Books: Tidbits From A Brief History Of Intelligence By Max Bennett

 (Drivebycuriosity) - How did intelligence develop? Max Bennett gives in "A "Brief History Of Intelligence" a plausible answer (amazon ). According to him the long and winding row to intelligence went with 5 breakthroughs:

Breakthrough #1: Steering: the breakthrough of navigating by categorizing stimuli into good and bad, and turning into good things and away from bad things.

Breakthrough #2: Reinforcing: the breakthrough of learning to repeat behaviors that historically have led to positive valence  and inhibit behaviors that have led to negative valence.

Breakthrough #3: Stimulating: the breakthrough of mentally simulating stimuli and actions.

Breakthrough #4: Mentalizing: the  breakthrough of modeling one`s own mind.

Breakthrough #5: Speaking

Each breakthrough was possible only because of the building blocks that came prior. Each breakthrough emerged from new sets of brain modifications and equipped animals with a new portfolio of intellectual abilities.

The book is densely filled with valuable information and elegantly written. It´s quite impossible to condense the huge material appropriately so I present here just some tidbits: 

 

                 Evolving From  Chaos

The human brain evolved from the unthinking chaotic process of evolution, small random variations in traits were selected for or pruned away depending on whether they supported the further reproduction of the life-form. 

After countless random nucleotide chains were constructed and destroyed, a lucky sequence survived. This new DNA-like molecule wasn`t alive per se, but it performed the most fundamental process by which life would later emerged: it duplicated itself. These molecules didn`t have to survive individually to survive collectively - as long as they endured long enough to create their own copies, they would, in essence, persist. Any new lucky circumstances that facilitated more successful duplication would lead to more duplicates.

In the eyes of evolution, the hierarchy has only two rungs: on one, there are those that survived, and on the other, those that did not.

 

                        Beating Entropy

By self-replicating, DNA finds respite from the second law of thermodynamics. The unbreakable law of physics declares that entropy - the amount of disorder in system - always and unavoidably increases; the universe cannot help but tend toward decay. Life persisted not in matter but in information.     

In evolution, systems starts simple, and complexity emerges over time. The first brain - the first collection of neurons in the head of an animal - appeared six hundred million years ago in a worm the size of a grain of rice. This worm was the ancestor of all modern brain-endowed animals.

Our ancestors from around five hundred million years ago transitioned from simple worm-like bilaterals to fishlike vertebrates. Many new brain structures and abilities emerged in these early vertebrate brains, most of which can be understood as enabling and emerging from breakthough #2: reinforcement learning.

 

                      Common Roots     

The reason why brains across the animal kingdom are so similar is that they all derive from common roots in shared ancestors. Every brain in the animal kingdom is a little clue as to what the brains of our ancestors looked like. The difference between our brain and a rat`s brain is only a handful of brain differences. The brain of a fish has almost all the same structures a our brain. 

Our ancestors were the first fish to evolve the ability to survive out of water.

 

                   Outwitting Predators  

We cannot understand the breakthroughs in brain evolution without also understanding the trials and triumphs of our ancestors: the predators they outwitted, the environment calamities they endured, and the desperate niches they turned for survival.

The innovation of wings independently evolved in insects, bats, and birds; the common ancestors of these creatures did not have wings. Eyes are also believed to have independently evolved many times.

An octopus has an independent brain in each of its tentacles and can blow a human away at multitasking. Pigeons, chipmunks, tuna, and even iguanas can process visual information faster than a human.

A gene is simply the section of DNA that codes for the construction of a specific and singular protein.

DNA is relatively inert, effective for self-duplication but otherwise limited in its ability to manipulate the microscopic word around it. Proteins, however, are far more flexible and powerful. In many ways, proteins are more machine than molecule.

 

                         Blueprint Of Life 

Armed with proteins for movement and perception, early life could monitor and respond to the outside world. Bacteria can swim away from environments that lower the probability of successful replication, environments that have, for example, temperatures that are too hold or cold or chemicals that are destructive to DNA or cell membranes. Bacteria can also swim toward environments that are amenable to reproduction. And in this way, these ancient cells indeed had a primitive version of intelligence, implemented not in neurons but in complex network of chemical cascades and proteins.

DNA was transformed into the informational foundation from which the stuff of live is constructed. DNA had officially become life`s blueprint, ribosomes its factory, and proteins its product.

The most impressive biological system in these early cyanobacteria was not their protein factories but their photosynthetic power plants - the structure that converted sunlight and carbon dioxide into sugar,which could then be stored and converted into cellular systems for extracting and storing energy. It provided cyanobacteria with abundance of fuel with which to finance their duplication. 

