Þe "Slouching Towards Utopia" Slow-Motion Tweetstorm
& BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2022-02-05 Sa
CONDITION: I Have COVID Symptoms!
Mild, so far, but not improving, accompanied by severe lethargy—but no positive test results, at least as of yet…
First: The Slouching Towards Utopia Slow-Motion Tweetstorm
Last November 25 I began tweeting out one sentence a day, with assorted commentary, from the manuscript of my forthcoming Slouching Towards Utopia <https://bit.ly/3pP3Krk>, appearing from Basic Books on September 6. As of now I have tweeted out the first 2600 or so words of the manuscript, up to about page 7 of 624, and the thread has 310 tweets in it. I have reached the first natural stopping point in the manuscript with the sentence: “And we are still, at best, slouching towards utopia.”
Up until this point the tweets—and the manuscript—have been laying out what my Grand Narrative Framework is: the sea-change around 1870, as technological and economic progress shifts into high gear; the doubling of human technological capabilities every generation after 1870; economic creative destruction at an unprecedented pace over and over and over again; political and sociological consequences; gross failure to manage the process; and so our failure to build a utopia, even though today our powers to manipulate nature and organize one another are so great relative to those of all previous human civilizations that it is not even funny.
The manuscript now shifts gears, to a defense of my decision to write an economic (rather than a political or a cultural or a sociological) history of the 20th century, to write a history of the long rather than a short 20th century, and to die on the hill that this economic history is by far the most important one.
Should I simply continue on through the manuscript, tweeting out a sentence every day or two, as September 6 approaches? Should I switch and start tweeting out the concluding chapter? Should I do something else?
The principal purpose of this ‘Stack for the rest of the year is, after all, to market this forthcoming book. I do want this book to be a treasure for all time, rather than a composition of the moment that makes a splash, wins at best a few prizes, and is then forgotten:
As a further taste, some elevator pitches:
30 words: Only when Keynes blessed the shotgun marriage of von Hayek’s market and Polanyi’s society did 20th-century humanity even slouch towards utopia. Remember that, and material El Dorado, at least, is at hand.
140 words: Before 1870, humanity lived in dire poverty, with a slow crawl of invention offset by a growing population. Then came a great shift: invention sprinted forward, doubling our technological capabilities each generation and utterly transforming the economy again and again. Our ancestors would have presumed we would have used such powers to build utopia. But it was not so. When 1870÷2010 ended, the world instead saw global warming; economic depression, uncertainty, and inequality; and broad rejection of the status quo. Economist Brad DeLong’s Slouching Towards Utopia tells the story of how this unprecedented explosion of material wealth occurred, how it transformed the globe—and why it failed to deliver us to utopia. Of remarkable breadth and ambition, it uncovers the last century to have been less a march of progress than a slouch, albeit broadly in a good direction.
300 words: The long 20th century—the first whose history was primarily economic, with the economy not painted scene-backdrop but rather revolutionizing humanity's life every single generation taught humanity expensive lessons. The most important of them is this: Only a shotgun marriage of Friedrich von Hayek to Karl Polanyi, a marriage blessed by John Maynard Keynes—a marriage that itself has failed its own sustainability tests—has humanity been able to even slouch towards the utopia that the explosion of our science and technological competence ought to have made our birthright. Whether we ever justify the full bill run-up over the 140 years from 1870 to 2010 will likely depend on whether we remember that lesson.
Friedrich von Hayek—a genius—was the one who most keen-sightedly observed that the market economy is tremendously effective at crowdsourcing solutions. The market economy, plus industrial research labs, modern corporations, and globalization, were keys to the cage keeping humanity desperately poor. Hayek drew from this the conclusion: “the market giveth, the market taketh away: blessed be the name of the market.” Humans disagreed. As genius Karl Polanyi saw, humans needed more rights than just property rights. The market’s treating those whom society saw as equals unequally, or unequals equally, brought social explosion after explosion, blocking the road to utopia.
