Books – Page 128 – artdiamondblog.com

Hunter-Gatherers Suffered Violence, Famine and Disease–No Idyllic Golden Age

(p. 44) The warfare death rate of 0.5 per cent of the population per year that was typical of many hunter-gatherer societies would equate to two billion people dying during the twentieth century (instead of 100 million). At a cemetery uncovered at Jebel Sahaba, in Egypt, dating from 14,000 years ago, twenty-four of the fifty-nine bodies had died from unhealed wounds caused by spears, darts and arrows. Forty of these bodies were women or children. Women and children generally do not take part in warfare – but they are (p. 45) frequently the object of the fighting. To be abducted as a sexual prize and see your children killed was almost certainly not a rare female fate in hunter-gatherer society. After Jebel Sahaba, forget the Garden of Eden; think Mad Max.
It was not just warfare that limited population growth. Hunter-gatherers are often vulnerable to famines. Even when food is abundant, it might take so much travelling and trouble to collect enough food that women would not maintain a sufficient surplus to keep themselves fully fertile for more than a few prime years. Infanticide was a common resort in bad times. Nor was disease ever far away: gangrene, tetanus and many kinds of parasite would have been big killers. Did I mention slavery? Common in the Pacific north-west. Wife beating? Routine in Tierra del Fuego. The lack of soap, hot water, bread, books, films, metal, paper, cloth? When you meet one of those people who go so far as to say they would rather have lived in some supposedly more delightful past age, just remind them of the toilet facilities of the Pleistocene, the transport options of Roman emperors or the lice of Versailles.

Source:
Ridley, Matt. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. New York: Harper, 2010.

“Just What Ailments Are Pylos Tablets Supposed to Alleviate?”

“Professor Bennett’s work opened a window to deciphering tablets written in Linear B, a Bronze Age Aegean script.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT obituary quoted and cited below.

(p. 22) Deciphering an ancient script is like cracking a secret code from the past, and the unraveling of Linear B is widely considered one of the most challenging archaeological decipherments of all time, if not the most challenging.
. . .
Linear B recorded the administrative workings of Mycenaean palatial centers on Crete and the Greek mainland 3,000 years ago: accounts of crops harvested, flocks tended, goods manufactured (including furniture, chariots and perfume), preparations for religious feasts and preparations for war.
It was deciphered at last in 1952, not by a scholar but by an obsessed amateur, a young English architect named Michael Ventris. The decipherment made him world famous before his death in an automobile accident in 1956.
As Mr. Ventris had acknowledged, he was deeply guided by Professor Bennett’s work, which helped impose much-needed order on the roiling mass of strange, ancient symbols.
In his seminal monograph “The Pylos Tablets” (1951), Professor Bennett published the first definitive list of the signs of Linear B. Compiling such a list is the essential first step in deciphering any unknown script, and it is no mean feat.
. . .
“We know how much Ventris admired Bennett, because he immediately adopted Bennett’s sign list of Linear B for his own work before the decipherment,” said Mr. Robinson, whose book “The Man Who Deciphered Linear B” (2002) is a biography of Mr. Ventris. “He openly said, ‘This is a wonderful piece of work.’ ”
. . .
As meticulous as Professor Bennett’s work was, it once engendered great confusion. In 1951, after he sent Mr. Ventris a copy of his monograph, a grateful Ventris went to the post office to pick it up. As Mr. Robinson’s biography recounts, a suspicious official, eyeing the package, asked him: “I see the contents are listed as Pylos Tablets. Now, just what ailments are pylos tablets supposed to alleviate?”

For the full obituary, see:
MARGALIT FOX. “Emmett L. Bennett Jr., Ancient Script Expert, Dies at 93.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., January 1, 2012,): 22.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary is dated December 31, 2011, and has the title: “Emmett L. Bennett Jr., Expert on Ancient Script, Dies at 93.”)

The book on the amateur, uncredentialed Ventris is:
Robinson, Andrew. The Man Who Deciphered Linear B: The Story of Michael Ventris. London, UK: Thames & Hudson, 2002.

“Emmett L. Bennett Jr.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT obituary quoted and cited above.

