The only problem I have with the title is that it drives me toward thinking of it as a three-way option: exit or voice or loyalty. When it really works more like exit or (voice and loyalty) with voice and loyalty not alternatives but complexly interrelated.
This framework is big among some techno-utopians, or at least was about ten years ago. Now tell us about your crypto wallet, Heebie!
That book is one of my all time favorites.
Hirschman is a fascinating person in his own right. Born in Berlin, fought in the Spanish Civil War, helped rescue refugees from occupied France, served as an interpreter in the war crimes trials, and then got his PhD.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_O._Hirschman
(Not, I should say, a techno libertarian.)
Now tell us about your crypto wallet, Heebie!
Sad crypto-moth flutters out.
I thought the LGB coin was supporting lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. I lost thousands.
This has been on my to-read list for a while. The organization where I work had a great leader for many years who oversaw twentyfold growth in headcount and many successes. He left in 2017, now managed by people who it's turned out actively want a bureaucracy, so I'm already thinking too much about responses to decline.
The combination of "Decline" in the title and "from 1970" makes me think I can probably guess what kind of decline the book means.
Any response other than dejected complacency seems irrational if we're talking about an organization bigger than a small town government. A gaming club or extended family or small business or team/division within a larger organization, there are interesting choices to make about jumping ship or trying to right its course. But thinking about my role in a polity the size of the company I work for, let alone anything larger? Fuck, what's the point?
Counterpoint: Complacency is great but we are in the middle of a lower-key civil war over the structure of society and organizations are about the only way someone not especially rich or violent can have an impact.
I'm still not willing to read a book about it. I mean I'm paying dues/donating and volunteering. Mostly the former because I don't get the phone/ text banking.
Hirschmann also wrote a lesser-known book about how US economic policy in the 70's was pretty good, the inflation being worth it as a tradeoff for the many, many jobs created (as evidenced by all the boomers successfully entering the job market), and could have been kept up sustainably with a few changes.
Balaji S in the Unfogged comments you love to see it
"You know what this is? It's one of those men-are-from-Mars, women-are-from-Venus things."
"I have not heard of this phrase but I understand immediately what you are saying."
"It's one of those American books where once you've heard the title you don't even need to read it."
"Then I won't."
In 1970, there was no internet and 4 tv channels. Reading books was the best way to spend time.
17: Aren't you a little curious how both wound up on earth?
The aliens who built the pyramids dragged them in.
20: No spoiler warning?
Well, I guess I don't have to read it now.
I knew Hirshman from stumbling on his 1950s work on development economics, and then later on his work on the rhetoric of reactionaries (click on my name for the latter). Then I read a long biography that had the Nazi-fighting as about half.
It's also interesting how he was actively combating the notion "If you don't like the company / organization, just stop buying/quit, otherwise you don't have a right to complain" when that notion would have been so alien even, I think, a generation before. Libertarianism spread quick!
Fuck, what's the point?
I realize this is a rhetorical question, and I'm sympathetic to your point, but I suppose the question always is: What can one person do? And the answer is: A person can do what they can.*
*I reserve the right to revert to despair/futility/nihilism in future comments. I contain multitudes.
Rhetoric of Reaction is a great book. It is amazing how much the dems and the democratic policy elite have become addicted to this type of rhetoric since the book came out in 1991. Republicans don't really bother with it that much anymore.
3: I remember reading that Hirschman took exactly the same route as Walter Benjamin through the Pyrenees, and in fact stayed at some of the same safe houses.
Exit, Voice, and Loyalty is not only a really good book but also a really short one. I think it comes in around 110 pages. If you have any interest in it, I recommend it.
Is there a comic book version? That's how I read Marx.
Or can Lin Manuel Miranda write a musical about it?
But anyway, with a book that short, we could even have a reading group!
I still haven't seen the musical. I'm waiting until after I finish Chernow's biography.
Well, then I won't watch any Albert Hirschman musicals until I finish Exit, Voice, and Loyalty.