The Long 20th Century Comes to a Shuddering End, &
BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2022-10-02 Su
FIRST: The Long 20th Century Comes to a Shuddering End
Foreign Policy is kind enough to publish an excerpt—the middle third of my conclusion, in slightly-edited form:
Brad DeLong: The Long 20th Century Comes to a Shuddering End: An era of once-undreamt-of progress is over—and you won’t like what comes next:
The history of the long 20th century, stretching from 1870 to 2010, is primarily the history of four things:
technology-fueled growth,
globalization,
an exceptional America, and
confidence that humanity could at least slouch toward utopia as governments could solve political-economic problems. And even that slouch was going to be done at uneven, unequal, and unfair rates, depending on skin tone and gender.
Still, twice in that long century, 1870-1914 and 1945-75, something every preceding generation would have called near-utopia came nearer, rapidly. But these generation-long episodes of economic El Dorados were not sustained….
[In 1914] World War I came….
The global north was lucky enough to rediscover after World War II what it thought was the path to utopia. The pace of economic growth during the Thirty Glorious Years that followed made, by its end in the 1970s, people dizzy with success: expecting more and tremendously upset at what seem in retrospect to be relatively minor speed bumps and roadblocks. But mere rapid growth did not satisfy those of a right-wing temperament, who felt that a prosperity that was shared too equally was unfair and degrading. And mere rapid growth did not satisfy those of a left-wing temperament, either, for they felt that the problems that the market, even tweaked and managed by social democrats, solved did not produce even a partial version of the utopia they sought. And so the world took its neoliberal turn. But the neoliberal policy prescriptions did not produce a slouching toward utopia that was more rapid in any sense…
And two nice reviews: one at the Independent.ie and the other at Open Letters Review:
Steve Donoghue: ‘Historical asides are so winningly conversational that they very much help to make the book’s 600 pages surprisingly easy reading… [DeLong] has written the most entertaining End Times narrative since The Late Great Planet Earth…’
David Chance: ‘At 600-plus pages… not for the faint-hearted, but there’s little in the way of jargon… the booked is laced with interesting anecdotes, although DeLong does get a bit wordy…’
“A bit wordy.” Hah! At over 600 pages, it is not a book for a flight from Dublin to Frankfurt or a ferry ride to Liverpool. Think “transoceanic” instead.
Must-Read:
Jacob Soll: How Christianity Influenced the Development of Capitalism in Medieval Europe: ‘The challenge facing Franciscans was enormous. If they accidentally owned wealth or used it beyond their bare necessities… they would be damned for breaking their sacred vows. The Franciscan Order began to study pricing and valuation mechanisms to be sure their members remained in “total poverty.”… Groups of radical mendicant friars… periodically led powerful and violent movements to overthrow the social order and destroy the Church as an institution of private property…. In 1307… Fra Dulcino was… burned at the stake…. Duns Scotus… propos[ed] that prices came neither from balanced exchange nor from moral rules… [but] from a freely working secular market process… from quantity and from the value of labor and expertise… “diligence, prudence, care, as well as the risk one accepts in doing such business.” Therefore, it was very difficult for churchmen to calculate market prices… for Franciscans to be sure that they were truly obeying their vow of poverty…. They needed to consult with merchants and those expert in secular market prices…
Other Things That Went Whizzing by…
Very Briefly Noted:
Michael Nielsen: Notes on Effective Altruism: ‘I personally often find many new EAs a little self-righteous and overconfident, and sometimes overly evangelical... ("why are you wasting your time doing that, you should be working on AI safety", said by someone who thinks they know about AI, but does not, and has no ideas of any value about AI safety). This varies from amusing to mildly annoying to infuriating...
Martin Farrer: A Ponzi scheme by any other name: the bursting of China property bubble: ‘Nearly a third of all property loans are now classed as bad debts…. S&P said at least 800bn yuan would be needed – or even 10 times that much in the worst-case scenario – to rescue a property market...