 

              Terraforming The Earth        

It was the cyanobacteria, with their new found photosynthesis, that constructed Earth`s oxygen-rich atmosphere and began terraform the planet from a gray volcanic rock to the oasis we know today. 

Oxygen is an incredible reactive element, which makes it dangerous in the carefully orchestrated chemical reactions of a cell. Unless special intracellular protective measures are taken, oxygen compounds will interfere with cellular processes, including the maintenance of DNA. This is why antioxidants - compounds that remove highly reactive oxygen molecules from the bloodstream - are believed to offer protection from cancer.

 

                  Preys And Predators 

Microbes began to actively eat other microbes. This fueled the engine of evolutionary progress; for every defensive innovation prey evolved to stave off being killed, predators evolved an offensive innovation to overcome the same defensive. Life became caught in an arms race, a perpetual feedback loop: offensive innovations led to defensive innovations that required further offensive innovations. 

While plants survive by photosynthesis, animals and fungi survive by respiration. Animals and fungi both breath oxygen and eat sugar; both digest their food, breaking cells down using enzymes and absorbing their inner nutrients.

Sugar is produced only by life, and thus there are only  two ways for large multicellular respiratory organism to feed. One is to wait for life to die, and the other is to catch and kill living life. Early in the fungi-animal divergence, they each settled into opposite feeding strategies. Fungi chose the strategy of waiting, and animals chose the strategy of killing.

What happens when you see something you want, like food  when you´re hungry, a sexy mate. In all cases, your brain releases a burst of dopamine. What happens when you get something you want, like when you´re orgasming or eating delicious food, your brain releases serotonin.

Opioids are the relief-and-recover chemicals after experiencing stress.

 

             The Gift Of Imagination 

Vertrebrates get an extra boost of reinforcement when something is surprising. To make animals curious, we evolved to find surprising and novel things reinforcing, which drives us to pursue and to explore them. Even if the reward of an activity is negative, if it is novel, we might pursue it anyway.

The electric signalling of neurons is highly sensitive to temperature - at lower temperatures, neurons fire much slower than at warmer temperatures. A side effect of warm-bloodiness was that mammal brains could operate much faster than fish or reptile brains. 

The gift the neurocortex gave to early mammals was imagination - the ability to render future possibilities and relive past events.

 

                Abundance Of Calories 

Habits are automated actions triggered by stimuli directly. They are the way mammalian brains save time and energy, avoiding unnecessarily engaging in simulation and planning. When such automation occurs at the right times, it enables us to complete complex behaviors easily; when it occurs at the wrong times, we make bad choices.

Early primates seemed to have had a unique diet of foraging fruit directly in treetops - they ware frugivores. They plucked fruit from trees right after it ripened but before it fell to the forest floor. This allowed primates to have easy access to fruit without much competition from other species. This unique ecological niche may have offered early primates two gifts that opened the door to their uniquely large brains and complex social groups. First, easy access to fruit gave early primates an abundance of calories, providing the evolutionary option to spend energy on bigger brains. And second, and perhaps more important, it gave early primates an abundance of time.

 

                Rational Economic Behavior 

Early primates had a unique diet: they were frugivores. Fruit-based diets come with several surprising cognitive challenges. There is only a small window of time when fruit is ripe and has not yet fallen to the forest floor. For many of the fruits these primates ate, this window is less than seventy-two hours. Some trees of offer ripe fruit for less than three weeks of the year. Some fruit trees has few animal competitors (such as bananas in their hard-to-open skin), while other fruit has many animal competitors (such as figs). These popular fruits are like to disappear quickly, as many different animals feed on them once their are ripen. Primates needed to keep track of all the fruit in a large area of forest and any given day know which fruit was likely to be ripe; and of the fruit that was ripe, which was likely the most popular and hence disappear first. It is interesting that this fact needed rational economic behavior which is denied by many modern so-called economists, like the behavioral economists. 

 

               85 Percent Meat   

A  frugivore must plan its trips in advance before its hungry. Setting up a camp en route to a nearby popular fruit patch the night before require anticipating the fact that you will be hungry tomorrow if you don`t take preemptive steps tonight to get to food early. 

All human invention, both technological and cultural, require an accumulation of basic building blocks before a single inventor can go "Aha", merge the preventing ideas into something new, and transfer this new invention to others. 

Homo erectus became a hypercarnivore, consuming a diet that was almost absurd 85 percent meat. Homo erectus may have been so successful that the displaced their local competitors; around the time Home erectus appeared, many of the other carnivores in the African savanna began to go extinct.

 

There is much, much, more information in the book - read it! 

