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A review by maxblackmore
The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century by Walter Scheidel
3.0
Walter Scheidel is a professor of ancient history at Stanford. This book is an attempt to systematically study the equalizing forces of distribution throughout the human history. The author observed that there were only four types of events that flattened economic inequality: mass warfares (>10% of the population mobilized), communist revolutions, state collapses, and plagues. He calls them “four horsemen” of equalization, alluding to their apocalyptic nature. Civilization could not render any peaceful equalization.
Those four horsemen brought equalization through two mechanisms: 1) the destruction of capital and labor - thus flattens wealth of the rich and inflates wages; 2) strong policy responses that are only possible in time of stress (such as punitively progressive taxes and land reforms).
Scheidel built upon the analytical frameworks of Milancovic and Piketty. Milancovic attempted to develop alternative measures to Gini coefficient. Specifically, he created two important concepts - inequality extraction ratio and inequality possibility frontier. Scheidel used these concepts as his quantitative framework of analyzing inequality over a long period of time. Piketty’s framework on return of capital versus return of labor also served as an important intellectual resource, especially in explaining why wages of the mass population gained relative weight in times of distress (because of the scarcity of labor and the compression of skill premium).
Counterintuitively, Sheidel’s narrative was more insightful when he talked about two distinct periods: the most ancient societies - where data is scarce and mostly qualitative evidence was used - and the more recent World Wars - where a wealth of data could be relied on. For example, it is interesting that the invention of cereal - a hordable food source - might have contributed to inequality. Also interesting was the fact that embodied inequality was more prominent in ancient times - as assorted marriage might have passed on the hereditary traits across generations. Thus the rich was distinctively taller in a society dominated by malnutrition.
In the end Scheidel briefly discussed the peaceful alternatives that are debated among policy circles today. However, he did not develop a convincing thesis why those would not work. He also tried to hypothesize whether those violent shocks are indogenous to unequal societies - whether revolutions are destined to happen if inequality sustained for a sufficiently long time. But he quickly pointed out that it is very difficult to reach any conclusion, as violent shocks tend to happen on a recurring basis regardless of the social conditions of those times.
While some chapters are engaging, some other chapters seem redundant and could be boring to read. For example, Scheidel devoted copious pages to the corruption in the Roman Empire and ancient China, which in my view offers little new and quite unnecessary to support his thesis. The book would have been much more readable if it were more concise. Nonetheless, I did learn a lot about inequality - and my gratitude to Scheidel.
Those four horsemen brought equalization through two mechanisms: 1) the destruction of capital and labor - thus flattens wealth of the rich and inflates wages; 2) strong policy responses that are only possible in time of stress (such as punitively progressive taxes and land reforms).
Scheidel built upon the analytical frameworks of Milancovic and Piketty. Milancovic attempted to develop alternative measures to Gini coefficient. Specifically, he created two important concepts - inequality extraction ratio and inequality possibility frontier. Scheidel used these concepts as his quantitative framework of analyzing inequality over a long period of time. Piketty’s framework on return of capital versus return of labor also served as an important intellectual resource, especially in explaining why wages of the mass population gained relative weight in times of distress (because of the scarcity of labor and the compression of skill premium).
Counterintuitively, Sheidel’s narrative was more insightful when he talked about two distinct periods: the most ancient societies - where data is scarce and mostly qualitative evidence was used - and the more recent World Wars - where a wealth of data could be relied on. For example, it is interesting that the invention of cereal - a hordable food source - might have contributed to inequality. Also interesting was the fact that embodied inequality was more prominent in ancient times - as assorted marriage might have passed on the hereditary traits across generations. Thus the rich was distinctively taller in a society dominated by malnutrition.
In the end Scheidel briefly discussed the peaceful alternatives that are debated among policy circles today. However, he did not develop a convincing thesis why those would not work. He also tried to hypothesize whether those violent shocks are indogenous to unequal societies - whether revolutions are destined to happen if inequality sustained for a sufficiently long time. But he quickly pointed out that it is very difficult to reach any conclusion, as violent shocks tend to happen on a recurring basis regardless of the social conditions of those times.
While some chapters are engaging, some other chapters seem redundant and could be boring to read. For example, Scheidel devoted copious pages to the corruption in the Roman Empire and ancient China, which in my view offers little new and quite unnecessary to support his thesis. The book would have been much more readable if it were more concise. Nonetheless, I did learn a lot about inequality - and my gratitude to Scheidel.