Not “blessed be the name of the market” but “the market was made for man, not man for the market” was required if humanity was to even slouch towards utopia that technology and potential material abundance ought to have made straightforward to reach. But how? Since 1870 humans—John Maynard Keynes, Benito Mussolini, Vladimir Lenin, and others—have tried solutions, demanding that the market do less, or different, and other institutions do more. Only government, tamed government, focusing and rebalancing things to secure more and different rights for more citizens have brought the El Dorado of a truly human world into view.
650 words: The theme of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, & Steel—a brilliant book, if not without its major flaws (and what things in this fallen sublunary sphere do not have their major flaws?)—is: Civilizations in different places had access to different plant and animal resources, and for developing bio and other technologies two heads are better than one. Within Eurasia, at the last the Atlantic Seaboard led in agricultural wealth and hence first developed the steel and the guns. Plus Eurasians gained immunity to all the germs that jumped from Eurasian animals into humans. And everything else follows from those Atlantic-Seaboard differential advantages with respect to guns, germs, and steel.
The theme of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century—a brilliant book, if not without its major flaws (and what things in this fallen sublunary sphere do not have their major flaws?)—is: Capitalists control enough political levers to keep the profit rate around 5%, faster than economies grow. Only in exceptional eras of wars, revolutions, deep depressions, and the short post-WWII social-democratic age of very rapid growth will wealth at the top fail to outpace wealth in general. Hence in normal times income and wealth inequality is either already very high already or is rising fast. And everything else follows from that tendency toward high inequality.
The theme of Brad DeLong’s Slouching Towards Utopia—a brilliant book, if not without its major flaws (and what things in this fallen sublunary sphere do not have their major flaws?)—is:
The long 20th century—the first whose history was primarily economic, with the economy not painted scene-backdrop but rather revolutionizing humanity's life every single generation— taught humanity expensive lessons. In 1870 industrial research labs, modern corporations, globalization, and the market economy—which, as that genius Friedrich von Hayek most keen-sightedly observed, is tremendously effective at crowdsourcing solutions—proved keys to the lock that had kept humanity in its desperately poor iron cage, with the only comfortable ones being the thugs with spears who took from the near-subsistence farmers, and those with whom they shared their extractions. And previously unimaginable economic growth revolutionized human life over and over, generation by generation.
We should, thereafter, have straightforwardly turned our technological power and wealth to building something very close to a utopia: a truly human world. From 1870-2016 was 146 years. Few in 1870 would have doubted that humanity more than ten times richer in material terms would build ourselves a utopia.
So what has gone wrong? Well, that idiot Friedrich von Hayek thought the unleashed market would do the whole job: “the market giveth, the market taketh away: blessed be the name of the market”. But, as that genius Karl Polanyi put it: people will not stand for being told that there are no rights but property rights. They instead insist that “the market was made for man, not man for the market”. The market’s treating those whom society saw as equals unequally, or unequals equally, brought social explosion after explosion, blocking the road to utopia. They deserved communities, incomes, and stability. They needed their Polanyian rights to those things vindicated too.
Since 1870 humans—Theodore Roosevelt, John Maynard Keynes, Benito Mussolini, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Vladimir Lenin, Margaret Thatcher, Deng Xiaoping, and others— tried to think up solutions. They dissented from “the market giveth…” constructively and destructively. They demanded that the market do less, or different, and other institutions do more.
Only with the shotgun marriage of von Hayek’s market to Polanyi’s society, a marriage blessed by Keynes, that was post-WWII social-democracy—a marriage that itself failed its own sustainability test—have we been able to even slouch towards utopia, and bring the El Dorado of a truly human world into view. Whether we ever justify the full bill run-up over the 140 years from 1870 to 2010 will likely depend on whether we remember that lesson.
