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Every year the United Nations ranks countries according to their standards of living in the world. Almost invariably, Canada comes up in the top spot, leaving cynical Canadians to wonder, What the heck? In The Efficient Society, self-described "professional philosopher" Joseph Heath goes a long way toward providing the answer. While certainly Canada is deficient in many areas, he notes, the country's overall operational efficiency is what boosts it to the top of the standard-of-living index. Drawing on social contract theory, on the conundrum known as "the prisoner's dilemma" (wherein two or more people acting purely in self-interest results in worst-case scenarios for everyone), and examples from pop culture sources such as Star Trek, American Beauty, and books by cyberpunk novelists Bruce Sterling and Neal Stephenson, Heath sheds light on why societies function the way they do, and how this affects their citizens. For instance, it's the author's contention that the U.S.'s determined quest for liberty curbs that country's ability to serve its citizens effectively. "The most serious inefficiencies in American society come from people's unwillingness to pay taxes (on the grounds that taxes interfere with individual liberty)," surmises Heath. "This is what produces the well-known 'private opulence, public squalour' that characterizes American cities."
Heath's main contention is that Canadians' willingness to let the government step in and maintain programs for "the public good" is what basically sets the country apart. On the issue of gun control, for instance, he says that the argument for bearing arms "may sound persuasive, but it misses the point.... The benefits come from knowing that other people don't have guns. Thus the outcome that everyone wants--a safer society--cannot be achieved through the exercise of individual rights. It can be achieved only if everyone is denied certain rights." But Heath is no ideologue--he criticizes both the right and the left, and it's unlikely anti-globalization crusaders will be putting this book up on the shelf next to Naomi Klein's No Logo after reading his defence of Wal-Mart and Nike. That said, Heath isn't entirely in favour of the status quo either. He notes how "the proliferation of desire" (as fanned by advertising) is the "reason you can't get no satisfaction." Nevertheless, The Efficient Society is a fairly convincing argument that Canada is, in the words of the book's subtitle, "as close to utopia as it gets." --Shawn Conner --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
In this fascinating account of what makes Canada such a successful society, Joseph Heath celebrates the much-maligned value of efficiency and asks some searching questions about the forces that threaten to undermine our quality of life. Canada is an efficient society, much more efficient than our neighbour to the south, where personal liberty takes precedence over collective well-being. This is one of the reasons, Heath argues, that the United Nations Annual Human Development Report consistently ranks Canada as the best place in the world to live. But this efficiency is under siege. Can we resist the allure of short-sighted tax cuts? Can we maintain our quality of life in the face of relentless pressure to increase our productivity - both at work and at home?
This is a profound and important look at how government and business conspire to improve our lives - and at the dramatic changes that will decide our social and economic future.
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Efficiency is our friend and our worst enemy. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Efficiency is our friend and our worst enemy. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great fun,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Efficient Society: Why Canada Is As Close to Utopia As It Gets (Mass Market Paperback)
One of the reviews here lays into this book for stretching a 30 page idea out into 300 pages. The reviewer has a point in one respect only, viz that the title might make one think that the book is going to focus almost exclusively on Canada. In fact, it feels more like a collection of essays that a publisher recommended needed to be linked by some grand unifying theme. Leaving aside the fact that the Canada vs USA thing *is* of relevance in many of these chapters, the crucial thing is that EACH CHAPTER IS EXTREMELY INTERESTING AND THOUGHT-PROVOKING. To call the book "the half-baked musings of a junior philosophy lecturer" is grossly unfair, and smacks of self-aggrandizing posturing. Heath's points are cogent, coherent and plausible. He takes the reader on a tour de horizon of various aspects of government, business and social policy that is very interesting to the layman. If you want to compare this book to some heavyweight university textbooks on economics, you're applying the wrong framework of analysis and run the risk of looking foolish and self-indulgent. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
4 of 7 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Intellectual Parochialism at its worst,
By Listener (Montreal, QC, Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Efficient Society: Why Canada Is As Close to Utopia As It Gets (Mass Market Paperback)
Another essay/book that concentrates on the hackneyed Canada vs US fraternal rivalry...As if MacLeans and many other magazines and newspapers and other media did not cater to this obsession almost daily with their lists and comparisons...Moreover, focusing on the comparison with one country and using the UN ratings for all the others is not only not profound but quite the opposite. What about Canada vs. Europe, China, India - it seems as if for the author these societies are not even options. Why ? Perhaps because he does not know what it is like to live there? And if that is the case - is this a good basis for such a book ? Having moved to Canada from Europe recently I distinctly remember my feeling of being transported back in time about 20 years, into the European 1980s - when issues like the right measure of taxation, the economic importance of public transport, the re-vitalisation of inner cities, culture as a factor of economical development, not to speak of ecological responsibility etc that I grew up with as a teenager and that have since led to a large societal consensus one way or the other in countries like Germany, Austria, Switzerland etc. are still in the very first stages of debate here in Canada. Granted, the US are even more backwards in many of these, but is that always the only "other" society in the world ? And as to the title: living in Canada has provided me with insights about inefficiencies in administration and societal discourse that I would not have thought possible in a "first world country". Canada, in my view, is not an efficient society compared to others (again, Japan, China and Germany come to mind). And why would efficiency be equated with utopia, anyway? Where is the link ? In short: A succinct definition of parochialism is "East, West, Home's Best"...and this book reads like an exemplification of this saying. Ignorance of the world always makes your home country look good, but it is not a reliable basis for the kind of sweeping announcements this book is full of.
9 of 16 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
An inefficient book, about one big idea.,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Efficient Society: Why Canada Is as Close to Utopia as It Gets (Hardcover)
I recently read THE EFFICIENT SOCIETY, at the advice of a friend. The introduction and conclusion present the central ideas of the book: i.e., that Canada is much better off than most Canadians think, because we efficiently make the best of a combination of market economics and government programs. None of these, in itself, is perfect or ideal; but the coombination is the best mix that we can get at this time, yielding a high quality of life (ranked no. 1 for many years in UN rankings, and close to the top in the last year or so (I wrote this in Feb. 2003).The problem is that all of this, with a few key illustrative examples, fits into 20-30 pages. The book is close to 300 pages. The author has written an excellent essay, with a provocative idea; he should have kept it to an essay. Instead, he has padded it out to a book. Much of this book details simplistic or pedantic presentations of "general ideas" about key concepts (e.g., a tedious chapter on the history of efficiency that regurgitates boiler plate bits about Aristotle, Taylor and Gilbreth the early efficiency experts, and a badly potted synopsis of Vilfredo Pareto. In effect, 250 pages or so represent badly prepared tidbits or hors d'ouevres that sound very much like the half-baked musings of a junior philosophy lecturer. Little more is written to tell us more about the Canadian situation. Much is left out: nothing on foreign relations, not much on export markets or economic relations with other countries, particularly the U.S., nothing about the froth (the play on anti-Americanism, the play on Federalism and natioanl unity) that passes for political thinking and strategic poicy thrusts in this country. . Read the intro and conclusion of this book, get a general idea of its main argument, check the index, and then read up on some of the details yourself.
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