Reddit mentions: The best economic condition books

yes, but who built the machines? this is why marx says that capitalists fetishize technological innovation.

yes, the idea is that labor is the only commodity available in the market which produces surplus value. Value, in marx, is defined as 'socially necessary labor time.' one should never lose sight of this definition and confuse value with either the money form of capital or which capital sui generis.

also, let us look at the reason why machines do not produce (absolute) surplus value, but only relative surplus value. machines, again, are commodities and as such are available to the market (or at least portions of it). Let us assume a certain business invests in a $25,000 machine which will eliminate several jobs, saving the company $50,000 a year. wow, thats really great, now the company can be more competitive with their pricing or, at the very least, will have a greater surplus this year. but what happens when this company's competitors start investing in these similar machines, and start undercutting our hypothetical company's profit margin. well now we see that the surplus value that the machine created was really only relative to that singular company. over time, as the machine or technological solution (or new organizational structure, or new process, or new space....) becomes the norm of the industry, the surplus value diminishes and it becomes an assumed cost of doing business.

marx again is making a class or macro-economic argument here: he does not care too much about singular capitalists making larger profits (he does in the sense that they are useful for his data on capitalists society), he is concerned with how a class of persons is able to exploit another class. within the capitalist class, yes, some are able to gain a better competitive advantage over other capitalists by being the first to utilize the latest technological achievement; however, that advantage will either spread to the entire industry as a commonplace necessity, or the company will begin to monopolize the industry.

labor as a surplus value producing commodity is useful for the entire capital class over the working class. it is the law of economics in general that labor must produce and it is the only thing capable of turning raw (or semi-raw) materials into use values. it is the law of capitalism that to produce a profit one must hire workers at a salary less than the sum of your revenue.

i would suggest reading some david harvey. he is a contemporary and really does a fantastic job at explaining marxism for the 21st century. i suggest either a companion to marx's capital vol i or the enigma of capital. the former address your question specifically in chapter 6 'relative surplus value'.

let me know if any of this is unclear or if you would like to discuss further. cheers and happy new year comrade.

Come now, I'm trying to engage you. Like this entire time.

ALL I SAID WAS HAVE SKILLS THAT CAN MAKE YOU STABLE AND HELP YOU HAVE A DAYJOB SO YOU CAN WORK ON YOUR DREAMS IN STABILITY.

Like I said that four times or something like that.

Over and over again.

Have skills people will pay for. Make sure you don't hate those skills but you don't have to have a passion for it. Work on your fun thing. It's unlikely to be the next Beatles because there's not enough brain space, but if it makes you happy, hobbies are great!

Somehow that came out

>NOBODY SHOULD EVER BE HAPPY. ALL ARE SLAVES!

Or something. I'm not sure how I could be more clear.

Anyone I know I haven't cited much here's an info dumb

http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Stagnation-Low-Hanging-ebook/dp/B004H0M8QS Tyler Cowen is one of the World's best most sober economists. You should fall in love with him (even if he sounds autistic)

http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-The-Machine-ebook/dp/B005WTR4ZI

Machines might be becoming substitutes instead of completments. This could cause problems even if we were socialists. We have no idea how to handle that

http://lesswrong.com/lw/4su/how_to_be_happy/ All the best happiness research in one post

http://www.amazon.com/Worthless-ebook/dp/B006N0THIM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1334194677&sr=1-1 A good book about the economics of college degrees

http://www.amazon.com/The-Happiness-Hypothesis-Finding-ebook/dp/B003E749TE/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1334194701&sr=1-1-spell

Jonathan Haidt is sexy and cool and also a psychologist.

http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html How to do what you love only also be practical and not ruin your life.

http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html How to get fuck you money if you can identify a good start up and work that hard. (also finance

http://www.amazon.com/The-Black-Swan-Improbable-ebook/dp/B00139XTG4/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1334194849&sr=1-1 Why all the advantages of artists go to a few while most are forgotten because they have trouble finding a fanbase

http://www.amazon.com/The-Consolations-Philosophy-Alain-Botton/dp/0679779175/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334194919&sr=1-3 How Ethical Philosophy can help with not having your favorite external circumstances.

Why modern therapy owes much of it's usefully to ideas generated by old greeks

http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Cognitive-Behavioural-Therapy-Psychotherapy-ebook/dp/B005TQU5KA/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334194962&sr=1-1

So yea, I hope that made up for claims you find spurious.

