The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good
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The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Robert H Frank (Author), Walter Dixon (Narrator), Gildan Media, LLC (Publisher)
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 113 ratings
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Who was the greater economist--Adam Smith or Charles Darwin? The question seems absurd. Darwin, after all, was a naturalist, not an economist. But Robert Frank, New York Times economics columnist and best-selling author of The Economic Naturalist, predicts that within the next century Darwin will unseat Smith as the intellectual founder of economics. The reason, Frank argues, is that Darwin's understanding of competition describes economic reality far more accurately than Smith's. And the consequences of this fact are profound.

Indeed, the failure to recognize that we live in Darwin's world rather than Smith's is putting us all at risk by preventing us from seeing that competition alone will not solve our problems. Smith's theory of the invisible hand, which says that competition channels self-interest for the common good, is probably the most widely cited argument today in favor of unbridled competition--and against regulation, taxation, and even government itself. But what if Smith's idea was almost an exception to the general rule of competition? That's what Frank argues, resting his case on Darwin's insight that individual and group interests often diverge sharply.

Far from creating a perfect world, economic competition often leads to "arms races," encouraging behaviors that not only cause enormous harm to the group but also provide no lasting advantages for individuals, since any gains tend to be relative and mutually offsetting. The good news is that we have the ability to tame the Darwin economy. The best solution is not to prohibit harmful behaviors but to tax them. By doing so, we could make the economic pie larger, eliminate government debt, and provide better public services, all without requiring painful sacrifices from anyone. That's a bold claim, Frank concedes, but it follows directly from logic and evidence that most people already accept.

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  1. Listening Length
    8 hours and 23 minutes
  2. Author
    Robert H Frank
  3. Narrator
    Walter Dixon
  4. Audible release date
    October 17, 2011
  5. Language
    English
  6. Publisher
    Gildan Media, LLC
  7. ASIN
    B005WIFZ0U
  8. Version
    Unabridged
  9. Program Type
    Audiobook
  10. See all details
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Product details

Listening Length 8 hours and 23 minutes
Author Robert H Frank
Narrator Walter Dixon
Audible.com Release Date October 17, 2011
Publisher Gildan Media, LLC
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B005WIFZ0U
Best Sellers Rank #281,878 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals)
#2,448 in Personal Finance (Audible Books & Originals)
#14,070 in Personal Finance (Books)

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
113 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Tim Tyler
5.0 out of 5 stars Darwinian evolution inspires book on tax policy
Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2013
Verified Purchase
This book argues that Adam Smith's idea of an invisible hand in economics is a metaphor with some significant limitations - and that a Darwinian perspective shows how individual self-interest and group benefit are often in conflict and that individual selfishness often leads to bad outcomes at higher levels.

Frank's examples of unhealthy individual self-interest in biology include products of runaway sexual selection. He lists a number of examples - such as peacock's tails and oversize antlers. He compares these with similar wasteful processes in economics - such as "conspicuous consumption" and other forms of status displays. Frank says that a Darwinian perspective predicts and explains such cases - while the idea of an "invisible hand" does not.

These ideas are good, but they are only a small part of the book. Most of the book argues for making some economic changes, in the light of a Darwinian perspective.

The main proposed changes seem to be changes to taxation. Frank promotes the idea of sin taxes. He proposes we tax total consumption directly - rather than directly taxing sales - and suggests a sliding scale where the rich get taxed more. He proposes taxing heavy vehicles, tobacco and alcohol, and emissions of carbon dioxide sulphur dioxide.

He pictures his main opponents as libertarians, who oppose most taxation. A substantial fraction of the book involves pointing out how crazy the libertarian positions are. I tired of this material rather quickly - since Frank was preaching to the converted in my case - I can't take libertarian positions seriously.

The book is generally great. However, Frank spends a lot of time on his libertarian critics - and not enough time on other more interesting criticisms.

Frank seems to generally favour more taxes - but he doesn't spend much time addressing the question of how much taxation is the right amount. Cries for more taxation should try to address this question.

Frank realizes that countries with higher taxes will be unattractive places to run businesses. His argument about why this is not a problem invokes the idea that countries with less taxes are not such nice places to live. This idea appears to be nonsense to me. I spent much of my life in England, which has a few nearby tax havens - in the form of Ireland and the channel islands: Jersey and Guernsey. Jersey and Guernsey in particular have a great climate, are full of rich people and are miniature paradises. Businesses based there have pretty good access to English consumers. Most people don't live there - simply because they can't afford the land prices. In such cases, Frank's argument about tax havens being places where people don't want to live seems to fall on its nose.

Lots of taxation tends to produce black markets which fund criminal undergrounds. Sin taxes can only be taken so far because this sort of effect starts to kick in after a while.

Similarly Frank doesn't spend much time on tax evasion. Some taxes are easier to avoid than others - and tax evasion is pretty big business. Levels of taxation on undesirable actions have to be set in the light of the ease of tax evasion. Fortunately, conspicuous consumption is often easy to tax - since it is by nature easily visible.

Frank's plans mostly seem to revolve around taxing activities that are currently not taxed very much. However there's also scope for raising funds via taxing actions that are currently illegal - such as consuming some drugs and prostitution. Such a discussion might have added some spice and could have replaced some of the book's more repetitive elements - but this topic was not covered.

