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The Nature of Economies
From the revered author of the classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities comes a new book that will revolutionize the way we think about the economy.
Starting from the premise that human beings "exist wholly within nature as part of natural order in every respect," Jane Jacobs has focused her singular eye on the natural world in order to discover the fundamental models for a vibrant economy. The lessons she discloses come from fields as diverse as ecology, evolution, and cell biology. Written in the form of a Platonic dialogue among five fictional characters, The Nature of Economies is as astonishingly accessible and clear as it is irrepressibly brilliant and wise–a groundbreaking yet humane study destined to become another world-altering classic.
Starting from the premise that human beings "exist wholly within nature as part of natural order in every respect," Jane Jacobs has focused her singular eye on the natural world in order to discover the fundamental models for a vibrant economy. The lessons she discloses come from fields as diverse as ecology, evolution, and cell biology. Written in the form of a Platonic dialogue among five fictional characters, The Nature of Economies is as astonishingly accessible and clear as it is irrepressibly brilliant and wise–a groundbreaking yet humane study destined to become another world-altering classic.
208 pages, Paperback
Published March 13, 2001
41 people are currently reading
1459 people want to read
About the author
Jane Jacobs
69 books702 followersJane Jacobs, OC, O.Ont (May 4, 1916 – April 25, 2006) was an American-born Canadian writer and activist with primary interest in communities and urban planning and decay. She is best known for The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), a powerful critique of the urban renewal policies of the 1950s in the United States. The book has been credited with reaching beyond planning issues to influence the spirit of the times.
Along with her well-known printed works, Jacobs is equally well-known for organizing grassroots efforts to block urban-renewal projects that would have destroyed local neighborhoods. She was instrumental in the eventual cancellation of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, and after moving to Canada in 1968, equally influential in canceling the Spadina Expressway and the associated network of highways under construction.
Along with her well-known printed works, Jacobs is equally well-known for organizing grassroots efforts to block urban-renewal projects that would have destroyed local neighborhoods. She was instrumental in the eventual cancellation of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, and after moving to Canada in 1968, equally influential in canceling the Spadina Expressway and the associated network of highways under construction.
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July 20, 2020
Jacobs is obviously best remembered as the godmother of the contemporary Urbanist movement thanks to her The Death and Life of Great American Cities. But to ONLY remember her for that would be to sell her short. She was an interdisciplinary scholar who was actively interested in developmental economics, sociology, ethics, evolutionary biology, and complex systems theory. She wrote several interesting books and articles on those broader topics. These deserve to be read just as much as her Urbanist work! The Nature of Economies, in fact, is a forgotten classic of evolutionary economics. In it, Jacobs presents an idiosyncratic ecological model of economics that jives with contemporary advances in "complex adaptive system theory" and cybernetics.
The substance of the book is really interesting. She takes up some ideas from ecology and evolutionary biology and applies them to various issues around economic development. Her work engages with some past and contemporary biological literature, such as Karl von Baer, Charles Darwin, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, Lynn Margulis, and James Lovelock. Nonetheless, it would be fair to say that her theories are often idosyncratic and speculative. This probably explains why a lot of her work has not been taken up by mainstream scholarship. Nor did she present her theories to the academic community but to the general public. Her use of ecological and biological concepts is rather metaphorical and unconstrained by the conventions of the academia. For example, like Herbert Spencer before her (in the 19th century), Jacobs takes up the rather old-fashioned language of Karl von Baer as the foundation stone of her thesis. She therefore speaks about evolution as the development from "generality" to "speciality" - terminology that was popular in the 19th C. but has been largely neglected (in my opinion unfairly) in the 20th C.
Stylistically, each chapter is structured around a theme and each theme is discussed in a dialogue format. However, the dialogue style of the book hampers its substance. Jacobs uses the dialogue format with the good intention of imitating classic Platonic dialogues. But she has not mastered the format. She introduces way too many characters and fails to establish their distinctive personalities. The overarching meta-narrative that brings these characters together feels slapped on. At their best, the exchanges of dialogue serve to help expose and develop her ideas, but this is rare. For the most part, the dialogue mode is a missed opportunity that only detracts from the central ideas.
