Bishop Hill The irrational polemicist
George Monbiot has written the most extraordinary review of the book I'm currently reading - Matt Ridley's Rational Optimist. I'm not sure I've ever read such a bilious review of a book before, and certainly few that have been devoted quite so much space to ad hominems. If anything, Monbiot comes over as slightly deranged. Ridley has nevertheless posted a polite and detailed rebuttal here (James Delingpole weighs in here). But despite appearing to be the rantings of a lunatic, Monbiot's is still an interesting piece - mainly for what it leaves out.
I'm at an early stage of the book, but some of the thesis that Ridley puts over in the first few pages is very clever indeed. As I read it, it found myself thinking "lefties are going to hate this". The reason is that Ridley has collated a great deal of scientific evidence to show that what differentiates humans from Neanderthals is, in essence, trade. Neanderthal brains were as big as human ones, they appear likely to have had sophisticated linguistic abilities too. The only thing that seems to have taken happened at the right time to explain mankind's sudden overtaking of his Neanderthal cousins was the ability to exchange things.
In other words, it is free trade that makes us human.
You can see why George Monbiot might not like it, can't you? Which is why I found his review so interesting, because he doesn't mention this part of the book at all.
Funny that.
Reader Comments (49)
Sorry to be slightly off topic but this links both Monbiot and Monckton (your next article). Monbiot has delighted in highlighting an attack on Monckton and Soon:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/jun/03/monckton-climate-change
The attack is by John Abraham and can be found here:
http://www.stthomas.edu/engineering/jpabraham/
It is pretty easy to discredit Abraham throughout his attack due to obvious cherry-picked data, straw men and ad hominens. It is also interesting to see the usual Team players emerge to support him.
Barter, trade, across tribal boundaries implies not only linguistic skills but socio-cultural hierarchies dividing haves from have-nots --rich from poor-- plus a tally system rationally capable of making qualitative distinctions: Two shells as a medium of exchange for (say) three pelts, five grain-bags, whatever... "Communication" is this sense entails a complex spectrum of interacting variables, requiring abstract intelligence to quantify profit-and-loss in very specific "economic" terms. Absent these abilities, against such as the Cro-Magnons (a disputed category) Neanderthals' relatively isolated and impoverished tribal groups would fail.
Trade as such is but a symptom, indicative of wide-ranging perspective plus ability to plan ahead and act in concert as directed by a honcho-in-chief. No evolutionary advantage, no trade; no trade, no evolutionary advantage. Mutually beneficial exchanges improve everyone's well-being: To the extent blinkered ideologues frustrate and manipulate the process, raking off unearned premiums, just so will their benighted polities recede to shadows as did the Neanderthals.
@ John Blake,
John, You might like to read Hayek's "the use of knowledge in society" from about 1947.
There is no need for a "Honcho in Chief" to direct. Trade is a spontanaeously organizing phenomenon.
For a beautiful animated graphic that illustrates how life has improved for people since 1800, see
http://www.gapminder.org/world/
Click on “Play►” (you can also hover over the colored circles, etc.).
Here is a great quote from Agenda 21, which was adopted at the UN Conference on Environment and Development, in Rio: “We are confronted with a perpetuation of disparities between and within nations, a worsening of poverty, hunger, ill health and illiteracy, and the continuing deterioration of the ecosystems on which we depend for our well-being”.
That quote is apparently one of the motivations of people like Monbiot, and other AGW alarmists. Compare the quote with the graphic.
Can there be any doubt left that Monbiot is a seriously disturbed individual? He has created a world of his own, and persists in defending it from attack. He deserves some sympathy, but he does not deserve to be taken seriously.
Monbiot is threatened thats all ... it was actually a good advert for the book ..i went straight online and bought it ( anything Moonbat hates so much has to be good ) ..sitting reading it now ..thank you George ..you muppet : )
It's worth remembering that, without his patrician family connections, Monbiot would be lucky to be doing anything more elevated than teaching geography in a sink comprehensive school.
