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Ha-Joon Chang's 23 Things They Don T Tell You About Capitalism

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There were very few economists who successfully predicted the 2008 economic crisis, but there are many of them who are good at introspection. The large number of books published after the crisis is a good proof, Professor Ha-Joon Chang’s book 23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism is one of them. Ha-Joon Chang is a currently a professor in the Political Economy of Development at the University of Cambridge. Chang writes this book to tell people some of the truths about capitalism, to let the readers know how capitalism works and how to make capitalism work better. Chang in his book states this at the beginning, despite its problem and limitations, he believes that capitalism us stull the best economic system that humanity has invented, …show more content…

That is to say the author’s superstitions about data are so high that sometimes he makes unbelievable conclusions. There are two chapters in the book: Chapter 2, the washing machine has changed the world more than the internet has, Chapter 7, free-market policies rarely make poor countries rich. In this two chapters the mainly argument approach is to analyze historical statistic data to compare the past and now and conclude the outcomes of the data. To be more specific, the invention of wash machine frees the housewife hours of time to increase their productivity, and the increase in GDP of African countries is lower than three decades ago. Therefore, the invention of wash machine has changed the world more than internet, and free-market fails Africa. This is very misleading. If people would not say Internet was the most successful invention in human history, never will the wash machine be the greatest. Chang blames people are more excited about newly invented things, and ignore the older ones. It is no wonder the first time when wash machine came out the world was crazy about it but things will get along, people couldn’t live on memories. If he says that wash machines have greater contributions to the world as a matter of productivity, what about the invention of wheels, will he even go back to that time that wheels free human beings from carrying everything on their backs. So he shouldn’t judge an invention simply based on its historical contribution to the world. The fair method is to judge it is to see how useful it is, think about Internet in today’s world, he probably uses Internet to help him finish his book, and how much help does the wash machine contribute. It is more complicated when he concludes that African countries are still poor because they buy the free-market theory. He argues that after African countries pursue free-market policy, the GDP growth is slower than they have

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