You Have More Servants than the Sun King

(p. 36) The Sun King had dinner each night alone. He chose from forty dishes, served on gold and silver plate. It took a staggering 498 people to prepare each meal. He was rich because he consumed the work of other people, mainly in the form of their services. He was rich because other people did things for him. At that time, the average French family would have prepared and consumed its own meals as well as paid tax to support his servants in the palace. So it is not hard to conclude that Louis XIV was rich because others were poor.
But what about today? Consider that you are an average person, say a woman of 35, living in, for the sake of argument, Paris and earning the median wage, with a working husband and two children. You are far from poor, but in relative terms, you are immeasurably poorer than Louis was. Where he was the richest of the rich in the world’s richest city, you have no servants, no palace, no carriage, no kingdom. As you toil home from work on the crowded Metro, stopping at the shop on the way to buy a ready meal for four, you might be thinking that Louis XIV’s dining arrangements were way beyond your reach. And yet consider this. The cornucopia that greets you as you enter the supermarket dwarfs anything that Louis XIV ever experienced (and it is probably less likely to contain salmonella). You can buy a fresh, frozen, tinned, smoked or pre-prepared meal made with beef, chicken, pork, lamb, fish, prawns, scallops, eggs, potatoes, beans, carrots, cabbage, aubergine, kumquats, celeriac, okra, seven kinds of lettuce, cooked in olive, walnut, sunflower or peanut oil and flavoured with cilantro, turmeric, basil or rosemary . . . You may have no chefs, but you can decide (p. 37) on a whim to choose between scores of nearby bistros, or Italian, Chinese, Japanese or Indian restaurants, in each of which a team of skilled chefs is waiting to serve your family at less than an hour’s notice. Think of this: never before this generation has the average person been able to afford to have somebody else prepare his meals.
You employ no tailor, but you can browse the internet and instantly order from an almost infinite range of excellent, affordable clothes of cotton, silk, linen, wool and nylon made up for you in factories all over Asia. You have no carriage, but you can buy a ticket which will summon the services of a skilled pilot of a budget airline to fly you to one of hundreds of destinations that Louis never dreamed of seeing. You have no woodcutters to bring you logs for the fire, but the operators of gas rigs in Russia are clamouring to bring you clean central heating. You have no wick-trimming footman, but your light switch gives you the instant and brilliant produce of hardworking people at a grid of distant nuclear power stations. You have no runner to send messages, but even now a repairman is climbing a mobile-phone mast somewhere in the world to make sure it is working properly just in case you need to call that cell. You have no private apothecary, but your local pharmacy supplies you with the handiwork of many thousands of chemists, engineers and logistics experts. You have no government ministers, but diligent reporters are even now standing ready to tell you about a film star’s divorce if you will only switch to their channel or log on to their blogs.
My point is that you have far, far more than 498 servants at your immediate beck and call. Of course, unlike the Sun King’s servants, these people work for many other people too, but from your perspective what is the difference? That is the magic that exchange and specialisation have wrought for the human species.

Source:
Ridley, Matt. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. New York: Harper, 2010.
(Note: ellipsis in original.)

In Supporting Bailouts Buffett Was More Bootlegger than Baptist

Source of book image: online version of the Omaha World-Herald review quoted and cited below.

(p. 9A) Peter Schweizer’s new book, “Throw Them All Out” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 211 pages, $26) mostly goes after members of Congress for profiting from inside information and making investments that are legal for them but would be illegal for almost anyone else.

But Chapter 6 is titled, “Warren Buffett: Baptist and Bootlegger.”
Buffett is neither an actual Baptist nor a bootlegger, of course. Schweizer’s reference is to the alliance of churchgoers and illegal marketers of liquor who both favored laws to limit the legal sale of alcohol, although for different reasons.
Schweizer wrote that during the 2008-09 financial crisis, Buffett pushed for government action and called attention to the problems, looking like a noble Baptist, but profited from the bailouts, like a bootlegger, through investments in Goldman Sachs, General Electric, Wells Fargo and other financial companies.
“Buffett needed the bailout,” Schweizer wrote. “He began immediately to campaign for the $700 billion TARP rescue plan that was being hammered together in Washington.” Several senators, including Ben Nelson, D-Neb., are Berkshire shareholders, Schweizer wrote, “and they had to know that passing the bailout bill would bring big returns for their Berkshire stock.”
“There were many legitimate reasons to support the bill, and it can hardly be said that Buffett’s support was the deciding factor,” Schweizer wrote. “But his Baptist-bootlegger position was noteworthy for its strength in both directions: a lot of people followed his advice, and he and they made (p. 10A) a lot of money by pushing for the bailout. . . .
“Warren Buffett is a financial genius. But even more important for his portfolio, he’s a political genius.”

For the full story, see:
Steve Jordon. “Warren Watch: Author Says Buffett Is a ‘Political Genius’.” Omaha World-Herald (Sunday, November 20, 2011): 9A -10A.
(Note: ellipsis in original.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the title “Warren Watch: A ‘Political Genius’.”)

Steve Jordan is discussing the book:
Schweizer, Peter. Throw Them All Out. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade, 2011.