I just had my copy of "Optimist" delivered and I was pleasantly surprise to see amongst the encomiums on the cover one from Ian McEwan. The two others include one from Steven Pinker and another from Boris Johnson!?.
Having already read much from Ridley and much from Monbiot on his Guardian blog I can only marvel that anyone could worry that undecided minds could take Monbiots prose seriously after having being exposed to Ridley...
It could be that is Monbiots only hope here - deflecting potential new readers from sane and sensible prose.
Neanderthals didn't have the ability to exchange things? Your inner loony is showing.
Oh , it is only when they put up a face towards the rest of us that lefties are against free trade. When they are surfing ebay they are cunning capitalists allright.
A Toyota Prius -without which you cannot come in public in many a quangocrat infested psuedobohemian neighbourhood- is not woodcrafted by the local greenery activist.
It seems bigcitylib can't exchange anything - like what she may have encoded in her last comment.
the neanderthals might have had the "ability" allright. The soviets did not lose the ability genetically to trade locally and yearn for freedom while they were living under the yoke of oba sorry Joe.
The issue might very well have been a cultural difference. Maybe the Neanderthals hunkered down in caves , being the strongest, physically, they won ownership of them. But this gave the weaker the opportunity to think and look beyond the cave, maybe find ideas for weapons from neighbours. The trade and free organisation concept gives that advantage.
The Neanderthal were 5year planning, in the darkest depths, a new revision of another phenolic wired telephone with now 15 instead of 12 buttons, while "out there" , evil capitalists were yakking on iPhones.The 5y plans and ever higher demands for the "free" care and food by females whose loud shrill whines give more chutzpah in a cave made them lose their edge, the poor Neanderthal.
Or maybe Ridley is entirely full of shit.
Hey! I've only just got the book, there are a lot of spoilers floating around here. I have yet to find out how these Neanderthals turn out. Maybe a few are still around ;)
Please excuse bigcitylib.
His quangocrat infested psuedobohemian neighborhood Party...no, no, scratch that.
His Toronto Party ... no, no, scratch that as well.
The Liberal Party of Canada has some issues at the moment.
Full of shit? maybe. My bets are he is NOT socialist.
With George on the other hand we have certainty.
Check out "the red queen" and its frontpage recommendation from "The Independent" of all extreme right wing think tanks (Were they paid by big-oil to do this?):
"A brilliant examination of the hows and whys of sex and evolution"
When they sing out of tune the authors / actors , character assassinations immediately kick in.. We saw that with superfreakonomics from Levitt/dubbner who dared vent something critical about AGW
Socioeconomically this leads to big institutes where all parott the same songs to each other. The BBC is the example. A big cave. It would be funny if it were not so that we have to pay for it.
Like MickeyD above, I treated Monbiot's reaction as the final endorsement I needed, and have now ordered the book. Keep up the good work, George!
This is my observation also. He is almost incomprehensible.
Did anyone else notice the word 'cornutopian'. I had to actually look that up. It doesn't exist. It is a compound of 'cornucopian' and 'utopian'. It seems Monbiot just made it up because he is lost for words.
i notice their link to the monckton debunked paper isnt working. maybe its been debunked. i noticed the first commentor at the guardian says things like:
'I suspect that the next PR battlefield is going to be about the extent to which the developing world can be allowed to develop, and the sorts of measures that can be considered acceptable to control population. '
man, we in trouble.
Pogo,
"It's worth remembering that, without his patrician family connections, Monbiot would be lucky to be doing anything more elevated than teaching geography in a sink comprehensive school."
------------------------------------------------------
Sorry Pogo, but "teaching geography in a sink comprehensive school" is a job that only a hero would attempt - Monboit is no hero.
If it wasn't for his soapbox position at the Grauniad, he would be unemployed, possibly under supervision in a care in the community programme for the mentally challenged.
"I'm at an early stage of the book, but some of the thesis that Ridley puts over in the first few pages is very clever indeed."
