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The Common Good
From the best-selling author of Saving Capitalism and The Work of Nations, a passionate, clear-eyed manifesto on why we must restore the idea of the common good to the center of our economics and politics.
With the warmth and lucidity that have made him one of our most important public voices, Robert B. Reich makes the case for a generous, inclusive understanding of the American project, centering on the moral obligations of citizenship. Rooting his argument in everyday reality and common sense, Reich demonstrates the existence of a common good, and argues that it is this that defines a society or a nation. Societies and nations undergo virtuous cycles that reinforce and build the common good, as well as vicious cycles that undermine it. Over the course of the past five decades, Reich contends, America has been in a slowly accelerating vicious cycle--one that can and must be reversed. But first we need to weigh what really matters, and how we as a country should relate to honor, shame, patriotism, truth, and the meaning of leadership.
Powerful, urgent, and utterly vital, this is a heartfelt missive from one of our foremost political thinkers: a fundamental statement about the purpose of society and a cri de coeur to save America's soul.
With the warmth and lucidity that have made him one of our most important public voices, Robert B. Reich makes the case for a generous, inclusive understanding of the American project, centering on the moral obligations of citizenship. Rooting his argument in everyday reality and common sense, Reich demonstrates the existence of a common good, and argues that it is this that defines a society or a nation. Societies and nations undergo virtuous cycles that reinforce and build the common good, as well as vicious cycles that undermine it. Over the course of the past five decades, Reich contends, America has been in a slowly accelerating vicious cycle--one that can and must be reversed. But first we need to weigh what really matters, and how we as a country should relate to honor, shame, patriotism, truth, and the meaning of leadership.
Powerful, urgent, and utterly vital, this is a heartfelt missive from one of our foremost political thinkers: a fundamental statement about the purpose of society and a cri de coeur to save America's soul.
Audiobook
First published February 20, 2018
About the author
Robert B. Reich
50 books1,051 followersRobert Bernard Reich is an American politician, academic, and political commentator. He served as Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997. Reich is a former Harvard University professor and the former Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. He is currently a professor at the University of California, Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy. Mr. Reich is also on the board of directors of Tutor.com. He is a trustee of the Economists for Peace and Security. He is an occasional political commentator, notably on Hardball with Chris Matthews, This Week with George Stephanopoulos and CNBC's Kudlow & Company.
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April 19, 2019
Just what I needed: a progressive book that concentrates on the positive, by a man who points a way forward for us all. "Positive” and “forward” are hard to do, under the yoke of King Donald the Mad.
Robert Reich even manages to see the positive in Mad King Donald himself. It is Trump who has “brought us back to first principles,” Reich argues, for he gets us “talking about democracy versus tyrrany.” And Reich is convinced that the key to snatching democracy from the jaws of tyranny depends on our concern for the common good.
What exactly is the common good? Here is Reich’s formulation:
The common good consists of our shared values about what we owe one another as citizens who are bound together in the same society—the norms we voluntarily abide by,, and the ideals we see to achieve….A concern for the common good—keeping the common good in mind—is a moral attitude. It recognizes that we are all in it together. If there is no common good, there is no society.Speaking of “norms we voluntarily abide by,” Reich certainly has things to say about Trump as the principal contemporary violator of such norms, but he also makes it clear that our president is only the most recent manifestation of a trend that stretches back a generation.. After mentioning a few contemporary examples—Prescription Drug Lord Martin Shkreli, Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf—Reich traces the erosion of the common good back to the late ‘70’s, when the philosophy of novelist Ayn Rand grew in influence and conservatives began lauding selfishness as a virtue, denigrating the very idea of government and glorifying the moral benefits of the "free market”. Reich steadfastly maintains that Ayn Rand is wrong, that it is not through pursuing selfishness, but rather through performing our mutual duties to ourselves and others, that we find out who and what we are, both as individuals and as a nation.
But how did we get so far from our duties, so far from our essential selves? In his chapter “Exploitation,” Reich presents a disturbing timeline of over fifty major civic violations—stretching from Lyndon Johnson’s lies about the “Gulf of Tonkin in 1964 to the Baltimore police and Wells Fargo bank scandals in 2017—that have eroded America’s confidence in the existence of a common good.
In all of this. he sees three crucial structural breakdowns: 1) “whatever it takes to win” politics, exemplified by Watergate and the Robert Bork confirmation hearings, 2) “whatever it takes to maximize profits” business practices, represented by junk bond king Michael Milken and General Electric CEO Jack Welch, and 3) “whatever it takes to rig the system” economics, signaled by Lewis Powell’s 1971 memo for the Chamber of Commerce, DCCC Chairman Tony Coelho’s corporate shakedown, and the Wall Street Bail Out of 2009. Taken together, these breakdowns—and others like them—have led not only to a widening gap between rich and poor, but also to a profound distrust of the institutions and mechanisms of government.
So how do we dedicate ourselves anew to the common good? Reich realizes it won’t be easy, but he suggests we can do so if we: 1) restore the idea that leadership is also trusteeship, 2) be careful whom we honor and whom we shame, 3) cherish, above all, the concept of truth, and do so by, first of all, supporting schools that promote civic values and, secondly, by protecting our free press and the independent journalists who keep our democracy alive.
I finished The Common Good encouraged, and ready for the fight, for—as always—Reich, clear-eyed but sanguine, convinces me that, although our democracy has been weakened, it may still be revived and reinvigorated. As theologian Reinhold Niebuhr said (in a quote Reich shares at book’s end): “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.”
March 15, 2018
This is a very timely essay. Reich takes a look at Adam Smith’s economic design, ideal of truth and equitable competition. Reich states we are a nation of law and order bound on the common good. He says the enemies of the common good range from the slumlords to megabanks and untrammeled hedge funds. These all disregard the rules of society for selfish gains. Reich stresses the importance of the truth; he proceeds to point out the problems caused by lies.
Robert B. Reich is following the lead of Sandra Day O’Connor who is advocating the renewal of civic education to enable people “to work with others; to separate facts and logic from values and beliefs”. I found this to be a most interesting discussion and a good review of citizenship. This book is easy to read. My only complaint is the repetition of key points throughout the book.
Robert B. Reich is a professor of public policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California Berkeley. He served in the administration of President Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and was Clinton’s Secretary of Labor from 1993 to 1997. Reich narrator the book himself. The book is just over five hours.
Robert B. Reich is following the lead of Sandra Day O’Connor who is advocating the renewal of civic education to enable people “to work with others; to separate facts and logic from values and beliefs”. I found this to be a most interesting discussion and a good review of citizenship. This book is easy to read. My only complaint is the repetition of key points throughout the book.
Robert B. Reich is a professor of public policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California Berkeley. He served in the administration of President Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and was Clinton’s Secretary of Labor from 1993 to 1997. Reich narrator the book himself. The book is just over five hours.
April 6, 2018
How to restore the notion of common good is a vital topic. This book makes some good points. Unfortunately, it is much more of a rant about rampant evil than a guide to the common good. Also, I don't quite agree with the bit on why we lost the common good and how to get it back.
Having recently watched the Ken Burns documentary about Vietnam, I think Reich is downplaying the importance of LBJ's campaign of systematic disinformation against the American people, in terms of what destroyed the previous social norms of common good. Before Vietnam, reasonable Americans believed what the president said just because he was the president. They assumed the government was competent, knew best, was looking out for the average Joe, and was telling the truth. That was shocking to me in the TV show because that's a different culture from what I've grown up in.
Reich does of course include Vietnam but as one thing in a long list. I don't know about that. Watergate, for instance, was petty nonsense in comparison: some politicians spying on each other. Vietnam killed a couple million people. Nixon got impeached over Watergate, but what happened to LBJ (or McNamara or Kissinger for that matter) for their evil?
Reich goes on to list a whole bunch of corporate crimes, but that's sort of off topic. That the malefactors of great wealth will murder their neighbors for another million dollars if they can get away with it is a constant. That's why we need an honest government to enforce the rules, and to amend the law when needed.
It's interesting reading this right after "Tribe" Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, which sort of implies that warfare is useful for social cohesion. Whereas it's clearer to me reading this book, that Vietnam was really the tipping point for wrecking the common good in the U.S.
Why did Americans trust in democracy before Vietnam? Because it was objectively, obviously working. It beat the Nazis. It got us out of the Depression without resorting to Stalinism. It wasn't perfect but it was moving things in the right direction for an expanding middle class. It built big bridges and libraries and useful stuff. How do we get back to going forward?
Having recently watched the Ken Burns documentary about Vietnam, I think Reich is downplaying the importance of LBJ's campaign of systematic disinformation against the American people, in terms of what destroyed the previous social norms of common good. Before Vietnam, reasonable Americans believed what the president said just because he was the president. They assumed the government was competent, knew best, was looking out for the average Joe, and was telling the truth. That was shocking to me in the TV show because that's a different culture from what I've grown up in.
Reich does of course include Vietnam but as one thing in a long list. I don't know about that. Watergate, for instance, was petty nonsense in comparison: some politicians spying on each other. Vietnam killed a couple million people. Nixon got impeached over Watergate, but what happened to LBJ (or McNamara or Kissinger for that matter) for their evil?
Reich goes on to list a whole bunch of corporate crimes, but that's sort of off topic. That the malefactors of great wealth will murder their neighbors for another million dollars if they can get away with it is a constant. That's why we need an honest government to enforce the rules, and to amend the law when needed.
It's interesting reading this right after "Tribe" Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, which sort of implies that warfare is useful for social cohesion. Whereas it's clearer to me reading this book, that Vietnam was really the tipping point for wrecking the common good in the U.S.
Why did Americans trust in democracy before Vietnam? Because it was objectively, obviously working. It beat the Nazis. It got us out of the Depression without resorting to Stalinism. It wasn't perfect but it was moving things in the right direction for an expanding middle class. It built big bridges and libraries and useful stuff. How do we get back to going forward?
April 3, 2022
I am familiar with Robert Reich’s writing through his articles in the Guardian newspaper. So, I was curious to read one of his books. The Common Good is a call for us to reconnect to one another as in the “We are all in this together,” of the 1960s rather than the individualist mindset of “you’re on your own,” which started to creep in during the late 1970s.
We need to regain a civic-minded community spirit, whereby we reach out to and care for each other, pool our resources, and ask ourselves how can we serve our community? As Robert Reich writes, “I believe we’re bound together by the ideals and principles we share, and the mutual obligations those principles entail.”
