Karl Marx's Das Kapital - A modern day interpretation by Steve Shipside

Kind of an crisp and concise book trying to interpret and revisit the relevance of the issues raised and concepts discussed and espoused by Karl Marx.

The author has taken the key points on labour, impact of mechanisation on labour and on Capital, stagnation of mental side of labourers due to excessive mechanisation etc.

No system is perfect, neither Marxism nor Capitalism .But over a period , people have generally found that Capitalism with its innate ability to get the best out of people by making them work for themselves ( selfish interests ) with great motivation and creativity and in the process end up doing something good for the society.

Karl Marx' theory , some of them are a reflection of the times he was in like Capitalists explouting labour for enhgancement of their interests only etc appear to be taking things a bit too far in the current context, some ideas especially on the impact of excessive mechanisation on people's creativity, the impact of how continuous exploitation of labour would not benefit the Capitalists in the long run appear to have relevance even today. Just have a look at the HR policies these days . A typical BPO appears to be a blue collared labour shop and there too, new and innovative practices to keep the employees motivated have come about.

Understand that Karl Marx took several years to complete his magnum opus.

With Capitalism also showing up gaping holes , Financial crisis which is nothing but result of excessive speculations , building up of bubbles , Capitalists creating such a big bubble and making hay in the bubble ( front ended incentives ) and creating a situation whereby the entire society has to bear the burden in dissipating the crisis, Governments taking up the bad debts bears testimony to that.

One would accept the fact that there are more good in Capitalistic way than a socialistic way where accountability is poor and efficiencies take a beating, one can not adopt the current Capitalistic ways in an unadulterated fashion.

There is also the aspect of unending exploitation land. At a certain stage, it appeared as if the resources are limitless, not so any longer. May be Karl Marx hit upon the right idea ( this aspect atleast ) unknowingly or may be he was very prescient. Now it does appear that the resources are not limitless and in fact there is need to ensure that use of natural resources is judicious.

Good book on the whole.

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Good book but not sure whether you can come to any kind of generalisations based on that or you can draw any specific theory. The author talks of how a split second or a decision based on an apparently perfunctory look at something backed apparently on instinct as against a considered and well thought through decision, sometime turns out to be better and correct.
The apparent "instinctive" decision is nothing but what the author terms as thin slicing or ability of individuals to draw on their experience and judgements and brain's ability to process the same without any external or extraneous noises.

I read somewhere that the author has a tendency to draw conclusions based on anecdotal experience rather than empirical and experimental experience. May be a bit unfair considering that he does draw on research undertaken by top class and committed researchers.

He talks of how a " Kouros" ( some greek .. some 2000 years back ) was found to be authentic and original based on an examination of documentation and even by leading experts who establish facts after scientific analysis of the samples ( in fact after this the Museum bought this for several millions ) but a perfunctory look by experts who had several years of experience in this field were not impressed about the authenticity.Later it was proved that it was in fact fake.

Very interesting topic was on mind reading. He talks of one Silvin Tomkins who was an expert and who with no background knowledge of some people ... comes to the right conclusion on the character of the people , he sees in a matter of few minutes , primarily based on ability to read the mind. He had trained himself to read minds based on the facial expressions.
Couple of people, one Eckman and Freisman take the research further and map out what one feels inside and how various muscles in the face act. They term it as Action Unit (AU ) 1/2/3/4 so on.There are some 32 muscles on the face.
Interesting thing is,how these muscles act is quite independent of the country. class , race etc.
They also come out with a strange finding which reverses the cause and effect. Mind causes the face to react. They find that , once one starts moving muscles in a certain way, the mind starts feeling the effect. You exercise your laugh muscles, you start feeling happy and so on.

Interesting read, atleast brings out the fact that the general myths about how snap decision is always inferior can be wrong.

He also discusses the way people react based on prejudices like race, color etc.

He tries to establish the same with anecdotal and sometimes experimental data on colored people

He draws how , women were considered inferior in the classical western music world and how that changed once the audition was just audition and not an audition where the judges get to see the people. The practice of putting a curtain between the performer and the judge , makes people take the correct decision devoid of prejudices.

Fault lines by Raghuram Rajan

Very extensive analysis of the reasons for financial turmoils which keeps happening once every 10 or 20 years.

Very well written book. The author deals at length all aspects of growth, economic turmoil, reasons for the same and broad solutions

Talks of how the western economies have become consumption driven and how the asian world has followed an export led growth. He is not a votary of export led growth either nor a great fan of exchange rate manipulated growth

Recommends various mneasures to optimise on economic growth and democratic aspects.

Needs to be read like a text book. Very detailed , sound and in depth analysis.

I recall, that thge author was one of the first to raise the red flag on the low interest rate led asset bubble ,e specially the hosing asset

He traces the history if how successive US President starting from Reagan to Clinton to Bush cheerled lending , to increase howm ownership. In the zeal , all around , the basic economic aspect of long term capabily to repay by the borrower was forgotten

Lending was more asset price based and not on capability to repay. With increased asset prices, that i sthe housing prices, the tendency was to go for refinance at higher prices . Once the prices started falling , the asset prices were lesser than the loan itself.

Need to read again to capture all aspects . One of the best and not one of this dogmatic ones. Fact based and rational