For the past few months, I have been working on my next book titled "Oil & Water - How energy shapes societies, countries and the world" that is expected to come out early next year. It starts with my personal stories from the years I was working as an offshore oil platform maintenance engineer in the late 80's and then discusses global energy policies, geopolitics including Russia weaponizing natural gas export, fracking, nuclear fusion and so on. Though these widely different topics may make me sound like a boring policy wonk, I have tried my best to keep the flow interesting, short, and crisp. Since there is always more to discuss, I have setup a companion website for the print edition at https://oilwaterbook.blogspot.com where I intend to post additional/updated links, videos and other reference material for interested readers. Though the site is WIP, check out the short audio intros I have posted there in multiple languages. These were generated using Notebook LM. I was tickled to be able to do this for free and have posted 15 min long audio intros in English, Chinese, Spanish, Korean, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada and so on. Each version is unique and is NOT a translation though there are overlaps. Try out the languages you like and let me know if there are errors or anything goofy that I should correct.
Book starts with anecdotes of a 55-year-old father pulling double shifts and taking whatever pill that is available to stay awake at the end of his graveyard shift, only to realize that the back ally pill he took has all kinds of drugs mixed in that shows up in his toxicology report, making him ineligible to keep his children with him. He is certainly not a junkie but is betrayed by the system is the takeaway. Left with no choice, he is happy to keep at least one child with him, while agreeing to let his stepmother take care of his other child. Another lady named Crystal, abused when she was a child, shorn by biological parents, bouncing around foster homes, not able to understand why her social security support stopped when she turned 18 (as she is an adult now), becomes homeless. A roommate of the author named Kimbell, who steps on a nail in a run-down apartment, ignores medical treatment since he can't afford it as he didn't have health insurance, ends up losing one leg. In each one of these cases, you'd think there will be mechanisms in a rich country to help them, since these are all people working one or more jobs to survive, not drug addicts or lazy bums just hanging around. But in reality, they all get advice about how they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps but often not much else. I know of such stories myself through volunteering work I do. Though things are far worse in many other parts of the world, point here is that US, a country that can potentially eliminate poverty and provide a good baseline quality of life to everyone, in reality doesn't.
Author discusses how in many areas laws in place are anti-poor. For example, tipping your waiter 15 to 20% when you eat in restaurants is a common practice in the US. While we think we are giving this tip to the staff in appreciation of their good service, restaurant industry has managed to get laws passed that allows them to pay less than minimum wage to their staff as long as the tips make up the difference! For example, if I hire a maid at home, I have to pay a minimum of say $10 per hour. But a waitress getting a $3 tip can be paid just $7 by the restaurant owner. Thus, the tip is actually going to the restaurant owner and not the staff. Book discusses many other areas such as how US corporations prevent labor unions, townships prevent low cost homes being built in their neighborhood thinking it will pull down the real estate value when poor people move in, etc.
Mitigation ideas suggested are, supporting corporations that pay a fair wage, allowing labor unions, supporting low-cost home building in your neighborhood (research shows that unless the implementation is horrendous, real estate values don't go down when low-cost homes are built in a high-income neighborhood) and so on. While I am in support of these ideas, I wasn't impressed much by this book. I was quite aware of these issues, and the solutions proposed aren't anything new. They are not even anything too precise that will quickly address the underlying issues but are highlevel ones that will take decades to show any meaningful impact.
Personal stories and anecdotes are powerful in helping us form our opinions. But it is a double-edged sword and so anyone who has experiences that fall in the opposite end, will have a strong negative reaction to the discussed problems and proposed solutions. For example, I personally know of people (i.e. not big faceless corporations) who have one or two condominiums they rent out to get some investment income. These are not the heartless slumlords discussed in the book but friends of mine who are generous, kind, good at heart middle-class individuals. They have horror stories of tenants who are coached not to pay rent and ways of avoiding eviction that have been living rent-free for years with court cases on going. These friends are realizing that they are not cut out to be landlords and are trying to sell the property and place the proceeds in mutual funds. I can tell many labor union stories where the impossible demands by the unions have run the whole company aground. Book doesn't even acknowledge such things happen, focusing only on one side of the narrative. We certainly don't want to be swayed by one anecdote or the other and will be better off following my Simple Questions framework to get the full picture and correct solutions that will scale.
If you are interested in this topic, this might be a quick easy read. Perhaps Ezra Klein's Abundance book (which I haven't read yet) that deals with this domain might be a more interesting read, providing lot more to chew on.
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