  

 

   

 

Books: A Gentleman In Moscow By Amor Towles

(Drivebycuriosity) - Imaging you are forced to spend the rest of your life in just one place. This is the basic idea of the novel "A Gentleman In Moscow", set in the Russia`s capital (amazon ). The plot stretches from the 1920s to the 1950s and follows an aristocrat who`s life got fundamentally changed by the Russian Revolution. The new rulers kept him alive, even though he didn`t fit anymore into a world ruled by Stalin and his followers, but they sentenced him to a lifelong house arrest. "Several duly gated officers of the current regime determined that for the crime of being born as an aristocrat, he should be sentenced to spend the rest of his days in a hotel". Fortunately this aristocrat was allowed to stay comfortably in a big classy hotel that is endowed with fine restaurants, bars and other amenities. 

The plot describes a life in a micro-cosmos, almost like a spaceship, and shows how Russia changed under the dictatorship of Comrade Stalin and the ruling Bolsheviks and how the protagonist adapted and responded to all new challenges.

 

                Brightened By Saffron 

There are many parts of the book I love. Many chapters are humorous and sarcastic and Towles spiced the text with philosophical & analytical musings about life in a Marxist system, sprinkled with a bit erotics. There are mouthwatering descriptions of food, for instance "The onions thoroughly caramelized, the pork slowly braised, and the apricots briefly stewed, the three ingredients came together in a sweet and smoky medley that simultaneously suggested the comfort of a snowed-in tavern and the jangle of a Gypsy tambourine". 

And "One first taste of the broth - that simmered distillation of fish bones, fennel, and tomatoes, with their hearty suggestions of Provence. One then savors the tender flakes of haddock and the briny resilience of the mussels. One marvels at the boldness of the oranges and the absinthe. And all these various impressions are somehow collected, composed, and brightened by the saffron - that essence of summer sun".  

The aristocrat had learned from experience that giving consideration  to appetizers before entrées can only lead to regrets. For instance, the very last item on the menu was osso buco - a dish that was best preceded by a light and lively appetizer." 

And we learn that a Barolo is a full-bodied red from northern Italy and is the perfect accompaniment to the osso-buco from Milan." And the chef of the restaurant declares: "Tell your boys that my lamb is served rare. If someone wants it medium, they can go to the canteen".

There is basic wisdom, like. "If a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them".

And "A new generation owns a measure of thanks to every member of the previous generation. Our elders planted fields and fought in wars; they advanced the arts and sciences, and generally made sacrifices on our behalf. So by their efforts, however humble, they have earned a measure of our gratitude and respect".

 

               The Moths Of Manchester  

I also learned an interesting fact about evolution and the speed of natural selection. "For thousand of years, the peppered moths of Manchester had white wings with black flecking. This coloring provided the species with perfect camouflage whenever they landed on the light grax bark of the region`s trees. But when Manchester became crowded with factories in the early 1800s, the soot from the smokestacks began to settle on every conceivable surface, including the barks of the trees; and the lightly speckled wings that had served to protect the majority of the peppered moths suddenly exposed them remorseless to their predators. Thus the pitch-black varieties that had represented less than 10 percent of the Manchester moth population in 1800, represented over 90 percent by the end of the century.

 

              Stalin`s Terror

But the most important part of the book are Towles`s descriptions of the terror by Stalin the ruling Marxists  (Bolsheviks). He starts softly by making fun of the socialist revolution, the Bolsheviks in command and their bureaucracy. "The Bolsheviks assembled whenever possible in whichever form for whatever reason. In a single weak, there might be committees, caucuses, colloquiums, congresses,and conventions variously coming together to establish codex, set courses of action, levy complaints, and generally clamor about the world`s oldest problems in the newest nomenclature". 

As a result of the communist revolution merits and talents didn`t count anymore, instead incompetent people got promoted for their relations with higher ranks.  

Later in the book Towles describes the terror executed by the Bolsheviks. Their politics lead to widespread hardship for the agricultural provinces of old Russia, and the death by starvation for millions of peasants in Ukraine. But the lead correspondent for the New York Times in Russia claimed that "these rumors of famine" were grossly exaggerated and had probably originated with anti-Soviet propagandists - and he won the Pulitzer Prize for that.

Towles also he depicts nicely the rise of Krushchev as the leader of the Soviet Union.   

"A Gentleman" is funny, philosophical and historical educating - highly recommend. 

 

 

Books: Why "On The Calculation Of Volume" Is Overrated

 

 (Drivebycuriosity) - I am a voracious reader and always searching for strong writers. Recently the book "On The Calculation Of Volume", the start of a series of 7 novels, appeared on my radar; mainly because of the mysterious & strange title ( amazon). The tiny booklet (just 164 pages) got rave reviews and is nominated for the International Booker Prize. To make it clear, the novel is way overrated, sorry Mr. Knausgard.