We need leaders with this same mindset, who engage and serve the people they lead and work to create collaborative communities. “As Shimon Peres, a former prime minister and president of Israel, put in his memoir, “We need a generation that sees leadership as a noble cause, defined not by personal ambition, but by morality and a call to service.””
Our previous president focused on “America First,” placing America above all other nations, which both isolated us and excluded others. “As George Orwell dryly observed, a nationalist, “although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge, is typically uninterested in what happens in the real world.” We can be patriots who love and support our country, while also building relationships and finding common ground with other countries, recognizing their sovereignty and their cultural identities.
As, “True patriots […] are deeply curious about, and open to, the rest of humanity. Their sense of the common good doesn’t end at the nation’s borders.” They are not racist or homophobic, and they don’t seek to divide people according to their gender, religion, or ethnicity. On the contrary, they focus on what people have in common.
“Finally, and not least, restoring the common good requires a new commitment to civic education – as part of the formal education of children and young people, as well as the ongoing education of us all.” We need to be committed to life-long learning to truly reach our potential.
We need to regain a civic-minded community spirit, whereby we reach out to and care for each other, pool our resources, and ask ourselves how can we serve our community? As Robert Reich writes, “I believe we’re bound together by the ideals and principles we share, and the mutual obligations those principles entail.”
We need leaders with this same mindset, who engage and serve the people they lead and work to create collaborative communities. “As Shimon Peres, a former prime minister and president of Israel, put in his memoir, “We need a generation that sees leadership as a noble cause, defined not by personal ambition, but by morality and a call to service.””
Our previous president focused on “America First,” placing America above all other nations, which both isolated us and excluded others. “As George Orwell dryly observed, a nationalist, “although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge, is typically uninterested in what happens in the real world.” We can be patriots who love and support our country, while also building relationships and finding common ground with other countries, recognizing their sovereignty and their cultural identities.
As, “True patriots […] are deeply curious about, and open to, the rest of humanity. Their sense of the common good doesn’t end at the nation’s borders.” They are not racist or homophobic, and they don’t seek to divide people according to their gender, religion, or ethnicity. On the contrary, they focus on what people have in common.
“Finally, and not least, restoring the common good requires a new commitment to civic education – as part of the formal education of children and young people, as well as the ongoing education of us all.” We need to be committed to life-long learning to truly reach our potential.
June 5, 2018
Reich presents a few reassuring words and suggestions on what we must do to restore Americans' faith in the common good. Hint: we need to dispose of "whatever it takes to win" partisanship, "whatever it takes to maximize profits" CEOs, and "whatever it takes to rig the economy" money pouring into politics. Sure seems like a pipe dream these days unless more voters suddenly become more informed.
I also plan to try the technique that Reich discusses regarding the use of Honor and Shame next year when attempting to collect the Neighborhood Association dues. Those who gave this year will be Honored with a thank you in the letter. Those who did not contribute to the common good will be subtly Shamed by having their name omitted from the list. OR, this could be a total failure with everyone coming to the conclusion that "Hey, if he didn't pay, why should I?"
Wish me luck . . .
I also plan to try the technique that Reich discusses regarding the use of Honor and Shame next year when attempting to collect the Neighborhood Association dues. Those who gave this year will be Honored with a thank you in the letter. Those who did not contribute to the common good will be subtly Shamed by having their name omitted from the list. OR, this could be a total failure with everyone coming to the conclusion that "Hey, if he didn't pay, why should I?"
Wish me luck . . .
September 12, 2018
A short, compelling read, (written and) published at a time when its message is incredibly important. I recommend it without hesitation, and it's the kind of thing I wish that high school teachers recommended to (or even considered requiring of) the nation's teenagers.
As much as I appreciated Reich's discussion of "resurrecting truth" and the critical need for "civic education for all," I found the most compelling chapters in the book the ones that focused on leadership (not just government, but corporate, etc.) and appropriate and inappropriate uses of "honor and shame." There's some really good food for thought in here.
Alas, I fear the book ... however well-intentioned ... has more than a dollop of rage against the storm aspect to it and, frankly, that it won't garner much attention or, more importantly, reach its intended audience. I also fear that it may be too dry (or conceptual) for its intended audience and that, even with a number of anecdotes, Reich's discipline in maintaining brevity leads to too many of the important points coming across as tautological, declaratory, conclusory, or ... I dunno, maybe even "preachy," and bordering on condescending.
Ultimately, the book reminded me - but, to be clear, it's a more broadly based argument, and it is (again, more broadly) focused on the role of citizens in a society, a nation, and a community, not just our role as taxpayers - of the short piece, by Kayla Chadwick, published in 2017 as our legislature "debated" the public's "right" to some standard of health care, titled: I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People: Our disagreement is not merely political, but a fundamental divide on what it means to live in a society. If you're interested, here's the link: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/... ...
Granted, Reich is an (accomplished) academic, who also earned his spurs at the Cabinet level (during the Clinton administration), and he invested over 200 pages in his thesis, so we can expect more, and he delivers. Reich does a far-more-than-adequate job of reminding us that our country, our society, and our communities depend upon ... not only sacrifice, but ... belief and investment in the common good.
I wish more people (OK, some people) would read it ... and not immediately dismiss or close their hearts and minds to its message ... and at least think about it. It would be, well, for the common good.... Hope springs eternal.
As much as I appreciated Reich's discussion of "resurrecting truth" and the critical need for "civic education for all," I found the most compelling chapters in the book the ones that focused on leadership (not just government, but corporate, etc.) and appropriate and inappropriate uses of "honor and shame." There's some really good food for thought in here.
Alas, I fear the book ... however well-intentioned ... has more than a dollop of rage against the storm aspect to it and, frankly, that it won't garner much attention or, more importantly, reach its intended audience. I also fear that it may be too dry (or conceptual) for its intended audience and that, even with a number of anecdotes, Reich's discipline in maintaining brevity leads to too many of the important points coming across as tautological, declaratory, conclusory, or ... I dunno, maybe even "preachy," and bordering on condescending.
Ultimately, the book reminded me - but, to be clear, it's a more broadly based argument, and it is (again, more broadly) focused on the role of citizens in a society, a nation, and a community, not just our role as taxpayers - of the short piece, by Kayla Chadwick, published in 2017 as our legislature "debated" the public's "right" to some standard of health care, titled: I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People: Our disagreement is not merely political, but a fundamental divide on what it means to live in a society. If you're interested, here's the link: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/... ...
Granted, Reich is an (accomplished) academic, who also earned his spurs at the Cabinet level (during the Clinton administration), and he invested over 200 pages in his thesis, so we can expect more, and he delivers. Reich does a far-more-than-adequate job of reminding us that our country, our society, and our communities depend upon ... not only sacrifice, but ... belief and investment in the common good.
I wish more people (OK, some people) would read it ... and not immediately dismiss or close their hearts and minds to its message ... and at least think about it. It would be, well, for the common good.... Hope springs eternal.
August 14, 2021
One of the best civics books I have ever encountered. It is not a partisan book. He points out errors and deficiencies from many fields and political parties. I have always loved Robert Reich’s books. He is the consummate model of a Universtiy professor during our time. The logic is irrefutable with the exception that modern life for many makes it difficult to fully follow his suggestions. He convincingly urges us all to live the life we know we should. I have personally fallen way short of his ideals. I am part of the problem. This book has inspired me to not waste my waning days. I will make “The Common Good” a mantra.
March 19, 2018
Everyone should read this. Reich explains what people have in common..the fundamental basis of what our society shares and why people like Shkreli and Ayn Rand are wrong.
February 21, 2018
If Robert Reich has not written the best book of political economy in a long while, he has certainly written the most timely and necessary book of our time. And it’s written on one fundamental truth: The reality of American history is the pursuit of an ideal of individuality defined by the common good, not the achievement of individual Americans jockeying for personal advantage at any cost to the common good.
Without the collective good, there is no society. Without regulatory restrictions insuring intellectual property and competitive fair play, there is no American economy. To suggest that our economy is “free” in any literal sense is to ignore the very principles of competition on which Adam Smith built his economic model. It is a model built on the ideal of truth and equitable competition, not the ideal of individualism without rules or constraints.
If we are a nation of law and order, it is because we, in our collective sense of right and wrong, have voluntarily committed to the ideal. It’s a commitment not to our individuality, but to our individual peace and prosperity through collective cooperation and self-restraint. Without the self-restraint that can only come from recognition of the common good the police would have virtually no chance to keep the peace. It is the ideal, as much as the police (who clearly deserve our respect and support), which keep the streets safe.
If modern science has taught us anything it is the degree to which our world is integrated. The quality of our environment is determined not by the local ecology of a prairie here and a rain forest there, but by the balance achieved within a complex and integrated global ecosystem. The most impactful economic theory flows not from presumed theoretical behaviors but from the recognition of how much our actual economic behavior is driven by human psychology. Human biology and medicine, by the same token, cannot be understood outside of the influence of evolution and the body’s integrated systems.
If there is a common theme to the malaise currently paralyzing our politics it is the historically inaccurate digital perspective that there is only democracy and authoritarianism. Any attempt to promote the common good on any front, including gender and racial equality, immigration, prison reform, income inequality, etc., is quickly and effectively dismissed by the people holding the microphone with a simple allusion to the slippery slope of tyranny, fascism, and, of course, communism.
As Reich points out, however, when Ayn Rand was establishing the ideological foundation of the conservatism now embraced by the ruling political class in Washington, the Allied powers did not defeat fascism, nor did the US defeat the USSR in the Cold War, by employing the opposite ideology. We defeated the repulsive authoritarianism of the mid-20th Century by doubling down on our commitment to the common good and the guiding ideal which redefined it in a uniquely American and effective way.
Technology has integrated our lives more than ever before. And whether you think that’s good or bad, we aren’t going to turn back the clock of technology. (Nor do I think we should want to.) Attempting to make the common good irrelevant or undesirable by abandoning our collective ideals of a commitment to truth, inclusion, and compassion, we aren’t going to resurrect America’s golden years. Those years were built on a commitment to the common good, not its rejection.
As any honest accountant will tell you, no accounting is without fault because no accounting can, by definition, be complete. The context of reality is just too complex and multi-faceted. Reich’s account is no different and many critics, I’m sure, will be quick to point to all of the offenses he chose not to include in his book. I could, too. But that kind of reciprocal finger pointing is one of the forces that undermine the common good today. It is the ultimate “broken window”, as Reich refers to it. The simple fact is that the problem is bigger than the individual injustices that collectively define it.
