Finally finished this... one of the best books I've read this year. A series of bold ideas, with many appropriate caveats, for synthesizing socialism and capitalism, and evolving democracy to work for the 21st century. A good companion piece to Slavoj Zizek's The Courage of Hopelessness.

I found Radical Markets to be a worthwhile book. It explores how we might decentralize power in key areas of our society where the centralization of power (monopoly) has created problems.

The book is fundamentally egalitarian. If you are interested in how to create a more egalitarian society, then this is a book for you. One major concept I am taking away from this book is that if you are egalitarian, then you should logically be anti-monopoly across most if not all dimensions of life.

I appreciate the structure of the book. Each section started with a fictitious vignette to describe what the world might look like after adopting that section's ideas. From there, it explained the overall concept. Each section also took time to discuss counter arguments.

I will not get into the ideas I liked, because I like a good amount of them, and I might as well not spoil it. However I do want to briefly touch on a few critiques:

Spoiler

The book discusses how we would largely eliminate private property. However, it does not really engage in a philosophical argument around why this is an ethical thing to do.
I am interested in how the COST system would work with perishables. Do I have to pay a tax on an apple I have already eaten? If I don't specify a value, does that mean people can simply take my perishables from me?
The argument that a COST system would increase community and civic engagement is counter-intuitive to me. It seems like you would make people even more economically driven.
I was very disappointed to hear the author patented the quadratic voting method described in the book. Or at least its digital incarnation for measuring opinions. I don't know if they plan to enforce this patent, but I know I am not receiving a social dividend. It also seems very close to patenting math.
How do we determine what to hold a quadratic voting session on?
The VIP system described relies on bringing immigrants in and paying them less than minimum wage. Would they be paid enough to survive in an economy with prices like ours?
While the data labor chapter eventually convinced me why addressing this problem is an important issue, the initial vignette was terrifying.
The idea that computers can plan you proposed at the end of the book would slowly erode diversity of thought. Even if it were technically possible, which it might not be, I don't like the idea.

Found chapter on institutional investors distorting markets and creating monopolies of interest. Other proposals are mixed, often would be very invasive, would still be gamed by elites, and would only go so far in fixing the different social issues.

The rating is more an evaluation of the presentation and utility of this book. I personally find some of or parts of the arguments unconvincing or shallow, and sometimes I wondered if the authors had ever met a person in all their irrational glory. But the argument they have is clearly presented and well-structured as well as being an incredibly interesting and valuable thought experiment.

You'll come to your own conclusions, sure, but you will have earned them.

Utopia for economists. Let's reshape social organization using artificial intelligence, living like you're planned by a central planning machine.

Quadratic voting sounds interesting.

The main problem with this book is that it tends to look at evil, and rather than eradicating the evil, seeks to feed it in such a way that they hope it will be less awful.

Spoiler

The immigration system is fraught with inefficiencies? Allow any person to import an immigrant labour and pay them less than the minimum wage as an indentured servant - it's ethical(TM) because this is already a thing under au pair visas in the US and the Arab world. Data logging by companies is intrusive and makes them powerful enough to manipulate democracies? Make them pay you in exchange for even greater intrusions.

I think the most damning illustration of this is how often variations of this phrase show up in the book: "[the thing we just proposed] might be compared to slavery, wrongly in our opinion".

The authors are fundamentally unwilling to accept what their own data is showing them. That said, they do offer an occasional interesting idea, and while many of these are unachievable

Spoiler

(weighted per-issue voting in a participatory mass-democracy with a sort of tradeable 'voting credits' budget per voter)

, some of them do have promise

Spoiler

(i.e. forbidding a company from owning interests in more than one area of a vertical market, but allowing them to own things in many markets).

All in all, the book might be worth it as a look at "problem areas", even if it tends to get the problem itself wrong.