23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang

Like Economics: The User's Guide, Ha-Joon Chang's 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism is a reader-friendly manual to economics. It provides its readers the tools to think critically about the economy and subverts the mystique of expert authority surrounding the field of economics.

The book is written in a particular context: the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. For Chang (as for many others), this is the result of free market ideology (or neo-liberalism or neo-classical economics) that has been dominant in university departments and in policy making since the 1980s. (From this perspective, I think it is important to note the failure of expertise in the economics profession in the current debates about the deflation of expertise, loss of trust in authority, and the rise of populism.)

The 23 Things enumerated and elaborated upon in the book refute the self-evident "truths" that this branch of economics takes for granted. Free market ideology filters into public consciousness through language and frames the way that we think about the world (e.g. human motivations) and Chang provides a counterweight to these ideas in this very approachable book.

Some of the more intriguing Things are the following:

Thing 1. There is no such thing as a free market: there are always rules and boundaries in every market (e.g. slavery, child labour, food safety), and calls for a free market are always a political opinion, not an objective economic determination.

Thing 4. The washing machine has changed the world more than the internet has: The washing machine and household appliances have allowed women to enter the work force and has led to massive social and economic transformations, much more so than ICT. Chang is being overly provocative in this Thing, but he makes the point that "our fascination with the latest, and our under-valuation of what has already become common " (p. 40) can lead us astray.

Thing 7. Free-market policies rarely make poor countries rich: Growth in the developing world (e.g. Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa) was faster before they followed neo-liberal prescriptions. The largest success stories in recent times, India and China, did not follow neo-liberal prescriptions. Even developed countries advocating for free market developmental policies today (U.K. and U.S.) used state-led development for their development.

Thing 13. Making rich people richer doesn't make the rest of us richer: Trickle down economics does not work; making the rich richer through tax cuts, incentives, etc. has not led to faster economic growth, especially as this has not led to more investment. It can be preferable to redistribute wealth downward, as those with lower incomes spend a higher proportion of their incomes.

Thing 19. Despite the fall of communism, we are still living in planned economies: Governments in large capitalist economies are always planning. Additionally, a large part of the planned economy in capitalist economies is missing in these debates: the private sector. Large corporations are also planning their activities and dominate a large section of the economy; more of the global economy is coordinated and planned by these companies and not through market transactions between firms.

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