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Shortest Book
108
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Longest Book
688
pages
Average book length in
2024
299
pages
Most Shelved
148,584
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Least Shelved
507
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also shelved
Ben’s
average rating for
2024
4.0
really liked it
4.0
Highest Rated on ÀÏ»¢»úÎÈÓ®·½·¨
4.38
average
Ben’s first review of the year
liked it
Elon Musk is one of the most extraordinary people currently alive. In fact, he might be one of the most important in all of human history. He's revolutionised space travel and electric vehicles, made important contributions to electronic payments, might soon help liberate humans altogether from the drudgery of driving, and may yet spearhead landmark developments in battery technology and artificial intelligence as well as perhaps the full-blown c
Elon Musk is one of the most extraordinary people currently alive. In fact, he might be one of the most important in all of human history. He's revolutionised space travel and electric vehicles, made important contributions to electronic payments, might soon help liberate humans altogether from the drudgery of driving, and may yet spearhead landmark developments in battery technology and artificial intelligence as well as perhaps the full-blown cyborgisation of the human species through his company Neuralink. Rarely (if ever) has someone who was not a political leader wrought such massive global change. Such a man deserves a biographer at the top of their game, ready and able to muster their considerable reserves of characterological insight and rhetorical charm. Through his previous biographies, Walter Isaacson proved himself to be just such a person. His biography of Leonardo da Vinci, for example, is one of the finest I've ever read. But for whatever reason, Isaacson's attempt to make the mercurial nature of Elon Musk transparent to the reader fails to live up to our expectations.
As you've probably gathered, I stan Musk. What he's done is unfathomably awesome. But I'm not in love with the guy. As this biography makes clear, Musk possesses some deeply ugly character traits that over the years, and especially since his acquisition of Twitter, have transformed him from a flawed, all-too-human force for good into a highly questionable person. I understand the contempt that gets thrown his way. The fact that he fathered, in secret, two children with one of his employees, mere months (or was it weeks?) after doing the same with his girlfriend, Grimes, with whom he already had two children, deserves nothing but the strongest, most unequivocal reproach. And the way that he defended his decision--by saying that she's an adult who can do what she wants--would be risible if it wasn't so evil and cruel. Musk is both a saviour of humankind and a cunt to many actual humans. And how does Isaacson deal with this division? How does he reconcile the hero and the monster?
Well, mostly, he doesn't. For 613 pages, Isaacson steers almost entirely clear of any attempt to speculate about who Elon really is. And I don't entirely blame him: in many ways, the story of Elon's life needs little elucidation. He is an intensely hard worker; he has an enormous appetite for risk, to the point of relishing risky experiences for their own sake; he's profoundly mission driven, and is entirely unafraid of alienating or hurting people who stand in the way of that mission; and he is extraordinarily resourceful: no idea is too stupid or outrageous to try, even if that means finding loopholes in zoning laws and building entire manufacturing plants outdoors, beneath tents; wheeling huge server farms out of storage with absolutely zero protection, not even bubble wrap or ratchet ties; or repurposing car parts for use in rockets.
But this is not the whole of the story. For this book, Isaacson was permitted to shadow Musk everywhere he went for two whole years. This is unprecedented access, and alongside his countless interviews with virtually everyone of even passing importance in Elon's life, it should have empowered Isaacson to compose his own thoughts and opinions on the man. But he didn't, at least not until the last 2 pages of a 615 page book where, in the clearest expression of Musk that he provides in the entire tome, he asks:
And as much as I enjoyed this book, I would have loved if this eminent biographer of an eminent man had used his unique opportunity and told the world what he really felt. ...more
As you've probably gathered, I stan Musk. What he's done is unfathomably awesome. But I'm not in love with the guy. As this biography makes clear, Musk possesses some deeply ugly character traits that over the years, and especially since his acquisition of Twitter, have transformed him from a flawed, all-too-human force for good into a highly questionable person. I understand the contempt that gets thrown his way. The fact that he fathered, in secret, two children with one of his employees, mere months (or was it weeks?) after doing the same with his girlfriend, Grimes, with whom he already had two children, deserves nothing but the strongest, most unequivocal reproach. And the way that he defended his decision--by saying that she's an adult who can do what she wants--would be risible if it wasn't so evil and cruel. Musk is both a saviour of humankind and a cunt to many actual humans. And how does Isaacson deal with this division? How does he reconcile the hero and the monster?
