& BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2022-01-16 Su: When Melissa Dell teaches the original from which I have appropriated my history of economic growth course, she starts with human evolution. She starts 5 million years ago or so, with the divergence of our lineage from the chimpanzee-bonobo lineage. But I am pretty sure that we do not know enough for it to be worth spending a full week or even half a week on human evolution. Nevertheless, her reading for that introduction can be read with enormous profit: Joseph Henrich (2016): The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter (Princeton: Princeton University Press): <https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/readings/book-heinrich-secret-selections.pdf>
Catch-up growth, China, institutions: like Japan, SK, Taiwan, and previously like the United States vs Britain & Germany, the catcher-upper need do little capital-I Innovation for most of this (there is of course a tremendous amount of hands-on innovation to successfully implement things). This saves you much effort on R&D which (along with lower labor and compliance costs) gives you a large advantage on the lower tiers, but leaves you less well-prepared for the higher ones where replicating trade secrets is more important, especially to quality. And the more competition you have from others who reached that tier before, the less appealing the cost of spending to replicate it. It is a hard thing to be the 8th best jet engine manufacturer, or the 30th best car maker, or the 15th best OLED panel maker. Your labor cost advantages are diminished by automation, your quality is inferior, your sales (actual or potential) are small. Import substitution leaves you with poor quality at home and no export prospects. Perhaps you can be 2nd or 3rd to reach it (cars in Japan) and invest to become competitive. 4th might be hard (cars in SK).
Anyhow this innovation if it will happen requires institutions capable of protecting innovators from piracy, which means independent enough from the state interest to protect them even when gosh wouldn’t it be nice if EVERY car maker knew your newly-invented worldwide-novel method to form body panels perfectly? Or specifically if the premier’s cousin’s company had it? And in the corrupt environment why bother to do that expensive R&D at all?
Those who come first or second or third have time and profit potential as a carrot to learn the need for institutional independence, and because they have done more R&D for longer they had them (or had to have them) at an earlier stage. But the catcher-upper who is 5th or 10th hasn’t needed them until all of a sudden they really, really need them, but they can’t be conjured out of thin air, and so much money is being made on lower-value goods that there is plenty for the elites to spend on higher-value imports (or on exporting themselves or their children to live elsewhere), elites who might drive for change otherwise. Hence the trap, and hence for China the longer distance reached without high-quality institutions (because more knowledge has disseminated, and in a few cases like HSR because the wishful thinking about market access drove unwise amounts of technology transfer).
I'm an author of legal articles, and I am too a really bad proof reader. Reading it backwards is one technique. Could you have RA's do a read through? What about reading it once for substance and once for grammar and spelling?
Postpartum depression is natural. After you're done with a task, the hormones and adrenaline stop pouring out. Take a break, read a book, watch a movie. Allen Kamp. Professor Emeritus, John Marshall Law School
I’m a fan of the Harpur and Iles police procedurals by Bill James. Iles is a (somewhat psychopathic) Assistant Chief Constable who terrifies the crooks. One of his profound statements goes somewhat like this: “What was normal then is not normal now and will be even less normal in the future.” Allen Kamp
I think in terms of understanding some basic facts about human psychology one should look at the books Baboon Metaphysics for some meaningful evolutionary constraints and Reading in the Brain for understanding how the primate brain supports and constrains written language, and other things of that nature. On the other hand we're the only domesticated primate, so there's that as well.
The thing we absolutely do know from evolutionary history of humans, our nigh-eusocial living arrangements, and our cultural dependency to become adult is that any time you should find yourself moved to think "I am important", you are wrong.
Indeed, it is not. And this is somewhat puzzling: why do we want to all believe that there is some one of us in a group who is the important one, and that by acting in the right manner we can become important the important one?
I am pretty sure our band status hardwiring works on much less than Dunbar's Number; being important is social success, which is better reproductive odds in general, so the behaviour is subject to selection for retention.
Lots out there about how you can't necessarily get stable social strategies in little brown birds (e.g., the genetically determined morphs of white-throated sparrows https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/White-throated_Sparrow/overview); I'd be astonished if it's possible in principle in humans.
that humans form overlapping groups—that plus status hierarchy within a Dunbar's number group makes me sometimes wonder whether we are not in fact somewhat hardwired for feudalism...
If one goes from Alfred born in Wantage to the arrival of the plague in 1350 in English history, actual feudalism -- the whole public-contracts-before-witnesses, automatic social class change (because your class is your tax bracket!), high social mobility bottom-up system -- is notably robust and effective.
What it can't deal with is having to fight professional armies or an adjacent polity better able to concentrate resources.
