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- Changed my life
- Required Reading for the Embattled Entrepreneur
- Moving onward and upward after a setback
- So, You Lost?
- smart is mine, and mine is smart " live with that every day
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When Smart People Fail: Rebuilding Yourself for Success
Carole Hyatt , and
Linda Gottlieb
Manufacturer: Penguin Books
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ASIN: 0140178112 |
Customer Reviews:
Changed my life.......2004-08-11
This book was really eye-opening. The book was so encouraging. I believe this book will help many people.
Required Reading for the Embattled Entrepreneur.......2002-09-16
Failure among the ambitious, upwardly mobile, educated and intelligent of our modern, industrialized society often comes across as being more devastating, more defining, and more frightening than it actually is. What in actuality defines us is not the number of our failures, but how we deal with our failure, how we look upon it, and most importantly, how we either use our failure or allow our failures to define us.
Hyatt and Gottlieb have written an excellent text on professional/career failure. The authors start the book by imparting intrepid examples both personal and private, of the emotional processes associated with failure. They accurately describe (often in painful and excruciating detail) the feelings of fear, isolation, shame and remorse associated with losing a job, status, money or some combination of the three. One can not only relate to the loss of purpose, the punctured egos, and the declining sense of self of those who have failed professionally, but also can actually feel as if it is happening to him or her- for it at some point has happened to him or her. They emphatically stress that career failure is something that eventually touches every professional, in some cases sooner, and in others, later. In this way, they show that failure has no prejudices, and everyone is a card-carrying member of this club, whether they realize it or not. As such, in dealing with failure, it is extremely important for the individual to realize that he or she is not alone in the experience, even if our greater society compels us to put up a strong front and pretend that nothing is really wrong. In order to healthily deal with failure, the authors emphasize the importance of understanding the meaning of failure in both the personal and the societal context, and elaborate upon how the feelings associated with failure unfold in the individual. Many people define themselves based on their occupation, their professional affiliation, or their status in life, and it comes as no surprise that these are the people hardest hit by career failure. Those of us who have cultivated other sides of our personality, such as those of us who live for our weekend hobbies, or those of us that are family or community oriented, tend to handle career failure much better, and can even take it in stride. Although many readers and those who have experienced failure or are currently experiencing failure may not believe it, failure actually gives people options, which the authors not only demonstrate, but also help the reader identify and ultimately take advantage of in later chapters.
In the first part of the book, one chapter each is devoted to defining the characteristics of failure at the level of the individual and the society, dealing with the feelings, which occur in stages, associated with failure, how our career failures can affect those closest to us, and how men and women respond to career failure. The second part of the book focuses on taking failure in stride, and offers a comprehensive strategy for personal reinvention after suffering a career failure. Arguably the most important part of the book, this section devotes one comprehensive chapter to each of the following topics: discovering why one has failed, gleaning from the failure some positive knowledge by re-interpreting the events leading up to the failure, recognizing and casting off old and inappropriate labels and finding new ones, expanding one's career choices, and making the transition from the old professional to the new, centered and focused individual. The authors also include in this section of the book a bonus chapter that showcases two successfully reinvented individuals, and elaborates upon the nature of their failure, how they dealt with failure, and the process of their reinvention. Each chapter in the second part of the book provides the reader with powerful tactics to build a new, improved person from career failure, and allows one to rise triumphantly out of the ashes of failure, much like the proverbial phoenix. The third and final part of the book, entitled `Towards Real Success', helps the reader to win the internal battle associated with failure. While the second part of the book helps to outwardly reinvent the individual for career success, the final section of the book helps the individual to cultivate a new perspective, a new outlook- on career failure. This part of the book encourages the reader to look upon failure as a learning experience, and as such, helps one to regard failure as a temporary setback that one can learn from.
The authors have written a truly empowering book, one that entrepreneurs and professionals must read and keep alongside all the other books on career and entrepreneurial success, as there inevitably will be one or more notable, spectacular and in some cases unfortunately public failures on the path to a successful career journey. In the end, I can only say that there is no shame in taking a risk, giving one's all, and failing, and I wholeheartedly believe that true shame results from failing to try, failing to risk, fearing change, and failing to grow. These, I truly believe, are the things that comprise the regrets in one's life.