Well, mostly, he doesn't. For 613 pages, Isaacson steers almost entirely clear of any attempt to speculate about who Elon really is. And I don't entirely blame him: in many ways, the story of Elon's life needs little elucidation. He is an intensely hard worker; he has an enormous appetite for risk, to the point of relishing risky experiences for their own sake; he's profoundly mission driven, and is entirely unafraid of alienating or hurting people who stand in the way of that mission; and he is extraordinarily resourceful: no idea is too stupid or outrageous to try, even if that means finding loopholes in zoning laws and building entire manufacturing plants outdoors, beneath tents; wheeling huge server farms out of storage with absolutely zero protection, not even bubble wrap or ratchet ties; or repurposing car parts for use in rockets.
But this is not the whole of the story. For this book, Isaacson was permitted to shadow Musk everywhere he went for two whole years. This is unprecedented access, and alongside his countless interviews with virtually everyone of even passing importance in Elon's life, it should have empowered Isaacson to compose his own thoughts and opinions on the man. But he didn't, at least not until the last 2 pages of a 615 page book where, in the clearest expression of Musk that he provides in the entire tome, he asks:
"Sometimes great innovators are risk-seeking man-children who resist potty training".This colourful and forceful statement hit me like a bolt from the blue! It demands explanation. A man-child who resists potty-training? What does that mean? I can read into it, but nowhere in the preceding pages does Isaacson so much as hint that his opinion of Musk is so strong and so lowly. Such a phrase deserves an explanation. Or at the very least, it deserves a biography (i.e., all the pages that precede it) that leads the reader inexorably, even if not always obviously, to the same conclusion. But it doesn't. The ending came out of nowhere. Which makes me feel like Isaacson was holding something back.
And as much as I enjoyed this book, I would have loved if this eminent biographer of an eminent man had used his unique opportunity and told the world what he really felt. ...more
µþ·¡±·â€™S
2024
BOOKS
it was amazing
it was amazing
Ben’s last review of the year
it was amazing
Housing affordability is probably the single most important political topic in contemporary Oz. As proof, this book was the most in-demand book I've ever borrowed from a public library: I was 12th in line for this one, and instead of waiting a few days or weeks for it to arrive, I had to wait months. Clearly, the problem of housing affordability is on a lot of people's minds. Another reason for the high demand for this book must be the prestige o
Housing affordability is probably the single most important political topic in contemporary Oz. As proof, this book was the most in-demand book I've ever borrowed from a public library: I was 12th in line for this one, and instead of waiting a few days or weeks for it to arrive, I had to wait months. Clearly, the problem of housing affordability is on a lot of people's minds. Another reason for the high demand for this book must be the prestige of the author and therefore the assumption that the quality of this book would be high. In my opinion, that assumption proved correct. This essay is excellent, and I would recommend it to everyone who wants to better understand the problem of housing affordability in Australia: how we got here, what its causes are, and what we can do about it.
So, what exactly is the housing affordability crisis?
It's this: that the house price to income ratio is two or three times larger than its historical average. Once upon a time, houses cost 2 or 3 times a person's annual salary. Nowadays, it's 7 or 8 times that number. The first and most obvious consequence of this is that it's now really hard to buy a house. The flow-on effects of houses being hard to buy are many, and Kohler thinks that taken together they constitute our nation's single most serious and pressing problem. It means that, to buy houses, people take on more debt; that, because their debts are larger, their mortgage repayments are bigger, which means that they have less income to spend on other things, which means that our economy as a whole isa lot less vibrant, dynamic, and productive; it means that people stay home longer, which likely delays the age at which people get married and have kids, which worsens the fertility crisis; it means that more people than ever draw on the bank of Mum and Dad, diminishing their parents' quality of life; it means that fewer people have pets, which science has very definitively proven make human lives better by making us happier, less lonely, and more active; it means that our entire economy is beholden to the interest rate cycle, because of how enormously interest rate changes affect monthly mortgage repayments; it makes our society as a whole much less equal, because people who own property are far, far more wealthy than those without; and so on. In short, houses being expensive make us less secure, less dynamic, less equal, less fecund (i.e., there are fewer kids); it transfers power to the people who are old, wealthy, conservative, and risk averse. It's just a plain disaster.
Kohler does a great job of spelling out exactly why it's so damaging. He then goes on the explain in just as convincing a manner the historical currents that led us to this point. I found this fascinating, although a little weak. I would've enjoyed more detail, but I'm sure I'll find that elsewhere. Very interesting to me was the fact that Prime Minister Menzies sold off virtually all of our public housing stock because he thought homeowners would see themselves as "little capitalists", and that little capitalists would vote Liberal. He was right about that fact. The nadir of public housing in Australia was after the Second World War, where lots of it was built in a build-to-rent manner for people on low incomes. Menzies and his Deputy thought this was mean to the middle class. The rest is history. The lack of cheap public housing drives up demand for, and thus the price of, the regular stuff. Kohler writes evocatively that public housing was no longer a way to ensure the economic right that everyone had to have a home and property; instead, it became a form of welfare.
