Category: History
Formaldehyde
Formaldehyde is a known irritant poison, capable of causing severe internal damage, and formic acid is equally destructive, best known to scientists as an essential part of the venom in bee stings. People poisoned by methyl alcohol would often seem to recover from that first bout of dizzy sickness, feel better while the alcohol was being metabolized, and then ten to thirty hours later by poisoned again by the breakdown products.
First, their vision would blur. The optic nerve and retina are acutely vulnerable to formic acid salts. The nerve, with its continual processing of images, runs in a high metabolic state, causing blood to circulate through it rapidly — which causes poison to be delivered there continuously. Autopsies often revealed a startling atrophy of the optic nerve area, the surrounding tissue swollen, bloody, and spongy. Methyl alcohol and its by-products caused similar damage in the parietal cortex, a region of the brain essential in processing vision. It concentrated as well in the hardworking lungs — the breakdown of pulmonary tissue was what usually killed people.
That is from the new and consistently interesting The Poisoners' Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, by Deborah Blum. Although she has won a Pulitzer Prize, she remains an underrated author.
Alcohol Poisoning
Deborah Blum writes about the Federal program to poison alcohol during prohibition:
Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.
What Blum fails to mention is that the Federal program to poison alcohol continues to this day. Drinking-alcohol is heavily taxed but ethanol is heavily subsidized so poisoning or denaturing is used to prevent arbitrage. Even today some people occasionally go blind or die when they try to drink some form of denatured ethanol but this is rare since safe, drinking alcohol is readily available, even if expensive.
(FYI, Tyler and I mention this unusual method of preventing arbitrage in our chapter on price discrimination in Modern Principles.)
Was Alaska a Good Buy?
The U.S. bought Alaska from the Russian Empire in 1867 for $7.2 million. At the time the purchase was derided as “Seward’s Folly,” but today it’s common to compare the purchase price with Alaska’s gross state product of $45 billion and claim it a resounding success. But is that the right comparison?
Most obviously one should correct for discounting, risk etc. Less obviously, but more importantly, one should start by thinking about total world product: Was total world product increased by the U.S. purchase? To the extent that the Russians would have held on to Alaska and would not have been able to fully exploit Alaska’s resources in the 20th century then perhaps the answer is yes. But if the U.S. had not purchased Alaska it’s plausible that Great Britain would have. So if the counter-factual was British purchase, then US purchase simply resulted in a redistribution of resources from British/Canadians to Americans with no increase in net wealth.
Moreover, given the ease of immigration at the time, economist David Barker argues that it’s closer to the truth to think that the redistribution was nominal only, i.e. from Alaskans calling themselves Canadians to more or less the same Alaskans of the same wealth calling themselves Americans. But why should other Americans be willing to pay for this nominal redistribution? Taking into account these considerations, Barker concludes:
Using a variety of assumptions and techniques for
valuing the net cash flows from Alaska, it is clear that the financial returns have not
been positive. The economic benefits that have been received from Alaska over the
years could have been obtained without purchasing the territory. In financial terms,
Alaska has clearly been a negative net present value project for the United States….[A] close analysis of non-economic factors also
casts doubt on the wisdom of the purchase….
True, the wisdom of purchasing Alaska is now moot, but the analysis raises questions of more than historical interest:
The results of this paper suggest new lines
of inquiry in the history of the West, such as: Has westward expansion been worth the
price? What have been the costs and benefits? Should expansion have been less or
greater than it was? Should United States expansion continue? Should the United States shrink by cutting ties with its remaining possessions? All of these questions
seem worthy of future research.
Hat tip: Ben Muse.
*The Rational Optimist*, the new Matt Ridley book
The subtitle is How Prosperity Evolves and you can buy it here. The book is due out in May. Excerpt:
In this book I have tried to build on both Adam Smith and Charles Darwin: to interpret human society as the product of a long history of what the philosopher Dan Dennett calls "bubble-up" evolution through natural selection among cultural rather than genetic variations, and as an emergent order generated by an invisible hand of individual transactions, not the product of a top-down determinism. I have tried to show that, just as sex made biological evolution cumulative, so exchange made cultural evolution cumulative and intelligence collective, and that there is therefore an inexorable tide in the affairs of men discernible beneath the chaos of their actions. A flood tide, not an ebb tide.
This book will be adored by fans of Julian Simon. Ridley is an optimist about the year 2100 and one of the final sections considers whether Africa and climate change will be exceptions to the generally optimistic trends.
Joel Mokyr on living standards during the Industrial Revolution
One of the notable arithmetical truths about the period of the Industrial Revolution is that it is quite possible (if not certain) that biological living standards in both urban and rural areas rose and yet average living standards declined. This can happen if urban living conditions are significantly worse than rural ones, and the proportion of people living in cities is rising because of migration from the countryside to the towns. It seems likely that the biological measures of living standards were especially sensitive to urbanization. While urban areas may have offered some positive amenities (such as entertainment and more choice in shopping), healthy living conditions were surely not among them.