One Video:
Isaac Hayes: By The Time I Get To Phoenix <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_Kb607VNKM>:
One Image:
Very Briefly Noted:
Antonio Regalado: How Pfizer Made an Effective Anti-Covid Pill: ‘A covid pill could cut serious illnesses and help prevent the next pandemic. But it’s expensive and in short supply… <https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/02/04/1044714/pfizer-covid-pill-paxlovid-pandemic/>
Matt Simon: Is This a Fossilized Lair of the Dreaded Bobbit Worm? | WIRED: ‘Scientists say they’ve got 20-million-year-old evidence of giant worms that hunted in pretty much the most nightmarish way possible… <https://www.wired.com/story/is-this-a-fossilized-lair-of-the-dreaded-bobbit-worm/>
Amanda Terkel: Biden’s Federal Reserve Nominee Lisa Cook Is Facing a Racist Smear Campaign: ‘If confirmed by the Senate, Cook would be the first Black woman on the Fed’s board of governors… <https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lisa-cook-federal-reserve-nominee-racist-criticism_n_61f367eee4b02de5f516fa2a?nb>
Lyman Stone: _’Huge swathes of the Alexandrian empire did Hellenize, and archeological and genetic evidence suggests it was largely because there were heaps and heaps of Greeks"…
Matthew: ’In literature there is a paranoid form of reading to resolve contradiction and a reparative form of reading a text. (Likewise a dozen other forms I am not mentioning here such as Lacan’s four discourses)…
Ryan Avent: The End of Two Globalizations: ‘What will future historians say that we did wrong?…
Paragraphs:
David E. Rovella: Is This the Beginning of Facebook’s Fadeout?: ‘Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg sought to rally his employees on Thursday in the face of a calamitous drop in the share price of Meta… [a] historic $250 billion crash…. The bad news comes at a critical juncture… the company… is fighting regulatory battles… has been a prominent medium for hate speech and a critical component of foreign misinformation efforts aimed at tilting the last two U.S. presidential elections…. What does Zuckerberg do now?…
David Pierce: Meta Earnings Show Facebook Users Drop for the First Time: ‘The signs have been out there for a while, but Facebook users have now declined for the first time ever…. A hard pivot toward the metaverse, including a whole-ass name change so that Meta’s potential might not be brought down by Facebook. But all we saw until now was slow growth, not decline…
LINK: <https://www.protocol.com/meta-facebook-users-drop>
Debby Wu: Chipmakers Are Outspending Governments: ‘In early January, Florida unveiled a $9.7 million program to boost state infrastructure and train future semiconductor engineers…. The laudable initiative was off by a few orders of magnitude…. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is set to spend over $40 billion on capex this year alone. Intel… more than $25 billion in 2022…. Samsung… is on a multiyear spending spree totaling more than $100 billion…. If Florida really wants in on that hotly contested action, it’ll have to be significantly more generous…. Japan is offering $6.8 billion in incentives to lure global chipmakers to the country and India is allocating $10 billion over six years for the development of a local semiconductor industry…
Carey Goldberg: U.S. Hospitals Cope with Fatal Overcrowding: ‘What’s the top worry?… “Tte strain on our infrastructure, on the health-care system,” virologist Jeremy Luban said recently… unprecedented staff shortages. “It’s a dumpster fire,” says Lisa Abbott, senior vice president of Lifespan, a Rhode Island health system with over 1,200 beds. “It’s a pandemic wrapped in a labor crisis. Omicron is the accelerant on the dumpster fire”…
LINK: <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-01-26/u-s-hospitals-cope-with-fatal-overcrowding>
Malcolm Schofield: The Noble Lie: ‘Socrates…. “Grand lie? Noble lie? G. R. F. Ferrari has a good note on the issue: “The lie is grand or noble (gennaios) by virtue of its civic purpose, but the Greek word can also be used colloquially, giving the meaning… a massive, no-doubt-about-it lie…. Some prefer to “lie” the more neutral “falsehood” (which need not imply deliberate deception), others “fiction”…. Cornford had “bold flight of invention.”... The noble lie is to serve as charter myth… or rather, two related myths… the natural brotherhood of the… population… all… born from the earth… [and] the city’s differentiated class structure a matter of divine dispensation…
SUBSCRIBER ONLY Content Below:
A Draft of My “Classical Greek ‘Efflorescences’ Lecture for the “History of Economic Growth” Course I Have Appropriated from Melissa Dell…
Not yet in the shape that I wish it were in, however…
3.2.2. Classical Greece
From 300,000 Greeks in the year -800 to 4 million in the year -300. And that was only the appetizer. Thereafter, following in the wake of the armies of Alexander the Great, and then the expansion of the Roman Empire to the Danube River, Greeks colonized city after city and spread out into the countryside from the Al-Fayyum oasis in Egypt to the Punjab, and from Alexandria Eschate near modern-day Tashkent to Marseilles in France. Houses got bigger—a lot bigger. Trade and the division of labor flourished.
