall "dynamism" movement.
I am sympathetic to her arguments
but am not totally convinced by the book;
like much of the "Forbes school" of public policy,
it handles the easy questions
(yes, over-officious bureaucrats shouldn't harass innocent businesspeople)
but is for the most part silent on the hard ones.
In particular, Postrel skates over questions like
- Is democratic government actually legitimate?
- To what extent (and for what purposes) can (and should) democracies
legitimately tax and regulate individuals and businesses?
- How should such decisions be made in a democracy?
It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Postrel is fuzzy on these issues
because she wants to have things both ways:
She wants to be able to claim a wider level of support and acceptability for
her positions,
while not doing anything to offend her core libertarian constituency.
- Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal
Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism.
I bought this at the same time I bought Postrel's book,
and it was an interesting companion to it.
You might think from the title and topic that this book would represent what
Postrel calls the "stasist" position (think "reactionary socialist").
Actually it is much more interesting than that;
Sennett does not reflexively oppose either change or capitalism,
but he is insistent on the need to be honest about the new
workplace contract employees are being exhorted and encouraged to accept.
- Amy Guttmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement.
This is an excellent attempt to outline ways in which democracies can
fruitfully approach complex and divisive moral issues.
I believe it has applicability in other contexts as well.
Unlike Postrel's book, this book is not afraid to address hard questions
of social policy.
Some other works I've enjoyed reading in the past few years:
- Theodore Zeldin, An Intimate History of Humanity
(interesting meditations on the evolution of personal and social concepts
like romance, individualism, etc.)
- Robert Frank and Philip Cook, The Winner-Take-All Society
(why fewer people supposedly make more money nowadays)
- John Holland, Hidden Order
(a quite nice "popularization without condescension"
of theories concerning complex adaptive systems)