I am the last person on the width of the Earth to give advice on the marketing of books!
As I am given to understand matters, your publisher should be giving away many copies -- hundreds -- to a broad range of potential reviewers; you should be maybe making a few strategic gifts to persons you think might both read with understanding and review with impact.
Well, yes, this is where that wretched element of luck comes into it.
Making a burnt offering of a notable member of the Chicago School would depart the bounds of civilised conduct, though it would provide an increase in notoriety, one perhaps helpful to sales.
Aside from calling Friedrich A. von Hayek a Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde-style genius-idiot, the only economist I take serious aim at as an ideologically-blinkered idiot without redeeming features is John Cochrane. I at least try to sympathetically see everybody else as they appeared through their own eyes...
> With the invention of money, all of a sudden each of our individual social gift-exchange networks changes from having to be a long-term close-relationship network (limited only to our close kin, our immediate neighbors, and our good friends—and not all of those). All of a sudden our potential division of labor expands to encompass every single other human in the world. This has powerful consequences for us as an anthology intelligence devoted to organizing our selves and manipulating nature.
But this is not what money does.
What money -- not an economy with notional values in money, not concepts of credit or accounting, but a fully monetary economy which requires currency exchange in place of custom to obtain goods or services -- does is render you utterly dependent for your survival on the agreement of an amorphous mass of strangers that you are useful. And the strangers do not know you and do not see your suffering and alter their opinions about utility more swiftly than you can learn.
Money increases the capability of an economy at the direct (and increasing!) cost of the security of individuals. In a monetary economy, the only security is great wealth, and if this is so, the only possible outcome is collapse, because oligarchs always prefer their status to an economy which functions generally as it must to function at all.
Money is a beta release of an important concept, but we don't collectively have the fit-for-purpose mechanism yet.
...as opposed to relying on a much poorer and smaller group of kin, neighbors, and frenemies to decide whether you are useful, or would be better sacrificed to Hunga Tonga Hunga Haʻapai...
But also a system where any construction of security is necessarily abstract, difficult, and has no supporting selection pressure _other than_ the utility of great wealth. And we know that great wealth destroys empathy; it's biologically an escape from eusocial constraints on conduct.
My best guess is that a money economy works great for collectives, but not so great for (nigh-all) individuals. Trying to make a single abstraction work for everything seems excessively hopeful, somehow.
Catch-up growth, China, institutions: like Japan, SK, Taiwan, and previously like the United States vs Britain & Germany, the catcher-upper need do little capital-I Innovation for most of this (there is of course a tremendous amount of hands-on innovation to successfully implement things). This saves you much effort on R&D which (along with lower labor and compliance costs) gives you a large advantage on the lower tiers, but leaves you less well-prepared for the higher ones where replicating trade secrets is more important, especially to quality. And the more competition you have from others who reached that tier before, the less appealing the cost of spending to replicate it. It is a hard thing to be the 8th best jet engine manufacturer, or the 30th best car maker, or the 15th best OLED panel maker. Your labor cost advantages are diminished by automation, your quality is inferior, your sales (actual or potential) are small. Import substitution leaves you with poor quality at home and no export prospects. Perhaps you can be 2nd or 3rd to reach it (cars in Japan) and invest to become competitive. 4th might be hard (cars in SK).
Anyhow this innovation if it will happen requires institutions capable of protecting innovators from piracy, which means independent enough from the state interest to protect them even when gosh wouldn’t it be nice if EVERY car maker knew your newly-invented worldwide-novel method to form body panels perfectly? Or specifically if the premier’s cousin’s company had it? And in the corrupt environment why bother to do that expensive R&D at all?
Those who come first or second or third have time and profit potential as a carrot to learn the need for institutional independence, and because they have done more R&D for longer they had them (or had to have them) at an earlier stage. But the catcher-upper who is 5th or 10th hasn’t needed them until all of a sudden they really, really need them, but they can’t be conjured out of thin air, and so much money is being made on lower-value goods that there is plenty for the elites to spend on higher-value imports (or on exporting themselves or their children to live elsewhere), elites who might drive for change otherwise. Hence the trap, and hence for China the longer distance reached without high-quality institutions (because more knowledge has disseminated, and in a few cases like HSR because the wishful thinking about market access drove unwise amounts of technology transfer).
I'm an author of legal articles, and I am too a really bad proof reader. Reading it backwards is one technique. Could you have RA's do a read through? What about reading it once for substance and once for grammar and spelling?