Moving onward and upward after a setback.......2002-02-14
I picked up this book after being let go from a F50 company late last year, and it has been a lifesaver as I've navigated unfamiliar territory. It lays out the stages most people experience when they've been fired, downsized, or eliminated -- shock, fear, anger & blame, shame, and despair. It addresses how failure changes the balance of power in a relationship, and how it affects men and women differently. It then moves to how we reinvent ourselves -- identifying the cause of failure, reinterpreting the event, relabeling yourself, and getting unstuck. There are numerous stories, including the authors' own, about failing and ultimately coming back better and stronger. One quote especially resonated with me: David Brown (he produced The Sting and Jaws, among other Hollywood blockbusters) was fired three times from top jobs. "Each time, [he] was stunned. And each time he never stopped to analyze what had caused him to be fired in the first place. Only after the third time did he begin to examine his working behavior. Why was he always running after corporate jobs...when in the end they held neither safety nor a degree of control over one's fate?" Whether you feel that corporate life is truly your calling, or you yearn for something different, this book can help you push past self-imposed limitations and re-invent your career in a unique and satisfying way.
So, You Lost?.......2001-04-09
If you are having problems confronting a business defeat (whether you were fired, lost your business, or "failed" in your career), this is the book for you.
If your setback is affecting your health, your marriage, your friendships, there is hope.
If you have been moping around the house for a year or more, read this book.
If you've tried and tried to "move past" your personal problems, buy this book now.
If you have been searching for an answer, this is it.
Read this book.
smart is mine, and mine is smart " live with that every day.......2000-07-11
first of all , i want to thank MR.Fischer, who sent me the book, and i will never forget that. When smart people fail is the message of every one think he is fail in some thing but the true is YOU ARE not failure, till you think you are failure. so believe in your self and take RISK. you are smart.
Customer Reviews:
A Must Read for Everyone.......2007-05-17
I work as a Business Coach and Life Coach and refer clients to this book regularly. This is an older book, originally published in 1987, but its message is timeless. The authors talk about success and failure in a unique and thought-provoking way. Their primary point is that failure is a larger concern for Americans than for people in other cultures, that we are the most success-oriented people in the world. Americans don't seem to have the ability to distinguish between their judgment of events and the events themselves. We judge our lives and careers based on perceived success or failure whereas people in other cultures tend to gain a sense of self from their families or themselves.
I found this book to be compelling and useful in the context of both business and personal well-being. Understanding the historical and social aspects of the concept of failure is helpful, as is considering the two types of failure they identify: Overt failure (e.g. getting fired) and hidden failure (e.g. looking successful on the outside but feeling disappointed in oneself and like a failure inside). The book guides the reader through the process of learning from mistakes and reinterpreting the failure, not only into a learning experience but also into future success. I found this book to be both informative and practical. The subject of failure holds such taboo in our culture and yet anyone who takes risks in life will fail at some point. I think it makes sense to study the subject and emulate what the authors teach, accepting and learning from everything life's rich pageant has to offer us-Lorna Kellogg
Book Description
The renowned financier reconsiders the state of the world economy, and the arguments he made in his New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller The Crisis of Global Capitalism.
Lauded by the New York Times as "brilliant and persuasive," and published in more than thirty-five foreign editions, George Soros's The Crisis of Global Capitalism became an instant classic. A must read for anyone concerned with the complex market forces that rule our global economy and that have thrust us into a state of financial flux and international economic insecurity. Now Soros takes a whole new look at the arguments he made in that book, incorporating the very latest in global economic and political developments. He shows how the recovery following the economic meltdown of 1998 may have been a false dawn, leaving us in a much more precarious position than we realize. He also explores surprising connections between events like the war in Kosovo and the economic wealth of nations. And he offers new insights into the fates of Russia, Asia, Europe and the United States. Demonstrating that our still unquestioning faith in market forces blinds us to crucial economic instabilities, Open Society provides an inspiring vision of how to fix the flaws in the system - suggestions that have already influenced leaders at the IMF, the World Bank, and in many national governments.
