Reddit mentions: The best development & growth economics books

I'm sorry if the reply turned out a bit too general, but the individual steps depend a lot on the specifics :)

As I said before, it's crucial that you understand the problem domain as good, or better than your customers. I like to think of it as the Fog of War in strategy game maps. I can only effectively perform once I have explored enough territory to see the big picture. Here's roughly how I would try to wrap my head around such a challenge, if the company hired me to help:

Customer

Who are the customers? It's actually possible to think of the customers just in terms of their needs and desires. But it's useful to know their demographic attributes, so you can choose whether your solution is going to be a lateral or a niche one. For instance.. Trello is a lateral solution, because the kan-ban methodology can be applied to many different types of problems. On the other hand, It could be argued that 500px is a niche solution, because it caters to photographers more than meme authors. It's very easy for 500px to figure out where photographers hang out online and in the real world, should they choose to reach out to them in any way.

The job (Problems / Desires)

The customers usually have some sort of job to be done. That job is driven by their desire for a benefit, or a lingering problem that needs solving. Those benefits can range from monetary to peace of mind or social status. And problems can range in severity. Furthermore, different customer segments can rate some problems and benefits as more important than others. This is the combinatorial explosion of stakeholders and their points of view, that informs a strategy of a good product designer, and causes an uninformed designer to arrive at an optimal solution only through brute force or sheer luck.

Solution

Sometimes the solution has to be drawn up from scratch, optimized or entirely re-imagined. So what is the existing solution? What would an utopian solution look like? A complex problem might require a solution in the form of a toolkit of multiple core activities (Like Google, HubSpot or Moz). A focused solution though, can be embodied in a single product (Caffeine.app keeps your mac from going to sleep). If a solution is complex behind the curtains, but you make it simple and gratifying from the user's point of view, it may seem like magic to them.

Business

The things that you do behind the curtains are some core activities, that might require some key resources. That's how the business makes sure it spends less than it earns on a customer (unit economics). It's easy to paint a picture where the world is split between sociopathic capitalists with a greedy agenda & empathic designers, who champion the user's priorities. But a similar solution with a sound business foundation will always be better for the customer, because it stands a better chance of outperforming the economically inferiour solution in the long run. It's the job of a designer to balance between the two aspects. So much so, that the Elements of User Experience places big emphasis on both Business Objectives & User Needs.

Communication

Once you love your people, and you have a way to show it to them, you'll have to start and maintain some sort of relationship. You can identify Touch Points or Channels. If, for instance, your customers are tourists looking for a place to grab a meal before boarding the next train, you can administer your solution right then and there, at the train station. But most of the time you'll be reaching out to your potential users somewhere between you and them, probably through a third party (online publication, app or ad network). It may take multiple exposures in different contexts, before somebody decides to give your solution a try. So a customer might bump into your message at certain touch points, open a communication channel like a newsletter or notification subscription, and only then decide to commit. There's often talk about a multiple stage funnel, through which we try to shove as much of our target market. But you can also look at customer lifetime stages as vertebrae in the cohort spine. For instance.. Slicing out customer segments by lifetime lets SoundCloud identify differences between a newcoming podcaster & a long-time podcaster, and communicate with each of them appropriately, even though most of the people that care about SoundCloud are producers and record labels. Staying on top of communication also helps you avoid conversion attribution mistakes, so you can communicate more effectively.

Here are some resources related to those subjects:

• Value Proposition Design, Alexander Osterwalder: How to map the Customer, their Problems and Desires to a Solution.
  
• The Innovator's Dillema, Clayton Christensen: Describes how disruptive innovators solve existing problems in novel ways.
  
• Minto Pyramid Principle, Barbara Minto: How to communicate the value propositions to a rationally minded customer.
  
  A bit more business related:
  
  
• Four Steps To The Epiphany, Steve Blank: A user-focused methodology for efficiently finding a viable business model, called Customer Development.
  
• Business Model Generation, Alexander Osterwalder: His first book takes a broader look, dealing with booth the business and customer side of things.
  
• Lean Startup, Eric Ries: What Steve Blank said.
  
  Once I have a good understanding, I would focus on Information Architecture, Experience Design, Production & Iteration. I can't spare the time to write about those now, but here are some related resources:
  
  
• Elements of User Experience, Jesse James Garret: What a typical experience design process is made up of.
  
• About Face, Alan Cooper: Another take on the whole process, dives a bit deeper into every stage than Garret's book.
  
• Don't Make Me Think, Steve Krug: One of the first books to gave the issues of IA and UX design a human, customer point of view.
  
  I might write more about the specific subjects of IA and UX later, when I find the time. In the meanwhile, check any of the three books with italicized titles, if you haven't already.
  
  Peace o/

This is a pretty huge question. I believe it was Robert Lucas who said: "Once you start thinking about why some countries are rich, and others poor, it's hard to think about anything else." Or something alone those lines. I'll do my best to give a few exemplars from which you may be able to induce larger issues, but this issue is too big for a Reddit comment of any size, I think.

Before I start, when dealing with big questions of society and economics, you are naturally going to get competing theories and competing ideas about history. Howard Zinn, for example, had a very different view on why the United States has been prosperous (through vicious extermination of indigenous peoples, oppression of lower-classes and immigrants, vampire-like exploitation of natural resources, benefiting from the results of wars, etc.) than someone like Victor Davis Hanson does (commitment to republicanism, enforcement of private property rights, Protestant work-ethic/tradition, citizen-soldier ethic, etc.). The same, of course, is true of historians of Canada.

One thing we can do as historians is examine the different circumstances that countries and societies had leading up to their current state, and see where the divergences occurred.

For me, a most interesting and illustrative comparison is that between the U.S. and Argentina. Leading up to and during the 1920s and 1930s, Argentina's economy and society were, in many ways, similarly successful to that of the U.S. Even up until the 1950s, Argentina was one of the 15 richest economies in the world.

However, at some point, things changed in Argentina, and the two countries went radically different ways in terms of prosperity. This continues to this day. That's a broad issue that I don't want to gloss over, and probably suited to its own thread, but some things we can see for sure:

• Argentina's formerly stable government went down to a coup d'etat in 1930 that ousted the elected President and set the country down a path of instability in government, heavy-handed caudillismo, and increasing reduction of the middle class. The United States, although in the midst of the depression, the Dust Bowl, and other terrible events, suffered from no such coup d'etat. Although President Roosevelt attempted a variety of theretofore unheard of government expansion schemes (including his infamous "court packing scheme"), the government maintained its influence and respect, and indeed, Roosevelt was beloved for his ability to instill confidence in government and continuity thereof in the people, despite harsh times.
  
  
• Militarism and stratocracy slowly replaced Argentina's former electoral system, most famously beginning with the election of Juan Peron and his successors. The United States, though warned about its growing "military-industrial complex" by President Dwight Eisenhower, saw its republican form of government remain strong
  
  
• Argentina's government shifted from a focus on economic liberalism (what we would today call free-market capitalism) toward nationalization of industries and social-welfare programs under Peron. Peron strove for and nearly achieved so-called "full employment," but this was mostly by creating government jobs, which, along with his other programs, put a massive strain on the treasury and created a huge debt. The U.S. at this time was recovering from World War II, and going into a period, in the early 1950's, of unprecedented economic prosperity, spurred on by a commitment to free-market ideals and a staunch opposition to nationalization of business in the U.S. (and in places where the U.S. had a lot of business interests, like Cuba).
  
  
• Following Peron's exile to Spain, Argentina suffered from increasingly unstable government, a series of coups d'etat, and a huge amount of oppression of the people at the hands of the military. The U.S. maintained a largely stable government, and although civil rights unrest and the Vietnam War rocked the public consciousness, the government and its institutions maintained their basic function and character throughout this period.
  
  
• Violence between the right-wing parties and left-wing underground in Argentina continued to worsen, making it relatively difficult to start and maintain a business, or to keep the fruits of one's labors without being extorted by one side or the other. The right-wing government became increasingly isolationist and paranoid, and increasingly looked-down upon by foreign countries, making international trade relatively harder, and concentrating power and wealth in an increasingly small group of political elites. In the U.S., it remained relatively easy to start a business and trade within and outside of the country (especially with Canada) was easy, helping expand U.S. products and services into foreign markets.
  
  I won't keep going, but these are a few key examples. There are many more, and each country or area has its own. It's very difficult to compare all of Latin America with the U.S./Canada in a quick way. I might recommend a couple of books:
  
  
• The Mystery of Capital by a South American historian and economist with the unlikely name of Hernando de Soto is interesting, although by no means exhaustive.
  
  
• Why the West Has Won by Victor Davis Hanson gives Hanson's view on why Western countries have succeeded so often in warfare, and by extension, why these economic and political policies have been so instrumental in keeping the West successful.
  
  
• Why Nations Fail by Acemoglu and Robinson is an interesting, if somewhat monomaniacal, look at theories on why certain political institutions are critical to national success, and uses examples of the U.S. and Canada quite a bit.
  
  
• Finally, Modern Times by Paul Johnson, is, in my view, one of the very best histories of the twentieth century, and while not necessarily addressing your question in specific, it does tackle a lot of the historical issues that led up the current situation, and it's a great read.

Well, arguing that you “should” have a moral compunction to do anything is a virtually impossible task, because morals are internal motivation. I can try to appeal to those morals through guilt (which you don’t like), though calculating marginal utility and appealing to your sense of community (the EA approach, which you don’t like), or by demonstrating that you did benefit from other people (which I will continue to try). But if you truly believe that you are entitled to everything you have and not only owe nothing to people to whom you profited from (because that’s the way the world works) and do not wish to address disparities even though the cost to you is much less than the benefit to someone else (because it’s yours and you worked for it), then you are free of moral compunction and I can’t change your mind. That’s why this is usually the provenance of religion, which promises a punishment from a higher being to encourage what many societies have defined as “the right thing to do.”

First, I would like to agree with you about capitalism as a force for good. The expansion of globalized trade and capitalist economies has made the people on this planet healthier and wealthier than at any other time in human history. Those gains have been distributed, but they have not been equally distributed, and as a result, there is massive global inequality both between and within nations. And actually, the OECD suggests economic strategies by which lessened inequality promotes more growth, growing the pie for everyone (so the pursuit of maximizing only profits at the expense of other developments is not necessarily the greatest global good).

That being said, I will address your three points.

The most important is #2. The idea of “business-friendly values” is a very popular one, but values alone cannot make an economy thrive (or a government or a society) without institutions that protect and promote those values. It is not at all clear that implementing “western values” create prosperity in any kind of automatic way, and certainly not without protective institutions. In addition, it is rare for people in positions of power to voluntarily give up that power, and so disenfranchised people tend to remain disenfranchised. I would say that in your example of immigrants that come to the “Western world” and prosper can do so not because of their values, but because of the institutions that allow that to happen. I suggest Acemoglu and Robinson's Why Nations Fail and Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion as further reading.

It’s also part of the reason that innovation tends to come from a subset of economies. Countries that innovate, have good institutions, and invest in education tend to have more innovators, find a balance between protection of profit and distribution, and make more innovators. There is also an incentive to oppress innovation on discoveries outside of the original innovation centers, which is why we have overzealous patent protection and unequal business agreements that use proprietary tech (Point #1).

Which brings me to the idea that international business can perpetuate disenfranchisement. Many companies use economic power to subvert the power of the people in order to protect their profits, whether through appropriating the use of force or through lobbying elected officials. BP lobbied the US and the UK to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Iran to prevent oil fields from being nationalized (and resource profits sent overseas) in 1953. The United Fruit Company convinced the Eisenhower administration to overthrow the government of Guatemala in 1954 to avoid agrarian reform policies. In 2007, Chiquita banana admitted to funding a terrorist organization in Colombia to protect their interests. Domino Sugar today refuses to comply with labor protections in the CAFTA agreements, using disenfranchised Haitian-Dominicans to harvest sugarcane (part 1) (part 2). Conflict minerals in the DRC and Zimbabwe are still used in a large proportion of electronics. Nestle still uses child labor to harvest cacao in the Ivory Coast.

Rich countries are not immune. Fossil fuel lobbying in the US is a real and problematic thing that is bad for the earth and bad for the green energy industry.

So though it’s true that you did not personally oppress any Tanzanians or Iranians or Koreans (or Guatemalans or Colombians or Haitian-Americans or Congolese or Zimbabweans or Cote-d’Ivorians) (Point #1), if you made money as a shareholder of those companies (or consumed their products), then you profited from the unethical behavior of those companies. As a direct result of those business decisions, people in other countries received less money and you received more. Period. I don’t think that this necessarily makes you a perpetrator, but I think that it does make you complicit.

If you consider this kind of capitalistic profiteering ethical (or “the way the world works”), I can agree that you do not have a moral compunction to support disenfranchised people and reject these company behaviors. However, if you think that any of these actions are morally wrong, then you should feel guilty from profiting off of them. (And I am speaking explicitly about investment income here).

Even if you do not profit from stocks in those companies, you may profit as a consumer – when you buy cheap gas or bananas. Taxes that the companies paid may have supported your elementary school. Benefits from medical protections may have been reinvested in new therapies that cured your grandmother’s cancer. The global economy is complex. But generally, the people who are already rich are those who reap a larger share of the benefits.

If you believe that this is morally acceptable (or “the way the world works”), then you do not have a moral compunction to donate to charity.

However, if you do have a problem with these behaviors and you feel morally uncomfortable with the results, you have two routes to address the issues, and both routes should be followed at the same time: to ameliorate the effects through global giving AND to pursue system reform to make it stop happening.

> It will send the message that a large portion of the American public want a more extreme version of the corpocracy they already have.

This is probably the key point on which we disagree. I believe you think this as a result of Democratic party propaganda and brainwashing. E.g. "Deregulation=good for Big Business."

The truth is a bit more complex than that:

http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-Conservatism-Gabriel-Kolko/dp/0029166500

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL-1SIUOL_w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hc9J4JNfLKU

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/CS/adamsmith.txt

In short, I believe the propaganda system has leveraged, hijacked, coopted Free Market rhetoric to sell to the Conservative boo-boosie some very bad hokum. That Free Market policies mean we have to let Big Businesses thrive and rake in profits. Whereas in fact, the original Free Marketeers that we supposedly look to for guidance - Adam Smith, Frederic Bastiat, David Ricardo - urged Free Market policies in order to pit producers (aka Corporations, in today's world) against each other, in brutal free market competition, reducing their profits to something close to zero.

So the problem here is not so much Free Market ideology per se, which aims for outcomes that even a liberal would not find very objectionable - but corruption. I.e. that a pack of sell-out politicians whored themselves out to Big Businesses and the rich, and used Free Market rhetoric to justify/rationalize what they were doing.

Coincidentally, this is not so different from what the Democratic party does. Only these guys use Socialist critiques of Free Market Capitalism as cover, rationale, justification for intervening in the market and setting up corporate welfare schemes. Again, because they're corrupt scumbags, just like the GOP.

Finally, I think you have to assess the impact of Ron Paul's message from the perspective of the GOP base, which clearly is wired very differently from you, and diagnoses the problems facing us very differently from you. This is the reality of Divide and Rule. I think you're completely unqualified to assess what it is that "the other" hears when they hear Ron Paul speak.

> But one without fetters of a public political arena to hinder it.

Alas, here you're simply on unsound ground, both from a RW or a LW perspective. Here is a LW'er on "public political arena."

http://charliedavis.blogspot.com/2011/10/preach-it-peter.html

> You are saying that you want a country that endorses private military forces conducting private wars for private benefit.

Like I said, I think you've fallen victim to "Divide and Rule" - one symptom of which is paranoid fears about what horrors will befall us if "the other" win or get more of what they want (doesn't this remind you of how Christian fundies think about the muslim menace? "They're going to re-establisht the Caliphate and take back Al-Andalus and besiege Vienna!"). This is yet one more example of this. Note that our wars are already for private benefit. And the situation is even better for corporate than if they had to wage wars via private military forces, because right now the cost of those wars are socialized - levied on society as a whole. In short, right now corporate gets all the benefits, without having to bear any of the costs. How profitable would Iraq have been for ExxonMobil and Halliburton, if they had had to pay the $1trillion all by themselves?

> His rhetoric does not mean what you think it means.

Well yes. It means different things to you, and the the red demographic. I'm saying what it means to you doesn't matter. I'm actually not that worried about the Liberal demographic - they can be talked out of imperialism and war relatively easily by someone like Kucinich or Nader. Now, the Red demographic - that's a different matter. Here someone like Ron Paul is a godsend.

So what matters is what the Red demographic hears.

You people don't need to hear Ron Paul. You need more Kropotkin, Bakunin, and Goldman.

> He truly believes that what is good for the super rich is good for all America.

Actually, this is not correct.

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread780018/pg1

> I would be interested to know if you think I have made any valid points. Peace and best wishes.

Thank you very much for putting in the time and effort to write this. I very much appreciate the sincerity. Sorry if some of the stuff I say sounds less than diplomatic. I thought this was going to be a rather long response, so I wrote it in a hurry. You have to understand that I started out from a position, an understanding of politics pretty close to where I think you're coming from (i.e. a moderate mainstream liberal), so pretty much all the concerns you have and raise, I had myself, and I had to think long and hard about how so much of the stuff I was hearing from the Paulist camp just didn't jive with the mainstream explanation of politics (e.g. Ron Paul actually does run around worrying publicly about how our system benefits Banks and Big Corporations - rather an odd thing for a libertarian to be saying, no?).

Anyhow, I hope you can overlook the less than diplomatic bits, and hope you find the remaining substantive bits thought-provoking. Peace out.

A couple of books that buttress these findings:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0029166500

("Progressive" regulations are a myth. Most such regulations were actually implemented at the behest of big business interests, to reduce destructive (to their profits) competition and to set up de facto cartels)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0226243176

(The policy outcomes the political system produces are a result of special interest and business groups investing in the political system)

Why such outcomes:

Most libs focus almost exclusively on campaign financing, donations, and super-PACs. The problem is possibly even worse than that. We have an extremely sophisticated system of bribery, where political favors are rewarded later:

http://www.republicreport.org/2012/make-it-rain-revolving-door/

(This focuses exclusively on lobbyists, but there is nothing stopping something similar being done by hiring ex-politicians as consultants, corporate officers, giving them seats on corporate boards. Similar things can be done with advisers and staff members to politicians - see how Robert Rubin and Larry Summers were rewarded by Wall Street after the Clinton admin. And you can hire them first, then have them go back to politics, and back and forth - see Dick Cheney and Halliburton)

As far as campaign donations, super-PACs, etc, are concerned, my own $0.02. Note a billionaire who gives $1m to a party, or a partisan political organization, etc, is going to be rewarded with access, attention, and influence. On the other hand, if you and 30,000 "little people" friends of yours each chip in $100 to give to a campaign or a party, do you know what you will get? Spam.

The whole system is rife, shot through with asymmetries like this. Consider that just by being wealthy and successful, rich people (or their agents, like Summers, Rubin, Greenspan, etc) are rewarded with the presumption that they're experts and specially knowledgeable about their fields. Few stop to consider the way their incentive system is set up, and the systemic consequences of political action to "help" their industry thrive.

So. The study is undoubtedly right. The conclusions are supported not just by empirical observations and data, but also by careful consideration of the nitty-gritty details of how the political system works.

Implications: the real problem people are NOT the voters and the bases of the two parties. They are the rich, and the politicians themselves, who are to a man corrupt. I.e. it is not the Tea Partiers. It is people like Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, etc, whose incentive structures, after all, are wired EXACTLY like people like George Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain, Mitch McConnell, and John Boehner's.

Despite the obvious logic of this, the two parties' bases continue to focus on each other. See e.g. the constant non-stop hate directed at Tea Partiers and conservatives by liberals. This is a product of manipulation by the two parties' propaganda systems - I repeat, if you hate Tea Partiers, and think they're the problem, not that Obama and the Democrats are venal and self-serving just like Republican politicians, and that you got stupidly scammed by Obama and the Democrats, then you're a victim of brainwashing and propaganda.

How this propaganda system works is actually excellently illustrated by r/politics. The constant stream of anti-GOP, anti-conservative, anti-Tea Party posts and articles works like "Two Minute Hate" from 1984. Remember, the best, sophisticated propaganda works not at the knowledge/information level, but at the emotional level - you can see this in how, e.g.corporate advertising has advanced from mainly information based in the late 19th/early 20th century, to more lifestyle/identity/emotional appeal and manipulation today. I repeat, the real problem with the propaganda system is not the torrent of false information being fed to Tea Party rubes (although to be sure, that is harmful and dangerous as well), it is in how your emotions, how you relate to leaders and institutions and organizations like Barack Obama, the Democratic or Republican party, liberal democracy, capitalism, the US government, the United States, the UN, etc, are shaped and manipulated.

Finally, the obvious impossibility of making a politico-economic system like ours work acceptably, democratically, in a way that produces rational responses to changing conditions (rather than corrupt rent-extraction policies to benefit whichever special interest group's turn it is at the trough) suggests that liberalism is not a legitimate, real ideology. Rather just like mainstream conservatism, an artifact of the propaganda system, a series of lies and conditioning designed to constrain people's political behavior within acceptable norms, and to shape, channel their reaction and anger at constantly deteriorating conditions and injustices in a direction that is safe and acceptable to the system, the establishment, and the ruling class.

I went to one AA meeting when I first got clean and never went back. I understand people have found support and success in it but to me, personally, I felt it only increased the stigma of drug addicts as these broken hopeless people barely hanging on by a thread. It's an outdated system that relies on little science or attempting to progress the participants and relies more on holding people in place and focusing on the past. Instead I just worked towards becoming a normal person. Here are some of the resources I used:

r/Fitness - Getting Started: Exercise is probably the #1 thing that will aid you in recovering. It can help your brain learn to produce normal quantities of dopamine again as well as improve your heath, mood, well being and confidence.

Meetup: You can use this site to find people in your area with similar interests. I found a hiking group and a D&D group on here which I still regularly join.

Craigslist: Same as above - look for groups, activities, volunteer work, whatever.

Diet

This will be the other major player in your recovery. Understanding your diet will allow you to improve your health,mood, energy, and help recover whatever damage the drugs may have done to your body.

How Not To Die Cookbook

Life Changing Foods

The Plant Paradox

Power Foods For The Brain

Mental Health

Understand whats going on inside your head and how to deal with it is also an important step to not only recovery but enjoying life as a whole.

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy

The Emotional Life Of Your Brain

Furiously Happy

The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works

Educational

If you are like me you probably felt like a dumbass when you first got clean. I think retraining your brain on learning, relearning things you may have forgot after long term drug use, and just learning new things in general will all help you in recovery. Knowledge is power and the more you learn the more confident in yourself and future learning tasks you become.

Illegal Drugs: A Complete Guide to their History, Chemistry, Use, and Abuse

Why Nations Fails

Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century

Thinking, Fast and Slow

The Financial Peace Planner: A Step-by-Step Guide to Restoring Your Family's Financial Health

Continued Education / Skills Development

EdX: Take tons of free college courses.

Udemy: Tons of onine courses ranging from writing to marketing to design, all kinds of stuff.

Cybrary: Teach yourself everything from IT to Network Security skills

Khan Academy: Refresh on pretty much anything from highschool/early college.

There are many more resources available these are just ones I myself have used over the past couple years of fixing my life. Remember you don't have to let your past be a monkey on your back throughout the future. There are plenty of resources available now-a-days to take matters into your own hands.

*Disclaimer: I am not here to argue about anyone's personal feelings on AA**

I don't think any single post can sufficiently explain what "Libertarianism" is. But somebody posted from this article titled Anti-Force Is the Common Denominator just recently in /r/libertarian, and I feel compelled to share it here, to best describe what falls under the shade of the "Libertarian" tree:

>[We] would like to see much less initiation of force in society. We live in a world where lots of misguided people are not satisfied that there’s enough of it yet. They advocate more initiation of force, as evidenced by their desires to deal with every problem under the sun by creating another tax-supported government program...A mature, responsible adult neither seeks undue power over other adults nor wishes to see others subjected to anyone’s controlling schemes and fantasies: This is the traditional meaning of liberty. It’s the rationale for limiting the force of government in our lives. In a free society the power of love, not the love of power, governs our behavior.

>Consider what we do in our political lives these days—and an unfortunate erosion of freedom becomes painfully evident. It’s a commentary on the ascendancy of the love of power over the power of love. We have granted command of over 40 percent of our incomes to federal, state, and local governments, compared to 6 or 7 percent a century ago. And more than a few Americans seem to think that 40 percent still isn’t enough.

>We claim to love our fellow citizens while we hand government ever more power over their lives, hopes, and pocketbooks. We’ve erected what Margaret Thatcher derisively termed the “nanny state,” in which we as adults are pushed around, dictated to, hemmed in, and smothered with good intentions as if we’re still children.