Another reason for high property prices is the paradox that Australia ranks 5th in the world for the percentage of its population that lives in cities (not just capital cities), even though we’re the 5th most sparsely populated country on earth (comparing land size to population size). This means that we simultaneously believe that there's enough land for everyone and that the only serious place to live is in our cities, where land is scarce, where demand's high, where costs are higher. Kohler says that this is made worse by there being only one CBD in each city: attempts to create other, alternative CBDs have all failed. Kohler says the only solution to this problem is to build fast, reliable train networks between capital cities and large cities on their fringe, so that residents can travel between the 2 places for work in less than 1 hour. I would love nothing more than to be able to commute daily between Newcastle and Sydney for work (no, seriously, I would). But unfortunately, this too appears to be a pipedream. Claims about fast trains connecting capital cities and regional centres have been bandied about for so long they became a running gag in the great Aussie political satire series Utopia.
Another fascinating reason why our cities suck, why there's so much sprawl and so little densification, is because our cities were still very young when the first cars came along. Unlike European cities, which were designed to be walkable because almost everyone walked then, our towns and cities were built to accommodate the car. That's why we have to drive everywhere, and that's why services, such as schools, hospitals, transport hubs, etc., are so sparse and so spread out: because our city planners designed them to be that way! Put simply, our cities aren't fit for the modern world's purpose, and it's going to be hard, very hard, to redesign them.
Housing is also unaffordable because of 3 specific tax policies, 2 of which most Aussie's are likely sick of hearing about: inheritance taxes, negative gearing, and capital gains taxes. Taken together, they create the incentives that make property speculation extremely lucrative; it's because of these that getting on the housing ladder is the surest path to wealth in Australia; it's because of these that people become professional landlords instead of finding other ways to make money, such as investing in Australian shares.
To start: Kohler says there are no inheritance taxes on property in Australia. So, if someone wants to leave an inheritance, the best way to do it is to leave their wealth in property. Second, negative gearing means that if you lose money on an investment property, you can offset this by reducing your taxable income, which means you pay less income tax. Immediately after negative gearing was reintroduced by John Howard, rental losses surged to historic highs, an indicator that investors were purchasing properties, not homeowners, and that they were doing so for the explicit purpose of reducing their income taxes and as long-term non-residential investments. Third, John Howard halved the amount of capital gains tax people pay on the gains they make from property. So, property investors can reduce their taxable income, pay less tax than on other types of capital, and upon their death they can transfer it to their children completely intact. These 3 policies taken together mean that property investors are taxed very, very little on their investments, which incentivises investment in residential property above virtually all other assets. The obvious outcome of this is that rich investors outcompete poorer would-be homeowners for residential housing stock, and the housing affordability and rental crises reach a fever pitch. It means that institutional investors, large corporations such as superannuation providers, don't think it's worthwhile to fund the construction of large residential complexes, which reduces supply. It means that "whereas in the rest of the world investing in real estate is all about getting rental income from tenants, in Australia it's about getting an income tax deduction and then a capital gain".
Near the book's end, Kohler sums up the states of things by saying that 'the fact that one of the 3 least populated countries on Earth contains the world's second-most expensive housing is a national calamity, and a stunning failure of public policy'. But the problem is complex and politically fraught. Bill Shorten lost his election campaign because he tried to reform too much, too quickly. Nonetheless, says Kohler, that's exactly what needs to happen. The situation is dire and the only way it'll be fixed is through an act (or acts) of enormous political will. This is because making housing affordable again would 'contradict the interests both of the majority of citizens [because they're homeowners] and those with the most power [politicians who benefit politically as well as financially from high house prices]". As remedies, he suggests:
Increasing capital gains tax on properties to its pre-Howard levels. This'll make residential property a less enticing investment. It's been tried many times and has always failed or been quickly reversed.
Restricting negative gearing to new houses only. This'll remove negative gearing from a whole bunch of properties, making them less likely to be bought as investments, while also incentivising the construction of new developments. This, too, has been tried many times, and this, too, has always failed or been reversed.
Having State and Federal governments invest massively in trains. Connecting capital cities and regional centres such as Newcastle via a fast train network would make it possible for dwellings and services to expand beyond our very few, very densely populated, and extremely expensive capital city CBDs.
