FREE GROWTH AND OTHER SURPRISES Draft Gordon Getty FOREWORD BY THE AUTHOR How Come This Book? A few months ago, Robert Trivers was kind enough to send me his new book. The title is “Wild Life”. Perfect two ways. Bob is a world authority on wildlife, to wit evolutionary biology. But his books and papers about that are already well known. His new one is about his own wild life, with his ideas in the background. I’ve started my own book three for four times over the past decade. Bob’s got me started again. Try it. It’s Bob’s real voice. One of his papers, co-authored by Huey Newton(!), is about deception and self-deception. I never saw much of either in Bob. I never saw a guy less anxious to impress. Fine if you knew his achievements, and fine if you didn’t. What he wanted to talk about was great new ideas by others. It was from him that I first heard about the Hamilton-Zuk parasite theory, and Paul Ewald’s complementary one about parasites stabilizing population density of hosts. Both are beautiful examples of the obvious-in-hindsight. I realized that my book could take a cue from his. My own life hasn’t been wild. It has been interesting because the genius of my father gave me interesting places to be and things to do. I could say something about that. But the book would be mostly about my ideas in economics. Bob’s ideas are well known to anyone in his field. Mine aren’t. I’m ten years older than Bob, without much to show for it except in composition. (My last two operas have been getting some traction, and my SACDs get pretty good radio time.) So I’ll run my economic ideas up the flagpole, in my real voice, and see if they prove deception or selfdeception or something worth the time. Declaring My Biases I’m a big free market fan. I would love it even if I agreed with socialists that there is something inherently iniquitous about it. There are bad guys and conflicted motives Forward By The Author 04/18/16 1 in markets and government both. What I love about it is the