Customer Reviews:
Cramming World Government Down Your Throat.......2006-05-09
It's a good idea to find out what financiers like George Soros are thinking because it may give some hints of what is in our future. His book, "The Crisis of Global Capitalism" was rushed into print "at breakneck speed." That should give a hint about Soros' power and influence.
Soros, once a Hungarian Jewish refugee, is now a big shot. When he isn't masterminding international financial scams or working toward world government, he makes public appearances, testifies before Congress, and writes books.
The stimulus for the book was the global financial crisis that began in Thailand in July 1997. The crisis steamrolled through the economies of many nations, collapsing the Russian banking system before the recovery began. Malaysia shut down its financial markets to foreigners, pointing to Soros as the source of the problem.
After that close brush with global economic meltdown, perhaps Soros is trying to convince us that we should create a mechanism to clean up after his meddling. Soros' "remedy" is international supervision over the national authorities. World government.
How much world government is enough? "You cannot have a common market without a common currency. You cannot have a common currency without a common fiscal policy, including some kind of centralized tax collection."
And of course he says we need the International Criminal Court. Still not enough world government for you?
"A society without social values cannot survive and a global society needs universal values to hold it together." In case you missed it, we are talking about a global religion. Maybe world government is like sex--you can't be a little bit pregnant, and you can't have a little bit of global government.
Soros clouds the issue with a lot of talk about "open societies," although world government would be anything but that. Soros touts democracy and open societies, but he obviously favors bureaucratic secrecy over an open society. Soros favors some type of powerful paternalistic oligarchy that falls somewhat short of actual totalitarianism-or better yet, makes people think that it stops short of totalitarianism.
This book is loaded with contradictions. Soros' definition of an open society diametrically opposes his desired stable society. Soros calls Communism a cure worse than the disease, yet he maintains that we must put common interest ahead of self-interest. He says that the US can't go it alone, yet somehow the US can save the world.
Soros is too dishonest to admit that pumping capital from advanced nations to the third world will lower US living standards, although he predicts that the US will have to dismantle the social safety net to become more competitive.
Soros decries the profit motive as the basis of human behavior, but what other motive is there for international capital flight and destroying national sovereignty?
What does internationalism deliver? If you look at the US in the age of internationalism, then the answer is war, low wages, unemployment, and loss of self-reliance.
The fact is, free movement of capital is a relatively recent phenomenon. At the end of the Second World War, economies were largely national in character. Since 1980, the balance has swung so far in favor of financial capital that multinational corporations and international financial markets have supplanted national sovereignty. The ability of a nation to provide for the welfare of its citizens has been impaired by the ability of capital to escape paying taxation and decent wages by moving elsewhere.
Regarding the 1977 financial crisis that sparked this book, the international financial system itself constituted the main ingredient in the meltdown process. The big difference with China was that its currency is not convertible; otherwise it's economy would have been exposed to the "wrecking ball," as Soros puts it. The countries that kept their financial markets closed weathered the storm better than those that were open. India was less affected than the Southeast Asian countries; China was better insulated than Korea.
Economic theory has misrepresented how markets behave.......2006-01-14
Reflexivity, is the two way interaction between thinking and reality. Reality is not separate from thinking. Reflexivity is acceptance that there is a reality and we are a part of that reality. Reflexity, strength of its statement is contingent on their impact.
Fallibility means there is a lack of correspondence between the participants thinking and the actual state of affairs. When one recognizes a fallible belief, he can correct for error, this is another name for learning. All human designs are bound to be defective. In finance the value of a hypothesis is measured in money. Money accumulation measures the degrees of success in a belief system and the exploitation of observed fallacy. No fertile fallacy is likely to last forever and eventually, it will be replaced with a new fallacy that will occupy people's imagination. There are two ways to deal with deficient design, one, to look for an escape and two, to look for improvement. Marxist philosophy and economics is not scientific provable.
Karl Popper's theory of scientific method involves predicting a specific phenomena then testing and explaining the phenomena. Therefore, prediction and explanation are reversible. Testing is comparing the initial and final conditions and establishing whether they conform to the hypothesis. One should accept the hypothesis provisionally, until is can be falsified. This approach allows the hypothesis to provide predictions and explanations without insisting on verification. The predictions can be either deterministic or probabilistic. However, generalizations made about reflexive events cannot be tested.
