Epstein Secrets

with capitalism is puzzling. As an aside, this may explain the common emergence of civilisation in river valleys that run through deserts; such as Mesopotamia and Egypt. What these areas have in common is good fertile land, but land that is limited in supply. If there is a bad year, a farmer with excess f

owed in 1896 that income distributions followed the power law distribution that now bears his name [Pareto 1896]. Pareto studied income in Britain, Prussia, Saxony, Ireland, Italy and Peru. At the time of his study Britain and Prussia were strongly industrialised countries, while Ireland, Italy and Peru

d, nomadic societies into a tight, enduring and largely effective authoritarianism. Wittfogel argued that the “irrigation societies” of Egypt, China, Mesopotamia, and South America all reflected this link between survival and water control. Power pooled in the hands of what he called a “Hydraulic Bureaucracy”.

ge; power moves. You can see leaders struggle with this constant shifting: Think of the “Englightened Despotism” of the 18 Century as Frederick II of Prussia, Joseph II of the Hapsburgs and Catherine IJ in St. Petersburg each struggled to marry the then-new ideas of liberty with older instincts of control.

(and disastrous) Paris Peace Conference of 1919. “Lloyd George, to my delight, had forgotten my presence,” Toynbee wrote, “and began to think aloud. ‘Mesopotamia...yes...oil...irrigation...we must have Mesopotamia; Palestine...yes... the Holy Land... Zionism... we must have Palestine...; Syria... h’m... what i

s it may have seemed in theory or drills or in midnight massacres in the African bush, some steam-press built for cold rolling the armies Belgium and Prussia and France. In fact, the weapons encouraged battle as they piled endlessly in national arsenals. They tickled fears of fast or surprise attack, even