Clever but not new (sorry Matt!). Adam Smith does after all talk about the human propensity to truck and barter....
I’m afraid Monbiot’s world is one which exits only within his own consciousness. The propositions in Matt Ridley’s book are of course an anathema to Monbiot and his ilk. But look on the upside.....any book that gets the rabid Monbiot frothing at the mouth and spouting incoherent drivel will encourage the more balanced in society to buy the book.
I can't seem to find any book review at that link you provide.
"exchange things" misses the nuance of the book - firstly even animals extend it to include services - you pick my fleas and I'll pick yours. But the exchange is always for the same stuff.
It is the trade in non identical objects and services that is important - an ax head for a bead for a banana.
That starts a market, reckoning and all human wonderfulness...
Then there is the service industry in the animal kingdom: The lions clear the grazing patches for zebra so they can grow and prosper. Of course when they're old and tired the zebra, the repo man is sent after them.
Well I've not read the book but I seem to have read a different review. I was expecting a loony Monbiot but in fact he makes a very good point about the free-market dogma that seems to always fail in practise yet the proponents of it, far from learning that the real world isn't rational nor perfect nor has a magic invisible hand, always instead blame government for the failures of the experiment. In this particular case Ridley makes no sense because, as Monbiot points out, his own experience is that lack of government oversight caused the Northern Rock problem and government had to step in to save it. By Ridley's doctine NR would have disappeared and there would have been a run on every other bank followed by a total collapse of the banking system. That much is absolutely certain. Let's be clear, the government did not want, at any time, to buy any banks - it was forced into it by the irrational decisions of people who thought the rationality of the rest of the market would smooth everthing over. However, as is quite clear, if the whole edifice is based on the idea that house prices won't ever fall then Ridley and the other bankers were really very stupid. I presume they fell into the trap of just copying everyone else because surely somebody out there knew what they were doing. As it turns out, nobody did! So while i'd agree that optimism has it's uses, blind optimism is counter-productive.
Ridley's defense is strong on the environmental issues though it does seems to be a case of one persons word against another. Though I'm more impressed by the Inuit anecdotal evidence and Lomberg has always seemed more rational than his critics. However the article about the Asian economies does not support what Ridley asserts and his "probably" is 100% subjective. More likely protectionism and direction gave the initial boost and yes interventionism had some failures but mostly had successes. The experience of the car industry is actually that the effects of good management and happy workers (which is again largely due to good management) far outweighs any government involvement. Neither seem to mention this. The experience of the NAFTA agreement for the US car industry is that it shipped jobs to Mexico. Whether that is of long term benefit to the US remains a debatable subject. China has taken over as the world's manufacturer and as a result, they are the ones with all the money while the West has all the debt. While Japan had debt too they crucially owe that money to their own population of savers at zero percent interest.
Also the bit about financial markets adding to growth is all very well if you are talking about investment in businesses. However the biggest surge has been in speculation, notably in money-markets and various other zero-sum games. As far as I can see that has meant a world with far more volatility in exchange rates and commodities, which makes it rather more difficult for the businesses that buy raw materials (which they must then add value to) and create the real wealth in society. Worse is the assumption that we need to prop up these speculators with taxpayer cash which they then use to keep the commodity bubble going and hence continue to derail any potential recovery in the real economy.
The worst part of current economics is the assumption by too many that their doctine is correct and the others are wrong. The real world however doesn't follow any of these doctrines - it continues in it's own non-linear, multivariable, chaotic fashion. So sometimes government intervention is good, sometimes bad, sometimes necessary, sometimes inevitable.
@JamesG
Fill in the blank.....
'The worst part of current xxxxx is the assumption by too many that their doctrine is correct and the others are wrong. The real world however doesn't follow any of these doctrines - it continues in it's own non-linear, multivariable, chaotic fashion' .
Any resonances occur to anybody?
