Book Review: Stubborn Attachments, by Tyler Cowen

I've had this book sitting in my Kindle list for a while. Something about the title made me stubborn too, and I went "I'll read it another time". But I'm glad I did, and annoyed I didn't do it as soon as I bought it, because for length:insights ratio it's one of the best books I've read. Tyler lays his thesis out in 3 clear precepts. Wealth is awesome. It's what enabled us to go from average age thirty to average age eighty, and air conditioning, and all the great things that makes us never want to take a time machine to go back in time. Exponential growth is even more awesome. It's what allowed Sessa to request a humble doubling of of rice every chess square, and won more wheat than existed in the land. Einstein called compound interest magic, and we see this magic every day with compounding growth. We want it to be like the Knightian Crusonia plant that gives ever greater outputs each period. Discount value for the distant future should be low - we should care about the future humans

I've had this book sitting in my Kindle list for a while. Something about the title made me stubborn too, and I went "I'll read it another time". But I'm glad I did, and annoyed I didn't do it as soon as I bought it, because for length:insights ratio it's one of the best books I've read. Tyler lays his thesis out in 3 clear precepts. Wealth is awesome. It's what enabled us to go from average age thirty to average age eighty, and air conditioning, and all the great things that makes us never want to take a time machine to go back in time. Exponential growth is even more awesome. It's what allow