James Nguyen

Gialanella

ENGL 2030-014

5 October 2018

Peer Review: Jacques Steyn

1.) The main idea of Jacques’ paper is to view the question “How does crony capitalism

affect the different facets of our society” in all views. Jacques premises is that “Crony

capitalism doesn’t just come in one awful flavor,” which shows that crony capitalism has

various effects rather than just one. Jacques presents rent seeking, regulatory capture, and

bribing to change the policy agenda as evidence of the various of crony capitalism.

2.) The question is divergent and conceptual because there is no single definitive answer to

how crony capitalism affects our society. The question is loaded towards the numerous

ways crony capitalism affects society but there is no paragraph refuting that crony

capitalism does not affect society. Besides the missing counter argument paragraph, the

question is not loaded.

3.) The subject of crony capitalism’s effects on society is narrowed enough to write about in

four to five pages. The topic is revolved around politics and may require background

knowledge on politics but the audience should have background knowledge on politics

when reading anyway.

4.) Steyn’s writing is efficient in getting to the point. For example once Jacques inserts a

piece of evidence on a way crony capitalism affects society, there is a sentence following

immediately after or before to further explain.

5.) The paper has a passionate conclusion that summarizes points previously made and

suggests new directions by suggesting the audience of the paper to pay more attention to

crony capitalism and realize that it has more effect on lives than one may think.

6.) I remember when I asked Jack Gialanella to write out all the to-be verbs on the board and

I think you kind of messed up here Jacques… I’m like 75% sure that ‘have’ was on that

list….

7.) The entire essay stays far away from opinions and holds a formal scientific tone

throughout. There is no opinions whatsoever, but the conclusion that life revolves around

politics might be more observation than fact.

8.) Steyn’s paper relies heavily on focus around politics affecting lives and the way crony

capitalism affects politics which results to crony capitalism affecting lives. I think the

sentences and paragraphs are structured great, but a little more could be explained on

how life relies on politics.

9.) I find the concluding paragraph good because it doesn’t only summarize the main idea of

the paper but also leaves the reader with a message to take away from the paper.

10.) Jacques introduces a passionate voice around the subject as words with the a

negative connotation such as ‘hurting’ and ‘malicious’ are used when referring to crony

capitalism.

11.) The negative connotations goes away later in part 2, making the voice go from

biased passionate to emotionless unbiased and professional.

12.) In comparison to Popper, Popper being a 10 on the sophistication scale, I would

rate this paper a 7 because it is professional and meets criteria on the short time we had

but obviously does not have the pages of evidence and premises that Popper provided.
13.) The paragraph right before the conclusion is less convincing than its potential

because I believe the purpose of that paragraph was to link how crony capitalism affects

society directly but uses only an example for those that have allergies and buy epipens

frequently. I suggest expanding on that paragraph to suit all audience (I have never

bought an epipen in my life) to see how crony capitalism affects their life.

14.) If I were to run this entire paper through text-to-speech, It would flow smoothly in

part 2 and part 1 would be a hilarious passionate section of the paper spoken in a

monotone voice.

15.) I question whether my paper rambles too much or whether the rambling helped

the reader get to the point I was trying to make. It makes me anxious to whether my

rough draft to first draft was a good or bad revision.