Actually,Moonbat demonstrates succinctly,with references,that Matt Ridley is a self-cooked goose. The free-market ideologue who ran to the loathsome government for help. Apparently,Ridley is now-and claims he was always-an advocate of careful regulation of financial markets. Can anyone produce evidence for his claim?
sHx,Moonbot provides a reference for the making of 'cornutopian'..
The ultimate cause of the problem with the banks was indeed chronic government interference, in the form of implicit and explicit guarantees supplied to them free of charge, which hopelessly weakened the entire industry. Reserve ratios - the percentage of deposited cash which is actually retained by the bank rather than lent out - has fallen from over 50% in the 19th century to 2-3% today (or a negative percentage in Northern Rock's case). That could not have happened in a free market, at least not on an industry-wide scale; nobody would lend to a bank if it tried to take on that much leverage without a government guarantee.
The banking industry had been rendered so unstable by government intervention that it was only a matter of time before it had a crisis, and the crisis could have been brought about by any number of proximate causes. Unfortunately most commentators blame the proximate causes, the particular individuals who happened to be involved at the time, and "free markets".
In a free market, firms fail from time to time; they aren't bailed out, people don't expect them to be bailed out, people arrange their affairs accordingly and so the failure of one firm doesn't bring down an industry or an economy. Banks were a long way from being a free market.
Hmmm..is bigcitylip the alter ego of Moonbat?
Moonbat is clearly a rtypical lefty self loathing lib which cannot cope with prosperity without feeling guilty about it. Now Georgie porgie, leave us alone and join the Movement of the Hooded Flagellants.
"Actually,Moonbat demonstrates succinctly,with references,that Matt Ridley is a self-cooked goose."
OK, now can you demonstrate succinctly that human had a better life 300 years ago?
Julian Franks of the London Business School discusses the long-standing government subsidy to the banking industry, which ultimately led to the banking crisis:
http://www.london.edu/videoandaudio/podcasts/whygovernmentguaranteesareadoubleedgedsword.html
The only thing that seems to have taken happened at the right time to explain mankind's sudden overtaking of his Neanderthal cousins was the ability to exchange things.
Tripe. For one thing, there is clear evidence that Neanderthal women and children lived apart in caves from the men, who were usually out hunting for meat and thus rarely in the caves. From time to time, the men return to the caves with large bundles of meat, which they exchanged for the amorous services of the women, thereby not only showing they had the ability to exchange "things" but also creating the oldest profession as well.
Man Caves were definitely not a Neanderthal creation, so it is much more likely that the invention of Man Caves by the Cro-Magnon is what differentiated them from the Neanderthals. While the Neanderthals were out running around chasing Saber Tooth Tigers, Mammoths, Giant Elk and other dangerous things, the Cro-Magnon settled into a life of luxury slumped into their overpadded chairs, drinking beer and watching the tele. Naturally, the Neanderthal active life style killed off quite a few, leading to their decline.
Also, Neanderthals are not extinct. They moved to New York City and became cab drivers. I suspect there are some in London as well. While most cab drivers in both cities today come from "Asia" (as the Brits like to say) 20 or 30 years ago it was clearly the case they were Neanderthals.
While I do expect some comment about these arguments, please remember they have as much evidence, if not more, than the "free trade" argument. :)
AGW hysteria peaked in 2008. It has been down hill ever since for climate alarmists, and it looks like the Global Warming bandwagon has plenty of loud-mouthed eco-loons on board but no brakes. A pity that - NOT!
The question is not 'Did Neanderthals trade' They probably had the ability to understand it as well as to trade in limited environment.
But the difference was in trading as a vocation. And to trade as a vocation, you have to expand your horizons to 'new and different'.
Pure hunter gatherers, it seems to me are content with 'enough to exist'.
The advancement of human civilization is owed to TRADE. Period
I've still not got round to starting this book but I have to say, looking at the arguments on this page, it seems the concept of the "competitive" influence of determinism and environment seem fully alive on this page.
I've read Ridley in Genome, and Pinker too. These guys are at the best end of sensibility that makes most sense in my mind.