Bruce Yandle is the former President of APEE and the author of the classic article on how bootleggers and Baptists often become allies in calling for government action:
Yandle, Buce. “Bootleggers and Baptists: The Education of a Regulatory Economist.” Regulation 7, no. 3 (1983): 12-16.

Happiness Depends Most on Being Free to Choose

(p. 27) Getting richer is not the only or even the best way of getting happier. Social and political liberation is far more effective, says the political scientist Ronald Ingleheart: the big gains in happiness come from living in a society that frees you to make choices about your lifestyle – about where to live, who to marry, how to express your sexuality and so on. It is the increase in free (p. 28) choice since 1981 that has been responsible for the increase in happiness recorded since then in forty-five out of fifty-two countries. Ruut Veenhoven finds that ‘the more individualized the nation, the more citizens enjoy their life.’

Source:
Ridley, Matt. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. New York: Harper, 2010.

Mackay Warned about Delusions, then Was Deluded by Bubble

(p. B1) Can you spot a bubble?
Ever since 1841, when a Scottish journalist named Charles Mackay published the book known today as “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,” the answer has seemed clear. If you watch carefully for signs of euphoria, you can sidestep the damage when markets go mad.
But bubble spotting isn’t as simple as Mackay made it sound–even, it turns out, for Mackay himself. Investors should always guard against the glib assertions of pundits who claim they can detect bubbles before they burst.
. . .
But new research tells the untold tale of Mackay’s own behavior in the face of a bubble–and it is a shocker. A mathematician and former cryptographer at Bell Labs named Andrew Odlyzko has spent much of the past decade researching a forgotten stock mania. One of its biggest boosters was none other than Charles Mackay.
A bubble in British railroad stocks began in 1844, only three years after Mackay published his book, and it didn’t start to collapse until late 1845. Even with the history of market folly fresh in his mind, Mackay urged British investors to pile into railway stocks, whose extravagant prices were based on absurdly unrealistic projections of future growth.
The most famous critic of bubbles who ever lived fell like a chump for a craze that was unfolding before his very eyes. On Oct. 2, 1845, Mackay wrote that “those who sound the alarm of an approaching railway crisis have somewhat exaggerated the danger.”
He went on to ridicule anyone who argued that “the Railway mania of the present day” was similar to the devastating bubbles he had described in his own book. “There is no reason whatever to fear” a crash, he concluded.
He couldn’t have been more wrong. From 1845 to the bottom in 1850, railway stocks fell by two-thirds–the equivalent of roughly $1 trillion of losses in today’s money. Mackay never fessed up to his own extraordinary delusion.

For the full commentary, see:
JASON ZWEIG. “THE INTELLIGENT INVESTOR; The Extraordinary Popular Delusion of Bubble Spotting.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., NOVEMBER 5, 2011): B1.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

Ridley Argues that Our Future Can Be Bright

Source of book image: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_cheRMv1X2oI/TAOvTFTnoeI/AAAAAAAAAgU/WAp7q0I_5mw/s1600/Ridley+Rational+Optimist.jpg

Ridley’s book is very well-written, well-argued and well-documented. He takes on all the main arguments against a happy future for humans. I agree with most of what he writes. (One exception is that I think he underestimates the importance of patents in enabling a broader group of inventors to continue inventing.)
In the coming weeks, I will be quoting some of the more memorable, thought-provoking, or useful passages.

Book discussed:
Ridley, Matt. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. New York: Harper, 2010.

Collins Says Successful CEOs Are Empirical and Disciplined

Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. A15) ‘Great by Choice” is a sequel to Jim Collins’s best-selling “Good to Great” (2001), which identified seven characteristics that enabled companies to become truly great over an extended period of time. Never mind that one of the 11 featured companies is now bankrupt (Circuit City) and another is in government receivership (Fannie Mae). Mr. Collins has a knack for analysis that business readers find compelling.

Mr. Collins’s new book tackles the question of how to steer a company to lasting success in an environment characterized by change, uncertainty and even chaos. Like his previous work, this book builds its conclusions on a framework of painstaking research, conducted over nine years and overseen by Mr. Collins and his co-author, Morten T. Hansen, a management professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
. . .
Messrs. Collins and Hansen draw some interesting and counterintuitive conclusions from their research. First, the successful leaders were not the most “visionary” or the biggest risk-takers; instead, they tended to be more empirical and disciplined, relying on evidence over gut instinct and preferring consistent gains to blow-out winners. The successful companies were not more innovative than the control companies; indeed, they were in some cases less innovative. Rather, they managed to “scale innovation”–introducing changes gradually, then moving quickly to capitalize on those that showed promise. The successful companies weren’t necessarily the most likely to adopt internal changes as a response to a changing environment. “The 10X companies changed less in reaction to their changing world than the comparison cases,” the authors conclude.
. . .
If “Great by Choice” shares the qualities that made “Good to Great” so popular, it also shares some that drew criticism. The authors’ conclusions sometimes feel like the claims of a well-written horoscope–so broadly stated that they are hard to disprove. Their 10X leaders are both “disciplined” and “creative,” “prudent” and “bold”; they go fast when they must but slow when they can; they are consistent but open to change. This encompassing approach allows the authors to fit pretty much any leader who achieves 10X performance into their analysis. Would it ever be possible, one wonders, to find a leader whose success contradicted their thesis?