In the same way, every solution Reich provides (e.g., commitment to truth, education, leadership as trusteeship, etc.) is part of a duality that he doesn’t always fully explore. If we have a responsibility in the name of the common good to universities, for example, they have a responsibility to our common good as well. Again, however, a duality is just that. Or to put it in more colloquial terms, two wrongs don’t make a right.
All told, Robert Reich has a perspective. We all do. In the end, however, I don’t believe his is just a personal perspective. It is the reality: “If we are losing our national identity, it is not because we come in more colors or speak more languages than before. It is because we are losing our sense of common good…We have never been a perfect union. Our finest moments have been when we sought to become more perfect than we had been.”
A superb and quick read that should be on everyone’s reading list.
Without the collective good, there is no society. Without regulatory restrictions insuring intellectual property and competitive fair play, there is no American economy. To suggest that our economy is “free” in any literal sense is to ignore the very principles of competition on which Adam Smith built his economic model. It is a model built on the ideal of truth and equitable competition, not the ideal of individualism without rules or constraints.
If we are a nation of law and order, it is because we, in our collective sense of right and wrong, have voluntarily committed to the ideal. It’s a commitment not to our individuality, but to our individual peace and prosperity through collective cooperation and self-restraint. Without the self-restraint that can only come from recognition of the common good the police would have virtually no chance to keep the peace. It is the ideal, as much as the police (who clearly deserve our respect and support), which keep the streets safe.
If modern science has taught us anything it is the degree to which our world is integrated. The quality of our environment is determined not by the local ecology of a prairie here and a rain forest there, but by the balance achieved within a complex and integrated global ecosystem. The most impactful economic theory flows not from presumed theoretical behaviors but from the recognition of how much our actual economic behavior is driven by human psychology. Human biology and medicine, by the same token, cannot be understood outside of the influence of evolution and the body’s integrated systems.
If there is a common theme to the malaise currently paralyzing our politics it is the historically inaccurate digital perspective that there is only democracy and authoritarianism. Any attempt to promote the common good on any front, including gender and racial equality, immigration, prison reform, income inequality, etc., is quickly and effectively dismissed by the people holding the microphone with a simple allusion to the slippery slope of tyranny, fascism, and, of course, communism.
As Reich points out, however, when Ayn Rand was establishing the ideological foundation of the conservatism now embraced by the ruling political class in Washington, the Allied powers did not defeat fascism, nor did the US defeat the USSR in the Cold War, by employing the opposite ideology. We defeated the repulsive authoritarianism of the mid-20th Century by doubling down on our commitment to the common good and the guiding ideal which redefined it in a uniquely American and effective way.
Technology has integrated our lives more than ever before. And whether you think that’s good or bad, we aren’t going to turn back the clock of technology. (Nor do I think we should want to.) Attempting to make the common good irrelevant or undesirable by abandoning our collective ideals of a commitment to truth, inclusion, and compassion, we aren’t going to resurrect America’s golden years. Those years were built on a commitment to the common good, not its rejection.
As any honest accountant will tell you, no accounting is without fault because no accounting can, by definition, be complete. The context of reality is just too complex and multi-faceted. Reich’s account is no different and many critics, I’m sure, will be quick to point to all of the offenses he chose not to include in his book. I could, too. But that kind of reciprocal finger pointing is one of the forces that undermine the common good today. It is the ultimate “broken window”, as Reich refers to it. The simple fact is that the problem is bigger than the individual injustices that collectively define it.
In the same way, every solution Reich provides (e.g., commitment to truth, education, leadership as trusteeship, etc.) is part of a duality that he doesn’t always fully explore. If we have a responsibility in the name of the common good to universities, for example, they have a responsibility to our common good as well. Again, however, a duality is just that. Or to put it in more colloquial terms, two wrongs don’t make a right.
All told, Robert Reich has a perspective. We all do. In the end, however, I don’t believe his is just a personal perspective. It is the reality: “If we are losing our national identity, it is not because we come in more colors or speak more languages than before. It is because we are losing our sense of common good…We have never been a perfect union. Our finest moments have been when we sought to become more perfect than we had been.”
A superb and quick read that should be on everyone’s reading list.
March 5, 2018
Outstanding, Reich is as entertaining as he is enlightening. This book ought be required reading for every elected official, spiritual leader, and business exec across the nation.
March 24, 2019
The Common Good, by Robert B. Reich, is a book on the decay of the concept of the common good in the United States (in particular, although this principle applies everywhere). Reich notes the rise of brinkmanship politics, where each party in the States holds the budget hostage and threatens a government shutdown to try and force in petty legislation. He notes the increasing viewpoint that political and business positions exist to enrich the incumbent, and not for increasing the quality of life in society. He notes how businesses are shareholder profit focused, and no longer view their human resources, customers, or products as the most important factors in business. Reich also disparages the promotion of individualism over the well being of individuals. This is seen in sectors like health insurance, education, politics, business and so on, where wealth is the most important factor.
Reich's book is about the principle of the common good - enshrined in Liberal Democracy. It is a utopian ideal, but one that basically promotes the well being of all over the well being of one. Certainly individual rights are important, but these rights should not trump the rights of everyone else - this is a slap in the face of the idea of individualism in general. Reich looks at this through specific examples. Certainly Donald Trump is in this book, but the book does not focus on him. Reich holds back nothing in criticizing the likes of Trump, Shkreli, and others who seem to promote their own positions and well being over anything. This erodes public trust in office and business, is unhealthy for economic well being and stability, and can detrimentally effect many others. Martin Shkreli used hostile takeover tactics to purchase a company that had a monopoly on an important life saving drug, and then raised its price to astronomical levels, making it unaffordable for many who needed it. He gained funds for this through securities fraud. Donald Trump has refused to put his private wealth in a public trust fund while in office, and maintains his ties to his former business empire, and all unabashedly. Such behaviour undermines and erodes the credibility of office for politicians, and destroys public trust in business. These issues could be potentially catastrophic for the idea of society, community and democracy, all concepts that rely on public trust, honesty, and the observance of rules and laws.
The Common Good is an interesting piece on the titled concept. Different from Reich's more economically focused works, this is more a piece on political theory and political philosophy. Reich is examining a key principle in American (and most) democracy. He also examines how this concept may be eroding in modern times, and how dangerous this may be for democracy to exist as a form of government. A solid read, and much less hysterical than much of the commentary about politics nowadays. It is a calm and collected examination of a key political concept by a veteran politician and political theorist. A solid read.
Reich's book is about the principle of the common good - enshrined in Liberal Democracy. It is a utopian ideal, but one that basically promotes the well being of all over the well being of one. Certainly individual rights are important, but these rights should not trump the rights of everyone else - this is a slap in the face of the idea of individualism in general. Reich looks at this through specific examples. Certainly Donald Trump is in this book, but the book does not focus on him. Reich holds back nothing in criticizing the likes of Trump, Shkreli, and others who seem to promote their own positions and well being over anything. This erodes public trust in office and business, is unhealthy for economic well being and stability, and can detrimentally effect many others. Martin Shkreli used hostile takeover tactics to purchase a company that had a monopoly on an important life saving drug, and then raised its price to astronomical levels, making it unaffordable for many who needed it. He gained funds for this through securities fraud. Donald Trump has refused to put his private wealth in a public trust fund while in office, and maintains his ties to his former business empire, and all unabashedly. Such behaviour undermines and erodes the credibility of office for politicians, and destroys public trust in business. These issues could be potentially catastrophic for the idea of society, community and democracy, all concepts that rely on public trust, honesty, and the observance of rules and laws.
The Common Good is an interesting piece on the titled concept. Different from Reich's more economically focused works, this is more a piece on political theory and political philosophy. Reich is examining a key principle in American (and most) democracy. He also examines how this concept may be eroding in modern times, and how dangerous this may be for democracy to exist as a form of government. A solid read, and much less hysterical than much of the commentary about politics nowadays. It is a calm and collected examination of a key political concept by a veteran politician and political theorist. A solid read.
February 25, 2018
Reich's heart is in the right place. In this book he takes a look at how norms have been eroded in the last couple years (more than that, but especially since the election of the current president). It feels a little too surface level without looking at the deeper structural problems.
Reich is old enough to remember the world before Watergate and Neoliberalism, where if you were a certain race and class, then you didn't have to worry about as much as you do now. There's been a number of books looking at this breakdown on both the right in the left - see recent works by Robert Putnam and Charles Muarry.
But to me it seems the problem is not that the last few years have been the aberration of the social world built on capitalism. Instead, the immediate post war years were the aberration, and asking how we get to that place (while not really mentioning separate water fountains and all that was a symptom of) again - it's in not looking deep enough.
And for a while Reich was on the left edge of what was possible to be listened to and not dismissed as a lunatic. I think the window is being pushed left. If not, the whole window being pulled, it is at least being widened.
Reich is old enough to remember the world before Watergate and Neoliberalism, where if you were a certain race and class, then you didn't have to worry about as much as you do now. There's been a number of books looking at this breakdown on both the right in the left - see recent works by Robert Putnam and Charles Muarry.
But to me it seems the problem is not that the last few years have been the aberration of the social world built on capitalism. Instead, the immediate post war years were the aberration, and asking how we get to that place (while not really mentioning separate water fountains and all that was a symptom of) again - it's in not looking deep enough.
And for a while Reich was on the left edge of what was possible to be listened to and not dismissed as a lunatic. I think the window is being pushed left. If not, the whole window being pulled, it is at least being widened.
May 7, 2018
I wanted to really like this book because it is such an important topic and because I agree that we have, as a nation, lost sight of the concept of a "common weal," or a common good. But I only sort of liked it because, while it is occasionally insightful, it reads like a first draft and, in many places, descends from its lofty thesis to become a series of rants about things that the author doesn't like. I'm glad that I read it, but I probably won't quote it much: its diagnosis is too general, and its prescriptions are too amorphous, for it to be much help in reinstilling an idea of the common good.
And also, Reich falls pretty hard into the nostalgia trap--the belief that the country was united and understood the common good until about fifty years ago, when things began to go drastically awry. But most of the things that he highlights have been with us always, though the amount of civic virtue and national unity was probably greater in the post-World War II period than at any other time since the Revolution. The narrative of decline that the book implies, though, misreads a temporary spike in common goodness as evidence of a steady decline.
