Joshua

Good general outline

Revisado: 03-06-23

A solid outline of the economic structure (and conditions) that gave birth to feudalism, and how an evolution of those economic conditions effectively ended feudalism. Also describes in detail the institution of vassalage.

This short book is excellent for someone wanting to learn the fundamental, institutional mechanics that governed the Feudal age.

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Very informative. Engaging narrative history

Revisado: 11-27-22

I was away from family this Thanksgiving and decided to purchase an audio book to try to fill in the time. I definitely got carried away listening to this one, and I also actively searched google maps to find the locations of everything being described. Doing this, I realized just how extensively the beaver trappers (aka mountain men) of the 1820's and 30's trekked across the far West of North America. While listening to this book (and using google maps), I gained a substantial familiarity with the geography of the West, along with which areas are passable on foot, with pack mules or with wagons.

Before this read, I was not very familiar with the Geography of the West outside of the current major mountain ranges, interstate highways and rail systems. Now if I were to go across the West on foot, I have a basic idea of the routes that one would take, and where they are located. Not that I have the requisite mountaineering skills.

I took the time to trace every major and minor river system from their headwaters all the way down to their mouths where they pay tribute to greater rivers or else where they meet the ocean. Also took notes on where Native Americans had the most luck in holding out the longest against commercial expansion. Particularly noticing the Blackfeet tribe at the Three Forks.

Before this book, I didn't really know any history of the Blackfeet, Crow, Flathead or Nez Perce tribes. Now I have become a bit more familiar with this particular chapter of their history along with that of other aspects of the Western US in the 1820's and 30's.

Good read if you have some time to waste!

FYI, Google maps does not currently have labels on Wind River, Powder River and the Shoshone River.

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Excellent

Revisado: 04-08-21

Matt Ridley's optimism is well founded in that the world can and probably will become an economically rich place, including providing relief to most of the impoverished of the world. Energy, capital, innovation and trade are all lining up to eradicate poverty one step at a time. It is proper to celebrate these things, especially when most of us readers in the first world can never fully imagine the horrors and suffering of the third world. Despite this optimistic reality, it is important to note that becoming rich leads to what the famous psychologist John B Calhoun described as a behavioral sink, and we in the first world are beginning to feel this very real and serious phenomenon in full swing.

Suspended from the many forces of nature and tribalism to which our species evolved, we will begin to unravel culturally and perhaps genetically as well. Just as the bones and muscles of astronauts atrophy during their missions to space, and just as the character of a prince is corrupted by unchecked power and pleasure, so too will the fundamental character of a society degenerate when reputation is replaced with anonymity, reciprocity replaced with money, and retribution replaced by the state, and all ultimately replaced with indifference.

In his earlier work (On the Origins of Virtue), Ridley argues that the evolution of social intelligence is built upon the need to track reciprocity across time such as in vampire bats in their sharing of food, and then baboons, chimps, and dolphins in cooperative mating strategies requiring reciprocity.

If the ecology of modern industrial civilization does not require reciprocity, are we not at risk of degenerating culturally?

The behavioral sink of Calhoun's mouse Utopia did not end with just social unraveling, it ended with the entire population of mice dying off, even though they had their every need met.

If one were to try to break an adversary's bones in battle, one might use a club or an axe. Who could have guessed that they could unravel simply by removing the force of gravity.
In a similar way, higher civilization with its rule of law, property rights and general prosperity removes who knows how many identified and unidentified forces from acting upon mankind at both the individual and group level.

Ibn Khaldun, whom Ridley references in this book, identifies one of the forces of tribal man and calls it Assabiah (spell check?). Men with it tend to naturally generate at the frontiers of civilization and end up conquering the completely degenerated empires to which they are adjacent.

Cities are beasts which require many inputs; the labor of man being near the top of the list. Therefore man is a food, so to speak, of big cities. In ancient times, cities would hunt for their food by capturing and enslaving nearby tribal populations. In modern times, the cities have found a new strategy for acquiring their food. They have become more like a Venus flytrap enticing human populations with the very real possibility of nectar and then slowly digesting the labor once the populations have entered into her. As Ridley mentioned in this book, populations do not do a lot of breeding in the commercial cities; these cities are a net consumer of people. Perhaps the Amish have learned how to resist this nectar more or less?

The less that man is able to depend on Capital to meet their wants and needs, the more they must depend on cooperation by other means. Such populations will always be at a vast material disadvantage to their commercial counterparts, yet they will be at a biological and spiritual advantage. The forces that have shaped our species for hundreds of thousands of years will act upon those who are unable to use capital to facilitate cooperation and keep those populations from atrophy both at the individual and group level.

There seems to be a negative correlation between economic and technological success on the one hand and biological and spiritual success on the other.

As we rightly celebrate the accomplishments of capital and it's successful advances against poverty, let us stop to consider that the Amish, the Afghans and the Africans still have something important to teach us.

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An illumination of the post Breton-Woods world

Revisado: 12-01-20

This analysis is ground breaking and brings a world that is usually constrained to Academia to a format that any educated citizen can easy absorb and digest. After reading this book you will understand the geography, economics, demography and politics of every major player on the board, each with their respective geopolitical fears, motives, capabilities and limitations.

Zeihans style is also somewhat humorous with a peppering of dark humor here and there. I found myself laughing out loud a couple of times and appreciating the light heartedness amidst a sometimes serious and heavy subject. It makes the learning and absorbing more fun and palatable.

While the depth of analysis is truly incredible, I sometimes found the limitation of nation-states as the primary players to be, well, limiting. Though I suppose to go any deeper would go beyond the scope of this book. If Russia eventually collapses as a nation state due to demographic decline and the proliferation of other ethnic groups within the state's borders, what would the resultant geopolitical picture look like? Fire-arms are now ubiquitous world wide. How will this change the political landscape in rural Russia or Chechnya?

Also when analyzing Russia, Zeihan basically boiled the population decline down to an agrarian population being crammed into close living quarters and thus not having the space for recreation or the privacy for procreation. This chapter made me laugh multiple times. Fair enough, however, a deeper insight into the nature and causes of population ascension and decline would be an incredible tool to add to this arsenal of geopolitical analysis and forecast. After all, what is the old saying? "Demography is destiny".
I would love to see Zeihan expand his analysis much deeper into the realm of demography exploring the nature of the trends more thoroughly and then potentially giving tips on how to reverse demographic decline for world leaders to consider. This would be a real golden egg.

Overall an excellent distillation of the present state of affairs based on sound geopolitical principles, hard data and real world trends. I have gained a much deeper understanding of the world after reading this book and look forward to reading more of Zeihans work in the future.

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