"New York 2140" by Kim Stanley Robinson is an insightful glimpse at a mid-term future. This is a character-driven saga of fiction that supposes a massive ice melt and rampant flooding of shoreline cities around the globe.
___Hundreds of port cities like New York have become instant Venices. Southern Manhattan and large portions of Brookline have gone underwater. Real estate owners have written off their flooded buildings. But abandoned tenants have adapted by applying waterproofing, converting lower floors to boathouses and spanning flimsy pedestrian viaducts from skyscraper to skyscraper.
___Robinson presents an eclectic group of characters. They've found amazing ways to eke out lives in the aftermath of ocean inundations.
___Stefan & Roberto are orphan teenagers. They've built a makeshift diving bell, and they're searching for a treasure chest of gold that was lost during the American Revolutionary War.
___Mutt & Jeff are quantum programmers who perform odd jobs in the dark net. As the novel opens, they've embarrassed their employers and gotten themselves imprisoned in a shipping container.
___Franklin Garr is a hedge fund player. He has devised a index model for the intertidal zone, tracking the livelihoods of half-drowned urban survivors. His index seems to parallel the health of the global economy.
___Vlade is the janitor, housekeeper and jack of all trades for the half-drowned highrise where most of the characters live.
___Charlotte is the chairperson of an intertidal cooperative. She suspects there are wealthy investors who want to make hostile takeovers of the dwellings in the intertidal zone. These same financiers abandoned the residents when ocean waves swamped southern Manhattan. Now they want to cash in after the residents have managed to salvage the threatened real estate.
___Inspector Gen is an old school policewoman. She vows to help Charlotte.
___Amelia is a Cloud performer. She streams her adventures in a dirigible. To gather a loyal audience, she started out with scenes that required her to solve issues without her clothes. Now that she has a considerable following, she transports endangered species to places that offer a better chance for survival.
___Robinson weaves an engaging narrative that brings these characters together. Along the way, he demonstrates the futility of governments to curb the financial parasites. Markets add surcharges to everything we buy, yet financial services contribute virtually nothing to the real economy. Central banks create money out of nothing and divvy it out to the largest commercial banks. Worse, if bankers make mistakes, governments bail them out, so bankers have a license to gamble without risk.
___ONE PASSAGE: "The bailout of the 2008 crash, which served as the model for the two that followed it, was calculated by historians at somewhere between 5 and 15 trillion dollars. One careful guess said it was 7.7 trillion dollars, another 13 trillion; both added that this was more than the cost (adjusted for inflation) of the Louisiana Purchase, the New Deal, the Marshall Plan, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the 1980s savings and loan bailout, the Iraq wars, and the entire NASA space program, combined. Conclusion: wars and land and social programs must not be very expensive. And compared to rescuing finance from itself, they’re not."
___Unfortunately, popular wags try to tell us that business (if left unfettered) is more efficient than government. Sure thing. Any idiot can appear to be efficient if he's pumped with taxpayer money until it pours out of his ears.
___Robinson has written an entertaining narrative with an important message. I recommend this book 100%...
___Hundreds of port cities like New York have become instant Venices. Southern Manhattan and large portions of Brookline have gone underwater. Real estate owners have written off their flooded buildings. But abandoned tenants have adapted by applying waterproofing, converting lower floors to boathouses and spanning flimsy pedestrian viaducts from skyscraper to skyscraper.
___Robinson presents an eclectic group of characters. They've found amazing ways to eke out lives in the aftermath of ocean inundations.
___Stefan & Roberto are orphan teenagers. They've built a makeshift diving bell, and they're searching for a treasure chest of gold that was lost during the American Revolutionary War.
___Mutt & Jeff are quantum programmers who perform odd jobs in the dark net. As the novel opens, they've embarrassed their employers and gotten themselves imprisoned in a shipping container.
___Franklin Garr is a hedge fund player. He has devised a index model for the intertidal zone, tracking the livelihoods of half-drowned urban survivors. His index seems to parallel the health of the global economy.
___Vlade is the janitor, housekeeper and jack of all trades for the half-drowned highrise where most of the characters live.
___Charlotte is the chairperson of an intertidal cooperative. She suspects there are wealthy investors who want to make hostile takeovers of the dwellings in the intertidal zone. These same financiers abandoned the residents when ocean waves swamped southern Manhattan. Now they want to cash in after the residents have managed to salvage the threatened real estate.
___Inspector Gen is an old school policewoman. She vows to help Charlotte.
___Amelia is a Cloud performer. She streams her adventures in a dirigible. To gather a loyal audience, she started out with scenes that required her to solve issues without her clothes. Now that she has a considerable following, she transports endangered species to places that offer a better chance for survival.
___Robinson weaves an engaging narrative that brings these characters together. Along the way, he demonstrates the futility of governments to curb the financial parasites. Markets add surcharges to everything we buy, yet financial services contribute virtually nothing to the real economy. Central banks create money out of nothing and divvy it out to the largest commercial banks. Worse, if bankers make mistakes, governments bail them out, so bankers have a license to gamble without risk.
___ONE PASSAGE: "The bailout of the 2008 crash, which served as the model for the two that followed it, was calculated by historians at somewhere between 5 and 15 trillion dollars. One careful guess said it was 7.7 trillion dollars, another 13 trillion; both added that this was more than the cost (adjusted for inflation) of the Louisiana Purchase, the New Deal, the Marshall Plan, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the 1980s savings and loan bailout, the Iraq wars, and the entire NASA space program, combined. Conclusion: wars and land and social programs must not be very expensive. And compared to rescuing finance from itself, they’re not."
___Unfortunately, popular wags try to tell us that business (if left unfettered) is more efficient than government. Sure thing. Any idiot can appear to be efficient if he's pumped with taxpayer money until it pours out of his ears.
___Robinson has written an entertaining narrative with an important message. I recommend this book 100%...
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