"On the Calculation" is basically another version of "Groundhog Day"; another time loop story, but less Hollywood and more ambitious. The plot is told in first person, the protagonist, a married woman, who lives in France, is suddenly trapped in time and relives the 18th of November over and over. 

It goes without saying that the text has many many many repetitions ("putting a kettle on the stove"; "putting a kettle on the stove"; "putting a kettle on the stove" ..... ) . These repetitions are getting soon boring and tedious to read. 

The language is often plain and the text just a row of simple words. Sentences  like "I go to the toilet, get water from the kitchen, but I soon go back to the room" could be written by a first grader.

The text is dragging on and on and reads sometimes like an itemization: "This went of for weeks. Or for a number of days corresponding to several weeks. Sixty-three days, perhaps. Sixty-four. Or sixty-five. I don´t know."

"Every morning I woke Thomas and explained what had happened. I told him that he had to help me. That I had slipped in another time. Maybe my brain has rearranged. I said. I needed help. I could not think the whole thing through my self. We had to find an explanation. He had to think too (Kindle version page 72, 43%).  

 

                Orange-flavored Chocolate 

There are interesting economic aspects as the result of an ever repeating November 18th, like a banking account that always refreshes or "freshly purchased bread or cookies vanished overnight only to be found back in the supermarket, where we had bought the last package on the shelf before". 

But otherwise - and conversely - favored and frequently purchased goods get slowly sold out and are not available any more: "We had trouble finding the coffee we usually bought. It was sold out, so we bought another brand, but it was us who had drunk the coffee from the shelf. Likewise it was us who had emptied the shelf of orange-flavored chocolate". Why do their own purchases lead to "bare shelves and empty space in freezers" when 18th of November day repeats on the level of November 17th evening?

How degenerate has the world become to call this "literature".

 

Traveling: Impressions From Virginia Beach, Virginia

(Drivebycuriosity) - Finally, the long waiting came to an an end. My wife and I traveled again. This time we stayed in Virginia Beach, a town on the US east coast; close to Jamestown, the place for the first English settlement in America (1607). The latitude is 36.8, comparable to Malaga in South of Spain. We stayed in one of the hotels that row along the beach, comparable to Cancun or other popular beach towns.

Unfortunately the weather wasn`t really southern. The daily temperature dropped to the low 60s (16 C) and the strong and gusty winds made the chill even more uncomfortable. 

I was impressed by the well groomed beach. There is a long and broad line of sand, clean & neat; accompanied by a generous boardwalk (3 miles/4.8 km). Apparently the beach is man made and the community takes a lot of effort to keep the beach alive, in spite of damaging winds & floods. Below are some images that compare the cultivated beach with the nearby natural shore.

 

Like all American settlements - with the exception of New York and maybe Chicago -  the city stretches over a wide area and almost everything is far away. Since we stayed in off-season the streets were almost empty - and we enjoyed the lack of traffic. 

Unfortunately there is a very active military airport nearby and the roaring of the fight jets, that were frequently speeding up into the sky, terrorized our ears in the mornings hours and sometimes in the afternoon. The droning of the heavy coast guard helicopters added to the military symphony. But otherwise the post-season beach-town is a quiet place.

 

During our hikes through the sprawl we discovered some nice old buildings, including the classy Cavalier Hotel, constructed in the 1920, where we enjoyed a dinner in a ritzy atmosphere, with surprisingly modest prices.

 

Being food lovers we found some nice restaurants that serve more than the regional usual fried dishes. My favorite was the Asian fusion cuisine at Orion`s Roof, a classy place on the top of a high-rise Marriott hotel, that offers an amazing view onto the ocean & the city. Their chefs create tasty Sushi, Sashimi and other Japanese inspired delicacies. 

 

As connoisseurs of craft beer - and lovers of American IPA - we visited the local pubs, partly to get comfort for the unfriendly weather. Most venues are tap rooms for the local breweries: Bunker, a cavernous military inspired place with a huge Frankenstein´s monster in the entrance (in the night highly popular), Vibrant Shore, a piece of LA esthetic on the east coast, Aslin, Esoteric, Smartmouth and finally Abbey Road Pub & Restaurant, a traditional waterhole.

Maybe one day we will come back. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Books: Nuggets From "Quantum Phenomena And Human Civilization"

 

(Drivebycuriosity) - Books about quantum mechanics are entertaining because they describe - but not explain - the bizarre, and sometimes spooky, behavior of the smallest parts of our universe. Recently the book "Quantum Phenomena And Human Civilization: Exploring the Intersection of Quantum Physics and Its Impact on Technology, Society, and Culture" (published ‎ May 23, 2025  amazon ) appeared on my radar. 

