Books: Augustus - First Emperor Of Rome By Adrian Goldsworthy

 

(Drivebycuriosity) - "The king is dead, long live the king!" The traditional proclamation, used to announce the immediate transfer of sovereignty from a deceased monarch to their successor, describes also a pivotal phase in the history of the antique Rome. In the year BC 44 Julius Caesar got assassinated, but his death made the way free for Imperator Augustus, the first of a long row of Roman Caesars. The impressive biography "Augustus - First Emperor Of Rome" by Adrian Goldsworthy describes the development of Rome`s first Imperator and how the Roman republic turned into a hereditary monarchy ( amazon). 

 

       Imperator Caesar Augustus divi filius 

Imperator Caesar Augustus divi filius declared: “Who could be found more magnanimous than I – not to mention again my deceased father – who more nearly divine? For I – the gods be my witnesses! – who have so many gallant soldiers, both Romans and allies, who are devoted to me, I who am supreme over the entire sea within the pillars of Hercules except for a few tribes, I who possess both cities and provinces in every continent . . . when you are all at peace . . . and, greatest of all, are content to yield obedience, I in spite of all this, voluntarily and of my dominion and give up so vast a possession”.

Augustus`stellar career was only possible because of the chaos in the Roman commonwealth during the first century BC and would have been unimaginable in earlier times. But he also was a creation of Julius Caesar himself, who adopted his grandnephew and gave him his name. At eighteen Caesar`s grandnephew ceased to be Caius Octavius and instead became Caius Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar promoted his protege further by giving him important military commands and finally made him the principal heir in his will. 

Augustus did not have the multiple talents of his foster father; he lacked the qualities of an orators, he did not become a successful advocate and was not an eloquent writer, but he was extremely ambitious & unscrupulous and became a very successful warlord. Along Marcus Antonius (Shakespeare`s Mark Antony) he was at the head of the bloody revenge campaign against Brutus and other Caesar assassins and later beat his competitor Antonius in a savage civil war and drove him to suicide. 

Goldsworthy writes: "At some point – perhaps not until the murder of Julius Caesar – Octavius/Augustus determined to be first in the state, and everything he did was directed to this end. Power was not supposed to be inherited at Rome, but armed with his sponsor`s name he rallied the dead dictator’s supporters and proclaimed his intention to assume all of his foster father’s offices and status.To achieve this he had no hesitation in resorting to violence, and so in the years that followed he killed and terrorized, switching alliances as it suited the moment. Ambition was in the blood of any Roman aristocrat, but never before had it been quite so untrammelled by convention nor so openly aimed at winning permanent unrivaled supremacy – but then never before had someone been heir to Julius Caesar, dictator for life and laden with honors greater than any Roman had ever received in the past. The situation in which the young Augustus found himself was as unprecedented as his actions, but his motivation at the very least had strong roots in the traditions of his social class".

 

                          The Wider Good 

Augustus` activity was devoted solely to the immediate end of winning power and defeating his enemies, and probably left no time for anything else. During these years he advertised his connection with Julius Caesar, celebrated the latter’s achievements, sought vengeance for his murder, and at the same time acquired power for himself. Later, in the thirties BC, he began to show more concern for the wider good, beginning to repair and add to the monuments and infrastructure of Rome, and to regulate the food supply of the City. Once again this was sensible politics, but the dedication with which he continued to act in this way was far more than the desire for immediate popularity. Augustus pursued power ruthlessly,

Till the end of his long live Imperator Caesar Augustus remained a warlord whose dominance of the state was based ultimately on his control of far greater military force than anyone else. By modern standards he was and would remain a military dictator, even if he always carefully avoided the title in its Roman sense. For all the display of resigning his powers and reluctant acceptance of the duties pressed on him by the Senate at the start of 27 BC, no one could compel him to do anything as long as he continued to monopolise military power. The legions were his, and the Senate had no real say in how they were run, nor did it any longer control the raising and disbanding of these and other army units.

It was up to Augustus and his advisers to decide on the size and shape of the army they would maintain. They needed to judge how many soldiers were necessary to secure his position against potential Roman rivals as well as how many were required to maintain the empire, defending and, where it was desired, expanding the provinces. The two were closely related. Imperator meant ‘victorious commander’ and it would be seriously damaging to Augustus’ reputation and auctoritas if the empire appeared weak to its foreign neighbors and began to suffer reverses on the frontiers or within the provinces.

In spite of Rome`s military power Augustus did not try to expand the empire. He decided against the conquest of the English Island, displaying the same caution that deterred him from risking war with Parthia, the power in the East, unless it became unavoidable. 

