The great leveler
by Walter Scheidel · first published 2017
17mentions
6recommended by
17HN commenters
2018–2026first – last mentioned
35% recommend65% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Traces income inequality from the Stone Age onward, arguing that war, revolution, and plague have been the main forces that reduced it. Suits readers interested in economic history.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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I'm almost finished with "The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century" by Walter Scheidel. It's a fascinating take on the global history of income inequality from the Stone Age to today; and the impact of major "leveling" events. On the fiction side, I'm enjoying the "Merlin:…
on “Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?” ↗Severe pandemics are actually really bad for elites, since large scale death increases the value of employees. See e.g. "The Great Leveler" by Scheidel.
on “Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end” ↗For the opposite (not quite converse logically!) argument that unrest and wars lead to economic equality, I recommend Walter Scheidel's "The Great Leveler". https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691183251/th...
on “Billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation, says UBS” ↗There's a sobering book "The Great Leveler" that argues that the only time growing inequality is reversed is during large scale war or other mass death event like plague.
on “Half of England Is Owned by Less Than 1% of Its Population, Researcher Says” ↗Probably "The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century"
on “What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?” ↗Check out the recent book The Great Leveler. It basically postulates that over the course of human history, the only things that cause rising wealth inequality to decrease is natural disasters or warfare. Pretty scary stuff if that's all to be…
on “If wages are to rise, workers need more bargaining power” ↗According to "The Great Leveler" by Walter Scheidel inequality throughout human history has always been going up and only been reset by things like war, violent revolutions or major economic throwbacks. So I'm pessimistic that we can…
on “Billionaire Khosla Is Asking the Supreme Court to Keep People Off His Beach” ↗…There are a number of ways that might not follow: capital flight or tax avoidance, untaxed fringe benefits saving money, general regressive flows like "having stock" wiping out the change. Scheidel (The Great Leveler) has argued, I think pretty persuasively, that mundane domestic policy doesn't undo inequality. It can constrain it, and sometimes diminish it briefly before wealth catches up to the changes, but major…
on “What to Do About Inequality (2012)” ↗See also The Great Leveler by Scheidel: "Deep and long-lasting levelling of both the absolute and relative degree of income and wealth inequality has found its place primarily in conjunction with the ‘Four Horsemen’ of levelling:…
on “The Success of Nonviolent Civil Resistance” ↗The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century Seems moderately depressing so far.
on “Ask HN: What book are you reading at the moment and what do you recommend?” ↗…that political dysfunction will prevent us from addressing (potentially solvable) economic problems, leading to further dysfunction, in some sort of self-reinforcing process. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Great-Leveler-Inequality-Twenty-First...
on “Anti-Intellectualism, Populism, and Motivated Resistance to Expert Consensus” ↗The book "The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century" by Walter Scheidel makes a similar argument: > Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer…
on “The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks” ↗> "Of course the Gini coefficient is increasing" translated means "income inequality is not a problem". The book "The Great Leveler" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31951505-the-great-level... is probably the most comprehensive dive into history of inequality, and arrives at a fairly unexciting conclusion that periods of great…
on “How People Get Rich Now” ↗…"leap" from the countryside to the city. Probably a new war could similarly eliminate the wealth inequality in countries like the US. Actually I looked for it and I'm 99% sure this is the book: "The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century" [1] [1] https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691183251/th...
on “US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days” ↗That correlation might be reversed, though. The author of The Great Leveler makes the argument that in peaceful times, inequality almost always rises to the maximum level that society can bear. It remains that way until a destabilizing event occurs (plagues, state collapse, destructive…
on “The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success” ↗