It seems I ahve overoptimised the length of the original post, therefore first some explanatory text and then some comments.
There are quite some insightful people circling the forum, so in starting the thread I was hoping to get some people read the book and point out the weaknesses/errors in author's arguments (hopefully it is available in libraries). Especially from the camp strongly in favour of profits and against redistribution - hopefully these people can summon the time and will to read something they oppose from the start, I know first hand this can be very hard.
However, it is difficult to discuss the arguments and ideas, when they have not been read in the original form presneted by the author - no pun intended. Moreover, I do not want to become an apologist for the author or his ideas, despite the fact that I do share some of his views. IMHO the original is worth reading beacuse it seeks for root causes of problems in current society and provides a draft plan for *gradual* treatment of these root causes, i.e. it is unorthodox but constructive from the outset.
Nevertheless, some good and interesting points have been already raised in the replies above. There will be some spoilers in my comments below, as much as I do not like it because they are out of context and may well be subject to "loss in translation."
Interestingly, the comments overall seem to confirm author's two key points:
- "capital investments must yield profit" is a dogma which is beyond any doubt in the current system (but a dogma is just a strong, orchestrated belief)
- collective human consciousness is the only obstacle in the migration path towards non-profit society (but humans in developed world have developed their consciousness to overcome many dogmas, e.g. slavery, women rights, etc.)
On hard work. The assumption in non-profit society is that everyone's needs are taken care of, i.e. everyone is FIREd, so no need for hard work, unless you want to. Do not mix the current, migration, and utopian states, though.
On reaching utopian state, I am pessimistic. We may reach the point when technology is able to cater for all our needs with no human intervention whatsoever. But the human is still just an animal, a fancy one, but an animal nonetheless. Which means we are driven not by our consciousness but by our lizzard brain, i.e. irrational emotions - how much does a lizzard care about human utopia?
On the role of government. If technology provides for human needs, no need to force humans into anything - an easy one in utopian state. Not sure how things would work out in the migraiton phase, though. Anyway, government's main role would be distribution of resources, as MaaS pointed out. And contrary to MaaSs' belief, there are very respectable scholars debunking the government vs. private sector myth. Enter
Marianna Mazzucato.
On externalities. To push it even further than evensjw, externalities fit among greatest cons, regardless of whether it is due to intention or incompetence of economy as a discipline. The original author believes the former due to profit pressures.
On author's competence. I generally agree about specialisation. However, the author is a tenured scholar in natural/technical sciences, i.e. he has command of the scientific method and (probbaly) applied it along with some knowledge from his discipline to another scientific discipline (economy). Moreover, it is hard to hold experts in economy/finance in high regard, given that they can't see farther than their nose let alone into more distant future - that is in fact one of the foundations of both index investing and this forum. So, is it possible for a scholar from another discipline to better understand economy than economists, so much so to win a Nobel prize in economy?
You bet. Is it possible for knowledge from another discpline to have value and be used in economy?
You bet. And is it possible for superstar economists with Nobel prize in economy, who invented and used the magic formula for eliminating risk from investing in derivatives, to be so clueless in what they are doing to blow several billion and threaten to bring down the financial system?
You bet. On perpetual economic growth, I have yet to hear a convincing (scientific) argument supporting it. Because simple arithmetic says it is impossible in a finite system. Moreover, I have yet to hear a good explanation on what drives it and to what extent. My own simple resoning tells me it is mainly productivity increase and demand growth due to population growth and standard increase. But how many percentage points each of them contributes and do they add up to e.g. 7%/10% real/nominal CAGR for S&P. This one lurks at the back of my head, even though I bought into indexing. I guess I am just hoping the breakdown does not happen on my watch.
-