Thoughts on Books, Q1'26

To read:
1. The International Brigades, Giles Tremlett
2. Toward a History of Needs, Ivan Illich
3. The Invention of Science, Dan Wootton
4. No Logo, Naomi Klein
5. This Is For Everyone, Tim Breners-Lee
6. Hyperpolitics, Anton Jager
7. What Just Happened, James Gleick
8. Radical Technologies, Adam Greenfield
9. Crude Capitalism, Adam Hanieh
10. Superintelligence, Nick Bostrom
11. Korolev, James Harford
12. The Dialectical Biologist, Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin

Growth, Daniel Susskind

The full title of Susskind's latest book is Growth: A Reckoning. Would that this book live up to its subtitle. Generally, I did not enjoy this book. Rather than being especially critical (by which I mean, demonstrating critical thinking) of economic growth as a concept, Growth boils down to little more than a love letter to modern economics. In principle, I think this is fine. We are all allowed to have different opinions about the state of the field--the joke about two economists and three opinions exists for a reason. But in practice, it leaves the book shallow, and indulging in that worst of traits (a trait that will reoccur with John Casti's book, below) of pretending to be removed from the subject matter, while clearly rooting for one team. And the team that Susskind is rooting for is, well, the one he is supposed to be sujecting to a reckoning.

There are some more egregious and less egregious consequences of Susskind's perspective. The less egregious is where he deals with degrowth. This is not because I, too, am anti-degrowth (I think the degrowth literature has a lot of merits, particularly around the question of what growth is for). Rather, it is because Susskind's critique comes across as naive, and in this sense, it is almost innocently forgivable. For instance, he gets extremely hung up on the idea that degrowth = recession. Recessions are bad--people lose jobs, homes and access to the means of survival. But the climate crisis will be worse. An uninhabitable planet is, almost by definition, worse than any recession that an overproducing industry or financial shenanigans might produce. The more egregious is when Susskind tackles the question of growth in the future--can it continue, and can we grow faster? Susskind--quite incredibly, in my opinion--asserts that actually: Yes!, economic growth is unlimited, and rapid expansion of the economy can continue forever. Few economists who believe this would admit to such a belief, and perhaps for that, Susskind should be praised. Susskind argues growth is unlimited because ideas are unlimited and intangible. So long as we can produce ideas, we can produce economic growth.

I regard this as Susskind's more egregious sin because, intellectually, I see it as a bit of a betrayal. Whatever one might think of them, contemporary British economics writers have a cultural link to the brilliant economic philosophical moment of the 1930s, Keynes and the Bloomsberries, Bertrand Russell, Joan Robinson, and the so on. The rows of Victorian (maybe Georgian) houses that make up much of the UCL campus and Russell Square, not to mention the stunning architecture of Cambridge, of Kings, that cannot fail to transport a nerd back in time. This intellectual milieu--a uniquely British kind of economics, that the Americans have never replicated--dealt not only in immediate economics, but in the philosophy of life. What does it mean to have a good life? How much is enough? How can we ensure enoughness? In an era of stagnant growth and of ecological catastrophe, these questions--this uniquely British strand of economic thought--is more important than ever. And Susskind, the closest economist to a nepo baby I can think of (besides, maybe, Robert Akerlof, though I don't mean to disparage the guy), a man who effortlessly fits into the cultural institutions founded on this British economics milieu, just totally ignores it. It is a tremendous shame.

Nevertheless, and perhaps to the surprise of some given how much I do not like this book, I have decided this will be one of two recommended books for my MBA module next year. It is undeniably accessible, and discusses ideas like endogenous growth theory much more clearly than some of texts I have seen. It is also cheap (compared to a textbook) and short. Both are ideal for a classroom setting. I doubt this is what Susskind was going for--I asusme he was shooting for more of an aiport book/reads the FT kind of crowd. But still, credit where it is due, it is an accessible text that covers various relevant economic ideas around economic growth.

The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Robert Gordon

Coming off Friedman's Moral Consequences of Economic Growth and Susskind's Growth: A Reckoning, I was on a bit of a growth kick (I have been trying, and failing, to write something on degrowth for a while, if you must know...). I anticipated Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth to be much the same as these. A bit shallow in places, wedded to an established orthordoxy around growth, and so on. Now, to be sure, Gordon's work is not radical or heterodox. It's a pretty straightforward piece of economic history. Where I do think Gordon's book becomes more interesting, and generally meaningful to the overall economic growth discussion, is a) in his assertion that new technologies have diminishing growth effects compared to older technoloies; and b) that the welfare effects of many older technologies have probably been underestimated.