Lastly, Frank is basically proposing a tax plan that benefits the poor, at the expense of the rich. It is true that many people might vote for such a tax plan, but it is also true that other people might use lobbying, campaign donations and so forth to oppose it. Politics, proverbially, is the fine art of getting money from the rich and votes from the poor while promising each that you will protect them from the other. Frank's proposed policies might get votes from the poor, but they probably won't attract much money from the rich. This makes them less likely to be implemented.

Despite spending his energy on some of the the sillier criticisms of his ideas, many of Frank's proposals seem sensible. Consumption taxes are generally favoured by most economists, and a sliding scale that taxes the rich more makes obvious sense - compared to sales taxes. Sin taxes are fairly common anyway - the main issue is where they can be best applied.

In summary, this is a pretty good book, which should be read by anyone with an interest in how biological ideas apply to economic issues.
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Joseph J. Leandri
4.0 out of 5 stars The Darwin Economy | Liberty, Competition, & the Common Good | Robert H. Frank
Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2014
Verified Purchase
Without question, Adam Smith's invisible hand was a genuinely groundbreaking insight. Producers rush to introduce improved product designs and cost-saving innovations for the sole purpose of capturing market share and profits from their rivals. In the short run, these steps work just as the producers had hoped. But rival firms are quick to mimic the innovations, and the resulting competition quickly causes prices to fall in line with the new, lower costs. In the end, Smith argued, consumers are the ultimate beneficiaries of all this churning.

But many of Smith's modern disciples believe he made the much bolder claim that markets alwaysharness individual self-interest to produce the greatest good for society as a whole. Smith's own account, however, was far more circumspect. He wrote, for example, that the profit -seeking business owner "intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was not part of it [emphasis added].

Smith never believed that the invisible hand guaranteed good outcomes in all circumstances. His skepticism was on full display, for example, when he wrote, "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. To him, what was remarkable was that self-interested actions often led to socially benign outcomes.

Like Smith, modern progressive critics of the market system tend to attribute its failings to conspiracies to restrain competition. But competition was much more easily restrained in Smith's day than it is now. The real challenge to the invisible hand is rooted in the very logic of the competitive process itself.

Charles Darwin was one of the first to perceive the underlying problem clearly. One of his central insights was that natural selection favors traits and behaviors primarily according to their effect on individual organisms, not larger groups.

Sometimes individual and group interests coincide, he recognized, and in such cases we often get invisible hand-like results. A mutation that codes for keener eyesight in one particular hawk, for example, serves the interests of that individual, but its inevitable spread also makes hawks as a species more successful. In other cases, however, mutations that help the individual prove quite harmful to the larger group.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on April 19, 2016
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Fun and smart read. Highly recommended
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didier
5.0 out of 5 stars un livre très important
Reviewed in France on May 9, 2016
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pour ceux qui veulent trouver une solution au problème de la dette. Sa proposition est de remplacer l'impôt sur le le revenu par une taxe progressive sur la consommation.
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Fede
2.0 out of 5 stars Titolo fuorviante per un dibattito pro o contro tasse negli USA
Reviewed in Italy on September 1, 2014
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Robert Frank spende i primi due capitoli per sostenere che, nonostante la Selezione Darwiniana possa essere associata al Libero Mercato, che è la bandiera dei Repubblicani USA, tuttavia nella società umana il Darwinismo migliore dovrebbe comprendere anche regole che stimolano verso il bene collettivo a spese del vantaggio individuale. Quindi il Darwinismo realmente vantaggioso dovrebbe essere quello dei Democratici.
E' abbastanza contorto il ragionamento? Per me, fin troppo. Ma questo è l'incipit.

Purtroppo anche in altri capitoli l'autore sembra iniziare con un'idea chiara in mente, spesso citando altri, ma poi si perde in ragionamenti collaterali che deviano dall'enunciazione di partenza.

Procedendo nella lettura l'autore si concentra con una varietà di argomentazioni e di esempi a sostenere che il vessillo Repubblicano di meno tasse e meno regole alla fine nuoce alla società USA impoverendo le infrastrutture e rendendo alla fine più poveri anche i ricchi che inizialmente si giovano della riduzione delle tasse.
Ci sono considerazioni interessanti sulla tassazione progressiva rispetto ad una percentuale piatta e sull'importanza di un mediatore neutro, l'autorità governativa, per trovare il punto d'incontro tra interessi legittimi ma contrapposti.

Detto che non mancano contenuti interessanti, per me resta determinante, in negativo, il titolo accattivante ma assolutamente gratuito per un libro che parla ben poci di Darwinismo economico.
Inoltre tutti i ragionamenti pro o contro le tasse sono fortemente centrati sul caso USA, che è troppo diverso dalla situazione europea per ricavarne per analogia degli spunti generali.
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Maggie
5.0 out of 5 stars The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 21, 2013
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I ordered this for my son. Have not read it myself but he was very pleased with it and am sure he would recommend it to friends.
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Elisabeth
4.0 out of 5 stars Finally!
Reviewed in Germany on October 7, 2019
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The book finally arrived after waiting a long time....now lets see and read it!!! seems really interesting!
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