Why Nothing Works
by Marvin Harris · first published 1987
4mentions
2recommended by
3HN commenters
2024–2025first – last mentioned
67% recommend33% neutral
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Another recent book along the same lines would be "Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress and How to Get It Back" by Marc Dunkelman: "When he looked into the history, Dunkelman realized that progressives have long swung back and forth between two opposing impulses. One…
on “California needs to learn from Houston and Dallas about homelessness” ↗I mean, this is right out of two books: Abundance, and Why Nothing Works. Both spend maybe 1/3 of their pages detailing the excesses and legalistic nature of env reviews. They are weaponized for political reasons and cause an insane amount of delays. They are put in place…
on “Boring Company cited for almost 800 environmental violations in Las Vegas” ↗The book Why Nothing Works is worth a read.
…which they manifest depend on the system (e.g. in Soviet Russia they could legislate prices but couldn't legislate availability of products) It was the decade of Ralph Nader. See https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nothing-Works-Anthropology-Origin... https://www.amazon.com/Out-Crisis-W-Edwards-Deming/dp/052130... https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Narcissism-American-Diminishi... A few themes could be broken out, not least "mongo…
on “Why is it so hard to buy things that work well? (2022)” ↗