Book Review: Money by Yuval Noah Harari

 

Harari was born in Israel in 1976. He studied at Oxford and lectures at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He specializes in the Middle Ages and World History. In this book the author starts with the history of money. He says that hunter-gatherers shared their goods and services through an economy of favors and obligations. Each village was a self-sufficient economic unit, maintained by mutual favors and obligations with a little barter trade with outsiders.

Rise of cities and kingdoms and the improvement in infrastructure created opportunities for specialization. Specialization also created a problem of managing the exchange of goods between specialists. For many societies creation of money was the answer.  Money could be anything that people use in order to represent systematically the value of other things for the purpose of exchanging goods. It isn’t a material reality, it is a psychological construct.  Harari stresses that money is the most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.

Harari states that history’s first known money is the Sumerian barley money. The first coins in history were struck around 640 BC by King Alyattes of Lydia, in western Anatolia. The Chinese monetary system depended on bronze coins, silver and gold ingots. According to the author, money is based on two universal principles. First, it has universal convertibility and, second it has universal trust. On page 21 Harari states money ‘corrodes local traditions, intimate relations and human values, replacing the with the cold laws of supply and demand.’

From the author’s point of view, in the modern era the new capitalist elite is not made up of dukes and marquises, but of board chairmen, stock traders and industrialists. Capitalism played a very important role not only in the rise of modern science, but also in the emergence of European imperialism. The Dutch won the trust of the financial system as their courts were a separate branch of the government, unlike Spain where it was subservient to the King. This helped the Dutch merchants gain confidence. While the French overseas empire was on decline the British were expanding. Like the Dutch the British empire was established by private joint-stock companies based in the London stock exchange.  

Harari discusses whether intelligence or consciousness is important. He says that the idea that humans will always have a unique ability beyond the reach of non-conscious algorithms is just wishful thinking.  If algorithms outperform human capitalists, we might end up with an algorithmic upper class owning most of our planet. Harari is of the view that algorithms wont revolt and enslave us, they will be good at making decisions for us. With that the author also writes that not following their advice would be madness. New technologies of the twenty-first century may thus reverse the humanist revolution, stripping humans of their authority, and empowering non-human algorithms instead. The author adds that if one is horrified by this direction, one should not blame the computer geeks. The responsibility actually lies with the biologists.

The great human projects of the twentieth century including overcoming famine, plague and war- aimed to safeguard a universal norm of abundance, health and peace for everyone without exception. The new projects of the twentieth century- gaining immortality, bliss and divinity- also hope to serve the whole of humankind. According to the author this may result in the creation of a new superhuman that will abandon its liberal roots and treat normal humans no better than nineteenth-century Europeans treated Africans.