Since Augustus was blessed with a very long life he was able to transform large parts of Europe. Under Augustus widespread cultivation of vines and wine-making began in Gaul, while manufacturers of ceramics responded to the demands of a growing market by establishing workshops in Gaul itself. Use of coinage based on the Roman standard, already widespread in the south, extended over a wider area, fostered particularly wherever the army was based and legionaries inclined to spend their wages.

 

              Begin Of A Dynasty 

Augustus held supreme power for forty-four years. 
In this time had gone from the angry avenger of a murdered father to the unifying elder statesman and ‘father’ of the Roman world. His long life empowered him to start a dynasty and a long line of Roman Casesars. His adopted sons shared his popularity and were being prepared for high office. His daughter – and only actual child – proved less willing to play the part given to her by her father.  

Following the model of his foster father Augusts promoted his wider family, especially his nephew Caius Claudius Marcellus, the son of his sister Octavia. After Marcellus`sudden death Augusts adopted Triberius, the first son of Julius Ceasar´s wife Livia Drusilla, and gave him important offices and provincial commands and named him his principal heir. After Augustus`death Triberius was given powers to those of the princeps (like Julius Caesar & Augustus) and smoothly succeeded Augustus in AD 14.

The Caesar is dead, long live Caesar! 

Books: Exploring the World Of Japanese Craft Sake

  

(Drivebycuriosity) - Do you like Sushi & Sashimi, the freshness, taste & texture of uncooked fish? Then you might also enjoy sake. I was wondering how a relatively plain grain like rice can be turned into such a delicious wine. The book "Exploring the World Of Japanese Craft Sake" by Nancy Matsumoto gives an introduction (amazon ). 

The authors went to sake bars and visited a lot sake brewers and rice farmers and interviewed them. Especially the female co-author focused on the family histories of the sake makers, too much for an introduction book.

But there are also some small informative parts about the different kinds of rice used for brewing, the types of water (minerals) and the regional differences. There is one very short chapter about the alchemy of sake making and explains the chemistry of transforming the starch of the grain into final product and I learned a lot about the use of mold - a special kind of mold - during the transformation process. 

Unfortunately the book is not formatted as an e-book and it looks like a PDF -  very hard to read. I will try to find a better book. 

Books: A Case Of Two Cities - The Curse Of Series

(Drivebycuriosity) - Everyone has to be efficient and productive these days - even writers. It seems that when an author has an idea for a good novel he stretches it out and turns it into a series. Unfortunately the following volumes are seldom good.

This is also true for Qiu Xiaolong`s "Inspector Chen Cao" series. I enjoyed volume 1"Death of a Red Heroine" about a detective in Shanghai in the 1990s (my review ). I liked also Vol 2 & 3, but I gave up reading vol 4 "A Case of Two Cities" after about 50% ( amazon).

This book focuses in corruption in China in the 1990. The subject is not new and the author really inflates it. So it becomes tedious to read again and again about the bad behavior of so many politicians and bureaucrats. There is a lot about Chinese poetry which I found interesting in the first 2 vol. but also got tiresome and slowed the already tardy plot. 

So reading Vol 1 - and maybe Vol 2 & 3 - is worth the time and the money, but not Vol. 4. 

Economics: Why A Shrinking Population Is A Boon

  (Drivebycuriosity) - There is a lot ado about the shrinking populations everywhere. Are we really doomed? I doubt it.

We could learn from history. The Middle Ages already experienced drastic shrinking populations, caused by the plague. In the year 1348 the bubonic plague (Black Death) reduced populations in England and other European countries by more than 30%. As a result the living standard of the survivors rose. 

Food prices fell because fewer people purchased food. The falling demand for food forced the producers to cut their prices. Wages rose because there were fewer farmhands and other workers and the employers had to pay higher salaries.

Today a shrinking population would support the living standard of low income groups. There would be less demand for housing which would reduce rentals and food prices would be constrained. 

A shrinking population is also a big win for the environment and could be the answer to global warming, another favorite subject of the doomsayers. 

Fewer people burn less energy - and they emit fewer greenhouse gases. Fewer people also eat less; therefore the incentive to destroy forests, to gain more land for farming, becomes weaker and the problem of over-fishing disappears.

 

                  More Green & Clean 

A shrinking population also slows down the trend of turning forests & meadows into the sprawl. There is no need for constructing more and more one-family houses, streets, strip malls, store houses & parking places. A shrinking population makes the world more green & clean!