I find myself intuitively resonating with Gordon's first proposition. The crux of the argument is that human experience can improve quite rapidly when you have things like running water, electric light, and stable food systems. Once these things, that strike much closer to the heart of our biological needs, are satisfied, it is much harder to invent similarly impactful technologies. The clear example of this is the computer. Now, most people seem to think the computer has been transformational. Computing has become ubiquitous. But, in some important ways, computing has hardly changed things for the better. There is tremendous potential in some manufacturing sectors, but the promises of greater human connection seem a bit shallow in retrospect, while the fragility of our information ecosystem is demonstrated daily with the bombardment of shit, a phenomenon only accelerating with generative AI. Technologies have been used to disrupt social pillars that people actually quite like, from the highstreet to reasonably well-paid jobs. Meanwhile, the working day has not gone down--computers might have even intensified working hours by blurring the boundaries of work. Neither has wages risen that substantially. From a productivity perspective, Gordon argues computers had a temporary productivity effect, before this uptick disappeared. And now, we're stuck in a digitised world. The point is, computers do not often cut to the heart of human needs, and given the structure of our economies are shaped substantially around the satisfaction of human needs (however inequitably), the scope for meaningful economic disruption through computers was limited. Hardly zero. But also hardly the same as sanitation in cities or electricity in homes and factories.

This degree of nuance, I think, is something that discussions like Susskind's misses. Yes, of course, ideas are important, and much of the endogenous growth literature should be praised for championing the argument that just building more roads and bridges and other capital infrastructure will not spur growth. It is cognitive labour that combines to identify better ways of manipulating the material world. But, as Gordon's analysis keeps coming back to, the ultimate impact on our lives is the material effect. Susskind misses this emphasis, in my opinion. Gordon, by contrast, highlights how economists, through a focus on productivity, have probably missed the true impact of some technologies throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As much as I complain about computers, the computer has undoubtedly made being a researcher easier. It just might not have made me more productive. This is a personal, and perhaps not widely applicable, example. But the rationale applies to electric light, too. My life is better for having electric light, as I'm sure yours is, too. Those extra hours of working light, though, probably haven't translated to you working every hour you are not asleep. Gordon's point is that the story of technology and human welfare is a much broader story than that of technology and economic growth. As above, it is why, rather than talking about 'growth,' the whole discipline would benefit from a re-embrace of economic philosophy. What is growth for? What is any of this for?

How Progress Ends, Carl Benedikt Frey

I am going to be nicer about this book than my gut would perhaps lead me to be. A key feeling I have about this book is that I must, at some point, read it again. I feel like I must have missed something. While I do not claim to have an especially good memory, I find myself remembering essentially nothing about this book. It has slipped through my mind. Now, maybe this is because I was getting bored of reading books about economic growth at this point. There is a lot of truth to this hypothesis, I think. But I also think, substantially, I failed to taken any of How Progress Ends in because I didn't really see why CB Frey was trying to do. Or more, what new thing he was doing with this book.

I reiterate--I probably should, at some point, reread this book. There is probably something here. But it felt like a book that immediately failed. A book called How Progress Ends should, surely, but a contemporary analysis of investment cycles, new technologies, political economy, existential threats. I was looking forward to reading what Frey thought about these things. I do not perfectly agree with him--Frey seems to have the same flavour of economics about him as Susskind (though I prefer Frey, intellectually speaking). This lack of agreement is why I can get so much out of these kinds of books. I might think a person is an idiot, but in terms of enlightening me, reading the views of people who think differently to you is invaluable. But Frey does not critique contemporary economics, really. He does not really say all that much that could fall under the banner of How Progress Ends, at least as I remember it (again, this book failed to make much of an impact on my grey matter). Instead, it's a whole load of history. Now, Frey is a historian. I should expect this. I also like history. But Frey's last book--The Technology Trap--covered much of the ground explored here. I wanted to see something new from Frey. And--I just didn't. I think this is why none of it went in. I had no buy in. I saw no hook. I felt the title existed to disguise a very dull treatise.

Maybe I am wrong. I hope I am wrong. I hope someone gets mad at me, calls me an idiot, and tells me that I have missed so much about this book. But, sincerely, none of it went in. I was looking, and found nothing. It's quite a shame.