What is so wonderful about Jacobs's book is her ability to explain the intimate links between ecological thinking in biology and ecological thinking in developmental economics. She explains, for example, how positive feedback loops lead to a) virtuous circles that sustain life and wealth, but also to b) vicious circles that deplete life and wealth. And she explains how negative feedback can be used to dampen out-of-control processes and to further sustainability in life and economics. She ties the central movements of goods and services to the movement of energy in nature. She explains how the vigorous hustle and bustle of the great city, or the great economy, is akin to to a "life force" or "energy dissipation" that sustains its organic growth. She explains how environmental degradation threatens economic collapse. Most importantly, similar to her approach in The Death and Life, Jacobs celebrates bottom-up experimental tinkering and free action by the people themselves - as entrepreneurs and ordinary citizens - as the key to healthy and sustainable development whose spontaneous trajectory lies beyond the control of any central planner.
Although Jacobs is a marginal thinker outside of the mainstream, and although her insights are often her own, she emphasizes how ecological thinking is not new to economics but has been with it since the beginning. She reminds us that the word "ecology" was modeled after "economics." She shows how Adam Smith's model of the invisible hand of the market anticipated contemporary information feedback loops. And she shows how Keynes's theory of counter-cyclical interventionism was an example of negative feedback design applied to fiscal and monetary policy whose intention was to increase economic sustainability by dampening the business cycle. But Jacobs also brilliantly explains how the evident failure of Keynes's followers to keep deficit financing in the limits of the intended business cycle has lead to out-of-control feedback loops that actually undermine sustainability! This is just one example of how Jacobs brilliantly applies the insights of cybernetic systems theory into economics. The whole book is full of original insights, most of which are worth considering, even though not all of them are equally plausible.
Overall, the two biggest obstacles to the long-lasting legacy of her work are the awkward dialogue format and the idiosyncratic and "amateurish" nature of her evolutionary speculation. The dialogue format is not AWFUL but it nonetheless presents a modest obstacle on the path of the reader. The idiosyncratic style leads to some slippery evolutionary speculation (as with her weird theory that animal laziness serves the ecological fitness function of preventing ecological collapse) and some unwarranted use of biological metaphors (as with her heavy use of Karl von Baer's conceptual apparatus). However, these are rather minor problems in an otherwise brilliant work. It is an insightful, almost poetic, work that anticipates many of the insights of contemporary complexity theory. It forces us to rethink our approach to economics and to humble ourselves before its spontaneity. As Jacobs has one of her characters to say: "I don't know what economies are for, ultimately, other than to enable us to partake, in our own fashion, in a great universal flow."
The substance of the book is really interesting. She takes up some ideas from ecology and evolutionary biology and applies them to various issues around economic development. Her work engages with some past and contemporary biological literature, such as Karl von Baer, Charles Darwin, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, Lynn Margulis, and James Lovelock. Nonetheless, it would be fair to say that her theories are often idosyncratic and speculative. This probably explains why a lot of her work has not been taken up by mainstream scholarship. Nor did she present her theories to the academic community but to the general public. Her use of ecological and biological concepts is rather metaphorical and unconstrained by the conventions of the academia. For example, like Herbert Spencer before her (in the 19th century), Jacobs takes up the rather old-fashioned language of Karl von Baer as the foundation stone of her thesis. She therefore speaks about evolution as the development from "generality" to "speciality" - terminology that was popular in the 19th C. but has been largely neglected (in my opinion unfairly) in the 20th C.
Stylistically, each chapter is structured around a theme and each theme is discussed in a dialogue format. However, the dialogue style of the book hampers its substance. Jacobs uses the dialogue format with the good intention of imitating classic Platonic dialogues. But she has not mastered the format. She introduces way too many characters and fails to establish their distinctive personalities. The overarching meta-narrative that brings these characters together feels slapped on. At their best, the exchanges of dialogue serve to help expose and develop her ideas, but this is rare. For the most part, the dialogue mode is a missed opportunity that only detracts from the central ideas.
