Extreme Economies: Survival, Failure, Future

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Extreme economics 

By Richard Davies (2019)

This book is a series of deep dives into the most extreme economies on the planet, e.g. refugee camps, cashless prisons, Glasgow, in order to understand what makes markets tick.


Where there are people,  markets emerge 

I feel like reading this book again, straight away. It’s just so dense, and good. Markets are on many levels very complex but from afar it looks pretty straight forward. The difference between survival and flourishing in any society is free markets. 


The same stories from around 

Richard Davis tells the tale of economics through a number of investigative journeys around the world to societies you normally don’t think about when it comes to economics or anything else. Like the two Syrian refugee camps, one where the people had created a market where their ideas and entrepreneurialism could run free creating a society with some hope, and one that worked exactly like the UN bureaucrats had designed it with no free markets and no hope. 

After reading this book I feel like the traditional definition of the market doesn't come close to the fundamental function it plays in societies and for the individual. 

 
“market prices reflect information, the totality of which is not known to any single individual, which determines the allocation of resources in an economy.” 
- Friedrich Hayek 


Free markets and free speech; two sides of the same coin

I think it's clear that free markets are much more than an economic tool to determine prices. Free markets are just like free speech, a fundamental human right and necessary to keep societies in check and move civilization forward.  


Top 3 Takeaways 

  1. Markets good
  2. Corruption bad 
  3. Regelation can kill you (or minimise unwanted externalities) 


Cost-book-benefit 

I really enjoyed this book. A solid piece of investigative journalism and superb storytelling. It’s especially good to read if you are of the ‘markets are evil’ preservation. Cause, to me one of the biggest mysteries in the world today is how free markets still can be disputed when all of the evidence on the ground tells a different story. 

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