"Anti-force"/"anti-coercion" is the unifying theme which has been perpetually elaborated on since the Age of Enlightenment, so its not like this is anything new. Libertarians may call themselves anarchists, anarcho-capitalists, laissez-faire capitalists, minarchists, classical liberals, objectivists, thin libertarians, thick libertarians, right libertarian, left libertarian, libertarian socialists, mutualists, and many more terms I am unfamiliar with or have forgotten.

The most heavily represented "libertarians" at least within the Internet/United States are of the "right libertarian" mindset. This is a good sample of the thought this particular tree branch shades - though not all members may necessarily advocate. I would consider myself a member of this constituent, though I would prefer to use the term "classical liberal" to differentiate myself from those with an anarchist mentality (and because it sounds more elegant ;) ). As a brief exposition, I recommend reading The Law (available for free online) by Frederic Bastiat or, the book that converted me, The Road to Serfdom by FA Hayek.

In any event, the "anti-force" mentality strongly contrasts with the rhetoric and ideology found on both sides of the congressional aisle - on the one hand you have moralists who want to tell you what you can and can't do with your body, and on the other hand you have collectivists who want to tell you what you can and can't do with your property (i.e. what you own), while both agree that blowing things up makes the world a better place.

That, I think is the best I can describe the Libertarian movement (though as demonstrated, this movement has existed for several centuries).

edit: Here is a list of some youtube channels I subscribe to that can can be classified as Libertarian:

• LibertyPen
  
• ReasonTV
  
• Malthus0
  
• catoinstitutevideo
  
• HeritageFoundation
  

> I just finished listening to it. One of the most cerebral podcasts and there is a lot to process. I've definitely been educated. I'm very much looking forward to a lot more from /u/noname888
Thanks, there will definitely be more soon!

> That was clarity. Thanks for that awesome explanation of the recent drama on /r/AM. I'm no longer wondering wtf really happened.

You're welcome. Sometimes it's a lot easier to explain things verbally than write a long explanation.

> When he was attending Seoul University, he had quite a few Chinese classmates. When he asked them why they chose to study in Seoul University, they said that they didn't choose Seoul University because they think it's better than the Universities in China. They chose to attend Seoul University because it is more westernized. They said that they wanted to absorb the western way of thinking, take that knowledge back to China, and then help China become more competitive against the west.

I feel like this maybe has to do with the stage of industrial development in China? Today, Korea is a first-world country, so the urgency may not be there for collective growth, freeing people to think more about their own personal situation. Totally anecdotal story: I once had a long talk with a Korean college professor in the sciences. He told me that when he was a kid in the 1950s, he and his classmates would wake up every morning to build a strong Korea. If I'm remembering right, Ha Joon Chang talks about this in his book Kicking Away the Ladder. I think that during the 1950s, S. Korea as an economy was poorer than Kenya -- but today it is one of the world's most developed industrial economies. Chang attributes this to smart industrial policy that protected Korean native industries until they were strong enough to compete internationally. Basically, the enclave strategy =)

> He then moved onto the topic of Chinese acquisitions of US companies. I googled and found this graph. I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on all this -- will the U.S. try to stop this? Have they already? Etc.

Chinese companies face the "problem" of holding a lot of US dollars, because for the most part they have been an export-led economy. So they want a place to put that money and get a return greater than they can get on Treasury bills (which are basically a savings account at the Federal Reserve). That pushes them to invest in the United States in things like real estate and American technology. For example, Chinese firms bought Motorola and IBM's Thinkpad division. The US government has already halted some Chinese acquisitions. About 10 years about CNOOC (Chinese oil company) tried to buy Unocal and the US government stopped them. I expect that the US government will continue to bar Chinese firms from buying assets in the US with strategic value. For example, if a Chinese firm tried to buy Cisco, I doubt the US government will let it happen. I mention Cisco because it came to light about 7 or 8 years ago that Chinese companies had built exact duplicates of Cisco routers and were selling them into the US IT market. Maybe you've heard about this? I think the FBI found out that these fake routers were backdoored. Yeah.

> Finally, he was telling me his experience while raising money for the company. He told me that in about 30% of the venture firms he's dealt with, they had at least 1 Chinese partner on the team. He also mentioned the difference between Chinese investors and US investors. U.S. investors were more concerned about how much % they would get back on their investment, whereas the Chinese investors' questions were also about the global effect the product would have (on top of the % return on their investment of course).

That's a really interesting story, and it helps me make more sense of what I'm seeing in Chinese consumer products. It seems like in the last few years, especially in mobile phones, new Chinese companies are bringing out products with international appeal.

> All of this is highly anecdotal, but he's very well educated, very well traveled, very successful so I just STFU and listened as he talked for 3 hours. I'm interested in hearing your take on all this. Maybe in another Podcast? :)

I really appreciate your comments here, I don't actually follow the China business situation that closely anymore, so it's always good to hear information from someone who is close to the action. No worries about the haste...we're all busy people!

Pareto distribution is a descriptive law, not prescriptive. It does not say that things ought to be one particular way, only that -- all other things being equal -- it will tend to be that way. Pareto had merely observed the well-known phenomenon of income inequality, and later speculated that in a truly free-market society, the most biologically superior citizens—namely the most intelligent—would migrate to the top end of the distribution. Mussolini claimed that as a younger man, he attended Pareto’s lectures at the University of Lausanne. He was struck by Pareto’s ideas, which he later thought may offer a "respectable" academic basis for fascist economics.

As Pareto’s biographer Franz Borkenau stated, “In the first years of his rule Mussolini literally executed the policy prescribed by Pareto” in matters of economic reform, “largely replacing state management by private enterprise, diminishing taxes on property, [and] favoring industrial development.” Pareto’s estimation of early fascist accomplishments entered the historical record: as he wrote in a letter to a junior colleague, “The victory of Italian fascism confirms splendidly the predictions of my sociology and articles.” When Mussolini took power in October 1922, Pareto was less than a year from death, but accepted an appointment to the Geneva Disarmament Conference that Mussolini had offered him.

If a society had a historical % rate of malaria, we would not use this as an excuse not to cure or treat malaria. If a society had a historical % probability for women to experience rape, we would not use this an excuse not to criminalize rape. You can try to apply it, but that doesn't mean it actually applies. You still need evidence.

In other words, almost every effort of human civilization is there to remedy some "natural state of affairs" that would occur if we didn't do anything at all, but in no other case do we take that as a recommendation that this is what we ought to strive for. Yet this is how some naive "classical" liberals interpret it. They paint Pareto distribution as some sort of justification for unlimited wealth concentration by elites, when in fact it shows that wealth concentration, while normal in prosperous societies, beyond certain levels; is characteristic of highly corrupt societies and late stage imperialism.

Whether the Pareto distribution correctly describes a set of phenomena is unimportant. Climate observations predict that Phoenix, AZ is not a particularly pleasant place in the summer. Yet, there is air conditioning and swimming pools. Observation of the anatomy of humans proves without a shadow of a doubt that we are incapable of flight. Yet, there are airplanes. Evidence suggests that in the past, small disagreements often escalated to conflicts in which one of the disagreeing parties was left dead or seriously injured. Today there are laws that not only lay out what is and is not allowed, but the range of punishments when people fail to abide by the laws.

Some classical liberals, and lost boys who've adopted Jordan Peterson as their new daddy, will have us believe that because Pareto distribution has been observed to apply to a variety of phenomena, that means it's inevitable and we should stop trying to decrease inequality, which is just as ridiculous as me suggesting we should just stop fighting gravity and confine ourselves to ground transportation. Social inequality exists in most societies, but the degree to which it exists varies wildly from society to society, and it is not at all a foregone conclusion that massive inequality need be the default social condition. In reality, human societies are diverse; some societies have a high concentration of wealth and income, while other societies have much lower concentrations.

The Pareto principle, often stated as "20% of the population will own 80% of the wealth", is only true for certain parameters of the Pareto distribution. Much has to do with the institutions that exist in the society. As Acemoglu and Robinson argue, when the elite control the government, they set up institutions that enrich the elite while dispossessing the majority of people. Rutherford Hayes and Einstein observed this also.

Thomas Piketty's discussion of Pareto from his book Capital in the 21st Century is good. It's a very unsettling book, but it's unsettling because it uses a wealth of data to challenge optimistic assumptions about the trajectory of inequality:

>It is worth pausing a moment to discuss some methodological and historical issues concerning the statistical measurement of inequality. In Chapter 7, I discussed the Italian statistician Corrado Gini and his famous coefficient. Although the Gini coefficient was intended to sum up inequality in a single number, it actually gives a simplistic, overly optimistic, and difficult-to-interpret picture of what is really going on. A more interesting case is that of Gini’s compatriot Vilfredo Pareto, whose major works, including a discussion of the famous “Pareto law,” were published between 1890 and 1910. In the interwar years, the Italian Fascists adopted Pareto as one of their own and promoted his theory of elites. Although they were no doubt seeking to capitalize on his prestige, it is nevertheless true that Pareto, shortly before his death in 1923, hailed Mussolini’s accession to power. Of course the Fascists would naturally have been attracted to Pareto’s theory of stable inequality and the pointlessness of trying to change it.
>
>What is more striking when one reads Pareto’s work with the benefit of hindsight is that he clearly had no evidence to support his theory of stability. Pareto was writing in 1900 or thereabouts. He used available tax tables from 1880–1890, based on data from Prussia and Saxony as well as several Swiss and Italian cities. The information was scanty and covered a decade at most. What is more, it showed a slight trend toward higher inequality, which Pareto intentionally sought to hide. In any case, it is clear that such data provide no basis whatsoever for any conclusion about the long-term behavior of inequality around the world.
>
>Pareto’s judgment was clearly influenced by his political prejudices: he was above all wary of socialists and what he took to be their redistributive illusions. In this respect he was hardly different from any number of contemporary colleagues, such as the French economist Pierre Leroy-Beaulieu, whom he admired. Pareto’s case is interesting because it illustrates the powerful illusion of eternal stability, to which the uncritical use of mathematics in the social sciences sometimes leads. Seeking to find out how rapidly the number of taxpayers decreases as one climbs higher in the income hierarchy, Pareto discovered that the rate of decrease could be approximated by a mathematical law that subsequently became known as “Pareto’s law” or, alternatively, as an instance of a general class of functions known as “power laws." Indeed, this family of functions is still used today to study distributions of wealth and income. Note, however, that the power law applies only to the upper tail of these distributions and that the relation is only approximate and locally valid. It can nevertheless be used to model processes due to multiplicative shocks, like those described earlier.
>
>Note, moreover, that we are speaking not of a single function or curve but of a family of functions: everything depends on the coefficients and parameters that define each individual curve. The data collected in the WTID as well as the data on wealth presented here show that these Pareto coefficients have varied enormously over time. When we say that a distribution of wealth is a Pareto distribution, we have not really said anything at all. It may be a distribution in which the upper decile receives only slightly more than 20 percent of total income (as in Scandinavia in 1970–1980) or one in which the upper decile receives 50 percent (as in the United States in 2000–2010) or one in which the upper decile owns more than 90 percent of total wealth (as in France and Britain in 1900–1910). In each case we are dealing with a Pareto distribution, but the coefficients are quite different. The corresponding social, economic, and political realities are clearly poles apart. Even today, some people imagine, as Pareto did, that the distribution of wealth is rock stable, as if it were somehow a law of nature. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. When we study inequality in historical perspective, the important thing to explain is not the stability of the distribution but the significant changes that occur from time to time. In the case of the wealth distribution, I have identified a way to explain the very large historical variations that occur (whether described in terms of Pareto coefficients or as shares of the top decile and centile) in terms of the difference r−g between the rate of return on capital and the growth rate of the economy.

There are two books that I have read that have done a great deal to help me understand the dynamics that allowed Europe to rise to dominance starting in the 17th century: Guns, Germs, and Steel, and Why Nations Fail. The former talks about the geographical and ecological considerations that stifled development outside of Europe. The latter talks about the role if extractive institutions, set up by colonial powers, that remained after decolonization and prevented previously-colonized nations from developing. I can't do their arguments justice here, but if you are sincerely interested in changing your view I strongly recommend reading those books. I'll try to address your specific points:

> it seems to me that those of European heritage have made the most long-lasting and significant contributions to mankind. To name a few: space travel, internet, modern technology and medicine.

All of these marvels are founded in the scientific method, which developed during the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment has been successfully exported to multiple non-European countries, most notably Japan. So, it's not just Europeans who are able to appreciate Enlightenment values. But the Enlightenment did start in Europe. So, to believe that the Enlightenment proves that Europeans are superior you must prove that the cause of the enlightenment was the innate character of Europeans, and not any contingent factors. That is...very difficult to do. And, yes, the burden of proof is on you, here, since the null hypothesis is that the biological distinctiveness of Europeans is unrelated to the start of the Enlightenment.

> I realize Arabs of ancient times also contributed a lot in the realms of mathematics and medicine.

Yes. Different civilizations have become world leaders at different points in history, which makes the idea of some kind of innate superiority of one civilization really hard to believe. It just so happens that the Islamic Golden Age occurred at a time when it was impossible to communicate over large distances, while the European Golden Age (which we are now in) occurred at a time when communication is instantaneous and we can project military power across the entire world. In other words, the global dominance of Europeans is historically contingent, not an immutable fact of biology.

>One argument I frequently hear to counter this position is that other nations have failed to develop due to colonization and exploitation.

This is an excellent argument, and is, essentially, correct.

> if they were on the same level as Europeans intellectually and strength wise, why couldn't they have found the means to fight back and turn the tables?

Although they were at the same level as Europeans "intellectually and strength wise", they were not at the same level technologically. Europe was in a golden age, Africa, India, and China were not. Again, the key here is that the European Golden Age occurred at a time when it was possible to travel the oceans and project military power worldwide. That was not the case in the Islamic Golden Age or the Indian Golden Age, which explains why those civilizations didn't conquer the world in the way the Europeans of the 19th century did.

>Instead of Europeans doing what they've done to others, why couldn't it have been the other way around?

Guns, Germs, and Steel does the best job of explaining this. In short: Europeans were blessed with livestock that could be domesticated and a consistent climate that allowed them to produce lots of food more efficiently that other regions of the world could, which allowed them to spend more time on other things, like technology. Again, the full argument is the length of a (very good) book, so I suggest you pick it up to get more details.

Here are all the books with amazon links, Alphabetical order :)

---

• Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1591396190
  
• Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh et al. Link: http://amzn.com/160941280X
  
• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown Link: http://amzn.com/0804137382
  
• Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days by Jessica Livingston Link: http://amzn.com/1590597141
  
• How Google Works by Eric Schmidt et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1455582344
  
• Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World by Gary Vaynerchuk Link: http://amzn.com/006227306X
  
• Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way by Richard Branson Link: http://amzn.com/0307720748
  
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1400064287
  
• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck Link: http://amzn.com/0345472322
  
• Never Eat Alone, Expanded and Updated: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi et al. Link: http://amzn.com/0385346654
  
• Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable by Tim S. Grover et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1476714207
  
• Rework by Jason Fried et al. Link: http://amzn.com/0307463745
  
• Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin Link: http://amzn.com/1591842948
  
• The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss Link: http://amzn.com/0307465357
  
• The Choose Yourself Guide To Wealth by James Altucher Link: http://amzn.com/150100994X
  
• The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: *God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison by Mike Wilson Link: http://amzn.com/0060008768
  
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz Link: http://amzn.com/0062273205
  
• The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business by Clayton M. Christensen Link: http://amzn.com/0062060244
  
• The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries Link: http://amzn.com/0307887898
  
• The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime by MJ DeMarco Link: http://amzn.com/B004BDOUAI
  
• The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph by Ryan Holiday Link: http://amzn.com/1591846358
  
• The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1885167776
  
• The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company by Steve Blank et al. Link: http://amzn.com/0984999302
  
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell Link: http://amzn.com/0316346624
  
• Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth by Gabriel Weinberg et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1591848369
  
• Unlabel: Selling You Without Selling Out by Marc Ecko Link: http://amzn.com/1451685319
  
• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel et al. Link: http://amzn.com/0804139296

>This has nothing to do with socialism or capitalism. Capitalist states often have the same social programs, but they have well made economic policy that can generate the wealth to sustain it without forcing everyone into poverty (see Denmark, Canada, Australia, etc)

No, it has to do with socialism and capitalism, it is not capitalism that generates that wealth, resources and labour generate wealth. If it was capitalism, then why are Somalia and Liberia so poor, their capitalist wealth generating magic should protect them, shouldn't it? They are being exploited out of their resources, so they cannot generate wealth, also, Cuba is just as poor as these countries, but it fares much better, I wonder why.

It is convenient to only talk about Europe, North America and Australia when you have to defend capitalism.

And Australia doesn't even have that big of a welfare state tbh.

>Venezuela was only doing "fine" because they were filthy rich from oil.

Yes, so?

>Compare them to singapore which didn't have said luxury of ridiculous wealth under their land.

Singapore? Have you ever heard reports of people actually working there? It's rich because their workers are controlled and alienated by the state, again, you are reinforcing my point (which is Keynes point, which is everyone with a brain's point), it is not capitalism that creates wealth, but it is labour and capital.

>Imperialism is entirely separate from capitalism (mercantilist nations relied on it the most)

I am not only referring to classical imperialism, but especially to economic imperialism, which includes the exploitation of resources and of cheap labour from other countries.

>are you really fucking implying USSR / PRC didn't kill innocents what the fuck.

When did I imply it? Just saying that capitalism kills mostly innocents, also, numbers are definitely inflated, the 60 million figure for Stalin is a meme by itself, and it is literally backed up by nothing.

>Read a book

>Exploitation tends to harm the imperialist nations, and nations become wealthiest by providing the means to success to all their citizens. It just so happens that private property and free enterprise does this the best.

I love it when people tell me to read a book, when they do it's probably the only book they've ever read, and they usually feel so triumphant when they have actual literature backing up their claims, no matter the context, also, it is always by some American economist.

Anyways, I do love me some Acemoglu (studied him pretty intensely in university, and I am rather fascinated by his theory of institutions being a fundamental driver in a nation's development, with the whole inclusive v. extractive discourse), but data is against the fact that exploitation harms imperialists, it might harm the nations that imperialist companies are located into (I would need data for this though), but it does not harm said imperialist companies, and how much cheap labour and resources are exploited in both Asia and Africa should tell you figures about it. You are confusing trading with exploiting, it's the former that gives theoretical gains to the poorest nation in some macroeconomic models.

Also, if you'd like, Read a Paper, even for a capitalist right wing economist such as Allen the centralised functions of the USSR are finely designed to bring about economic growth (and the USSR was the fastest growing nation for 50 years), so your "most efficient" meme which originates with the neoclassical school is just empirically wrong, and what I already said about Cuba (thanks to the embargo it's just as poor as some African countries, but it fares much better) further cements it, and I'm saying this without even supporting the Stalin-driven USSR (guilty of following aggregate results more than worker benefit, like capitalists do).

And, alas

>Marxism is a meme. That's why it will never be taken seriously by people outside of New School or UMass (besides internet memers and autocrats), sorry son.

I don't want to be racist, but this is the final showing that you are an American kid stuck in your own all-American Neoliberal bubble; Marxism is taken seriously (very seriously) everywhere except for the country that has a strong propaganda against communism, a right wing skewed government where the """"left"""" is composed of liberals and a government and education system which are quite literally controlled by big corporations, I wonder why.

And fun fact, in the rest of the world your economics literature (not all of it of course, some of it is good, mostly from the salt lake schools) is what is being made fun of.

And since we're talking about the US, lolefficiency, more than 5 times more vacant homes than homeless people, truly a fair and efficient allocation of resources, wouldn't you think?

Disclaimer: I'm mid20s guy with less invested in shares than I have in my super. The following is what I did to get started in investing which sounds like you're about where I was a year or two ago.

First of all; depending on your circumstances be aware that ING Direct's or ME Bank's savings accounts are currently giving 3.00% interest which might be better than your term deposit if you don't want to go whole hog into shares right away. (ING Direct also does $50 bonus referral codes so expect a flood of PMs now that I've mentioned this)

-----
As for books:
/r/FI's wiki makes some good recommendations from what I've read of them

>Investing

>* The Bogleheads Guide to Investing

• A Random Walk Down Wallstreet
  
• The Four Pillars of Investing
  
• The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns
  
• Millionaire Teacher: The Nine Rules of Wealth You Should Have Learned in School -- Suggestion - Ignore Rule 9 regarding individual stock picking.
  
• The Intelligent Investor -- Caution - Embark on individual stock ownership at your own risk.
  
  The lowest barrier to entry would be that "acorns" app but I strongly recommend taking the couple days to make a CMC account or some other online brokerage with low fees and buy ETFS through that instead so that you're actually learning how it all works and not just pressing buttons on an app. Link it up with free Sharesight account for pretty graphs and easy tax reporting and that should teach you more about "having a share portfolio" than the majority of the population.
  
  Obviously this subreddit and /r/fiaustralia in the sidebar are worth keeping an eye on for insight from people with more skin in the game than me.
  
  -------------------
  
  Now, the other option is you want to ACTIVELY trade that $1k. If you've read some of Bogle's explanations on why that's a bad idea, realised you'll be competing against people with much bigger budgets and a full time job anaysing these things and understand that even at CMC's low $13 flat fee you're losing 1.3% of your $1k packet with every trade then you'll need advice from someone other than me.
  
  Personally the best investment I think I have made so far was my $1k of "beer money" that I threw into bitcoin. Not because it made a good return, but because after months of careful analysis, frequent trading and keeping an ear to the ground on new alt coins I turned my 3.5 bitcoin into 1.05. I didn't end up losing a cent thanks to other factors but seeing how badly my "high risk, high gain, actively managed portfolio" went I'm ecstatic that I learned my lesson with $1k and not with my self-managed super fund at 57 y/o like several people I know.
  
  TL;DR: Anything by John Bogle

>A federal carbon tax will never be passed by the government and really the carbon tax does decrease emissions a little bit but it's more useful for generating money for the government.

Will a federal carbon tax ever be passed by the government? I think it's unlikely in the near term, but in the medium or long term? Who knows? As to the scale of emissions reduction, it would obviously depend on the scale of the tax! Admittedly we don't have much empirical data on this, but insofar as the demand curve slopes down, a carbon tax should be as effective as the rate it is set at. As for "it's more useful for generating money for the government", this is a seperate policy goal than reducing carbon emissions. The two aren't comparable as they have different metrics for success (revenue generated vs emissions reduced).

>Tesla's success has already spurred investment and research by all the other car companies without coercion or extra tax dollars.

How would you even prove this causal link? The fact that Tesla can't even fill its orders suggests that Toyota's success with the Prius could be just as important if not moreso. Either way, Tesla operates in one sector of the economy - The transportation sector is responsible for about 15% of emissions, and I'd bet that personal motor vehicle emissions are not even half that. The point is that Tesla will not spur research and development in the development of cleaner factories, for example.

>Tesla has accelerated the pathway to sustainable transportation by 8-10 years.

Again, don't know how you would prove this claim.

If you're looking for people to reject government spending based on "coercion", I don't think you're going to find many friends here. Neoliberals have an axiomatic belief that government is necessary. If you're interested in some historical policy successes of the US government (which frankly is one of the less effective governments in the developed world), I'd suggest you read this book. It does a good job outlining the technological innovation of the private sector as well as policy areas where it fell short and where government intervention was required.

> It is cumbersome to setup an interac or paypal when you want to help.

Those are your words. The words that I am replying to. Paypal is not irrelevant, which you very well know, because it is the competition to changetip.

> Says you.

No, says the entire field of economic history, not to mention lean startup methodology and user experience design.

Innovation (defined as the wide-scale adoption of new technologies) is not an easy or simple process. The "if you build it, they will come" mantra almost always works out poorly for the builders.

Invention is, by comparison, rather easy. Large businesses project manage invention all the time. We know about when and how well new inventions will be established if we just crank away at them.

Driving user adoption, on the other hand, is a very difficult process. You have to not just build an invention that solves problems for individuals and opens up new avenues of economic efficiency for society, but you also have to convince individuals en masse to change their behavior.

This takes marketing, politics, sales, and more. It takes understanding the human factors that go into technological adoption. At the end of the day, no technology succeeds without humans. These are creative fields which see some degree of process but which are ever-changing. Solutions have to fit the specific technology, consumer market, legal framework, etc..

A good example of innovation vs. invention is Edison vs. Tesla. We all know the popular geek narrative, that Tesla was a lone genius whose work was suppressed by the evil, profit-hungry Edison. But really, the difference was one of innovation. Both men were greatly inventive, but only one of them cared to focus on marketing, user adoption, working with governments, and building a business. It's telling that the one major "success" that Tesla did have was the one where he engaged with Edison on his own turf, taking the AC/DC battle to local governments and the courts.

But at the end of the day, Tesla the inventors legacy is a yet-to-be-built museum crowdfunded by a webcomic author, while Edison's legacy is one of the oldest, largest, and most inventive consumer companies in the US.

