Valuable insight turned into neoliberal politics
2 stars
There is some substantially insightful information in this book about land, property and individual ownership. But the solutions to the information brought up is watered down and mostly disempowering. For anyone new to this area, this book can give you some excellent groundwork about why individual property ownership needs to be disrupted. Unfortunately, the author falls short on the solution, and basically suggests how we need to change the way we tax people, while weaving in various “inspirational quotes” from Gandhi, “Native American proverb” and others. It’s possible the publisher insisted on watering down the content, but it was really a letdown. Solely focusing on obscure policy changes as solutions without any suggestion as to how do this work as a general population is saying “try voting for someone who hopefully read this book”, which is kinda pointless imo. even if I was convinced by their policy and new ways …
There is some substantially insightful information in this book about land, property and individual ownership. But the solutions to the information brought up is watered down and mostly disempowering. For anyone new to this area, this book can give you some excellent groundwork about why individual property ownership needs to be disrupted. Unfortunately, the author falls short on the solution, and basically suggests how we need to change the way we tax people, while weaving in various “inspirational quotes” from Gandhi, “Native American proverb” and others. It’s possible the publisher insisted on watering down the content, but it was really a letdown. Solely focusing on obscure policy changes as solutions without any suggestion as to how do this work as a general population is saying “try voting for someone who hopefully read this book”, which is kinda pointless imo. even if I was convinced by their policy and new ways of taxing suggestions, when it comes to land and property activism, there is SO much that can be done by people on the ground, we don’t actually need policy change. I would have appreciated the author at the very least acknowledging this. They also brought up Israel’s colonization of Palestine but seem to have missed the point, and again offering watered down and mostly pointless insight. they also bring up communism and clearly have no idea what communism is. To be fair it was first published in 2015 and the 2020 version had a note from the author (at the end) that suggests they now have more radical thoughts on the subject of land but I would have liked a chapter that contained them.