Based on this NYT review of Sven Beckert’s “Capitalism: A Global History,” I think it’s safe to say Beckert, a Harvard historian, is no fan of capitalism, blaming it for most of the world’s ills, past and present. Or maybe it’s just the reviewer going a tad overboard, describing Beckert’s book as a “moral indictment” of capitalism (“the global beast”) and praising “the metaphor of monstrosity (that) runs throughout Beckert’s pages.” … And here I was, a lowly blogger, thinking that ever-evolving capitalism over the centuries was not so much an economic system as it was a reflection of human nature and activity, both good and bad, from stuffed supermarkets to stuffed slave ships, and that it requires constant monitoring and regulation precisely because humans will always be humans. … But, again, I’m just a lowly blogger, so I guess my notion of human nature factoring into human history is just so passé.