The End: The Fall of the Political Class and break through to the future

Though generally interesting and covering an extremely important subject, The End: The Fall of the Political Class by Chas Holloway suffers from some serious issues pertaining to the source and organization of its content.

At least half the contents of this book seem to be either directly taken or at least paraphrased from the original content of the V-50 Lectures (published in the book Sic Itur Ad Astra), created by Andrew J. Galambos and popularized by one of his lecturers, Jay Snelson. Both Galambos and Snelson are mentioned in the book’s acknowledgements, but it’s extremely worrying that the author did not (at point in the book that I saw) reveal that the ideas and theory he espouses in this book are not his own and that he is essentially just reframing someone else’s work. Sometimes, the definitions, examples, and explanations given are exactly the same as published and lectured by Galambos. This could very well constitute plagiarism. This is even stranger considering how many decades have passed since Galambos came up with his original content. One would expect an original update to these ideas, perhaps more contemporary examples or presentation, instead of just rehashing the same thing practically by rote. This is actually quite ironic considering that Galambos himself placed such huge importance on respecting the intellectual property of others and not using or taking credit for or using their work without their permission. I have no doubt he would object highly to the publication of his ideas in this book. Bizarrely, Galambos is directly quoted and attributed briefly in the section on postulates and fundamental constants. Why bother quoting him in such an insignificant way here when the bulk of the book is directly taken from him?

The epilogue has Holloway explicitly claiming that “No one before me has been able to define the term property (and non-coercion) in a non-ambiguous and non-circular way. I’m the first to do it.” This is an outright lie. He is using Galambos’ definitions and reasoning throughout the book. He even provides many of the exact same historical scientific anecdotes to support his claims, practically taken verbatim from how Galambos presented them in his lectures. This is akin to if I started showing Star Wars off to all my friends from a country where it never became popular and telling all of them that I made it, merely because I liked it so much and identified so strongly with it. I don’t understand how someone can be a student and admirer of Galambos and disrespect him so much by trying to take credit for his work to a public that largely doesn’t know any better.

He then goes on to ask that anyone who uses his (i.e., Galambos’) ideas as presented in this book to compensate him for doing so. The irony is massive enough to form a black hole.

The other issues are about the organization of the content, including the stuff that I cannot identify as directly coming from Galambos. There are a lot of good, interesting, and important ideas and historical anecdotes included here, but the order in which they are presented makes little sense. Basic philosophical and epistemological concepts are presented well after conclusions arrived at by them. The author presents big, all-encompassing conclusions that the reader is excepted to accept at face value from the beginning of what he calls “free world theory.” Though much support is eventually presented for these conclusions and the author explains the structure of how he arrives at those conclusions, the way in which presented asks the reader to take too much on faith and just abandon up front whatever else they might already believe.

This is a book written for people who already agree with the author. As I happen to be one of those people (and happen to be familiar with the superior work of Galambos), I still found value in the ideas presented here. However, I cannot strongly recommend it to others. As well, the author should be held critically and economically liable for taking credit for another thinker’s original work.