If you'd like to learn more, I'd highly recommend The Lever of Riches by Joel Mokyr. He uses historical examples from Europe, the Americas, and China to develop a historical narrative and theory of technological and economic progress (aka, innovation) that helps explain why certain technologies see adoption, as well as why certain societies see more technological innovation than others. And if you're interested in the latter question, Why Nations Fail by Acemoglu and Robinson is a very enjoyable read.

> Haha, we're gonna get in the semantic mire here. My use of the word charity (I thought) kinda implies that 'is giving people direct charitable help the best form of charity'? Is the form of charity that 'charities' enforce the best use for £100 million? And who's to say the charities I pick would be the best. I can't really squeeze that all into a pithy headline. So no! Not yet haha.

Sorry, this just sounds so dishonest. Again, how does this prove that the government are the best? Again, if you don't know what's best, why are you saying they are?

I already gave you a solution if you don't know best that doesn't require the government. Quoting myself, "If you don't know which charities to donate to, why not an index fund of charities of sorts which excludes inefficient charities? For example, charities where, for every $1 donated, less than 80 cents actually goes towards helping people. We can let people vote for causes with their money and back those causes accordingly." Vote with your money or back the market of other people's votes.

> My evidence is that nothing else has done it better to raise living standards. https://humanprogress.org/

What evidence do you have that governments raise living standards?

Governments don't raise living standards. Businesses raise living standards. Governments getting out of the way of business helps businesses raise living standards.

Ensuring fair rule of law (no corporatism, no cronyism, etc.) and property rights (the promise that what you earn or have is yours to keep) for all is the only thing government can do to get out of the way of businesses.

Please read this book when you've got time.

> Do many third world countries have efficient democracies and government? To be fair, this is the best critique, because I think the utility of my point is directly relative to the amount of corruption, and rent seeking in the society. So yeah, it does depend.

No, you misunderstand how governments work and form. They (edit: third world country governments) fail to ensure fair rule of law and property rights.

> Except these fish have tried plenty of other gold fish bowls and they're rubbish.

What does this even mean?

Read. All the famous investors started reading at a young age and read ferociously (ok maybe not all but most).

Go to the library if you can, they generally will have all the quality investing tomes, without some of the "get rich quick manuals" which only benefit the authors.

Here is a few books to start with:

• The Four Pillars of Investing
  
• The Intelligent Investor
  
• The Bogleheads Guide to Investing You could start here. Pretty good introduction.
  
• A Random Walk Down Wall Street
  
• The Richest Man in Babylon (PDF) This is a quick read, and more a story than anything. Still worth it.
  
• [The Little Book of Common Sense Investing] (http://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Common-Sense-Investing/dp/0470102101/ref=pd_sim_b_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=16QN03Q9GFZ6NG5PPJ6P)
  
  Most of this stuff is investment theory. To be a successful investor as an average American, without a job in the finance industry, you probably don't have to read all of those books. If you really want to get into investing, that's a good place to start.
  
  Also, the Bogleheads book is a great one to start with because you can decide if you really are interested in investing. If not, that book is good personal financial advice regardless who you're getting paid. It will benefit the regular American.
  

>The new wealth from our growing economy is not going to the guy at the median level. It isn't going to the guy at the bottom.

Inequality, to be sure, is an issue that many Economists are focused closely on. However, here is a paper that addresses some of the more popular misconceptions regarding inequality. In short, we haven't seen the same level of growth of wages in the bottom brackets of the economy, however, focusing solely on wages paints a misleading picture. Nonwage compensation (things like benefits), when added to direct income, gives us a far less alarming view of our current situation. Which, again, is not to say a problem does not exist. Inequality is, without a doubt, growing.

>It's also pretty important to note that I don't have an alternative to your, or the current, system. At least, not one that the majority of the population would agree to.

Good on YOU for having this introspection. Contrary to what is spouted on social media/tv/etc., most Economists believe we already have a relatively successful system (here in the US, anyway). Have a look at this graph. As you can see, the Human Development Index (a measure used for standard of living) value increases as inequality decreases. A conclusion we can draw from this is that inequality is simply unsustainable in an economically successful country.

This is a fantastic book by an MIT economist that gives me great hope. I highly recommend it, or even just the first few chapters. A system that excludes people, extracts wealth from the impoverished, and uses exploitative practices to keep a ruling party in power is not one that can also have the relatively great standard of living that we enjoy in the US. They are incompatible.

Boy do I have a book for you!

Kicking Away the Ladder by Ha Joon Chang.

He's a 'heterodox' economist, in other words he doesn't agree with the 95% of economists who are writing at the moment.

He basically argues that economies have grown because they developed using protectionist policies. Then, when they were strong, forced countries to open up to their advantage, effectively 'kicking away the ladder'. The book is thoroughly well researched and well written.


Now, technological advancement. For a fun idea of this I like Brenner who writes lots about economics and how the crash happened. He also wrote a LOT about how capitalism originally developed from Feudalism: Here's a link to a copy http://www.scribd.com/doc/74325361/BrennerPropertyandProgress

Basically he's arguing that it's nothing to do with technological developments but developments in relations of production that decide social relations, what he calls 'social property relations'. It's a bit of a dull read because he's REALLY methodical but interesting because it shows how capitalism developed - it's about control from the top.


Now! To more recent times. How did America get ahead? I reccomend two articles: The American Road to Capitalism by Charles Post which talks about slave economies and how it held America back as well as how the petty agronomy was central to the development of industry (if you've read the Brenner this will sound familiar in an odd way).

The other piece I really like is by Kozul-Wright called the myth of Anglo-Saxon Capitalism, it's in a book called he Role of the State in Economic Change. He argues that America did well because it ignored Britain's 'laissez-faire' mentality and instead created a strong domestic economy backed up by a strong state which helped to develop an 'agro-industrial complex' that was the back bone. A strong state had money to spend plus it had the ability to change property laws to help the common good (think about eminent domain in developing rail accross the US which was so imperative to it's growth). Once it got big internally the state began to fade away.


Now! We come to the modern day! Technological advancement, why is it some countries roar ahead? For this I reccomend Block and Keller's excellent (recent) article "Where do Innovations Come from?". Turns out if you look at the most promising innovations of recent times they've all come from government funded labs or from universities - the private sector has little to do with R&D and technological development. They argue that the State, even if not a direct and single funder (because there are so many state and federal bodies in the US) acts as a 'networked state' that provides information and backs certain people to give others confidence in their innovations and this is central to keeping ahead.


Hope that helps! (p.s this is not economics so much as a leftward leaning political economy which seeks to explain a lot of things economics tries to gloss over).

Fellow Tech grad here! I used to do exactly what you are doing, and found it to be a not so great system. After getting hammered I decided to do my homework and learn about investing from pros and peer reviewed material.

The first lesson I learned is just because a product is doing well does not mean it will be a good thing for investors. (PDF warning)

I'm not sure what degree program you are in or if you have to take statistics, but believe it or not that course had a large impact on how I decided to invest. Market price is essentially a collective prediction, and that is usually a very accurate prediction compared to the individual predictions that make up the collection.

When you have a little free time on your hand I'd recommend reading these two books.

Four Pillars of Investing

The Intelligent Asset Allocator

I found it really easy to read and very informative. I wish I had read them 10 years ago and not wasted all those years floundering away in the market.

Warren Buffett's shareholder letters are a great resource as well. I'd start with the essay entitled "How to minimize investment returns" in the 2005 letter, page 18.

Good luck! If you have any questions feel free to ask!

Looks like you picked up the torch ;) I'll head over to r/StateofTheUnion - but since you took the time to put down a thoughtful perspective, I'll try to return the favor.

The role of government. I find myself thinking in 21st Century terms rather than either 20th Century or 19th Century and in this, I find that Paul's libertarianism (albeit still rough hewn) is much closer than classical Liberalism or the Neo-Liberalism of the Republicans. Perhaps this is why Paul is the only candidate of either Party who seems to connect in some way with the #OWS folks (who are themselves a part of the formation of 21st Century politics). The key principle here is to recognize that bureaucracy in general - be it government or corporate or non-profit is disempowering and corrupting. Consequently, it should be avoided wherever possible and where necessary should be designed to reboot on a periodic basis (a deep reset that can clean out all of the self-reinforcing structures that tend to accumulate). Of utmost import is to avoid situations where corporate and government bureaucracy can connect and co-evolve (e.g. the FCC, the FDA, the DOD, etc.). IMHO, in the 21st century - so long as we can keep the Internet free and open - the edge (the individual) is dramatically empowered. 20th Century top-down hierarchies were largely formed as a result of the discovery of the efficiency of these kinds of bureaucracies during the 30's and, particularly, the War. But this was in a very low bandwidth environment when a real premium was on span of control. Nowadays, bandwidth is wide open and our ability to monitor and police non-mutalistic/maladaptive behavior from the edge is much higher. As a surprisingly illuminating example, consider the music industry vis a vis MP3 and P2P. But for the increasingly intense intervention of government, people at the edge would have completely mopped the floor with these huge media companies. And that's just in the area of music where the human interest is relatively trivial (but the corporate interest - money - is identical to any other corporate interest). Expect individuals to fight harder in more existentially important areas like journalism, health and education; but expect the alternative corporate interests to have roughly the same capabilities and intensity. If corporations were not able to control government, we'd already have broken their control.

We still need some architecture to put it all together of course, but the key is that 20th Century approaches are anachronistic and new more distributed approaches to pretty much everything (education, banking, healthcare, environmental protection) are absolutely necessary.

While Paul is most certainly not the guy to build this 21st Century architecture - he seems the only guy capable of (interested in) getting the obsolete machinery the heck out of the way. Everywhere I look, I see inordinately bloated and delusional (i.e., unresponsive to reality) institutions that are increasingly incapable of either executing on their original raison d'etre or engaging in any form of plausibly adequate reformation. We are in need of a complete enema - from which we can perhaps begin a redesign that is adequate to modern realities.

As for economics and monetary policy - you are right, the gold standard is the wrong answer. If you have an interest in complexity - check out Eric Beinhocker's work. We need to go beyond the 19th Century model of the gold standard, but equally clearly late 20th century fiat currencies are a terrible answer. I'm largely convinced that a mixture of reputation currencies and decentralized digital currencies are likely the right answer. Ron Paul might not be in a position to get this - but again, none of it matters if the Fed is in charge. I'll count on Paul to nix the Fed and then allow people to figure out the solution without getting too much in their way.

Thanks for listening.

I will try to make this short and sweet. (I failed)

What you're talking about is tongue-in-cheek referred to as "The Rise of the Robots" in the economic and technological discourse. To be clear, it's not so much that robots will "take people's jobs" so much as having robots do those jobs will be more cost-effective than having humans do them at a politically acceptable wage.

The thing to understand about technological progress and automation is that all of the previous waves of industrialization (the so-called "first" and "second" industrial revolutions) all involved technology that was complementary to unskilled labor. Whereas before a man would have likely done hard labor out on the farm, because of industrialization one man with farming equipment could do the work of dozens or hundreds before. This freed up labor to go work in efficient assembly lines. So previous waves of industrialization were consistent with high demand for low-skilled labor and thus, rising wages at the low-end. When your grandpa talks about how back in his day you could graduate high school and then go work at the factory or mill or whatever, that's what he's talking about.

Why was this? Well, to summarize this Brad DeLong post, previous industrial technologies were able to substitute for brute force, but they still required a human brain to serve as a sort of "cybernetic control loop," which is to say, you still needed crane operators, tractor drivers, assembly line workers, truck drivers, retail and fast food employees, etc.

So for a long time people such as the Luddites have protested that labor-saving devices were "taking their jobs." Economists have long regarded those fears as unfounded. On the contrary, labor-saving machines freed up labor to be put to other uses. The transition period could be painful as businesses rise and fall and people find themselves in and out of work, but the greater prosperity gained thereby was more than worth it.

But now, we seem to be entering a "Third Industrial Revolution." McAfee and Brynjolfsson call it The Second Machine Age in their book. What separates the current round of automation from previous ones is that they are substitutes for low-skilled labor rather than complements to it. Each passing year we seem to be getting closer and closer to the point where smart computers can drive cars and trucks, run warehouses, stores, farms, and factories, run fast food restaurants, either by themselves or almost entirely by themselves. In fact there is a running joke in certain circles that "a modern manufacturing plant only has two employees: a man and a dog. The man to feed the dog, and the dog to stop the man from touching the machines." In addition, technologies such as the internet are creating a "superstar economy," in which a handful of successful people (think Taylor Swift or the guy who invented TurboTax) get ALL the moneyz because their "product" can be scaled up almost without limit.

What are the broader societal implications of this? Probably the best source to check out is Tyler Cowen's Average is Over. He argues that we will increasingly see a divergence between the roughly 20% of people who are either superstars or able to interact well with machines (data scientists, computer programmers and engineers, etc.) and the 80% or so who won't. The depressing implication is that many people are today what horses were 100 years ago: on the brink of obsolescence.

My own personal opinion is that we do have a non-trivial problem on our hands as we plow ahead into the 21st century. If managed correctly we can ensure that robots are by-and-large beneficial to most people instead of detrimental. This is a topic where it's very hard to tell who is a crank and who is being reasonable if you're just reading about it for the first time, so I'm trying hard to give you a balanced approach.

Erik Brynjolfsson and Tyler Cowen have both done podcasts on their books if you are interested in listening to them. Brad DeLong also discusses this occasionally on his blog, which in my opinion is one of the best econ blogs out there.

Hope this helps. If I wasn't clear about something I'd be happy to clarify.

I didn't read either of those two, but I did read Zero Sum Society and Zero Sum Solution when they were released. I know he gets a lot of flack for some of his ideas, but the issues he was popularizing at the time are still valid, IMO.

In fact, a recent Freakonomics episode featured Robert Gordon, author of The Rise and Fall of American Growth, which echoes some of the central themes of Thurow's.

Namely, that in a society with a low growth pattern, for one group in a society to prosper it inherently means another group must have their fortunes decline. Thurow predicted the growth in wealth inequality in the US, as the wealthiest would have their net worth increase at the expense of other stratifications of society.

Thurow is a very easy to read economist, which can be seen as both a strength and a weakness. I do hope you give some of his writings a chance. I have a great fondness for Thurow as a writer, even if I disagreed with some of his views.

>Except, empirically, it shows otherwise.

Actually, minimum wages have been shown to cause job losses: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/26/business/economy/seattle-minimum-wage.html

The Berkeley study covered restaurant workers only. A different University of Washington study compiled data from all sectors in Seattle, and showed far worse results:

The University of Washington researchers found that the minimum-wage increase resulted in higher wages, but also a significant reduction in the working hours of low-wage earners. This was especially true of the more recent minimum-wage increase, from as high as $11 an hour to up to $13 an hour in 2016. In that case, wages rose about 3 percent, but the number of hours worked by those in low-wage jobs dropped about 9 percent — a sizable amount that led to a net loss of earnings on average.

Yeah surely the rents don't help, but if you make the minimum wage $100/hour, you will have fewer jobs. This is econ 101 stuff.

As for the automation replacing jobs thing, the experts on AI/robotics are mostly in agreement on this. Check out:

The Second Machine Age by Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the MIT Center for Digital Business and one of the most cited scholars in information systems and economics, and Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at MIT,

Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future, by Martin Ford.

High-Skilled White Collar Work? Machines Can Do That Too NY Times article

It's not really a question of when, it's already happening.

Consider how:

Turbotax and automated payroll systems have replaced a significant % of accounting positions

Wall St firms need fewer employees because most trading is now automated

Highly automated Amazon warehouses means fewer employees are needed for retail and malls shut down

Law firms now need fewer new associates and paralegals due to legal software

Universities can hire fewer teaching assistants due to educational software

In the ports of NYC and worldwide a few engineers controlling robotic cranes have replaced tens of thousands of longshoreman unloading and loading ships

Many newer behemoth companies like Facebook and Google are worth far more than old guard firms like GM or Walmart but require only a few hundred to a few tens of thousands of human employees...

And technological progress isn't slowing down, it is speeding up. Think of the approximately 20 million drivers who will be almost surely out of a job within the next 2 decades as self driving cars and trucks hit the roads.

Yes there will still be jobs, but a surprising number of them are being and will continue to be automated, at an ever increasing rate. One cashier watching 10 self-checkout scanners replacing ten cashiers is a good example of the jobs that might still require humans... until you replace her too with a robot.

Neither tariffs nor high minimum wages will change this trend. UBI is really the only long term solution.

It's great to know that you are soaking in all that great material at such a young age! You are certainly way ahead of the curve.

For a fairly complete understanding of Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism I recommend reading these in the following order:

• Society Without a State - an essay on the basic position that the state is unnecessary/undesirable.
  
  
• For a New Liberty [PDF] - a book on the fundamentals of libertarianism, and anarcho-capitalism
  
  
• The Ethics of Liberty [PDF] - a more philosophical and in depth analysis of how best to apply the non-aggression principle under various circumstances.
  
  I also recommend the following books in no particular order:
  
  
• An Agorist Primer [PDF] by Edward Konkin III
  
  
• Practical Anarchy by Stefan Molyneux
  
  
• The Road to Serfdom [Amazon, can't find a free version, probably available at a local library] - by F. A. Hayek - not an anarcho-capitalist, but an important work on sociology/economics by one of the original Austrian economists.
  
  
• Anarchy, State and Utopia [link to download PDF] by Robert Nozick - Nozick is a minarchist, but I think that understanding his philosophy is a must for any libertarian, "anarcho" or not.
  
  If you are interested in free audiobooks, you will find 3 great ones here:
  
  http://freekeene.com/about/books/
  
  And Stefan Molyneux turns most of his books into free audiobook downloads as well.
  
  http://www.freedomainradio.com/FreeBooks.aspx
  
  And if all that isn't enough for you, here is a list by Lew Rockwell:
  
  http://www.lewrockwell.com/books/anarcho-capitalism2.html

Sorry for the late response, I've been pretty busy all day.

Anyway,

> The problem, I think, is trying to make an issue that's not so black-and-white look black-and-white. In the poll you linked, read the write-in responses below. Most of the comments for the 'agrees' say things like "gains and losses are not spread evenly" or "economists understate short-term employment costs"

True. Trade is not black-and-white, there are winners and losers. There is consensus on that as well -- the losers are those who lose their jobs, and the winners are literally everyone else (not just the uber-rich). If you're interested in reading about trade and how it does and does not affect the economy, I'd suggest this Paul Krugman essay.

However, the consensus is still there. Although some particular trade deals might not be considered favorable to the US (Krugman described himself as a "lukewarm opponent" to the TPP) trade overall is seen as a massively positive benefit to the economy due to comparative advantage. The extremely quick drop in world poverty and rise in living standards can mostly be attributed to trade.

Also, I see you've noticed Acemoglu's comment. You left out

> probably less than benefits

Which makes a huge difference. I highly recommend his book, Why Nations Fail though if you are more interested in his thought process.

> It's worth noting that Sanders is only 'anti-free-trade' in the black and white world, and in reality his stance is that these agreements can be good if there are stipulations like retraining programs, comparative working condition requirements, etc.

Sander's view is about as black-and-white as you can get. He has opposed literally every single trade deal he could, whether or not they had any of those stipulations.

And, I know I've linked Krugman a lot -- I don't think he's infallible but he's one of the very best resources on trade -- here he explains in plain English why "comparative working conditions" may not lead to quite as good an outcome as you'd expect. I agree with you and Bernie that retraining programs are necessary, as would many economists (there's not quite a consensus because that is more a matter of opinion on what is "right") but the fact is that there is and has been a solid consensus in economics on the benefits of free trade, comparable almost to that of global warming for climate scientists.

I posted more links to you last night. Here they are again:

> Ah yes you’re right David Autor is the chap. Fascinating work! This is what I call structural technological unemployment, though it would be more accurate to call it UNDER-employment. Of course, if these trends continue in the same direction or amplify because of technology in different ways, things could go very badly.

> This is why adaptation to Human-Centered Capitalism is so important

> https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.29.3.3

> These papers are starting to get rather old to me at least! Here’s also The Race by Man and Machine, by Acemoglu and Restrepo

> https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/aer.20160696

> These two are experts in the technological impacts on economies. Check out The Second Machine Age by Brynjolfsson and McAfee. I’d bet you could find some good papers by them if you search for it:

> https://www.amazon.com/Second-Machine-Age-Prosperity-Technologies/dp/0393350649/ref=nodl_

> Another good one about post-scarcity economics might be Abundance by Peter Diamandis. He’s not an economist but check out all those boards he’s on!! Guy knows his stuff

> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance:_The_Future_Is_Better_Than_You_Think

> Really was trying to find a good paper for you by Young Joon Kim, Kyungsoo Kim, and Su Kyoung Lee in 2017... shucks. Published in the journal Futures. In any case you can find a good related article here: http://earchive.tpu.ru/bitstream/11683/52262/1/jess-62-288.pdf

> This last one was very much a clincher study, so enjoy! Behold: Technological innovation and employment in derived labour demand models: A hierarchical meta-regression analysis
Mehmet Ugur, Sefa Awaworyi Churchill and Edna Solomon! So much glorious MATH

> https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/16035/1/16035_Ugur_Technological%20innovation%20and%20employment%20%28AAM%29%202016.pdf

Btw I’ll let you know more how to persuade me after I finish breakfast but check them links out

Ooo I really wanted to find this one for you but can’t find a non-paywalled link. This would show you a lot of the data for manufacturing

Technological prospective of manufacturing for the year 2030 by Miguel Alfaro, Manuel Vargas, et al

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8609728

This one was great as well, but also pay walled. This one suggests that the US workforce is incredibly lacking in higher skill sets and so will be more susceptible to automation-caused job losses. “Problem-Solving Skills of the U.S. Workforce and Preparedness for Job Automation” Sorry couldn’t find a way for you to access it for free.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1045159518818407

This one isn’t pay walled! You should definitely take a look, they mention UBI, but it was published from a law school, not an economics institute or think tank. “Technology, unemployment & policy options: Navigating the transition to a better world” by Gary Marchant, Stevens, and Hennessy which appeared in the Journal of Evolution and Technology

https://jetpress.org/v24/marchant.pdf

This one was incredibly informed, shows more figures and evidence in an easily-understandable way than I’ve seen elsewhere. “The impact of technological change on jobs and workforce structures” by Chandon Bezuidenhout, published by the Gordon Institute of Business Science

https://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/64525/Bezuidenhout_Impact_2018.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

EDIT: so how will you persuade me that technological unemployment isn’t a problem??

I need evidence that shows conclusively that other factors are more important than automation in causing job losses and depressing wages since the 1970s. Or evidence that shows more jobs were created since the 1970s than phased out because of new technology.

Not sure how you could calm me down about Artificial Intelligences since they aren’t exactly around to test yet. Perhaps you could send me evidence for why the AI industry will not face accelerated technological research and development? Could you send me evidence for why the labor replacement potential of AI is overblown, maybe because their advancement has some kind of natural ceiling or impediment somehow?

The historical precedent of new job creation following technological destruction of jobs doesn’t seem to have kept up since the 1970s and 1980s, and seems like enough evidence for why we should be skeptical it’ll pop up some time in the future but because it popped up in the 1950s and earlier in the century. What conclusive evidence is there that Artificial Intelligence isn’t a game changer for our economy? Obviously you can’t use evidence from before there were computers for such a rebuttal. There’s no good comparison for AIs in history to use for economic predictions other than computers. It’s a tough road to persuade someone that machine intelligences will always be inferior to humans. That’s a nice story but it’s entirely based on treating Hollywood movies like real life

> You do realize we're living in the economic fallout of regulations slashed in the name of "small, ineffective government", right?

No, I don't realize that at all.

First of all, you can't talk about "regulations" like that in blanket terms. You have to ask, regulations for whom, and deregulation for whom? It's a little bit like talking about "free markets." It's not quite correct to say our problem is "free markets" run amock. It's actually more like "brutal free market competition for poor and workers, corporate welfare and socialism for corporations (especially big ones) and plutocrats."

I.e., not enough regulations holding big corporations in check? But on the other hand, tons of regulations protecting big business and corporations from competition from little guys.

So, ultimately the question is why is it that the regulations we do have are for the benefit of corporations and the rich? To set up monopolies and cartels for their benefit? Why is that the socialism and welfare we do have is for the benefit of corporations and the rich?

And that, of course, brings us to the question of who actually controls government, and why. And thence to "what exactly is the nature of this government thing, anyhow?"

Edit: also, pretty damn remarkable that liberals think we have small, ineffective government, when it soaks up, what, like 30% of GDP. And ineffective? It's highly effective at the stuff it does want to do. Imperialism, militarism, domestic police/surveillance state, imprisoning young black males, bailing out and enriching Wall Street bankers, etc etc etc.

In fact, there are plenty of data points that point to the conclusion that the government is HUGE, has enormous resources, and is remarkably efficient and effective at the things it wants to do and wants to be effective at.

