Crack-up Capitalism – Market Radicals and the Dream of A World Without Democracy
by Quinn Slobodian 2023
The New York Review of Books ran a recent review of Slobodian’s new book Hayek’s Bastards – Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right which was intriguing. When I checked at the library for it, it was in a queue for the e-book. So, I’ll see what else he’s written and found the above book available in the stacks.
I am impressed with his writing, research, point-of-view and the book’s composition, the chapters are sewn together and resolve into a good finish.
Slobodian traces the cult of anarcho-capitalism back to Hayek and Van Mises and from there into our current time. The book is heavy on characters who think they have solved the riddle of how to get filthy rich, pay no taxes, and live free from silly things like law and convention. He draws from sources as far afield as Stephenson’s Snow Crash to Marx forging into a kind of Peter Theil state of mind of the uber-wealthy. The results are, in hindsight, logically predictable but I wasn’t thinking how he’d tie up the book until the last chapter.
I kept thinking about the crap that the current administration is pulling with defunding the Universities, dumbing down and defunding reasearch in the government etc., there must be some subscribers to Van Mises/Hayek’s program who are pulling the strings to get the country to “crack-up.”
It is scary in a few ways, the first being no one has succeeded in building an anarchist “state” with any staying power. If these crackpots do break the back of the government, we are in for a real shit storm of zealots failing to execute.
Highly recommened reading for those who are looking for a bit of insight into the zealot/nutbags running the country today.