Jeff Herf: Reactionary modernism: technology, culture, and politics in Weimar and the Third Reich
Stefan J. Link: Forging Global Fordism: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Contest over the Industrial Order
Ilya Somin: ‘Ukraine seems likely to bag thousands of prisoners in Lyman, and another pocket could collapse in Kherson, in the next few weeks, yielding many more. In both cases, Putin refused permission to withdraw…
Matthew C. Klein: The Covid Recovery Looks Different Now: ‘The latest revisions… have closed most of the gap between the… value… produced… and the income… generated…. GDP as of 2022Q2 has been revised up by 1.1%… GDI has been revised down by 1.5%…
¶s:
Alex: Keynes' General Theory Ch.19: ‘Usually arguments against... status quo receive the answer “it takes a model to beat a model.” This is necessary, but not sufficient. It takes institutions to displace institutions, and it takes alternative sources of legitimacy to displace existing sources of legitimacy. The NK edifice took decades of dedicated work by thousands of people to arrive in the shape it’s in now. I don’t have a comparable administrative-intellectual edifice to slot in place.... [But] the issue here should be clear to longtime readers of this substack: none of this has anything to do with Keynes or the General Theory at all. What Keynes would have to say about it may well be worse than anything I’ve said above...
Noah Smith: A concrete vision of the liberal democratic future: ‘The final thing... the liberal democratic vision needs is a way to accommodate conservatives.... A great many people within any society, including liberal democratic ones, are socially conservative to a greater or lesser degree. If the vision of the future that liberal democracies present is one where conservative values have been wiped from the Earth, then conservatives will feel they have no choice but to embrace reactionary illiberalism.... Abortion bans and fights over trans rights show that the culture wars won’t be swept under the rug.... Key pieces of the liberal democratic future vision remain to be filled in, and doing so will be a difficult and fraught process.... But it’s something we need to do, or we will leave the future to the people with darker, more dramatic visions that are sure to lead to nowhere good...
The Economist: A study of lights at night suggests dictators lie about economic growth: ‘Part of what makes dictatorships dictatorships is that questioning the official line is dangerous. At the same time, autocratic regimes have a strong incentive to report healthy growth.... Citizens in dictatorships often assume they are being lied to. Outsiders should be similarly sceptical. ■ Chart sources: “How much should we trust the dictator’s GDP growth estimates?”, by L.R. Martinez, 2022; Freedom House; World Bank...
Doug Jones: The world at 1000 BCE: ‘The world population is about 50 million.... The Bantu expansion is just beginning.... Seafarers with roots in the Lapita culture have already reached Western Polynesia.... The Olmec are flourishing in Meso-America.... In China... from the Shang... to the Zhou. In the Near East and Eastern Mediterranean, the Late Bronze Age collapse has opened up space for smaller states. Tyre and other Phoenician city-states are sailing the Mediterranean.... People are now learning to make effective use of cavalry... beginning... 2500 years in which the division between Steppe and Sown will be central to Eurasian history...
Nicole Barbaro: The Cognitive Gap Between Humans and Everything Else: ‘Evolutionarily, we see the first hints of foresight over the last couple million years in extinct human species. Creating complex tools, coordinating hunting attacks, burial ceremonies, agriculture, time keeping devices, writing and symbolism, and eventually full blow cities. Foresight combined with cumulative culture and innovation to jump start and feedback loop process over evolution that is unique to humans…. The Invention of Tomorrow is a phenomenal book on a cognitive topic that I hadn’t much thought about until reading it…
Felix Martin: Free Market: The History of an Idea by Jacob Soll: Review: ‘This rich history of economic thought shows that the concept of completely unfettered trade is an extremely recent invention…. Free Market offers a rich and valuable antidote to narrower and more traditional accounts of the liberal economic tradition…. It is firmly a work of intellectual history, not of economics…
The quote from Noah Smith reminds me yet again why I don't find him worthwhile to read: his political opinions are *so* bad. It is simply not the case that liberals need to "accomodate" (read "appease") conservatives, particularly under the threat of conservatives adopting "reactionary illiberal" options. No, conservatives have agency too, not just liberals; it's conservatives who need to accept (not just "accomodate") democracy. "Reactionary illiberal" options are *never* on the table, certainly not as a threat.
What makes his comment still worse is that he's vague about what issues liberals need to "surrender" while implying that abortion and trans rights are 2 of them. But both of those involve fundamental human rights, as well as a rejection of state control over personal medical decisions. Surrender on those issues would simply permit conservatives to aim at other targets until they reach the "reactionary illiberalism" that Smith doesn't demand they reject.
I bought both the paper and kindle versions of Slouching. It's interesting to see on Kindle what passages people are highlighting. "North Atlantic economies had invented invention" is a turn of phrase that 35 people seem to have liked, for example.