I found this book very difficult to read--Hirsch is laying out a complicated argument and sometimes its not clear how everything he says is related to each other. It feels as if Hirsch is thinking faster than he is writing and he is responding to counter-arguments he has in his mind but has not articulated clearly in the text.

Still, I think this is a very provocative challenge to laissez-faire economics and to the idea that economic growth is the be-all and end-all of economic policy. Hirsch argues that in advanced industrial societies a positional economy has surpassed a materialistic economy. Rather than worrying about obtaining basic necessities of life (material goods), we strive to obtain positional goods whose utility depends on other people NOT using them, owing to either congestion or just snobbery. Hirsch argues that Adam Smith's notion that if everyone pursues their individual ends everyone's well-being will be increased was applicable to the nascent industrial age, but now it doesn't work. He says that in our post-materialistic age we actually need collective means to satisfy individual ends.

He also talks about how capitalism has depended on people sharing some kind of common moral foundation but that pervasive pursuit of self-interest has eroded this moral foundation--I'm not sure how much he needs this to support central thrust.

The book was published in 1976 and I would be interested to see what the libertarian/pro-free market response has been. ( )