Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence - David Benatar
I found reading this to be quite validating of my own life experiences and observations
This book is very well written but I disagreed completely with the premise. I believe is true that we don’t choose to be born. We’re forced into existence kicking and screaming but that’s the nature of being. We are born we grow up we procreate and then we die. Some of us don’t procreate by choice but I feel the desire to have offspring is innate to being alive. Some people and beings have a stronger desiree than others, and there’s nothing wrong on following through and cires related to the suffering we impar into our offspring is not reason not to do it. Just like children’s role is not to take care of their parents when they’re old. All things considered, this is quite a philosophical debate.
The Count of Monte Christo, Fahrenheit 451, Neuromancer.
Count of Monte Christo imo isn’t so great, or maybe I’ve read too many shorter riffs on the theme. I’d also plop 1984 before 451.
The Count of Monte Christo
i keep seeing this listed, but I saw the Wishbone episode of it when i was younger and i dont think i could take it as seriously and also already knowing the twist at the end
Give it a try. I was blown away by how good it is. I prefer the audiobook because it’s so long.
The ones that influenced me the most earlier in life was
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera
- sapiens, by yuval noah harari
Both illuminate what it means to be human and what makes us (not) achieve happiness, but explained through very different lenses
I enjoyed sapiens but I’m much faster to recommend The Dawn of Everything these days
Recommend “if books could kill” podcast about sapiens. Might give you some pause on recommending that book
Different people like different books.
You don’t say? Thank you for this insight!
;)
I mean, this questions suggests there are books that every person would like and/or understand. I don’t thin there are.
Ok first of all, it’s a turn of phrase that means “recommend a book you really like”. Secondly, people should absolutely read books they don’t understand and also should absolutely read books they don’t like. The former challenges you to learn and the latter challenges your taste or morals. Those types of books help you grow.
Ok first of all, it’s a turn of phrase that means “recommend a book you really like”.
Not really. “A book everyone should read once in their lifetime” implies more a book that is so culturally valuable and important that everyone should know it, not just something “you really like”. If we’re talking about books you just “really like” than you would simply recommend it as something you like, not say “everyone should read it”. Unless you think your taste in books is so great everyone will like what you like.
Secondly, people should absolutely read books they don’t understand and also should absolutely read books they don’t like.
Yes, tell children to read books about quantum mechanics. They will not understand anything but will be challenged to learn…
Some books are just beyond some people. What’s the point of reading things you can’t comprehend? You should read books about things you don’t know about but not understanding what you’re reading makes no sense.
Same with books you don’t like. Reading books should be fun, not a chore. I used to finish all the books I’ve started, even if I didn’t like them. I meant I wasted a lot of time struggling through books I didn’t enjoy. Nothing morally challenging in it.
Whatever, ya fun policing pedant. People just wanted to talk about books.
Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. For me, I think Russian literature is a must-read.
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz.
A short read that makes you think about how you interact with the world. I’ve read it multiple times and always take something new from it.
A lot of fiction here so I’ll go the other way and suggest “Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich–and Cheat Everybody Else” by David Cay Johnston.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/291700/perfectly-legal-by-david-cay-johnston/
If people aren’t outraged, they aren’t paying attention.
Sample:
"Once, Blattmachr devised a way that Bill Gates, the richest man in America, could reap $200 million in profits on Microsoft stock without paying the $56 million of capital gains taxes that federal law required at the time. The plan was so lucrative that Gates would not have to pay a single dollar in tax and would even be entitled to an income tax deduction of $6 million or so. And that was just the initial plan. The concept could be applied endlessly, allowing Gates to convert billions of dollars in Microsoft stock gains into cash over the years. So long as the Internal Revenue Service did not challenge the deals, then Gates could realize unlimited capital gains without the pain of taxes.
The trick was in manipulating charitable trusts, a common enough device used by generous people who own an asset, such as stock or a building that has appreciated in value. Instead of selling the asset and investing the after-tax proceeds, an individual or a married couple can donate the asset to a charitable trust that they control. The trust sells the asset tax-free and invests the proceeds, giving the donating individual or couple a lifetime income, typically 6 percent per year. When the donors die, what remains in the trust, typically half its value, goes to charity.