A smaller population is also the answer to another doomster alert: "The robots are coming" And: "Automation will destroy our jobs!"  (" thehill). Both trends are mostly compensating each other: A falling demand for workers, thanks to automation, compensates a declining supply by shrinking populations.

 

                      Industrial Revolution 

Machines have been replacing labor for many centuries. In the middle ages wind & water mills already substituted human & animal labor. In the 18th century followed steam power, starting the industrial revolution. In the recent centuries the ongoing automation process has been raising productivity of labor considerably - and the progress has been accelerating. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is raising the productivity of labor even even further, reducing the demand for human workers even more. 

And there is more: science is making exponential advancements in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence and will support the economy and the labor markets in the coming decades. 

               Less Work, More Income

Today even farmers are using robots, for instance for harvesting strawberries or milking cows (wikipedia). Drones are being used in warehouses and yards for inventory management. Robots also help restaurants to deal with the scarcity of labor.  

"Domino’s Pizza Inc. is putting in place equipment and technology that reduce the amount of labor that is required to produce our dough balls", reports time.com. 3D-printers are also replacing workers, even in construction. "A 3D printer can build the walls of a house in as little as two days versus weeks or months with traditional construction materials" notices today.com.  

 A study by economists John G. Fernald and Charles I. Jones from Stanford & the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco claims that "it becomes possible to replace more and more of the labor tasks with capital" (robinhanson ). Fernald & Jones define capital as physical capital (machines including robots & computers), plus human capital (knowledge & skills) plus discovery of new ideas (inventions like computer, internet etc.). According to them "artificial intelligence and machine learning could allow computers and robots to increasingly replace labor in the production function for goods", meaning that the society can produce more things without increasing hours worked or even with a shrinking labor force. As a result the growth rate of income per person and the long-run growth rate (now around 2%) will rise as well: "The possibility that artificial intelligence will allow machines to replace workers to some extent could lead to higher growth in the future.

 

                 Universal Basic Income

Naive observers claim that a shrinking population reduces the demand for goods & services and will destroy many markets and businesses (noahpinion). These pessimists ignore that demand is the number of potential buyers multiplied with the purchasing power per capita. Thanks to the accelerating technological progress the purchasing power per capita is rising and will overcompensate the shrinking number of consumers.

I reckon that technological progress leads to:

    - rising salaries (for those still working), 

    - climbing dividend incomes and stock market gains 

which will raise the purchasing power of most people - enough to compensate the shrinking number of buyers. Even those who don`t invest in the stock market may participate via pension funds and insurance investments. 

The productivity gains will finally translate into higher tax revenues for the governments (by taxing company profits, dividends & stock market gains). Some day a much greater part of goods & services will be produced by robots and other machines. Then fewer people may work than today and many things will cost less. Then the time could come for an universal basic income, paid to everybody, and financed by productivity gains delivered with automation (driveby ).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Books: What I learned From Fuchsia Dunlop`s "Invitation To A Chinese Banquet"

  (Drivebycuriosity) - It seems that almost everybody in the US or in Western Europe knows Chinese food, thanks to the sheer ubiquitous China restaurants everywhere. But the real Chinese cuisine is very different. Fuchsia Dunlop describes in her monumental work "Invitation to a Banquet" the real thing (460 pages  amazon ).

Mrs. Dunlop is the perfect ambassador for China´s cuisine. In the 1990s she studied at the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine and became a Sichuan chef herself, later she extended her knowledge by traveling all over the country, meeting chefs and tasted sheer countless meals. Dunlop`s "Invitation" is not a cook book, she describes the various incarnations of China´s delights, narrates their history, explains the chemistry and the preparing techniques.

China´s cuisine is far more complex and diversified than most Westerners are aware. It represents a huge country that stretches over many climate zones, from a dry and chilly north to a humid tropical south; and covers mountains and vast coastal areas. China`s art of preparing food developed over at least two thousand years and it is shaped by very different local and regional traditions.

 

                A Kind Of Alchemy  

In spite all the differences there are some commonalities: the Chinese use chopsticks and their cooks cut food into small pieces, so their customers don`t have to use knives. Chinese rarely eat dairy foods, they prefer rice, fermented legumes and tofu and they like food that is sliced, diced and slivered, often prepared by steaming and stir-frying.  

I learned that Chinese cuisine is fundamentally about creating harmony, by transforming, mixing and matching very different ingredients. Mrs. Dunlop writes: "The job of the Chinese cook is to create an almost magical harmony out of contrasting ingredients. Cooking became a consummate skill, even a kind of alchemy". And virtually no ingredient is too humble or too unlikely to resist transformation in the hands of a skilled Chinese chef.
. 

