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A review by yosquish
The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequality by Brink Lindsey, Steven M. Teles
1.0
Andrew (another one star reviewer of this book) has already covered the very same reason why I have rated this book one star. For clarity I'll just share the paragraph that made me finally put the book down (at 160 out of 180 pages), which Andrew's succinct review referred to:
"The problem of undue special-interest influence over policy-makers has long been the subject of political reform efforts, but the conventional approach has been to try to disarm the lobbyists by restricting their use of money to influence elections. An alternative approach is to focus on the other side of the equation, namely making policymakers resistant to lobbyists' self-serving claims. The best way to do that is to make policymakers less dependent on lobbyists for policy-relevant expertise and information."
I would have thrown this book across the room if it didn't belong to my local library.
I have many more complaints about the writing and the content, but the one that sticks out the most besides the laughably out-of-touch suggestion above, is the authors' oft-repeated claim that the presence of women in the workforce is at least partly to blame for myriad economic problems. Almost any time they listed circumstances to blame for an issue, women in the workforce was on the list. They never expanded upon this claim, at any length. I realize it was not the subject of their research and to expand upon it at all might have required going much further beyond the scope. But still, it seemed a bit "sus."
"The problem of undue special-interest influence over policy-makers has long been the subject of political reform efforts, but the conventional approach has been to try to disarm the lobbyists by restricting their use of money to influence elections. An alternative approach is to focus on the other side of the equation, namely making policymakers resistant to lobbyists' self-serving claims. The best way to do that is to make policymakers less dependent on lobbyists for policy-relevant expertise and information."
I would have thrown this book across the room if it didn't belong to my local library.
I have many more complaints about the writing and the content, but the one that sticks out the most besides the laughably out-of-touch suggestion above, is the authors' oft-repeated claim that the presence of women in the workforce is at least partly to blame for myriad economic problems. Almost any time they listed circumstances to blame for an issue, women in the workforce was on the list. They never expanded upon this claim, at any length. I realize it was not the subject of their research and to expand upon it at all might have required going much further beyond the scope. But still, it seemed a bit "sus."