A Farewell to Alms: Book Review

What a pile of puss ridden filth!

Gregory Clark seems to think that populations decide what density to stay stable at for hundreds of years. Those that choose a lower density are richer per capita. They just magically decide to have 2 children per woman. What horseshit.

People try to keep all their children alive. In areas with more resources per person, they are more successful at keeping their spawn alive. Thus the next generation has more people in it. This leads to less resources per person and less success in keeping their brats breathing. This results in a long term stable population (in the absence of tech innovation).

Gregory Clark has his independent and dependent variables mixed up. He put his effect before the cause. Dumbass.

He has a book full of graphs, to give his crap some credulity - but it's just crap. Crap with some perfume, but crap all the same.

What really pisses me off, is that he talks a good game. He mass markets this shit to people. They buy the book to be enlightened and his making them stoopid. The average joe has no mental defense.

He claims that economics as a field reached in peak in 1800, and that it cannot be used when capital is involved. I'm thinking that all the econ I've observed works - therefore he is wrong. As a PhD economist... he is a dumbass to boot.

He claims that northern Europeans are better evolved for economic activity. Yeah, the West may have a culture advantage in the production of wealth... but genetic? Yes, most westerners alive today are the spawn of rich Westerners of the past. The poor all starved. But evolved? Jeebus! A few centuries isn't enough time to evolve something like a genetic predisposition towards thrift and industry.

I've only started the book. I'm in chapter three. But my reaction has been viscerally negative. I don't know if I've ever hated a book this much so quickly before. I'l try to soldier on to choke down the rest of this bag of crap.


Maybe it'll get better - but I doubt it.