That is from Mokyr's new and notable The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850. The obvious question of course is why so many people moved into cities. Did "new goods" make the urban living standard higher than some measures might suggest? Was it to avoid boredom? To avoid "rural idiocy" and invest in future IQ externalities for children?
Here is my previous post on the book.
Predators and multiple marginalization
Abraham Rosenwald likewise encountered a bewildering array of different groups in the forest after he escaped from Tartak [a concentration camp in Poland]. First, he encountered Bolek, who would not take his group of Jews since they had no weapons. A second partisan group robbed them of their few possessions. To live, "we went to the fields and gathered potatoes. The peasants ambushed us and beat us up." A third group of partisans murdered one of Abraham's companions, Israel Rosenberg, because they coveted his clothes. In one village they encountered a fourth group of partisans, whose commander would not let them join but nonetheless gave them some grenades for self-defense. Members of a fifth group of partisans robbed them once again, but this time the commander returned the stolen goods. A sixth partisan group agreed to take any Jews with prior military experience but subsequently murdered them. Abraham was finally allowed to joint a seventh group, from whom he received rifle training, but he became separated in escaping a German encirclement. An eighth group, led by "Piotor," allowed Jews to join but only to perform menial work, not fight. And the Jews were not allowed to stay with Piotor when he crossed over to the Russian lines. At this point, Abraham encountered Shlomo Einesman, who had left his hiding place. Einesman suggested the others return to that hiding place with him, since he had sufficient money. Instead, Abraham persisted in going east and this time made it across to the Soviets.
That is from Christopher R. Browning's new book Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp.
Early globalization
The Greenlander belonged to a Paleo-Eskimo culture called the Saqqaq by archaeologists. On the basis of his genome, the Saqqaq man’s closest living relatives are the Chukchis, people who live at the easternmost tip of Siberia. His ancestors split apart from Chukchis some 5,500 years ago, according to genetic calculations, implying the Saqqaq people’s ancestors must have traveled across the northern edges of North America until they reached Greenland.
Here is the full article. Call me crazy, but I've long been a (partial) fan of John Bailey's Sailing to Paradise: The Discovery of the Americas by 7000 B.C.
Relations
The source article is here.
Naughty Bits in the Bible
From a review of The Uncensored Bible:
In court we swear to tell the truth with a hand placed on the Bible. But in the book itself, Jacob, nearing death in Egypt, asks Joseph to swear an oath not to bury him there by “put[ting] your hand under my thigh” (Gen. 47:29). Earlier in Genesis, Jacob wrestles with God, who touches “the hollow of his [Jacob’s] thigh” (32:25). “Thigh” happens to be a biblical euphemism for male genitalia; it’s from Jacob’s “thigh” or “loins” that his numerous offspring sprang.
This was new to me:
The practice of swearing an oath while touching one’s or someone else’s testicles was common in the ancient Near East (Abraham also orders a servant to do just that in Genesis 24:2). Its linguistic memory survives in our word “testify”–testis being the Latin both for “witness” and the male generative gland.
I will never be able to listen to George Clinton and Parliament's funkadelic classic, "I just want to testify, what your love has done for me," in the same way again. The album title is interesting in this context also.
*The Enlightened Economy*
The subtitle is An Economic History of Britain, 1700-1850 and the author is Joel Mokyr. This is now the most comprehensive and indeed the currently definitive history of the British Industrial Revolution. Here is a short excerpt:
Despite the protestations of some scholars who call it "a misnomer," the idea of the Industrial Revolution will remain an essential concept in the economic history of Britain and the world. It was, in a narrow sense, neither exclusively industrial nor much of a revolution. But it remains in many ways the opening act of the still-developing drama of modern economic growth coupled to far-reaching change in society.
The main thesis (apart from the comprehensive coverage) is that ideas were of the central importance for the British take-off. Here is the book's website. Here is a blog review. I would not describe the book as "fun" but it is clearly written and does not require the knowledge of a specialist.
There is another new book on the Industrial Revolution, namely Robert C. Allen's The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective. It's all about how the British had high wages and cheap energy, a kind of Heckscher-Ohlin approach to why we're not eating mud cakes. It's good enough on its own terms, but it's a) question-begging in parts, and b) startling what a small role ideas play in the basic story. Indirectly, this book is proof that Mokyr's contribution is an important one.
Rename Capitalism Socialism?
Here's a potentially confusing footnote from Roderick Long:
There’s an ongoing dispute among libertarians over the meaning of
“capitalism.” While most libertarians use the term to refer to a free
market, a growing minority (examples include Kevin Carson, Gary Chartier, Charles Johnson, Sheldon Richman, and Brad Spangler) tend to reserve “capitalism” for the corporatist status quo, favoring “socialism” for the free-market alternative;
In a post titled Libertarians against capitalism, Sheldon Richman explains:
We are a group of libertarians who understand that historically the word "capitalism" has meant, not the free market, but crony capitalism — that is, collusion between business and State at the expense of consumers/workers. Thus we refuse to use the word "capitalism" to describe what we favor: individual liberty in all respects and free, competitive markets. We believe that what we have today IS capitalism — and we oppose it.