Paradigms Lost: Images of Man in the Mirror of Science, John Casti

There is a paradox, which I know as the Gell-Mann paradox, that goes like this. Distinguished physicist Murray Gell-Mann is reading the newspaper. He sees a news story on a recent physics discovery. Knowing a thing or two about physics, he drives in with great enthusiasm. Very quickly, he is disappointed. Murray discovers that the story oversimplifies the physics. It misinterprets some of the quotes. It deploys technical terminology in quite inaccurate ways. It is, in short, a bad story, an example that should demand any reader's trust in the newspaper as a source of physics information. Anyway, Murray turns over the page, and eagerly consumes the latest political analysis about an election he must confess he is no expert in.

The Gell-Mann paradox is that people can often trust sources of information when they are non-experts on the topic, but see how shallow and inaccurate the same source is when it is on a subject they are an expert in. Murray should not trust the political analysis in the newspaper, because it is likely to be as accurate as the atrocious phyiscs write-up that he has just mentally dismantled. And yet, he does.

I bring up the Gell-Mann paradox because, in reading John Casti's Paradigm's Lost, I was reminded of it. Paradigm's Lost is an old--1989--general popular science book that discusses various (as of then) cutting-edge theories about human nature and our place in the univerise. It looks at biology, language, the origin of life, the possibilities of extraterrestial life, and so on. While the book is dated--for instance, Casti's discussion of extraterrestial life says nothing on exoplanets because, in 1989, we knew very little about exoplanets--it is a fun read regardless. I appreciated Casti's angle of treating each angle as a courtroom trial, with a leading theory around a big question juxtaposed against various criticisms. It was very much a celebration of a 'I fucking love science' person's idea of how the scientific method works.

The Gell-Mann paradox moment came in his chapter on human behaviour and sociobiology. Casti weighs in on the debate between E. O. Wilson and R. C. Lewontin. Now, as much as I love Lewontin, I can appreciate his is a difficult and at times controversial thinker. From my own experience, few of us--let alone scientists--are taught to interrogate our own ideology. Lewontin's assertion on the role of ideology in the production of science is therefore, I imagine, a tremendous source of discomfort for some scientists. I can also appreciate how, for someone like Lewontin confronting an interpretation of human genetics that will potentially cause tremendous social harm (sociobiology), he may treat those who deny the role of ideology in science much more personally than he would if just debating the subject matter. R. C. Lewontin was a much bolder, and braver, academic than I think I will ever be. But--and this is my actual point--I think Lewontin is pretty much right about everything. I do not know sociobiology that well, but I do know behavioural science and nudge theory extremely well, and I can see how ideology works in subtle ways to shape the application of science. I have written about it multiple times. And so, when Casti dismisses Lewontin's critiques as nothing more than fashionable left-wing gate-keeping, as absurd and naive and grossly personal attacks, as critiques lacking in any scientific substance, I cannot help much come to realise that Casti's book is not actually that well informed. It is not that critical, not that fair and balanced. Not that curious.

Maybe I am butthurt. Casti has shat on one of my favourite science writers, and now I am mad at Casti. There is probably some truth to this. But like the paradox goes, I kept reading. I did genuinely enjoy elements of Paradigms Lost. The chapter on the origin of life, for instance, was really interesting. But I also couldn't shake this feeling. I felt a bit vindicated when I read Casti's chapter on extraterrestial life, because it is just a lame--I might even say lazy--exploration of the Drake equation. And, for such an interesting topic, this is perhaps the least inspired when to explore it. (Incidentally, I recently discovered that John Casti has had several incidents of plagiarism in his career. I don't really know the context behind these incidents)

Chokepoints, Edward Fishman

I bought Chokepoints somewhat on a whim, and somewhat for research. The book has been widely praised by The Financial Times, amongst others. It certainly has vibes of Chris Miller's Chip War, another recent darling of the FT's business book section and, truth be told, a book I very much enjoyed. So, I was looking forward to Chokepoints. In the round, I would say this is a decent book. It is readable enough, and makes a good attempt to present things as dull as obscure international financial regulations as if they were James Bond esque international espionage matters (which, according to Fishman, they sometimes might be). Yet, my impression upon finishing the book was that it felt a bit shallow, or at least, a bit Washington. Fishman wants to prevent economic weapons, like sanctions, as some new paradigm shaping modern conflict. To an extent, this is true. But the wider extent reveals that there is much more at play, relating to geography, access to resources, the commodification of weapons systems (sometimes called the 'democratisation of precision strike capabilities') and the shift in Western hegemonic power away from manufacturing and towards intellectual property and finance. Economic weapons, then, are not the prominent tools of the US and Europe because they're novel per se, but because they're politically acceptable within a globalised, post-industrial economic context.

