The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World)

Masterful, scholarly, and a little bleak - hopefully for a reason that is slightly misplaced.

I had thought this a popular history book, entreating and insightful but a little shallow, boy I was wrong!

This is a hard economic history work, with the emphasis on the economic (surprisingly for a historian). Expect lots of talk of GINI coefficients and top income shares. An immense amount of research went into it. There is a well built model and an interesting book structure. He recognizes the novel construction and acknowledges its flaws, along with data quality/availability issues.

We brilliantly span time from our ape forbearers and their shoulder adaptations, to speculations on the mid-term future and our cyber enhancements! Chimes nicely with Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari on this point. We go global, yet granular, with A fascinating study of a single German town during the 30 years war sticking in the mind.

The thesis is that only the 'four horseman' have ever caused significant and lasting economic compression - and always by levelling the top never by raising the bottom segment of society. The four horseman are mass mobilization warfare, total revolutions, state collapse, and pandemics. The first two are only really applicable to modern times. He includes their after effects, so the 30 year post WW2 inclusive boom is argued to be a direct consequence and not a new phenomenon.

I find a few of the suppositions like this arguable, but I cant reject any myself. I have come to see my communist acquaintances with a type of pity, I see their good intentions but misdiagnosis of capitalism as the issue, when its just humanity. Surplus leads to stratification, no need for capitalism. (Communism as applied in real life gets a deserved shellacking here for the untold misery and death it inflicted upon its unfortunate victims.)

The somewhat bleak outlook of the book comes from its unmistakable conclusions - inequality is almost a natural force, it rises inexorably over time unless smashed apart but one (or multiple!) of the horsemen. While this may appeal to the downtrodden or revolutionary among you, this is always worse for the poor, devastatingly bad. With some upside if you survive (better wages and conditions for labourers after the Black Death for example - but you have to survive the black death first). Soon enough inequality begins to rise once more. No other mechanism we have tried works, not economic growth, progressive tax, democracy, land reform or anything else - some ameliorate, but none reverse the trend. Nor would the main policy adjustments suggested by Tony Atkinson - noble winning expert on inequality.

Inequality has been booming since at least the 80s, with the 1% the main beneficiaries, this is all set to continue, as we have seen even during the pandemic with Bezos and Musk in particular, but all the 1% as a collective. European aging and anti immigrant sentiments will compound these trends.

My only glint of light here, comes from the question not addressed (on purpose) of just how bad is inequality in a modern rich society? As the author notes, most of the horsemen seem to have been wounded, if not banished (including pandemics if you look at the death toll in % terms).

If we become ever more unequal, yet the poor are richer than 99% of all humans that have ever lived, with good living standards combined with accessible medical and education systems will it be OK? I think maybe. At least not bad enough to force revolution. I am not suggesting we are there now, not in any major developed country, but I don't think we are so far away historically speaking, a kind of global Luxembourg. Boring but nice, even for the poorest.

On equity "we would do well to remember that with the rarest exception it was only ever brought forth with sorrow" indeed.