The Wealth of Nations, Book 4

Before we get into Book 4 of "Wealth", a correction. My online course stated that "The Wealth of Nations" was published in 1776, not 1790 as I stated. The Wikipedia article on Adam Smith concurs with the 1776 date. But it looks like he continued to revise the book up until his death in 1790. There are references to a 1780 trade agreement, and to the American Revolution having already taken place ("Before the revolt of our North American colonies").

1776 was a banner year:

1. The signing of the Declaration of Independence started the American Revolution.
   
2. The invention of the steam engine by James Watt started the Industrial Revolution.
   
3. "Wealth of Nations" was published, which is generally considered to mark the start of modern economics.
   

Book 4 is titled "Of Systems Of Political Economy". It is the longest book. It basically discusses trade between nations and the government's involvement in such trade via duties, tariffs, and bounties (basically inverse tariffs). He calls it The Mercantile System, but never really defines it. To me, his main points were:

• Government attempting to protect or incubate industries by penalizing imports or exports via tariffs or outright bans winds up being a zero sum game. Favoring one industry segment penalizes other industry segments or consumers.
  
• Balance of trade is really not worth worrying about.
  
• Free trade, like free markets, will make everything work best in the end.
  
• "Monopoly of one kind or another, indeed, seems to be the sole engine of the mercantile system."
  

There are more examples of how weird it makes things to have your currency based on precious metals. Because not only can the metal be used for coins, it can also be used for flatware!

The gold and silver which can properly be considered as accumulated, or stored up in any country, may be distinguished into three parts; first, the circulating money; secondly, the plate of private families; and, last of all, the money which may have been collected by many years parsimony, and laid up in the treasury of the prince.

In chapter 2, "Of Restraints Upon Importation From Foreign Countries Of Such Goods As Can Be Produced At Home", we meet the only actual reference in "Wealth" to the famous "invisible hand". It's import is actually somewhat limited, being used only to explain why merchants better promote the public interest by supporting domestic rather than foreign industry.

He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain; and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest, he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.

Here's a passage from chapter 5 which is more what people understand "the invisible hand" to mean:

The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principle, that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions, with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations: though the effect of those obstructions is always, more or less, either to encroach upon its freedom, or to diminish its security.

Here's an example of his favoring free trade:

If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry, employed in a way in which we have some advantage.

And another:

By diminishing the number of sellers, therefore, we necessarily diminish that of buyers, and are thus likely not only to buy foreign goods dearer, but to sell our own cheaper, than if there was a more perfect freedom of trade.

And another:

Every derangement of the natural distribution of stock is necessarily hurtful to the society in which it takes place;

And another:

The effect of bounties, like that of all the other expedients of the mercantile system, can only be to force the trade of a country into a channel much less advantageous than that in which it would naturally run of its own accord.

Interesting, also on bounties (government credit for producing certain goods) -- that they can lead to bubbles, similar to those we have seen in the last few decades. The housing bubble would have been less likely without the tax deduction on mortgages -- a government "bounty" paid to the consumer. I can't think of a similar incentive that led to the dot-com bubble of the late '90s.

The usual effect of such bounties is, to encourage rash undertakers to adventure in a business which they do not understand; and what they lose by their own negligence and ignorance, more than compensates all that they can gain by the utmost liberality of government.

He does make an exception for strategic materials required to maintain the nation's military equipment.

Smith is definitely not a fan of taxes. At the time of "Wealth", Holland was the richest country in the western world.

Such taxes, when they have grown up to a certain height, are a curse equal to the barrenness of the earth, and the inclemency of the heavens, and yet it is in the richest and most industrious countries that they have been most generally imposed. No other countries could support so great a disorder. As the strongest bodies only can live and enjoy health under an unwholesome regimen, so the nations only, that in every sort of industry have the greatest natural and acquired advantages, can subsist and prosper under such taxes. Holland is the country in Europe in which they abound most, and which, from peculiar circumstances, continues to prosper, not by means of them, as has been most absurdly supposed, but in spite of them.

Here's a surprisingly democratic result derived from Libertarian principles: that all people should be free to follow whatever trade they desire. I bet that he would not be opposed to anyone who felt they could be, say, a surgeon, putting a sign up and having at it -- buyer beware! Like when our own Random Paul created his own certifying board -- solid Libertarian principle in action.

Soldiers and seamen, indeed, when discharged from the king’s service, are at liberty to exercise any trade within any town or place of Great Britain or Ireland. Let the same natural liberty of exercising what species of industry they please, be restored to all his Majesty’s subjects, in the same manner as to soldiers and seamen; that is, break down the exclusive privileges of corporations, and repeal the statute of apprenticeship, both which are really encroachments upon natural Liberty, and add to those the repeal of the law of settlements, so that a poor workman, when thrown out of employment, either in one trade or in one place, may seek for it in another trade or in another place, without the fear either of a prosecution or of a removal; and neither the public nor the individuals will suffer much more from the occasional disbanding some particular classes of manufacturers, than from that of the soldiers.

It is interesting that the difficulties caused by currencies being based upon precious metals, such that coins can be clipped or become worn, led to the establishment of the first commercial bank, in Amsterdam in 1609.

Smith really does seem to be more Libertarian than what we would now call pro-business. He seems pretty disgusted by merchants and industries who succeed in getting favorable trade treatment from the government.

Commerce, which ought naturally to be, among nations as among individuals, a bond of union and friendship, has become the most fertile source of discord and animosity. The capricious ambition of kings and ministers has not, during the present and the preceding century, been more fatal to the repose of Europe, than the impertinent jealousy of merchants and manufacturers. The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit of a remedy: but the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit, of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind, though it cannot, perhaps, be corrected, may very easily be prevented from disturbing the tranquillity of anybody but themselves.

His attitude on having wealthy neighboring countries is interesting:

The wealth of neighbouring nations, however, though dangerous in war and politics, is certainly advantageous in trade. ... Private people, who want to make a fortune, never think of retiring to the remote and poor provinces of the country, but resort either to the capital, or to some of the great commercial towns. They know, that where little wealth circulates, there is little to be got; but that where a great deal is in motion, some share of it may fall to them. The same maxim which would in this manner direct the common sense of one, or ten, or twenty individuals, should regulate the judgment of one, or ten, or twenty millions, and should make a whole nation regard the riches of its neighbours, as a probable cause and occasion for itself to acquire riches.

Here is a succinct statement on his "don't worry about balance of trade" thinking. Nice too that he jibes at his fellow economists -- some things never change.

There is no commercial country in Europe, of which the approaching ruin has not frequently been foretold by the pretended doctors of this system, from all unfavourably balance of trade. After all the anxiety, however, which they have excited about this, after all the vain attempts of almost all trading nations to turn that balance in their own favour, and against their neighbours, it does not appear that any one nation in Europe has been, in any respect, impoverished by this cause. Every town and country, on the contrary, in proportion as they have opened their ports to all nations, instead of being ruined by this free trade, as the principles of the commercial system would lead us to expect, have been enriched by it.

But in contrast he is absolutely not a fan of deficit spending -- I guess we have to wait for Keynes to realize that borrowing money during slumps when it's cheap and paying it back during booms when revenues are up can work wonders.

Chapter 7 is titled "Of Colonies" and deals with all things colonial. Definitely relevant to an earlier time. It starts with a discussion of Greek and Roman colonies, about which I had totally forgotten. He appears to have been a fan of the American colonies.

The colony of a civilized nation which takes possession either of a waste country, or of one so thinly inhabited that the natives easily give place to the new settlers, advances more rapidly to wealth and greatness than any other human society.

One important difference in the colonies is that primogeniture is no longer universal. There is so much free land that this is not a problem. But Britain was practicing the standard colonial model, with the colonies restricted to exporting raw materials and importing manufactured products.

The more advanced or more refined manufactures, even of the colony produce, the merchants and manufacturers of Great Britain chuse to reserve to themselves, and have prevailed upon the legislature to prevent their establishment in the colonies, sometimes by high duties, and sometimes by absolute prohibitions.

And, you gotta give credit to Smith, he calls this out:

To prohibit a great people, however, from making all that they can of every part of their own produce, or from employing their stock and industry in the way that they judge most advantageous to themselves, is a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of mankind.

There is a discussion of the restrictive trade practices which the European countries adapted to maximize their profits on trade with the Americas and the Far East. And again, Smith is against all such practices.

But whatever raises, in any country, the ordinary rate of profit higher than it otherwise would be, necessarily subjects that country both to an absolute, and to a relative disadvantage in every branch of trade of which she has not the monopoly.

Surprisingly, globalization is already an issue in the late 18th century -- with business, just as now, not wanting to share the wealth.

Our merchants frequently complain of the high wages of British labour, as the cause of their manufactures being undersold in foreign markets; but they are silent about the high profits of stock. They complain of the extravagant gain of other people; but they say nothing of their own. The high profits of British stock, however, may contribute towards raising the price of British manufactures, in many cases, as much, and in some perhaps more, than the high wages of British labour.

More Smith goodness! Here he lauds full employment.

The most advantageous employment of any capital to the country to which it belongs, is that which maintains there the greatest quantity of productive labour, and increases the most the annual produce of the land and labour of that country.

There is some commentary on the American Revolution as seen from the British side. There was great consternation at the loss of their trade monopolies. But, following his Libertarian instincts, Smith actually proposed that Britain get rid of all its colonies, and the expense of protecting them, when the only ones benefitting from them are British merchants and manufacturers.