Hence, I return to the shallowness. Fishman's attempt to paint economic weapons as new, dangerous, and a bit sexy, misses (in my opinion) so much of the wider political economic story at play here. In doing so, the typical FT reader will appear knowledgeable when dinner party conversation turns to America's latest sanctions regime against Russia. It does little to explain, though, why American hegemony is collapsing and conflict is rising. To borrow a perspective from Baudrillard, Chokepoints has a flavour of the virtual about it--a stylised description of reality, but one (by virtue of stylisation) not actually reflective of the full reality. I worry this review sounds too negative, and I do not mean it in that way. But in contrast to the actually book on economic weapons, Chokepoints does come across as a bit shallow, too Washington-centric, a tad incurious and--bizarrely--very poorly referenced.

The Uses and Abuses of Weaponized Interdependence, various

When I say the book on economic weapons, I am referring to The Uses and Abuses of Weaponized Interdependence. This book is a collection of essays written by various international relations scholars around the topic of weaponized interdependence, or WI. Economic sanctions, like blocking banks from operating in certain countries, is--under particular circumstances--WI, and so Chokepoints is really a WI book. But unlike Chokepoints, which is written for the FT crowd, The Uses and Abuses of Weaponized Interdependence is a unashamedly academic book. It delves into the network theory behind the idea, offers details definitions of concepts, is rich with examples (several of which, one wonders, whether Fishman was inspired by), and introduces concepts in addition to those discussed by Fishman's Chokepoints. I am conscious that WI and economic weapons is a very niche area, so I will not linger on this point. I will simply say that while Chokepoints is good, and readable, The Uses and Abuses of Weaponized Interdependence is better for someone wanting to gain a deeper understanding of the topic (as, admittedly, I did).

October, China Mieville

The final book of the quarter is also the one I enjoyed the most. I picked up China Mieville's October for three reasons. Firstly, I had heard positive things about Mieville's literary analysis of The Communist Manifesto, and so I wanted to see what he (they?) were like as a writer. Secondly, I am very interested in Lenin and the Russian Revolution, though owing to language and the natural complexity of revolutionary moments (*cough* the French Revolution), it can be hard to find accessible material. I hoped (given reason #1) this book would be accessible. Thirdly, I found it in a charity shop for £3 or £4, too cheap to be that bothered if it wasn't that good (reason #1) or that accessible (reason #2).

Mieville's account of the Russian Revolution mostly begins in February, and tells a month-by-month story of how the Provisional Government was born, attacked, and collapsed. All the while, Mieville traces the activities of the Bolshevik's, and Lenin specifically. Mieville's at his best when detailing the pains of party management that faced the Bolshevik's--including the debates around the nature of the revolutionary moment--but also Lenin's own calculus about the potential of a socialist revolution given the war, the counterrevolutionary forces, and the general failure of the Provisional Government (that was happening without Bolshevik antagonism). I have learnt bits and pieces about Lenin's views on political strategy, and this is something I think Mieville should have brought more into the narrative. Without it, the narrative reads a bit as though Lenin was simply too curious, or too ignorant of the actual revolutionary potential of the moment, rather than concerned about the political maturity of the revolutionary working class, and the relative strength of the Provisional Government (sometimes with, and sometimes without, the counterrevolution). I also found Mieville's discussion of the various parties and factions a bit presumptuous at times. One gets the sense that October is not meant as an introduction to the topic, but as an alternative account of the revolution, compared to be liberal historical perspectives.

Finally, and maybe this is unkind, the book ends too soon. Yes, while the book is called October and concerns the October revolution, it is much more a book at Lenin, the realities of government, and the revolutionary strategy particular in relation to counterrevolutionary forces. To end with the successful revolution in October misses out on so much, like The New Economic Plan, Trotsky's construction of the Red Army to fight the civil war, or even things like Kollontai's work around women's rights and, of course, the plotting of Stalin. Maybe Mieville will write this book, one day (maybe he has, I've not looked...)?