What is so wonderful about Jacobs's book is her ability to explain the intimate links between ecological thinking in biology and ecological thinking in developmental economics. She explains, for example, how positive feedback loops lead to a) virtuous circles that sustain life and wealth, but also to b) vicious circles that deplete life and wealth. And she explains how negative feedback can be used to dampen out-of-control processes and to further sustainability in life and economics. She ties the central movements of goods and services to the movement of energy in nature. She explains how the vigorous hustle and bustle of the great city, or the great economy, is akin to to a "life force" or "energy dissipation" that sustains its organic growth. She explains how environmental degradation threatens economic collapse. Most importantly, similar to her approach in The Death and Life, Jacobs celebrates bottom-up experimental tinkering and free action by the people themselves - as entrepreneurs and ordinary citizens - as the key to healthy and sustainable development whose spontaneous trajectory lies beyond the control of any central planner.
Although Jacobs is a marginal thinker outside of the mainstream, and although her insights are often her own, she emphasizes how ecological thinking is not new to economics but has been with it since the beginning. She reminds us that the word "ecology" was modeled after "economics." She shows how Adam Smith's model of the invisible hand of the market anticipated contemporary information feedback loops. And she shows how Keynes's theory of counter-cyclical interventionism was an example of negative feedback design applied to fiscal and monetary policy whose intention was to increase economic sustainability by dampening the business cycle. But Jacobs also brilliantly explains how the evident failure of Keynes's followers to keep deficit financing in the limits of the intended business cycle has lead to out-of-control feedback loops that actually undermine sustainability! This is just one example of how Jacobs brilliantly applies the insights of cybernetic systems theory into economics. The whole book is full of original insights, most of which are worth considering, even though not all of them are equally plausible.
Overall, the two biggest obstacles to the long-lasting legacy of her work are the awkward dialogue format and the idiosyncratic and "amateurish" nature of her evolutionary speculation. The dialogue format is not AWFUL but it nonetheless presents a modest obstacle on the path of the reader. The idiosyncratic style leads to some slippery evolutionary speculation (as with her weird theory that animal laziness serves the ecological fitness function of preventing ecological collapse) and some unwarranted use of biological metaphors (as with her heavy use of Karl von Baer's conceptual apparatus). However, these are rather minor problems in an otherwise brilliant work. It is an insightful, almost poetic, work that anticipates many of the insights of contemporary complexity theory. It forces us to rethink our approach to economics and to humble ourselves before its spontaneity. As Jacobs has one of her characters to say: "I don't know what economies are for, ultimately, other than to enable us to partake, in our own fashion, in a great universal flow."
February 27, 2011
In her forward, Jacobs writes "Readers unwilling or unable to breach a barrier that they imagine separates humankind and its works from the rest of nature will be unable to hear what this book is saying." This is, in my experience, profoundly true, and much of what passes for economic intelligence and reason is little more than ideology propped up by delimited reason and thinking. I was pleasantly surprised at how Jacobs' ideas confirmed my own observation of the paucity of true rationality and reason within 'official' economic ideology.
A few have commented on how much they disliked the dialogue approach Jacobs has taken in this book, but I found, after my initial surprise, that allowing it to move is a stimulating and enjoyable way of exploring ideas.
I think that this book is a very important critique of economic practices, thinking and ideology. I was tempted to write powerful, but as this was written more than 20 years ago, and just about every manner of economic fallacy Jacobs discusses have become even more pervasive is a true measure of how unreasonable are those who in high places practice economic arcana that are bankrupting societies and people while enriching corporations and their owners.
A few have commented on how much they disliked the dialogue approach Jacobs has taken in this book, but I found, after my initial surprise, that allowing it to move is a stimulating and enjoyable way of exploring ideas.
I think that this book is a very important critique of economic practices, thinking and ideology. I was tempted to write powerful, but as this was written more than 20 years ago, and just about every manner of economic fallacy Jacobs discusses have become even more pervasive is a true measure of how unreasonable are those who in high places practice economic arcana that are bankrupting societies and people while enriching corporations and their owners.
August 28, 2025
I had, on a recent vacation, the delightful chance to spend a morning in one of those ancient and overstuffed used book stores who seem to take pride in selling nothing since the turn of the millennium. While there I grabbed this basically on a lark – the title meant nothing to me, but Jane Jacobs is one of those figures who the entire intellectual environment I grew up in was downstream of, but who I have never actually read directly. So, in the name of becoming familiar with primary sources (and because the place had a 4 for 3 deal) I grabbed this to read in the park. It was interesting as a cultural artifact, but frankly I can see why this isn’t the work of hers anyone actually talks about.
The book is at least formally interesting. While functionally a series of essays, it is framed as a series of meandering dinner- (well, lunch-)party dialogues between different intellectual types of the same class, living in the then-contemporary New York of the 1990s. Each essay is framed as a different conversation all (in a very ‘90s-meta way) being recorded by one of the participants to eventually be cleaned up and published. This is mostly just a framing device – each chapter consists overwhelmingly of long monologues occasionally intercut with helpful followup questions or obvious strawman objections to give a springboard for further monologuing in response. The different characters ostensibly have different personalities and skills
The fundamental thesis of the book is that humans and everything we create are, axiomatically, not unnatural. And, more provocatively, that this means the same laws and principles that govern complex ecological systems can also be applied to human societies and economies (both in a descriptive and a prescriptive sense). This lens is used to present a theories of economic development and decline, with each chapter/essay being used to present and examine a different aspect of it by way of analogy to natural ecosystems.
The ecology in question is all fairly basic, except in the places where it’s clearly 30 years out of date. The economic theory is interestingly heterodox, though. It is first and foremost a cry against economic specialization and in favour of economic diversity and local interdependence. And, specifically, in favour of urban agglomeration and complexity (the book spares barely any thought at all for economic units smaller or larger than that of the city, and has a sort of implicit assumption running through it that the ideal political order would be one of independent, fiscally sovereign city-states freely trading with each other as peers).
The key to that is the idea of ‘co-development’ – that economic development is a process, not a discrete phenomenon and still yes just a certain set of goods and practices that can be imported and instituted by fiat. It’s only by combining different industries and skill sets in the same area, such that there is genuine interaction and cross-pollination between them - that the innovation and symbiosis which genuine development and evolution depends upon can occur (and the only way that the overall economy/ecosystem is dense and resilient enough to survive and adapt to a genuine disruption or shock to any one part of it).
Following this is a comparison between a desert and a rainforest – even recieving equal amounts of sunlight, and even positing some deluge provides the desert equivalent amounts of rainfall to the forest, the later ecosystem does far more with the energy received than the former. By this analogy the book pitches the basic idea of ‘import stretching’ – that the measure of a city’s development and wealth is how many times and how efficiently a given unit of imported resources can be used and how much of the city it enrich before the resources (or their products) flow outward again in exports. This, along with the creation of local industries to meet needs that previously required imports, is the essence of economic development (and the pressure created by other cities doing the same requires doing so constantly to maintain dynamic stability, a virtuous cycle of development). The failstate this is contrasted against is a one-industry factory town or (even worse) farm or mine – somewhere that can have truly eye-popping amounts of capital and raw materials flow into it, only for the absolutely overwhelming majority flow right out again with barely anything captured and stretched for use by the town itself.
This all sounds convincing enough on its own merits, though theories of specialization and comparative advantage are hardly given a fair hearing for their best arguments against it. As the argument develops, I was surprised by the strong undercurrent of economic libertarianism running through it all. Partially, it seemed, as a way of explaining how the failed Import-substitution industrialization schemes of the 20th century are totally different than the import-substation the book is talking about. But generally the book consistently sings the praises of serendipity and competition, development as something bottom-down and emergent, and generally is incredibly skeptical of any sort of planning or state intervention at any point in the process. It all feels internally consistent, and so very ‘90s, but given how left-coded Jacobs is in the popular memory, it did take me a bit by surprise.
It’s a slim, easy read – less than two hundred pages, short on intricate arguments or technical vocabulary. I finished it pretty easily in two short sittings, and it was a pleasant enough way to kill some time with both. But neither the arguments, nor (with the surprising exception of the forward) the quality of the writing ever really arrested me or struck me as really novel. Which is the curse of thirty years of imitators, I suppose (and it is pretty bleak how little the general tone of discussing the environment and how humanity is treating it has changed in that time). But yeah, it’s pretty obvious why this is not the book of Jacobs’ that anyone still talks about or cites.
