Dambias Moyo is touted as a fresh and important new voice in economics. The Edge of Chaos, her analysis of the global economy and democracy, plus her ten recommendations to fix it all, does not affirm that reputation. It is superficial, naïve and unimpressive. On the other hand, if you know very little about the state of the world, it is a very helpful overview.

The book is chock full of statistics. Moyo summarizes every major economy with them. Then she keeps telling readers that it puts the countries involved on the edge of chaos, which is clearly not the case.

She writes about infrastructure in the USA putting the country on edge of chaos. I remember (and still have) a fat 1970 issue of Business Week saying the same thing. At the time, it would have taken an impossible $50 billion to fix the crumbling bridges, roads, ports, trains and airports that were sending the country to the edge of chaos. Today, the bill is a trillion, which interestingly is not an impossible number. And rather than all the many reasons she gives for that money being unavailable, the simple truth is if the USA hadn’t invaded Iraq for no reason, it would have all the money it needs today to fix all those things.

Moyo leaps from facts to conclusions with abandon. As I read, I kept thinking things like – but that’s not the reason…. this has nothing to do with that… correlation is not causation…. that’s not why this is happening… we’ve known the real reason for that for decades…

Globalization isn’t working at its optimum because it isn’t real globalization. Free trade is anything but free trade. Treaties are a thousand pages long, with carve-outs, exceptions and workarounds that make them a fraud. Globalization is shrinking under its own pointless baggage, not because it is a failing strategy.

Sadly, her answer to every economic situation is growth, the more the better. We can grow our way out of any problem. This is so grossly naïve and wrong, it should be coming from Donald Trump, not Moyo.

Her prescriptions for saving democracy are similarly superficial, old hat, and impossible. A country that can’t escape the Electoral College is not about to implement weighted voting. In deploring the descent of voter participation, she does not account for the simple fact that voters are offered no quality choices. And she certainly has no scope to examine the fact the two party system prevents quality candidates from even bothering. They are much better off avoiding the swamp and influencing those who choose to be there. If citizens had to serve, if terms were unique, if representatives were elected by issue instead of party, things would be different. Capping expenditures, fining nonvoters and all the other usual patches she proposes will fix nothing.

And despite it all, we stumble on, reducing poverty, improving lives, and by the way, somehow avoiding chaos.

David Wineberg ( )