Arguments For Standing On The Sun

Standing on the Sun is a book that pretends to be full of provocative ideas about the future of capitalism; in reality, it makes weak, pie in the sky arguments full of flawed reasoning. The book is foolishly optimistic and idealistic in some instances, while also managing to ignore staggering upside in other situations. My criticism will focus on four instances of flawed reasoning. Firstly, the author takes something that is rare (a fundamental economic revolution like the industrial revolution) and assumes not only that it will happen again, but that they can predict both when and how it will happen. Secondly, the book begins with a promising thesis and a few solid arguments, then devolves into the author simply pointing out flaws of current
As such, any predictions about it are likely to be wrong—some more than others. The author Chuck Klosterman introduced a useful way of dealing with this called ‘Klosterman’s Razor’: “the philosophical belief that the best hypothesis is the one that reflexively acknowledges its potential wrongness to begin with.” This provides an interesting lens for examining the ideas presented in Standing on the Sun. The author is dealing with the future, an inherently uncertain concept, but making predictions in foolishly concrete terms— “Emerging economies will find themselves at an advantage because…,” or even something as fundamental to their argument as “Capitalism is not an absolute construct; rather, capitalism changes as its environment changes.” Not only are these uncertainty-based predictions unscientific, they fail Klosterman’s Razor. Rather than acknowledging their potential wrongness and dealing with it to start, they instead present no counterarguments or grounds for potential falsification of their claims. In fact, the latter of the predictions mentioned is an integral part of the thesis. Remove that claim about the future, and the book’s logic falls apart completely. Much to the chagrin of Klosterman’s Razor, Standing on the Sun not only doesn’t acknowledge the potential wrongness of its predictions, but bases the entirety of its arguments on these very same predictions. As the author of Standing on the Sun, to improve my predictions, less time should be spent cherry-picking examples of emerging economies and more time on potential falsifications of my argument. Primarily, the book’s predictions assume that all relevant information is known and included. As such, if disruptive new technologies or innovations fundamentally change the landscape or relationship between topics discussed, as seems inevitable in a large enough timeframe, all my predictions will be