So again, perhaps the problem here is that you liberals are incapable of getting over that propaganda lie of what the government is and is supposed to be doing, and just taking at face value the reality of what it does, and is. Cause that reality is... not very pleasant.

> Disastrous job creation is one of the most central/pressing problems in India today. If not the most one.
>

I agree with you. But it takes a special kind of genuis to declare that there is an easy policy fix to it. The fundamental problem is with treating "job creation" as an end in itself. It isn't. It is an outcome contingent on multiple economic factors -- increasing demand, growing productivity, a burgeoning economy, and so on and so forth. Where is this demand, pray tell? We keep reading of a global demand slump, and of inflated debt further reducing people's ability to spend. Productivity? This nice, well-acclaimed book makes a very convincing case that the world's productivity is no longer growing. Productivity growth fell steadily over the last two decades and came to a complete standstill around 2014. The author posits that nothing short of a miracle is going to reverse this trend.

Export-oriented growth has been the chief mechanism through which Asian economies achieved rapid economic growth, the build-up of industrial strength, the creation of skilled jobs, and the reduction in poverty. Best of luck trying to replicate that today. We're essentially treading new ground when it comes to these things, and may have to be the first country that does it based on domestic consumption alone.

And it's not even that the government is sitting on its hands. Infra development has picked up. Make-in-India, while not exactly a model of success in the civilian sector, has shown some real success in defence manufacturing. Much of the world still sees India as the best emerging market to investment in, and the government has pursued significant reforms in enabling that investment. But no, the 149 words I've written based on cherry-picked soundbytes are the final verdict on the matter!

>People who vote for Modi should just come clean that it's all about Hindutva and the rest of it is garbage nonsense excuses.

Yes sir. Whatever you say, sir. After all, you know me better than I know myself.

> It's a big government that has been purchased and is currently being run by big corporations.

The corporate form is relatively recent (4, 5 centuries?) so let's generalize it to "the rich."

The problem is, if you study history, governments have pretty much always been associated with the rich. It is an institution that is either created by, or controlled by the rich, or in cases where the government is imposed by those who control military force, the guys who control it in very short order become "the rich" and use their control of government to make that state of affairs permanent.

As far as corporations are concerned - don't forget how corporations are created. By a State Charter. I.e. corporations are entities created when the government bends the rules and exempts some rich people from liability laws for some of their investment/business activities.

So there is a case to be made that government supporters are ultimately responsible for the problem of corporations.

> Big corporations that Ron Paul wants to further remove regulations from.

How did those corporations get so big? Who controlled the government when it enacted those regulations? So what purpose do those regulations really serve?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Triumph-Conservatism-Reinterpretation-1900-1916/dp/0029166500

http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Rule-Investment-Competition-Money-Driven/dp/0226243176

> Just as thinking the problem is only democrat or only republican caused

I don't think that. The vast majority of you liberals or Democrats think that. That is a big part of the reason why I yell at you.

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1i6ac5/wounded_soldier_writes_letter_about_being_forced/cb1mwdd?context=3

> thinking Ron Paul the deregulatory is the solution shows that you just aren't paying attention.

Of course he's not "the solution." But his campaign in 2008 and 2012 were probably the best efforts to back, to make things better.

Because corporate/Wall Street scam #1 is imperialism.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/

And a guy who is speaking out against that, in front of Republican audiences, is pure fucking gold.

> Why do you think Ron Paul is the only "crazy" the media allows to have even a small voice?

The media has to maintain the illusion we're a free country with a free media. So they can't simply ignore a movement of a couple million people. It's the same sort of stuff they do with #OWS or anti-war rallies. They can't completely bury it, so they either play down the numbers (i.e. anti-war rallies with hundreds of thousands of people made to look like it was "only" 50 thousand) or portray them like crazy kooks (Ron Paul, #OWS).

http://www.businessinsider.com/jon-stewart-ron-paul-media-video-2011-8

z.b. hier hab ich mich aus der Diskussion gezogen, weil du so unehrlich warst.

Aus einen Blogpost von den Autoren der Bücher:

>"From the point of view of Why Nations Fail, the types of social norms that Ferguson talks about are institutions — they are rules that people face that centrally govern their incentives and opportunities. Of course they are not laws or written in the Lesotho constitution, rather they are what Douglass North called “informal institutions”. But they are institutions, none the less."

http://whynationsfail.com/blog/2013/10/23/cows-capitalism-and-social-embeddedness.html

>So what sorts of institutions did we emphasize? Not the written aspects of the constitution such as whether or not there is a parliamentary democracy, another thing that Henry and Miller focus on. Those things can be important, but the types of institutions that influence the political and economic incentives in society can be very different. For example, in the first chapter of Why Nations Fail, we emphasized that the distinctive economic performance of the United States was created by the US Constitution with its checks and balances and separation of powers. But we also argued that this document was an outcome of a set of political institutions that had already been established during the colonial period. A further illustration from the same period that other types of institutions matter is the two-term limit for presidents in the United States. This was not part of the Constitution. Rather, it was established as a social norm by George Washington when he decided not to run for a third term. The social norms worked form 150 years until Franklyn Roosevelt violated it. The role of the Supreme Court in assessing the constitutionality of legislation was not in the Constitution either, but likewise emerged as a social norm after the landmark Marbury versus Madison case in 1803.

>In our post last week about Cows and Capitalism, we pointed out that social norms, like the one in Lesotho that cash could be converted into cows but not vice versa, counted as institutions according to the definition we used. In this case the social norm that Washington set, for example, clearly created incentives and constraints for future US presidents that influenced their behavior. That’s what institutions do.

http://whynationsfail.com/blog/2013/10/29/what-are-institutions.html

Jetzt nochmal Wikipedia Definition.

"Institutions are "stable, valued, recurring patterns of behavior". As structures or mechanisms of social order, they govern the behaviour of a set of individuals within a given community. Institutions are identified with a social purpose, transcending individuals and intentions by mediating the rules that govern living behavior. The term "institution" commonly applies to both informal institutions such as customs, or behavior patterns important to a society, and to particular formal institutions created by entities such as the government and public services. Primary or meta-institutions are institutions such as the family that are broad enough to encompass other institutions."

Die Definition passt hier so viel mehr, als deine Anspielung auf die katholische Kirche oder das römische Reich.


aber wikipedia nimmt hier die falsche Definition... und du erwartest von mir das ich hier noch weiter diskutiere? Wenn du mir mit voller Absicht ins Gesicht lügst? Wenn du genau weißt das ich das Buch gelesen habe und mich da eigentlich auf dein Wort schon verlassen musste um überhaupt eine weitere Diskussion möglich zu machen?

Naja ich klatsch in die Hände, das weißt du dir auch gleich wieder easy weg dass es eh so gemeint war und hurr durr. Das mehrere Nobel Laureate genau diese Institutionen Argumentation preisen, ist dir ja egal, weil du ja so viel bessere Internetkommentare verfasst als diese dummen Nobelpreisträger.

https://www.amazon.de/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719219

>“This important and insightful book, packed with historical examples, makes the case that inclusive political institutions in support of inclusive economic institutions is key to sustained prosperity. The book reviews how some good regimes got launched and then had a virtuous spiral, while bad regimes remain in a vicious spiral. This is important analysis not to be missed.” —Peter Diamond, Nobel Laureate in Economics

>“Acemoglu and Robinson have made an important contribution to the debate as to why similar-looking nations differ so greatly in their economic and political development. Through a broad multiplicity of historical examples, they show how institutional developments, sometimes based on very accidental circumstances, have had enormous consequences. The openness of a society, its willingness to permit creative destruction, and the rule of appear to be decisive for economic development.” —Kenneth Arrow, Professor Emeritus, Stanford University, Nobel Laureate in Economics, 1972

>“This fascinating and readable book centers on the complex joint evolution of political and economic institutions, in good directions and bad. It strikes a delicate balance between the logic of political and economic behavior and the shifts in direction created by contingent historical events, large and small at ‘critical junctures.' Acemoglu and Robinson provide an enormous range of historical examples to show how such shifts can tilt toward favorable institutions, progressive innovation and economic success or toward repressive institutions and eventual decay or stagnation. Somehow they can generate both excitement and reflection.” —Robert Solow, Nobel Laureate in Economics, 1987

Wie arrogant muss man eigentlich sein um zu meinen man weiß mehr über ein Thema als 3 Top Wissenschaftler dieses Gebietes? Sowas von Lächerlich. Wegen solche Sachen verwehrst du dir jeglicher zukünftiger Diskussionen mit mir.

>* What is the best advice you have ever been given (in and out of finance)?

• Focus on what you can control.
  
  >* So, it’s you last day. Everything you have ever done, written or saved for your children has been deleted. What advice or teachings would you give to your children or wife about finance in the hopes of them achieving more freedom/time (assume you only have a short time to explain)?
  
  
• No one cares about your money as much as you do. In fact, most people are after it (you broker, your lawyer, the grocery store, your dentist...), so learn to manage it and protect it.
  
  
• Never stop learning.
  
  
• In investing (and most things in life), simpler is generally better.
  
  
• Passive is preferable to active income.
  
  
• Diversify.
  
  
• Invest for the long-term on cash-flow-generating assets. Buying things hoping that they will simply go up in value is speculating.
  
  
• No one can tell the future.
  
  
• Do your homework.
  
  
• Ignore the crowd.
  
  
• Focus on what you can control.
  
  
• Be patient.
  
  >* What is the best lessons life have taught you so far?
  
  
• Time is the only limited resource, so make the most of it.
  
  
• Life is in constant movement, with or without you, so keep moving.
  
  
• Life is like a roller coaster, neither good things, nor bad things will last forever.
  
  
• Be humble and treat people well.
  
  
• Empathise.
  
  
• Don't complain.
  
  
• Don't criticise.
  
  
• Focus on what you can control.
  
  
• Think long-term.
  
  
• Fight for what you think is worth fighting.
  
  
• Work hard, it will pay off.
  
  
• Be patient.
  
  
• Ignore the crowd.
  
  >* What quotes do you live by or think a lot about?
  
  
• "Fortes fortunam adiuvat", "Fortune favours the brave", Roman saying.
  
  
• "If you think you're going through hell, just keep going", Winston Churchill.
  
  
• "This too, shall pass", Jewish saying.
  
  
• "Good things come to those who wait", popular saying.
  
  
• "The grass is always greener on the other side", popular saying.
  
  >* If you could have every 30 year old read/watch/consume 1 - 3 things, what would you prescribe?
  
  
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
  
  
• The Slight Edge
  
  
• The Four Pillars of Investing

There are three books I'd like to add as suggestions:

• Development as Freedom, by Amartya Sen. 285 pages, 5 hour and a half read without pauses.
  
  
• The Dictator's Handbook, by Bruce B. de Mesquita and Alistair Smith. 300 pages, 5 hour read without pauses.
  
  
• Making Globalization Work, by Joseph Stiglitz. 5 hour, fifteen minute read without pauses.
  
  For reference, the site I used says World Order by Henry Kissinger, the book we read previously, takes 6 hours to read. So these books a bit shorter.
  
  Development as Freedom:
  
  This book proposes a relatively new theory for public policy based on free agency. Amartya Sen's thesis is that the objective of governing and developing a country is to provide freedom to its citizens. He does a pretty good analysis of how a country works policy-wise and he makes a proposal to reach this free agency goal. I think this book would broaden perspectives on how to view a government's labor, on what development is, and what it should be.
  
  The Dictator's Handbook:
  
  In this book, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alistair Smith decompose multiple historical situations both in governing and in private enterprises in order to define the universal dynamics of power. It is a great book and it explains, with sufficient evidence, what a leader needs to capture and retain power in any system imaginable by redefining how we view government systems.
  
  Making Globalization Work:
  
  I have read a bit of the previous books, but only a single chapter of this one, so instead I'm going to quote a review on amazon:
  
  > Three years ago, I was a little freshman economics student at a small college. My World Politics professor assigned me this book to read halfway through the semester, and I am quite happy that I read it. Stiglitz is blessed with both brains and writing ability, something that too many economists do not have [...] Stiglitz does an exceptional job of summarizing much of the baggage that international policy makers carry from their past mistakes.
  
  >The largest criticism that people have of the book is that much of what he says has been said by other people. This is true. But those other people can't write and aren't remotely as accessible as Stiglitz is. If you're looking for a good jump-in, read this book.
  
  

I'm a web developer, so of course I know what an API is.

Bitcoin isn't going anywhere. Bitcoin handlers are already integrated into browsers. In fact it's part of the HTML5 spec.

Are you familar with email:blahblah@blah.com ?

You can also do

bitcoin:someaddress

This will automatically open your wallet and prefill a few fields.

http://blog.coinbase.com/post/78127728420/support-for-bitcoin-payment-urls

Coinbase just implemented it for their wallet. Any wallet can do the same, because this is how open source protocols work. Your bitcoin wallet is gonna be just like your email app today. You can run a bitcoin client on your desktop, phone, or in the cloud if you trust those people with your money. The choice is yours. The risk is on you.

The browser that you're using right now already supports bitcoin. So it's already part of the internet whether you like it or not. There are going to be websites that require you to have bitcoin. Games and paywalls are gonna use crypto currencies because it's easier than Paypal or any other 3rd party system. This is because the developer/website gets their money instantly regardless of the country they live. A 12 year old can create an app anywhere in the world and get paid directly. This is unprecedented.

Why don't we have paypal: or visa:? Because those systems are closed source, proprietary, have non standard APIs, are restrictive depending on the country, and are a central authority.

Bitcoin is an open source protocol that anyone can investigate and learn the inner workings of. It will continue to get better as technical issues arise, because there are thousands of smart developers out there who love this shit. Bitcoin is the future of money on the internet and I can say that with absolute confidence because I know developers and we are personally making it happen. We are innovating faster than ever before and now that global payments are essentially solved, we're gonna see another leap in what the internet can provide.

If you want some insight into where we're headed, read this book.

http://www.amazon.com/Sovereign-Individual-Mastering-Transition-Information/dp/0684832720/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1393650820&sr=1-1&keywords=sovereign+individual

It talks about crypto-currency to the T and it was written in 1997.


More disruption! AKA innovation.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1z8n4n/i_dont_get_angry_when_i_see_a_layman_ridicule_and/

hmm... this is tough are you more interested in theory or application? Political Economy can get very abstract/philosophical which I personally like but it turns some people off.


why nations fail: great overview of Institutional/development economics by two phenomenal economists, Acemoglu and Robinson.

violence and social orders Another great book, it was written as introduction to North's theories for non-economists. Very interesting work.

capital in the 21st century: I don't think this book needs an introduction. But just in case, Picketty examines the interplay between economic prosperity and income inequality. The book was written with non-economists in mind. The math will greatly help your understanding but it's not necessary to understand his general arguments

Capitalism a general introduction to socioeconomics that is concise and a variety of topics on capitalism that have puzzled (and sometimes outraged) sociologists since the 19th century.

Development as Freedom: Sen argues that open dialogue, civil freedoms and political liberties are prerequisites for sustainable development.

The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times And Ideas Of The Great Economic Thinkers: A history of economic thought/theory that really elucidates the intersection of politics,economics and philosophy.

Hello hackpro,

Couple things I would initially suggest. Read these 2 books:

1.) The Blue Ocean Strategy: A "red ocean" is a market where a product or service is already manifested, aka saturated or even oversaturated. A "blue ocean" is walking into that market and changing the game. This book has a TON of great tips and mindset pointers when trying to do what you do. Here is the Amazon link:

http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Ocean-Strategy-Expanded-Uncontested/dp/1625274491/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459345146&sr=8-1&keywords=blue+ocean+strategy

2.) Growth Hacker Marketing: This book is just plain awesome. I have read it 3 times. It goes through quite a few tactics to get your product/service visable and has some great case studies (dropbox, evernote etc.) showing how they made it with little to no marketing, but rather pushing their products via exclusivity and making smart calculated moves. Here is the amazon link for that:

http://www.amazon.com/Growth-Hacker-Marketing-Primer-Advertising/dp/1591847389/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459345183&sr=8-1&keywords=Growth+hacker+marketing

Post the above 2 books - I would really try to niche market your product. If you do not have a budget for paid search or media, I would focus on finding small to medium communities, join those communities and talk about your product, get sugggestions from community members, offer free beta tests (not sure what your product is, but you mentioned dropbox so I am assuming its software related) etc. Then, move up to larger communities/bloggers etc.

Content is king. Make TONS of content about your product (articles, video, etc.) and get it in cycle in your focus niche. I would focus on a message that sets you apart. You mentioned that the competition is mediocre, so in a creative "non bashing way" just highlight your strong points.

Just my initial $0.2 cents. If you have any deeper questions feel free to let me know.

-Rob

I get where you're coming from, but there are fine examples of the best the West hast to offer too: Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, et al. There are multiple high points in the cultural landscape. Japan may lay claim to one peak, but there are other (perhaps taller) ones out there.

Within America too, there are regions and groups that stack up more favorably on a hypothetical "culture-index". For instance, Minnesota seems to be working better than Mississippi for reasons beyond location and history. If I were to speculate as to why, it'd rely heavily on the theses found within Why Nations Fail. Namely, how inclusive the local economic/political/social strucures are. That's heavily dependent on culture. Thus, my earlier comment was suggesting that the fraction of America that vehemently supports Trump is more than likely identifying with an entirely different culture than the other 60%. And (in my opinion) there's no contest as to which of the two cultures tends to produce better results. Alas, that is a bias as to what factors we value and include in our "culture-index". Those differing priorities are at the heart of our nation's lamentable cultural divide.

I don't think we need to adopt a Japanese culture to improve overall. We're a young and ignorant country... baby steps. Just a nudge toward Minnesota and away from Mississippi would yield significant long term results.

Probably a lot of readers of /r/water have read Cadillac Desert.

I own a copy of, and have made two false starts reading, The King Of California as recommend by the anonymous author of the blog On The Public Record.

I highly recommend A Great Aridness, a worthy heir to Cadillac Desert.

Also on my to-read list is Rising Tide. I would like to find a book that does for the Great Lakes what Marc Reisner did for water in the American West with his book Cadillac Desert.

A few things I've read this year that have little to do with water:

• The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
  
• The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind
  
• The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2
  
• The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies
  
• Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government
  

Chairman Mao died in 1976. This came after 10 years of the ‘cultural revolution’, an economically disastrous movement that sought to further entrench communism in the country. In 1978 Deng Xiaoping took over and it is from this point that China started on its course of development/capitalism.
Foreign money, often from Chinese Disapora (known as the bamboo network) flooded into China.
China did not go for outright free market liberalisation. No. Infant industries were protected from foreign competition behind high import tariffs (average of 55% in the 1980s) and firms were given state support through low interest loans in order to develop certain industries. Industries like manufacturing. China became the world’s manufacturer (particularly of low-tech goods but they may soon move up the value chain and produce more high tech goods). Furthermore they put in place capital controls to stop money from leaving China.
Importantly, if China had been a member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which it only became in 2001, it would not have been able to hide behind high tariff barriers to protect infant industries.
This book by Ha-Joon Change talks about how the US and UK developed by nurturing industries behind high tariff barriers, but now promote the idea of trade liberalisation, which is at odds with how they developed (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Institutions-Globalization/dp/1843310279/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1285252397&sr=1-1)
China would also stipulate that foreign firms had to do a certain amount of technology transfer (another thing that you can’t do so easily when you are in the WTO).
China’s growth was quick. “China has set a new record – per capita GDP in China doubled within only 9 years between 1978 and 1987, and doubled again in another 9 years between 1987 and 1996” (Cai Fang and Wang Meiyan, ‘How Fast and How Far Can China’s GDP Grow?’, China : An Economics Research Study Series, vol. 3, 2004, p. 2.)
China used its huge trade surplus to prop up the US spending boom. So Americans buy Chinese stuff, with money borrowed from China, that China got from Americans buying their stuff.
TLDR: In 1978 China decided to follow a capitalist route. Foreign money, often from Chinese overseas flooded into the country. Infant industries were protected from competition from other countries behind high tariff barriers. China was able to do this because it wasn’t in the WTO. China integrated itself into the global economy without free trade liberalization.

Barbara Tuchman was brilliant writer of history.

Albert Camus was a brilliant absurdist philosopher and novelist.

Jared Diamond has written some brilliant books at the intersection of anthropology and ecology. Another good book in this genre is Clive Ponting's A New Green History of the World.

Gwynne Dyer is an acclaimed military historian turned journalist on international affairs who has written a number of very engaging books on warfare and politics. His most recent book Climate Wars is the ONE book I would recommend to someone, if so limited, on the subject as it embodies both a wonderful synopsis of the science juxtaposed against the harsh realpolitiks and potential fates of humankind that may unfold unless we can manage to tackle the matter seriously, soon. Another great book on climate change is Bill McKibben's Deep Economy.

For social activists interested in ending world hunger and abject poverty, I can recommend: Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom; Nobel Prize winning micro-financier Muhammad Yunus' Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism; UN MDG famed economist Jeffrey Sach's End Of Poverty; and Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea

For anyone of Scottish heritage, I heartily recommend Arthur Hermann's How The Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It

For naval history buffs: Robert K. Massie's Dreadnought.

Last, but not least: Robert Pirsig's classic Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Enjoy!

Ha Joon Chang, a Korean economist does an excellent book about this.

All those myths about how free market capitalism is the greatest is fucking bullshit.

https://www.amazon.com/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Development-Perspective/dp/1843310279

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003Z9L4NA/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i1

IMF and the World Bank have essentially become enforcers of the current capitalist regime and basically shame countries who try to adopt self-sufficient policies that can be better for them in the long-run.

1 excellent example he gave in the books is the steel & shipbuilding industry in Korea. 50 years ago the free market wouldn't have thought of investing in them as Korea was a poor country with no resources with super risky projects. The government took the matter into their own hands and it laid the groundwork for the economic miracle that they experienced.

Countries going into debt to invest in their long-term capabilities really made sense to me, just like how you pay for your college & post-graduate fees to better your human capital. If countries always spend within their means, huge infrastructure projects will never get off the ground.

Likewise, if Indonesia's government do not invest in long-term profitable projects, we will never really become developed. The main driver of the economy will be the private market that really don't give a fuck about infrastructure and the likes if it doesn't benefit them (e.g. RGE in Riau having their own ports and electric generators for their paper mills, Lippo having their malls/hospitals/housing relatively well-connected to each other).

One can make an argument that if the government incur debts and use it inefficiently they may well make the economy worse off, but as long as the money stays within the country, it's better than not doing it at all. The book mentions the example of Suharto vs Mobutu Sese Seko who remitted most of the money to Swiss.

But I agree, Indonesia should invest more in projects like this. Debts aren't always bad. Gimana beli rumah kalo ga ada KPR? Gimana mulai bisnis kalo ga ada pinjeman bank?

>No, it's that modern people score ~120 on older tests. We can test living people with older tests, we can't test dead people with new tests.

No, the implication is also that older people score lower on modern tests. In the Dumfries and Des Moines tests this was shown to be the case when comparing similar population groups across generations when testing on the new full-form tests like the WAIS-IV but the Raven's Progressive Matrices tests showed very little or negative gains in crystallized IQ and slight gains in both in fluid intelligence.

Re-norming of tests is designed with this in mind because they are re-normed on a culturally-adapted basis.

>How would that work? The flynn effect has been observed in people taking THE OLDER TESTS.

You're misunderstanding how tests are normed. When I started administering IQ tests in 2006 we had fewer sections and a greater focus on actual IQ, which is to say arithmetic and verbal ability.

You have obviously not read enough data regarding the Flynn Effect if you don't understand how it work. The Flynn Effect heavily uses g as a basis for comparison in the absence of actual testing.


>Flynn found that the highest gains are not on subtests that measure vocab and arithmetic, but rather on culturally-loaded subtests with questions like “How are dogs and rabbits similar?” that can illicit different answers depending on one’s everyday life experience.

>Flynn says our modern lives are more cognitively demanding and so we’ve acquired something he calls, “scientific spectacles.” Today, we are more likely to answer using abstract categories, like, dogs and rabbits are mammals, rather than the more concrete, like, dogs and rabbits are pets.

Culturally adapted tests provide these new and differing results thanks to their innate cultural bias.

Strict IQ tests do not favor the new generation or show a great increase except in theory and with test comparisons and not in result comparisons.

>Good to know you are an old person. Because one thing hunting another something does make them similar.

The point is to note they are both animals used in a sport or that they're pets of some sort and not that they are both the abstract, "animal," as such.

>That study you gave at the bottom is full of it. IQ cannot be determined by reaction time only. I have a fairly low reaction time, but above average IQ.

Did you read it? People had worse scores on digit spanning tests. Digit spanning is a direct test still used today to test memory. The abstract only seems to note the basic psychometric measure they use to derive g differences and not where they get the actual IQ differences but the average differences in abstracts in their place.

g is an abstract form of crystallized IQ measure that is best suited in giving averages and curves and is not necessarily indicative of your exact IQ.