There are a couple of 'strands' of Marx's thought which you might investigate. I can't comment too much on shorter introductions to the philosophical side, as I'm more familiar with (and interested in, for the moment) works the economic side. For this, I can recommend the following:

• A Short History of Socialist Economic Thought by Gerd Hardack, Dieter Karras, Ben Fine. It's all in the title :)
  
• David Harvey's excellent A Companion to Marx's Capital. This certainly isn't a short book, but Harvey is a terrific writer, and so the time flies. I would also point to and highly recommend the series of lectures on which this book is based. Of course, the lectures are hardly an exercise in brevity, but they are very good and worthwhile.
  
• Ernest Mandel's An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory is good. Read it online here. Any Mandel is very good. He is an incredible clear author, and he really knows Marxist thought inside out. For instance, I would also recommend Ernest Mandel's introduction to the Penguin edition of Capital (the introduction is a bit shorter than the whole book of Mandels that I've mentioned above) very nicely summarises the context of his economic thought, and gives an overview thereof.
  
• Yannis Varoufakis (the former finance minister of Greece) wrote a fantastic, more general introduction to economics and economic theory called Foundations of Economics: A beginner’s companion. While Varoufakis deals with economics as a whole, and discusses, for instance, Adam Smith and David Ricardo, this serves to very well position Marx within the economic milieu of his time. This is a recurring theme for a reason: to understand Marx, I believe that it's imperative to understand what drove Marx to ruthlessly critique capitalism.
  
• Finally, I'm not trying to be glib or conceited by suggesting The Marx-Engles Reader (2nd ed.), edited by Robert C. Tucker. This is the book that I used to start studying seriously the thought of Marx and Engels, after reading Singer's introduction. I recommend the book because it has (again) a wonderful introduction, the works that are presented are quite short, and each work has a solid introduction. This is a very good volume for seeing the trajectory and evolution of Marx and Engels's economic thought without having to dive into the larger works. The book even has a very heavily reduced version of Capital vol. I. This book also deals with the philosophy of Marx more heavily than the other works I've recommended here, as it contains a number of earlier philosophical works (including the Grundisse, which is practically the philosophical sister to Capital).
  
  I hope these will be useful, even if they aren't necessarily the aspect of Marx that you are most interested in.
  
  Edit: I should state that I am a philosopher of language, and so one doesn't need any especial economics expertise to dive into the texts that I've recommended! I certainly knew very little about the field before I read these texts.

I'll bite.

First and foremost, there are many different breeds of libertarians (or people that call themselves libertarians). For instance, Glenn Beck has even used the word to describe himself as such--however, I don't think many libertarians really take him seriously on that claim.

More seriously, libertarians tend to be divided into two camps: those that want small government providing basic protection of individual rights (called minarchy) and those that want no government at all (usually labeled as anarcho-capitalists, voluntaryists, agorists, etc.). I consider myself a voluntaryist, which in addition to being an anarcho-capitalist, also qualifies me as someone who does not wish to participate in electoral politics and views it as an approach that really cannot help--and also means that I only prefer voluntary means through which to achieve a voluntary society.

To make matters more complicated, the anarchists of us have two different ways to speak of a free market: a David Friedman approach which concentrates on how free markets solve problems more efficiently than States, and a more deontological approach made famous by Murray Rothbard. Usually, you'll see us taking both angles--sometimes it helps to show how a free market is ipso facto better than a State, and sometimes it's better to show that we have the ethical high ground. (And some of us can be absolute in this sense--some might even recognize a failing of a free market but say that it still doesn't justify violating the ethics of libertarianism.)

There is, however a hurdle that needs to be jumped, I think, to truly grasp the libertarian position: familiarization with Austrian Economics. Austrian Economics is usually regarded as a fringe school of economics, and not taken seriously--it is taught in only a few of the colleges around the United States. In spite of that, Austrian business cycle theory, which puts the blame on fractional reserve banking, and specifically, the Federal Reserve, for the ebb and flow of today's marketplace, has proven itself time and time again. Frederick Hayek, the pioneer of this theory (and a winner of a Nobel Prize because of it), predicted the 1929 stock market crash, and more recently, Peter Schiff used it to predict the current recession. (It also explains bubbles that have inflated and popped in the past, when applied.) The best layman's explanation and the theory's real world applications that I can give you is the recent book Meltdown by Thomas Woods. It's not too long and does a great job at explaining Austrian business cycle theory.

There are many differences between Austrian Economics and the more mainstream schools, but I highlighted Austrian business cycle theory because that is the really important one. To emphasize this even more, I can say that if I could change one thing about the current State (sans abolishing it), it would be to abolish the Federal Reserve by establishing a free market currency. Unhesitatingly.