Equilibrium in supply and demand means there is exists no unsatisfied sellers and buyers. Economics is the study of the relationship between supply and demand, not the conditions. All markets have radical fallibility and are liable to be flawed. Economic theory has misrepresented how markets behave. The conditions of supply and demand are unknowable because financial markets are discounting the future contingent on how they discount the present.
Rational expectations of price are based on fundamentals, such as, future earnings, dividend, and the prospect of future transactions. Therefore, it would be irrational for an investor to believe they can outperform the market.
Self-interest is the best explanation why free markets succeed. Different people work with different bias. A sequence of events occurs and these events affect a person's bias. Rational expectations philosophy contents that markets are always right. However, in reality financial markets are almost always wrong, but have the ability to validate them selves to a point. Divergence from outcomes and expectations can be taken as bias.
For example, credit expansion and contraction are followed by a boom or bust, in the business cycle. Collateral value depends on the amount of money the bank is willing to lend. Investors had sought fast per-share growth rates and certain companies had exploited this bias using their high-priced shares to acquire companies with lower multiple of earnings and producing higher shares and growth earning increases, for which, the investors appreciated. These companies become bestowed with higher P/E multiples far from the mean and reality cannot sustain these expectations.
The turning point formed because there were size limits and the company could not sustain momentum. Investors got carried away with expectations. The moment of truth occurred when reality could not support investor expectation. People only increased their pain by continuing too play the game when they, themselves no long believed, hoping a greater fool would arrive and bail them out. The crossover point would be followed by a downward trend and eventual crash. Markets are in constant dis-equilibrium: Prices do not clear the market and there are dissatisfied buyers and sellers in the wings, who could not execute order at the last sell or could not make up their minds.
1972, Citibank enters the market and starts using capital to simulate stock prices, raise additional capital, and made purchase acquisitions. 1973, Oil crisis causes a boom and swing into dis-equilibrium. 1982, radical change caused the international banking crisis. 1989, the Soviet empire collapsed and robber capitalism emerged, as, management tool control of companies and private property by cheating workers of vouchers and buying up companies cheap. State to Private property distribution became the problem of a free for all. The Russian central government was unable to collect taxes.
1998, IMF negotiates with Russia, a $22.5 billion rescue plan. Emerging market Russia's stock had fallen 48% in four weeks. Prior too the bailout, Russia had $11 billion in hard currency in its reserves, but this was not enough to cover debts come due. The USSR was on the verge of breaking up and building a free-market system in the stead. Peoples exchanging their rubles for dollars had depleted the central bank by $2.4 billion. Russia was too big and too nuclear to fail and IMF bailout mandated and required. The IMF role in the financial intervention of Russia would be too help Russia make the transition into a free-market. Russia lacked many of the components needed in a free-market: viable commercial banks, stocks and bond markets, and laws to protect private property and enforce contracts. The IMF used "shock tactic" to dismantle communist command and control hierarchy and liberalizing price and markets. Soon after shock tactic private retail shops opened and imports of foreign goods increased. Bloated budget deficits caused an explosive rise in Russian money supply and in 1993, inflation topped 843% and 224% in 1994. 1995, Russian reforms acquired a $6.8 billion IMF loan aimed primarily to tame inflation and inflation subsided. The ruble was pegged too the dollar ending a slide in currency value. The next stage of reform was modern banking. By 1997, inflation was 11 %, the ruble stable, communism vanquished, and portfolio investor were infusing money into Russia. Portfolio investment surged to $45.6 billion. Russia economy looked health, but its heavy dependence on short term borrowing subjected it to heavy costs. Russia had to borrow $1 billion each week by selling GKO to replace the maturing ones with increase costs of 25%. The
"policeman to the world"... on second thought..........2005-12-29
One of Soros' most compelling arguments comes out of his experiences during the 90's- mostly during the Clinton years- that the Open Society should take an active role in becoming a strong advocate for creating nascent Open societies in areas of political and economic strife. He berates America (as the leader of the free world) for not taking an active role in promoting stable and fair markets in Russia, and not doing enough to prevent the tragedies in the Balkans. He even goes as far as to say that America should step up and become the "policeman of the world".