It is true that capitalism was named by its enemies. Thus, it's interesting to note that a socialist is someone who believes in socialism, a communist someone who believes in communism but a capitalist is someone with capital.
It's also true that capitalism is a truly social system, a system that unites the world in cooperation, peace and trade. Thus, if all were tabula rasa socialism might be a good name for capitalism. But that boat has sailed.
So if we name crony capitalism, capitalism, and if we can't name capitalism, socialism, then what should capitalism be named?
Estimating when the Soviets could produce a nuclear weapon
Following up on Alex's post on Soviet economic growth forecasts, I was intrigued to read the 1940s estimates, emanating from the United States, about when the Soviets would obtain a nuclear weapon. Leslie Groves — who knew something about building a bomb — testified in front of Congress that it would take them twenty years. In 1948 many Kremlinologists were saying "five to ten years," when in fact the Soviets had a usable bomb in 1949. In 1948 an engineer in Look magazine predicted the Soviets would get the bomb in 1954. Many scientists predicted 1952 and some thought 1970. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were predicted the mid- to late 1950s. The Air Force was the one institution which got it right and remarks from Senator Arthur Vandenberg were close to the truth as well.
Groves was skeptical of the Soviet engineers, who did not turn out to cause delays and who regularly did very well with what they had to work with. Other commentators did not realize that 40 percent of the world's known uranium reserves were within the Soviet Union, or that the Soviets could use German uranium quite well.
All this is from the truly excellent new book Red Cloud at Dawn: Truman, Stalin, and the End of the Atomic Monopoly, by Michael D. Gordin. Here is one very accurate review of the book.
One question is what kind of ideological biases, if any, colored these forecasts. Another question is whether today's estimates of Iranian production are any better.
Thai-Cambodia refugee camps, 1975-1999
Study this model and try to improve on it. Here is further historical information.
What does the domestic U.S. political equilibrium look like when we are funding and running these camps? Will Obama be seen as "doing too much" for "black people"? How will we punish wrongdoers in the camps? Will the residents be treated better than those in Guantanamo? What happens when we, explicitly or implicitly, start using Haitian gangs to keep order in the camps? How many Haitians will the DR shoot crossing the border?
Haitians are extremely nationalistic, sensitive to foreign influence, and they have a clear historical memory of the U.S. occupation of 1915-1934. What if they ask us to leave before the camps are self-sustaining? For how long will we pretend that Haiti still has a real government?
Those are my questions for today.
Why is Haiti so poor?, part II
Here is a short essay, I thank MR commentator Bobabdil for the pointer.
Why is Haiti so poor?
I'm not interested in talking about Greg Clark or making comparisons to the West; if need be compare it to other black Caribbean nations, such as Jamaica or Barbados. It's much worse and in terms of social indicators it is also worse than many places in Africa. Why? Here a few hypotheses (NB: I don't endorse all of them):
1. Haiti cut its colonial ties too early, rebelling against the French in the early 19th century and achieving complete independence. Guadaloupe and Martinique are still riding the gravy train and French aid is a huge chunk of their gdps.
2. Haiti was a French colony in the first place and French colonies do less well.
3. Sugar cane gave Haiti some early characteristics of "the resource curse," dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries.
4. Haiti was doing OK until the Duvaliers destroyed civil society, thus putting the country on a path toward destruction. It is a more or less random one-time event which wrecked the place.
5. Hegel was correct that the "voodoo religion," with its intransitive power relations among the gods, was prone to producing political intransitivity as well. (Isn't that a startling insight for a guy who didn't travel the broader world much?)
6. For reasons peculiar to the history of the slave trade, Haitian slaves came from many different parts of Africa and thus Haitian internal culture has long had lower levels of cohesion and cooperation. (The former point about the mix is true, but the cultural point is speculation.)
7. Haiti has higher than average levels of polygamy (but is this cause or effect?)
8. In the early to mid twentieth century, Haiti was poorly situated to attract Chinese and other immigrants, unlike say Jamaica or Trinidad. It is interesting that many of the wealthiest families in Haiti are Lebanese, such as the Naders.
Overall I don't find this set of possible factors very satisfactory. Is it asking too much to wish for an economics profession that is obsessed with such a question?
If you are looking for some cross-sectional variation to ponder, consider the fate of Haitians in Suriname (they make up a big chunk of the population there), Haiti vs. Santiago, Cuba, pre-Castro of course, or why early Haitian migrants to Montreal have done better than later migrants to Miami and Brooklyn.