Konstantinos P. Tsiantis, born in 1961 in Khartoum, Sudan, presents an immense amount of material. The book is apparently based on a long row of magazine articles, lectures and speeches by the Greek author. Unfortunately there is no editing, many parts are sheer endlessly repeated, which makes the book hard to digest. The more than 800 pages could have been easily condensed into 200 pages. But anyway I found a lot informative nuggets. Many of them I have read in other books, others were new for me: 

 

              Spooky Action At A Distance 

The German physicist Max Planck introduced the quantum hypothesis in the year 1900, proposing that energy is emitted in discrete units called "quanta".

Scientists also discovered that particles like electrons and photons exhibit wave-like and particle like properties. Light for instance can travels in waves (similar to sound)  or a stream of particles. The phenomena is called wave-particle duality.

Einstein got his first Nobel Prize in Physics because in the year 1905 he proposed that light consists of discrete packets of energy and explained so the photoelectric effect. When a photon strikes  an electron it transfers its power to the electron. The electron is ejected if the photon`s energy exceeds the material`s work function.  

The German physicist Werner Heisenberg formulated the uncertainty principle. It asserts that specific physical properties, such as position and momentum cannot be simultaneously known to arbitrary precision. This phenomena might be caused by the observer effect, it suggests that the mere act of observation can alter the state of a quantum system. When particles are not observed, they exhibit wave-like behavior. However, when measurements are made to determine the path of the particles, this pattern disappears, and the wave function collapses and particles behave like classical objects. During a conference in Copenhagen some suggest that the act of measurement causes the wave to collpase (Copenhagen interpretation). 

The observer effect - the wave function collapses during observation - leads to the idea that reality is not fixed until measured. It also suggests that the act of measurement influences the system being observed. The measurement in quantum mechanics is not merely passive; it actively determines the system`s state. Some believe that consciousness itself may be a necessary component in the act of measurement, suggesting that the observer does not merely record outcomes but actively participates in the creation of results. 

Experiments also proved a phenomena called entanglement: A situation where the states of two or more particles become interdependent. The measure of one particle instantaneously determines the state of the other, regardless of the distance separating them. Einstein called entanglement a "spooky action at a distance".

Experiments also proved the existence of tunneling: A pivotal mechanism that enables particles to pass through potential barriers, defying classical constrains. The Soviet-American physicist and cosmologist George Gamow demonstrated in the 1920s that alpha particles could escape from atomic nuclei despite the energy barriers that would classically prevent such an escape. 

The collection of spooky phenomena contains also superposition, that enables particles to exist in multiple states simultaneously. "This feature allows particles to behave paradoxically such as being in two places at once". According to Tsiantis the wave function represents a superposition of all possible states of a quantum system, encapsulating probabilities rather than certainties. When a measurement occurs, the wave function collapses realizing a single outcome.

Entanglement and superposition are used today in quantum computers, that can process vastly more complex calculations than traditional computers. In classical computing bits are either zero or one. In quantum computingbit or qubit can embody both states simultanously.

 

                        Exotic Implications 

The author tries to extend quantum mechanics to almost everything and offers a lot exotic implications. For instance: 

According to Tsiantis a certain species of birds, like the European robin, utilize the Earth´s magnetic field for navigation. Tsiantis beliefs that these birds may posses a cryptochrome protein in their eyes that might be sensitive to quantum entanglement, allowing them to perceive magnetic fields. He claims that this quantum effect enables bird to navigate vast distances accurately.

Tsiantis also writes about quantum biology and sees implications for medical science. He claims that enzyme catalysis, a fundamental biological process that accelerates chemical reactions within cells, "has been shown to exhibit quantum tunneling effects. This phenomena allows particles to pass through energy barriers leading to faster reaction rates than would be feasible under classical circumstances". 

According to Tsiantis one of the most promising applications of quantum tunneling in oncology is the development of advanced nanoparticles designed for drug delivery. By encapsulating chemotherapeutic agents within these nanoparticles, scientists can ensure that drugs are released only near cancer cells, maximizing efficacy while reducing systemic toxity.  

Tsiantis presents a theory called Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG) that claims that "the fabric of the universe is composed of discrete units, or "loops", that form a network".  

                        Resume:

The book allows me to refresh my meager quantum knowledge and inspires me to think in new directions, even though I don´t follow the author to most of his exotic implications. I cannot recommend it because it lacks structure & shape and is almost unreadable. 

 

  

 

Books: Milton Friedman - The Last Conservative By Jennifer Burns

 

(Drivebycuriosity) - Milton Friedman belongs to the most influential economists of the last 100 years. John Maynard Keynes might still have more followers, the Keynesians, but Friedman was more often right. I was so lucky to meet him in the year 1990 at a meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in München, when I worked for a German magazine.