A great empire has been established for the sole purpose of raising up a nation of customers, who should be obliged to buy, from the shops of our different producers, all the goods with which these could supply them. For the sake of that little enhancement of price which this monopoly might afford our producers, the home consumers have been burdened with the whole expense of maintaining and defending that empire. For this purpose, and for this purpose only, in the two last wars, more than two hundred millions have been spent, and a new debt of more than a hundred and seventy millions has been contracted, over and above all that had been expended for the same purpose in former wars. The interest of this debt alone is not only greater than the whole extraordinary profit which, it never could be pretended, was made by the monopoly of the colony trade, but than the whole value of that trade, or than the whole value of the goods which, at an average, have been annually exported to the colonies. It cannot be very difficult to determine who have been the contrivers of this whole mercantile system; not the consumers, we may believe, whose interest has been entirely neglected; but the producers, whose interest has been so carefully attended to; and among this latter class, our merchants and manufacturers have been by far the principal architects. In the mercantile regulations which have been taken notice of in this chapter, the interest of our manufacturers has been most peculiarly attended to; and the interest, not so much of the consumers, as that of some other sets of producers, has been sacrificed to it.

And then maybe after the colonies are turned loose ...

By thus parting good friends, the natural affection of the colonies to the mother country, which, perhaps, our late dissensions have well nigh extinguished, would quickly revive. It might dispose them not only to respect, for whole centuries together, that treaty of commerce which they had concluded with us at parting, but to favour us in war as well as in trade, and instead of turbulent and factious subjects, to become our most faithful, affectionate, and generous allies; and the same sort of parental affection on the one side, and filial respect on the other, might revive between Great Britain and her colonies, which used to subsist between those of ancient Greece and the mother city from which they descended.

Ha ha, I guess that it didn't turn out that way for their American colonies. But Britain is the greatest ally of the US nonetheless. I see this more as the empire of the 19th century cozying up to the empire of the 20th century more than as "parental affection" and "filial respect".

I'm guessing Smith would have been aghast at the British Empire of the 19th century.

He also proposed that representatives from the colonies be given seats in the British parliament, in an attempt to buy off the leaders of the colonies.

Unless this or some other method is fallen upon, and there seems to be none more obvious than this, of preserving the importance and of gratifying the ambition of the leading men of America, it is not very probable that they will ever voluntarily submit to us ...

Smith is eerily prescient on the future of the American colonies. He really seems to have been a fan.

From shopkeepers, trades men, and attorneys, they are become statesmen and legislators, and are employed in contriving a new form of government for an extensive empire, which, they flatter themselves, will become, and which, indeed, seems very likely to become, one of the greatest and most formidable that ever was in the world.

Smith next goes into excruciating detail on many of the market goods of his time. I thought this one was kind of funny, about efforts of the English wool industry to get the government to give them special treatment.

This doctrine, like most other doctrines which are confidently asserted by any considerable number of people, was, and still continues to be, most implicitly believed by a much greater number: by almost all those who are either unacquainted with the woollen trade, or who have not made particular inquiries. It is, however, so perfectly false, that English wool is in any respect necessary for the making of fine cloth, that it is altogether unfit for it. Fine cloth is made altogether of Spanish wool. English wool, cannot be even so mixed with Spanish wool, as to enter into the composition without spoiling and degrading, in some degree, the fabric of the cloth.

Ha ha, his reference to "any considerable number of people" reminds me of Paul Krugman's Very Serious People (VSP).

Here is Smith recommending that if the game is zero-sum, then it shouldn't be played.

To hurt, in any degree, the interest of any one order of citizens, for no other purpose but to promote that of some other, is evidently contrary to that justice and equality of treatment which the sovereign owes to all the different orders of his subjects.

Another principle, which I guess can be regarded as Libertarian, is that when the government makes things too restrictive, the market will find a way around the government. Hello, war on drugs.

Their avidity, however, upon this, as well as upon many other occasions, disappointed itself of its object. This enormous duty presented such a temptation to smuggling, that great quantities of this commodity were clandestinely exported, probably to all the manufacturing countries of Europe;

Wow, there are just so many issues that are still with us today, in different form. Here's 18th century Intellectual Property (IP) law. And notice, the rights of the individual are completely subjugated to those of the merchant or manufacturer.

When such heavy penalties were imposed upon the exportation of the dead instruments of trade, it could not well be expected that the living instrument, the artificer, should be allowed to go free. Accordingly, by the 5th Geo. I. chap. 27, the person who shall be convicted of enticing any artificer, of or in any of the manufactures of Great Britain, to go into any foreign parts, in order to practise or teach his trade, is liable, for the first offence, to be fined in any sum not exceeding one hundred pounds, and to three months imprisonment, and until the fine shall be paid; and for the second offence, to be fined in any sum, at the discretion of the court, and to imprisonment for twelve months, and until the fine shall be paid. By the 23d Geo. II. chap. 13, this penalty is increased, for the first offence, to five hundred pounds for every artificer so enticed, and to twelve months imprisonment, and until the fine shall be paid; and for the second offence, to one thousand pounds, and to two years imprisonment, and until the fine shall be paid.
...
If any artificer has gone beyond the seas, and is exercising or teaching his trade in any foreign country, upon warning being given to him by any of his majesty’s ministers or consuls abroad, or by one of his majesty’s secretaries of state, for the time being, if he does not, within six months after such warning, return into this realm, and from henceforth abide and inhabit continually within the same, he is from thenceforth declared incapable of taking any legacy devised to him within this kingdom, or of being executor or administrator to any person, or of taking any lands within this kingdom, by descent, devise, or purchase. He likewise forfeits to the king all his lands, goods, and chattels; is declared an alien in every respect; and is put out of the king’s protection. It is unnecessary, I imagine, to observe how contrary such regulations are to the boasted liberty of the subject, of which we affect to be so very jealous; but which, in this case, is so plainly sacrificed to the futile interests of our merchants and manufacturers.

The final chapter of Book 4 is chapter 9, "Of The Agricultural Systems, Or Of Those Systems Of Political Economy Which Represent The Produce Of Land, As Either The Sole Or The Principal Source Of The Revenue And Wealth Of Every Country". Man, Smith is definitely the king of the run-on sentence. This goes back to the "agriculture is better than manufacturing" meme. He reviews a French theory, attributed to Colbert and Qttesnai, which places merchants, artificers and manufacturers into the "unproductive" class.

Artificers, manufacturers, and merchants, can augment the revenue and wealth of their society by parsimony only; or, as it is expressed in this system, by privation, that is, by depriving themselves of a part of the funds destined for their own subsistence. They annually reproduce nothing but those funds. Unless, therefore, they annually save some part of them, unless they annually deprive themselves of the enjoyment of some part of them, the revenue and wealth of their society can never be, in the smallest degree, augmented by means of their industry. Farmers and country labourers, on the contrary, may enjoy completely the whole funds destined for their own subsistence, and yet augment, at the same time, the revenue and wealth of their society.

I'm really not sure I get this. Smith goes back to the the open market being best.

Those systems, therefore, which preferring agriculture to all other employments, in order to promote it, impose restraints upon manufactures and foreign trade, act contrary to the very end which they propose, and indirectly discourage that very species of industry which they mean to promote.
...
It is thus that every system which endeavours, either, by extraordinary encouragements to draw towards a particular species of industry a greater share of the capital of the society than what would naturally go to it, or, by extraordinary restraints, to force from a particular species of industry some share of the capital which would otherwise be employed in it, is, in reality, subversive of the great purpose which it means to promote. It retards, instead of accelerating the progress of the society towards real wealth and greatness; and diminishes, instead of increasing, the real value of the annual produce of its land and labour.

So with regard to current US politics, Smith would advocate getting rid of all forms of corporate welfare.

Well, that's 4 books down, 1 to go. The last book is on the revenue of the state.

Future Letter to the Editor

I'll wait til next week to post this one to the Herald Leader, but I'll save it here since I've got the Jefferson quote in the paste buffer.

What would the Founding Fathers think of our current plutocracy? Here's a quote from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson in 1814:

"we have no paupers, the old and crippled among us, who possess nothing and have no families to take care of them, being too few to merit notice as a separate section of society, or to affect a general estimate. The great mass of our population is of laborers; our rich, who can live without labor, either manual or professional, being few, and of moderate wealth. Most of the laboring class possess property, cultivate their own lands, have families, and from the demand for their labor are enabled to exact from the rich and the competent such prices as enable them to be fed abundantly, clothed above mere decency, to labor moderately and raise their families. They are not driven to the ultimate resources of dexterity and skill, because their wares will sell although not quite so nice as those of England. The wealthy, on the other hand, and those at their ease, know nothing of what the Europeans call luxury. They have only somewhat more of the comforts and decencies of life than those who furnish them. Can any condition of society be more desirable than this?"

I think Jefferson would view our current plutocracy, with its billionaires with multiple castles, airplanes, and yachts, with shock and horror.

Letter to the Editor

Looks like the last letter is not going to get published. Let's try again!

Hello Plutocracy, Goodbye Democracy

In all seriousness, who could possibly believe that the Founding Fathers intended "freedom of speech" to include unlimited election campaign contributions by the ultra-wealthy and corporations? Apparently 5 Supreme Court justices and our own senior Senator, Mitch McConnell, the champion fund-raiser in all of history, expect us to think that they could and do believe this.

Common sense tells us that their true motive can be nothing but to continue the consolidation of power in this country into the hands of the ultra-wealthy and the corporations. Even if all of us can learn to ignore the perpetual blare of attack ads and vote in our own self interest, those we elect, Republican or Democrat, will still listen to the money that they think they need to be elected.

Given the recent McCutcheon Supreme Court ruling, it will take a constitutional amendment to correct this travesty and implement elections financed only by public funds. This is sure to be a long, drawn out process. So in the short term, I guess we all just have to learn to love living in a plutocracy, watching the rich get richer and everyone else get poorer, and trying to remember what it was like to live in a democracy.

Random

No, this isn't a post about Random Paul, our beloved junior senator. Man, I keep posting them, no one seems to like my snarky Random Paul memes. Maybe just too snarky? There's

Here in KY we call him Random Paul because you never know what he's going to say next.

and

The Boy Who Would Be King

and

Sarah Palin with a Y chromosome, a narcissistic lightweight.

and

Random Paul is like a stopped clock. Occasionally he gets something right.