Then again... isnt that exactly what he's spent the years after this book was authored trying to stop in his attacks on the campaign of George W Bush? Soros is fascinating in the sense that he feels perfectly comfortable documenting his complete ineptitude at coming up with theories about world politics. He even deconstructs his earlier writings, pointing out his flaws, suggesting that the fact that he can be falsified reinforces his self-title as thoretician.
Soros makes the bold claim that if you can get people to agree with you, you can make money off them on the upside, and then make money off them on the downside as long as you don't continue believing your own guff past the sell-by date. He defends this as moral, because it is playing by the rules. He trumpets his years of philanthropy as the justification for a life spent in raiding the economies of the world.
This is a book well-worth reading, and attempting to understand, because he makes/confirms his own point about the evils of market fundamentalism in autobiography. It is an expose on the evils of self-deception and over-reliance on the rules of the game to create morality. Laws and civility, like economics, do not construct good morals and ethics. He leaves himself lost, essentially falling into recourse to a higher power (of a more perfect UN or WTO or IMF, rather than a deity), but calling upon a higher power nonetheless to check the excesses of which has been his daily bread and butter for fifty years.
Soros and capitalism..........2005-07-22
George Soros, one of the greatest speculators of all time wrote this book which is an ode to govenment and bureaucracy intervention. It seems at first sight that Soros realized that true liberalism (not the liberalism of the left wing in America) was wrong and thus the Estate should intervene to fix the market's problems.
Now you may be asking, How come a guy who made 1 billion dollars in one day thru speculation against the british pound in the 90's is now a critic of the system that let him speculate and get rich?. Well, Soros changed his mind about capitalism when he lost 2 billion dollars during the russian crisis. He tried to convince the World Bank and the IMF to save russian markets like they did in Mexico in 1995, but no help was approved.
So, what's the solution according to Soros? Easy: create new bureaucracy. He wants a Global Fed, Government intervention in the markets and a more robust and strong Estate. If this solution were to be implemented, Soros would be denying to others the opportunities he had to get rich. I think what Soros wants is to prevent others to compete with him perhaps because he is tired of today's competition.
If you are into Mises, Hayek or even Friedman, this book will only be useful to show the clichés that the left wing repeats over and over against capitalism. It doesn't add something new to the debate, just shows us that Soros is a great speculator but a poor economist.
Soros is right, the economists are dead wrong.......2005-05-25
The ideas in this book are based on Soros' experience as successful speculator and market observer, and are described further in "The Alchemy of Finance". One basic idea is that financial markets are inherently unstable, and deregulation makes them even more unstable. Second, but related, there are social needs that cannot be met by `market solutions'. This is the opposite of what's taught in standard economics texts, where the Pareto Optimum is presented as if it would describe real markets (but empirical evidence indicates strongly that it does not). Recent empirical research shows that Soros is right: financial markets are neither stable nor show any tendency toward either dynamic or statistical equilibrium. According to Soros, imposing `market discipline' means imposing market instability, and he is right, empirically seen.
Soros presents his argument in the interest of preserving the global capitalist system, as opposed to any desire to destroy it. Rightwing pundits, blinded by free market ideology, are unable to read his words objectively. The central point of the book is that "market fundamentalism" (radical free market ideology, or free market extremism) is a greater threat to a free society today than is totalitarianism. The book was written in 1998 before Islamic Fundamentalism in the Mid-East, and Christian Fundamentalism in the US, made their aims fully apparent to the rest of us.