I personally arrived to my conclusion through a deontological perspective, and later familiarized myself with how free markets can provide services that most people widely regard as services that only States can provide. The deontological perspective essentially leads up to the non-aggression principle (NAP): aggression, which is defined as the initiation of physical force, the threat of such, or fraud upon persons or their property, is inherently illegitimate. (I can hammer out the details of the NAP's justification if you like, but I've chosen to omit it here in the interest of brevity.) The most important thing to realize about the NAP is that it is proportional: if you violate my property, I don't have the right to kill you (i.e., the idea that I can shoot a little boy that trespasses onto my yard to collect his baseball). As once I have quelled your aggression, any further aggression on my part is an over-abundance, and therefore an initiation of aggression--and that is illegitimate.

So with this in light, you can see that libertarians (at least, my style, anyway) are a bit of a mix: we simultaneously believe that libertarianism is the only ethical stance consistent with the idea of liberty, and its natural conclusion, a free market, is an inherently better solution to the problem of "infinite wants" and "scare resources" then centralized control through a State. That is, the State is both illegitimate and inefficient.

So the key to the free market, or capitalism, is to understand its most fundamental truth: two individuals voluntarily committing a transaction. What does it mean to commit a transaction? It means that I am giving you X in return for Y because I value Y more than X, AND because you value X more than Y. It's a win-win scenario, and not zero-sum: we both get something we desire.

For example, if my toilet is clogged, and despite my best attempts, I cannot unclog it, I probably need to call a professional. When the plummer comes over, he tells me that it will be $100 to fix my toilet. Immediately, his actions indicate, "I value $100 more than the value of my services as a plummer." When I agree to his proposal, my action indicates, "I value your services as a plummer more than I value $100." At this most basic level, we can see the Subjective Theory of Value in action brilliantly. That is, things don't have intrinsic value, only the value that each individual assigns.

Now, with that background, I think I can answer your questions:

(Wow, I went over the character limit for comments... yikes...)

> Yet the bankers just keep doing it again and again. They do it with and without central banks.

Fractional reserve should be prosecutable as fraud. Having said that, banks would be much more responsible if they faced a risk of going out of business. The occasional bankruns of the late 19th century, did not significantly impede the surging prosperity of the gilded age. They were a good thing -- just like when a crappy restaurant goes out of business.

> > but your own devotion to Keynesianism fails to live up to the standards by which you judge the Austrian School.

> I fail to see how. Keynesianism doesn't pretend to be deductive logic.

It seems to me that Keynesians are able to put numbers around little things. Unemployment, inflations (both of which are heavily manipulated). They have graphs and charts and look very much like their distant colleagues in the hard sciences. The play empiricism, but all the big things and important decisions are made by pure deduction, just like the Austrians. For example:

We need a central bank.
We need to bailout company/industry X
The economy can be centrally steared by manipulating the reserve rate in a positive way.
We need to force people to use their state's currency.
The liquidity trap occurs when there's a shortage of money circulating.
The free market is inherently unstable.
Crashes are caused by animal spirits / the bursting of asset bubbles.

> > it just restructures production for long-term projects.

> That directly contradicts the concept of "flight to liquidity".

Not a contradiction. A flight to liquidity can mean a flight to savings and checking accounts. That's money ready for lending.

> If savers were making long term investments, we wouldn't have a problem.

Ugh. Right now, you Keynesians think we need long-term investment, and your policies are creating an illusion of savings by lowering the interest rate to zero. In actuality, there are almost no savings. People need to work, busy consumer goods, and save (or not -- it's up to them). Keynesian policies have pushed a lot of land labor and capital into long-term projects at a time when people are thinking about the short term.

Your statement presumes a "correct" way for savers to be investing. The only correct way is one which is in harmony with the level of savings, and the market signal which creates that harmony -- the interest rate -- is centrally controlled and, for the moment, pushed to near-zero, creating an illusion of savings which don't really exist.

> How do you know? [regarding consciousness] . . . There is no evidence that the human brain consists of anything but physical processes

Because physics cannot even entertain (much less provide answers for) simple questions like what do you want to do? When there's meaningful progress on the Turing test, I'll reconsider.

> if you really believe it is such a great thing and will work well in the real world, go find a small country and convince them to adopt pure Austrianism. . . . Honestly, I'd write a letter … to advocate giving you guys an island in the Pacific ocean to test your system.

Liberty is a threat to the gov't. Allowing it would mean exposure of their fraud.

I'd love to, and I think about it often. Small states have many advantages over large ones. There's a theoretical project by Friedman's grandson which involves a nation consisting of floating barges.

> Even the anarcho-capitalist advocates say that there must be private militaries that are hired by insurance companies (which is really all a state is) to protect their customers. Overall, the idea that violence is magically going to disappear is very naive.

No one says violence is going to go away. A state is not a hired insurance company, because the client does not the right to walk away. The service of security is not subject to market pressure. The state unilaterally decides both the nature of security (invading Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, bombing Somalia and Yemen, TSA, full body scanners), and the cost of security. This is the difference.