For the full review, see:
ALAN MURRAY. “BOOKSHELF; Turbulent Times, Steady Success; How certain companies achieved shareholder returns at least 10 times greater than their industry.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., OCTOBER 11, 2011): A15.
(Note: ellipses added.)

Companies Can Grow to Greatness in Brutally Turbulent Environments

(p. 118) All that said, there remains a question: what about “the perennial gale of creative destruction” as described by the famous twentieth-century economist Joseph Schumpeter, wherein technological change and visionary entrepreneurs upend and destroy the old order and create a new order, only to see their new order destroyed and replaced by an even newer order, in an endless cycle of chaos and upheaval? Perhaps all social institutions in our modern world face disruptive forces so fast, big, and unpredictable that every entity will fall within years or decades, without exception. Can we still stave off decline in the face of severe turbulence?

While working on How the Mighty Fall, my colleague Morten Hansen and I have been simultaneously working on a six-year research project to study companies that grew from vulnerability to greatness in severe environments characterized by rapid and unpredictable change in contrast to others that did not prevail in the same brutally turbulent environments.

Source:
Collins, Jim. How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 2009.
(Note: italics in original.)

A&P Sold Consumers Better and Lower-Priced Food

Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. A15) Mr. Levinson’s history centers on the two Hartford sons who followed their father into the business. They would spend their entire working lives at the company being known simply as “Mr. George” and “Mr. John.” Thoughtful and studious, Mr. George’s idea of excitement was a good jigsaw puzzle; Mr. John, somewhat more outgoing, liked the horses but also a daily lunch of milk and crackers. Together the brothers, neither of whom had finished high school, built what would be, for 40 years, the largest retail outlet in the world.

The brothers’ business philosophy was simple, writes Mr. Levinson: “If the company keeps its costs down and prices low, more shoppers would come through its doors, producing more profits than if it kept prices high.” The more stores they could open, the greater the take.
But the Hartfords had a public-relations problem. Since the nation’s earliest days, small family stores had served as community anchors. There were thousands across the country. Mom and pop knew every customer who came through their door; they extended credit to families down on their luck. If low-priced chains drove out such stores, what would happen to small-town America?
In fact, many mom-and-pop operations were inefficiently and incompetently run. A&P might be coldly corporate by comparison, but it offered consumers far more variety and fresher, better-quality goods at less cost to the family budget.

For the full review, see:
PATRICK COOKE. “BOOKSHELF; How a Grocer Bagged Profits; At its peak, the chain had nearly 16,000 stores. Critics charged it with competing unfairly by offering too-low prices.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., AUGUST 29, 2011): A15.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

The book under review is:
Levinson, Marc. The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America. New York: Hill and Wang, 2011.

Entrepreneur Sam Walton Sought to Learn from Others

(p. 40) So where is Ames at the time of this writing, in 2008?
Dead. Gone. Never to be heard from again. Wal-Mart is alive and well, #1 on the Fortune 500 with $379 billion in annual revenues.
What happened? What distinguished Wal-Mart from Ames?
A big part of the answer lies in Walton’s deep humility and learning orientation. In the late 1980s, a group of Brazilian investors bought a discount retail chain in South America. After purchasing the company, they figured they’d better learn more about discount retailing, so they sent off letters to about ten CEOs of American retailing companies, asking for a meeting to learn about how to run the new company better. All the (p. 41) CEOs either declined or neglected to respond, except one: Sam Walton.
When the Brazilians deplaned at Bentonville, Arkansas, a kindly, white-haired gentleman approached them, inquiring, “Can I help you?”
“Yes, we’re looking for Sam Walton.”
“That’s me,” said the man. He led them to his pickup truck, and the Brazilians piled in alongside Sam’s dog, Ol’ Roy.
Over the next few days, Walton barraged the Brazilians with question after question about their country, retailing in Latin America, and so on, often while standing at the kitchen sink washing and drying dishes after dinner. Finally, the Brazilians realized, Walton-the founder of what may well become the world’s first trillion-dollar-per-year corporation-sought first
and foremost to learn from them, not the other way around.

Source:
Collins, Jim. How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 2009.