New book on co-operation vs competition.
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New book on co-operation vs competition.
New book about the history of money, which might make for a good review in the ‘Standard:
Money by David McWilliams [economist]
Waterstones says:- “Charting the relationship between humans and money, McWilliams’ eye-opening and entertaining volume ranges across trade, science, art and philosophy.”
The synopsis:-
“‘Money. The object of our desires. The engine of our genius. Humanity’s greatest invention.’ [sic!]
“Whether we like it or not, our world revolves around money, but we rarely stop to think about it. What is money, where does it come from, and can it run out? What is this substance that drives trade, revolutions and discoveries; inspires art, philosophy and science?
“In this illuminating, sometimes irreverent, and often surprising journey, economist David McWilliams charts the relationship between humans and money – from a tally stick in ancient Africa to coins in Republican Greece, from mathematics in the medieval Arab world to the French Revolution, and from the emergence of the US dollar right up to today’s cryptocurrency and beyond. Along the way, we meet a host of characters who have innovated with money, disrupting society and changing the way we live, in an ongoing monetary evolution that has, for the last 5000 years, animated human progress.
“McWilliams unlocks the mysteries and power of money, explaining why it matters and how it shapes our world.”
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd
ISBN: 9781471195433
Number of pages: 416
Dimensions: 234 x 153 x 30 mmTM, any chance of you reading and reviewing the first one?
Of course we must be careful not to draw conclusions from the behaviour of one animal about the behaviour of another, including (and especially) not about human behaviour.
Humans are, like many other aninals, social by nature in the sense of living together. In our case, due to our biological nature, we can adapt (and have adapted) to living in a wide range of different societies.
From this we can conclude that we are capable of living in a socialist society but not that capitalism is against “human nature” and that socialism is the “natural” form of human existence. After all, capitalism too involves co-operation and no human society could exist without it. Both capitalism and socialism are compatible with human biological nature.
I don’t have the stamina for composition that I used to have. Are there not other comrades interested in other species and in mutual aid in both human and nonhuman societies, who would like a chance to write for the Standard?
I’ve been over this subject so many times, and with diabetes I am lately tired every day.
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