The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism

The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-vision of Capitalism by Howard Bloom. (2010) Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Well, this isn't your dad's old economics. And, that's the point--at least part of it. Howard Bloom views the economic boom and bust cycle as a biological phenomenon at least as old as bacteria expanding (boom) and consolidating (bust). Much else in capitalism is biological as well, especially emotions, which have not been emphasized in previous objective views of economics. At the top, the "big men" try to attract more attention to their wealth than other big men are able to do and received emotional and neurotransmitter boosts that effect their future actions. In the process of organizing and cajoling their tribesman to produce more pork and yams or semi-conductors, they turn their tribe into productivity machines with wide-spread benefit. Bloom has a bone to pick with Adam Smith concerning the real "bottom line." Money to these big men is not a goal as much as are higher status and more attention from others. Money is a symbol that is attached to these more basic goals by Pavlovian conditioning. Other materials in the "symbol stack," such as gold (which was prior to money), letters of credit, stocks, and more creative financial instruments are similarly conditioned but are not the goal--the attention of others is. All these symbols require trust that they can be exchanged for symbols closer to the goal, and this trust waxes and wanes in economic booms and busts. Bloom emphasizes "tuned empathy" for the customers and recommends management by "walking outside" not just inside the company. Middle managers who play to each other while looking down on their customers are likely to have limited success. Those who are in touch with their customers' feelings are likely to be more successful. Recognizable capitalism predates current Western capitalism. Bacteria (and many other living things) had it. David had it, and his tuned empathy for depressed Saul earned him the kingdom. Moses, a "marketeer par excellence," had it, with six of 10 commandments being demands for brand loyalty (no other gods before me, etc.), leaving a much more manageable set of four (against killing, adultery, stealing, and bearing false witness) to guide interpersonal activities. Many other examples of expansion, including ancient walled cities, the silk trade between the Romans and the Chinese, and Henry the Navigator are reviewed in the run-up to Western capitalism. Of course, capitalism has its down side. For example, African slavery after the discovery of the Americas is lamented. Too slowly it seems, capitalism offers the remedy--the protest industry. Only Western capitalism has made the "protest industry" a permanent fixture by supplying capital to the offspring of the successful to allow them to protest conditions responsible for their predescecors successes. Thus did the offspring of planters and a slave-ship captain produce the abolition industry which succeeded with little bloodshed in the British colonies and much bloodshed in the U.S. Bloom offers Marx as another example of the capitalist protest industry. The son of privilege, Marx was emotionally moved by seeing dirty laborers, although soap had been available to wash aristocratic faces for only a short time. Marx was in touch with his emotions and wrote protests that appealed to the emotions of similar middle and upper class progeny to raise the status of poorer people that they often did not even like. Marx's program sold, with the resulting deaths of 40 million Russians under Stalin and another 40 million Chinese under Mao. Although usually considered discredited, this program continues to sell and accounts for several current insurrections. Bloom exhalts frivolity and the selling of it. From the early makeup industry in India 300,000 years ago to his own experience in the rock and roll industry, Blooms suggests that these entertainments uplift our emotions biologically. They allow us to show ourselves as members of a group but also to express our individuality. They may make us more likely to expand, and doing things slightly differently increases the chance that one way of doing something will have positive results. "'Trivial' wants may well propel the advance of humanity." P.T. Barnum, who never said anything about a sucker being born every minute, is presented as a model capitalist. The impact of Bloom's book on this reviewer is similar to that felt by the man who learned he had been speaking prose all his life and did not know it. With capitalism in my DNA according to Bloom, I wonder if knowing his suggestions earlier would have made me better at it and whether knowing them now will. I guess I have some "walking outside" to do.Dr. James Wakefield

BLUF (bottom line up front) - Go with this book only if you're a big fan of Howard Bloom and want to read everything he's done. Otherwise, there are better works out there, both by him on different subjects or others on the same.I'll be honest, I really like Howard Bloom, and his "Global Brain" changed my whole thinking about many things. Unfortunately, "Genius of the Beast" fails to measure up. As many have pointed out, Howard is a marketer at heart, and he's smart and extremely passionate. That clearly comes through in his writing and the reader KNOWS just how much he cares about the subject and that a giant light turned on over his head. The problem is that Mr Bloom failed to take his "a ha!" moment and translate it for others to turn on their own lights. There are some insights, and it seems like if it was done right, this could have been an outstanding and useful book. I just wish he had someone there with the hard edits, pushing him and channeling his energy.Things I like: Again, his passion. I would rather have a passionate book that doesn't quite measure up than a dry book without feel. Also, he's good at seeing things from different angles and thus seeing how those things can connect. An example is his famous ability to link molecular biology to everything else. He is also clearly quite intelligent and has done a lot in his life. There will definitely be people that get something from this book like inspiration.What I don't like: his passion run amok. Ironically, he fails to live up to his credo (mentioned many several times) that anything good can be a poison in too high a dose. Most of the book is hyperbole, writing tricks, and things better suited for a speech. Because of this he lacks focus and fails to really get down into the subject. He also fails to take some of his own lessons... In almost the same page, he can correctly point out how a lot of success is luck, then claim how he almost single handedly created so many billions in revenue and launched such stars as Prince, Bob Marley, etc. Or about how to give others an 'ego stake' then in literally the same page say "yeah, the company I founded did that." Also where I don't like where his hyperbole goes off the track - when discussing his luck in taking a job at a paper at Columbia, he actually said "Washington Square Review gave me an out, an escape chute from the antiemotional Auschwitz of Columbia's ivory tower." Wow, seriously? Columbia was so academically strict that they gased hundreds of thousands in attempted genocide? Clearly he doesn't think so, but also clearly shows a lack of restrained and intelligent writing. I also don't like that the book is a LOT bigger than it really is. There are way too many notes pages as he clearly did not dig into all of those works, and a LOT of blank pages. The first 100 pages or so, I'd say there are 25-30 blank pages, though I have a feeling this is intentional to give readers a sense of progession and success.So again, one gains too little from this book to outweigh the shortcomings. Bloom has shown he has the ability, he just doesn't show it here. If I needed any more sign of that, it came after about 80 pages... I had picked it up recently because I thought I hadn't read it yet, but then everything sounded so familiar. When I got to one of my notes at around page 80, I realized that I had read it before, just nothing stuck out to me enough to really remember having read it. So just reading my 'gut' I knew that this book was quite underwhelming.

Was für eine gequirlte ...Ein Blick auf die Rezensionen haettte genügt aber ich habe mich durch das Marketing in Blogs etc blenden lassen.Plattitüden, schlechte Analogien und ein unerträglicher Stil (ich sehe immer einem jovialen Texaner vor mir) machen das Buch schmerzhaft zu lesen.