                     Art, Craft & Magic

She claims that Chinese food is art and craft and magic. It is the harnessing of armies of microorganisms; the conjuring of a hundred flavors in a tiny kitchen, the transformation of crude raw materials into myriad forms. It is one of the supreme expressions of human ingenuity.

The Chinese tend to believe that the success of a dish depends less on the nature of the base ingredients than the ability and human knowledge employed in their transformation. For "the rich" intense variety was part of the delight of eating, and the more surprising and unexpected the ingredients, the merrier.

Westeners see the Chinese as rice eaters, but that is only true for the southerners, while northerners prefer wheat in the form of dumplings, noodles, pancakes and breads. The preferences mirror the geographic conditions: While the north is too cold & dry for rice growing, the humid heat in the south supports its growth. Many westeners know the many variations of Italian pasta, but they might not be aware that the northern Chinese have a highly developed culture of pasta-making which is significantly older than the Italian tradition.

The Chinese like soups and sauces, which reminds me of the meals my parents in Southern Germany prepared where I grew up. Mrs. Dunlop believes that the ancient affection for soupy food may have been partly why the Chinese adopted chopsticks as their main eating tool in the first place, because they were so suitable for fishing morsels of food out of a potful of scalding-hot liquid. 

The famous Peking duck - referring the old-fashioned spelling of the capital - is made by a complex process designed to maximize the glossy crispness of the skin and the tender succulence of the flesh, involving inflation with a pump, wind-drying, lacquering with a maltose solution, adding moisture and roasting while hanging in the fierce heat of a domed oven fuelled by a fruitwood fire.

 

                   Oral Pleasures 

According to Mrs. Dunlop the Chinese care about the texture of the food as much as they care about the taste. The introductions to professional recipes typically specify the precise mouthfeel a dish should have, as well as its flavor. For instance fox nuts (an aquatic plant, also known as Prickly Water Lily) have gorgeously crisp, slippery or chewy textures: a whole genre of "beauty in the mouth". 

She describes poetically the oral pleasures of some fish dish: "Pale slices of fish mingle in the broth with tiny, grey-green quills of leaf. Pluck up a leaf with your chopsticks and you will find it coated with a layer of totally transparent jelly. Put it into your mouth, and it will feel shiny and slippery, a perfect match for the silkiness of the fish".

Also: The taste of drunken crab "will be impressed on my tongue for ever. Ice-cold and vividly slimy, with a scintillating kick of liquor, the flesh and ovaries of the crab made me shiver with pleasure. They were as creamily voluptuous as foie gras, yet simultaneously as brisk and arresting as a raw oyster".
 

              Cascade Of Chemical Reactions 

I learned a lot about the chemistry of food & drink preparing. Soy sauce - the archetypal Chinese seasoning - is made by soaking and steaming yellow or black soybeans, mixing them with wheat flour and then leaving them in dark, warm, humid conditions to be colonized by Aspergillus Oryzae molds. The molded beans are combined with salt and water in clay jars and left to ferment and mature; the molds then produce enzymes that break the beany proteins down into delicious amino acids, their oils into fatty acids and their starches into sugars. As the sauce matures, a cascade of further chemical reactions produces a whole array of delicious tastes. 

The character of a soy sauce depends partly on the relative proportions of soybeans and wheat used to make it: the soybean dominates in traditional Chinese soy sauces, giving a darker, richer result, while Japanese use roughly equal proportions of soybeans and wheat, making them lighter, sweeter and tangier.

 

                    Health & Happiness 

Mrs. Dunlop also explains that transforming cereals into wines, ales and other types of liquor presents particular challenges because, unlike grapes and other fruits, they lack accessible sugars that yeasts can devour and turn into alcohol. Before they can be fermented, the starches in the grains have to undergo saccharification, a process of hydrolysis that breaks them up into sugars that yeasts can digest. 

Making alcohol from grains is always a multi-stage process, more complicated than fermenting wine from grapes – which, is spontaneous and ‘practically unavoidable’ because of the sugars in the fruit and the yeasts on their skins. Since grains, unlike grapes, have no natural enthusiasm for fermentation, they need encouragement. In northern Europe, malted grains are used to coax cereals into beer

Mrs. Dunlop`s resume:

The key principles of ordering a Chinese meal are balance on the one hand and variety on the other, with the strenuous avoidance of repetition. 

The subtlety of Chinese gastronomy, with its minute discernment in matters of cutting, cooking, flavor and mouthfeel, is unparalleled anywhere.

"Perhaps the greatest lesson I’ve learned from China is how to eat simultaneously for health and happiness".

