MAIN IDEA:

This book is a detailed history of: “THE CATASTROPHE NOW known as the South Sea Bubble is on record as the first and in many ways the archetypal stock market crash and fraud. What happened then and what the British state did in response both have a direct connection to what has occurred (and may soon come again) in the financial life of the twenty-first century.” The author links it to the general development of enlightenment and the discovery of the scientific method as a tool that allows predicting future events based on current data. Consequently, the book shows how an attempt to apply this method in its simple mechanical form to a more complex world of finance led to unpredictable and unpleasant events. Despite this, progress did occur, and here is the author’s statement recognizing it:” The various breakthroughs behind the new forms of money and credit that Britain exploited for its ends weren’t either. But the cultural changes that flowed from the eruption of natural philosophers’ habits of mind—the way many people came to incorporate the values of empiricism, of experiment and the importance of measurement and calculation—had a profound effect on British civic life. What animated people and events in London, that is, was the eagerness, almost urgency, to apply emerging ways of thinking to everyday human experience.”

MY TAKE ON IT:

This book is an excellent illustration of the need to understand the nature of intellectual tools so one can apply them when there is a good fit for the means and the problem they are supposed to resolve. By now, it should be clear that “good” ideas such as a planned economy or controlling climate by limiting CO2 emissions or equalizing rewards between high achievers and non-achievers lead to disastrous consequences, often causing misery and even deaths on the mass scale. So, instead of great global projects like Mao’s great leap forward or Stalin’s collectivization, or the most recent reincarnation: fighting Covid via suppression of freedoms and destruction of the economy, I would recommend applying something that Lenin called “crawling empiricism,” meaning slow and careful movement ahead while continuously collecting and analyzing results before expanding the scale of any idea’s implementation.