I recommend reading the whole thing and the rest of The Flynn Effect Re-Evaluated in it's entirety.



You've entirely missed the point in how these tests are created, what they are based upon, or how they are developed and how that development has changed in recent years.
-----------------------------
I didn't want to wholly offend you with how I stated it but that is how I saw it so I've decided to link some excellent books on the matter.

Here are...

The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability by Arthur Jensen

What is Intelligence?: Beyond the Flynn Effect by James Flynn

A Negative Flynn Effect in Finland by Edward Dutton and edited by Richard Lynn

A Beautiful Theory, Killed by a Nasty, Ugly
Little Fact by Alan Kaufman, Thomas Dillon, and Jeffrey Kirsch

IQ and Global Inequality by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen

Ethnic Conflicts: Their Biological Roots in Ethnic Nepotism by Tatu Vanhanen

IQ and the Wealth of Nations by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen and Ron Unz' critiques, Lynn's responses.

There are many things but there is one that is most importend. It does not explain why it happend around 1990 or many other things but it is the reason behind all of it.

Innovation

The USSR had some growth in between 1930 and 1960 but after that it didn't grow any more. There is tones of economic theory to explain this, I will link some resources.

First I hope that it is clear that the USSR was a extractive regim, a lot of people worked few profited. Economic theory predicts that if you have a extractiv regim you will not grow in most cases.

The USSR did grow for a time but then growth stoped and no attemped to change that by any of the leaders changed this. The USSR had growth because of forced industrialisation, this process is however not substanable.

Substanable growth only happens threw innovation and the USSR just did not have the insentiv structure to do that.

Without growth the massiv amount of resource extraction for the few and the millitary could no longer be substaned and eventully the system collapst. The process how happend is just a symptem of the underlying problem not the cause.

It could have happend 10 years earlyer or 50 latter but without changing the social and economic structure the USSR could not be substained.


This book provides a good overview why nations fail or succed, http://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Prosperity-ebook/dp/B0058Z4NR8

The theory is rather 'thin' in that it does not say you need to do X or Y. It is a more general observation of how extractiv or inclusive a regim is. The support there theory with tons of historical examples, including USSR.

Edit: To be a little clearer in how USSR was extractive, the USSR worked diffrent then most people think. I think some of the essays in the book linked below would help to make the point clear. I would suggest, chapter 8 to 11 specially 8.

Calculation and Coordination (http://library.mises.org/books/Peter%20J%20Boettke/Calculation%20and%20Coordination%20Essays%20on%20Socialism%20and%20Transitional%20Political%20Economy.pdf)



Edit 2:

To go a bit into the points you mentiond.


1. Lenin in 1918 to 1921 failed too. Its not like its all stalin. Most of the growth (look at the data) was acctually in the time of stalin. It is true that implmented a bad structure but the reason he did that is to make his planes work. You can not have forced industrialization where everybody can do what he wants. The reason the USSR grew was forced industrialization and this does not work without controll. So what I conclude is that if stalin did do what he did he would never have been able to stay in power or put threw his planes.

2. All the leaders after statlin had the same problems. They all tried to do revisions because if the worked it would secure there power. If the USSR economy would have worked leaders would not have to do all these chances and could have just said that they are the reason everything worked. This infighting was harmful to the USSR and let do the collaps, but the intressting question is why this happend in the first place. Here is where rent seeking in a extractiv regim comes in. Do you guys really belive that if not for Khrushchev, the USSR would have been happly ever after?

3. This arugment fail in many ways. Many people pointed out that you can not have a plan economy (specially not the war communism time economy) and have it work in a democratic way. If you look at chapter 8 of the book above you will see that it has infact a lot in common with state capitalism or mercantilism, to make money people did not help others, they went to the state and asked for favers (rent seeking and lobbying).

Many socialist still think it is possible to have a state controlled economy with a peaceful democracy. I would argue that this is not possible, look at public choice economics or read Road to Serfdom by Hayek (specially the chapter on democracy and planning).

4. Here I would just say that a system that does only work if you allready have a well working system is avoid the problem and it is idiotic. If I have a system that brings growth I would just stay with that system. If socialism really works and is a good alternativ to capitalism I want to see a poor society to become rich with socialim.

I know what marx said but I think its idiotic. Sure if the US became socialist tomorrow you would have a relativly rich socialist society but that does not really say much about the ability of socialism to creat or substain wealth.

If you can creat weath with socialism (special central planning) has been douted in many fundamental ways and many of the crtics still wait for a solution.

5. This is vage. I would just say that if you want a world where no more scarcity exists I would agree that central planning socialism will never ever lead you there. I think you can have a society like the on in the USSR where people live under a form of socialism for hunderts of year but I think it will never become a rich society.

See Acemoglu and Robinson's work, summarized inWhy Nations Fail. Here's a decent summary.

> Their argument is that the modern level of prosperity rests upon political foundations. Proximately, prosperity is generated by investment and innovation, but these are acts of faith: investors and innovators must have credible reasons to think that, if successful, they will not be plundered by the powerful.

> For the polity to provide such reassurance, two conditions have to hold: power has to be centralised and the institutions of power have to be inclusive. Without centralised power, there is disorder, which is anathema to investment.

> China most certainly ticks this box – it has centralised power and order in spades. Some African societies don't; localised power usurps the authority of the state. But China resoundingly fails to tick the box of inclusive institutions. Acemoglu and Robinson quote a summary of the structure of Chinese political power: "The party controls the armed forces; the party controls cadres; and the party controls the news."

> That states need order to prosper is important but no longer controversial. That they need inclusive institutions is, in view of China's success, wildly controversial. Their argument is that order without inclusive institutions may enable an economy to escape poverty, but will not permit the full ascent to modern prosperity. Their explanation is that if the institutions of power enable the elite to serve its own interest – a structure they term "extractive institutions" – the interests of the elite come to collide with, and prevail over, those of the mass of the population.

In Defense of Globalization is a great book.

Which developing economies were you interested in? Asia has a rich literature because of its stratospheric growth in the past half century. But when finding a good book for something like development economics, it's good to find a book that caters to a region of your interest. The development experiences of some nations are so varied.

You might want to check out Amartya Sen's work.

They are compatible.

It is basically a question of when you want access to the money.

You create a regular account, and IRA or a Roth IRA (assuming you make less than $193k)

The regular account you put you after tax money in, and you can take it out whenever you want. You pay taxes on the income and when you sell you will pay capital gains on any appreciation.

​

The Iras are accounts meant for retirement so you can't take money out until retirement age. With the IRA you put Pre tax money in with the Roth after tax money in. IRA deferes the taxes on income and gains. Roth you can take out without tax. but again at retirement age. There is a lot more info on here about the differences but that is the TLDR version.

​

Now that you have picked the TYPE of account (Regular/IRA/Roth) you have a choice of what to invest in. you can invest in many many things almost anything. but a solid simple and many would say best choice over the long term is the simple index fund with low fees. <.1 %

​

In summary you would buy the index fund in your roth IRA account if that was your choice. There is a done of good summary info tagged in here so that is a good place to start learning more or can pick up a book or two at the library this is a good one.

https://www.amazon.com/Four-Pillars-Investing-Building-Portfolio-ebook/dp/B0041842TW

https://investor.vanguard.com/index-funds/?WT.srch=1&cmpgn=PS:RE (Vanguard was the industry leader in pushing down costs for their investors so a very reputable company, though others have caught up on the low fee idea. )

Hope it helps!

Happy to help :) It is a near lifetime of just being a business junky and just loving to read about this stuff. The best and easiest book I give people when they want to learn business is the Personal MBA.

http://www.amazon.com/Personal-MBA-Master-Art-Business/dp/1591845572/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375464773&sr=1-1&keywords=personal+mba+josh+kaufman

It is a solid, easy to read overview of business. You wount become an expert from it, but it is a 'explain like I am five 'introduction into business.


For innovation and new market development specific (My specialty) I'd go with Crossing the Chasm Quick read

http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Business/dp/0062060244

Lastly, take a strategic finance class. No numbers, simply the logic behind what is value. I've been told The Wall Street MBA is a good read but I can't vouch for it.
http://www.amazon.com/Wall-Street-MBA-Second/dp/007178831X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375464915&sr=1-1&keywords=wall+street+mba

Finance will ultimately change how you think. And not entirely for the better...

>So what are good sources of information for current news and good books/articles for past history?

That's something that I'm currently working on. I've only begun to dive into the history of the world within the past year. There are innumerable books and documentaries that serve this purpose for innumerable regions and events in the world. But I believe the starting point for anyone should be a book on US foreign policy. Once you begin to learn about how the US has acted internationally, you will obtain a view of the world that is essential for understanding current events.

One recent pair of works that I recommend is "The Untold History of the US". It is a 800 page book alongside a 10 part documentary series that tells a story of the US not known to most people. Here is the first part of that series available for free. Here is the companion book.

>How did you learn about these sources?

I keep a journal and I've meant to do a write up of this for a while now, so I'll be as detailed as possible. The following is both for your sake, and for mine. This is also a story of how I came to hold the political views that I have, so bear with me if you disagree with my views. Reading about history will inevitably force you to form opinions, and as I've learned more, I was pushed further and further to the left. But anyways, here it is.

I took a class on Latin American history, and I learned about the history of the island in the Caribbean my parents come from, the Hispaniola (the island of the Dominican Republic and Haiti). I learned how the US occupied it repeatedly during the 20th century and installed dictators in each country, and how it became a trade slave of the US with its sugar production.

I was being more and more interested in politics and current events, after learning about Obama and drones. I didn't have internet access and I hated television, but I had to do something, so I vowed to only watch channels without commercials. So I was watching PBS, CSPAN, and Al Jazeera. One night I saw an interview on PBS done by Tavis Smiley. During this time, Martin Luther King was being celebrated. The interview centered around the "real" Martin Luther King, and how he is unjustly known for only a few words that he spoke during a march. So I read his last major speech, and his speech about the Vietnam War. In the latter speech, he says "The greatest purveyor of violence in the world is the US government", and I couldn't believe what I was reading. After some searching, I realized that he was actually a socialist. I learned that he had planned a march for economic justice that would join all races, to trump any march in the history of the country, and he did this with the two socialists who organized the march that made him famous. They were Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph.

Martin Luther King died while helping a union of black sanitation workers, a month before the march. I doubted the mainstream narrative of the killing due to what I learned the US was capable of when I read about the Dominican Republic and Haiti, and I came across COINTELPRO, the operation run by the FBI to stop leftist movements in the US. I was watching yet another channel with no commercials, and it's called LinkTV, which is a leftist channel that shows mainly documentaries. I saw one called "American Coup", which was about how the US toppled the government of Iran with clandestine CIA operations. Oddly enough, today is the day, 50 years after it happened, that the CIA admits to doing it. Anyways, at this point I was intensely both anti-government and anti-capitalist.

As I pondered all of the problems with the US, like its media, healthcare, the military industrial complex, the corruption of congress, etc, I came across this speech by an economist at the University of Massachusetts. He spoke of a new type of democratic economic enterprise called a cooperative, and how it solves many problems that traditional capitalist enterprises cause. the political atmosphere of Germany, that has a party called Die Linke, or the "Left Party". Their slogan is, "Germany can do better than Capitalism". Being from the US where questioning capitalism is out of the question, I couldn't believe that Germany had the political atmosphere for that, so I started learning about the politics of Germany.

That's really when my interest of international affairs and politics took off, and when I finally began to read about other countries. Inevitably, to understand the current events of a country you have to understand its history, so I started reading about the history of Germany. Once I saw its relationship to the USSR, I started reading about that. All the while, everything I learned about the US was brimming in my mind.

I learned about the media in the US because of a documentary I saw called "Shadows of Liberty". It will be available here for free here during the first two weeks of September. Because I refused to watch TV with commercials, I began watching Al Jazeera English. It covered the civil war in Syria extensively, and it frequently airs documentaries. One of them was "The Reckoning", which details the history of Syria during the latter portion of the 20th century to give a context to current developments in Syria. I then borrowed this book on the history of the modern middle east from a local library.

By this time it was around March, and Hugo Chavez died. He was a very controversial figure, and I wanted to learn why. Here in the US they paint him as a dictator, but my faith in US media was destroyed, so I questioned that as well. This video quite nicely sums up a few of the experiences I've had about learning about Venezuela and Chavez. While he did a few things I don't agree with, and I don't like his stances on a few issues, I learned that Chavez was a hero to Venezuela. This documentary goes into a overthrow of the government that happened in 2002 to oust Chavez, but was saved by the masses of Venezuelan people who wanted their leader back. By this time I was well aware of US involvement in Latin America, and could contextualize the events well, due to a book called The Open Veins of Latin America.

After this, I was ready to tackle history around the world with much more ease. I learned of the miners strikes in the UK, and the market socialism of Yugoslavia that was a socialism vastly different than others. I learned of some of the great feats of China and the USSR after only knowing what mistakes they made. I learned about Anarchism and Anarchist Spain during the 1930's, and the war between Iraq and Iran. I learned of Zimbabwe's agrarian reform, and Mexico's revolution in the early 1900's. I learned of South Africa's fight with apartheid, which put the US on supporting it and Cuba fighting it alongside Mandela. It was just historical event after event, and after some time, you really can't pinpoint specific avenues of thought that you've been taking through by reading and watching documentaries. History becomes just one large living organism that you begin to understand more and more fully as you go on.

I cut it a bit short because its late, but feel free to ask me anything now that you know me a bit more personally, haha.

Wow! Thanks. I'd love to be a leader, but I'm too lazy. I think I'm just channeling a little DPR/Ross Ulbricht. He's a real visionary. A book that I think covers this sort of thing that I'm looking forward to reading is The Sovereign Individual. It was recommended by Peter Thiel.

Another thing I'm super interested in is Ethereum (/r/ethereum). It's a platform for building distributed, blockchain-based software. It has the potential to eliminate the middleman in everything. I think it will disempower corporations to the same extent that cryptography can disempower governments.

Thanks again for your kind words. I'm open to discussing anything with anyone.

>Do you think there's no middle ground between foreigners showing up with guns and ships and taking your shit, and being separated from world trade?


Yes, I believe trade and foreign investment is that middle ground.

>Despite being grotesquely unequal (as all countries were at the time), India was once enormously wealthy. I cannot help but think that if its wealth had remained in India or been traded for other forms of wealth, rather than just being taken, India might be doing a bit better today.

Read this book it's a great book about the topic at hand.

>If I expend energy carrying a rock down a mountain does my labor give it value?

I would like individual losses to be socialized to encourage a culture of innovation. Money should always pay your material cost but the maslow's head decides what have value, scredules objectives and propose improvements.

​

>forces of supply and demand inform the market of what goods and services are desired by the economy and how much profit there is to be made in goods and services

Free marketing gold rule I guess. "Please dont bail out banks". Aka Privatizing Profits And Socializing Losses of big ones.

"Development Strategy in Historical Perspective" say:

>(...) His conclusions are compelling and disturbing: that developed countries are attempting to 'kick away the ladder' with which they have climbed to the top, thereby preventing developing countries from adopting policies and institutions that they themselves have used.

Some would say I read too much, but I really enjoyed:

founders at work: Steve Wozniak (Apple), Caterina Fake (Flickr), Mitch Kapor (Lotus), Max Levchin (PayPal), and Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail) tell you in their own words about their surprising and often very funny discoveries as they learned how to build a company. (This is one of my favorite books ever!)

the art of the start:Kawasaki provides readers with GIST-Great Ideas for Starting Things-including his field-tested insider's techniques for bootstrapping, branding, networking, recruiting, pitching, rainmaking, and, most important in this fickle consumer climate, building buzz.

the innovator's dilemma: Focusing on “disruptive technology,” Christensen shows why most companies miss out on new waves of innovation. Whether in electronics or retailing, a successful company with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know when to abandon traditional business practices. Using the lessons of successes and failures from leading companies, The Innovator’s Dilemma presents a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation.



And in terms of getting your life together to the point where you are responsible enough to lead others, I would highly suggest Getting Things Done by David Allen

There has never been more information available to aspiring entrepreneurs, which is great, but make sure you research the source before following any advice.

Learn from successful entrepreneurs; read blogs and watch their fireside interviews, but be weary of advice that comes from people who claim they contribute to the ecosystem.

Recommendations:

Mark Suster's Blog

Ben Horowitz's Blog

PandoDaily's YouTube Channel - Sarah Lacy does great for fireside interviews.

Clayton Christensen's book The Innovator's Dilemma is also a great resource.

I'm drawing it from Why Nations Fail.

>Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories.

Those types of changes-- psychological and sociological-- aren't something economists are necessarily interested in. And that's perfectly fine. The problem is when people that are interested in those types of changes make the illicit inference that it will change the economy in some drastic way (e.g. the neo-Luddite belief I see mentioned elsewhere in this topic that automation will replace labor, despite the fact this has been empirically falsified historically again and again, and that there are good theoretical reasons to think it's false).

On the other hand, asking about things "beyond capitalism" isn't something economists are really interested in either. The reason is most economists simply don't see a viable alternative. Marx might still have some truck in philosophical circles, but he's considered an intellectual dead end in academic economics for a variety of reasons.

Yet, there are still economists that do comparative institutional analysis, i.e. study different institutions, how they structure human behavior, and so forth, and see what that implies vis-a-vis the information and incentives faced by people working within those institutions. That's probably the closest thing you'll find to mainstream economists looking at alternative arrangements and the like-- look up new institutional economics. Recently a lot of people have won Nobel prizes for looking at those questions, e.g. you might find Douglass North, Elinor Ostrom, and Ronald Coase interesting. Also Daron Acemoglu, who wrote a good popular-level book.

Epic content marketing might help you look at content from your blog to provide you with alternate methods of presenting it (infographics, videos, slide share presentations).

I liked the ideas found in Blue Ocean Strategy towards the beginning, but for whatever reason was never able to go past chapter 5.

Books and the blog of Seth Godin or alternatively Basecamp (formerly known as 37 signals) are usually fun, quick reads.

Blogs by KISSMetrics, Zendesk, Hubspot, and following Growth Hackers threads are all good options too.

What does your SaaS do?

Lastly, something that can provide guidance is taking an hour or two to draw your message map. Essentially, it's a list on one side of your target audience at each stage of purchase, what you want them to takeaway from your message and what are the main barriers to them understanding that message.

Best of luck!

Edits: Was on phone; added links for the lazy.

> Once powerful enough, from a profit perspective it absolutely makes sense to stifle competition with that power, to merge and consolidate workforce and to establish oneself as the only provider in town

I've quoted this book before in this sub... this is written by a left wing historian with many original sources. I point out that he is left wing so people don't dismiss it as some kind of libertarian revisionist history.

https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-Conservatism-Reinterpretation-American-1900-1916/dp/0029166500/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+triumph+of+conservatism&qid=1574826960&sr=8-1

The back cover describes it best:

> The Triumph of Conservatism is one of the most influential and important works in moderan American history. This bold reinterpretation of the Progressive Era develops a startling thesis: that the dominant tendancy in business after the turn of the century was toward competition and economic decentralization, not toward concentration and monopoly; and that, unable to halt this trend by their own means, the leaders of big business―and not the political reformers―became the chief initiators of the era's "progressive" regulatory laws. Thus, "progressivism" was a profoundly conservative effort to maintain existing political and social relations in a new economic context.

Well, neoclassical is mainstream. It's useful to understand, in part just to get an idea of why people arguing against neoclassical are doing so.

If you're interested in economics, I'd suggest...

• Makiw is easy to read for neoclassical (avoid the "Introduction to.. textbooks).
  
• New Institutional Economics (mainly just Ronald Coase's two most famous articles), because transaction costs are very interesting.
  
• Complexity... the Origin of Wealth is very easy to read.
  
• History of Economic thought (most important). The Origin of Wealth has a decent chapter on it, but a detailed study is very useful. This is a useful website
  
  The distinguising thing about Austrian Economics is its reliance on an axiomatic system (Praxeology), and the rejection of experimentation/hypothesis testing. While I said I don't see a rational reason to distinguish between methods in the other thread - well, let's just say I'm an empiricist at heart.

Those are two very important points and the main reason, why neoliberals think that inclusive institutions are so important. Inclusive institutions are rules in a society that make shure that everyone can participate in societal developments both economically and politically.

> So you just hope that your government can do that without getting corrupt like literally every government in the history of the world?

Freedom of corruption (and democracy of course) is really important to keep politics inclusive and to achieve that political power is spread among the population, so I think it is a good idea to take countries with very low corruption like Denmark as a role model in that regard.

> Also how is that government's job different than democratic socialism?

The right that everybody can own property, is another important inclusive institution: You want to make shure that every person, no matter what her background is, has an incentive to contribute her abilities to society. In a socialist society you are not allowed to own things like patents, so that is how it would be different from democratic socialism.

You might want to read Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoğlu if you want to learn more about inclusive institutions.

Mah, surprinzator de putine lucruri se rezolva cu cooperare oficiala si "hai sa facem!" spirit. Exemplul meu ideal sunt ecologistii si becurile economice. N-am trecut la becuri care consuma de 5 ori mai putin si dureaza 8 ani din spirit civic sau dragoste de natura, ci pentru ca sunt o alternativa mai buna decat becurile cu incandescenta.

Asa se face si o natiune. Ai clasa de mijloc, care-i facuta mostly din corporatisti care lucreaza 9 ore la cate-o internationala, plus 1-2 ore drum de acasa la job. Primesc salarii care incet incet trec de 1000 euro, cumpara o casa, o masina, apoi a doua masina (ca noh, un second hand e mult mai ieftin decat s-o duci pe nevasta la servici in fiecare zi), platesc impozite mai mari, duc copii la facultate etc.

Nu-i viata de basm, nu-i miscare populara - e exact ce s-a intamplat in toate tarile in care acum e un pic de prosperitate.

Daca te intereseaza subiectul si iti plac discutiile interesante, pune mana pe carti. Strange bani de-un kindle si citeste, de exemplu: http://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719219 sau orice de Nassim Taleb.


PS: nu ma pot abtine. Drogurile nu-s rele, heroina e :D

As stated Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. The region played a factor. Focusing on Europe, Europe had easy access of travel due to the Mediterranean sea. In broader view they had the silk road. There is a book called Why Nations Fail. A very interesting read. Out of dozens of examples the book shares, I will point out two that help shape Europe; the first being the story of Hercules and second the Black Death. The story of Hercule enabled a change in thought over the centuries as greek men went to the Olympics trying two win fame and glory for themseleves. The individual. The Black death on the other hand destroyed the working class and enabled a change in the current western system.

$245,000 is not that much money but it could be life changing for someone young in that it could allow you to put away a tremendous amount for your retirement when you are young. You don't have enough to do the "wealth management" route but you do have enough for it to make a huge difference. You can't really escape knowing about money now that you have some. https://www.amazon.com/Four-Pillars-Investing-Building-Portfolio-ebook/dp/B0041842TW is terrific first book.

Put it in a money market. Commit to it coming out of the money market within 90 days but not before 30 days. If you don't want to learn: Scwab's robo and Wealthfront's robo are excellent places to just put it now and forget about it. You sound young and if you are get an 80/20 portfolio.

Otherwise read that book and decide what you want to do.

You wouldn't happen to have read this book? https://www.amazon.com/Second-Machine-Age-Prosperity-Technologies/dp/0393350649/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1482767189&sr=8-1&keywords=second+machine+age

They talk about exactly that, capital vs. labor and the effects it's having on society that all wealth gain is going to capital. They also talk about median wages being stagnant since 1979 and falling since 1999. Pretty interesting. It also makes a lot of sense, every time a robot replaces a worker then the value that the robot creates doesn't go to the worker's family but rather to the owner of the robot. That's a huge driving factor behind the wealth inequality we see today and there's more to come. All the wealth generated in transportation will go to Uber instead of being spread across many companies and independent contractors. We'll see that pattern again and again...

He's not wrong, he's just an asshole. Here are some other groups that have fewer Nobel prizes than Trinity College.

• women
  
• black people
  
• those not following an Abrahamic religion
  
• anyone living in the Southern Hemisphere
  
  How come? The simple answer is that rich industrialized societies with secure property rights have been the source of almost the entirety of scientific innovation since the inception of the Nobel prizes. Within those societies, it's been groups with economic cache in those societies in the relevant time period (white men, including Jewish ones after the early 19th century) that have best been able to take advantage of the opportunities to study, write, and innovate.
  
  Why did industrialization and the culture of innovation arise in the Christian world rather than the Islamic world? That's a complex question and there are a lot of excellent books and papers on the subject, such as this. Here's a hint: none of them take seriously the claim that religion has much to do with it. The fact that most Muslims had the misfortune to be ruled either by an autocratic feudal despotism or were colonized by Europeans during the relevant time periods might just have something more to do with it.
  
