I was disappointed by Douglas Rushkoff’s [amazon_link id=”0241004411″ target=”_blank” ]Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity[/amazon_link], in the sense that my expectations were high and it didn’t live up to them. To start with the positives, it’s a  good read, and I share Rushkoff’s concerns about aspects of the ever-more-digital economy. There’s the inequality at self-destructive levels in many OECD countries. The obscene amounts of money many corporate execs pay themselves. The determination of some of the digital titans to entrench their monopoly power and indeed extend it to more markets. The intrusiveness of online surveillance for profit. The undermining of content creation in news and the creative sector as Google and Facebook vacuum up a large and growing proportion of the advertising revenue. All of that, yes.

[amazon_image id=”1617230170″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity[/amazon_image]

It is, though, all familiar and Rushkoff doesn’t offer much that seems either new or practical to combat it. In terms of policies, he advocates a sub-40 hour work week and a universal basic income. Both have supporters, both are problematic. He also advocates new, community currencies, enabled by blockchain. Technology might be making it more feasible (although I’m a blockchain sceptic because of the energy requirement), but people have been writing about local and community currenies for decades.

Above all, though, Rushkoff wants companies to change their behaviour, treat workers well, and focus less on ‘growth’. And this was my biggest frustration with the book. He makes no distinction between financial ‘growth’ in the sense of short term profits and share price (so VCs can get their money out, shareholders get their returns and execs cash in their options), and economic growth in the sense of goods and services, often innovative, valued by consumers. Heaven knows, that needs to be sustainable too. But there is a difference between, say, changing corporate law to ban quarterly reporting or share option schemes, and limit financial short termism, and the changes in behavior and policy that would ensure sustainable economic growth. Of course they are linked, including throuhg corporate behaviour. But while bringing about an end to the financialisation would be desirable indeed, bringing about an end to economic growth would be very undesirable. After all, for many people in the western economies, there hasn’t been any economic growth for a decade or so, and the results are not pretty.

I also disagree on one other key point. Rushkoff writes: “The economy is less like a forest or weather system than it is like a technology or a medium. It was created not by God but by people.” Leaving aside divine agency, I’d argue the economy is both – both a natural system of creatures (us) acting in accord with our biological nature, and a system we have some ability to change. It is therefore incredibly complex (in both normal and technical senses). While possible to change its course, this is not as straightforward as saying ‘we’ need to do this or that – adopt the blockchain, introduce a minimum income, report on long term rather than short term profits – and all will be well. Google’s monopoly power is a good place to start, but I’d place more of my hopes on Margarethe Vestager’s use of competition powers than on Google’s executives following this book’s advice to act sustainably.

So in short, a book whose heart is in the right place, but too garbled in its analysis to appeal to me.