Humans have more latent instincts than "lower" life" forms. But these human instincts, like the instincts of hamsters have yet to be neatly codified into a formula.
It takes thinking. I appreciate the full review of this book by a poster above above. However my instinct tells me I should still read it myself ;)
James Dellingpole has it in one with his blog
"Just what is it that greens like George Monbiot find so offensive about prosperity, abundance, happiness?"
Is George really a green, or is he just a professional playing to the Grauniad audience - very successfully, after all we all have to pay the mortgage. Like others I have also ordered the book on his recommendation so should Matt Ridley be paying Monbiot a sales commission?
Did you give George a copy of your Hockey Stick book ?
There's a kind of extended misofamilia about the Monbiots of this world. From their positions of bourgeois privilege they decide that everything is bad - their class, their country, their culture, everything that made them - and embrace the left. Usually it hits in adolescence, they chant a few slogans, listen to some Clash records, get laid by some revolutionary vegetarian and grow out of it. Those that don't grow out of it, well half a century ago they'd have spied for Stalin, now they cloak their hate in green.
Regarding Monbiot's screed, Mr. Ridley has my sympathy, as the target of a similarly venomous review of my own similar book -- a review, actually, of a caricature of my book, rather than its actual content. It's just amazing how people with that cynical leftist point of view can be so dishonest in intellectual argument.
(My book is THE CASE FOR RATIONAL OPTIMISM (Transaction Books, Rutgers University, 2009), which makes points and arguments quite similar to Ridley's, but develops the case for optimism over a rather broader range of subject areas. See http://www.fsrcoin.com/k.htm)
The advancement of human civilization is owed to TRADE. Period
Statements like this remind me of the old and now very discredited argument that the hallmark of humanity was toolmaking. Now they find that birds, apes, and even insects make and use tools. Beyond that I am left to wonder just why this is such an important argument. Why not the hallmark of Human Civilization's Advancement is the invention of the automobile? Or Tele? Or of a good pint of the black stuff? Surely a pint of Guinness will go much further? I have spent enough nights at a pub with me neighbors engaged in a round or two (or three) of drinking the blonde in a black skirt and craic (Gaelic for "good natured joking") to know that such an evening is far more civilized.
And may I point out the most of humanity's civilized dark side -- war -- is based on efforts to control trade. Having been shot at and and having shot back in The Nam, I can tell you that there is nothing civilized about war.
There's a kind of extended misofamilia about the Monbiots of this world.
I must agree with you Liam. You have made an excellent point. My problem is not that they hate themselves -- that is their right as far as I am concern -- but that they also insist on imposing their distorted view of the world on the rest of us. Monbiot is a twerp.
And Frank S. Robinson correctly called Georgie boy's diatribe a "screed." (Had to look that one up along with "misofamilia" )
God how I love this blog! It really builds the vocabulary! :)
More worthless diatribe from George Spambiot
It seems that Man's Neanderthal cousin wasn't exactly overtaken. More like 'absorbed':
Neanderthal genome yields insights into human evolution and evidence of interbreeding
Signs of Neanderthals mating with humans
Some Guy
No doubt that is one cause - but the entire cause? Not even close. Deregulation meant that a lot of people just let greed rather than common sense rule their entire decision-making structure. I'd agree that the collapse was predicted by the real free-marketeers and non-government interventionsists, ie the Von-mises, Hayek fans and I'm a big follower of certain free-marketeering dogma though not all. Strictly speaking, the Chicago school, not the Austrian school are the ones whose optimism is most mis-placed. The big issue though with both is this unrealistic assumption that a truly free market wouldn't have any problems. You repeat this dogma too. However reality has proven it to be wrong all over the world - since it was enthusiastically applied by the IMF and World bank under the name "Washington consensus". In real life any free market has a short lifespan because it is quickly gamed by monopolism, crony-capitalism and criminal mafias, ie by human nature. When you start off by assuming all of these things are likely, and will happen, then you automatically come up with the idea of more regulation.
