Doom

The Politics of Catastrophe

By: Niall Ferguson

Narrated by: Niall Ferguson

Length: 16 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

Disasters are inherently hard to predict. But when catastrophe strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted or medieval Italians when the Black Death struck. We have science on our side, after all. Yet the responses of many developed countries to a new pathogen from China were badly bungled. Why?

While populist rulers certainly performed poorly in the face of the pandemic, Niall Ferguson argues that more profound pathologies were at work - pathologies already visible in our responses to earlier disasters.

Drawing from multiple disciplines, including economics and network science, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe offers not just a history but a general theory of disaster. As Ferguson shows, governments must learn to become less bureaucratic and more 'antifragile' if we are to avoid the impending doom of irreversible decline.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2021 Niall Ferguson (P)2021 Penguin Audio

Historical material persuasive, topical somewhat less so

I have read many of Ferguson’s books so I had a good idea what to expect from him - and this book is typical of the thorough and multidisciplinary analysis he offers.

The material on COVID (though enlightening) was undermined by intelligence/data/events post publication in August 2020. And, of course, by the highly partisan, politically charged information communication matrix of modern times - especially since the election of Trump in 2016.

The use of scale-free network analysis in respect of COVID was fascinating - though what Ferguson missed was the importance of one characteristic of such networks - it is true that they are extremely resilient against arbitrary damage (knock out a few - even quite a lot of - randomly chosen nodes and communication can be rerouted very effectively) but it is also true that such networks are very fragile against deliberate and targeted attack.

Knowing this, it is easy to see that eliminating Trump (the ultimate highly connected node in respect of one “side” of political discourse) from Twitter, Facebook etc essentially decimated conservative discourse in the election period (and, in fact, subsequently). Important for that section of this book because the entire COVID story is strongly, almost viciously politically partisan.

An approach to management of the COVID discourse and response focused on a partisan contest in which the interests of the people played the part of, at most, the football is, I think fundamental…and is way underplayed in this book.

Irrespective, the book lays out a basis for critical analysis and Ferguson’s own is not “holy writ” there is space to argue, to consider the implications of alternative lines of analysis.

I enjoyed the book, gained much from it, was sometimes very vocally disparaging of the author, sometimes surprised and respectful. Overall, if this had been a graduate class, I’d have been very happy that I’d enrolled.

Read it critically, it can only help you grow your understanding of the topic and your capacity to critically analyse fact-grounded argument.

Really poor

I think the author used the pandemic situation to sell a fairly weak book. In fact, the best ideas expressed in the book are coming from Taleb.

Don’t bother.