Jennifer Burns`excellent biography "Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative" gives an introduction in his life and his work ( amazon). Burns calls Friedman a "conservative" even though he preferred to call himself  a liberal, a believer in limited government, free trade and individual rights. But in America the term "liberal" is used for left of the middle and includes politicians like Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders & Elizabeth Warren. 

Friedman was the leading monetarist, preaching the classic quantity theory of money and the insight that "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon". He declared "too many dollars chasing too few goods cause a general rise of prices". The recent inflation wave, caused by a deluge of money generated by government checks & massive bond purchases by the Federal Reserve, Friedman´s helicopter money, confirms him again.

 

                       Freedom Of Choice 

But he was much more. He had an enormous influence as a classical liberal. He fought (in words) for a philosophy of freedom and was an advocate of individual rights, free markets and trade and limited government. Friedman wanted a political world of maximum individual choice, and an economic system where individuals were likewise free to bargain and to contract at will. As an economist, Friedman tended to see numbers, and as an individualist, he saw people rather than groups. 

Milton published together with his wife Rose the book "Capitalism and Freedom", which they later distilled into their TV show "Free to Chose".  The show, a major platform for Friedman´s view, dovetailing with the emergent anti-government, tax-cutting sentiment in the Reagan era, aired on nearly 75 percent of the nation`s PBS television channels. Each of the ten episodes attracted an estimated three million viewers, while a companion volume was the best-selling nonfiction book of 1980. "Free to Choose" crystallized all the free-floating anti-government sentiment of the era, showcasing inefficient bureaucrats, runaway federal spending, and harried, harassed ordinary citizens struggling against red tape and regulation.

Friedman put price theory into the center of his research and revitalized and popularized the Chicago price theory - the analysis of rational human choice under conditions of scarcity. He taught that the price system - the free interaction of buyers and sellers - could produce better social outcomes than the decisions of politicians and regulators. Friedman claimed that human behavior is shaped by price signals, that people want more of what was cheap and less of what of what was dear, or would prefer (by same risk, stress, time etc) a higher income to a lower one.

 

                     Vanishing Monopolies 

Friedman dismissed the popular view that monopolies are pervasive and therefore require government control, which lead to the Sherman Antitrust Act from 1890 and the Clayton Antitrust Act from 1914 and today`s huge antitrust lawsuits against Google, Amazon and other big corporation. Friedman asked: "Do monopolies really exist? Were they inevitable and durable, or did they tend to disappear?" He claimed that - government intervention aside - monopolies tend to vanish and competition to revive. 

History gives him right. When a company has success it inspires copycats who want a share from the pie. Who remembers MySpace? The company was once the leading social network and regarded as a monopolist ( theguardian). But then came Zuckerberg out of nowhere and destroyed MySpace`s "monopoly" by creating Facebook. And today the technology sector is shaken up by the rise of AI. "The free market is not only a more efficient decision maker than even the wisest central planning body, but even more important, the free market keeps economic power widely dispersed".

Friedman also critizised the idea that companies are responsible for social issues, today known as DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion): "There is one and only one responsibility of business - to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits as long as it stays within the rules of the game. A corporate executive only had direct responsibility to his employers. To divert resources to other goals would be unethical, spending someone else´s money for a great social interest".     

                    

                  Markets For Votes 

Friedman embraced the Public Choice Theory, developed by Gordon Tullock, James Buchanan and others, who taught that "politicians were political entrepreneurs, creating new markets for votes with new programs, industries and special interests trying to influence policy were ´rent-seeking´, hoping to stifle competition, gain advantage, and pass the costs to someone else." Friedman recommended "we shall do far better to seek a change in our effective political constitution that will narrowly limit the power of those whom we elect and thereby alter the incentives of both politicians and voters". 

But - maybe surprisingly - Friedman also sided with some progressives ideas and proposed a basic income which he called "negative income tax". He recommended that households who`s incomes are below a certain low level should not pay taxes, instead they should receive government money to finance their living.  

 

                      Destabilizing Influence 

  

Friedman`s center of gravity was of course the role of money in the economy. He was supported by Anna Schwartz, who was at first Friedman´s teacher and later cooperated with the famous momentous study about the role of money in business circles and the cause of the Great Depression: "A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960". Schwartz`s contribution to this work was important because she was buried in data and grasped the granularity of the data in a way and had a love and feel for history that Friedman did not share. 

The book`s centerpiece was its stunning analysis of the Great Depression. Friedman and Schwartz`s data showed a precipitous 33 percent decline in the quantity of money during what they called "The great contraction". The Federal Reserve, that was founded in 1913 to stabilize the banking system, failed because the agency ignored that money was drained from the banking system and the economy collapsed. What appeared to be a failure of markets was in fact a failure of the Fed. Friedman reached the conclusion that the Great Depression was made great by a severe reduction of money supply, that was caused or at least accepted by the Federal Reserve: "By and on the large the Federal Reserve system has probably been a destabilizing influence during its life and that we might very well have been better off if we had never had it".  

