One of the non fiction books I picked up to interspace my typical fantasy reading, Kaput is a relatively short book that goes over the problems facing Germany right now. One of the things that I like to think about myself is being relatively up to date with world politics. And while that’s true, one thing that struck me while reading this, is that I had no idea what was happening under the surface in German politics.
It’s hard to write a book review about a non fiction book. But while reading this, there were a few through lines of the problems with Germany, that I had a new light on. So the following will be a very train of thought, discussion on the main points that stood out to me.
1) The capture of the state banks by politicians. Basically letting regional governments and banks, act as the enforcer for industries. In fact that’s one of the major problems with Germany, is that it is inherantly… conservative? Protectionist? It’s very deferential to the old, industry players, ie Cars, Steel, and Chemicals. You see this in cases such as when the German government helped VW fool emission standards. But on top of that, many decisions are made to further a specific industry’s goals, leading to where they are now.
2) The two part attack of the Greens to kill nuclear power because they don’t like it (and using their position as a minority but part of the coalition giving the government a majority to push it down mid), and overreliance of russian gas for the buffer energy source when wind/solar aren’t enough leading to a truly, awful environment where new industries cannot start up, because energy costs are so high. What’s crazier to me, is that in the midst of the Ukraine invasion, the Greens still wanted to kill nuclear, even though that was the only thing prevent utter subservience to russia for energy. And a lot of this also just comes down to Schroder’s lifelong goal of selling germany to russia (hyperbole but only kinda).
3) When I was a young edgelord I considered myself a Realpolitik for my political views. Of course it was stupid. It’s the kind of world view that only works if you are willing to work with whomever. India for example, still deals with Russia as well as the west. But Germany it cannot. One of more shocking revalations of the book (to me at least) was the shockingly high number of people who wanted to continue deepening economic ties with Russia even in the face of deteriorating geopolitical ties. It’s the hubris of capitalists, to think that trade can overcome power. All it took was Deng being replaced a few decades later with Xi, for all the economic progress the west thought they made, to evaporate. But somehow, Germany kept with that policy until the Nord2 was literally destroyed.
4) This is a very common one, but Germany has a car selling problem in China.
5) Germany created it’s own immigration problem, AND created it’s own far right problem, and they did it to themselves. The book gives examples, but the key immigration takeaway is, germans hate foreigners (shocking), and make it incredibly difficult for high skilled immigrants to immigrate, while making it very easy for low skilled immigrants to immigrate. All the while, Germany has a massive skill/labor gap, something like 800k openings more than qualified applicants. But on top of that, the AfD party rose to power on the back of anti immigrant sentiments and the rising cost of living, which itself was due to a over reliance on russian gas, which ironically, East germans pushed for including schroder. It’s almost comical.
6) The US Fed has a dual mandate, to keep prices stable, and employment high. It leads to fun moments with Jerome Powell, when he has to talk about dropping interest rates to bolster the economy, while trying to skirt the fact that it’ll raise prices. But in Germany, their Fed has a single mandate, keep prices stable. The Germany banking and financial system is basically, a legal framework rather than economic one. Which all leads to, german budget problems with forced balancing, leading to the government not making investments.
This book gave me a lot to think about. As much as I hate to say it, there were things that Trump did in his first term, in terms of calling out Germany for not spending and for becoming overreliant on Russia, that we was correct about. And there are a lot of things that Biden did, including increasing US investment in businesses, that had an indirect effect of stealing those companys from allies like Germany, and bringing them to the US.
Either way, great book, would highly recommend. But also I would recommend reading this sooner rather than later. This being a relatively current affairs book, if you wait too long, it might be a autopsy instead of a current events book.