The Blockchain Alternative: Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy and Economic Theory

The basic question that this book promises to deal with in the title is very interesting, namely: In how far does blockchain technology represent an alternative to established economic theories and the economic policy measures derived from them? A good (!) Book on this topic would do the following: 1. Define and explain basic terms. 2. Explain blockchain technology and how it works. 3. Selected economic theories (e.g. Principal-Agent Theory, Contract-Threory, etc.) thus explain: Statements of the theory, its implications, its value for the explanation of economic reality, its shortcomings and its classical alternatives or further developments. 4. Explain how economic policy is made on the basis of economic theories, what one wants to achieve, what one actually achieves and what the difference between the goal and the outcome of economic policy is due to. 5. Explain how blockchain technology affects economic theory and why. 6. Explain how the change of economic theory through the blockchain leads to, or should, or will, change economic policy in the future. Unfortunately, the book of Kariappa Bheemaiah is NOT a good book! The book is a completely unstructured word mash into which really every current fashion word has been cut into: A bit of financial kriese, a bit of training kriese, a bit of “Know Your Customer”, and “Too Big to Fail”, FinTech and unconditional basic income must also not be missing and definitely blockchain at all yet so inappropriate opportunities. Everything messed up, all without a recognizable structure, order or context. Which core statements does the author want to make? What is the current state of affairs? Where does the analysis begin or end, where does objective criticism begin, where does the assessment begin and where the author’s own opinion or his speculation? The reader of the book can not recognize it! Unfounded assertions, inadequate conceptual explanation, incomprehensible criticism, hasty valuations, unclear theory understanding, unclear hypotheses, incomprehensible conclusions, author’s own opinion, name-dropping and opinions of others pour into an endless and unstructured continuum. I am surprised how this book has received positive references from a European Parliament Policy Advisor, an Associate Professor of ESCP European Business School and a Professor of Harvard University and a Fellow of Cambridge Judge Business School. Did these people even read this book? Or was it judged on the basis of the back text? My conclusion: The book reads like the transcript of an extremely beerful speech about economics, theory, politics, the universe and everything in it, above and below, and even the blockchain things and everything else that has always been said. If the book was meant as a persiflage to contemporary blockchain hype books, one could at least nominate it for the alternative Nobel Prize. But unfortunately the author seems to be serious about it.