Valet Reader

Common Wealth, Economics for a Crowded Planet by Jeffrey Sachs

No, I will not engage in a debate with you. I may have been a member of the middle school debate team but frankly I don’t have the time to write down my notes on index cards these days. Instead I will write my brief, nonsensical review to your book on my blog and hope that I either a.) inspire some people to read it or b.) dissuade others.

Thank You,

The Valet

As I was walking through my office’s reception area I couldn’t help but notice the cover of Newsweek: the caption “Everything you think you know about Iran is Wrong” accompanied by a frowning (or scowling) President Aminijhad (depending on how you look at it, I suppose). In case you’re wondering, this was some time ago. Anyhow, I found it somewhat ironic that without reading the article, but after reading this book I found something profound in the caption. Sure, most Americans do not know nearly enough about Iran, Afghanistan and other third world countries. Nor do most Americans understand how or why these countries are in the perceived perilous state they are in. But if you are indeed curious, Sachs does a very nice job presenting his arguments as to why things are the way they are in these countries and what the global community should be doing to help.

Now, I could easily be wrong about this but from what I gather the underlying notion of the book is that the world has to come together to fight the battles of the future. By battles I mean environmental degradation, overpopulation and poverty issues. While I found the book to be somewhat dry and convoluted (bear in mind that I read at a mind blowing speed, and I realize my reviews can be equally convoluted); it was also very informative. However, I kept on finding parallels between this book and Jared Diamond’s Collapse. Of course this is unfair, as Diamond’s book largely focuses on environmental degradation and Sachs’ work is more broad.

Not being entirely sure of how to review this book I am going to point out a few of the arguments or statements which I found the most compelling.

Pg. 45 – Sachs asserts that it is not Earth running out of natural resources that is our planet’s biggest problem, rather, it is the market forces that are leading to their misuse and demise. Touché capitalism, touché.

Pgs. 96-100 – Carbon management is discussed in more detail than I’m guessing you could have ever imagined it would be. The topic is somewhat redundant these days but is still interesting. It all boils down to this: start riding your damn bike!!

Pg. 112 – Still focusing on carbon, Sachs points out that the global costs of keeping CO2 levels at their present state is less than 1% of the worlds annual income. Thankfully he recognizes that allocating those costs is the more controversial issue at hand . With the US deserving the most blame for the rise in CO2 the odds of reaching an agreeable allocation are slim, will we as a nation be willing to foot the largest bill? Yeah, pretty unlikely.

Pg. 174 – It is no lie that in order to get the impoverished out of poverty they need to stop having babies. Brad and Angelina can only adopt so many before they will become impoverished themselves (I put that number somewhere around 1.2 million).

Pg. 191 – “It is ironic that the Bush administration’s attitudes toward family planning are in many ways more fundamentalist than Iran’s.” I like the brutal honesty here, thank goodness seňor Bush is gone.

Pg. 212 – My favorite subject is broached: geography. I dog-eared (not really, since I don’t like doing that to my books) several pages here because they were so interesting. It’s somewhat obvious that geographically, some countries have advantages and should perhaps bequeath some of their good fortune to those places that are less fortunate. The sub-Saharan part of Africa should be more like Antarctica, where no one lives ’cause life there is just not sustainable.

Pg. 272 – Uh, the United States spends nearly as much on military as the rest of the world combined. Sure, I appreciate the sense of security but come on… spread the love a little. Sachs makes a grand point that if some of that money went towards helping poor, troubled countries (where most of “our” trouble stems from) we wouldn’t need to spend so much on the military! Then again Somali pirates wouldn’t be wearing eye patches, you win some, you lose some.

And lastly pg. 305 – One of the most inspiring side stories in the book was of Muhammad Yunnus of Bangladesh and his use of micro credit. To summarize would be too much (as if this review isn’t long enough already) but you should look him up and see what he’s up to.

There you have it; I’ve given you my favorite parts of the book. I enjoyed it on the whole but it was a struggle to get through at times. Give it a shot if you’re interested in developmental economics, otherwise it could possibly make for good bathroom reading as its broken up pretty well into short parts.

Ps. Thank you Mr. Sachs for making me feel guilty about that long, hot shower I took this morning