Capitalism is in trouble. The ascendancy of the free-market system following the final collapse of communism 20 years ago has yielded the worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression. Many of the world's most open economies, paragons of capitalist virtue such as the USA, the UK and Ireland, are in serious difficulties with too much debt, high unemployment and trade imbalances. Something appears to be wrong. Could the problem be capitalism itself?

Ha-Joon Chang, a world leader in development economics, likes capitalism – he thinks it is the best available system for wealth-creation. But Chang is a little less sure about the strain of capitalism that has dominated the age of globalisation: free-market ideology. Unlike the true believers of capitalist economics, Chang does not accept that the free market is really all that free. Instead, he argues that the free market is a social construct developed, unsurprisingly, by those who stand to benefit from the myth that markets are free.

The '23 Things' are assertions against that myth. Among them are seeming heresies such as "the government can pick winners", "financial markets need to become less efficient" and "people in poor countries are more entrepreneurial than people in rich countries". By lifting the lid on capitalism's shibboleths, Chang wants to encourage what he calls "active economic citizenship" – a way of determining socially preferable outcomes from economic activity instead of letting so-called market forces dictate how everything turns out. If we can wrest capitalism away from the interests – executives, shareholders, speculators – who have flushed it down the toilet, we might get it to work more fairly.

People in Ireland are certainly aware of this tension between what the people want and what the market allows. But, as we are finding, it takes more than a new perspective to gain the upper hand.

Chang's book is useful for gaining that new perspective. His clear writing style makes it very easy to grasp his key points. In fact, he almost completely avoids the numerical side of economics, arguing that 95% of the subject is common made complicated by explanation, and instead relies on rhetorical force and moral cajoling to make his case.

But the lack of statistical support is a weakness. As a result, Chang's alternative capitalism feels shaky underfoot and perhaps just as likely to collapse as the free-market kind.