The book is at least formally interesting. While functionally a series of essays, it is framed as a series of meandering dinner- (well, lunch-)party dialogues between different intellectual types of the same class, living in the then-contemporary New York of the 1990s. Each essay is framed as a different conversation all (in a very ‘90s-meta way) being recorded by one of the participants to eventually be cleaned up and published. This is mostly just a framing device – each chapter consists overwhelmingly of long monologues occasionally intercut with helpful followup questions or obvious strawman objections to give a springboard for further monologuing in response. The different characters ostensibly have different personalities and skills
The fundamental thesis of the book is that humans and everything we create are, axiomatically, not unnatural. And, more provocatively, that this means the same laws and principles that govern complex ecological systems can also be applied to human societies and economies (both in a descriptive and a prescriptive sense). This lens is used to present a theories of economic development and decline, with each chapter/essay being used to present and examine a different aspect of it by way of analogy to natural ecosystems.
The ecology in question is all fairly basic, except in the places where it’s clearly 30 years out of date. The economic theory is interestingly heterodox, though. It is first and foremost a cry against economic specialization and in favour of economic diversity and local interdependence. And, specifically, in favour of urban agglomeration and complexity (the book spares barely any thought at all for economic units smaller or larger than that of the city, and has a sort of implicit assumption running through it that the ideal political order would be one of independent, fiscally sovereign city-states freely trading with each other as peers).
The key to that is the idea of ‘co-development’ – that economic development is a process, not a discrete phenomenon and still yes just a certain set of goods and practices that can be imported and instituted by fiat. It’s only by combining different industries and skill sets in the same area, such that there is genuine interaction and cross-pollination between them - that the innovation and symbiosis which genuine development and evolution depends upon can occur (and the only way that the overall economy/ecosystem is dense and resilient enough to survive and adapt to a genuine disruption or shock to any one part of it).
Following this is a comparison between a desert and a rainforest – even recieving equal amounts of sunlight, and even positing some deluge provides the desert equivalent amounts of rainfall to the forest, the later ecosystem does far more with the energy received than the former. By this analogy the book pitches the basic idea of ‘import stretching’ – that the measure of a city’s development and wealth is how many times and how efficiently a given unit of imported resources can be used and how much of the city it enrich before the resources (or their products) flow outward again in exports. This, along with the creation of local industries to meet needs that previously required imports, is the essence of economic development (and the pressure created by other cities doing the same requires doing so constantly to maintain dynamic stability, a virtuous cycle of development). The failstate this is contrasted against is a one-industry factory town or (even worse) farm or mine – somewhere that can have truly eye-popping amounts of capital and raw materials flow into it, only for the absolutely overwhelming majority flow right out again with barely anything captured and stretched for use by the town itself.
This all sounds convincing enough on its own merits, though theories of specialization and comparative advantage are hardly given a fair hearing for their best arguments against it. As the argument develops, I was surprised by the strong undercurrent of economic libertarianism running through it all. Partially, it seemed, as a way of explaining how the failed Import-substitution industrialization schemes of the 20th century are totally different than the import-substation the book is talking about. But generally the book consistently sings the praises of serendipity and competition, development as something bottom-down and emergent, and generally is incredibly skeptical of any sort of planning or state intervention at any point in the process. It all feels internally consistent, and so very ‘90s, but given how left-coded Jacobs is in the popular memory, it did take me a bit by surprise.
It’s a slim, easy read – less than two hundred pages, short on intricate arguments or technical vocabulary. I finished it pretty easily in two short sittings, and it was a pleasant enough way to kill some time with both. But neither the arguments, nor (with the surprising exception of the forward) the quality of the writing ever really arrested me or struck me as really novel. Which is the curse of thirty years of imitators, I suppose (and it is pretty bleak how little the general tone of discussing the environment and how humanity is treating it has changed in that time). But yeah, it’s pretty obvious why this is not the book of Jacobs’ that anyone still talks about or cites.