  Dawkins makes a divisive little innuendo that states two facts that are related but in subtle and complex ways and implicates a simple causal relation between. He should know better.

If your a 'recovering republican' I recommend this book:
What it means to be a Libertarian It really explains the core of what libertarianism is from the perspective of a former mainstream republican.

Then start reading some classical Libertarian works like:
The Road To Surfdom by FA Hayek, where you will be amazed to learn that Big Corporations are the best friend the far left socialists ever had and know that they are full of crap whenever they say bad things about big business. I really like Hayek's writings quite a bit. Hayek is my favourite libertarian economist. The things he predicted right after world war 2 have happened amazingly like his predictions. This book is so popular its even been made into a comic book version.


/And don't forget all the links on the right hand side of this reddit. Lots of good stuff in those links.

Actually, the argument is a bit different now than it was in the past. I can recommend several books on the subject that can explain it more eloquently, specifically "The Second Machine Age" and "Robots will Steal your Job (but that's OK)", but in a nutshell it is because of AI.

We are automating thinking, in the same way that the first machine age automated mechanical labor.

The issue is, you are thinking of the past technological unemployment scares and comparing the human position there to the human position here, which theoretically makes sense.

The problem is, this Machine Age is with us in the positions of horses circa 1860. They were for centuries the source of physical labor and transportation. Then the engine replaced them entirely because it was better in absolute terms.

AI is getting better and better. It's already better than us at a great many things, and that list only gets larger as time passes (driving being a recent grab). As it moves into general intelligence instead of specific situations, more and more people will be rendered effectively obsolete.

How's the horse employment rate these days?

As an aside, the other industrial revolution also resulted in widespread social unrest, many people who dropped out of the work market from automation simply blankly starved because they didn't have welfare programs back then. Society is much better off if we offer a safety net.

> I'm gonna read that book just to get a better idea of what exactly I'm advocating for.

LOL, not my intention to spread the ideas I disagree with. But it sounded like a thesis you would.

> Do we know this? I don't think we do

I think the evidence suggests this. And it makes sense to me that the lives of people who highly value self-reliance are going to generally be far better than those who don't share that value and who are perfectly content to be on the dole.

At the risk of going down a completely different rabbit trail my view is actually a little more complex since I DO think interdependence in the context of family and community is important and of great value. I'm all for Edmund Burke "little platoons" of family, church and local neighborhood. It is large impersonal institutions that reliably fail, they cannot know and love the individual, they cannot make the moral judgments that a loving parent, or an increasingly impatient neighbor might make when presented with yet another plea for next month's rent. I very much agree with the title of Hillary Clinton's book "It takes a village" I don't think she understood the full meaning of the proverb... since she turned it around to mean: "It take a large impersonal bureaucracy" which is NOT the same thing at all.

> If you have any other reading suggestions then I'll take a look. I don't want to become massively entrenched in my views

None of these are necessarily related to your discussion though they might touch on some similar topics.

I recently read Haidt's The Righteous Mind not actually a conservative book but one which is really interesting in terms of figuring out why liberals and conservatives talk past each other.

And there's always the conservative classics that you'll always get when people ask. A few personal favorites: Kirke's The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom though technically he'd insist on calling himself as a "liberal" (By which he means a classical 19th century liberal) I liked Bastiate's The Law if you want an actual 19th century liberal. The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis

Those last two are both relatively quick and easy reads.

And of course Sowell has written extensively on exactly this subject. I think Race and Economics was his first book so it may be a bit dated now.

Sadly I've not read that one nor his other books that seem most directly related to our discussion. Personally I've only read his Basic Economics and I read Race and Culture years ago which is somewhat related but about the impact of race, ethnicity and culture in an international setting. His ideas about the primacy of cultural capital in explaining group differences in economic capital are consistent but he's applying those concepts internationally in how various cultural groups have done economically as majorities, as minorities, migrants, conquers or conquered etc. it's been a while but I remembered more about the overseas Chinese minorities in Southeast Asia than about blacks in America.

On What to Read


Here are some suggestions on books and websites:


The Millionaire Next Door by Stanley and Danko - https://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising-Americas/dp/1589795474


If You Can by William Bernstein - http://efficientfrontier.com/ef/0adhoc/2books.htm


Free version is here - https://www.dropbox.com/s/5tj8480ji58j00f/If%20You%20Can.pdf?dl=0


The Investor's Manifesto. Preparing for Prosperity, Armageddon, and Everything in Between by William Bernstein - https://www.amazon.com/Investors-Manifesto-Prosperity-Armageddon-Everything/dp/1118073762


The Bogleheads Guide to Investing - https://www.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide-Investing-Taylor-Larimore/dp/1118921283


The Coffeehouse Investor - https://www.amazon.com/Coffeehouse-Investor-Wealth-Ignore-Street/dp/0976585707


The Bogleheads' Guide to Retirement Planning - https://www.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide-Retirement-Planning/dp/0470455578


The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio by William Bernstein - https://www.amazon.com/Four-Pillars-Investing-Building-Portfolio/dp/0071747052/


Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey - https://www.amazon.com/Total-Money-Makeover-Classic-Financial/dp/1595555277


Personal Finance for Dummies by Eric Tyson - https://www.amazon.com/Personal-Finance-Dummies-Eric-Tyson/dp/1118117859


Investing for Dummies by Eric Tyson - https://www.amazon.com/Investing-Dummies-Eric-Tyson/dp/1119320690/


The Millionaire Real Estate Investor per red-sfplus’s post (can confirm this is excellent) - https://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Real-Estate-Investor/dp/0071446370/


For all the M.Ds on here and HNW individuals, you might want to check out https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/ and his blog – found it to be very useful.


https://www.irs.gov/ or your government’s tax page. If you’ve been reading, you know that millionaires know more than your average bear about the tax code.


https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/7vohb3/money/


https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/3hzcvn/financial_advice_from_a_financier/


https://www.artofmanliness.com/2017/09/22/4-money-tips-4-personal-finance-legends/


Personal Finance Flowchart from their wiki - https://i.imgur.com/lSoUQr2.png


Additional Lists of Books:


https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Books:_recommendations_and_reviews


https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/books-4/


Subreddits


https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/


https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/ - I would highly encourage you to spend a half hour browsing their wiki - https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/index and investing advice - https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/investing


https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/


https://www.reddit.com/r/SecurityAnalysis/


https://www.reddit.com/r/finance/


https://www.reddit.com/r/portfolios/


https://www.reddit.com/r/Bogleheads/


MRP References


https://www.reddit.com/r/marriedredpill/comments/40whjy/finally_talked_to_my_wife_about_our_finances_it/


https://www.reddit.com/r/marriedredpill/comments/67nxdu/finances_with_a_sahm/


https://www.reddit.com/r/marriedredpill/comments/488pa0/60_dod_week_6_finances/ (original)


https://www.reddit.com/r/marriedredpill/comments/6a6712/60_dod_week_6_finances/ (year 2)


https://www.reddit.com/r/marriedredpill/comments/3xw015/how_to_prepare_for_a_talk_about_finances/


https://www.reddit.com/r/marriedredpill/comments/30z704/taking_back_the_finances/


https://www.reddit.com/r/marriedredpill/comments/2uzukg/married_redpill_finances_and_money/


https://www.reddit.com/r/marriedredpill/comments/3637q5/some_thoughts_on_mrp_and_finances/


https://www.reddit.com/r/askMRP/comments/8dwaqt/best_practices_for_finances_within_marriage/


https://www.reddit.com/r/marriedredpill/comments/588e5o/gain_control_of_the_treasury/


Final Thoughts


There are already a lot of high net worth individuals on these subs (if you don’t believe me, look at the OYS for the past few months). This should be a review for most folks. The key points stay the same – have a plan, get out of the hole you are in, have a budget, do the right moves for wealth accumulation. Lead your family in your finances. Own it.


What are YOU doing to own your finances? Give some examples below.

Its all the same Mafia, the US pedo super rich need the UK taxavoiding and moneylaudering infrastructure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBPZxbO7OLM&t=1s

https://www.mintpressnews.com/shocking-origins-jeffrey-epstein-blackmail-roy-cohn/260621/

https://medium.com/@bernstein1985/trump-russia-9-11-our-president-is-a-longtime-money-launderer-who-remains-beholden-to-the-efdc38110653

https://www.mintpressnews.com/mega-group-maxwells-mossad-spy-story-jeffrey-epstein-scandal/261172/

https://theschpiel.com/world/ehud-barak-went-into-epstein-mansion-with-face-covered/

Boris Johnson, Mogg, Farage are in the same Group of soziopaths as the billionaers around Epstein and Trump. And Russian Soziopath Oligarchs wanne fuck with the old circles. Its better than any movie.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics

Hoover Institution senior fellow John B. Dunlop stated that "the impact of this intended 'Eurasianist' textbook on key Russian elites testifies to the worrisome rise of fascist ideas and sentiments during the late Yeltsin and the Putin period".[1]

Military operations play relatively little role. The textbook believes in a sophisticated program of subversion, destabilization, and disinformation spearheaded by the Russian special services. The operations should be assisted by a tough, hard-headed utilization of Russia's gas, oil, and natural resources to bully and pressure other countries.[9]

The United Kingdom should be cut off from Europe.[9]

Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics".[9] The Eurasian Project could be expanded to South and Central America.[9]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/victorlipman/2013/04/25/the-disturbing-link-between-psychopathy-and-leadership/#55e91fe24104

https://i.redd.it/rtkgeknpljl21.jpg This is from the father of the guy that leads the ERG https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/brexiteer-mps-allegedly-call-themselves-14185548 the shithole that invented Brexit. Why don't people understand that people like JRM, Farage, Murdoch (I once asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union. “That’s easy,” he replied. “When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.” https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/anthony-hilton-stay-or-go-the-lack-of-solid-facts-means-it-s-all-a-leap-of-faith-a3189151.html), and Trump are narcissists or straight psychopath. I still don't get it why people don't see their dead eyes. They are a real danger, they orgenize via internet, and behind closed doors and want to rule the world, and its sadly no joke or conspirecy. What do you think Putin is doing? Read whats above and you know what he does. Trump is a wannebe part of this network like McConnell and Tucker. Putin, the Arabfamilies, UK elites, US big Money work together.

https://www.amazon.com/Sovereign-Individual-Mastering-Transition-Information/dp/0684832720

[–]KittyGrewAMoustache It's insane to me that people don't see this, I mean, it's not even hidden. You look at the books Rees-Mogg wrote, then you look at what's happening in the world right now and it's obvious - these people aren't trying to liberate the people from some oppressive 'liberal' new world order, they're trying to liberate rich criminals and kleptocrats from national and international laws so that they can basically use their wealth to crush democracy and run countries and exploit workers for their own benefit. And it's so obvious. And yet all these people have been totally brainwashed into thinking Trump and Brexit are some kind of blow for the elites, or a fight back against neoliberalism or something, when actually they've been duped into supporting neofeudalism. "Why Silicon Valley billionaires are prepping for the apocalypse in New Zealand" by Mark O'Connell https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/15/why-silicon-valley-billionaires-are-prepping-for-the-apocalypse-in-new-zealand It is O'Connell's pithy summary of Rees-Mogg's book.

Another fashist is aaron Banks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6q6qinW95M

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/21/arron-banks-andy-wigmore-brexit-supporters-trump-guests-mar-a-lago

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/09/brexiters-put-money-offshore-tax-haven

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/us-billionaire-mercer-helped-back-brexit

Putin has a used a biker gang called the Night Wolves to quell anti-kremlin dissidents in Russian. They are associated with a Russian biker club operating out of Florida called Spetsnaz M.C. One of the founders of Spetsnaz has had some very sketchy real estate deals with Donald Trump and another is a former russian intelligence operative. So, it is possible that Russian Intelligence may have had a hand in the formation of Bikers for Trump. But the tale of Igor Zorin offers a 21st-century twist with all the weirdness modern Miami has to offer: Russian cash, a motorcycle club named after Russia’s powerful special forces and a condo tower branded by Donald Trump. Zorin is a Russian government official who has spent nearly $8 million on waterfront South Florida homes, hardly financially prudent given his bureaucrat’s salary of $75,000 per year. He runs a state-owned broadcasting company that, among other duties, operates sound systems for the annual military parade that sends columns of soldiers and tanks rumbling through Moscow’s Red Square. Zorin has other Miami connections, too: His local business associate, Svyatoslav Mangushev, a Russian intelligence officer turned Miami real-estate investor, helped found a biker club called Spetsnaz M.C. Spetsnaz is a group of motorcycle-loving South Florida expatriates who named themselves after the Russian equivalent of Delta Force or Seal Team Six. Spetsnaz members once asked for official recognition from Russia’s biggest biker gang, the Night Wolves, an infamous group that has strong ties to Russia’s security services.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article157640179.html

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a55879/russian-bikers-trump/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/29/russian-biker-gang-in-ukraine-night-wolves-putin https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/putins-angels-inside-russias-most-infamous-motorcycle-club-56360/

Fugitive Malaysian financier in multibillion-dollar scandal building army of foreign agents in the U.S.

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/03/jho-low-building-army-of-foreign-agents/#utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=r%2F_jho-low-army-of-foreign-agents-032018

Russia behind the Texas Seccession movement.

2015 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/vladimir-putin-texas-secession-119288 2017 https://www.houstoniamag.com/articles/2017/12/4/russia-texas-secession-facebook-page-heart-of-texas 2018 https://thinkprogress.org/russia-texas-california-separatism-9809aca9f61d/ 2019 https://thinkprogress.org/this-former-daily-caller-editor-is-trying-to-get-texas-to-secede-with-help-from-russia-9b8d276cb64e/

Child Sexual Abuse and Narcissism is another dimension of the Problem.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-legacy-distorted-love/201103/child-sexual-abuse-and-narcissism https://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/04/jeffrey-epstein-trump-lawsuit-sex-trafficking-237983 https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/20/trump-bob-kraft-visit-1230492
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3632847/Farage-s-UKIP-party-aide-30-predatory-dangerous-paedophile.html

I doubt such a database exists, and I would bet there are too many challenges to make it worth creating. Even if you could get data on something so secretive and specific, there would be a lot of room for subjectivity in categorizing lobbying activity.

But, I'd recommend you look into the research by Gabriel Kolko. He wrote a book called The Triumph of Conservatism that provides a history of regulation in the Progressive era. Contrary to your high school history text book, big business wanted more regulation to keep out smaller competitors and maintain power for their organizations forever (hence the triumph of conservatism).

If you don't want to read a whole book, check out this article. It's still kind of a long read, but gives you a sense of the kind of evidence and "data" out there about big business being on the side of regulation rather than the free market.

What's especially interesting about Kolko is that he was a part of the left, which makes him fun to bring up in conversations with leftists.

Be aware, though, not everybody thinks Kolko was right in his telling of the history. Even some libertarians say we should be wary of using him as a source.

LOL, no, its a good book but there are many better recommendations.

For example, if you wanted to understand the tools of state/religious oppression and its consequences in modern context I may recommend; Why Nations fail

Or if you desired to have greater understanding of the consequences of inventing money; Debt, the first 5000 years

Or if you felt that religion was cool but the idea of God was wrong you could read; Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao

Or if you wanted to read about the decline of world wide violence; The Better Angels of our Nature

In large part it is due to the Public Land Records System in the US. In the US we can buy and sell land with confidence and use it to gain wealth through appreciation of land values, taking out equity loans to invest in other things and it also supports our local governments through taxes that provide services. If you want to read more, check out The Mystery of Capital https://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Capital-Capitalism-Triumphs-Everywhere/dp/0465016154

Ouch, tough, man. It's always a delicate balance between living in your own bubble (http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/03/my_beautiful_bu.html) and making compromises to expand your circle of friends.

As to how to argue more easily, see

http://voluntaryistreader.wordpress.com/2012/12/22/success-socratic-style/

This will allow you to exploit the weaknesses in your opponent's arguments more easily.

As to the actual topics mentioned, here's what I have:

1. You need to press him on which ones they are. This book is a good overview of why essentially all government regulations suck:
   
   http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2006/9/monetarypolicy%20winston/20061003
   
   
2. Check out the article I linked above. I apply the Socratic Method to the claim that deregulation caused the Great Recession
   
   
3. To fix this misconception, you need to understand the competitive process:
   
   http://thelibertyhq.org/learn/index.php?articleID=257&parentID=32
   
   Working conditions are just another condition of employment besides wages, and is set by supply and demand. Furthermore, about OSHA - see the book linked in #1. It shows that OSHA has had no statistically significant impact on safety. You could also try http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-handbook-policymakers/1999/9/hb106-34.pdf
   
   On occupational licensing and other licensing, see
   
   http://econjwatch.org/articles/occupational-licensing-scant-treatment-in-labor-texts
   
   http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/06/your_sort_is_pr.html
   
   http://t.co/WQKpPYM8Kw
   
   As well as the book in #1. Summary of all of the above: licensing is useless at best.
   
   
4. This might be a good starting point: http://www.cato-unbound.org/2008/11/10/roderick-t-long/corporations-versus-market-or-whip-conflation-now
   
   After that, try http://www.amazon.com/The-Triumph-Conservatism-Reinterpretation-1900-1916/dp/0029166500
   
   The above book is written by a socialist historian who actually argues that competition was alive and kicking during the Guilded Age, and that it was the big corporations which asked government for more regulations to control competition.
   
   
5. He got that big because he was simply good. He lowered prices and increased quality. Claims of predatory pricing are baseless, upon an economic analysis. See my writeup about Standard Oil on the Mises Wiki: http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Standard_Oil
   
   
6. Start with http://mises.org/daily/2317#1
   
   Also, point out that the actually bad robber barons got big through help from the government.
   
   
7. See #2. Also, read Meldown, by Tom Woods: http://www.amazon.com/Meltdown-Free-Market-Collapsed-Government-Bailouts/dp/1596985879
   
   See http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/deregulation-caused-the-financial-crisis/
   
   and http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/did-deregulation-cause-the-financial-crisis/
   
   
8. Well, it wouldn't be just ostracism. The police would still get the money back...
   
   
9. Reasons are mixed, I suppose. I don't know enough about Civil War history. You might want to read DiLorenzo on the issue, though I have also heard from some libertarians that he is sometimes dishonest in how he presents the facts.
   
   
10. The facts speak - real per-student funding has more than doubled in the last 30 years with no impact on scores. If full socialism works in education (as is essentially currently the case, and as your friend suggests would be nice), why not have the entire economy be socialistically planned?
    
    More about education: http://thelibertyhq.org/learn/index.php?listID=9
    
    If you want to see the Socratic Method in action, check out this convo of mine:
    
    http://libertyhq.freeforums.org/socratic-method-in-action-t477.html
    
    But once again, I highly recommend reading my article linked in #1. It's a super helpful debate tactic.
    
    Edit: Screw automatic fixing of numbering.

I mostly agree with you, of course. But I'm not always sure how to parse through the issue based on historical data.

>In the last 30 years freedom has increased in the developing world and gains are economic gains increasing in the last 30 years in the west freedom has decreased and gains are slowing.

That's likely more to do with what economists call "convergence" (diminishing returns to capital). Also, what we've seen increase in these developing countries over the last 30 years has not been just freedom (not in the voluntaryist/ancap sense of the word); it's been more a shift of better property rights and more inclusive institutions, which is dominated not by lack of government, but more democratic forms of governance and all the public goods via the state that comes with this; a la Acemoglu and Bueno de Mesquita.

So, in other words, what is the relative magnitude of "freedom" as a factor in producing growth and prosperity, as opposed to the natural march and progression of technology and our evolution from bacteria into 4-dimensional beings of light?

It hardly matters what they want:

"If only Stalin knew".

Also see, for example, Hayek's fairly short although dense "The Road to Serfdom", or perhaps the Reader's Digest condensed version, which he found to be marvelous, see the "Why the worst get on top" section.

Although based on a quick skim just now of the latter, it looks like avoids a serious treatment of the information theoretic explanation for why planned economies are impossible (there's to much information, as represented by prices, for a few planners at the top to grok, and constantly adjust for). I suppose that's fairly well know by now, but it was the single most enlightening thing I took from it when I read it in the early 1980s, back when our betters were sure the Soviet Union would win the Cold War, and that that was for the best.

I'm seeing a lot of criticism of communism based on the "it's never worked" or "you're forgetting the human factor" but I'm not seeing any Hayekian criticsm. So let me kick in.

First off, what I'll be saying comes from The Road to Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek. The book is intended to be a short, highly condensed version of a much larger argument. It succeeds at that, but is still over 200 pages. You can get an inkling of how little I'll be getting into here.

Second, none of these problems are a silver bullet in the heart of communism. They are core problems with the communist system of government, but rational people absolutely can look at these problems and say "sure, but it's worth it."

So having said that.

One basic problem with any system of government where you are determining outcomes is that we do not all agree on what that outcome should be. Even if we all agreed on the big stuff (abortion, murder, proper liability of controlling stock owners, etc), we would and do disagree on the small stuff - like where a park should be, or what size the swingset should be.

When you solve these issues by voting, you succeed in making the plurality mostly happy, but you fail to make others happy. Okay, so some people will be disappointed no matter what system you use - that's okay. The trouble is that when your decisions are made by a subset of the population (ie you're using representatives) then what decision your representative will make becomes far more important than whether or not they will do the right thing.

This is true for any representative system, but with systems where outcomes are determined by the state, much more will be governed by this problem. This problem is the essence of politics.

Systems that are not centrally organized have other problems, but they do not have this problem. As the US has moved toward centrally organizing more and more things, we have more and more of this problem.

Next problem: when you guarantee income levels, you start having a very bad set of problems.

If you guarantee the income levels for all workers, you cannot let workers choose what job they will take. Consider a very skilled man who could be a lawyer, doctor, or historian. Under a price system, he would consider which he liked doing and factor in how much he could expect to make in the jobs he would like doing. He would then make his choice. If there were too many lawyers, the expected salary would go down and he could take that into account as well.

If his employment were guaranteed, there would be no way to deal with a glut of attorneys. If everyone was paid the same, you would simply have to say "you cannot be an attorney. We have too many attorneys." Even if he loved being a lawyer and fighting for the little guy - and was willing to work for little pay - because you guarantee income he could not do that.

If you guarantee the income level only for some workers, then those positions become valuable out of proportion to their income. In fact, you create a superclass of people who's employment is guaranteed and compensation is guaranteed - we have seen this in every system that guarantees employment.

If you do not guarantee employment or compensation, then you either have a free market system, or you have to force people to work.

The interesting thing about using money instead of needs to compensate people is this: with money, people choose which of their needs are most important to them. When you give a man $100, you pay for the greatest of his needs. When you take $100 away from him, you take from the least of his needs.

There's more, but I don't feel the need to flood. I'm also a bit tired - my apologies for any bad writing.

I appreciate the well-thought-out response - and I happen to not disagree with a lot of what you're saying here.

Self-interest is a force, like any other. Like electricity, it can be put to both constructive and destructive uses...

It's also a given; Life would not exist without it. Your appetite is your body, applying self-interest to keep you alive.

Self-interest can co-exist with morals, just as group-interest can co-exist with a lack of morality. Neither guarantees the other.

Capitalism, used today, is somewhat of a blanket term which does nothing to distinguish between constructive uses of this force, and destructive ones.

The Founders undoubtedly acted in their self-interest, as did everyone who went to work today - is there no difference between someone who helped others for a paycheck, and someone who swindled others for one?

Carroll Quigley's Evolution Of Civilizations makes a rather compelling case that societies don't last very long when they cease to differentiate between the two. Hence the terms instruments and institutions.

Brief summary (not mine):

>Among his conclusions, Quigley wrote about the importance of social instruments, which he defined as organizations that are effectively serving the end for which they were established. When an instrument stops serving that goal it has become an institution, requiring a response — reform or circumvention, or reaction — which leads to either a new or reformed instrument, or decay.

To respond to your point...

>The people driving this change are wealthy capitalists, and the people doing most of the world are third-world labourers, why praise the wealth capitalists and ignore everyone else?

I won't tell you the third world hasn't been exploited by institutions; It has. Instruments have provided them with cell phones and other technology that they otherwise wouldn't have. Eventually, it may provide them with much more.

The developing world stands to be one of the largest benefactors of cryptocurrency. It is estimated that the poor in these countries "informally" own $9.3 Trillion in property that cannot be "legally" theirs; Their governments don't permit them to own it. If decentralized finance enables them to circumvent this, their quality of life would improve immensely.

It's a question of personality. I am all for Innovation, Innovation, Innovation.

> Which are better in your opinion?

Innovation

> What examples do you have?

• Apple,
  
• Whole Foods,
  
• Walmart (Walmart is not about Low-Prices, it's about IT and innovative processes that allow for low-prices and more)
  
• Google
  
• Facebook
  
• Instagram
  
• Compaq
  
• MCI
  
• Digital
  
• Intel
  
• Tesla
  
  
  If you want more, read this: https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Change-Business/dp/0062060244
  
  and this: https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Solution-Creating-Sustaining-Successful/dp/1422196577

This is arguably the best book on libertarianism: http://mises.org/books/thelaw.pdf

"No legal plunder: This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony, and logic."