Postpartum depression is natural. After you're done with a task, the hormones and adrenaline stop pouring out. Take a break, read a book, watch a movie. Allen Kamp. Professor Emeritus, John Marshall Law School
But how about post-partum mania? That is definitely not normal!
I’m a fan of the Harpur and Iles police procedurals by Bill James. Iles is a (somewhat psychopathic) Assistant Chief Constable who terrifies the crooks. One of his profound statements goes somewhat like this: “What was normal then is not normal now and will be even less normal in the future.” Allen Kamp
:-)
I think in terms of understanding some basic facts about human psychology one should look at the books Baboon Metaphysics for some meaningful evolutionary constraints and Reading in the Brain for understanding how the primate brain supports and constrains written language, and other things of that nature. On the other hand we're the only domesticated primate, so there's that as well.
Interesting! I will try to take a look...
The thing we absolutely do know from evolutionary history of humans, our nigh-eusocial living arrangements, and our cultural dependency to become adult is that any time you should find yourself moved to think "I am important", you are wrong.
This is not a popular lesson.
Indeed, it is not. And this is somewhat puzzling: why do we want to all believe that there is some one of us in a group who is the important one, and that by acting in the right manner we can become important the important one?
I am pretty sure our band status hardwiring works on much less than Dunbar's Number; being important is social success, which is better reproductive odds in general, so the behaviour is subject to selection for retention.
Lots out there about how you can't necessarily get stable social strategies in little brown birds (e.g., the genetically determined morphs of white-throated sparrows https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/White-throated_Sparrow/overview); I'd be astonished if it's possible in principle in humans.
that humans form overlapping groups—that plus status hierarchy within a Dunbar's number group makes me sometimes wonder whether we are not in fact somewhat hardwired for feudalism...
If one goes from Alfred born in Wantage to the arrival of the plague in 1350 in English history, actual feudalism -- the whole public-contracts-before-witnesses, automatic social class change (because your class is your tax bracket!), high social mobility bottom-up system -- is notably robust and effective.
What it can't deal with is having to fight professional armies or an adjacent polity better able to concentrate resources.
I am the last person on the width of the Earth to give advice on the marketing of books!
As I am given to understand matters, your publisher should be giving away many copies -- hundreds -- to a broad range of potential reviewers; you should be maybe making a few strategic gifts to persons you think might both read with understanding and review with impact.
I think Basic Is on to this. The problem is that other publishers are, and so potential reviewers are drowning in books. Cf. John Scalzi's website...
Well, yes, this is where that wretched element of luck comes into it.
Making a burnt offering of a notable member of the Chicago School would depart the bounds of civilised conduct, though it would provide an increase in notoriety, one perhaps helpful to sales.
Aside from calling Friedrich A. von Hayek a Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde-style genius-idiot, the only economist I take serious aim at as an ideologically-blinkered idiot without redeeming features is John Cochrane. I at least try to sympathetically see everybody else as they appeared through their own eyes...
> With the invention of money, all of a sudden each of our individual social gift-exchange networks changes from having to be a long-term close-relationship network (limited only to our close kin, our immediate neighbors, and our good friends—and not all of those). All of a sudden our potential division of labor expands to encompass every single other human in the world. This has powerful consequences for us as an anthology intelligence devoted to organizing our selves and manipulating nature.
But this is not what money does.
What money -- not an economy with notional values in money, not concepts of credit or accounting, but a fully monetary economy which requires currency exchange in place of custom to obtain goods or services -- does is render you utterly dependent for your survival on the agreement of an amorphous mass of strangers that you are useful. And the strangers do not know you and do not see your suffering and alter their opinions about utility more swiftly than you can learn.
Money increases the capability of an economy at the direct (and increasing!) cost of the security of individuals. In a monetary economy, the only security is great wealth, and if this is so, the only possible outcome is collapse, because oligarchs always prefer their status to an economy which functions generally as it must to function at all.
Money is a beta release of an important concept, but we don't collectively have the fit-for-purpose mechanism yet.
...as opposed to relying on a much poorer and smaller group of kin, neighbors, and frenemies to decide whether you are useful, or would be better sacrificed to Hunga Tonga Hunga Haʻapai...
Unquestionably a more capable system!
But also a system where any construction of security is necessarily abstract, difficult, and has no supporting selection pressure _other than_ the utility of great wealth. And we know that great wealth destroys empathy; it's biologically an escape from eusocial constraints on conduct.
My best guess is that a money economy works great for collectives, but not so great for (nigh-all) individuals. Trying to make a single abstraction work for everything seems excessively hopeful, somehow.
a stark (and unworkable) utopia, as Karl Polanyi wrote back in the 1940s...