Reich's basic argument is that Americans used to have a shared notion of civic virtue and the common good and now we don't any more. And he places the blame on three sets of villains: 1) politicians who want to win at any cost; 2) corporate leaders who want to make money at any cost; and 3) politicians who conspire with corporate leaders to "rig the economy at any cost." Technically, I guess, this is only two sets of villains who combine in different ways to produce three things that have destroyed public virtue. But whatever.
I was impressed by the even-handedness of Reich's treatment of the first group. He does not single out Republicans as the destroyers of civility and common values. He blames them of course, but he blames democrats just as much. He is especially hard on the 1) Democratic Senate that defeated the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork through outright character assassination; and 2) Barack Obama, who legislated through executive order and weakened the public's trust in the separation of powers.
He is not nearly as even handed when talking about rich people and corporations, who, he argues, have entirely abandoned the idea of public virtue in favor of making money and maximizing shareholder value. And with these ill-gotten gains, they have flooded government with huge donations aimed at shifting the playing field so they can earn more money. And politicians of both parties have gone right along with them.
And all of this leads directly to Donald Trump, who has been (and I think that Reich is absolutely correct here) systematically destroying the norms and values at the heart of civic virtue and the common good. But Trump, as Reich presents him, is a consequence of the disappearance of public virtue and not its cause.
All of this is packaged in a relatively short book with ten chapters--most of which quickly abandon their primary arguments and become a kind of stream-of-consciousness narration of what Robert Reich thinks is wrong with the country. I agree with a lot of what he says, but I desperately wish that he had taken a little more time--and a revision or two--to say it.
And also, Reich falls pretty hard into the nostalgia trap--the belief that the country was united and understood the common good until about fifty years ago, when things began to go drastically awry. But most of the things that he highlights have been with us always, though the amount of civic virtue and national unity was probably greater in the post-World War II period than at any other time since the Revolution. The narrative of decline that the book implies, though, misreads a temporary spike in common goodness as evidence of a steady decline.
Reich's basic argument is that Americans used to have a shared notion of civic virtue and the common good and now we don't any more. And he places the blame on three sets of villains: 1) politicians who want to win at any cost; 2) corporate leaders who want to make money at any cost; and 3) politicians who conspire with corporate leaders to "rig the economy at any cost." Technically, I guess, this is only two sets of villains who combine in different ways to produce three things that have destroyed public virtue. But whatever.
I was impressed by the even-handedness of Reich's treatment of the first group. He does not single out Republicans as the destroyers of civility and common values. He blames them of course, but he blames democrats just as much. He is especially hard on the 1) Democratic Senate that defeated the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork through outright character assassination; and 2) Barack Obama, who legislated through executive order and weakened the public's trust in the separation of powers.
He is not nearly as even handed when talking about rich people and corporations, who, he argues, have entirely abandoned the idea of public virtue in favor of making money and maximizing shareholder value. And with these ill-gotten gains, they have flooded government with huge donations aimed at shifting the playing field so they can earn more money. And politicians of both parties have gone right along with them.
And all of this leads directly to Donald Trump, who has been (and I think that Reich is absolutely correct here) systematically destroying the norms and values at the heart of civic virtue and the common good. But Trump, as Reich presents him, is a consequence of the disappearance of public virtue and not its cause.
All of this is packaged in a relatively short book with ten chapters--most of which quickly abandon their primary arguments and become a kind of stream-of-consciousness narration of what Robert Reich thinks is wrong with the country. I agree with a lot of what he says, but I desperately wish that he had taken a little more time--and a revision or two--to say it.
April 5, 2018
Feels like notes for a TED talk.
August 15, 2023
Overall, this is an excellent book that should be read by every American. It shows how a devotion to the common good generally characterized American political, cultural, and economic life until the ideological revolution from the 1970s to the present substituted a concept of “doing whatever it takes to win” over the common good. Reich’s historical account of how this occurred is quite enlightening.
I have only a few quibbles with the book (all page citations in the following discussion are to the Kindle edition):
1. Reich’s discussion (pages 69–70) of the Senate rejection of the nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the US Supreme Court in 1987 emphasizes the “scorched-earth” liberal opposition to Bork’s nomination. I have not recently studied the details of this nomination in depth, but I recall there were some legitimate concerns over Bork’s nomination, including his role in the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturda...) and his extreme views on some jurisprudential issues. Reich does not mention that several Republican senators voted against Bork’s confirmation.
2. On pages 129–30, Reich states (emphasis added):
3. Reich states on page 179 that proper civic education “should enable [young people] to work with others to separate facts and logic from values and beliefs, and help them find facts and apply logic together even if their values and beliefs differ” (emphasis added). I applaud Reich’s dedication to evidence and informal logic. But he here repeats a characteristic, erroneous premise of modern philosophy: the distinction between facts and values, which entails the view that values are mere subjective preferences that are not subject to rational or scientific examination. If this fact-value distinction were valid, the thesis of Reich’s book—that humans should pursue the common good instead of “doing whatever it takes to win”–is merely his subjective preference, with no more rational basis than the view that that people should do whatever it takes to win. For an alternative approach, written before I read Reich’s book but which agrees with it in many respects, see Reason and Human Ethics, especially chapters 1 and 2 (which are reproduced online at https://www.academia.edu/82835731/Exc...).
Alan E. Johnson
Independent Philosopher, Historian, Political Scientist, and Legal Scholar
I have only a few quibbles with the book (all page citations in the following discussion are to the Kindle edition):
1. Reich’s discussion (pages 69–70) of the Senate rejection of the nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the US Supreme Court in 1987 emphasizes the “scorched-earth” liberal opposition to Bork’s nomination. I have not recently studied the details of this nomination in depth, but I recall there were some legitimate concerns over Bork’s nomination, including his role in the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturda...) and his extreme views on some jurisprudential issues. Reich does not mention that several Republican senators voted against Bork’s confirmation.
2. On pages 129–30, Reich states (emphasis added):
None of this [the historical replacement of the common good with “doing whatever it takes to win”] is simply a matter of “ethics.” Ethics involves fulfilling legal responsibilities, avoiding obvious conflicts of interest, and behaving in an aboveboard manner. As now routinely taught in graduate schools of business and as required for obtaining many professional licenses, ethics is about how to avoid legal troubles or public relations disasters. Leadership as trusteeship extends way beyond ethics. It goes to the heart of the job. It requires a different way of thinking about the central obligation of leading any institution. Part of the responsibility of elected or appointed government officials, of corporate executives, and of leaders of nonprofits and other major organizations in society must be to enhance the public’s trust in their institutions and in our political economic system as a whole. Their success should not be measured solely in how much money they or their organizations make or raise, how much power they accumulate, or how much influence they wield. They must also be judged by the legacy of trust they pass onward. As Shimon Peres, a former prime minister and president of Israel, put it in his memoir, “We need a generation that sees leadership as a noble cause, defined not by personal ambition, but by morality and a call to service.” Exactly. The purpose of leadership is not simply to win. It is to serve.Reich here makes a semantic distinction between “ethics” and “morality.” It is clear that he does not equate “ethics” and “morality.” “Ethics,” for him, is merely the business or professional ethics taught in business or professional schools (law schools, medical schools, etc.). Reducing ethics to business or professional ethics is, in my view, incorrect. Although business and professional ethics have their appropriate places in business and professional education and practice, the philosophic study of and reflection on human ethics generally has been considered integral to the concept at least since the most famous book on ethics was written in the fourth century BCE: Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. The term “morality” has a narrower connotation, often confined to religious morality derived from alleged revelation or from a priori “categorical imperatives” postulated by Kant or his successors. For further discussion, see my book Reason and Human Ethics.
3. Reich states on page 179 that proper civic education “should enable [young people] to work with others to separate facts and logic from values and beliefs, and help them find facts and apply logic together even if their values and beliefs differ” (emphasis added). I applaud Reich’s dedication to evidence and informal logic. But he here repeats a characteristic, erroneous premise of modern philosophy: the distinction between facts and values, which entails the view that values are mere subjective preferences that are not subject to rational or scientific examination. If this fact-value distinction were valid, the thesis of Reich’s book—that humans should pursue the common good instead of “doing whatever it takes to win”–is merely his subjective preference, with no more rational basis than the view that that people should do whatever it takes to win. For an alternative approach, written before I read Reich’s book but which agrees with it in many respects, see Reason and Human Ethics, especially chapters 1 and 2 (which are reproduced online at https://www.academia.edu/82835731/Exc...).
Alan E. Johnson
Independent Philosopher, Historian, Political Scientist, and Legal Scholar
May 23, 2018
3.5
there is a lot to say for a rather simple book. Reich is the definition of a New Deal liberal, an anachronism in a world where neoliberalism has infiltrated the political establishment and those challenging its hegemony looking for much more radical solutions than Reich proposes. Reich obviously appreciates the crisis that capitalism finds itself in, growing inequality, growing alienation from governing institutions, and what he sees as the destruction of an ethos he believes once allowed for shared wealth and prosperity, namely this idea of the common good. He describes a post-war era where politicians and corporations embraced an idea of the common good, where decisions took into account all of society's stake holders, but this idea has been replaced by the me-first, win at any cost rejection of the common good, where profit and self-aggrandization is now the dominant goal of politicians and corporate entities.
Although I appreciate the philosophy of the common good as an ideal worth organizing society around, I'm less convinced that this was a motivator in the post-war book, an era of unprecedented economic growth and union militancy that allowed social policy to encourage sharing of resources. Nor do I think the post-1970s world was merely one overtaken by a selfish ideology as much as these ideological expressions reflecting a capitalism less able to share wealth as growth slowed and recessionary periods returned to the fold. I also do not believe Reich offers much in terms of political solutions out of the current state of things, other than proposing educational and volunteer models that can re-instill civic duty to the citizenry. His solutions are driven by a very top down approach to social change: if only we can convince our leaders to re-embrace the ideals of the common good all will be well. Absent is any role of ordinary people and working class institutions in shaping how a society organizes itself and in helping shape the ideas of what is right and just in the world.