                     Pariah Of The Left  

Unfortunately Friedman became a pariah of the left after he visited Chile where he and other economists - mostly from Chicago, the so-called Chicago Boys -, convinced Pinochet to set on market forces instead of government controls and taught the Chilenian administration how to reduce the red-hot inflation there by slowing the growth of money.

Burns`book is much more than just a biography of Friedman, it is also a history of economics, "the master discipline of the twentieth century". We learn about the work of Alfred Marshall ("Principle of Economics"), Frank Knight ("Risk, Uncertainty and Profit"), Jacob Viner, Irving Fisher and others who influenced Friedman´s thinking. She describes the evolution of the global economy during Friedman`s lifetime and the ancient clash between so-called progressives and classical economists, the changes of the global economy and the developments of the economic science. And Burns elaborates Friedman´s disputes with Keynesians, the left-leaning, universities and professors like MIT and Paul Samuelson & James Tobin and covers the political changes in the US that influenced Friedman or might have been influenced by him. 

The biographer also introduces her readers into the controversy between  "saltwater" and "freshwater" economists. "Saltwater" represents universities in the East Coast, which are leaning on left-wing theories, also called Keynesian theories; while "Freshwater" includes  Chicago, Minnesota and Carnegie Mellon, who - like Friedman - defend the importance of market forces contra regulation & activist government policies. 

Unfortunately Friedman´s opponents and the economic illiterate seem to rule theses days, leading to trade wars, rising regulation and ill advised monetary policy (for instance Fed Chair Powell ignores the role of money driveby).

 

  

 

 

 

Books: Seapower States By Andrew Lambert

 (Drivebycuriosity) - History is fascinating. Among many other things we can learn how cultures rose and fell and we might be able to draw some implications for today´s world. Andrew Lambert focuses in his book "Seapower States" on 5 civilizations: Athens, Carthage, Venice, the Dutch Republic, and England/the United Kingdom (amazon ). These states have in common that they all were relatively small & weak - not really powers - but they  focused on the oceans and gained wealth by controlling maritime trade, at least for a while. And "seapower states give the commercial classes a significant share in political power."

               Source Of Revenue 

 "The volume and value of trade made the sea an attractive source of revenue. Sailing ships needed secure harbors, pushing the developments of port cities, where increased populations provided seafaring manpower for commercial and constabulary functions. Trade enable strategically located cities and states to become rich, spreading people, customs and beliefs, and reshaping regional identities. Merchants gravitated towards cities that offered the best balance between protection, taxation and political participation".

 

We learn about the Phoenicians: Sea trade civilised them by compelling them to settle core values and sustain them by law. As their societies became stable, they shared political power across the populace. Their military forces evolved from chaos to order, from warriors and sea raiders to citizen armies and standing navies,serving the interests of the states, not elite rulers.

The Athenians borrowed ideas and methods from Phoenicia, but heir approach took a more militarized form. Already part of a democracy, the Athenians used a sudden windfall of silver to build a war fleet, which secured their independence, before acquiring an empire to sustain their fleet. The combination of democratic policies and naval might made Athens a great sea power.

 

             Slave-propelled Galleys    

By the fifth century BC Carthage had become a huge city state, powerful at sea, where it deployed slave-propelled galleys to extract tributes from distant ports. The Carthaginian economy was monetarized in the fifth century, primarily to pay mercenary armies. As a sea state Carthage bore the imprint of many cultures: Greek and Egyptian influences distinguished Chartaginian culture from its Phoencian origins. The city grew by assimilating immigrants, and Carthagnians had no ethnic or class restrictions on intermarriage, building a new society with strong north African, Greek and Italian connections.

Carthaginian strategic culture reflected  a commercial/maritime focus, a concern for stability and prosperity over conquest and territory, the combination of wealth and a weal manpower base that emphasized the need for allies and mercenaries, and above all a willingness to compromise to preserve the state.

In 146 BC Carthage and Corinth were systematically destroyed, their books and inscriptions, art and statuary ruined or removed. Carthage was wiped of the map and denied a history. Lambert explains: The Romans concluded that a virulent revolutionary center was being formed on the most northern tip of Africa, close to Sicily and to southern Italy. Roman leaders incited a suitably xenophobic Senate to declare war on a defenseless state. The object was to destroy the very name of Carthage, the physical city, the people and above all the culture that it represented. The last Punic War was  the ultimate response of continental hegemony to a seapower challenge, a shattering clash of culture, land against sea, a landed aristocratic oligarchy against a populist civic assembly, military empire against merchants.

