Book Review: Jennifer Government by Max Barry

This is an older book, written in 2003, which I borrowed from the Washington County Public Library system. (Aloha branch to be specific).  I started it on the plane and finished it that evening in the hotel room.  It has a compelling promise, in that the government has been slashed back to nearly nothing due to the abolition of taxes.  A free-market paradise of a world, everything has a price and the world has broken down, largely, to tribal affiliations and rivalries all fighting for supremacy in rational unrestrained markets.  At one point, the characters want to obtain fake guns as part of a stunt, but find it easier to get real ones and just don't load them.
The story clearly shows how economic theories are largely irreconcilable with human emotions such as love and compassion.  There are passages which have some exposition on "capitalizm", as it is called in the book, as well as critiques of it from a socialist viewpoint and both are merely sound bites which ring hollow in the lives of the characters in the novel.
Love, hate, paranoia, altruism, ambition, service to others have no markets.  But these are the human impulses with which the characters wrestle against a backdrop of might makes right financial dealings.  Science does not appear, each character deals with the reality presented to them through a filter of marketing, highly polished ad copy which allows propaganda to masquerade as truth.  Every impulse can be acted on, if you have enough money and any scheme to make money can be tried, even if it kills your customers or destroys the world.  Most of the citizens portrayed have no moral compass left and the ends are what matter, regardless of the means.
I enjoyed the book immensely.  While the philosophical questions are interesting, the plot is character driven and, trying not to give too much away, it is a love story with jealousy, betrayal and infatuation where the main characters each have an arc that despite how much money any one of them might have, they all want to just be happy.  And the happiness never comes from the things they have around them, it is the people.
Washington County has a great library system.  I can't say enough good things about it.  If you don't have a library, card, just do it and get one.