April 11, 2009
This book had some interesting ideas but the format was absolutely maddening. It's set up as if it is a quirky spontaneous dialogue arising from a group of friends over dinner and drinks. Although this might be cute(and actually might be a true transcript of an actually conversation, although I doubt it), it is not a very effective or convincing way to convey some fairly complex ideas about the relationship between economic and natural evolution. As in any quasi-socratic dialogue, there has to be one character who plays the unbeliever, constantly lobbing convenient questions at the other parties who quickly and pithily launch into long flawless monologues. This dialogue is not artful in the least and undermines the validity of the arguments made in the rest of the book.
This being said I think the idea that economic patterns are part of natural patterns of evolution and species survival is a pretty interesting one. I'm a little skeptical at the simplicity of this thinking, but I think it's a valid point to jump off from. The biggest question is really that in the book, every question in nature is framed in terms of input and export of commodities and the understanding that valuation and commodity exchange is as integral part of the "natural" world as it is of the modern human world. I'm not sure that this isn't just using nature as a justification of current development practices. I think that the understanding of both economics and natural forces seems a little shallow. I'm intrigued enough to take a course or two in economics to see if I can sort if out for myself.
This being said I think the idea that economic patterns are part of natural patterns of evolution and species survival is a pretty interesting one. I'm a little skeptical at the simplicity of this thinking, but I think it's a valid point to jump off from. The biggest question is really that in the book, every question in nature is framed in terms of input and export of commodities and the understanding that valuation and commodity exchange is as integral part of the "natural" world as it is of the modern human world. I'm not sure that this isn't just using nature as a justification of current development practices. I think that the understanding of both economics and natural forces seems a little shallow. I'm intrigued enough to take a course or two in economics to see if I can sort if out for myself.
August 14, 2008
This book proves that economics is a beautiful, vital subject, not "the dismal science". It is a creative vision of the native beauty of a well-functioning market economy. It also addresses some common economic thinking of the last few decades and its practical impact on developing economies. (Particularly interesting is the author's take on Latin American economies and the World Bank's focus on agricultural exports in the 1980s.)
February 8, 2013
Ms. Jacobs' book has some interesting ideas that made me think about economics in a different light. For that intellectual contribution, she gets 4 stars. Still, this book would be a hard one to recommend to a casual reader, as the dialogue discussing those ideas was sometimes dry and unrealistic. Also, I would have liked a little more ecology/science in the discussion. I'm still a little flabbergasted that she never once mentioned the concept of entropy in the book.
November 25, 2012
I have to admit, I gave up on this book. It requires a lot of thinking and I didn't have time to give it what it deserves before the library demanded I return it. I read the first few chapters/conversations and I'm entirely intrigued. No economics background required, just some brain space and time to digest!
January 7, 2008
A fairly interesting approach to writing about a certain way to view economic structures, Jacobs invents a cast of characters (named, I have to assume, after dead 18th century English folks...plus a Kate. Or maybe these are common names in contemporary Toronto - the late Jacob's adopted hometown? I dunno.) in a series of dialogues, or rather, politely interrupted monologues offered up by some cat named Hiram to the perpetuity potentially offered by Armbruster's tape recorder (yeah, really). Ostensibly it's about the guy's theory that, while not directly modeled on natural processes, general economic structures are governed by the same systems that govern nature, in fact, that necessarily govern everything. I think that was the general thrust. To make these curious discussions support this concept, or to at least prove interesting to the reader, Jacobs seemingly draws examples from a grab bag filled with everything from some unpublished 1950-something lecture to numerous recent articles from the The Globe and Mail. So all this comes off as unbridled randomness ever-so-slightly reined in by these peculiar seminar-like scenarios. Nonetheless, I found it engaging – if only because my exposure to non-architecture/urban stuff is woefully inadequate. I would recommend, at the conclusion of each chapter, looking to the non-footnoted notes in the back as she dedicates a brief description and source(s) for each specific item thrown out during these “conversations.”
August 21, 2012
We read this book as a study group at work, and it spurred a lot of interesting conversation. Definitely worthwhile, and accessible to any reader (in terms of both reading proficiency and interest in the subject matter).
I appreciate Jane Jacobs' choice to write this book in the form of a Platonic dialogue. It just made it a lot more readable. To bring up the points and counterpoints in the voices of characters, rather than essay format, made them a little easier to follow.
