The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

Hammurabi and the American Founding Fathers alike imagined a reality governed by universal and immutable principles of justice, such as equality or hierarchy. Yet the only place where such universal principles exist is in the fertile imagination of Sapiens, and in the myths they invent and tell one another. These principles have no objective validi

American founding document promises that if humans act according to its sacred principles, millions of them would be able to cooperate effectively, living safely and peacefully in a just and prosperous society.

Capitalism, for example, is the purely liberal economic system. After having implemented this system, we learned that utterly unregulated capitalism is a catastrophe—this was what Karl Marx was reacting against. Paradoxical as it may seem, because of the power of monopolies and the influence of dishonest actors, a free market requires regulation—an