Oh well, I'll keep on plugging I guess. I of course recommend my post from before his election (sigh) "Random Paul's Top 10 Randomisms".

Life has been somewhat disrupted lately. My mother-in-law died March 16, 2014, after having a massive heart attack and stroke. She was making oatmeal for her 55 YO Downs Syndrome son, said, "I feel woozy.", passed out, and never regained consciousness. 93 YO, pretty coherent til the end, but in increasing pain. For the next few months, I will be taking a turn watching Uncle Bruce 1 or 2 days a week with his sibs and other sib-in-laws. I'm going to try to get him out to shoot some hoops, we used to do that.

So haven't read any of "Wealth of Nations" for over a month. Magazine stack is clear, so hopefully I'll be back on it RSN. I have stayed current with my online course "The Age of Sustainable Development". Main thing I have gotten from that course is just how screwed sub-Saharan Africa is:

• tropical diseases;
  
• no coal (for an industrial revolution);
  
• no oil;
  
• no major rivers, giving many land-locked countries;
  
• no connected network of railroads like India has, since there were many colonial occupiers rather than 1.
  

I did read the collection of short stories "Adrift in the Noösphere" by Damien Broderick. He's Australian and has been writing for decades but somehow stayed under my radar. It's a nice mix of stories. A couple are pretty creepy, particularly the final one with a UFO abduction theme.

Letter to the Editor

I wrote a very snarky letter to the editor re our beloved junior senator Random Paul -- The Boy Who Would Be King -- a couple of weeks ago. I was pretty sure it wouldn't get published -- way too snarky -- but, I didn't save a copy it anywhere, and now it's gone. I am going to continue to write letters to the editor -- I've had a few published over the last few years -- and I think I'm going to write them in Blogger rather than directly on the Herald-Leader site so that I'm sure to have a copy. So here's the latest.

Our senior senator Mitch McConnell has in recent statements continued to deny climate change, despite 97% of climate scientists finding that the evidence for human-caused global warming is overwhelming. I guess that, sadly, it is the new normal for Republicans to ignore and deny any science that is inconvenient for their donors or unpopular with their voter base. But it is surprising to me that McConnell is also ignoring the strident alarm being raised by the US military. In its 2014 Quadrennial Review, the Pentagon states that climate change is real; that it posts a clear and present danger to our troops worldwide; that is a "threat multiplier" and a terrorist incubator; and that we should take urgent action to combat climate change.

So the next time McConnell or other Republicans say that they support our troops, ask them why they are ignoring the Pentagon's recommendations that we address climate change as a urgent matter of national security.

The Pentagon report is available at:
(www.defense.gov/pubs/2014_Quadrennial_Defense_Review.pdf)

Light Reading

I was in Naples FL from February 4 to February 27. It rained twice. It was cool (overnight low 45 degrees, high of 66) 1 day. Other than that, 2 weeks of highs around 83-84, which are actually a little hot, and 1 week of highs in the upper 70s, which are perfect. You leave all the doors open, mild breezes move the air, perfect. Plus green and colorful flowers everywhere. Very hard to come home to gray and white and more snow and ice.

I also really miss the exercise opportunities that I have down there. The biking is weird -- mostly bike lanes on 4 and 6 lane highways -- but I still got to bike 9 times for 430 miles total, an average of 47.7 miles. That puts me on the bike 3-4 hours, and that seems to put too much stress on my hands. I still have some numbness in the ring and pinky fingers on both hands. I was biking with a guy on one of the "leaning on your forearms on the handlebar pads" bikes, he said that bike totally fixed the hand thing for him. So I'm going to look into getting that type of bike.

I also walked 10 times for 50 miles. The default walks in the community there wind up at around 4.5 miles, so I've come up with some more convoluted routes that get up to 6-7 miles. At the end I was also stopping by the exercise room towards the end of the walk and doing arm and torso work.

Well, that pretty much seemed like a vacation, so I decided to reread "The Great Book of Amber", by Roger Zelazny. This is the 10 Amber novels, which were all around 200 pages and published from 1970 to 1991, in 1 book. There are actually 2 stories of 5 books each, the 1st of the older generation doing a "Game of Thrones" thing and vying for the "King of the Multiverse" job, the 2nd of the next generation vying for the "King of Primordial Chaos" job. They are very quick reads. I like the 1st 5 better. I liked these a lot back in the day, they were pretty good on the reread. The 1st one was funny, hippy slang ("I couldn't dig what he was talking about") definitely jarring and gave some chuckles.

Then at the recommendation of my brother the author, I read "Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths", by Nancy Marie Brown (2012). This was a biography of Snorri Snurluson, an Icelander of the early 13th century. Snorri was responsible for the creation of the Eddas, which are our major source of Norse myths, which I have always loved. Iceland at the time was independent -- it came under Norwegian rule later in the 13th century. If you weren't a mighty warrior, you could get by on being a mighty poet (called a skald), which describes Snorri. Snorri eventually became the most powerful man in Iceland, before his allies and in-laws betrayed him and he was killed.

I think the most interesting thing about this to me was how many of my favorite stories were apparently not passed down from older stories but were instead created whole cloth by Snorri. 1 example is the 1 where Thor and Loki visit the giant after spending the night in his glove and their young male companion races Thought, Loki has an eating contest with Fire, and Thor wrestles Old Age.

This was an interesting and a quick read, and puts me up to 3 biographies that I can remember reading in my life. The other 2 were Albert Einstein and Harpo Marx.

I am 6 lectures and quizzes into the online course I'm taking at coursera on "The Age of Sustainable Development". I skim or read the recommended reading materials, which takes 2-3 hours. I then watch the lecture, which are up to around 1 hour 40 minutes. I then take the quiz with the help of the PDF of the lecture, which takes around 5 minutes. It's getting a little boring, but maybe the slower rate of information transfer will help it stick. Around 1/3 of the quiz questions involve looking stuff up in online databases and doing some easy math, which I guess is an OK thing. It doesn't seem like I'm really learning much new stuff, but getting a lot of this knowledge in the framework of a course again will probably help it to stick.

The Wealth of Nations, Book 3

Book 3 of "Wealth" is titled "Of The Different Progress Of Opulence In Different Nations". This book comes across more as history than as economics, and actually doesn't seem to have a lot to do with its title. It's short, only 70 pages or so.

Smith's contention that agriculture is superior to manufacturing and trade underlies a lot of the narrative of this book. He favors systems where small landholders (yeomen) actually own the land, as this encourages them to invest their stock in improving the land. Feudal and serf-based systems he describes as being a form of slavery.

Very interesting was the fact that most towns and cities (burghs) were chartered by kings to oppose the power of the landed barons. Getting off the farm and into a city meant even more then than it does now: if a serf ran away from his land and his master couldn't find him for 1 year, then he was free of his master, and cities were the best place to hide for that year.

Most inheritance at the time was primogeniture: the oldest son inherited everything. It seems kind of backwards and primitive to me (disclosure: I am a 2nd son), but it totally makes sense as the only way a landed baron could keep his land, the basis of his power, together.

Sometimes you wander how conservatives can be so hard-hearted and wrong-minded. Some of Smith's reads of human nature are painful:

The pride of man makes him love to domineer, and nothing mortifies him so much as to be obliged to condescend to persuade his inferiors. -- hard to believe this book was published 14 years after "all men are created equal."

Another lesson on the English class system:

In England, besides, a lease for life of forty shillings a-year value is a freehold, and entitles the lessee to a vote for a member of parliament; and as a great part of the yeomanry have freeholds of this kind, the whole order becomes respectable to their landlords, on account of the political consideration which this gives them. -- "Money talks, bullshit walks." seems to be a recurring theme across the books.

More nice classism:

Through the greater part of Europe, the yeomanry are regarded as an inferior rank of people, even to the better sort of tradesmen and mechanics, and in all parts of Europe to the great merchants and master manufacturers.

The lords despised the burghers, whom they considered not only as a different order, but as a parcel of emancipated slaves, almost of a different species from themselves. The wealth of the burghers never failed to provoke their envy and indignation, and they plundered them upon every occasion without mercy or remorse.

Smith continues with his disdain for the landed gentry:

Merchants are commonly ambitious of becoming country gentlemen, and, when they do, they are generally the best of all improvers.

One contention he makes is that, before they were cities providing manufactured goods, landed barons could do nothing with the excess produce of their land but increase the number of their retainers, increasing their power by feeding more people. Once cities started manufacturing crap stuff, they could instead now trade their surplus produce for money and become consumers!

These gradually furnished the great proprietors with something for which they could exchange the whole surplus produce of their lands, and which they could consume themselves, without sharing it either with tenants or retainers.

And at this point, down went the number of retainers. So the free market, consumer society kind of snuck up on everybody:

A revolution of the greatest importance to the public happiness, was in this manner brought about by two different orders of people, who had not the least intention to serve the public. To gratify the most childish vanity was the sole motive of the great proprietors. The merchants and artificers, much less ridiculous, acted merely from a view to their own interest, and in pursuit of their own pedlar principle of turning a penny wherever a penny was to be got. Neither of them had either knowledge or foresight of that great revolution which the folly of the one, and the industry of the other, was gradually bringing about.

Here's some foreshadowing of our modern multinational corporations:

A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country.

I had to look up several odd, archaic words in this book:

• entails -- noun, a settlement of the inheritance of property over a number of generations so that it remains within a family or other group.
  
• engrosser -- noun, basically a monopolist.
  
• regrater -- noun, basically a commodity speculator.
  
• forestaller -- noun, someone who stores commodities for a socially useful purpose, i.e., for times of shortage, rather than as an engrosser or regrater.
  

The next book appears to be a huge one, so I'll go over to some short stories for a break.