Reich is a complicated figure. A former secretary of labour under the Clinton administration who has regret about the economic policies that presidency embraced, someone who has recognized the social tension and breakdown caused by 30 years of neoliberalism, someone who broke with his close friends the Clintons to endorse Bernie Sanders' presidential bid. But while his critiques of the current state of things are right, he paints a too rosy (and I'd argue inaccurate) picture of the New Deal era and offers little in terms of political solutions to challenge the economic and political polarization the United States finds itself in. Unfortunately, this is not a road map for the radical change the world needs.
there is a lot to say for a rather simple book. Reich is the definition of a New Deal liberal, an anachronism in a world where neoliberalism has infiltrated the political establishment and those challenging its hegemony looking for much more radical solutions than Reich proposes. Reich obviously appreciates the crisis that capitalism finds itself in, growing inequality, growing alienation from governing institutions, and what he sees as the destruction of an ethos he believes once allowed for shared wealth and prosperity, namely this idea of the common good. He describes a post-war era where politicians and corporations embraced an idea of the common good, where decisions took into account all of society's stake holders, but this idea has been replaced by the me-first, win at any cost rejection of the common good, where profit and self-aggrandization is now the dominant goal of politicians and corporate entities.
Although I appreciate the philosophy of the common good as an ideal worth organizing society around, I'm less convinced that this was a motivator in the post-war book, an era of unprecedented economic growth and union militancy that allowed social policy to encourage sharing of resources. Nor do I think the post-1970s world was merely one overtaken by a selfish ideology as much as these ideological expressions reflecting a capitalism less able to share wealth as growth slowed and recessionary periods returned to the fold. I also do not believe Reich offers much in terms of political solutions out of the current state of things, other than proposing educational and volunteer models that can re-instill civic duty to the citizenry. His solutions are driven by a very top down approach to social change: if only we can convince our leaders to re-embrace the ideals of the common good all will be well. Absent is any role of ordinary people and working class institutions in shaping how a society organizes itself and in helping shape the ideas of what is right and just in the world.
Reich is a complicated figure. A former secretary of labour under the Clinton administration who has regret about the economic policies that presidency embraced, someone who has recognized the social tension and breakdown caused by 30 years of neoliberalism, someone who broke with his close friends the Clintons to endorse Bernie Sanders' presidential bid. But while his critiques of the current state of things are right, he paints a too rosy (and I'd argue inaccurate) picture of the New Deal era and offers little in terms of political solutions to challenge the economic and political polarization the United States finds itself in. Unfortunately, this is not a road map for the radical change the world needs.
March 15, 2018
This book actually digs out several of the points where I find myself wondering if, somehow, Reich manages to be naive. It's endearing how hopeful he is, definitely read this, but it's really not his best work from my perspective. But then, to be fair, I just can't wrap my head around seeing the basic systems of the world today as anything other than actual evil. I usetacould. . .but, man, I can't these days. I learned too much about how they work, and how perfectly normal my own life was, nevermind how far down there is yet to fall. The people are mostly fine, as far as people go, but put people in a system that encourages and reward immoral, selfish and cruel behaviours, and that's what you'll get. It's not just cream that rises to the top.
Go read Saving Capitalism, for the Many Not the Few next -- it's more concrete, and to my tastes, but you might like it if you liked this either way.
Go read Saving Capitalism, for the Many Not the Few next -- it's more concrete, and to my tastes, but you might like it if you liked this either way.
February 22, 2018
Compelling
From the very first page, with the details of pharmaceutical CEO Shkreli's story and the banking CEO Stumpf's appearance, this book grabbed me by my emotional center as almost no book ever has. Honestly, I feel angry. Actually angry.
The reason this book is so compelling, I think, is that it rings of a truth that I've known for a while but haven't actually heard anyone say. Consider how it starts. It begins with Shkreli, the American hedge fund guy who bought out a pharmaceutical company, then raised the price of a cheap life-saving drug just to make money. In a completely selfish way, he stated that he didn't care if people couldn't afford it, because he "was only interested in making money and we live in a capitalist society." He said it wasn't illegal and he would do everything he could to make more money. He said he regretted not raising the price higher. He antagonized everyone around him. The good news is that he also did illegal things, so they were able to jail him, but what if he hadn't? What if he only raised the price? It made me think of Epipens, for example, and other drugs, whose price has only recently been raised here in American, whose pharmaceutical owners are making huge profits. It's not hard to do the math.
So, Shkreli's story was both fascinating and repulsive, but then Stumpf appears, a criminal parading as good man. It's hard to know why he bothered, but there Stumpf was, saying politely that he was a man interest in being helpful. It broke soon after that he was making hundreds of millions of dollars destroying millions of American's lives. Could he really have wanted to be helpful? As I read, I thought about it. But no. Stumpf's behavior was clearly predatory. He was making money. And he didn't go to jail. He was too rich.
Robert Reich is talking about these two men first because that's what is bleeding our society dry now. Our businesses, our politicians, our Congress, and even our president, they are straightforward about making money to the detriment of the good of most of the people. And I think we are brainwashed into thinking this is how it has to be. This book discusses how it was in 1975 and earlier, before Reagonomics took hold, before we allowed the people who are so desperate to make and stockpile an infinite amount of money to the detriment of others in this country.
One last thing. Is there even such a thing as, "A Common Good"? You know, that's something that Reich talks about a lot throughout this book. As I was reading, a certain realization formed in my own mind. It's my own opinion. Reich paints a good picture of what the common good is. Here's what I personally came up with myself but if you read this book, and I think you'll really enjoy it if you do - "A Common Good" refers to several things, but most importantly, it refers to these things: 1. Recognizing other people as human beings and not hurting each other for any reason, not even to make money (so, not breaking laws and not worrying about laws because you have no desire to break them because you don't want to hurt anyone); 2. Doing everything you can to help others as long as it doesn't hurt yourself (so, paying taxes and supporting schools and things like that).
In conclusion, I haven't ruined the book for you because it's a lot more than what I've just said. It's really worth reading.
From the very first page, with the details of pharmaceutical CEO Shkreli's story and the banking CEO Stumpf's appearance, this book grabbed me by my emotional center as almost no book ever has. Honestly, I feel angry. Actually angry.
The reason this book is so compelling, I think, is that it rings of a truth that I've known for a while but haven't actually heard anyone say. Consider how it starts. It begins with Shkreli, the American hedge fund guy who bought out a pharmaceutical company, then raised the price of a cheap life-saving drug just to make money. In a completely selfish way, he stated that he didn't care if people couldn't afford it, because he "was only interested in making money and we live in a capitalist society." He said it wasn't illegal and he would do everything he could to make more money. He said he regretted not raising the price higher. He antagonized everyone around him. The good news is that he also did illegal things, so they were able to jail him, but what if he hadn't? What if he only raised the price? It made me think of Epipens, for example, and other drugs, whose price has only recently been raised here in American, whose pharmaceutical owners are making huge profits. It's not hard to do the math.
So, Shkreli's story was both fascinating and repulsive, but then Stumpf appears, a criminal parading as good man. It's hard to know why he bothered, but there Stumpf was, saying politely that he was a man interest in being helpful. It broke soon after that he was making hundreds of millions of dollars destroying millions of American's lives. Could he really have wanted to be helpful? As I read, I thought about it. But no. Stumpf's behavior was clearly predatory. He was making money. And he didn't go to jail. He was too rich.
Robert Reich is talking about these two men first because that's what is bleeding our society dry now. Our businesses, our politicians, our Congress, and even our president, they are straightforward about making money to the detriment of the good of most of the people. And I think we are brainwashed into thinking this is how it has to be. This book discusses how it was in 1975 and earlier, before Reagonomics took hold, before we allowed the people who are so desperate to make and stockpile an infinite amount of money to the detriment of others in this country.
One last thing. Is there even such a thing as, "A Common Good"? You know, that's something that Reich talks about a lot throughout this book. As I was reading, a certain realization formed in my own mind. It's my own opinion. Reich paints a good picture of what the common good is. Here's what I personally came up with myself but if you read this book, and I think you'll really enjoy it if you do - "A Common Good" refers to several things, but most importantly, it refers to these things: 1. Recognizing other people as human beings and not hurting each other for any reason, not even to make money (so, not breaking laws and not worrying about laws because you have no desire to break them because you don't want to hurt anyone); 2. Doing everything you can to help others as long as it doesn't hurt yourself (so, paying taxes and supporting schools and things like that).
In conclusion, I haven't ruined the book for you because it's a lot more than what I've just said. It's really worth reading.
August 8, 2019
Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, focuses his latest book on the dramatic shift that took place in American culture from WWII to the 1980s. The US, and I think most of the western democracies, went from the "greatest generation" to the "me generation". We went from "what you can do for your country" to "what's in it for me". Civic life, where we as citizens in our democracies, participants in our economies, managers or employees of our companies, and members or leaders of our communities, has suffered a sharp and serious decline.
Although Trump is mentioned throughout the book, Reich emphasizes that he is more a symptom than a cause of the loss of the common good that once made up civil society. Rather, a slow and steady decline has brought us to this pass: Watergate and the erosion of trust in government and officials, numerous corporate scandals such as Enron and the savings and loan crisis, the Great Recession where bank CEOs risked everything, lost, and had the tax payer bail them out, and constant environmental degradation where companies continue to reap huge profits while turning a blind eye to pollution and climate change-- all of these aspects and more have chipped away at the public's trust in its leaders and in each other.
But what can be done? I had hoped Reich could come up with a bit more here. Although his suggestions are completely logical, and based in what worked in our western societies before, I'm not sure how you can convince so many in the doubting public to believe in them once more.
He talks about honor and shame. We need to do a better job at calling out those in power about their bad behavior and honor those who are often hidden. I continue to wonder how Trumpers can worship a con-artist who was handed a family fortune but practically went bankrupt (even as a casino owner), and obviously has no moral compass as evidenced by his tawdry business dealings in NY, along with his personal life with numerous wives and mistresses. Yet, many say it is because he has "made it" through all that...and, well, he is The President!
Reich also talks about resurrecting the truth. I totally buy into this one. As Andrew McCabe discussed briefly in his book (The Threat), how can a civil society even begin to have a conversation about how to fix things if they cannot agree on the facts? Democracy has big challenges in issues such as climate change, immigration patterns, wealth disparity, and more; but if we cannot even agree on the key causes of these issues (or in some cases, whether they ARE issues), we will never make any progress on solving them. Yet our social-media continues to build bubbles around us, simply reinforcing the opinions it thinks via its algorithms that we already have...