PS I used images from a tasting menu by Cantonese chef Chef Qiu Xiaogui that I had enjoyed at Bangkok`s Yu Ting Yuan restaurant.

Economics: Why The Inflation Fears Are Overblown

 

(Drivebycuriosity) - There is a lot ado about inflation. The Iran war pushed oil prices higher and amplified the price jumps caused by the tariff hikes. But I suppose that both influences are just temporary and the inflation hike will teeter out.

                  Helicopter Money 

We learned from Milton Friedman that "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon". The money volume, the amount of money available in the whole economy, restricts how much people can spend for goods & services. If they - for in instance - pay higher prices for imported goods, then they purchase fewer of them or they spend less for other goods & services.

Friedman`s insight got confirmed by the recent inflation wave. It was caused by a deluge of money in the years 2020 & 2021. In 2020 & 2021 the government flooded the economy with stimulus checks in the value of trillions of dollars to fight the Covid19 recession (American Rescue Plan). The government checks got financed with massive bond purchases by the Federal Reserve (Quantitative Easing known as QE1,QE2 & QE3).

The government money landed directly on the bank accounts of the Americans, blowing up the money volume M2 (bank notes & coins & deposits at banks). Milton Friedman described this as helicopter money (cato ). As a result in 2021 & 2022 the US money supply M2, the engine of the inflation, jumped 40%. 

Unfortunately the money deluge met a constrained supply of goods & services partly - partly because of Covid19. So the price level inevitably had to jump and the inflation rate (first derivation) went up.

                         Causal Relationship

The causal relationship between the money supply and inflation was already recognized by Nicolaus Copernicus! The astronomer explained in the year 1517 why "too much money" causes inflation. Copernicus` "quantity theory of money" is based on observations: Early in the 16th century Spain conquered today`s Latin America and looted the silver stocks. The Spaniards send the precious metal to Europe where it was printed into coins and used as money.

As a result the European money supply jumped, but the supply of goods & services did not change much. The flood of money raised suddenly the demand for scarce goods & services and caused a jump of the price level.

Elaborated studies by Milton Friedman, Karl Brunner, Allan Meltzer and many other economists (known as Monetarists) confirmed Copernicus & the quantity theory of money. They described in the 1960s elaborately how and why the inflation rate follows the growth rate of money with a time lag (causal connection).
 

 

 ( source)

 

But the money deluge has ended. Today the US inflation is constrained by the slowly growing US money supply. In the recent months M2, the engine of inflation, grew just 4.7%. Simultaneously the US economy, represented by the GDP, advanced 1.6%. There is not much space for price hikes and inflation will run out of fuel.

  

  

Economics: Why America`s Housing Obsession Is Like Cancer

 

 (Drivebycuriosity) - It seems that the public is obsessed with housing. Politicians, pundits and the media claim that America has not enough one family houses, calling this a housing crises, with the plead to construct more houses.

I beg to differ. When I drive through America I get annoyed by the vast sprawl; the sheer endless row of flat houses, parking places, malls & gas stations. Above you can see the sprawl around Chicago. This was once green land; trees, bushes, shrubs, grass, flowers, weeds - now everything is buried below concrete.

 

Unfortunately the sprawls are spreading like cancer. They are not just unaesthetic. The construction of more and more flat houses, parking places, malls & gas stations, connected by a labyrinth of streets, destroys nature. The trees, bushes and other plants, that once turned carbon dioxide (CO₂) into oxygen and stored water, get wiped out. The concrete also seals the ground, therefore not enough rain water can be stored, causing either floods or droughts. 

To make things worse the settlers in the sprawls need to drive long ways to commute to working places, to shop, to visit restaurants etc. etc.. This way the growing sprawls are producing even more green house gases and reducing the air quality in general. The growing sprawls are making global warming worse. 

There are other - and more intelligent - ways to supply lower income people with affordable accommodations. When I visited Vancouver I was impressed by the plenty of high rises, all surrounded by green. They are the result of Vancouver´s three-decade-old Higher Buildings Policy ( dailyhive). These buildings keep a large part of the population in the city and protect the surrounding rain forests from being replaced by vast suburbs. 

Apartments in high rises are much more affordable than the majority of free standing houses. Their tenants don`t  need to take expensive mortgages with the risk to overburden themselves. America`s obsession with houses lead to the 2008 mortgage crisis, because people often took loans to purchase houses they could not afford. In 2008 many of these home owners weren´t able to service their debts, which brought the banks into trouble and lead to a chain reaction on the financial markets.

America´s housing obsession is the real housing crisis.