Buy Fresh, Buy GMO

The title of this post comes from the cover of the latest issue of MIT Technology Review. Technology Review joins Scientific American in promoting GMO crops. These are the 2 most respected popular science publications in the world. I've read these 2 mags every month for > 40 years. To my knowledge their integrity is unimpeachable.

more than 15 years of experience with transgenic crops have revealed no health dangers, and neither have a series of scientific studies.

Humans have been creating plant hybrids for 1000s of years. Genetic engineering techniques let us insert just the desired gene instead of 1000s of genes -- surgery with a scalpel instead of a chainsaw.

But, we still need to be smart about how we use genetic engineering. Plants are promiscuous with their genetic material, there's no way the Roundup-Ready gene is not going to wind up in weeds. I believe it already has -- that was a bad idea.

Monsanto's heavy-handed patent policies and control of seed stock are reprehensible. But many GMO crops, like the golden rice that can save the lives of 100Ks of children who die from vitamin A deficiency, have been given to the developing world under much better, but still slightly restrictive, terms. But groundless fear is preventing their use.

The subtitle from the cover:

Population growth and climate change will make it harder to feed the world. We need to overcome our fears of genetically modified food.

4500 Pages of Short Stories

For my Adam Smith sanity break, I decided to read some of the free short stories published in "The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com". I tweeted about one of the stories that the collection was 5000 pages, but with the font set to the smallest size, it is only 4572 pages in the Apple eBook reader. So I've read over 1/5, 900 pages. There is a lot of fill around the stories tho: a cover art page (nice!); title page; DRM verbiage page; and a TOC. After the stories, for the established writers there's a listing of their work; for the newer writers, there were several 1-3 chapter previews of their novels. Still, this is great free content, thanks Tor! It winds up being 150 stories, alphabetically arranged by author's last name, and I've read 33 so far.

I'd read a few of the stories already. All have been pretty strong, except for one by a YA author which did seem a bit juvenile. Favorites:

• "Six Months, Three Days", by Charlie Jane Anders. "The man who can see the future has a date with the woman who can see many possible futures." Fun and games playing with prescience. The author is apparently transgender, so maybe she has seen the dating scene from both sides?
  
• "The Girl Who Sand Rose Madder", by Elizabeth Bear. I'd read this before. For those of you wondering how Keith Richards keeps going.
  
• "The Final Now", by Gregory Benford. "Great Sky River" by Benford would definitely be in my list of top SF of all time. This is a nice, quirky (if theistic) look at the history of the universe. His "Grace Immaculate" story in the collection also has theistic overtones, whazzup widdat?
  
• "A Window or a Small Box", by Jedediah Berry was I think my favorite story so far. An engaged couple, possible with cold feet, wind up in a totally odd parallel world -- maybe a variant of Pepperland. Adventures ensue. I ordered his novel "The Manual of Detection", which is apparently a fantastic, alternate-reality detective novel.
  
• "TVA Baby", by Terry Bisson. A totally off-the-walls, WTF story.
  
• "The Ruined Queen of Harvest World", by Damien Broderick. Nicely mythic and sure of itself. Apparently Mr. Broderick has been writing Sci-Fi in Australia for decades. I ordered a collection of his short stories.
  

Before going back to "Wealth of Nations", I'm clearing the magazine stack for February. The newest issue of "Technology Review" has on it's cover "Buy Fresh, Buy GMO". I think I will probably use this to do some pro-GMO tweets and FB postings. There's too much superstitious peasant anti-GMO sentiment out there.

The Wealth Of Nations, Book 2

Before we get on to Book 2, I'd like to add a couple of important concepts of basic economics that I omitted from the list in my post on Book 1.

• Division of labor is a prerequisite for having an economy at all. If everyone is growing and/or hunting their own food, building their own house, making their own implements, then there is no economy.
  
• Barter systems don't scale, so you need this stuff called "money".
  

Book 2 is titled "Of The Nature, Accumulation, And Employment Of Stock". I think that he defines "stock" as, "anything that someone owns that has value" -- so it can be produce, goods or money. Also, I think he defines "capital" as, "stock that has been invested with the expectation of it being used productively, rather than spent on expenses, and of it retaining its value and being returned in the future". In his words:

His whole stock, therefore is distinguished into two parts. That part which he expects is to afford him this revenue is called his capital. The other is that which supplies his immediate consumption ...

There are 2 ways of investing capital to yield a revenue or profit:

1. "in raising, manufacturing, or purchasing goods, and selling them again at a profit." This he calls "circulating capital".
   
2. in investing in land improvement, new machines, or other improvements to one's operation. This he calls "fixed capital". Later he says "The intention of the fixed capital is to increase the productive powers of labour, or to enable the same number of labourers to perform a much greater quantity of work."
   

An odd (and very dated) discussion at the end of chapter 1 about, of all things, treasure troves. In countries without much security, people would commonly bury their valuables, and then die or forget where they were buried. When a treasure trove was found, it belonged not to the finder, nor to the landowner of where it was found, but to the sovereign of the state! Sweet deal if you can get it, I guess.

In discussing the flow of money and capital, ("Money, ... the great wheel of circulation, the great instrument of commerce"), he talks about how the same money can be used to finance 3 or 30 transactions -- so there is a clear understanding of "multipliers", of which modern conservatives seem to want to deny the existence when it comes to government spending for fiscal stimulus.

He also talks about discounted "bills of exchange", which may correspond to modern default credit swaps, and about how they can get kited by unscrupulous bankers -- surely not! (Note, I don't know enough modern economics to know if these really are the same as default credit swaps.) He also talks about banks issuing their own paper money and thereby leveraging their gold and silver holdings. But, the reliance on precious metal reserves -- "The whole paper money of every kind which can easily circulate in any country, never can exceed the value of the gold and silver ..." -- is still there.

He also talks about "raising money by circulation", which I think was making short term low interest loans, but making them rapidly, so that the effective interest rate is driven up -- not sure I get that. He uses the term "projector", which I think means the same as "speculator".

Chapter 3 is very interesting. He introduces the concepts of productive vs unproductive labour. Productive labour is the good kind: it is factory workers or farmers producing things. They are being paid, but their wages are offset by their production, with profit normally additionally being generated. Unproductive labour, on the other hand, is the bad kind: it takes the wages, performs tasks, but produces nothing lasting. It includes what we would now call the service industry. Interestingly, also unproductive are: the king, the government, the army, the navy, the clergy, lawyers, physicians, scholars, actors, musicians. I think that, with the advent of recording, actors and musicians are no longer totally unproductive. ;->

I think tho, that this is another reason that Smith is down on government: he lived in a time when there were still kings and nobles who maintained courts whose primary function was to engage in conspicuous consumption. I think we'd all agree that's about as unproductive as you can get.

Here's a reference to a "proverb" which I have never heard:

Our ancestors were idle for want of a sufficient encouragement to industry. It is better, says the proverb, to play for nothing, than to work for nothing.

Ha ha, can't argue with that, I guess. This is in a discussion of the superiority in activity and wealth of towns containing industries to towns containing the court of a king or noble. So stock used as capital is good, stock used for everyday expenses is bad. More bashing of the government/religious/military complex:

Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct. The whole, or almost the whole public revenue is, in most countries, employed in maintaining unproductive hands. Such are the people who compose a numerous and splendid court, a great ecclesiastical establishment, great fleets and armies, who in time of peace produce nothing, and in time of war acquire nothing which can compensate the expense of maintaining them, even while the war lasts. Such people, as they themselves produce nothing, are all maintained by the produce of other men’s labour.

And yet more fine bashing:

But though the profusion of government must undoubtedly have retarded the natural progress of England towards wealth and improvement, it has not been able to stop it. ...

It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense, either by sumptuary laws, or by prohibiting the importation of foreign luxuries. They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. Let them look well after their own expense, and they may safely trust private people with theirs. If their own extravagance does not ruin the state, that of the subject never will.

"Sumptuary laws" were laws which prohibited the lower classes from buying luxury items like the upper classes.

Increasingly I'm having to conclude, Smith really is a market-based libertarian. He doesn't seem to believe that government does anything good -- maybe back then it really didn't?!?!? He even has no use for the defense budget! Now that's a real libertarian! But he also seems to think that capitalists are going to be continuously reinvesting their profits into capital projects to grow business, while living relatively modestly and not wasting their capital on luxuries -- not too much like our modern captains of industry.

Chapter 4 is "Of Stock Lent At Interest". Not much seems to have changed from then to now. Borrowing money to pay expenses (as opposed to borrowing for a capital project), bad. Borrowing too much money and having to declare bankrupcy, bad.

Finally, chapter 5 is "Of The Different Employments Of Capital". Here he starts by basically defining 4 types of commerce:

1. 1st order acquisition of produce: farming and mining;
   
2. 2nd order production of goods from 1st order produce: manufacturing;
   
3. transport of 1st and 2nd order produce to markets: wholesaling;
   
4. breaking down produce into small quantities as needed by consumers; retailing.
   

He seems to favor farming over manufacturing as a more productive use of capital -- you get the "work of Nature" thrown in for free??? Not sure I've ever thought about it that way. But I guess, photosynthesis is not matched by anything yet produced by industry for capturing free (solar) energy, so maybe he has a point. Almost sci-fi, that growing stuff would be better than manufacturing it, nice!

Smith addresses issues of globalization, but I don't think that his conclusions agree with modern practices. "It is of more consequence that the capital of the manufacturer should reside within the country." Here he talks about what would happen if the Americans adopted protectionist policies and built their own industries, and I believe history has proven him dead wrong on this one:

Were the Americans, either by combination, or by any other sort of violence, to stop the importation of European manufactures, and, by thus giving a monopoly to such of their own countrymen as could manufacture the like goods, divert any considerable part of their capital into this employment, they would retard, instead of accelerating, the further increase in the value of their annual produce, and would obstruct, instead of promoting, the progress of their country towards real wealth and greatness.

