Random shots

I am still collecting my thoughts, and catching up with work, after holiday, so a few Random Shots are in order. For general reading inspiration I’d recommend Aeon, Arts and Letters Daily, The Hedgehog Review and The Point. I try to consume as much from all of these as I can, in between the mandatory market/investment-related research.

The significance of the end of the Western Roman Empire

Mateusz Fafinski, a scholar in medieval history at Freie Universität Berlin, responds to a piece by Paul Adams, chief executive of EverEdge Global, which argues that the evaporation of Roman “intangible capital” had a significantly destabilising impact on the British isles. I am not qualified to comment on the details of this debate. That said, the changes in the aftermath of the break-up of the Western Roman Empire is one of the most fascinating periods in European period, stretching all the way through, ultimately, to the formation of the nation states after the 30-year wars with the Treaty of Westphalia. Yes, societies became less complex after the Romans receded, but how, to what degree. Historians don’t seem to agree entirely on this. In any case, the fall of the Western Roman Empire provided the vacuum for the emergence of the lineages and empires, which founded modern Europe. Chris Wickham, in particular, writes eloquently on this, in The Inheritance of Rome. I often go back to this title to re-update my knowledge of this period in Europe.

Ukraine’s counter-offensive has begun

Ukraine has just begun a major offensive in the south and east, centred around Kherson. The fog of war is thick, but it seems increasingly clear that Ukrainian forces have the initiative. With some luck, they will be able to push the frontline a good distance back towards Russia, re-taking land in the south and east that has otherwise been occupied by pro-Russian forces since 2014. In the extreme, Ukraine will succeed to drive out Russian occupation entirely, and re-take Crimea. In this context, the narrative remains that any attempt to point out the dangers of Russia being pushed into a corner, perhaps into full-scale mobilisation or even worse with the use of nuclear weapons is seen as borderline pro-Russian and an insult to the glorious Ukrainian fight for freedom. This makes a lot of sense, primarily because it is aligned with Ukraine’s continuing valiant will, not to mention ability, to fight to redraw the map, which Russia has altered so brutally in its favour since the annexation of Crimea. After all, unless or until either side is beaten to a point at which they cannot continue to fight, or until they have achieved a satisfactory position, it is their decision to keep going. Still, as I explained in my recent piece, I think that the risks of a decidedly catastrophic outcome, which could somewhat counter-intuitively be positively correlated with Ukrainian success on the battlefield, is underpriced.

John J. Mearsheimer articulated this point nicely in a Foreign Affairs piece, for which he was widely lambasted, at least in my social media echo-chamber. In particular, he was criticised for ignoring Ukraine’s agency in the war, focusing on the risk of a high-stakes game between Washington and Russia, potentially drawing in US/NATO troops or a strategic nuclear strike by Russia. It is a bit unfair to accuse Mearsheimer for ignoring Ukraine, given that he explicitly analyses what he considers to be Kyiv’s independent position, which is to keep fighting. Interestingly, he does ignore any independent agency by Europe’s major powers or the EU, which is more telling. The point in a nutshell, however, is that the West became an active belligerent in this conflict the minute it started supplying arms to Ukraine, especially in the context of explicitly affirming its commitment to such deliveries to aid Ukraine’s counter-offensive. Remember that it has arguably been the delivery of Western artillery and the much-talked about US HIMARS missile system, which has turned the tide. This, in turn, means that the West has agency too, and anyone who does not see how such agency might rub up against Ukraine’s desire to crush Russian armed forces is being too naive. Why no one is seriously factoring-in what Russia will do if backed into a corner by increasingly explicit western support for Ukraine scares me. Meanwhile, in Europe’s capitals, the prospect of a severely bruised Russia on its Eastern borders, and the by now near automatic increase in NATO force build-up seems an ignored perspective. If it this leads to a more independent and realistic European military and defensive posture, it is for the better. But the stakes are high. Diplomacy and economic relations die when the cannons thunder; can they be revived again once they go silent? For Europe’s sake, I hope so, and indeed for Ukraine’s sake too.

On Land

I finished the audiobook of Simon Winchester’s recent book Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World while on holiday, and I warmly recommend it. Simon is a writer that takes his time, probably a bit too much time for many people’s liking. I enjoyed it, mind. His patience with his topic means that he gets to travel far, from the brutal eradication of native peoples in North America, and Australia/New Zealand, by European settlers and imperial colonists, the invention of barbed wire, the storage of nuclear waste in the US, the treatment of US residing Japanese people’s land holdings during WWII to the outer Hebrides in Scotland and the conflict between an island owning playboy millionaire and his tenanted island dwellers. The key thrust of Simon’s story is the profound consequences and significance of the commodification of land, and the importance of the right to own land and, by extension, to exclude others from it. In doing so, he brushes up against the economics definition of a public good, characterised by non-excludability and non-rivalry. Air is a public good to the extent that my consumption of it, except in the most extreme of circumstances, does not exclude you from consuming it. It is non-rivalrous because the price of your consuming it does not increase with my consumption of it. Simon seems to muse about the prospect of a better, or perhaps a fairer, world in which land is treated, by governments, as something more closely related to a public good. Of course, land can never be a public good because it is inherently scarce and finite, thus falling woefully short of fulfilling the principles of non-excludability and non-rivalry. I believe that Simon is right in the sense that this fact is a profound driver and determinant of economic and social outcomes in a modern capitalist economy.