This is a fine book by Robert Reich, with the same optimistic tone and common sense as his other past works. I just wish he had a wider audience...It shocks me how many citizens don't really have a clue or care about what we must do to work together for the common good but instead get mired in the "us" versus "them" mentality. We cannot go on with progressives saying, "No use arguing with die-hard Republicans or Trump fanatics because they are all stupid racists" whilst the die-hard Trumpers simply retort, "MAGA 2020! We own the libtards!"
Although Trump is mentioned throughout the book, Reich emphasizes that he is more a symptom than a cause of the loss of the common good that once made up civil society. Rather, a slow and steady decline has brought us to this pass: Watergate and the erosion of trust in government and officials, numerous corporate scandals such as Enron and the savings and loan crisis, the Great Recession where bank CEOs risked everything, lost, and had the tax payer bail them out, and constant environmental degradation where companies continue to reap huge profits while turning a blind eye to pollution and climate change-- all of these aspects and more have chipped away at the public's trust in its leaders and in each other.
But what can be done? I had hoped Reich could come up with a bit more here. Although his suggestions are completely logical, and based in what worked in our western societies before, I'm not sure how you can convince so many in the doubting public to believe in them once more.
He talks about honor and shame. We need to do a better job at calling out those in power about their bad behavior and honor those who are often hidden. I continue to wonder how Trumpers can worship a con-artist who was handed a family fortune but practically went bankrupt (even as a casino owner), and obviously has no moral compass as evidenced by his tawdry business dealings in NY, along with his personal life with numerous wives and mistresses. Yet, many say it is because he has "made it" through all that...and, well, he is The President!
Reich also talks about resurrecting the truth. I totally buy into this one. As Andrew McCabe discussed briefly in his book (The Threat), how can a civil society even begin to have a conversation about how to fix things if they cannot agree on the facts? Democracy has big challenges in issues such as climate change, immigration patterns, wealth disparity, and more; but if we cannot even agree on the key causes of these issues (or in some cases, whether they ARE issues), we will never make any progress on solving them. Yet our social-media continues to build bubbles around us, simply reinforcing the opinions it thinks via its algorithms that we already have...
This is a fine book by Robert Reich, with the same optimistic tone and common sense as his other past works. I just wish he had a wider audience...It shocks me how many citizens don't really have a clue or care about what we must do to work together for the common good but instead get mired in the "us" versus "them" mentality. We cannot go on with progressives saying, "No use arguing with die-hard Republicans or Trump fanatics because they are all stupid racists" whilst the die-hard Trumpers simply retort, "MAGA 2020! We own the libtards!"
April 26, 2021
Highly recommended for those interested in this topic.
I was raised to believe in the Common Good or as we called it The Greater Good. I became a better person by living up to the ideal that there are things in life more important than I am. By caring about each other we all benefit.
Reich is fair minded in his criticism. He discusses both Democrats and Republicans. But he realizes if you listen carefully that it is not an equal equivalency. The Republican Party is off the rails.
I was raised to believe in the Common Good or as we called it The Greater Good. I became a better person by living up to the ideal that there are things in life more important than I am. By caring about each other we all benefit.
Reich is fair minded in his criticism. He discusses both Democrats and Republicans. But he realizes if you listen carefully that it is not an equal equivalency. The Republican Party is off the rails.
May 8, 2018
While this book was written by an author whom I vaguely remember in my youth as having been more conservative, or right-wing, than what I was comfortable with in more recent times, I now see him as more moderate, perhaps because I am now looking through the lens of what we see here, in these very polarizing times. That is rightly what he tries to take aim at in his book: despite what I see as some rather unfair critiques that he levels at former President Obama, he is working to make us all understand that it is The Common Good, which has always been at the center of American thought, that he is talking about in a most urgent way. And on that, we can certainly agree.
Let's #EndPoverty by improving these four parts of our Public Domain Social Infrastructure: (1. #libraries, 2. #ProBono legal aid and Education, 3. #UniversalHealthCare , and 4. good #publictransport )
Read, Write, Dream, Walk !
#PublicDomainInfrastructure
Shira
7 May, 12018 HE
Let's #EndPoverty by improving these four parts of our Public Domain Social Infrastructure: (1. #libraries, 2. #ProBono legal aid and Education, 3. #UniversalHealthCare , and 4. good #publictransport )
Read, Write, Dream, Walk !
#PublicDomainInfrastructure
Shira
7 May, 12018 HE
February 19, 2020
palpably powerful and cogent, this book diagnoses the ultimate reasons for current societal malaise especially in the United States in the unstitching of societal fabric and undoing of common trust.
"Three exploitations of trust set off chain reactions that have undermined the common good: Whatever-it-takes-to-win politics, Whatever it takes to maximize profits, Whatever it takes to rig the economy... to attribute all this to the impersonal workings of the free market is to be blind to the disproportionate political power of America's economic elites over the rules of the game, and the failure to use that power to deliver rising or even stable incomes to the rest of the nation"
We now live in a world where ethical people originally subscribed to unwritten norms about the rights and duties everyone holds in trust for his or her neighbor, then some 'ambitious' people see the chance to break the norms and maximize their own personal benefits. These initial rulebreakers, the author says, would include the first congressmen to conceive of the revolving door to affluent lobbying, the first CEOs to calculate their decisions according to the colossal dismissal packages they would reap from hollowing out their own industries, the first bankers to realize they could risk safe investments then hold out for a public bailout, the first pharmaceutical leaders to realize they can charge as much as they want for drugs and hold the sick hostage. Because of these initial rulebreaking, even ordinarily honest people abandon social norms in pursuit of what is also beneficial for them individually, in suspicion of losing out or being bamboozled from their own share of the pie. Because of this, society now consists of atomized, hyperindividualized citizens out to grab the best deal for themselves and leave fellow citizens behind.
What a disheartening state of affairs. This is a very good book for people interested in these turn of events.
"Three exploitations of trust set off chain reactions that have undermined the common good: Whatever-it-takes-to-win politics, Whatever it takes to maximize profits, Whatever it takes to rig the economy... to attribute all this to the impersonal workings of the free market is to be blind to the disproportionate political power of America's economic elites over the rules of the game, and the failure to use that power to deliver rising or even stable incomes to the rest of the nation"
We now live in a world where ethical people originally subscribed to unwritten norms about the rights and duties everyone holds in trust for his or her neighbor, then some 'ambitious' people see the chance to break the norms and maximize their own personal benefits. These initial rulebreakers, the author says, would include the first congressmen to conceive of the revolving door to affluent lobbying, the first CEOs to calculate their decisions according to the colossal dismissal packages they would reap from hollowing out their own industries, the first bankers to realize they could risk safe investments then hold out for a public bailout, the first pharmaceutical leaders to realize they can charge as much as they want for drugs and hold the sick hostage. Because of these initial rulebreaking, even ordinarily honest people abandon social norms in pursuit of what is also beneficial for them individually, in suspicion of losing out or being bamboozled from their own share of the pie. Because of this, society now consists of atomized, hyperindividualized citizens out to grab the best deal for themselves and leave fellow citizens behind.
What a disheartening state of affairs. This is a very good book for people interested in these turn of events.
August 16, 2024
I heard Robert B. Reich speak in Houston virtually a few months ago, and he wowed me with his knowledge about our American political system, his intelligence, and his ethics. I immediately set out to read something he's written, and I was happy to find this book at my local library.
I read it today, and---wow---everyone needs to read this book. Reich opens the book by relating how he heard President John F. Kennedy's famous line, "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country," when he was a teen. Reich is saddened by how much the overall attitude of our country has changed over the years since then to "What's in it for me?" He goes on to look at the idea of the common good and how that has developed through history, and then he examines the key events of the past that have torn the fabric of the common good from government as well as business. He concludes by proposing several ways (thank goodness!) we can all nurture the idea of the common good in America today.
An exceptional book that could change our country. I want to buy multiple copies and hand them out to everyone I know.
If you are feeling bleak about America, I urge you to read this book and act in ways that will work for the common good. I intend to try.
I read it today, and---wow---everyone needs to read this book. Reich opens the book by relating how he heard President John F. Kennedy's famous line, "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country," when he was a teen. Reich is saddened by how much the overall attitude of our country has changed over the years since then to "What's in it for me?" He goes on to look at the idea of the common good and how that has developed through history, and then he examines the key events of the past that have torn the fabric of the common good from government as well as business. He concludes by proposing several ways (thank goodness!) we can all nurture the idea of the common good in America today.
An exceptional book that could change our country. I want to buy multiple copies and hand them out to everyone I know.
If you are feeling bleak about America, I urge you to read this book and act in ways that will work for the common good. I intend to try.
March 16, 2018
Although I agree with Reich’s position that we have lost civility in this country, I was searching for more ideas on how to bring it back. Yes civic education in schools and universities will help, but what about the rest of us? Are we a lost cause if we’re over 25? I hope not! We need to stay aware, hold politicians and corporate leaders accountable. Vote. Shop responsibly. And most of all, talk to each other.
Read
July 7, 2018The common good is the short hand for the set of values, ideals, and norms shared by a society (such as freedom, fairness, trust) that makes the society functional and healthy. The US constitution embodies this common good: "we the people" will promote general welfare. But people like Ayn Rand promotes a different view where common good will lead to tyranny whereas a society should be structured based on self-interest. People can also exploit the common good for their self-interest (e.g., thief exploiting trust). There are recent examples of erosion of common good in US: Pharma CEO hiking price for personal enrichment; Trump lying to fan his base; CEOs destroying middle-class welfare for share holder interests; Obama and McCain renege on promises for public campaign financing. How do we regain and maintain that common good? According to Reich, that requires virtuous leaders, eduction, and commitment to truth. (fat chance).
February 14, 2019
A thought provoking book about the way so many things and people in the US have turned away from the common good for the country. He outlines simply and clearly how he thinks this came about and how we can regain it. It is non partisan and he is critical of both Democrats and Republicans in an inoffensive way.
April 5, 2018
This long essay (184 pages)/short book lays out a case for the United States society to refocus on “the common good” in our civic, political and economic national dialog. In the three sections, What is the common good?, What happened to the common good?, and Can the common good be restored?, he addresses these questions with reason and with examples, and finalizes each of the section with a short summary of key points.
Let me quote from the book, to give the reader of this review a summary of the key points of the book.