Linking immigration to housing approvals. He says that for every 2.5 new immigrants, the government ought to build one new dwelling. This will prevent immigration from putting unsustainable upwards pressure on housing prices. This is the first time I've encountered that idea, and I have no idea how politically viable it is. I will note, however, that many people who normally consider talk of restricting immigration to be racist, are fine with the idea so long as it's raised in the context of the housing affordability crisis. The crisis is so bad that it's killed the racist slur.
Use taxes to increase the cost of holding land (land banking). Lots of property developers restrict their release of land to ensure that it remains in demand enough to keep land prices high. Land banking should not be outlawed, but it should be taxed, and heavily, to incentivise developers to release more land to the public.
State and Local governments should reform their zoning laws to make it easier, simpler, quicker, and less expensive to build. One main aim of these reforms should be the rezoning of lots of land as medium-density residential. Australian houses are enormous, and they typically sit on lots of unused land, land that could be used to build secondary dwellings that are already located near essential services and infrastructure.
He also suggests abolishing First Home Owner grants, because he says, actually, that they help usher very few first home buyers into the market but drive up prices for everyone else. I get that it drives up demand but still thought that in its own way this policy was good. This is one I'll research further.
All in all, it's a great and informative read, but a dispiriting one. It's a massive problem, and there are no easy fixes. I guess all we the people can do for the time being is advocate, advocate, advocate, and put pressure on our elected representatives to show some of that much needed "political will" to enact much needed change. ...more
So, what exactly is the housing affordability crisis?
It's this: that the house price to income ratio is two or three times larger than its historical average. Once upon a time, houses cost 2 or 3 times a person's annual salary. Nowadays, it's 7 or 8 times that number. The first and most obvious consequence of this is that it's now really hard to buy a house. The flow-on effects of houses being hard to buy are many, and Kohler thinks that taken together they constitute our nation's single most serious and pressing problem. It means that, to buy houses, people take on more debt; that, because their debts are larger, their mortgage repayments are bigger, which means that they have less income to spend on other things, which means that our economy as a whole isa lot less vibrant, dynamic, and productive; it means that people stay home longer, which likely delays the age at which people get married and have kids, which worsens the fertility crisis; it means that more people than ever draw on the bank of Mum and Dad, diminishing their parents' quality of life; it means that fewer people have pets, which science has very definitively proven make human lives better by making us happier, less lonely, and more active; it means that our entire economy is beholden to the interest rate cycle, because of how enormously interest rate changes affect monthly mortgage repayments; it makes our society as a whole much less equal, because people who own property are far, far more wealthy than those without; and so on. In short, houses being expensive make us less secure, less dynamic, less equal, less fecund (i.e., there are fewer kids); it transfers power to the people who are old, wealthy, conservative, and risk averse. It's just a plain disaster.
Kohler does a great job of spelling out exactly why it's so damaging. He then goes on the explain in just as convincing a manner the historical currents that led us to this point. I found this fascinating, although a little weak. I would've enjoyed more detail, but I'm sure I'll find that elsewhere. Very interesting to me was the fact that Prime Minister Menzies sold off virtually all of our public housing stock because he thought homeowners would see themselves as "little capitalists", and that little capitalists would vote Liberal. He was right about that fact. The nadir of public housing in Australia was after the Second World War, where lots of it was built in a build-to-rent manner for people on low incomes. Menzies and his Deputy thought this was mean to the middle class. The rest is history. The lack of cheap public housing drives up demand for, and thus the price of, the regular stuff. Kohler writes evocatively that public housing was no longer a way to ensure the economic right that everyone had to have a home and property; instead, it became a form of welfare.
Another reason for high property prices is the paradox that Australia ranks 5th in the world for the percentage of its population that lives in cities (not just capital cities), even though we’re the 5th most sparsely populated country on earth (comparing land size to population size). This means that we simultaneously believe that there's enough land for everyone and that the only serious place to live is in our cities, where land is scarce, where demand's high, where costs are higher. Kohler says that this is made worse by there being only one CBD in each city: attempts to create other, alternative CBDs have all failed. Kohler says the only solution to this problem is to build fast, reliable train networks between capital cities and large cities on their fringe, so that residents can travel between the 2 places for work in less than 1 hour. I would love nothing more than to be able to commute daily between Newcastle and Sydney for work (no, seriously, I would). But unfortunately, this too appears to be a pipedream. Claims about fast trains connecting capital cities and regional centres have been bandied about for so long they became a running gag in the great Aussie political satire series Utopia.
