Reviews for The laws of history

The average rating for The laws of history based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-02-19 00:00:00 E. Suzanne Rowland This is book three of a trilogy that begins with The Dynamic Society. I didn't do a detailed reading of part 2, skimming it briefly, because I was simply too excited to see the end result. Except for his usual wordiness and hard concepts the author did not disappoint. His framework for history is thorough and well developed. There will be new and innovative concepts for everyone in this book. The book is divided into two sections. The first section discusses the past attempts to uncover the laws of history, the different methods used in conducting that research, and how he improved on those methods in his research. The second section reiterates his historical research conclusions and describes the laws of history developed in book 1 and 2 of the trilogy. There have been a few attempts through the millennia at deriving the laws of history. He puts these into two categories although JS Mill seems to fall between the two. There is the inductive/empirical camp, which decries deductive thinking and as a result resorts to purely factual retelling or, at best, finding patterns in outcomes of events. Then there is the deductive camp which creates metaphysical creations in their minds and projects those onto history. These are the most famous authors of laws of history such as: Spengler, Toynbee and Marx. He describes these as the two extremes of scientific analysis. He argues deduction and induction both need to be used to analyze patterns in the historical processes that generate events, using deductive models. This is also Bertrand Roehner's conclusion on scientific methodology in history in "Patterns and Repertoire in History" - no wonder they are friends. In order to generate his laws he looks at a civilizations across time, the patterns in quantitative and qualitative data, tries to understand the processes that generate the data, and then generalize on the processes. The laws are divided into three sets. The first describes the primary laws from which all others are derived. The most important of these is that the human desire to survive and prosper is the fundamental driver of civilization. The secondary laws describe mechanisms and some are more oriented to certain periods of history. The tertiary laws are about the institutions and organizations we build. There are 22 laws in total, which is too many to describe here. I think I am so enamored with this book because it touches on two of my own hobby research projects: how we form knowledge and beliefs; and the mechanics of historical change. His ideas fit well with my (still evolving) thoughts on these two issues, which encourages me. I think its fair to compare his research to bottom-up models of economics, such as ABMs. The outcomes are fundamentally driven by the desires of agents. Their self-organizing behaviour creates the conditions for them to meet those desires. Should those conditions no longer be useful to meet the desire to survive and prosper, the agents will change their behaviour and restructure their society, etc., etc. To be clear he doesn't put it in those terms and is openly against ABMs in other papers. This is purely my interpretation of his research through my lens. I hope that his research gains more traction some day, because he has really valuable things to say about the laws of history and dynamics of society.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-03-08 00:00:00 Bernice Aldrich There have been a number of books recently about the failures of market economics. You could be forgiven for thinking this is a recent concern following the global financial crisis (what the US calls the Great Recession). But this debate has been raging for decades, with one of the key contributors being John Kenneth Galbraith. Galbraith’s core conclusion in this book is that "left to themselves, economic forces do not work out for the best except perhaps for the powerful.’ (p ix) Galbraith notes that much public policy is based on the assumptions of classical economics where market prices are established in competitive markets with many buyers and sellers. However in practice, the majority of economic activity falls outside the market system and occur in the ‘planning system’ where markets are determined by few sellers (what economists refer to as oligopolies). Neo-classical model denies the existence of corporate power whereas the accumulation and exercise of power over consumers and the states are key characteristics of entities operating in the planning system. This is more than evident to day in the concentration of players in certain industries (eg aviation, automotives, supermarkets, pharmaceuticals), the extent of corporate lobbying, and the size of government activity in the economy. The relationship between the planning and the market systems, their unequal rate of development, and the exploitation of market forces by oligopolies and the resulting inequality in returns, are the central concern of this book.’ (p128) In the planning system power passes from the consumer to the producer. This results in: irrationally excessive production; distortions to income distribution; threats to the environment; and exploitation of consumers. By their nature, oligopolistic entities operating in the planning system have two fundamental purposes: 1. protect their earnings; and 2. growth. As organisations increase in size, they have increasing power in the markets, over community attitudes and in relation to the state which helps to protect their earnings. Above a certain size, ‘members of the technostructure’ are rewarded by growth and scale rather than profits. This also results in a focus on acquisitions rather than organic growth. Galbraith argues that this explains the rise of the conglomerates, driven not by scale economies but simply by scale itself - propelled by CEO salaries determined by organisational size not shareholder returns. One of the consequences of the level of activity occurring in the planning system is the increased role for the state. In neo-classical economics the state had a small subsidiary role. In oligopolistic markets the state is a large purchaser of products and services and has the potential to be decisive for the development of particular industries. The distribution of public resources reflects the power of the planning systems over the state. Locking in contracts, often with the state, becomes a core activity to protect an oligopolies profits, rather than production of sales. Galbraith’s cogent arguments were being advanced during a period where the debate was between the free-market economists of the Chicago School (most notably Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek) and the neo-Keynesians (including Galbriath and Joan Robinson). Ultimately, Galbraith implicitly, and correctly, argues that the absence of true market economies means that there is a role for government regulation and public policy to address the However he prescribes the wrong intervention. Galbraith concludes that because of the difference in economic powers the structure of the planning systems requires general wage and price control. These were adopted by Nixon in the US in the 1970s, but soon abandoned because they didn’t work. With his focus on oligopolies, Galbraith ignores other free-market assumptions which in some ways offer an even more compelling argument for intervention: market failure (eg imperfect information) , externalities (such as pollution and environmental damage), and behavioural economics. These are much richer areas to outline why we need to temper free market economics and provide a guide to effective public policy. Although written in the 1970s the arguments in this book as are important for people to understand now as they were almost half a century ago.