 

                 Obsessive Intelligence 

We learn about Venice: The physical city began as an assembly of tiny local communities on man-made islands, connected by boats, not roads, with foot-paths unsuited for horses and wheeled traffic. In the absence of taxable land the state relied on customs dues, taxes on salt and wine. Venice endured because it adopted an inclusive, oligarchic political structure, relying on elections, checks and balances top secure the Republic against dynastic rule and dramatic shift of policy. Unique among Italian republics, Venetian government was dominated by a powerful and highly legalistic structure.

The head of the state, the Doge, was elected by fellow aristocrats, and from the tenth century his powers were strictly limited.....Venice´s empire "was settled by the logistic of conducting trade with the eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea in galleys. These small manpower-intensive vessels needed frequent stops at secure ports, no more than two days apart by oar, to refresh their crews"

"When two major powers collided the Venetians would support whichever was least likely to damage their commerce or provide the most lucrative trade privileges". "Banking system evolved to support costly voyages, while bills of exchange eased the movement of fund".

"The Venetians had long known the importance of recovering information and keeping secrets. Secrecy and obsessive intelligence gathering became defining characteristics of Venice, essential tools for a seapower state facing far larger foes".

 

                      Primus Inter Pares 

We learn about the Dutch seapower: "In the republic, Amsterdam was primus inter pares, not a hegemonic city comparable to Athens, Carthage or Venice, cities that dictate the politics, economics and culture of the state. In the Dutch case a struggle identity pitted a seapower proto-city-state against agricultural provinces that had no interest in the ocean". 

Lambert writes about the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC), known as the Dutch East India Company, "which was rapidly evolving into a territorial empire in Asia. Although independent of national government the company was controlled by the men who dominated national politics. The VOC had been built by war, driving the Portuguese out of Asia and dominating the Indian Ocean and the Indonesian archipelago, by harnessing private capital. Authorized to conduct Asian trade, attack Spanish and Portuguese shipping, build fortresses, sign treatises and make defensive war, the VOC was either a state within a state or a semi-detached empire". It became "effectively a sovereign state, with forty or fifty warships and 20,000msoldieres, commanding the trade between northern Europe and Asia"..."The company became continental, emphasizing territorial control and monopolies of supply".

"After 1688 the VOC consistently lost money on Asian trade: costs rose three times more quickly then revenues, despite rising volumes of trade.... Unable to compete at sea and no longer in control of a staple trade, corruption, incompetence and the growing costs of running a distant territorial empire combined with a weak financial bae, reliant on loans to covers operating costs, meant that or the VoC disaster was inevitable."

 

                        National Priority 

Lambert reports about Spain & Portugal: "The Iberian sea empires were directed by royal autocrats who emphasized religious faith over commercial success, continental expansion over sea control, and imposed monopolistic economic models that crushed initiative and enterprise".

We learn about Russia and Tsar Peter I "Peter was a very odd Tsar: He liked ships, sailors and sailing...he went to England. Between January and April 1698 he lived and worked at Deptford Dockyard, recruiting experts to build and sail his ships, teach navigation and create a modern navy... Making the fleet a national priority, working on it with his own hands by way of example, and taking pleasure in mastering the sea world at the heart of his reforms made Peter unique".

We learn about England:  "The foundations of England as a seapower state were laid when Henry VIII removed England from the European system. He declared his kingdom to be an empire entire unto itself.. To secure his new-made state from foreign invasion Henry developed a standing Royal Navy with heavy-gun armed capital units, along with coastal forts and art in which bronze artillery connected ships, forts and royal authority". 

 

"In 1546/t Henry`s fleet defeated as French invasion attempt, and the mythic power of the Mediterranean galley, taking control of the English Channel. Once the seapower strategy could secure England against larger states, insularity could be celebrated".

"The City of London would expect naval protection, whoever sat on the throne. The navy served the City, and the City provided the necessary funds".

 

              Clearing The Land Of The Natives 

And there was much more: 

For instance Lambert refers to Plato and his "anxiety about the ´corrupting sea`. Plato advised to level the city and move its inhabitants 8 mile away from ´corrupting sea, to live as farmers"  "Plato´s ideal society was landed, dominated by peasant labor and aristocratic control".

Lambert writes about the exploitation of America: "The immigrants who left the coast for the frontier were Scots/Irish and German, not English: the frontier made them Americans. The ocean gave way to frontier violence and overland exploration".   

In the 18th & 19th century "Although Americans shared British anxieties about standing armies, they needed them to clear the land of Native Americans"  (page 415 Kindle version.

What did Lambert learn? He writes:

"On its current trajectory Europe will become an empire, not a nation, closer to Russia and China than the liberal democratic nation states that are the legacy of seapower".