Blattmachr’s plan was to take back not 6 percent annually for life, but 80 percent per year for two years. Gates could have pocketed at least $192 million without paying any tax. Then the trust would fold and a charity would get the remaining sum, less than $8 million. Under the plan Gates could have converted into cash more than 96 percent of gains on the Microsoft shares he donated, not the 72 percent he was entitled to after federal capital gains taxes. The charity would get less than four cents on each donated dollar. The government would collect nothing.
The scheme even created a tax deduction that was enough to reduce Gates’s income taxes by about $2 million.
Whether Gates took advantage of such a plan is not known for sure because the law makes individual income tax records confidential. What is known is that when Blattmachr made this route available to others, it sold like a treasure map where X marks the tax-free spot. Billions of dollars of assets poured into these short-term charitable trusts and their super-rich owners took many millions of dollars of income tax deductions that further cut into the flow of revenue to the government.
The technique was so outlandish that when some other tax lawyers got their hands on the map in March 1994, they sent it to the Department of the Treasury in a plain brown envelope. That July, Treasury blocked the route to newcomers and said that it would pursue those who used the device. However, the Internal Revenue Service never announced whether it collected any of the taxes. One hint that the IRS may not have acted against those who used the technique can be found in the records of United States Tax Court, which is where taxpayers challenge the IRS. There are no Tax Court cases in which taxpayers fought for a court blessing on the device, known in taxspeak as an “accelerated charitable remainder trust.”
The Treasury rules shutting down this route to tax-free investment profits were not the end of stretching charitable trusts in ways never anticipated by Congress. So facile is Blattmachr’s mind that from those 1994 rules he divined a new route to tax-free gains. He started selling a new treasure map and billions of dollars more in capital gains passed untaxed into the bank accounts of his clients before the government blocked that second path, known in taxspeak as “son of accelerated charitable remainder trust.”
There’s been a lot of abuse of Trusts in finance for a while. This seems like a good recommendation.
One thing I don’t follow; if someone puts their money into a charitable trust, achieving those lighter tax rules, wouldn’t the obvious rule be that the trust could only then be spent on communal benefit, NOT withdrawn as a personal piggy bank?
It’s fine if someone wants to make an account that is given to charity in case of their death, but then pro-charity tax rules shouldn’t take effect until they die. I’m confused as to why it wouldn’t work that way.
Sounds like a loophole that was either accidentally or intentionally inserted. This book is full of them.
Feels pretty cliche to say them, but
1984, the handmaid’s tale and brave new world
Should probably be on anyone’s list that hasn’t managed to get to them yet
Dont forget the graphic novel version of 1984. Awesome und a downer.
Oh I’ve never actually read that one, thanks for the rec, I’ve not read 1984 in a good decade or so now, so that seems a good way refresh my mind
While I read it in university for a history class… I quite like Candide by Voltaire. Sometimes we all should just tend our own gardens.
To kill a mockingbird -Harper Lee
After reading it, I felt I had read and understood something important that remained with me. Not a difficult or long book, enjoyable and interesting.
Don Quixote
It’s old but very readable and surprisingly funny. Even gets quite meta at points!
Goes off on some tangents at points (including some nested stories), but even these I found quite fun.
The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin.
Few other sci-fi books do as good a job of depicting how a gift/library economy could work like in practice. It’s quite a hopeful vision of where can collective go in the future.
It also shows a realistic version of utopian hope. An eternal struggle for better
That reminds me that I really need to put more le guin into my book pile
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Just the intermissions would get everyone’s blood boiling.
One of my favorite books and unfortunately lots of the story still is relevant today.
Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. I’d have never picked it up if I hadn’t been bored and trying to kill time, but it really put life in a new perspective. Genuinely think it’s made everything lighter since reading that one.
Is it like his other books? Slaughterhouse 5 was totally and completely terrible. IMO.
Yep, that one’s extremely boring, but the other ones are great. I think that’s a relatively popular opinion.
Sheesh I guess I’ll have to try again. I didn’t like that it seemed shallow and… without a plan? Like you get some mild character explanation through time but it is mostly just kind of surface level/shock value weird.