"But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime."

This is probably the other classic I'd recommend.
http://www.amazon.com/Road-Serfdom-Fiftieth-Anniversary/dp/0226320618

William Bernstein is fantastic for learning the basics of asset allocation. The Four Pillars of Investing is probably the best overview, with a lot of practical advice. If you want a little more underlying theory, with just a bit of arithmetic, get The Intelligent Asset Allocator.

You may find Acemoglu and Robinson's Why Nations Fail interesting reading. They are growth economists from MIT. Their main thesis is that states that are controlled by a small elite will tend to oppress the population and set up extractive economic institutions. These states will tend to stagnate, and because of political in-fighting, will eventually fail. Sustained economic development occurs when a state has pluralistic political institutions (which hold the exploitative tendencies of the elite in check), this in turn leads to inclusive economic institutions that allow the greater part of society the freedom to pursue and profit from economic success.

I've found 'The Sovereign Individual' to be more prescient even though it was written in 1997.

Predicting the rise of wealth inequality, tax avoidance by the wealthy and increased immigration as the fuel for a nationalist resurgence in most countries with calls for increasing wealth redistribution and stronger national borders.

It will be interesting though to see if the predictions continue with reduced government power as more SEZs and potentially 'free cities' develop and whether we will see a rise in secessionist movements.

https://www.amazon.com/Sovereign-Individual-Mastering-Transition-Information/dp/0684832720

• Open the Roth and fund it for last year and this year, don't miss the deadline, get the money in there...if you ever need the principal you can pull it back without penalty.
  
• Next read this: The Four Pillars of Investing and allocate your funds and build a plan to ensure you will have enough money for retirement.
  
• you have a unique opportunity to create a lot of wealth. once you create your plan use the extra to have fun or invest in real estate or whatever else.

> Wat, the whole point of Cuba is that no one dies of poverty and starvation, everyone has a right to a home, food, schooling and medical treatment, no matter which medical treatment (changing sex is free too for example, if you were born with the wrong one for your gender). And all of this with an embargo (lifted recently, thankfully) that hindered its imports considerably; can the same be said for the US, for example?

This has nothing to do with socialism or capitalism. Capitalist states often have the same social programs, but they have well made economic policy that can generate the wealth to sustain it without forcing everyone into poverty (see Denmark, Canada, Australia, etc)

>Which has been fine until they decided to specialise too much in a single good (oil) which has many shocks in price, more of an incompetence problem than a structural one.

Venezuela was only doing "fine" because they were filthy rich from oil. When shit hit the fan they had no way to mitigate it. So instead they hire idiots who claim inflation is a capitalist conspiracy. Compare them to singapore which didn't have said luxury of ridiculous wealth under their land.

>I'm a huge critic of both Stalin and Mao (more of the former), but it must be clarified that

>1) The numbers are hugely inflated

The numbers are not inflated. Are they misleadingly thrown around? Yea. It wasn't murder, it was just the end result of elementary economic policy.

>2) It is true that capitalism and imperialism kill more, and they kill innocents.

Imperialism is entirely separate from capitalism (mercantilist nations relied on it the most), and are you really fucking implying USSR / PRC didn't kill innocents what the fuck.

>The richest countries are capitalist, it's easy for them to trick you into thinking that it's because "their system is superior" but it's actually because they exploit their workers and workers in other countries, which work in inhumane conditions to create their richness.

Read a book


Exploitation tends to harm the imperialist nations, and nations become wealthiest by providing the means to success to all their citizens. It just so happens that private property and free enterprise does this the best.

>Funny, because this description fits both neoliberalism and anarchism pretty well, but if you think that this describes Marxism, I think you should study a bit of Marxism, and not from memes.

Marxism is a meme. That's why it will never be taken seriously by people outside of New School or UMass (besides internet memers and autocrats), sorry son.

>The 1982 recession was worse than the 1991 or 2001 ones, so it took more growth to recover from.

Yes, and the 2008 recession was even worse, yet the economic bounceback was anemic. If the economy's ability to recover from recessions had remained statically dynamic for the past 30 years then there should have been a huge uptick in growth between 2009-2012ish. But there wasn't, and the rebound from the Great Recession was even worse when you remember that recoveries ought to be commensurate with the severity of the preceding recession. The pattern for the past 30 years is that the economy takes longer to recover from each successive recession even when accounting for the severity of that recession.

>Well yeah, because the postwar boom ended. That was never going to last forever.

Yes, but our expectations for individual opportunity and future quality of life increases are still based on those post-war norms of 3.6% GDP growth, 2.2%ish Real GDP/Capita growth, 2.2% productivity growth, high levels of job creation......etc. But it's very possible that those norms will never return.. And if people are forced to live in a world of drastically diminished economic growth in which normal working class people have fewer opportunities and there is less opportunity for upward mobility due to decreased economic churn then it would not be unrealistic to expect them to react by voting for angry populists who promise simple solutions for complex problems.

In fact, I'd say that has already begun.

> So you support corporate subsidies?

Yes insofar that I support the government assisting and propping up businesses that provide goods and benefits for the betterment of America. It is (and has been) a very beneficial practice for American industry, workers, and finance since the 1940's. A good book I'm reading about on the subject (among other things) but have not finished yet.

> Just in areas you agree with?

I prefer in areas I agree with but I understand the need for compromise and concession in the areas I don't.

what, all of it? maybe something by galeano? memories of fire or open veins.

for chile, specifically, muñoz's dictator's shadow is very good. also, i really liked this anthropological text - very good view into current (well, more or less) chilean culture and surprisingly easy to read.

Actually, the development of private property rights is strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly associated with improvement of quality of life for the poor. I have yet to see any data suggesting there is any credible alternative to the market if your interest is a healthy and wealthy society.

On inequality I think Piketty and Piketty and Saez are probably about right, but there isn't that much variation across societies where "ownership of assets" varies. I'm prepared to argue that North Korea might stand as the world's most unequal society however (perhaps asymptotically so?), even though we lack for real data on the subject.

If your interest is in reducing inequality, you should probably be thinking more about taxing the stuff that the rich earn rather than eliminating the social construct of the rich owning stuff.

First, you didn't answer my question. Do you think private reinvestment of a portion of their profits is more beneficial to the communities in which they operate than simple using that money for increased wages, pensions and benefits?

>>If efficiency comes at the cost of less wages, later retirements, shorter and closer-to-home vacations, and so on - what is the point? How does it benefit us?

>Is this a result of efficiency or a result of globalization? If globalization is reducing poverty in the developing world at the cost of making people in the rich world poorer, is that OK?

It's clearly a result of this quest for faux-efficiency. We've whittled down unions, stagnated in mandating vacation time and minimum wage increases, privatized a fair amount of the public sector and refused to nationalize some other ones. Globalization and free trade can be blamed for many things, but they are simply manifestations of the expansion of private businesses ability to undermine comprehensive labour and trade laws.

I also don't think that globalization helps poorer nations. I suggest these books, or if you aren't so inclined, at least this talk.

Not at all. There's an epidemic of economic ignorance which is clearly apparent when watching Maher or Oliver while witnessing a resurgence of socialism as a plausible solution. "If socialists understood economics, they wouldn't be socialists." -F.A. Hayek

Here's an excellent place to start learning, if anyone is interested in a very readable, logical and engaging lesson in basic economics..

Happy to consider another source on economics if you have any to offer.

hand them this book. "The Triumph of Conservativism"

Calls progressives the true conservatives, and theyre the ones who put corporate special interest in power.

Buy and read these books (first):

Bogle on Mutual Funds https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/111908833X/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Bogleheads Guide to Investing
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1118921283/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The Four Pillars of Investing
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071747052/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

After reading those, download Robinhood and put $100 in (no more) and play around for like 6 months before even thinking about trying to play with larger amounts.

-- OR - skip Robinhood and download "Betterment" and just slowly put money in there and build some wealth.

Happy Learning.

You hit the proverbial nail on the head. Make-work bias has been around for centuries and there is usually only temporary unemployment for those whose jobs get replaced by capital. But like you said it's not really worth worrying about at this point.
If anyone has any interest in technological advancement or capital from an economic standpoint, these are some great books to check out:

[Capital in the Twenty-First Century] (http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/067443000X/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=0ETBP81SYG4890W6R34T)


[The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Second-Machine-Age-Technologies/dp/0393239357/ref=pd_sim_b_6?ie=UTF8&refRID=0N2W244G0SF4XT3Q5MDB)

[The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Lights-Tunnel-Automation-Accelerating/dp/1448659817/ref=pd_sim_b_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=0Q1BR5DDQRM29TZPTGBN)

Highly effective narrow AI should be a huge long-term boon, but will be a big problem in the short term. Many, many people spend most of their days doing work they do not enjoy only because they must do so to support themselves (and family etc.) Moreover a lot of the least pleasant jobs pay the worst, which has always seemed backward to me. A world in which there are only a small number of unpleasant jobs remaining, and higher compensation to do them, would be awesome.

But it will be tricky for us to make it into that awesome world. Although in the past increased automation has also led to the creation of new jobs to replace the old ones, there is no law of physics — or for that matter economics so far as I know — guaranteeing this. Brynjolfsson and McAfe make a pretty compelling case that we are already seeing heightening inequality resulting from recent automation, and this is very like to continue on overdrive.

I see nothing to suggest that our economic, let alone political, systems are ready for this. Such a society would require enormous wealth redistribution from the company owners to lots of people who are doing essentially nothing for that wealth in traditional economic terms. Its hard to conceive of the idea of something like that happening in the US until/unless there is huge upheaval. It seems almost guaranteed that we will go through a phase of hyper-inequality.

Moreover, AI is unlikely to just stay at the goldilocks state of doing all of our unpleasant jobs for us, without replacing us in the jobs we humans do want to do, and thus essentially replacing humanity altogether.

Asset Class|Target %|Ticker

---|:--:|:--:
US Total Stock Market| 19.2%|VTI
US Small Value|12.8%|VBR
US REITs|8%|VNQ
Int. Pacific|8%|VPL
Int. Europe|8%|VGK
Int. Value|16%|VSS
Int. Emerging Mkts.|8%|VWO
Fixed Income|20%|VARIOUS

****

My glide-path is to add 1% in fixed-income every year until it reaches 40%-50%, at which time the allocation will remain constant.

Rebalancing is done with new money (when possible). 5/25 banding is in use; i.e., if an asset class is meant to comprise < 20% of the portfolio, then the tolerance is +-25% (relative percentage) of the desired %. If the asset class is meant to comprise >= 20% of the portfolio, then the tolerance is +-5% (absolute percentage) of the desired %. (Credit for technique goes to Larry Swedroe).

Influences on my portfolio:

Bogleheads Forum

William Berstein's The Four Pillars of Investing

Rick Ferri's All About Asset Allocation

FundAdvice's Ultimate Buy and Hold

Trev H's Ultimate Buy and Hold Redux

//EDIT: Table format

I recommend the book Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (4 Volume Set) by Ludwig von Mises of the Austrian School of Economics. Austrian Economists debunk many Keynesian fallacies such as the Broken Window fallacy.

Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy by Thomas Sowell of the Chicago School.

The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents--The Definitive Edition (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, Volume 2) by F. A. Hayek (he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1974)

The Ludwig von Mises Institute has many excellent articles, free books and lectures about economics and society. Watch Mises Media on youtube.

And The Peter Schiff Show about economic matters on youtube.

You've stumbled onto a whole subfield of economics: Development Economics.

Here is a list of all NBER papers tagged with development.

This is a good resource regarding the EITC (check the citations).

If you are looking for "lay person friendly" books, I'd recommend:

• Gregory Clark- A Farewell to Alms (more of an economic history but essential context in my view)
  
  
• Acemoglu & Robinson- Why Nations Fail (This is a book that attempts to answer the age old "why are the poor poor" question and possible ways out)
  
  
• Angus Deaton- The Great Escape (Deaton recently won the economics Nobel)
  
  
• William Easterly- The White Man's Burden (A pretty scathing view of the West's efforts to help poor countries).
  
  This is a really wide field in economics.

1. That is the most important question in economic history, perhaps the only important question in economic history, and the answer is: we still don't have a good account of the Industrial Revolution. It's something of a Holy Grail for economic historians.
   
   
2. Oh boy.
   
   Let me preface by saying that if you have the time, you should read several Big History type books, preferably when you're in your early 20s. At that stage you're old enough to appreciate them, but not so far into your economics studies that you've forgotten how to ask questions bigger than "what is the value of a coefficient in an IV regression?" I'm going to be critical of these books, but that doesn't mean they are not worthwhile.
   
   So as for the main books and their explanations,
   
   

• I don't give a whole lot of weight to culture, in part because it's such a slippery concept. So Landes is out.
  
  
• Geography just doesn't provide the right lever, in the right times, or the right places, so Diamond is out qua income per capita or the IR.
  
  
• Up until about two years ago I would have argued that de Soto's book, which emphasizes economic and financial institutions, has the highest concentration of true and useful claims among Big History / Big Development books. However the AEJ symposium on microfinance was discouraging and threw a lot of cold water on the financial institutions hypothesis. This is high praise for those papers; the results were disappointing enough and credible enough to move my prior in a big way.
  
  
• Political institutions don't quite do the work you need them to during the Industrial Revolution. And it's not clear whether political institutions cause growth or vice-versa; Acemoglu has two books on this, each arguing in the other direction (WNF and EODD). I also have reservations about the empirical work that underlies many of the claims in WNF. However, the stories are just so damn good, and they advocate for policies that we otherwise want to see implemented anyway, so it remains the Big History de jour.
  
  Mokyr and Clark have books that look specifically at the Industrial Revolution that are good, but Mokyr's is too dense for a popular audience and Clark's basic explanation for the IR is not really credible.

IQ and the Wealth of Nations was published in 2002 by Lynn and Vanhanen. It was followed by IQ and Global Inequality in 2006. Here is a map taken from that book.They contend that nations differ in IQ and that this is predictive of their economic success. Their data support them in this. Here is a more recent figure that uses distinct data, with cognitive ability estimated from independent performance measures, PISA, TIMSS, and PIRLS international exams.

The Left do not like genetic determinism and reacted angrily to the book: these things should not be said, it's all racist, IQ is meaningless, it's all down to differences in nurture. The usual squid's ink, in fact.

The reality is far more complex, and this post catches another angle of it. Primate brain size correlates strongly with the average number of animals in a troop, as do estimates of their intelligence. That is, social behaviour - intensionality, having a model of the mind of others - is one of the most intense cognitive tasks that we face. Managing a stable society in which long run collaboration, property rights comes late in development, and appears to be the key step in achieving it. Differences in assessed institutional strength explains around two thirds of the differences in social and economic development between 1950 and today.

Is this related to "national IQ", and collaboration consequent on that? Certainly, but in a non-linear way. Average IQ in the industrial world has risen by 30 points since the 1920s: the Flynn effect. The mean today would have been seen as "gifted" in 1920. That is down to nutrition, education and the far better understanding that the average person has of the world that surrounds them. A soap opera is a marvellous education in how other people "work".

All of this is rather good news. The Left should not be in denial about this: given appropriate stimuli, the world's population can improve its collaboration and prosperity much more rapidly than naive factor supply analysis would suggest. It may be that poor countries generate conditions that lead to populations with low IQs , and not that some countries have innately lower average intelligence than others.

Yes "The Road to Serfdom" is a truly prolific work, and absolutely worth the read. It's very approachable, and only talks about the economics of socialism in the first few chapters - most of the rest of the book is dedicated to the morality of collectivism VS. freedom.
https://www.amazon.com/Road-Serfdom-Fiftieth-Anniversary/dp/0226320618

I would also try to read "Ideas have consequences" by Richard Weaver. It's a bit more condensed - but extremely valuable insight for our current political trends

I can see your heart is in the right place, but the reason that Russia is falling farther and farther behind is because of its authoritarian government. Please, if you intend to vote in another election I beg that you read up on the relationship between democracy, liberty, and economic progress. Just read a few chapters of Why Nations Fail and I know you'll be convinced that Russia is on the wrong path.

I did, but after studying the World Bank and IMF I changed my mind again.

http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/wbimf/imfwbReport2001.html

http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/wbimf/imfwbReport2001.html

http://mrxfromplanetx.com/tag/imf/

Raw Story once quoted Ron Paul as saying the structural adjustments are Keynesian economics, but they are not. They are Milton Freedman economics.

I am still all for ending the Fed, but when you look at what the IMF and World Bank do is privatize everything.

Mind you in the real world, you and I do not have a chance at purchasing anything getting privatized. It all goes to the rich elites that control the World Bank and IMF.

Tragedy and Hope is widely touted as disclosing banker conspiracies, but it also shows something else -- the free market has never existed because rich and powerful business interests always strive to control the market to control their prophets. Read chapter 5 http://ia341238.us.archive.org/0/items/TragedyAndHope/TH.pdf

As Kolko says, there is no system that works https://www.amazon.com/dp/0029166500?tag=alt13-20&camp=213381&creative=390973&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=0029166500&adid=1XQCCH30FXW7141AWP75&

Walter Lippmann called the collusion "Patronage" and claimed it was the glue that holds the country together. I think Lippmann was on the wrong side, but he was a brilliant man http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Democracy/Lipp_PubOpin_Patronage.html

I'm glad you've become interested in such a fascinating topic. However, it's pretty expansive, so here are some links to books and topics in terms of broad, global, and more specific studies related to the issue of income equality:

Broad Topic/Global:

• Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson
  
  
• The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time by Jeffrey Sachs. This is more of a look into global poverty, but has elements of income equality between countries tied into it.
  
  
  In the US/more specific:
  
  
• Inequality: Growing Apart is a short article by The Economist on the topic of growing income inequality in the US
  
  
• The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future by Joseph Stiglitz
  
  
• Income Inequality in the United States: 1913-1998 an empirical study by Thomas Piketty and Emanuel Saez
  
  This is just a list of the more well-known, discussed, and publicized works on the broader subject of income inequality and poverty. There is a plethora of information on this topic from different perspectives and analyses (e.g. political economy, neoclassical, marxist, etc...), as well as in different countries and time periods, so while you're reading remember to take the context of how it is being written and who is writing it into consideration. Hopefully this list gets you started though!
  
  

The fantasy is the success of centrally-planned economies. There is tremendous evidence suggesting that liberty works best:

• West German vs East Germany
  
• South Korea vs North Korea
  
• Hong Kong in the 80s vs China in the 80s
  
• Estonia vs Latvia or Lithuania
  
• Botswana vs the rest of Africa
  
• Chile vs the rest of S. America
  
  This debate was settled (again) when the Berlin wall fell, at yet socialist ideas continue to rise from the grave. I'll never understand the public's lust for tyranny.
  
  Recommend Hayek's Road to Serfdom

If you're interested in reading more on the subject, check out Ha Joon Chang's work in Kicking Away the Ladder, for which he won the 2005 Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought.

> Productivity growth is on the decline, forgot the word growth at the end, but you obviously knew what I meant.

I did not know what you meant. I find it dangerous to assume, especially on the Internet, so I asked.

Sources of slower productivity growth are a matter of some controversy. Here is some survey coverage. I wouldn't say anyone has a convincing explanation yet, but I wouldn't say that the data really support the conclusion that rising inequality is to blame. It's probably a factor, but a relatively small one.

The theory I am most partial to is Gordon's, from The Rise and Fall of American Growth. Summary: productivity growth above the 1% level we're experiencing now only occurs when you have a major technological shock that creates and destroys industries. The last one of those we had was the Internet, and we've captured the low-hanging productivity fruits from that already.

The good news on this front is that we have a pretty good idea what the next big thing is. The bad news is that it's AI, and the disruptions to labor from this technological shock are going to be huge.

> I dont include finance because finance is not the economy.

Disdain for finance is trendy these days, but I find it quite dubious to proclaim one kind of service work is productive and another is not. Is law the economy? Politics? Rather a lot of GDP is in those fields, and I don't know how you can draw the line in an unbiased way. Probably you'll find that some types of finance you like, and other types of finance you don't.

Ultimately, I think it's right and proper for the market to decide.

link studies on what...genetic component to altruism? here, read this:
https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Richard-Dawkins/dp/1491514507

IQ and genetics?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/10/genes-dont-just-influence-your-iq-they-determine-how-well-you-do-school
http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/v20/n1/full/mp2014105a.html
Deary IJ, Johnson W, Houlihan LM. Genetic foundations of human intelligence. Hum Genet2009; 126: 215–232. | Article | PubMed | ISI |
Plomin R, DeFries JC, Knopik VS, Neiderhiser JM. Behavioral genetics, 6th edn. Worth Publishers: New York, 2013.
https://www.amazon.com/IQ-Wealth-Nations-Richard-Lynn/dp/027597510X
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121002150027.htm

I dunno...do you need more sources? This is a good intro reading, there are many thousands more studies...

they all contradict the politically correct narrative, and they all suggest that importing 3rd world immigrants into wealthy nations is an excellent way to destroy those nations. This is not controversial speculation...for actual scientists it is a known fact. This should make you feel a bit uncomfortable...unless you live in israel or china of course.

Still, it's not that simple.
It's interesting how we measure wealth, and how much those 36% actually own that does not appear in such measures, because of how ownership works (or doesn't) in most of the world.

In particular, you could say that the line dividing worlds (first & third) can be drawn where property rights (and supporting legal system) exist and where they don't.

Read Hernando de Soto to see what I mean!

It can be demonstrated that there are trillions of dollars of 'wealth' just from land ownership alone that does not appear in any wealth measures, because the corresponding countries do not have formal, legal ways to define and transfer ownership! This inability to tap into that wealth is a major barrier to investment, business expansion etc.

>Amit Aujla: What’s the most important or influential book you’ve read?

>[Thiel:]The Sovereign Individual (Touchstone, 1997), by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg, is an unusual book that I read at a singular moment, just before starting PayPal. A lot of thinking about technology oscillates between two extremes: It’s either a big historical force acting over the long term or it’s a matter of short-term trends to bet on. The Sovereign Individual is different because it takes foresight seriously: If you think hard, you can understand and make plans for a future lasting 10, 20 years or more–and that’s how you have to think to be successful.

...

>The plotline sounds like a science fiction novel. Early in the 21st century, the cybereconomy produced by the Information Age liberates sovereign individuals as economic transactions occur outside government regulatory confines via such means as computer-generated electronic money (e-cash).

Look, there's no need to bash my background in economics, which is irrelevant. You should be addressing the faulty logic in the government encouraging short term economic growth as well as greater integration between financial markets and real estate.

Besides, I don't think a single credible economist would argue that a sensible long-term economic growth policy is to invest in real estate over fundamentals. We're not talking basic macro, we're talking about having read historical analyses of the endogenous growth model. Even the neoclassical model of economic growth would warn against a focus on real estate. Tell me, what have you read that suggest real estate is a good bet?

You don't need lots of houses to subsidize education or R&D. There's a thing called "debt" which the government has so far been using to pay for its various overseas wars which can be used to subsidize the fundamentals of growth.

Try to spend as much time continuously working as possible. This may take a number of sacrifices to do. Depending on what part of the film industry you may be waiting for jobs, or you may have one of the jobs where you just fly to the next project elsewhere in the world.

If you are in one of the more mobile jobs do that. The more time you continuously work the better off you'll be.

Now if you have reasonably consistent income you need to keep your expenses down and not accumulate debts. The reason being you need to save as much money as you possibly can.

Any retirement fund benefits need to be taken. The remainder needs to be invested. Those investments will be what generates your income.

My recommended reading to learn how to be a good passive investor is The Four Pillars of Investing.
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Pillars-Investing-Building-Portfolio/dp/0071747052/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1450552472&sr=1-1&keywords=the+four+pillars+of+investing

You may want to consider shares that consistently pay dividends and bonds. This is not always the best long term strategy but knowing the film industry this may be a safer option for you.

The Chinese economy follows the East Asian Model. Huge export --> savings --> reinvestment [infrastructure, education,etc to fully utilize human capital] = develop and move up the value chain [clothes/toys ---> high tech goods].

 

>Chang blasts holes in the "World Is Flat" orthodoxy of Thomas Friedman and others who argue that only unfettered capitalism and wide-open international trade can lift struggling nations out of poverty. On the contrary, Chang shows, today's economic superpowers-from the U.S. to Britain to his native Korea-all attained prosperity by shameless protectionism and government intervention in industry, a fact conveniently forgotten now that they want to compete in foreign markets.

https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Samaritans-Secret-History-Capitalism/dp/1596915986/

 


>How did the rich countries really become rich? In this provocative study, Ha-Joon Chang examines the great pressure on developing countries from the developed world to adopt certain 'good policies' and 'good institutions', seen today as necessary for economic development. His conclusions are compelling and disturbing: that developed countries are attempting to 'kick away the ladder' with which they have climbed to the top, thereby preventing developing countries from adopting policies and institutions that they themselves have used.

https://www.amazon.com/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Development-Perspective/dp/1843310279/

I started to make one a while back but didn't get too far. There are just too many great books to choose from.

