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I bought that book years ago, it was so stupid. It was like a naive teenager’s uninformed screed about how international trade, development and finance are intrinsically bad. I didn’t know about the fabulistic aspects of it, but that’s not surprising in the slightest.

Come to think of it, I think I still have it on a bookshelf somewhere. I should banish it to the same place I banish books that I’ve read because they seem interesting but are just right/wing agitprop (e.g., books that come to mind in this category were books about the over-expansion of the federal criminal code, the East German stasi and the dysfunctionality of San Francisco - I’m happy to have my perspective changed, but I don’t find that I’m very receptive to arguments that boil down to “your beliefs are stupid and that’s why these things are bad”).

Another notably stupid book that I bought was called “A History of the English Speaking Peoples” - I (foolishly) thought it was going to be about the remarkably resilient political systems and economies of US/UK/Can./Aus./NZ but it was basically a white supremacist tract. No thanks.



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