Another fascinating reason why our cities suck, why there's so much sprawl and so little densification, is because our cities were still very young when the first cars came along. Unlike European cities, which were designed to be walkable because almost everyone walked then, our towns and cities were built to accommodate the car. That's why we have to drive everywhere, and that's why services, such as schools, hospitals, transport hubs, etc., are so sparse and so spread out: because our city planners designed them to be that way! Put simply, our cities aren't fit for the modern world's purpose, and it's going to be hard, very hard, to redesign them.
Housing is also unaffordable because of 3 specific tax policies, 2 of which most Aussie's are likely sick of hearing about: inheritance taxes, negative gearing, and capital gains taxes. Taken together, they create the incentives that make property speculation extremely lucrative; it's because of these that getting on the housing ladder is the surest path to wealth in Australia; it's because of these that people become professional landlords instead of finding other ways to make money, such as investing in Australian shares.
To start: Kohler says there are no inheritance taxes on property in Australia. So, if someone wants to leave an inheritance, the best way to do it is to leave their wealth in property. Second, negative gearing means that if you lose money on an investment property, you can offset this by reducing your taxable income, which means you pay less income tax. Immediately after negative gearing was reintroduced by John Howard, rental losses surged to historic highs, an indicator that investors were purchasing properties, not homeowners, and that they were doing so for the explicit purpose of reducing their income taxes and as long-term non-residential investments. Third, John Howard halved the amount of capital gains tax people pay on the gains they make from property. So, property investors can reduce their taxable income, pay less tax than on other types of capital, and upon their death they can transfer it to their children completely intact. These 3 policies taken together mean that property investors are taxed very, very little on their investments, which incentivises investment in residential property above virtually all other assets. The obvious outcome of this is that rich investors outcompete poorer would-be homeowners for residential housing stock, and the housing affordability and rental crises reach a fever pitch. It means that institutional investors, large corporations such as superannuation providers, don't think it's worthwhile to fund the construction of large residential complexes, which reduces supply. It means that "whereas in the rest of the world investing in real estate is all about getting rental income from tenants, in Australia it's about getting an income tax deduction and then a capital gain".
Near the book's end, Kohler sums up the states of things by saying that 'the fact that one of the 3 least populated countries on Earth contains the world's second-most expensive housing is a national calamity, and a stunning failure of public policy'. But the problem is complex and politically fraught. Bill Shorten lost his election campaign because he tried to reform too much, too quickly. Nonetheless, says Kohler, that's exactly what needs to happen. The situation is dire and the only way it'll be fixed is through an act (or acts) of enormous political will. This is because making housing affordable again would 'contradict the interests both of the majority of citizens [because they're homeowners] and those with the most power [politicians who benefit politically as well as financially from high house prices]". As remedies, he suggests:
Increasing capital gains tax on properties to its pre-Howard levels. This'll make residential property a less enticing investment. It's been tried many times and has always failed or been quickly reversed.
Restricting negative gearing to new houses only. This'll remove negative gearing from a whole bunch of properties, making them less likely to be bought as investments, while also incentivising the construction of new developments. This, too, has been tried many times, and this, too, has always failed or been reversed.
Having State and Federal governments invest massively in trains. Connecting capital cities and regional centres such as Newcastle via a fast train network would make it possible for dwellings and services to expand beyond our very few, very densely populated, and extremely expensive capital city CBDs.
Linking immigration to housing approvals. He says that for every 2.5 new immigrants, the government ought to build one new dwelling. This will prevent immigration from putting unsustainable upwards pressure on housing prices. This is the first time I've encountered that idea, and I have no idea how politically viable it is. I will note, however, that many people who normally consider talk of restricting immigration to be racist, are fine with the idea so long as it's raised in the context of the housing affordability crisis. The crisis is so bad that it's killed the racist slur.
Use taxes to increase the cost of holding land (land banking). Lots of property developers restrict their release of land to ensure that it remains in demand enough to keep land prices high. Land banking should not be outlawed, but it should be taxed, and heavily, to incentivise developers to release more land to the public.
State and Local governments should reform their zoning laws to make it easier, simpler, quicker, and less expensive to build. One main aim of these reforms should be the rezoning of lots of land as medium-density residential. Australian houses are enormous, and they typically sit on lots of unused land, land that could be used to build secondary dwellings that are already located near essential services and infrastructure.
He also suggests abolishing First Home Owner grants, because he says, actually, that they help usher very few first home buyers into the market but drive up prices for everyone else. I get that it drives up demand but still thought that in its own way this policy was good. This is one I'll research further.
All in all, it's a great and informative read, but a dispiriting one. It's a massive problem, and there are no easy fixes. I guess all we the people can do for the time being is advocate, advocate, advocate, and put pressure on our elected representatives to show some of that much needed "political will" to enact much needed change. ...more
What did you read this year?