Finally, there is a discussion of 3 types of wholesale trade:

1. home trade;
   
2. foreign trade of consumption (importing);
   
3. carrying trade, which is trading within or between foreign countries.
   

Smith posits that involvement in carrying trade is a result of national wealth, rather than a cause thereof. At his time, Holland was the richest country and had the greatest carrying trade, while England was 2nd in both.

This book ends by noting that, as much as farming is the best use of capital, it is also much more capital intensive. So if you are seeking your fortune with a small amount of seed capital, farming is not where you will can succeed -- look to manufacturing or trade instead.

Book 2 was only about 1/2 the length of book 1, 100 vs 200 pages. So a sanity break, then on to book 3. I also got the link to the 1st lecture of the online course I'm going to try, The Age of Sustainable Development. Interesting to see how this goes.

A Great Short Story Collection

I just finished "Beyond The Rift", a collection of the short stories of Peter Watts. This was the best short story collection I have read in a while. Lots of variety, touching on topics including evolution, consciousness, first contact, and death. There is also an essay at the end where he talks about his writing, and about his beating, arrest, and trial at the hands of the US Border Patrol when he was returning to Canada.

His novel "Blindsight" (2006) (blogged here) was one of the best novels of the oughts.

Hmm, tried to link to the eBook on Kobo, and, shazam, it's gone. However, all his short stories and his 1st novels -- the Rift trilogy -- are available for free at his website.

Nice Music Video

Tom Martin posted this video on Facebook. Who knew Robert Downey Jr. could sing? He does a great job, both singing solo and harmony with Sting and the 3 fabulous female backup singers. A great Police tune, and Vinnie Colaiuta on drums (thanks Jeff Adams for the ID on Vinnie). I worked it up for playing at a jam -- need to practice several more times to get the lyrics down -- but probably only about 1/2 of the drummers who play at the jam will be able to handle the chorus.

The Wealth Of Nations, Book 1

I have started reading "The Wealth Of Nations", by Adam Smith, 1790. Note, this is public domain, so I downloaded it for free from the iTunes store. Definitely slow going, what with archaic language (how bout all dem commas?) and spelling, and with having to learn the British pre-decimal currency system, which I believe is as follows:

• 1 pound === 100 pence (pennies)
  
• 1 shilling === 5 pence => it's a nickel, 20 per pound
  
• 1 crown === 5 shillings => it's a quarter
  
• 1 guinea === 21 shillings === 1.05 pounds ??? I think guineas were gold, the others were silver or copper.
  

"Wealth" is 4 books, so I'm going to read and report on it 1 book at a time to maintain my sanity.

Book 1 is (no joke) "On The Causes Of Improvement In The Productive Powers Of Labour, And Of The Order According To Which Its Produce Is Naturally Distributed Among The Different Ranks Of The People". Really? That's what that section was about? Interesting, over 200 years old, and the 1st book is about how the benefits of worker productivity increases are distributed among the different classes. Sound familiar?

There are 3 classes identified:

1. landlords, or land-owning gentry, whose income comes from rents on land. In addition to rent on land used for farming, there is also rent on ocean- and river-side land used for fishing.
   
2. laborers, whose income comes as wages on labor, or as crops/produce if they are farmers;
   
3. masters, whose income comes as profit on stock. He uses the term "capital" sometimes, but not "capitalist". A 2ndary form of profit is interest, "that derived from it (stock) by the person who does not employ it himself, but lends it to another". So our CEOs and finance types are both in this class.
   

Interesting how much has changed. A list of some of the things that were totally different in the 18th century:

• The master craftsman / journeyman / apprentice system was still in place. Apprenticeships varied in length from 7 years in England to 3 years in other countries.
  
• The Industrial Revolution has not happened yet, so the "industries" being improved are agriculture -- with the majority of the discussion being about raising corn vs cattle -- and cottage industries.
  
• Currencies are based on gold and silver. Reading how in the 1630s and 1640s the opening of huge new silver mines in South America caused a glut of silver on the market, lowering its price and as such devaluing the currency, thereby raising the price of everything else -- shows clearly why this is a bad idea. Also, bullion of the metal must be price-controlled to cost less that the same weight in currency -- otherwise you would melt the coins down and sell it as bullion. This is why US pennies are currently copper-coated zinc. The copper in the pure copper pennies got to be worth 3 cents each, so that you could make a profit from melting them down and selling the copper. But now we have the dog wagging the tail rather than vice versa.
  
• It was illegal for workers to organize. The workers were already pretty much getting the shaft:
  

  The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit, their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work, but many against combining to raise it. ...

  We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform, combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action ...
  

  I recently read where Henry Ford was demonized by other industrialists for paying his workers 2x the current going wage so that they could afford to buy a Ford car. How did management forget this 1st order virtuous cycle, and instead embark on following Walmart on a race to the bottom?
  
• Infant mortality rates were around 50%!!!
  
• Is this really different now? We're not supposed to have a class system in the US, but this reminds me of something a Republican would say:
  

  Is this improvement in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people to be regarded as an advantage, or as an inconveniency, to the society?

  Well, at least he does convince himself that it is an advantage.
  

Other economic principles introduced:

• Natural price: the sum of the natural wages, profit, and rent that go into the product. I think that here rent includes the raw material required for a product.
  
• "The demand for those who live by wages, therefore, naturally increases with the increase of national wealth, and cannot possible increase without it." So no jobs growth without GDP growth.
  
• "It is not, accordingly, in the richest countries, but in the most thriving, or in those which are growing rich the fastest, that the wages of labour are highest." So a growth economy needed for wage growth is a universal? Example of rich non-growing country was China at the time. Huge inequality in such countries was also noted. Reminds you of our economy now. Krugman has mentioned recently how companies maybe don't mind the current slow growth and high unemployment because of the leverage it gives them over their employees.
  
• Rents and wages are normally lower the further from population centers you are, but profits are generally higher. The joy of monopoly!
  
• "The rent of land ... is naturally a monopoly price." Smith seems to look down his nose at the land-owning gentry at times -- so maybe "rent-seeking behavior" has never been popular?

  As during their whole lives they (merchants and master manufacturers) are engaged in plans and projects, they have frequently more acuteness of understanding than the greater part of country gentlemen.

  Their superiority over the country gentleman is, not so much in their knowledge of the public interest, as in their having a better knowledge of their own interest than he has of his.

• Jobs that some people do for fun, like gardening, hunting, and fishing, don't pay as well as jobs that people don't do for fun. Other factors in job pay include difficulty or distastefulness of the required tasks, and the amount of training required to acquire the requisite proficiency in the required tasks.
  

He also seems to resent various government attempts to control trade. The most common form of government intervention up to that time seems to be the government fixing prices of certain staple items. But there were also laws limiting the number of apprentices and otherwise controlling this system -- he particularly seemed to be annoyed by what he felt were the excessively long 7 year apprenticeships required by English law. He also didn't seem to like tariffs and protectionism. Plus, there were regulations requiring all members of given trades to register with the town, making it easier for them to organize! Overall it didn't seem like he was against the principle of government being involved in the economy, it seemed more like he felt that the particular ways in which it was being done in his time were somewhat stupid and/or less than optimal.

The most boring (least relevant?) parts are where he argues (I'm sure against competing economists of his time) that corn production and pricing is what provides the best thing to track, rather than gold, silver or butchered beef prices. (Note -- Wikipedia says "corn" refers to whatever the current dominant local grain is, rather than to maize, which is what we call corn. This confused me, since corn was not intruduced into Europe from the Americas until late 15th-early 16th century. But then he talks about corn vs wheat, barley, and hops, so I'm still confused.) There are 10s of pages of this, and charts of corn prices going back to 1210, that he uses to analyze price fluctuation and inflation -- although the term "inflation" is never used.

I like the ending of Book 1 a lot though. An explicit warning against corporatocracy?

The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market, and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can only serve to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens. The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

You know, this is actually the strongest statement he makes against government involvement in the economy. So controlling business dominance of government apparently was a problem over 200 years ago. Hell, it has probably been a problem for as long as there has been business and government. "Money talks, bullshit walks."

Music, Music, and ... More Music

I had very little chance to listen to music during November and the 1st 1/2 of December, so the music has really piled up. Finally had a chance to do some listening, so let's clear the stack.

• "Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action", by Franz Ferdinand. No, it's not a buddhist album. Catchy energetic rock, which I mostly put in the genre "Punk". A little too energetic for me, I'm afraid -- I'm getting old. 3 stars.
  
• "The Third Eye Centre", by Belle & Sebastian. Like their last album, more adventurous, more quirky, better than their earlier stuff. 4 stars.
  
• "Love In The Future", by John Legend. This would be great music to play if you were in your 20s and looking for a romantic evening with a beautiful woman -- so it's useless to me in my current state! Nice tunes, very romantic music. 3 stars.
  
• "The Electric Lady", by Janelle Monáe. A sci-fi theme album, in which Janelle plays a liberated android who is a symbol of android rights. Interspersed with comments from a supportive DJ on a call-in show. Some good tunes, a very interesting effort. 4 stars.
  
• "From Here To Now To You", by Jack Johnson. Easy listening, what my wife would call "dinner music". In fact, we were lunching at Captain's Quarters in Louisville and a Jack Johnson song that I recognized came on. Then a few songs later, another song I couldn't identify, that shazaam'ed as Jack Johnson as well. 3 stars.
  
• "Wise Up Ghost", by Elvis Costello And The Roots. Wow, nasty, tight grooves, dripping the trademark Elvis cynicism. A great album. 4 stars.
  
• Eponymous, by MGMT. Kind of electronica/dance but not quite. Some strong tracks. 3 stars.
  
• "Babel", by Mumford & Sons. I've got kind of tired of this power folk -- not enough variation in the songs maybe. 3 stars.
  