3.2.2.1. Institutions & Peace
Alongside the extraordinary growth of the Greek population is a remarkable increase in the average age of death among adults. There appears to be much less violence inflicted upon adults—either through violence directly applied, or through violence depriving adults of the resources that they need to keep living.
What do I mean by “less violence”? Consider what Odysseus says about what he did after the Trojan War was over, immediately after he and the twelve ships of Ithaka departed the shore:
What of my sailing, then, from Troy?
What of those years of rough adventure, weathered under Zeus?
The wind that carried west from Ilion
brought me to Ísmaros, on the far shore,
a strongpoint on the coast of the Kikonês.I stormed that place and killed the men who fought.
Plunder we took, and we enslaved the women,
to make division, equal shares to all—
but on the spot I told them: ‘Back, and quickly!
Out to sea again!’ My men were mutinous,
fools, on stores of wine. Sheep after sheep
they butchered by the surf, and shambling cattle,
feasting,—while fugitives went inland, running
to call to arms the main force of Kikonês.This was an army, trained to fight on horseback
or, where the ground required, on foot. They came
with dawn over that terrain like the leaves
and blades of spring. So doom appeared to us,
dark word of Zeus for us, our evil days.My men stood up and made a fight of it
backed on the ships, with lances kept in play,
from bright morning through the blaze of noon
holding our beach, although so far outnumbered;
but when the sun passed toward unyoking time,
then the Akhaians, one by one, gave way.Six benches were left empty in every ship
that evening when we pulled away from death.
And this new grief we bore with us to sea:
our precious lives we had, but not our friends.
No ship made sail next day until some shipmate
had raised a cry, three times, for each poor ghost
unfleshed by the Kikonês on that field…
At the moment when he says this, Odysseus has just been washed up, a castaway, in the land of the Phaiakia. They ask him how he got there. And the story he tells them is that he is a pirate. It is, moreover, a pirate who keeps pirating. When Odysseus leaves Troy, he has just finished fighting the long and brutal Trojan War. He and his crew have their plunder from Troy. Yet the first thing they do is pirate. Plus they are rather stupid and undisciplined about pirating. In such an environment, is anybody going to save and invest a lot? Or, rather, is anybody going to save and invest in anything other than weapons and weapons training both to (a) make you and yours a hard and difficult target for the pirates, and (b) make yourself more effective when you go pirate? The economy’s ratio of savings to depreciation s/δ is surely going to be low, depressing the population.
Moreover, the risk that, as you mind your own business, Odysseus and company, well-trained, well-equipped, battle-hardened, will come along and, just because they can, “stormed that place and killed the men who fought. Plunder we took, and we enslaved the women…”—such high risks of violent death must, in Malthusian equilibrium, be offset by reduced mortality risk from disease and such. Hence the economy’s level of subsistence-necessities consumption will also be high. That also depresses the population.
Not in the model, but potentially very real: A low population density means that ideas that are known and deployed somewhere will have a difficult time diffusing throughout a civilization. A low population density means that the “Smithian” productivity gains from using those ideas to build an extensive and highly productive division of labor will be difficult to attain.
Yet from this Early Iron-Age Dark-Age beginning after the collapse of the high Mycenaean civilization of the Late Bronze Age, the Greek peoples built a civilization.