Classics 1950-1970

What is Conservatism?

The Conservative Mind

The Road to Serfdom

The Constitution of Liberty

Ideas Have Consequences

The Quest for Community

Economics in One Lesson

Capitalism and Freedom

In Defense of Freedom


Age of Reagan 1970-1990

The Conservative Intellectual Movement Since 1945

Modern Times

Knowledge and Decisions

A Conflict of Visions

Anarchy, State, and Utopia

Roots Of American Order


Modern Must Reads 1990-Today

The Clash of Civilizations

A History of the American People

The Vision of the Annointed

Intellectuals and Society

Illiberal Reformers

Restoring the Lost Constitution

How To Be A Conservative

>make them SEZ

Zero federal taxes and zero federal regulations? Cause I’d be okay with this. Mmmhmmm that capital inflow would be so hot.

>redistribute those votes to new immigrants

Lol wow here you need this

>limit the civil rights

Like what exactly?

Start by reading the recommended books in the sidebar. My personal favorite investment book is:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Four-Pillars-Investing-Portfolio/dp/0071747052

Becoming a good investor is something that is learned by reading books. You may also want to read some more general books on saving and budgeting. While you are reading these books, focus on saving money and putting it into the highest interest savings account you can find.

I would also advise that you focus on investing in yourself if possible. An education which leads to a higher paying job will be an investment that gives you far higher returns than the stock market.

Before placing myself in the position of defending child labor practices in the Industrial Revolution, let me take a second to refine my objection.

When I read your post, you were obviously exaggerating for effect (I don't think people are clamoring for deregulation of child labor), but I do think that the situation in the Industrial Revolution wasn't as simple as just having some regulations would have put an end to child labor and simultaneously maintained or raised overall living standards for the working class. It is my view that the claim that all corporations were monopolies who were dominant enough in the market that they had full control over wages and wouldn't have raised them without unions and regulation is overstated.

Secondly I do happen to study history when I find the time, so I can avoid putting my foot in my mouth and so that I can support my views about things. Specifically - most of what I know about Progressive regulation comes from the work of Gabriel Kolko (a self-described leftist and anticapitalist with a PhD from Harvard, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Kolko), who wrote the book The Triumph of Conservatism. Its central thesis is that regulations of the era were lobbied for by the corporations themselves (to stifle competition). It's not available online anywhere, but here are some reviews (http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-Conservatism-Gabriel-Kolko/dp/0029166500).

Until you provide substantive evidence of your own views you can't run around claiming that I'm some ignorant buffoon who doesn't know basic history. Maybe if you show some good material I'll change my mind.

Jews were integrated into whiteness during the 1950s and 1960s, especially after the 1967 Six Day War. Great book: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu/product/How-Jews-Became-White-Folks-and-What-That-Says-Abo,3228.aspx

The Japanese were incredibly fortunate in that China and North Korea arose as Communist powers in the post-war period. Suddenly, Americans were willing to spend billions of dollars aiding them. Japan in particular had a strong pre-war history of using the same economic techniques that America had to become strong (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_School_%28economics%29) while most countries are advised to open their markets to western powers instead. See: https://www.amazon.ca/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Development-Perspective/dp/1843310279

I've got to be honest, though I agree entirely with the theory presented in my previous post, I wasn't actually stating my own speculative opinion, I was (accurately) parroting the empirically based works of Chang. I think that if you read his book [Kicking Away The Ladder] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Institutions-Globalization/dp/1843310279), or for a more accessible work [Bad Samaritans] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Samaritans-Secrets-Nations-Prosperity/dp/1905211376) you would be hard pressed to disagree with his account of economic history.

Indeed, almost all predominant advocates of free trade begrudgingly accept Chang's view, but counter that such policies are no longer possible nowadays, given how globalized and intertwined the various national economies are. For an example of this kind of argument see Martin Wolf's [Why Globalization Works] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Globalization-Works-Yale-Nota-Bene/dp/0300107773).

I didn't really want to challenge your various retorts of my previous comment, because as I stated it's not my argument. But I would like to say that I think it is fair to describe your depiction of South Korea as inaccurate. Whilst true that Korea produce goods that are exported to other developed countries, this is no bad thing - all developed countries trade between each other, as it has been shown to be the most efficient way to produce things. Also, you imply that Korea has a particularly unequal society, but a cursory look at the national [gini-coefficient rankings] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality), which ranks countries by income equality, shows that Korea has a more equal society than Canada, France, Belgium, the UK, Ireland, Spain, Italy, New Zealand, and a significantly greater level of equality than the United States.

Another good resource on informal economies and the importance of spreading property rights, check out: "The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else."

http://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Capital-Capitalism-Triumphs-Everywhere/dp/0465016154

This is a great read on the subject.

I remember a stat in the (fantastic) book The Second Machine Age that showed similar levels of automation in factories in China as the US, so it's really something that goes well beyond the cost of labor.

​

Good article, thanks for sharing

Actually, trust me, they're perfectly happy with paid-for Democrats who will push through regulations that set up cartels and monopolies that will ensure more money inevitably finds its way into the Kochs' pockets.

As far as targeting is concerned, I would recommend focusing on a single niche. This will help you to modify and change your sales message and offerings to be catered to the very specific needs of your niche, which can only help you to get more consultations within that niche, and even raise your prices considerably.

The reason niche-ing down works is because almost no one else actually markets to a niche, and they end up competing with so many other people that have the exact same message they usually have to compete on price to get clients to buy from them over others.

If you'd like to learn more about this principle, read the book called, "Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant", by W. Chan Kim

Four Pillars of Investing is a great introduction to index investing and how to build consistent lifelong returns. If you start at your age with even the smallest consistent investments, you have the potential to build solid wealth. Once you understand compound interest (rule of 72, etc), you'll see that time is a critical variable that is often overlooked.

no surprises here, China is currently playing catch-up. They will stabilise at a much lower level of GDP-per-capita than the US (in the next 10-20years, with growth trend slowing throughout the period). The only way they will get close to US productivity is by radical overhaul to their political and economic system, eg mass privatisation of state industries, freely floating currency, greater transparency of governance etc. These are all reforms that would erode power from the elites that currently enjoy it, so these changes are unlikely.

http://www.amazon.com/Bird-Cage-Legal-Reform-China/dp/0804743789
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Prosperity-ebook/dp/B0058Z4NR8

This has been a big subject of academic debate. But the most popular theory among economists (but not necessarily other social sciences) is that it had a lot to do with the kinds of governments that colonists set up; which in turn had a lot to do with native geography and, in particular, disease environments. I did some of my postgrad on this.

In short - if your initial settlers survived, you set up a colony your people could go live in, and you set up government and institutions based on yours back home. They weren't democracies as we know them know, but they had property rights and rule of law.

If your initial settlers didn't, you extracted what you could from the people and the land and stayed as remote from them as you could. The government and institutions you set up were then effectively corrupt and exploitative to begin with.

The theory goes that institutions like that don't change quickly (revolutions can change them, but not always for the better), so countries that started at a disadvantage with the colonisation ended up at a disadvantage.

The most common example is the British Empire in ie Canada or NZ versus sub Saharan Africa.

If you're interested in further reading this was the original seminal research even if it does get a bit technical in parts (https://economics.mit.edu/files/4123). There's also a related book by he same principal author which is more recent (https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719227)

>But the point of redistribution is not to grow the pie, it is to ensure everyone gets a big enough piece - KNOWING that this reduces the size of the pie.

You are assuming a model of benevolent, disinterested redistributors sitting at the top, pondering how to best distribute desert according to just deserts, even if this reduced the total amount of desert served. (Plato's Guardians become Plato's Redistributors).

But a far more accurate model is: everyone throughout the system, at all points up and down, left and right, using it to grab as much of the pie as they can for themselves, and NOT CARING if this reduces what everybody else gets or the size of the total pie.

The reason why capitalism/democracy has created such a huge increase in wealth in the last 200 years is that it breaks up the monopolies that groups always used in the past to extract wealth for themselves at the cost of everyone else, throughout all pre-modern-capitalist-democratic history.

See, for instance, Nobelist Douglas North's Violence and Social Orders or Acemoglu & Robinson's Why Nations Fail.

The model used in this analysis is very important. Apply the false one, you get failure-to-disaster.

>Why does the government do this? From a utilitarian point of view: declining marginal utility of income (whereby each additional dollar leads to a smaller increase in happiness - giving a millionaire a dollar does not create as much happiness as giving a beggar a dollar).

Bah! I guarantee you, no politician ever thought in those terms. They all think in terms of "(1) What's best for me. (2) What's best for the allies I need", when pondering how much to take from who to give to whom (i.e. "redistribute").

>From a political realist point of view: your redistributed tax dollars purchase social stability (so that rioters don't send you to the guillotine).

Ah, but just remember that the voters who threaten to send politicians to the guillotine are those with political power, not those with "high marginal utility of income" need. The correlation between the two is near zilch.

The members are AARP as a group on average have far more wealth and disposable income than all the people below age 40 -- that's all you Redditors reading this -- whom they will force to pay much higher taxes to pay off the deca-trillions of dollars of unfunded entitlement benefits they expect come to them, which they didn't pay for themselves.

But if those AARPers get the idea that those benefits will be cut -- even by mere means-testing to assure the benefits only actually do go to those among them with "high marginal utility of income" -- well, we've already seen what happens. It's "Attack! Off with the heads" of those damn politicians! very much threatening social stability to keep their gettings...

"Dan Rostenkowski's being attacked by his own constituents after telling them that they would have to pay for their own catastrophic health care coverage isn't just a long-forgotten event from a bygone era.

"To this day, it's something that members of Congress cite chapter and verse when discussing the budget. Like a story passed down from generation to generation, this includes current representatives and senators, the vast majority of who weren't in office when the event occurred.

"I can't tell you the number of times the Rostenkowski incident has been mentioned by members of Congress at meetings I've attended. Usually it's mentioned as a throw away line ("I don't want my constituents chasing me down the street")...

"It seems to be a story that elected officials feel most personally. Staff invariably do not raise it first.

"Historically, my guess is that it will assume a place right up there with the Whiskey Rebellion that occurred in Pennsylvania in the late 1770s. The picture below shows the incident where a federal tax collector was tarred and feathered, the Revolutionary War equivalent of attacking the limo of the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. "

So do not make the naive mistake of thinking redistribution schemes are designed by well-meaning, disinterested leaders for the benefit of the "high marginal utility of income" needy, ever.

They are in fact always designed and enacted by entirely self-interested politicians in response to political power -- the marginal utility of the income of the recipients be damned.

A couple of related books are:

a) [The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies] (http://www.amazon.com/Second-Machine-Age-Prosperity-Technologies/dp/0393239357/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407946623&sr=1-1&keywords=the+second+machine+age)

b) [The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future] (http://www.amazon.com/Lights-Tunnel-Automation-Accelerating-Technology/dp/1448659817/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407946576&sr=1-1&keywords=the+lights+in+the+tunnel)

They are both pretty sobering

Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson is seen as a sequel of sorts to Diamond's book. Why do some nations thrive while other fails? What breeds success?

The Great Divergence by Kenneth Pomeranz tries to answer the question Diamond wasn't able to fully answer in GGS: why Europe and not China?

There have been entire books written on why everything you said is the opposite of what actually happens in the real world. It's great that you want to help people. But sometimes just giving people what they want doesn't actually help anyone.

Once thought the same, evolved from it after reading The Second Machine Age: Work Progress And Prosperity In A Time Of Brilliant Technologies
The only people you do need in times of an aging population would be medical professionals and caretakers, the first is not happening at all, the second to a small degree. Canadians though are not becoming doctors in sufficient numbers and definitely not become caretakers. All the rest could be automatized, the inefficiency that you can see in Canadian companies is beyond explanation.

Not just the US, almost all nations had heavily regulated monopolies at the time. All nations also deregulated at roughly the same time as well (for internal traffic at least).

That said there have been some intriguing numbers that while deregulation had some initial gains, the later changes (aka cutting of food, free baggage allowance, decreases in comfort, etc) were not actually reflected in a real dollar cost decreases. You can read The Rise and The Fall of American Growth for the actual argument (that is all cited and done better than my memory can allow).

>I support government health care for all
I dislike excessive government intrusion

Does not compute. How, exactly, are you defining "excessive"? Because, at least to me, government controlling the massive healthcare sector of the economy is pretty "excessive".

But in general, the books these guys have recommended are great starting points. I don't know if Hayek's Road to Serfdom has been mentioned. It's not quite a definitive libertarian work (at least from what I've been told), but it did get me started towards my understanding of libertarianism, so it might be worth reading.

I agree macroeconomic prediction has a poor track record. I believe this is because it generally tries to extrapolate from past trends, rather than looking at the first principles causality - e.g. macroeconomics through extrapolation could not have predicted the impact of the internet, but looking at the underlying capability of the technology could (and did).

I think we're already seeing service sector jobs being obsoleted. See http://www.amazon.com/The-Second-Machine-Age-Technologies/dp/0393239357 for examples and data backing this up.

Job sectors relying primarily on perception will be the first and hardest hit, since perception is what computers are most rapidly improving at thanks to deep learning.

Since you seem quite interested in the topic, I will not be able to write out all the compelling arguments and data on this forum. If, however, you are still curious, the book The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830 by T.S. Ashton outlines quite well the conditions of the Industrial Revolution.

As for the correlation between the GDP per capita and the standard of living, I do not mean this as an ad hominem attack, but if anyone truly believed that, then they are free to give away their income to pre-Industrial Revolution levels. More income means greater ability to buy better food, medicine, and education.

This statement is also curious:
> Also in the creation of industrial capitalism people had their access to land removed as exited in the medieval ages and so weren't able to produce their own food.

The medieval ages had feudalism and serfdom.

I do not understand why colonialism was brought up, as I did not bring it up and do not defend it, but in fact, abhor it; nor was it mentioned in the original post. There has been great work done by economists Acemoglu and Robinson detailing the deleterious effects of colonialism to the colonizers and the colonies and the ensuing effects it has on current institutions (see Why Nations Fail). In addition to being morally wrong, slavery did not make America rich (see Gallman and Easterlin). You brought up American cotton and textiles, which presumably alludes to the belief that cotton produced through slavery was the foundation of the American economic, especially for the South. Again, the myth of King Cotton was proven by Olmstead and Rhode.

Now, it is true that technology has good and bad aspects, my previous statements do not deny that. It is, however, difficult to deny the benefits of the modern fertilizer, the MRI machine, vaccines and antibiotics, and the artificial heart--just to name a few.

For anyone wanting a good read on disruption The Innovator's Dilemma will certainly clear a lot of things up about emerging markets replacing existing ones. It uses great examples even if they are a little dated.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Business/dp/0062060244

Kicking away the ladder is something that privileged groups have been doing for a long time even on a geopolitical basis

While there is some truth to the original thought, it may be misguided because the prior generations may not be the correct generations to point your fingers at. All these programs for seniors are really peculiar when they're not the most vulnerable financially of demographics in the US by any measure

The first chapter of this book is free and it's a great read (up until the Y2Kbug part)!

I hear "race to the bottom dollar" a lot and I recommend reading the book Blue Ocean Strategy. It helped me find uncontested marketspace.

Second, I think video is going towards virtual and augmented reality. Editing footage in 360 degrees is my prediction for the future. Good luck with everything!

> Lmao, imagine writing that wall of text an then breezing over significant point in the 20th century with "got smashed up" like the investment and reforms it brought about isn't directly responsible for Japan's thriving economy.

And the significant difference between Astante Kingdom and Japan? Japan wasn't colonised.

> Korea emerged from Japanese rule as an agrarian society.

And what happened in the 60s? They returned to the growth rates as before because of the policies I outlined. State intervention, death penalty for capital flight. As did every developed country including this one and the United States.

The United States was the most protectionist country in history, when it was at the peak of its powers it started touting free-trade.

If anyone wants to read the history:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Development-Institutions/dp/1843310279

You want to be armed with Gabriel Kolko's work:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Triumph-Conservatism-Reinterpretation-1900-1916/dp/0029166500

He's a respected Marxist historian who argues that the progressive era was anything but, and happens to agree with the libertarian account of the "history of capitalism" that government/big-business collusion created the heavily regulated and largely cartelized economic structures of the twentieth century in the US.

There's lots of useful information at The Boglehead's Website, especially The Getting Started Guide.

I've also found the following books incredibly helpful as well:

1. The Four Pillars of Investing
   
   
2. The Boglehead's Guide to Investing
   

> I can’t figure out why a high valued company with a negative free cash flow is thriving a lot better than the others.

It has to do with Disruption and Innovation. This book will give you 1/2 of the answer, the business half; the other half is how the finance world and Wall Street valued these companies.

I recommend [Blue Ocean Strategy](Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant https://www.amazon.com/dp/1625274491/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_fNpJybKTNDM86). It's a great marketing book but is especially relevant for entrepreneurs. It's one of the only required readings I held on to from college (marketing major). Really makes you think differently about innovation.

> Remember just like Americans, Latin American's or South American's forget in only a few decades if not sooner.

Are you trolling?

Go to Argentina with a T-shirt that says 'School of the Americas'.

Good luck.

Anti americanism in Latin america has its roots since the US invasion of Mexico. It's firmly entrenched in the intellectual class at least since Rodo's Ariel, more than a hundred year old.

Also, Eduardo Galeano's Open veins of Latin America competes with the new testament as holy writ here.

Words fail me to express how mistaken is the concept that that you can just buy public opinion.

Each culture has its zeitgeist, and ignoring it and its mythos (for example, the gallant revolutionary) is, in the best of cases, just throwing money away.

This was predicted in the 90s in the book the Sovereign Individual, it just took a a couple decades for the Information Age to have the information easily available. The printing press was the last time we had huge changes in easy access to education/knowledge. The church lost so much power ever since the printing press was invented, the internet and information age has further damaged the perceived infallibility of large organizations that acquired power long ago.

With a $20 phone people can now learn and communicate information at a rate that we never thought possible.

They predicted things like cyber money and nationalism itself crumbling while politicians increase the big brother attempts. Its playing out remarkably accurate for a book written so long ago.

https://www.amazon.com/Sovereign-Individual-Mastering-Transition-Information/dp/0684832720/

Yes,

Think about how far human development has come over the last 100,000 years or even the last 100.

Great book that dives into this idea, I had to read it for Economic Gardening


http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Wealth-Evolution-Complexity-Economics/dp/157851777X

You don't understand economics. If it's too expensive to use Chinese labor to make cheap goods, that means China is already too wealthy and developed to need to rely on low-value manufacturing in its own labor force.

In fact, moving such factories to India, SE Asia or West Africa would mean more money going to China, as Chinese companies invest in the developing economies the same way US companies and individual investors have gotten wealthy from Chinese development, production and consumption.

Other countries will change their laws to whatever China wants. They want to compete to attract all those factory and low-level service jobs that China is seeking to offshore.

Why Nations Fail

Yi Wen's illustrative essay on how China's economy developed so rapidly

>Intellectual property is an important way for authors to be compensated for their work and if you think you will enjoy it, I recommend buying it.
>
>But some times you may want to preview a book before purchasing it and that's what "libraries" are for.

Socialism/Communism

A People's History of the World

Main Currents of Marxism

The Socialist System

The Age of... (1, 2, 3, 4)

Marx for our Times

Essential Works of Socialism

Soviet Century

Self-Governing Socialism (Vols 1-2)

The Meaning of Marxism

The "S" Word (not that good in my opinion)

Of the People, by the People

Why Not Socialism

Socialism Betrayed

Democracy at Work

Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA (again didn't like it very much)

The Socialist Party of America (absolute must read)

The American Socialist Movement

Socialism: Past and Future (very good book)

It Didn't Happen Here

Eugene V. Debs

The Enigma of Capital

Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism

A Companion to Marx's Capital (great book)

After Capitalism: Economic Democracy in Action

Capitalism

The Conservative Nanny State

The United States Since 1980

The End of Loser Liberalism

Capitalism and it's Economics (must read)

Economics: A New Introduction (must read)

U.S. Capitalist Development Since 1776 (must read)

Kicking Away the Ladder

23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

Traders, Guns and Money

Corporation Nation

Debunking Economics

How Rich Countries Got Rich

Super Imperialism

The Bubble and Beyond

Finance Capitalism and it's Discontents

Trade, Development and Foreign Debt

America's Protectionist Takeoff

How the Economy was Lost

Labor and Monopoly Capital

We Are Better Than This

Ancap/Libertarian

Spontaneous Order (disagree with it but found it interesting)

Man, State and Economy

The Machinery of Freedom

Currently Reading

This is the Zodiac Speaking (highly recommend)

Reading the Sovereign Individual after it came up on Peter Thiel's list of favourite books.

Very interesting book. Each paragraph will give you a new insight or has the wow factor. And I say this after reading plenty of non-fiction books

Well we have hundreds of books that you haven't read, and you continue to repeat the assertions of the same self described economist who I am very familiar with and I have reread very recently.

Marx's definition of capitalism is private ownership of the means of production. When the largest government in the history of the world steals tax money and gives it to the wealthiest firms in society, there is nothing capitalist about it. It is simply mercantilism and welfare for the the rich. You have absolutely no idea what the tradition I'm coming from is based on, which is the voluntary acceptance of the concept that property rights are the most just manner of resolving claims to scarce resources in a given area. The recognition that the state is not the spirit of the people, but a criminal organization that will inevitably hand favors out to the wealthiest people in society.

The economic school I am convinced by bases its explanation for economic collapse and the business cycle on exactly the type of behavior you describe: the creation of fraudulent fiduciary media leading to artificial expansion of credit and the malinvestment we have experienced since the crash which will certainly lead to a larger crisis.

This is not capitalist behavior to save capitalism, this is fascist behavior to sustain the growth of the state. When American Progressivism rose to popularity along with Nazism and Fascism in the early 1900's, it too did so on the back of Right-Hegelianism and propaganda claiming the death of laissez-faire and the need for a central body to manage the inequity of markets.

A lot of the historical work I value covering this period comes from the New Left, actually, like Gabriel Kolko's https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-Conservatism-Reinterpretation-American-1900-1916/dp/0029166500

This is the prevailing system in the US, where the income tax didn't exist and the government was a shadow of its current self prior to Wilson and FDR.

I'm not going to play dumb and misrepresent Marxism, I disagree with the LTV and the historical process exactly how it is written. If you want to make dismissive blanket assertions about a tradition that has all of its literature available for free all over the internet, much like Marxism, you should at least learn enough about it to know what it is. Or just ignore it... But you don't have any clue about the ideas you're criticizing.

China's authoritarian directives have absolutely pushed it far ahead of the squalor its previous authoritarian regimes had perpetuated. Its really flabbergasting to me how people point to this as a positive for china-style authoritarian regimes. Even more stupid is the people that try to say China has a new form of government. They don't. Its basically a dictatorship.

Countries with authoritarian regimes can certainly have massive growth between huge valleys of economic stagnation or collapse. You should read Why Nations Fail by Acemoglu and Robinson. They have a very clear and well supported theory on the effects of government institutions that explains china, russia, the US, and all the rest: https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719227

And lastly, democracy vs non-democracy is not a binary thing. Russia, for example, has a "democracy" but very little real representation of its people. India has a similar problem to a far lesser degree. And so does the US for that matter. Democracy is new and something we still have to improve on. But the economic effects a democracy has, of causing sustained but slow growth, are far better than the massive economic swings and generally far lower economic prosperity of authoritarian countries.

The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee.

A noob who wants to read a textbook, or a noob who just wants to read something interesting in the economics area?

Textbook noob - The Economic Way of Thinking

Novel noob - The Price of Everything

Libertarian noob - The Road to Serfdom

Like anything, the textbook will be the least bias, and everything else you will want to understand the bias of the author to get an accurate picture of the profession.

I'd say look up quantitative easing on wikipedia then youtube. Maybe just youtube. If you read something and it doesn't seem to make sense just follow up on it.

Hmm and probably learn about how Western nations stifle the development of developing countries. http://www.amazon.com/dp/1843310279
That book and others by Ha-Joon Chang are pretty good.

Are you American? Matt Talibi is good, all the stuff I read isn't for people without trading knowledge.

www.nakedcapitalism.com is good but the author is there to cover news for the knowledgeable so it probably won't make sense to you

> It’s different this time.

It bugs me when people cite earlier technologies disrupting the labor market saying that the scale of automation we're faced with isn't going to be a problem. We're making machines that can think now (edit: made exaggeration, but machines are getting smarter at a much faster pace) , it's completely different now.

Also, I recommend this book.