“I’ve noted that a majority of today’s Americans worry that the nation is losing its national identity. If you examine our history, you’ll see that the core of that identity has not been the whiteness of our skin or the uniformity of ethnicity. It has been the ideas we share, the good we have held in common ….
“That common good, as I have emphasized, is a set of shared commitments – to the rule of law, and to the spirit as well as the letter of the law; to our democratic institutions of government; to truth; to tolerance of our differences; to equal political rights and equal opportunity; to participating in our civic life, and making necessary sacrifices for the ideal we hold in common. We must share these commitments if we are to have a functioning society. They inform our judgments about right and wrong because they constitute our common good. Without them, there is no “we”.
“Whether that common good can be recovered will depend in part on establishing a new ethic of leadership based on trusteeship; an appropriate application of honor and shame; a renewed commitment to truth; and a dedication to the civic education of our children and ourselves. …”
Reich is a passionate writer, who presents his arguments well. Having worked in government, and having grown up in a family that put service to others as a priority, I have wondered why we as a country do not focus on “common good”. Have we forgotten how we have succeeded by ensuring all people had equal opportunity for education and advancement, that by ensuring these attributes we ensure a stronger society, more opportunities for ourselves and family, and have a renewed spirit from that contribution. Reich makes it clear that the founders of our country understood that education for all was essential for a democracy to succeed.
As noted above, Reich gives examples of how personal greed, political and economic excesses, and increased license to lie, without repercussions, has led to a general distrust of our democratic institutions, of corporations, and of journalism. He proposes several broad steps for us to regain a focus on the common good (and of course justifies why this is important). He also acknowledges that this is an uphill battle, one we must struggle towards or else lose our country.
I believe his motivation for writing this, given the age we live in, is to ignite a conversation in our country, that will lead to the changes he suggests, and has included a discussion guide at the end of the book. And two of those questions are “Does democracy depend on a shared reality, or can a democracy function with people believing fundamentally different facts?”, and “Do Americans have sufficient understandings of the obligations of citizenship?”
With that in mind, I recommend this book to any citizen wishing to understand the value of common good and its positive impact on our country and our lives, and those of our children.
Let me quote from the book, to give the reader of this review a summary of the key points of the book.
“I’ve noted that a majority of today’s Americans worry that the nation is losing its national identity. If you examine our history, you’ll see that the core of that identity has not been the whiteness of our skin or the uniformity of ethnicity. It has been the ideas we share, the good we have held in common ….
“That common good, as I have emphasized, is a set of shared commitments – to the rule of law, and to the spirit as well as the letter of the law; to our democratic institutions of government; to truth; to tolerance of our differences; to equal political rights and equal opportunity; to participating in our civic life, and making necessary sacrifices for the ideal we hold in common. We must share these commitments if we are to have a functioning society. They inform our judgments about right and wrong because they constitute our common good. Without them, there is no “we”.
“Whether that common good can be recovered will depend in part on establishing a new ethic of leadership based on trusteeship; an appropriate application of honor and shame; a renewed commitment to truth; and a dedication to the civic education of our children and ourselves. …”
Reich is a passionate writer, who presents his arguments well. Having worked in government, and having grown up in a family that put service to others as a priority, I have wondered why we as a country do not focus on “common good”. Have we forgotten how we have succeeded by ensuring all people had equal opportunity for education and advancement, that by ensuring these attributes we ensure a stronger society, more opportunities for ourselves and family, and have a renewed spirit from that contribution. Reich makes it clear that the founders of our country understood that education for all was essential for a democracy to succeed.
As noted above, Reich gives examples of how personal greed, political and economic excesses, and increased license to lie, without repercussions, has led to a general distrust of our democratic institutions, of corporations, and of journalism. He proposes several broad steps for us to regain a focus on the common good (and of course justifies why this is important). He also acknowledges that this is an uphill battle, one we must struggle towards or else lose our country.
I believe his motivation for writing this, given the age we live in, is to ignite a conversation in our country, that will lead to the changes he suggests, and has included a discussion guide at the end of the book. And two of those questions are “Does democracy depend on a shared reality, or can a democracy function with people believing fundamentally different facts?”, and “Do Americans have sufficient understandings of the obligations of citizenship?”
With that in mind, I recommend this book to any citizen wishing to understand the value of common good and its positive impact on our country and our lives, and those of our children.
January 9, 2024
not bad but remind me to never read a book about politics again
January 11, 2021
"My hope is that this book provokes a discussion of the good we've had in common, what has happened to it, and what we might do to restore it... My goal is not that we all agree on the common good, it is that we get into the practice of thinking and talking and hearing one another's views on it."
This is one of a number of recent books from academics and public servants tracking the decline in concern for the wellbeing of our communities over the last half century and urging a renewed commitment to the common good in the era of Trump. The themes found here are similar in some ways to Michael Sandel's books, but Reich analyzes a few unique causes and offers some interesting suggestions. I think this book pairs nicely with either of Sandel's latest books The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? or What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets.
Reich starts by commenting that in society we see some people that start to engage in behavior to get ahead at someone else's expense, everything from finding loopholes to evade paying taxes to CEOs' hyper-focus on the company stock price at the expense of well-being of the workforce or the community. He recounts the saga of Martin Shkreli's downfall from hedgefund shark to pharma bro to felon as a sort of Ayn Randian "virtue of selfishness" villain.
According to Reich's telling of it, the first half century of the 1900s was much more focused on the common good—schools and universities, healthcare for the aged and poor, national highways, rebuilding war-torn Europe, civil rights movements. Then, beginning in late 1970s, Rand's views started to take ground. "She became the intellectual godmother of modern-day American conservatism, especially it's libertarian strand."
(Fun fact, Trump and Paul Ryan are both known Rand fans, see also: https://qz.com/882493/donald-trump-pa... )
Reich lists a bunch of incidents that eroded public trust in government and business leaders and by effect eroded America's emphasis on the common good. Here are some of them:
-Gulf of Tonkin (escalation of Vietnam war)
-Pentagon Papers
-Lewis Powell Memo
-Watergate
-Abscam scandal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abscam
-Carl Icahn hostile takeover of TWA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Icahn
-Savings and loan scandals
-Iran Contra scandal
-Robert Bork's supreme court rejection
-Michael Milken conviction
-Keating Five
-House banking scandal
-Whitewater scandal (Clintons)
-United Way Scandal (stealing from charity)
-Shutdown of government in 1995
-Newt Gingrich reprimand for improper financial deals
-1998 Rampart scandal LAPD anti-gang unit corruption and
-Clinton impeachment
-1999 financial derivatives, Clinton administration under Wall Street pressure decides NOT to regulate financial derivatives
-Repeal of Glass-Steagall, the protections separating commercial banking from investment banking
-2000-2007, Wall Street gambles on risky mortages and resell them to investors, rating agencies give them higher ratings than they should
-Stellar Wind eavesdropping, and use of torture on suspects
-Red Cross reallocates donations to promised to 9/11 victims
-Enron faking profits
-Southebys and Christies price fixing scandal
-Dot Com bubble - every major investment bank assisted in efforts to defraud investors
-"Weapons of mass destruction"claim
-Jack Abramoff fraud over Native American casinos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ab...
-Bailout of major Wallstreet banks while 9 million homeowners lose their homes and 9 million people lose their jobs. No responsible bank execs go to jail, but instead reward themselves large bonuses.
-Travis Kalanick...
-BP oil spills
-2013 SAC capital scandal
-Lance Armstrong doping scandal
-2013 Soccer scandal
-General Motors ignition scandal, knew about the problem for a decade
-2015 Mitch McConnell says #1 aim is to unseat President Obama
-Martin Shkreli raises price of life-saving pill from $13 - $750
-2016 Chicago Police Scandal on excessive force against Black people
-KPMG scandal
-Greg Gianforte scandal (Representative beats up a reporter)
-2017 Baltimore police abuse against Freddie Gray and other Black people
-Wells Fargo execs are found to push bank employees to create multiple new accounts for customers who didn't want them or request them and then to sell them auto insurance they didn't need
All of these are, Reich says, examples of people seeking personal gain at the expense of the common good. He doesn't say this proves an uptick or that before 1960s things were fine, but he claims that trust has been broken down for decades now and Trump is partially the result of this growing self-focus.
Reich spends a good deal of time discussing "truth" or "a shared truth". Without a shared truth, and organizations with the integrity to speak the truth regardless of lucrative incentives to do otherwise, "we find ourselves in a permanent state of bewilderment." He sees this breakdown of "shared truth" as a fundamental threat to the common good because it's very difficult to act collectively if there is not a shared understanding of the situation. Cross-referencing this with Michael Sandel's comments on 'truth' in The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? is interesting. In his book, Sandel quotes the same Moynihan quote "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts," and questions whether this sentiment is sometimes misapplied—"facts" and "truth" are sometimes not quite so cut and dry as we make them out to be, especially in continually-developing fields like science and sociology. The idea of "shared truth," by contrast, strikes me as an interesting distinction. Obviously, "shared truth" that more closely approximates reality (capital T Truth?) is better for society and should be sought after endlessly, but putting. aside for now that we'll mostly be approximating our Truth, it's much easier to make progress towards a common good if we have many of our 'facts' or views of the world in common. How to reach shared truth in a pluralist society? Without widespread propaganda or central censorship of information? I don't know. I don't know if a shared conception of the facts is always good—consider if the shared conception is fatally wrong... Now I'm rambling off topic. Reich doesn't get this deep. He just says ~"we used to have more of a shared truth, but now thanks to xyz media outlets trying to get ahead, we have many more people believing in untrue things and calling reputable sources 'fake news.'"
Reich says that we should employ honor and shame more. Shaming individuals who exploit the common good for selfish reasons. He says we should punish them in order to really make it clear. Corps paying fines doesn't shame individuals enough, he says.
There are no big answers in this book, but I appreciated Reich's analysis of some of the ways in which the public's trust in those with power has been eroded and its effect on our concern for the common good.
- Other notes -
Health Insurance
Health insurance plans starting in 1920 were created not to generate profits, but to cover as many people as possible. Non-profits Blue Cross and Blue Shield accepted everyone and all members paid the same rate regardless of age or health. By 1960s Blue Cross provided healthcare to 50 million people. In the 70s and 80s, the idea to make money in this industry led to for-profit insurance companies like Aetna and Cigna and accepted only younger and healthier patients. This reduced their costs and enabled lower premiums than the Blues while still pocketing big profits. The Blues couldn't compete after they lost all their younger, healthier constituents to the low premiums so they succumbed and became for-profits too. This led to the healthcare system we have now, eager to insure healthy people and avoiding anyone with health problems.