• "lousy with sylvianbriar", by Of Montreal. When I first started listening to The Flaming Lips, I thought that the lead singer's voice would eventually become annoying -- but it never did. I did not particularly think that the lead singer of Of Montreal's voice would become annoying -- but it kind of has. There is good variety on this album though. 3 stars.
  
• "Plantation Lullabies", by Me'Shell Ndegeocello. On the recommendation of the excellent drummer Keith Halladay. Definitely fine "angry black woman" music. She's the bass player as well as the vocalist. This was her 1st album, I will probably try out more of her several others. 3 stars.
  
• "Let's Be Still", by The Head And The Heart. Very lyrical tunes, but I don't like it quite as well as their prior album. 3 stars.
  
• "Reflektor", by Arcade Fire. All disco, all techno, all the time. Their usual interesting instrumentation, but no standout tunes. 3 stars.
  
• Eponymous, by San Fermin. Probably the best find of this lot -- from economist Paul Krugman, who posts music in his blog every Friday. Another Brooklyn band. It comes across as a symphonic work, which is confirmed by this article. The 24 YO composer has also done scores for ballet. What an outstanding 1st effort. They have a male baritone lead singer like The National, but also a female lead singer, and some backup vocals by the women from Lucius. I think this is my favorite song -- I'm going for 5 stars for it: "Oh Darling".
  
• "Shields: B-Sides", by Grizzly Bear. I really liked "Shields" -- the song "Sun In Your Eyes" was my 1st new 5 star song in years. I'm guessing that that album was successful enough that they went back to the tracks that didn't make it and said, "Well, let's see what else we got". 8 tracks, with some really different stuff -- long-form disco for instance. This really reminded me of Department of Eagles 1st album vs their 2nd. The 1st album had all kinds of different, and maybe incompatible(?), stuff, like they were trying to figure out their sound. Then the 2nd album was much more cohesive. So this album was the all-over-the-place one, and "Shields" was the "we figured out what we want to sound like" one. 4 stars.
  
• "Nilsson Schmilsson", by Harry Nilsson (1971). Recommended by my younger brother. It had the hits "With You", "(You Put De Lime In De)Coconut" and "Let The Good Times Roll" on it. But I really didn't like it much. I'm surprised, I loved the tunes he wrote for the movie "Popeye". 2 stars.
  
• "Five Spanish Songs", by Destroyer. The album of course contains 6 tracks. I think that is a point of honor that the number of tracks in an album title cannot agree with the actual number for tracks on the album. A bit more variety in the songs that his prior album, which I liked a lot regardless. Hunh, he's out of Vancouver, not Syracuse. Worked with New Pornographers. Daniel Bejar has been performing as Destroyer since 1996 and now has a total of 11 albums out?!?!? Well, we got that going for us now! 4 stars.
  

Merry Christmas!

For the prior few years, I had been a soldier in the War on Christmas. I have not considered myself a christian since my early teens. I did love all of the Christmas stuff as a kid: going to midnight mass and belting out carols ("Joy To The World", "Oh Come All Ye Faithful", and "Hark The Herald Angels Sing" were favorites) in particular. But, as the Religious Right has kept pushing and pushing -- "the US is a christian nation", etc -- I've felt the need to push back.

So the last few years, I've been celebrating Winter Solstice explicitly. Not that I'm particularly a pagan, but I was an astronomer, and the solstices and equinoxes are astronomical events. I do think that the pagan myths, particularly the Norse ones, are a lot more fun and interesting than the christian and hebrew myths.

But this year, I have figured, screw it. If I know someone's a christian, I tell them "Merry Christmas". So funny tho, the Indians around the neighborhood or working various places, I stick with "Happy Holidays" -- because they probably aren't christians. They are some of the new, multi-cultural americans whose existence conservatives are trying so desperately to deny. I think my newfound tolerance is a result of my generally more relaxed attitude to life since retirement.

One thing though that is Not Right. Christmas, by name, is a religious holiday, and it is the only religious holiday that is s federal holiday. Seems like a 1st amendment violation to me. Hmmm, asking The Google about "christmas federal holiday constitutional" points to this lawyer's blog post. Apparently there was a court case in 1999 that said it was OK -- because there is no requirement to actually do anything or accept anything religious or christian on Christmas. Ha ha, it also mentioned that Thanksgiving being the 4th Thursday in Novemember, is not an endorsement of the Norse god Thor, whom Thursday is named for. Yay, I guess???

Last week, on impulse I got a couple of history books out of the library. BTW, our local public library branch is really nice. Lots of meeting and study rooms, and a bank of 32 public PCs in the back. I skimmed both the books and only read in depth in a few places. The first book was "The Atlas of Past Worlds", by John Manley (1993). This tried to give a sense of what development was going on around the world, rather than just in the famous places. They took 5 locations for the years 2000 and 1000 BC, 1, 1000, and 1500 AD for a total of 25 chapters. I didn't get that much from this. The author is an archaeologist, so a lot of the emphasis was on the physical layout and the types of artifacts found. I think Jared Diamond spoils you for this kind of stuff by providing so much of the "why" of the time and how it integrates into the sweep of history.

The 2nd book I skimmed was "The Encyclopedia of North American Indians", edited by D. L. Birchfield (1997).I don't feel like I learned much new here, except for maybe more of an appreciation for how many different tribes there were. Generally a tribe consisted of up to 10s of villages with 10s of 1000s of individuals living in areas of a few 1000s of square miles. This book and more googling seemed to confirm that in the 18th century at the time of 1st contact with the white invaders, Kentucky was the permanent home of no tribes. It was used as hunting grounds for Shawnee from north of the Ohio River and Cherokee from the southeast. I wonder why that was?

This book, in the entry for "Alcoholism, Indian", also denies that there are genetic differences that limit the ability to metabolize alcohol that are more prevalent among Native Americans. A friend of mine who claims Indian blood would disagree with that, claiming that his Indian blood makes him a lightweight when it comes to alcohol consumption -- 1 or 2 beers and he's done, and the more so as he ages. Hmmm, googling "alcohol metabolism genetic variation" gives among others this article, which says that there are definitely different genetic alleles that give some individuals more ability to metabolize alcohol. So the question I guess is, how are these alleles distributed across ethnic groups? This article addresses this explictly, and says:

Additionally, despite the fact that more Native American people die of alcohol-related causes than do any other ethnic group in the United States, research shows that there is no difference in the rates of alcohol metabolism and enzyme patterns between Native Americans and Whites.

So my friend probably has the slow alcohol metabolizing genes, Indian blood or no Indian blood.

Now on the magazine stack, then on to "The Wealth of Nations". Oh, also signed up for an online course at Columbia University that starts Jan 21: "The Age of Sustainable Development". Interested to see how that goes.

10 Albums

Now on FaceBook we're doing 10 albums. As I wound up doing with the books, I'll just go with 1 per artist. In no particular order:

1. Electric Ladyland, Jimi Hendrix
   
2. Waka/Jawaka, Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention
   
3. Workingman's Dead, The Grateful Dead
   
4. Talking Book, Stevie Wonder
   
5. Last Train To Hicksville, Dan Hicks & The Hot Licks
   
6. Blue, Joni Mitchell
   
7. After Bathing At Baxter's, Jefferson Airplane
   
8. Healing, Todd Rundgren
   
9. Minute By Minute, The Doobie Brothers
   
10. Petrushka, Igor Stravinsky
    

Hah, you can tell when I was in college, can't you?

An Exciting Conclusion

I finished the 3rd book of The Expanse Trilogy by James S. A. Corey, "Abaddon's Gate". As with the 2nd book, we have one narrative thread that continues (Jim Holden), and his crew are still characters. We pick up 3 new narrative threads. I think that's a decent plotting technique for a trilogy. 1 of the threads is a minister -- but not too bad, not very much "religion in the face of the unknown" thrown in. Another is the daughter of the villain of the previous book on a mission of revenge.

This seemed a little weak to me. Thinking about stories of revenge, (I tweeted about IMO the 2 greatest stories of revenge: "The Count of Monte Cristo", by Dumas, and "The Stars My Destination", by Bester) I couldn't really think of any where the person seeking revenge was not seeking it for harm done to themselves. Dedicating one's life to avenge a wrong to one's parent seemed far fetched to me. But, if you go to Japanese or Chinese stories, you could probably find a fair number of instances. So I guess that the authors had Japanese or Chinese influences.

The exciting conclusion is maybe a little unexpected from the previous thrust of the books, and way over the top, but still, there's a lot of that that goes around in science fiction. I think the conclusion worked, and was somewhat inspirational.

So if you like space opera, I would recommend this trilogy. It definitely sucks you in and keeps you turning pages.

10 Books

Hmmm, a friend on Facebook did a post of "10 books that have stayed with me" and tagged 10 people, of which I was 1, and asked us to do likewise. Man, hard to do. But seems like a fun mental exercise, to actually go back over my whole life and list books. I'll do these in rough chronological order by when I read them. Well, here goes:

1. D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths, Ingri d'Aulaire
   
2. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
   
3. The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexander Dumas
   
4. The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
   
5. 1984, George Orwell
   
6. The Viking, Edison Marshall
   
7. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
   
8. Dune, Frank Herbert
   
9. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes
   
10. Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
    

Huhn, kind of an odd list, but given the "don't overthink it" directions, I'll stick with it.

Definitely a Page Turner

I finished the 2nd book of The Expanse trilogy by James S. A. Corey, "Caliban's War". It was definitely a page turner, probably the most so of any novel I have read in the last year or so. One of our main characters from the 1st book is back, with his crew, all of whom are interesting characters, but this time there are 3 narrative threads in addition to his. The 3 new ones are a kick-ass Martian marine, a grieving father botanist, and the power-behind-the-throne of the government of Earth. That last thread adds a lot of political intrigue to go with the space action. And, a satisfactory ending, although the cliffhanger of cliffhangers is brought up on the last page! So definitely ready to forge ahead to the 3rd book. Onwards!

