From humans to hermit crabs to deep water plankton, all living things
compete for locally limiting resources. This universal truth unites
three bodies of thought--economics, evolution, and history--that have
developed largely in mutual isolation. Here, Geerat Vermeij undertakes a
groundbreaking and provocative exploration of the facts and theories of
biology, economics, and geology to show how processes common to all
economic systems--competition, cooperation, adaptation, and
feedback--govern evolution as surely as they do the human economy, and
how historical patterns in both human and nonhuman evolution follow from
this principle.
Using a wealth of examples of evolutionary innovations, Vermeij argues
that evolution and economics are one. Powerful consumers and producers
exercise disproportionate controls on the characteristics, activities,
and distribution of all life forms. Competition-driven demand by
consumers, when coupled with supply-side conditions permitting economic
growth, leads to adaptation and escalation among organisms. Although
disruptions in production halt or reverse these processes temporarily,
they amplify escalation in the long run to produce trends in all
economic systems toward greater power, higher production rates, and a
wider reach for economic systems and their strongest members.
Despite our unprecedented power to shape our surroundings, we humans are
subject to all the economic principles and historical trends that
emerged at life's origin more than 3 billion years ago. Engagingly
written, brilliantly argued, and sweeping in scope, Nature: An Economic
History shows that the human institutions most likely to preserve
opportunity and adaptability are, after all, built like successful
living things.