That being said, I didn't feel much connection to the characters. Some of my co-workers had a better sense of each character's personality, but for me that didn't come through very clearly. Thus, the ending feels a little odd - as though Jacobs felt the need to wrap up a plot, when there wasn't really much of one.
The downside to this book being so readable is that it's easy to breeze through without much critical thinking. Reading through it with others, and having intentional discussions about the topics explored, will help with this.
I appreciate Jane Jacobs' choice to write this book in the form of a Platonic dialogue. It just made it a lot more readable. To bring up the points and counterpoints in the voices of characters, rather than essay format, made them a little easier to follow.
That being said, I didn't feel much connection to the characters. Some of my co-workers had a better sense of each character's personality, but for me that didn't come through very clearly. Thus, the ending feels a little odd - as though Jacobs felt the need to wrap up a plot, when there wasn't really much of one.
The downside to this book being so readable is that it's easy to breeze through without much critical thinking. Reading through it with others, and having intentional discussions about the topics explored, will help with this.
June 6, 2011
I had high hopes for this book initially, but found it pretty uninspiring. First and foremost, the "dialogue" format seems extremely contrived and doesn't feel like it helps to advance the arguments at all. There are so many characters (maybe 6?) and I never really developed a sense of differing personalities among them.
As for Jacobs' ideas about economies, they seem reasonable enough, as far as they go--mostly treating economics through the lens of ecology. I often enjoy reading non-economist writers on economics, particularly when they take a heterodox view. But Jacobs, unlike some others (Wendell Berry, Gandhi), seems like she is trying too hard to "be legitimate" rather than just saying what she thinks. This book is peppered with phrases such as "Development is differentiation emerging from generality" that seem to me to be mundane observations wrapped up in formal-sounding language.
As for Jacobs' ideas about economies, they seem reasonable enough, as far as they go--mostly treating economics through the lens of ecology. I often enjoy reading non-economist writers on economics, particularly when they take a heterodox view. But Jacobs, unlike some others (Wendell Berry, Gandhi), seems like she is trying too hard to "be legitimate" rather than just saying what she thinks. This book is peppered with phrases such as "Development is differentiation emerging from generality" that seem to me to be mundane observations wrapped up in formal-sounding language.
September 11, 2013
I liked this book. This is a theoretical book set in the form of a dialogue between friends. Hiram the ecologist argues that the same rules that apply to nature apply to economics with Hortense, Armbruster, Kate and Murray. Although the characters' names are not important they lend a cheerfulness to an otherwise profound set of (injunctive) observations.
I found the parallels she draws very insightful, and persuasive. Now it seems obvious that economies evolve variations from generalities into more specialized goods, and that like species in an ecological system they co-relate, creating new and narrower industries.
In one of the early chapters of the book it points out that the etymology of Economy and Ecology are related; economy is "house management" and ecology is "house knowledge". This, I believe is something that has become obscured with the passage of time.
I am very excited to read more of her work.
I found the parallels she draws very insightful, and persuasive. Now it seems obvious that economies evolve variations from generalities into more specialized goods, and that like species in an ecological system they co-relate, creating new and narrower industries.
In one of the early chapters of the book it points out that the etymology of Economy and Ecology are related; economy is "house management" and ecology is "house knowledge". This, I believe is something that has become obscured with the passage of time.
I am very excited to read more of her work.
June 21, 2016
Ugh. I wanted to like this book, and it probably contains some enlightening ideas, but the format was too distracting for me to really get into the concepts. It's structured as a dialogue between a group of presumably tweed-wearing intellectuals who spend their weekend afternoons discussing ecology and economics. In the bizarro universe where these events take place, the characters talk about the Internet but communicate by fax, and record their conversation via a plug-in tape recorder. The weirdness is only a small annoyance, though. Worse is how the dialogue meanders, argues with itself, cuts itself off mid-stream so the characters can eat lunch or close the windows when it starts to rain... it's just odd and nonsensical and completely detracts from the ideas it presents between these interruptions.
