Title: Collective Ownership Based Economy: A Road Map to Prosperity, Peace, and Happiness for All

Author: Prathapchandra Kedilaya

Genre: Politics / Socioeconomic System

This book details the steps necessary, according to the author, to achieve the socioeconomic dream of a nation and world without war, poverty, divisions, anger, and crime.

The first part of the book examines capitalism and the history of society, looking at how capitalism could be considered the source of the various ills society experiences today, including laziness, unemployment, misemployment, and corruption. The book then discusses how a collective ownership based economy, or COBE, would address these same hurdles and how it would, in the author’s view, overcome them all thanks to the nature of such a system.

The book includes a question-and-answer section where many arguments against a system like COBE are analyzed and evaluated, and it provides a somewhat repetitive explanation of how a COBE government would function.

The author does not support all versions of socialism but feels that COBE is a method that has not been tried, seeing how it unites a democracy with socialism and would only be adopted by popular vote in the first place. There would be no money and no mandatory work, and machines would be utilized to the utmost, taking over all unpleasant, dangerous, or mundane tasks and leaving the grateful population to contribute to COBE as their interests dictate.

The author views capitalism as the germ currently contaminating everything, to the point where any example of how people currently do not act in such a way as to support a system like COBE can be swept away as the result of current capitalistic conditioning. The writing is densely worded and cooly logical, though it could use further editing polish to help make the message clearer at times.

Similarly, the book would be helped by having more charts, graphs, and illustrations and by having them appear earlier, especially when discussing the democratic reforms and how officials would be elected in a relay system. Despite having a number of somewhat belated images in that section, one can still come away confused as to how these new legislative bodies retain their functional size and how such bodies would be created in the first place, as each election for the tier above themselves would necessitate shrinking them without any explanation about how they’d get replenished.

The book makes a handful of confusing statements, such as saying that personal belongings will be held individually yet all wealth will be held collectively, and it misappropriates at least one quote. Statistics and assumptions are made regularly without any proper footnotes or explanation of how one knows such a thing is so, from its claim that the manifestos of the United States Republican and Democratic parties show little difference between them to the belief that capitalism is the economic system that now exists in all the nations of the world.

The author’s arguments, based on his framework of human nature, are well defined and consistent, and his tone is optimistic, encouraging, and sincere. Clearly thought out and carefully argued, this book will provide a glimpse into a political world some may not have considered before. While the views herein may not be for everyone, those who already support the author’s political views will likely find this book enlightening.

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