Just got a copy of “Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities” by V.Smil after seeing a mention of it by Ashutosh Jogalekar. One problem that has been bothering is ‘interest rate’ which has been with us since Mesopotamian times. Apparently, the problem was solved in ancient times by periodic debt cancellations, as pointed out by Michael Hudson. I feel that growth is related to this since as long as there is interest on money, growth is needed in at least some important parts of the economy. I wanted to see how Smil handles this. A first look at the book shows that Smil does not even mention ‘rate of interest’. I will still read the book since it seems to have a lot of ‘facts’ but doubt whether he really solves the problem of growth.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment