globalization: n. the irrational fear that someone in China will take your job

This is not an investing book and I recommend it more than most investing books.

Greenwald takes something everybody in 2008 believed, which is that globalization was hollowing out developed economies, and walks it back to first principles until there is nothing left. Most economic activity is local. Most of what people buy cannot be shipped. The numbers are much smaller than the noise.

Honestly I think he overstates it in places, and some of the manufacturing chapters have not aged well. Does not matter. The method is the thing. He does not argue with the loudest version of a claim, he finds the quiet assumption underneath it and pulls on that.

In the off-road world the assumption was that people want to bring their own machine. Everybody said it. Every operator I talked to said it. When I actually looked, the people with money did not want to own or tow or maintain or fix anything, they wanted to show up, and that one assumption falling over is the entire business I run now.