January 25, 2016
I had tried reading this several years ago, but was so put off by the writing style (a dialogue) that I quit and gave the book away. But when I recently re-read Jacobs' books "the economy of cities" and "cities and the wealth of nations" it occurred to me that there were many similarities between evolution of organisms and the evolution of economies. Looking further into this, I came across this book and so borrowed it from the library. What I found particularly interesting was the convergence between her ideas and those expressed in "the God problem".
November 9, 2007
Surprisingly good. I normally have really negative things about almost every single book on Economics I've ever read (the curse of majoring in something I suppose), but this is really really good. I could have done without the conversational fiction, and would have loved some more robust explorations of the concepts but the concepts themselves make this book a must read. Really analytical, really scientifically minded. A real gem.
November 17, 2007
Honesty requires me to revise the number of stars down to one, and to move this to the booooo-ring shelf. I still would like to read her book about cities, but this one was a yawnfest from beginning to end. That device of putting assorted arguments into the mouths of invented characters soooooo doesn't work.
April 13, 2008
Everybody reads Jane Jacobs' Systems of Survival and never gets around to reading The Nature of Economies. Don't be like them. Read this book.
Although the characters are less colorful and their actions less exciting than the first book, let's pretend that we are reading these dialogs for the ideas as well as the action.
Although the characters are less colorful and their actions less exciting than the first book, let's pretend that we are reading these dialogs for the ideas as well as the action.
Read
August 10, 2011Import stretching anyone? The singular insight I derive from the book is about how anxious human economies should be the farther away they are from animal existence. This anxiety around habitat destruction versus habits of easing off on the economic progress at all costs treadmill is useful -- whether or not consciousness of parasite-host symbiosis exists.
December 19, 2011
Liked it. Don't think I've fully digested some of her proposed theories yet, but there's time. At the least I learned how redwoods grow so tall!
p. 108 "All those investigations would have been more fruitful than theories about how economies should work, or might work, or could be manipulated into how they should or might work - instead of learning how they do work. What a waste."
p. 108 "All those investigations would have been more fruitful than theories about how economies should work, or might work, or could be manipulated into how they should or might work - instead of learning how they do work. What a waste."
December 5, 2012
While it features a fair number of interesting ideas and topics, this book left a lot to be desired for me because it was done in a platonic dialogue. If you're looking for a scientific examination of the questions asked this is not the book. If you want "gee whiz...what about if we do this?"...then here you go.
April 14, 2013
Though not as good as her earlier book on the economy of cities and no where near her classic "Life and Death of Great American Cities," I found her discussion to be thought provoking. I can quibble with some minor generalizations that I disagreed with, but her framework illuminates more than it obscures.
September 12, 2014
Some interesting insights into complex systems and spontaneous order in Economics, presented in a format that prevents The Nature of Economies from being an interesting read. Even so, a reader unfamiliar with either Economics or Complex Systems Science may learn something useful from this book.
March 21, 2008
Jacobs through a masterful technique of dialog demonstrates her versatility in explaining the core principles of natural economies. It reinforces her deep understanding and provides a benchmark of what a vibrant economy is and isn't. Brilliant!!
November 20, 2008
this is one of the best books i have ever read. jane jacobs sets up a platonic dialogue between four fictional people to discuss how economic systems mirror natural systems. ANYTHING HUMAN IS NATURAL. it's a book that i want everyone to read.
July 16, 2009
It was an interesting viewpoint, and supposedly, a very influential book in the 1970's when it was written. I just couldn't finish it. Probably a better read for someone without a background in traditional economics.
July 22, 2013
Only 3 stars likely because I am in a fiction part of my life. The painless, easy to read info on economic systems kept me going and I hope to pick this up again and really finish it. Jane Jacobs is a recommended author by me. I'd like to meet her.
October 24, 2008
BRILLIANT. My first look into systems thinking and of the link between none other than the link between nature and economies no,not from a CSR perspective... but rather behaviorally.
December 4, 2008
Jacobs links economies to the natural world. It's written as a conversation between different characters.
Want to read
December 25, 2010
March 10, 2012
The ideas in this book are easily worth 5 stars, but the stiff and boring dialogue imposed on it hurt the delivery severely.
August 8, 2018
Little too eclectic for may taste. Platonic dialogue of friends is superfluous - it doesn't add clarity nor interest.
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