Money in politics
1971 Lewis Powell Supreme Court decision. Corporations allowed to throw lots of money at politics. Lobbyists ballooned. By 2016, corps and wall street contributed $34 for every $1 donated by labor unions and all other public interest orgs combined.
We still join together, but now we come together for services too expensive to purchase alone (for the best possible deal)—childcare, schools, recreational facilities, security—we cluster by income and exclude those who are more costly. Whether called private or public, often these are available only to those with money. The best public schools are not a common good because they are available only to those who buy their way in via expensive homes in the area.
John McCain and Jeff Flake as examples of not engaging in the whatever-it-takes politics and attending to the common good. Willing to stand up against certain fake info that might otherwise benefit them
Says CEOs are all abdicating their responsibility to the common good.
CEOs could push for laws that...
-resurrect stakeholder capitalism (thinking about the employees, community, customers, instead of just shareholders and stock price)
-require severance packages to communities they abandon
-prohibit mandatory arbitration
-limiting tax deductibility of CEO pay
-raise taxes on themselves
-higher minimum wage
-universal healthcare
-portable pensions
-make it easier to create unions
Google has paid off academics to write papers that they can use to defend itself against regulation, up to $400k. Google has also gotten people fired at non-profit orgs for writing positive things about anti-trust against Google. Google has too much lobbying power, especially with all of its donations to the democratic party.
Wikipedia's definition of 'the common good':
In philosophy, economics, and political science, the common good (also commonwealth, general welfare, or public benefit) refers to either what is shared and beneficial for all or most members of a given community, or alternatively, what is achieved by citizenship, collective action, and active participation in the realm of politics and public service.
Our personal information about what we buy and do, where we go should be private. That info should be protected by stronger laws and Google etc. should not get free reign after getting you to tap I agree to Terms and Service.
This is one of a number of recent books from academics and public servants tracking the decline in concern for the wellbeing of our communities over the last half century and urging a renewed commitment to the common good in the era of Trump. The themes found here are similar in some ways to Michael Sandel's books, but Reich analyzes a few unique causes and offers some interesting suggestions. I think this book pairs nicely with either of Sandel's latest books The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? or What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets.
Reich starts by commenting that in society we see some people that start to engage in behavior to get ahead at someone else's expense, everything from finding loopholes to evade paying taxes to CEOs' hyper-focus on the company stock price at the expense of well-being of the workforce or the community. He recounts the saga of Martin Shkreli's downfall from hedgefund shark to pharma bro to felon as a sort of Ayn Randian "virtue of selfishness" villain.
According to Reich's telling of it, the first half century of the 1900s was much more focused on the common good—schools and universities, healthcare for the aged and poor, national highways, rebuilding war-torn Europe, civil rights movements. Then, beginning in late 1970s, Rand's views started to take ground. "She became the intellectual godmother of modern-day American conservatism, especially it's libertarian strand."
(Fun fact, Trump and Paul Ryan are both known Rand fans, see also: https://qz.com/882493/donald-trump-pa... )
Reich lists a bunch of incidents that eroded public trust in government and business leaders and by effect eroded America's emphasis on the common good. Here are some of them:
-Gulf of Tonkin (escalation of Vietnam war)
-Pentagon Papers
-Lewis Powell Memo
-Watergate
-Abscam scandal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abscam
-Carl Icahn hostile takeover of TWA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Icahn
-Savings and loan scandals
-Iran Contra scandal
-Robert Bork's supreme court rejection
-Michael Milken conviction
-Keating Five
-House banking scandal
-Whitewater scandal (Clintons)
-United Way Scandal (stealing from charity)
-Shutdown of government in 1995
-Newt Gingrich reprimand for improper financial deals
-1998 Rampart scandal LAPD anti-gang unit corruption and
-Clinton impeachment
-1999 financial derivatives, Clinton administration under Wall Street pressure decides NOT to regulate financial derivatives
-Repeal of Glass-Steagall, the protections separating commercial banking from investment banking
-2000-2007, Wall Street gambles on risky mortages and resell them to investors, rating agencies give them higher ratings than they should
-Stellar Wind eavesdropping, and use of torture on suspects
-Red Cross reallocates donations to promised to 9/11 victims
-Enron faking profits
-Southebys and Christies price fixing scandal
-Dot Com bubble - every major investment bank assisted in efforts to defraud investors
-"Weapons of mass destruction"claim
-Jack Abramoff fraud over Native American casinos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ab...
-Bailout of major Wallstreet banks while 9 million homeowners lose their homes and 9 million people lose their jobs. No responsible bank execs go to jail, but instead reward themselves large bonuses.
-Travis Kalanick...
-BP oil spills
-2013 SAC capital scandal
-Lance Armstrong doping scandal
-2013 Soccer scandal
-General Motors ignition scandal, knew about the problem for a decade
-2015 Mitch McConnell says #1 aim is to unseat President Obama
-Martin Shkreli raises price of life-saving pill from $13 - $750
-2016 Chicago Police Scandal on excessive force against Black people
-KPMG scandal
-Greg Gianforte scandal (Representative beats up a reporter)
-2017 Baltimore police abuse against Freddie Gray and other Black people
-Wells Fargo execs are found to push bank employees to create multiple new accounts for customers who didn't want them or request them and then to sell them auto insurance they didn't need
All of these are, Reich says, examples of people seeking personal gain at the expense of the common good. He doesn't say this proves an uptick or that before 1960s things were fine, but he claims that trust has been broken down for decades now and Trump is partially the result of this growing self-focus.
Reich spends a good deal of time discussing "truth" or "a shared truth". Without a shared truth, and organizations with the integrity to speak the truth regardless of lucrative incentives to do otherwise, "we find ourselves in a permanent state of bewilderment." He sees this breakdown of "shared truth" as a fundamental threat to the common good because it's very difficult to act collectively if there is not a shared understanding of the situation. Cross-referencing this with Michael Sandel's comments on 'truth' in The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? is interesting. In his book, Sandel quotes the same Moynihan quote "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts," and questions whether this sentiment is sometimes misapplied—"facts" and "truth" are sometimes not quite so cut and dry as we make them out to be, especially in continually-developing fields like science and sociology. The idea of "shared truth," by contrast, strikes me as an interesting distinction. Obviously, "shared truth" that more closely approximates reality (capital T Truth?) is better for society and should be sought after endlessly, but putting. aside for now that we'll mostly be approximating our Truth, it's much easier to make progress towards a common good if we have many of our 'facts' or views of the world in common. How to reach shared truth in a pluralist society? Without widespread propaganda or central censorship of information? I don't know. I don't know if a shared conception of the facts is always good—consider if the shared conception is fatally wrong... Now I'm rambling off topic. Reich doesn't get this deep. He just says ~"we used to have more of a shared truth, but now thanks to xyz media outlets trying to get ahead, we have many more people believing in untrue things and calling reputable sources 'fake news.'"
Reich says that we should employ honor and shame more. Shaming individuals who exploit the common good for selfish reasons. He says we should punish them in order to really make it clear. Corps paying fines doesn't shame individuals enough, he says.
There are no big answers in this book, but I appreciated Reich's analysis of some of the ways in which the public's trust in those with power has been eroded and its effect on our concern for the common good.
- Other notes -
Health Insurance
Health insurance plans starting in 1920 were created not to generate profits, but to cover as many people as possible. Non-profits Blue Cross and Blue Shield accepted everyone and all members paid the same rate regardless of age or health. By 1960s Blue Cross provided healthcare to 50 million people. In the 70s and 80s, the idea to make money in this industry led to for-profit insurance companies like Aetna and Cigna and accepted only younger and healthier patients. This reduced their costs and enabled lower premiums than the Blues while still pocketing big profits. The Blues couldn't compete after they lost all their younger, healthier constituents to the low premiums so they succumbed and became for-profits too. This led to the healthcare system we have now, eager to insure healthy people and avoiding anyone with health problems.
Money in politics
1971 Lewis Powell Supreme Court decision. Corporations allowed to throw lots of money at politics. Lobbyists ballooned. By 2016, corps and wall street contributed $34 for every $1 donated by labor unions and all other public interest orgs combined.
We still join together, but now we come together for services too expensive to purchase alone (for the best possible deal)—childcare, schools, recreational facilities, security—we cluster by income and exclude those who are more costly. Whether called private or public, often these are available only to those with money. The best public schools are not a common good because they are available only to those who buy their way in via expensive homes in the area.
John McCain and Jeff Flake as examples of not engaging in the whatever-it-takes politics and attending to the common good. Willing to stand up against certain fake info that might otherwise benefit them
Says CEOs are all abdicating their responsibility to the common good.
CEOs could push for laws that...
-resurrect stakeholder capitalism (thinking about the employees, community, customers, instead of just shareholders and stock price)
-require severance packages to communities they abandon
-prohibit mandatory arbitration
-limiting tax deductibility of CEO pay
-raise taxes on themselves
-higher minimum wage
-universal healthcare
-portable pensions
-make it easier to create unions
Google has paid off academics to write papers that they can use to defend itself against regulation, up to $400k. Google has also gotten people fired at non-profit orgs for writing positive things about anti-trust against Google. Google has too much lobbying power, especially with all of its donations to the democratic party.
Wikipedia's definition of 'the common good':
In philosophy, economics, and political science, the common good (also commonwealth, general welfare, or public benefit) refers to either what is shared and beneficial for all or most members of a given community, or alternatively, what is achieved by citizenship, collective action, and active participation in the realm of politics and public service.
Our personal information about what we buy and do, where we go should be private. That info should be protected by stronger laws and Google etc. should not get free reign after getting you to tap I agree to Terms and Service.
April 20, 2018
What I appreciate the most about this reading, is it clearly lays out that the responsibility for the horrendous state of our current political discourse and erosion of our cohesion as a nation lies at the feet of us all. Reich calls out all sides from the media, academia, politicians, corporations and the average American citizen. He makes it clear that if we are dismayed by the "other" side it is more than just differing philosophies but rather a reflection of our country embracing "whatever it takes politics" in favor of upholding public morals and ultimately the common good. There has to more to our political beliefs than just defeating the other if we expect our republic to remain.
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