Pointing out that preferences are not stable, which is opposite the notion of time-invariant preferences taught in mathematized neo-classical economic ideology, Soros contrasts two extreme societies: `transactional society', where everything is freely traded and all values are priced in dollars, and a society that believes in `fundamental values', as in fundamentalist religion. His main point is `reflexivity', that in social phenomena what we think about affects what happens, on the one hand because we can make wishes come true by acting on them (a problem of self-reference), and on the other because we can never foresee all the consequences of our actions (incomplete foresight). This is not the case in natural science, where thinking about the orbit of a planet cannot affect that orbit (unless we would then fire a large enough nuclear rocket to shift the planet's orbit). Soros as trader is always sceptical, because he knows that there is always a gap between reality and his present perception of reality, that no one can be in possession of the absolute truth. This awareness emphasizes the danger posed by `Fundamentalism' or `Fundamental Values' of all brands, if one labors under the dangerous illusion that those values represent inviolable truth. Likewise, transactional society (money-based society) is unstable, chaotic, for lack of any values other than `price'. His idea of an `Open Society' lies somewhere in the no man's land between those two extremes, and is based on the recognition of human fallibility, on the fact that no one is ever in possession of the ultimate socio-economic-religious truth, nor can anyone ever be.
Soros was strongly influenced by Popper in his early years and gives much weight to falsifiability, which he thinks is limited in the social sphere to finding out eventually that one or more of one's perceptions is wrong, and why. But he is optimistic that, via scepticism, we can iterate toward (non time-invariant!) social truth, even if we cannot ultimately reach it. E.g., a financial hypothesis doesn't have to be true to be profitable, but if one doesn't realize that the hypothesis is flawed and get out of the market fast enough, then one will get burned. Soros calls such gaps between perception and reality `fertile fallacies'. Osborne-Black-Scholes was a fertile fallacy until 1987, after which point options traders said it was wrong. The market model that is correct in our era is another fertile fallacy. The assumption from 1990-2000 that the market would only go up was a fertile fallacy, a much more profitable one than a mathematical market model! Believers in 'fundamental market values' held onto an impotent fallacy in the era 1990-2000.
Soros says that the events in which we participate do not constitute some sort of independent criterion (as in hard science) by which the truth or falsehood of our thoughts can be judged. By this, he means that there is always a gap between reality and how we perceive reality. However, he is not entirely right that Popperian falsification is beyond the pale: if `reflexivity' is correct, and if we could mathematize that idea as an agent-based trading model, then we could test reflexivity on historic finance statistics. Why do that? Because if reflexivity is correct, then it must have produced those statistics. This mightn't bring us a whit closer to predicting the future, and surely would not, but at least Soros' idea can perhaps be tested, it may be falsifiable after all.
Now for the many mistakes in the text. Neither chaos theory nor 'evolutionary models' have anything to do with exploring phenomena that cannot be determined by timeless laws (pg. 12). Newtonian mechanics is full of chaotic examples, and `evolutionary models' (`complex adaptable systems') have so far explained absolutely nothing about biology. Logical positivism and Deconstruction/Postmodernism are certainly not the only worldviews available! Wigner (1967) has explained implicitly the difference between the hard and social sciences in his essays "Symmetries and Reflections". A model needn't be a timelessly-valid law of motion (like Newton's Laws) to be falsifiable (pg.30), it need (like the Gunaratne-McCauley finance market model) only be empirically correct over a large enough time interval. Our model is correct over the last fifteen years, e.g., and is falsifiable. The following errors occur on pg. 36: pendula are not `ergodic', movement toward `equilibrium' occurs in no known real market, Osborne (1973) gave the correct definition of observable demand-supply curves, they are noninvertible step-functions where, e.g., x=D(p,t) exists but p=f(x,t) never exists. Stock market limit orders provide the canonical example. Pg. 39: equilibrium is not a special case of reflexivity, equilibrium does not exist in markets, which are both far from equilibrium and complex. Sunspot experiments did not establish General Relativity. On pg. 42 Soros disparages Black-Scholes, which was a good zeroth order model and was falsifiable, and gives credence the economists' impotent notion of `equilibrium', which is not only falsified by real markets but was never even approximately true of any known market. Soros is not close to finance theorists (no disadvantage in making money in the markt) but is apparently close to two or more NYU economists, and is still too much influenced by the `equilibrium' ideas taught in standard economics textbooks. "Dynamic disequilibrium" should read simply "disequilibrium", there being no such thing as `static disequilibrium' (another term that he misuses elsewhere). A good dose of Newtonian physics, or at least a basic course in dynamical systems earlier at the London School of Economics might have prevented such misconceptions. "Value" is discussed on pg. 43, but we have shown in our recent work that there is no time-invariant definition of the (fundamental) `value' of an asset, there is only the most probable or `consensus' value attributed by most traders at a given time. Consensus value fluctuates much more wildly than the market statistics that are distributed about it. On pg. 49 Soros gives a wrong definition of equilibrium, analogous to one that Black apparently had in mind in his paper "Noise". Pg. 55, market statistics have nothing to do with fractals, but are described to zeroth order by nonGaussian (nonlognornal, non everything you've read if you haven't yet read Gunaratne and McCauley) `Brownian motion' still with Hurst exponent H=1/2, in agreement with the efficient market hypothesis, which simply means that the market is hard to beat (the market shows no systematic patterns, to zeroth order). Pg. 59, no known market phenomena are susceptible to `equilibrium analysis'. Pg. 62, `static disequilibrium' should be replaced by `closed system with small fluctuations', maybe equilibrium, maybe far from equilibrium. Indeed, the only known way to reach statistical equilibrium in an otherwise free market is to impose upper and lower price controls (see "Dynamics of Markets" by JMC). By 'dynamic disequilibrium' Soros sometimes means far from equilibrium markets with volatility and fat tails (normal liquid markets), and sometimes he means market crashes. Market bubbles fall into the former category of a normal liquid market. On pg.66, another wrong definition of `equilibrium' is given. There, Soros only means the gap between appearances and (the unknown) reality of the market that will make itself better known in the future. Pg. 67, the claim about near and far from equilibrium for water is physically completely wrong. Pg. 70, there is no evidence that 'open society represents near equilibrium conditions', we certainly know nothing of the sort. On pg. 90 is discussed valuing everything via money, and Spengler's "Untergang des Abendlandes" could (and should) have been acknowledged.
In general, I'm in strong agreement with this book and recommend it very highly, not only to laymen but especially to economists and econophysicists, many (if not most) of whom have bad misconceptions about real markets. In particular, there is the myth of stationary markets, or asymptotic `market equilibrium' in the face of nothing but market instability. Market instability is shown by our model, which is inferred from hard, empirical data. I would like to have been invited to correct the wrong definitions and misleading terminology in the book before it went into print, but apparently that task was given to Economics Professor Roman Frydman at NYU. Maybe next time around.
References
1. G. Soros, The Alchemy of Finance, Wiley, NY, 1994.
2. E.P. Wigner, Symmetries and Reflections, Univ. Indiana, Bloomington, 1967.
3. J.L. McCauley, Dynamics of Markets, Cambridge, Cambridge, 2004.
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From Noose to Needle: Capital Punishment and the Late Liberal State (Law, Meaning, and Violence)
Timothy Vance Kaufman-Osborn
Manufacturer: University of Michigan Press
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ASIN: 0472112910 |
Book Description
From Noose to Needle contributes a new perspective on the controversial topic of capital punishment by asking how the conduct of state killing reveals broader contradictions in the contemporary liberal state, especially, but not exclusively, in the United States. Moving beyond more familiar legal and sociological approaches to this matter, Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborn asks several questions. Why do executions no longer take the form of public spectacles? Why are certain methods of execution considered barbaric? Why must the liberal state strictly segregate the imposition of a death sentence, whether by judge or jury, from its actual infliction, whether by a state official or an ordinary citizen? Why are women so infrequently sentenced to death and executed? How does the state seek to hide the suffering inflicted by capital punishment through its endorsement of a bio-medical conception of pain? How does the nearly-universal shift to lethal injection pose problems for the late liberal state by confusing its punitive and welfare responsibilities?
Drawing on a wide range of theoretical sources, including John Locke, Max Weber, Nicos Poulantzas, Friedrich Nietzsche, J. L. Austin, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Pierre Bourdieu, Elaine Scarry, and others, Kaufman-Osborn grounds his appropriation of these authors in analyses of specific recent executions, including that of Wesley Allan Dodd and Charles Campbell in Washington, Karla Faye Tucker in Texas, and Allen Lee Davis in Florida.
From Noose to Needle will be of interest to students of law, political theory, and sociology as well as more general readers interested in the troublesome issue of capital punishment.
Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborn is Baker Ferguson Professor of Politics and Leadership, Whitman College.
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