However it's no good criticising things during the bust - the better economists did it during the boom. Hence anyone who didn't predict this economic disaster certainly isn't worth listening to now. Did Ridley predict the disaster? Why no he didn't - he was overly-optimistic! Similarly anyone who thinks there is currently a recovery thanks to getting into even bigger debt is also being overly-optimistic to put it mildly. And talking about allowing bad businesses to fail so that better businesses flourish is not nearly as good as preventing them from failing in the first place.
I'd encourage you to also take into account that free markets might be good for another country at the expense of your own. Fair enough for international investors and maybe ok long term for everyone but short term it leads to collapse of entire industries, really poor quality products from the 3rd world and mass unemployment in the developed world. Ergo globalization itself is a two edged sword - ie it's fine if you have a good plan for the short-term pain, pretty bad if you don't and seriously bad if you assumed debt-laden financial products were a good gdp replacement for manufacturing industry.
The advancement of human civilization is owed to TRADE. Period
"Statements like this remind me of the old and now very discredited argument that the hallmark of humanity was toolmaking. Now they find that birds, apes, and even insects make and use tools. Beyond that I am left to wonder just why this is such an important argument."
Step back and think about that statement. Apes use tools, sure, but they are FOUND tools which they consider sufficient. The fashioning of them is rudimentary or accidental at the least. Same as wiht the neanderthal and many aboriginals, they are content to subsist. Humanity never was. Neanderthals probably used flint to chip, chop and dig. Who added the handle? Who compounded the tool with a taut branch and sinew and added feathers to the stick on which the flint was mounted?
And when you cite wars over trade, do you also consider wars over hunter-gathering turf? Those wars can be averted with free AND EQUALLY beneficial trade.
Like say... trading tools for spices, just as an example.
No doubt that is one cause - but the entire cause? Not even close. Deregulation meant that a lot of people just let greed rather than common sense rule their entire decision-making structure.
The reason banking regulation was needed in the first place was to attempt to prevent the banks from gaming the government guarantees, in other words as a patch to unintended consequences of previous government intervention. Without the guarantees there wouldn't have been the leverage that was needed for the "greedy" behaviour, at least not on an industry-wide scale.
The big issue though with both is this unrealistic assumption that a truly free market wouldn't have any problems. You repeat this dogma too.
I hope I don't make that assumption, either implicitly or explicitly. All kinds of bad things happen in free markets. But they don't require industry-wide bailouts, as the government-subsidised banking industry did.
In real life any free market has a short lifespan because it is quickly gamed by monopolism, crony-capitalism and criminal mafias, ie by human nature. When you start off by assuming all of these things are likely, and will happen, then you automatically come up with the idea of more regulation.
Not keen to get into a general discussion about free markets on this forum although I would for example question whether people who make regulations are any less subject to greed, criminality etc than people in business; whether monopolies or crony capitalism aren't themselves generally implemented through regulation, and whether regulation can stop criminal mafias where standard criminal and civil law can't? Coming back to Monbiot's ad hominem critique of Ridley, the point about the banking industry was that it wasn't a free market and it was precisely its non-free-market nature, sheltering behind the subsidy of government guarantees, and greatly weakened over many decades by those guarantees, which required a bailout. In a free market there would have been no bailout, and no need for a bailout.
Monbiot is a classic conservative right wing anti capitalist of the kind that existed in Germany in the 1930s. No, he isn't a Nazi, but his friend Paul Kingsnorth who has close connections to the ultra right Goldsmith family is a lot closer.
For a brilliant summary of Monbiot's dishonesty and insanity, read this
Monbiot’s metamorphosis
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5479/
The responses are in...
Monbiot in all his glory..
I want to like Matt Ridley (a fellow Northumbrian), I really do. But I can't help feeling he still took the filthy lucre in the Northern Rock debacle. If he came out and said ¨well, I knew we would get a bail out¨, and detailed why he could be a great test case for free markets in banking and money systems, but he seems to shy away from the whole affair rather disappointingly. Unless anyone can point me towards something that suggests otherwise?