As Josiah Ober has written, the Greeks moved out of:
the violence and gift-exchange economy that characterized what Finley (1965) famously called “the world of Odysseus”…. There was in fact sustained and substantial growth in the Greek economy between the ages of Homer and of Plato and Aristotle… driven by (1) efficient methods of production, predicated on relative advantage and aimed at increasing the quantity as well the quality of goods produced, and (2) by market exchanges based on voluntary contracts. Moreover, the rational Greek state (notably, but not exclusively Athens) was increasingly cognizant—through its legislative, judicial, and administrative functions (ch. 5)—of the social (and taxable) value of providing rules and infrastructure aimed at facilitating the profitable production and exchange of goods…. Ancient Greeks, as individuals and collectives, frequently employed economic rationality, i.e. rationally instrumental reasoning in economic contexts….
All-in-all, this appears to be a remarkable civilizational accomplishment, and not one limited to the enrichment of a luxurious predatory upper class. There is a reason that the Greeks have a predominant place in our cultural memory. That reason is not that they are "our" ancestors, whoever "we" happened to be. The people who decided that universities should study the Greeks lived on the island of Britain, in the upper Thames river valley near Oxford and in the fins of Norfolk near Cambridge. They were in nowise descendants, biologically or culturally, of the ancient Greeks. Nobody in England in 1450 could speak or read Greek. Yet the inhabitants of the valley and the fens adopted them as their predecessors in what they decided to call “western civilization”.
3.2.2.2. The City-State
Emerging out of the Iron “Dark Age” of -1200 to -800, the Greeks built a unique institutional framework: the city-state. It emerged with functional systems of governance which provided public goods—security, boundary stones, marketplaces, mediators, dispute resolution. This initiated a period of sustained increases in living standards.
Now do not overstate the accomplishment. While Ancient Greece did have a period of democracy, it was relative short (less than 200 years) compared to the duration of the polities. Even during Greece’s Democratic Age, most poleis remained oligarchies. And remember! Most citizens—slaves, poor citizens who couldn’t afford their tax bill, women—could not participate even in smallholder democracy. The Greek rules according to which the society was organized tended to be “extractive”—at least if you were not one of the equals who were full citizens. And the economy was largely based upon slavery. (Do note, however, that with some notable exceptions like the Spartan helots and the Athenian and Syracusan mines), this slavery was small-scale rather than plantation slavery: it was ripping somebody out of their social context and placing them in a position in which they had no family or other trusted companions to provide them with any social power.)
At and near its peak, the civilization had astonishing creative achievements. Look at the people of ancient classical civilization. In rhetoric and politics, we have Perikles and Cicero. In generalship, should we have Cæsar and Alexander. In governance? We have Augustus and Trajan. In philosophy we have Aristotle and Plato. In sculpture and literature we have Praxiteles and Sophokles. They are our equal, even though they knew much less and did not stand on the shoulders of giants, as we do.
Even in something like making a good living through mass media via presenting yourself as a celebrity there were equivalents then who are our equals now. Consider Mnesarete of Thespiai. Her name means “Remembrance of Excellence”. But she was called Phryne: toad. Why? Because people thought her skin color, yellow, was like that of a toad. That was thought very very attractive in the Athens of the -300s. Phryne was the favorite model for Aphrodite of the sculptors of her day. And I do not think she would have had anything to learn from Kim Kardashian about how to manage your celebrity. After all, 2000s years after her death people were still writing poems about and marveling at statues of her as Aphrodite.
The ancients were—at least those who were not protein-deprived in utero from malnutrition—our equals in intelligence, cultural sophistication, mechanical ingenuity, intellectual creativity, and, in short, in the ability to think and do.
Get well quickly. I was thinking just the other day about Isaac Hayes's great cover of the Jimmy Webb song, 'By the Time I Get to Phoenix.' Of all the recorded versions, it is still the one I like best!!
Get well! We need to get that book finished.