Re economics, I have decided that rather than read Keynes' "General Theory", I would go back to the fountainhead and read Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations". Published in 1790, it is now of course free and available in several eBook formats. Nice!

Space Opera

First a quick music note: the Wednesday Night Blues Jam has moved back to Lynagh's at Woodland and Euclid. We were there for around 9 months in 2007 I think. Slightly larger stage than Cheapside, and no homeless people -- which is the major downside of downtown Lexington.

I finished reading "Leviathan Wakes", by James S. A. Corey, which is apparently 2 guys, one of whom has worked for George R. R. Martin. This is book 1 of "The Expanse" trilogy. I picked this one up because the 2nd book of the trilogy, "Caliban's War" got nominated for the Hugo award. The 3rd book, "Abaddon's Gate" is already out. The books are all about 600 pages each and were released in 2011, 2012, and 2013 respectively -- so these guys are really cranking them out.

This was a very enjoyable read. 200 or so years in the future, humanity is on Earth, Mars, the Asteroid Belt and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn when an unlikely alien first contact appears -- complete with vomit zombies! There are two narrative threads. One follows a burned-out police detective following the standard cheap detective, film noir story arc: the crime whose roots keep reaching further and further out and higher up the food chain. The other thread follows a dishonorably discharged Earth Navy officer who we first see as the XO on a water hauling tug. Kind of a different character, too honest for his own good by a long shot. Very good plot and pacing, and an unexpected but satisfying conclusion that creates a decent sense of closure while it also sets up the rest of the series. Not too much emphasis on the hardware or the military aspects of the story.

Here's a fragment I liked, nice sense of history here.

On Ceres, Eros, Tycho, the bore of the standard corridor had been determined by mining tools built to accommodate the trucks and lifts of Earth, which had in turn been designed to go down tracks wide enough for a mule cart's axle.

Hmmm, time to clear the magazine stack, then I think I'll read the other two of these before starting Keynes's "General Theory". It's the holiday season after all!

Damn Plutocrats!

I finished reading "Plutocrats", subtitled "The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else", by Chrystia Freeland, 352 pages. This wound up being somewhat not what I expected. There is a short intro and a short conclusion and 6 main chapters. 3 of these -- chapters 2-4 -- seem to be a bit of an apologia for the plutocrats -- not what I expected. But, I guess it is a good idea to really try to understand these guys and where they came from.

Chapter 1, "History And Why It Matters", after a quick review of the feeds and speeds of our current plutocrats, talks about The (First) Gilded Age at the end of the 19th century of the great robber barons: Carnegie, Mellon, Morgan, etc. (plutocrats v1.0). One of the conclusions of the book that is pretty much the topic of Chapter 4, "Responding To Revolutions", is that times of social upheaval -- revolutions -- offer enormous opportunity for the quick and the cunning to amass vast fortunes in a relatively short time. For The First Gilded Age, the upheaval was the Industrial Revolution.

Some interesting FFTKAT (Fun Facts To Know And Tell) of the history leading up to The First Gilded Age: From 1 AD to 1000 AD, the GDP of western Europe fell by around 0.01%/year. From 1000 AD to 1820 AD, it rose by 0.34%/year. "Then the world changed utterly": between 1820 and 1998, it rose by 2.13%/year, while in the US, Canada, Oz, and NZ, it rose by 3.68%/year.

I had seen this quote from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson in 1814 before:

we have no paupers, the old and crippled among us, who possess nothing and have no families to take care of them, being too few to merit notice as a separate section of society, or to affect a general estimate. The great mass of our population is of laborers ; our rich, who can live without labor, either manual or professional, being few, and of moderate wealth. Most of the laboring class possess property, cultivate their own lands, have families, and from the demand for their labor are enabled to exact from the rich and the competent such prices as enable them to be fed abundantly, clothed above mere decency, to labor moderately and raise their families. They are not driven to the ultimate resources of dexterity and skill, because their wares will sell although not quite so nice as those of England. The wealthy, on the other hand, and those at their ease, know nothing of what the Europeans call luxury. They have only somewhat more of the comforts and decencies of life than those who furnish them. Can any condition of society be more desirable than this ?

"Can any condition of society be more desirable than this?" This was the USA at the time of its founding, the USA of the Founding Fathers. Sigh :-(

That completely changed with The First Gilded Age. Carnegie and his ilk thought that the vast wealth they had earned/stolen was right, reasonable, and appropriate. But the inequalities became so great that they gave rise to the progressive movement, which lead to trust-busting, government regulation, and income taxes.

In Europe, with its hereditary aristocracy, the inequality was even greater, leading to "the first coherent political ideology of class warfare -- Marxism". And although the Communist regimes of Russia and China were economic failures, and brutally murderous (see my blog post on Pinker's latest book), they did stir things up enough that FDR's New Deal and the social welfare systems of western Europe were created to stop their spreading to the West.

The current situation is being driven by the technology revolution and globalization. This has given rise to twin new Gilded Ages: one mostly of the technocrats of the developed world; the other of the robber barons in the developing world, particularly BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China). So a 2nd Gilded Age in the west, a 1st Gilded Age in the developing world.

Chapter 1 concludes with a review of data in the Credit Suisse annual wealth report. I spent some time with the latest version of this when it came out a month or so ago. Really interesting numbers. Total wealth of the world? $241T (trillion). Amount held by the 1% (actually the 0.7% worth more than $1M)? $99T, 41% of the total. By the next 7.7% (worth > $100K)? $103T, 42%. Everyone else, $40T, 16%. The top is absolutely booming, the bottom of people with crap jobs is also growing, but the middle is being hollowed out. Au revoir, middle class. :-(

Chapter 2, "Culture of the Plutocrats", is all about how the .1% live. British public schools, US Ivy League colleges. The billionaire set is largely becoming stateless. They own homes all over the world, but particularly like the "world capitals": New York, London, Hong Kong, Dubai. They attend the same events: Davos (economic forum in Switzerland), Wimbledon, TED in California, the Oscars, the Cannes Film Festival. The worst thing about this, commented on in chapter 6, is that from within this bubble of privilege, they very quickly lose sight of what life is like for the rest of the world.

Most of the latest crop of billionaires are "working rich" -- per Forbes, ~2/3 of the world's current billionaires are self-made. 2/3 of them work, as opposed to 1/5 100 years ago. Their kids will get to be the idle rich, we'll see how that goes, I guess. Funny to me that she defines alpha geek / technologist as being the most common background for the new billionaires -- technocrats, my tribe. But, I was never a candidate. Not driven enough by a huge factor, and way too many side interests.

The current billionaires have a new take on charity as well: "philanthro-capitalism". They'd rather found their own charitable foundation and show that it can solve some world problem better than the other plutocrats' foundation can. And in chapter 6, the plutocrats are quoted as saying, we can do this better than the government, don't tax us, let us figure out now to spend our money for the public good ourselves. The problem I have with that is that religious groups have been saying the same thing for years relative to addressing problems like hunger -- but, there are still too many children hungry, so, sorry, == epic fail. IMO taxation and government is the only sure kill, at least until we get to a post-scarcity, anarcho-utopian type state.

There is some discussion of conflict between the 0.1% and the rest of the 1%. Worldwide there has been some conflict between these groups, but in the US, millionaires normally see themselves as billionaires in waiting.

Also worth noting: being a billionaire is a boys club. Of 1,226 billionaires in 2012, 104 were women. "Subtract the wives, daughters, and widows and you are left with a fraction". "The plutocracy ... still lives in the Mad Men era". Per Larry Summers: "They don't have the killer instinct, they don't want to fight, they won't go for the jugular." Another reason to get more women in positions of power.

Chapter 3, "Superstars", talks about the "superstar" effect: "the tendency of both technological change and globalization to create winner-take-all economic tournaments in many sectors and companies". This occurs in music, art, sports, cooking, lawyers. I think everyone is coming to realize that the "long tail" the Internet creates is not particularly helping with this -- Lady Gaga probably outsells the lowest 1,000,000 musicians out on the long tail. The first recognition of the superstar effect is attributed to Alfred Marshall in 1875. In the 20th century, Sherwin Rosen recognized that technological advances, particularly in distribution, intensify the effect. And most recently, Roger Martin has posited that superstars power has increased to where they can extract more wealth from their employers -- talent beats capital. So in the late 20th century, capital defeated labor, but so far in the 21st century, talent is defeating capital. Good, I guess? But the ones who are really "making out like bandits" are:

• bankers, with salaries 2x the average for modern knowledge workers;
  
• CEOs, who are almost never "company men" anymore, but rather superstars who move from company to company.
  

Chapter 4, "Responding to Revolution" I have already mentioned. Revolutions can be technological or political. Being able to respond to revolution may have a genetic component (high dopamine levels) that is probably higher in immigrants. Hence the Americas, being composed mostly of immigrants, as hotbeds of intellectual revolutions. But the US in particular has had it so good for so long that it is becoming more conservative -- such that the big profits are now in the developing world.

There are lots of samples of plutocrats across the world making their fortunes by responding to various revolutions.

Chapter 5 is "Rent-Seeking". OK, finally we're getting to it. "Rent-seeking" refers to making money without doing work. This is where you distinguish between someone who works hard, builds a company, and makes a fortune (yay) and someone who figures an angle to extract wealth without adding value or particularly working (boo): "we need to be constantly alert ot efforts by the elite to get rich by using their political muscle to increase their share of the preexisting pie, rather then by adding value to the economy and thus increasing the size of the pie overall." Paul Ryan says we should:

lower the amount of government spending the wealthy now receive. ... true sources of inequity in our country ... corporate welfare that enriches the powerful, and empty promises that betray the powerless ... a class of bureaucrats and connected crony capitalists trying to rise above the rest of us, call the shots, rig the rules, and preserve their place atop society.

Really??? Paul Ryan??? Boy, I doubt that's what he says behind closed doors.

The various sources of plutocrats vary from country to country:

• In the US, new plutocrats are largely technologists.
  
• In Russia, they are men who gambled and aggressively bought up state resources when the communist system was broken up. (Ms. Freeland's earlier book, "Sale of the Century", documented this historic event.) Unfortunately for Russia tho, most of their GDP now comes from natural resources, which tends to lead to corruption and stagnation.
  
• In China, the plutocrats are mostly members of the government. But if they go too far, they can be stripped of wealth, jailed, and even executed.
  
• In India, the "License Raj" controlled industry. In 1991, it was done away with, and the Indian economy took off. But the government is still heavily involved, and very corrupt, with bribery as a fact of doing business.
  
• In Mexico, Carlos Slim jumped in when the Mexican phone company Telmex was privatized.
  

You know, I have posted several times, "privatization" === "let some fat cat buddy of mine make $100Ms". These stories I think bear that out. But in a lot of these cases, liberals actually drove the sell-offs, trying to bring life to stagnant, inefficent, state-owned companies -- and wound up with plutocrats and oligarchs for their efforts. In some cases, the companies did become more vital and competitive, in others not. I think we just need to harvest some of the wealth back from the plutocrats.

Chapter 5 ends with the run-up to the 2008 financial meltdown, which was preceded by years of the financial industry bitching about how too much government regulation was stifling them. Wall Street claimed the business would all move to London. Meanwhile, Canada, with well-regulated, stodgy, risk-avoiding banks completely dodged the financial crisis.

Annual bribes worldwide: $1T. "But orders of magnitude more money was being made thanks to that he dubbed 'legal bribery'" -- the army of incredibly funded lobbyists, many of whom are in a revolving door relationship with the government and its bureaus, the pervasive influence peddling.

Chapter 6, "Plutocrats and the Rest of Us", starts out really depressing. After a tour of Zappos (?!?!?), plutocrat after plutocrat is quoted:

I think we ought to honor and uplift the 1 percent, the ones who have created value.

or

Do we feel bad for the growing gap between the rich and the poor in the U.S.? Of course not; we celebrate it, for we were poor once and we are reasonably wealthy now. We did it on our own, by the sheer dint of will, tenacity, street smarts and the like.

or

If a man is not an oligarch, something is not right with him. Everyone had the same starting conditions, everyone could have done it.

Which is of course not correct. I don't think that we'll ever lack for alpha types able to build companies and amass fortunes, but, luckily, the vast majority of the population do not have the possibly psychopathic or sociopathic genetics that is apparently often part of being a successful CEO.

There are many anecdotes of how the plutocrats wind up living in a bubble, expecting deference to all their whims. There's funny (but sad) stories of Wall Street types refusing to take any responsibility for the meltdown, blaming instead anyone who got caught up in the frenzy of the housing bubble.

Of course, finally, John Galt comes up -- you knew he was going to eventually. I've said several times, any plutocrats wanting to Go Galt, go for it! There's plenty more where they came from. The Seasteading Institute is studying man-made islands which will become floating Libertarian paradises, yes!

But finally, we do talk to some plutocrats who sympathize with Occupy Wall Street, and who see the incredible inequity as bad and unsustainable.

I liked the discussion of Willem Buiter's "cognitive state capture": that the mindset and worldview of so much of Wall Street, the Fed, the SEC, the Department of the Treasury, and all financial institutions is so similar that it goes without saying that "what is good for Wall Street is good for everyone". Before the 2008 meltdown, they all thought it would be best if the financial industry policed itself -- yeah, right.

Canadian Mark Carney, current governor of the Bank of England and chairman of the G20's Financial Stability Board, is apparently emerging as a voice of reason re regulation of financial markets. Funny, like the rest of the rulers of the financial world, he is a Goldman Sachs alum (13 years) (the blood sucking vampire squid ;->). He had some good head-to-heads with Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan/Chase -- and I will say came out the winner. He totally calls Dimon out re, a financial crisis is something we have every 5-7 years, as Dimon says he told his daughter. Plus the London Whale lost JPMorgan/Chase (investors?) $6B on Dimon's watch.

An interesting discussion of my BFF Barack Obama in this chapter. The contention is, he's not an idealist, a socialist, a liberal, a centrist; what he is is a pragmatist. What will work? That's all he cares about. Sounds highly possible, how disappointed am I to have to let go of "hope and change"? I will advise.

More depressing news, that the ultra-rich have subverted the intellectual class and created their own alternate reality and infrastructure of conservative think tanks (oxymoron?), etc. Clearly a done deal, man I sure hope we can fight against $B of attack ads, lies, etc. My god, the boilerplate press releases of my Tea Party congressman Andy Barr ("we made 14 attempts to keep the government from shutting down, and Obama ignored them all!") are coming from a universe other than the one I live in.

Meanwhile, our legislators become more aligned with the plutocrats because they are getting richer and richer all the time. Wow, "between 2000 and 2007 the Clintons earned $111M, nearly half of it in Bill's speaking fees, many of them paid by global plutocrats ..." :-(

The chapter closes with the unbelievable Paulson story. The Secretary of the Treasury happens to mention in a lunch with a bunch of his Goldman Sachs buddies that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are going to be taken over by the government -- insider trading info of the highest order. And, anybody called to task for this? In a word, no. Planned, or cognitive capture as earlier mentioned?

Maybe the most revealing quote of the entire book:

When you have a financial incentive to see reality in a certain way, you will see it that way, not because you're bad, but because you are human. -- Professor Dan Ariely

Finally, in the conclusion, we get to what I thought would have been the main push of the book. First, a very nice story about 14th century Venice. It grew to be a financial superpower by inclusive, upwardly mobile business policies. Then, those in power decided to lock themselves in, fuck future upward mobility, 100 years later, they were done.

This brings us to what I somehow thought the whole crux of this book would be: Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson and their thesis that states succeed or fail based on whether they are inclusive or extractive. As I mentioned earlier, inclusive == meritocracy, work hard and succeed (or fail), reap the rewards of your hard work; extractive == rent-seeking, make your money without working, rig the rules to work in your favor, play king-on-the-hill, kick the people trying to come up the hill in the face.

Re Eric Schmidt of Google:

So I think it's very important to distinguish between rich people who get there by taking the economic rents of the country for their own benefit versus the people who, in fact, create a new corporation or a new source of wealth.

But Ms. Freeland, says, dividing plutocrats per the above principle is hard. And maybe she's right. At some level profit is profit. But I say, still we have to try to incent and reward the real job-creators, and to penalize (via taxing the hell out of) the rent extractors.

The final cautionary tale: the Great Gatsby Curve: "as societies grow more unequal, social mobility is choked off." Haha, Ms. Freeland interviews the president of Brown U, who says, no getting rid of legacy admissions soon, because "I have a granddaughter. It's not time yet." I am proud that my alma mater, M.I.T., which used to give alumni children one extra application review for admission, now gives the children of alumni absolutely zero of a leg up.

OK, we're done. And I've noticed that "creative destruction" in the economy, particularly the job market, which is mentioned several times, had not heretofore been mentioned. So check that off the list.

The official review: chock full of stuff you didn't know, particularly re Russia, India and China, the book is a quick read at 350 pages. I read it in 3 days, a few hours each day max. It is definitely worth a read. It has much hard data on the political issue -- wealth inequality -- that several politicians are trying to frame as the central debate of our current zeitgeist.

On a final hopeful note, Ms. Freeland has apparently retired from journalism and is now the Liberal Party candidate to become a Canadian MP! Best of luck to her in politics!

1 Novella, 2 Novels

So, into the Sci-Fi/Fantasy to-read stack. Finally (duh) figured out that I could manually create a "Unread" self in the Kobo eBook reader and put my unread books there. Oops, 14 there. It's way to easy to impulse buy eBooks. The Kobo eBook reader seems to crash less but still, unbelievable that it does not have a "search text" function.

First off, read "Equoid", by Charles Stross. It's a novella set in his The Laundry series of books, I think like $1.99 for the eBook. Stross has so much fun taking the base mix of Dilbert, H.P. Lovecraft, and James Bond and then finding some much beloved fantasy meme to throw in, normally with horrible consequences. In this case it's unicorns -- and I'll never be able to watch My Little Pony again :-(

Then I read the 2nd and 3rd books of The Inheritance Trilogy, by N.K. Jemisin: "The Broken Kingdoms", and "The Kingdom of Gods". The first book, "The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms" was blogged ... or apparently not, hmmm. I enjoyed it enough to try these two.

This woman writes very well, and I really like the way this trilogy is structured. The protagonist changes in each of the novels, with other protagonists and supporting characters threading through all 3 novels. She has created what I think is a nice workable mythology. Chaos spawns 3 gods (she seems to like trinities of 2 males and 1 female, not sure what that means): male gods of light/day and darkness/night, and a female god of grey/twilight. The gods are capable of manipulating reality on pretty much any level they want. The gods' children are demigods, who can live in the physical world or in the god realms. They typically have to have a theme, like a Greek/Roman god -- the protagonist of the 3rd novel is Sieh, trickster demigod of children/childhood. They can manipulate reality like the gods only in limited fashion. Demigods breeding amongst themselves or with the gods produce more demigods. Demigods breading with humans create demons (not sure why she chose that term) who may have various magical powers.

The writing is good, the pacing and plotting decent. All 3 novels have male (demi)gods having sex with human women, with no sex going the other way -- is this a standard feature of the paranormal romance genre, which I guess this falls into to some degree? There is also male homosexual action in the 3rd novel, mercifully with very little detail (I guess that goes with the 2 male god / 1 female god trinity thing).

So overall, well written, nice mythology building, nice structure. 3 stars.