> for placing the extreme long term conservation of value for mattress stuffers

It is not just mattress stuffers. Huge quantities of wealth are transferred from people in general to whomever is closest to the place where new money enters the economy. Even Keynes admits this:

"By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens."

And I think you're full of shit for trying to muddy the waters on the ethic argument I raised. The dollar is backed by force. Voilence will be used against Americans who attempt to work around the dollar system. Yes, violence has been used before in history. No, this doesn't justify today's.

> gold

You were comparing the dollar's 97% loss in value to the instability of gold. That dog don't hunt.

> As I said, the 1921 recession ended when the fed cut rates.

I'm going to look more deeply into this. It seemed that the 29 crash happened when they stopped their easy money policies. Do you think we can get out of today's easy money without a catastrophe?

>

> Please stop calling an increase in the money supply inflation... just say "an increase in the money supply".

No.

> voluntarily decided it likes fractional reserve banking. In 400 years or so of modern banking, full reserve banking simply hasn't emerged.

Not true. It's contradicted by the video you posted. Government enshrined and protected the fractional reserve system.

> That era was a miserable failure.

Not true at all. Yes, lots of banks went out of business. (It is good when bad companies go out of business). But it was a time of sky-rocketting prosperity.

Your baromoter is laughable. When banks go out of business this is bad. When today's commercial banks survive for a long time, this is good. Dark world. How much wealth has to be taken to give irresponsible banks a long life?

> So which is it? Do you support free banking or gold? A gold standard (at least in the form that the US and most other countries had in its past) is mandated from a central government, by the way.

Free banking gets my vote, though either one would be huge, mind-blowing progress. I'll mention again that fractional reserve banking should be prosecutable as fraud instead of enshrined by law.

> Except it has been done successfully that way for long periods of time. You shouldn't get your ethics confused with your evidence. You might not like central banking, but to say that it can't work is absurd given how successful the US economy was under the periods with central banks.

Typical of your positivist and keynesian approach, whenever you connect two data points you jump for joy. Can we likewise conclude that the Soviet system worked because it brought electrification, had zero unemployment and a growing GDP?

You know, Keynesian economist and Nobel Prize winner Paul Samuelson predicted into the late 1980's that the soviet union, the fucking soviet union!!!!! would outpace the US economically. He asked whether their surging economy didn't make the political oppression (43-62 million killed) worth while. But it's the Austrians who are cruel. Right?

Also, not all the evidence supports you. The biggest depression in American history. The only time there has been wide-spread malnutrition in the US. A 97% drop in purchasing power.

> I believe the burden of proof is on you if you want to make claims about government failure. You haven't done that with the CRA or with any other program.

The long history of bailouts are facts. What proving do they need?

Also:

FACT: In 2008, CRA loans accounted for just 7% of Bank of America's total mortgage lending, but 29% of its losses on home loans. Also, banks with the highest CRA ratings tend to have the lowest safety and soundness ratings.

FICTION: Only 6% of subprime loans were originated by banks subject to the CRA, so the vast majority of risky lending was not tied to the law.

FACT: Among other things, the figure does not count the trillions of dollars in CRA "commitments" that WaMu, BofA, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo and other large banks pledged to radical inner-city groups like Acorn, Greenlining and Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America (NACA) after they used the public comment process to protest bank merger applications on CRA grounds.

[Earlier this week I noted that I had changed my mind on the Community Reinvestment Act. Contrary to my initial conclusion, the evidence is overwhelming that the CRA played a significant role in creating lax lending standards that fueled the housing bubble. Once I realized this, I had to abandon my suspicion that the anti-CRA case was a figment of the rhetoric of Republicans attempting to distract attention from their own role in the mortgage mess.]http://www.businessinsider.com/the-cra-debate-a-users-guide-2009-6#ixzz1RTwfW5or)

Prior to 1995, such subprime home loans constituted less than 2% of new home loans, but by 2000 they were over 9% of new home loans, and by 2008 they were 20% of new home loans. To make matters worse, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae began to buy and/or guarantee more and more of these risky subprime loans.

If you want more opinions supporting my view, look here,
here, here.

Wow, I'm seriously explaining this to someone on a debate forum.

> So, they move money from one rich person to another?

No, this applies to everyone with credit, loans, savings/checking accounts, and investments.

What do you think interest is?

Say you open up a Merril Edge account with BOA, they are able to store your money and give you some percentage atop of it depending on how much risk you take.

At no point are you forced to invest. You merely do so because you value future gains over access to that money immediately.

The bank, then lends your money as well as the money of many others in big lump sums to certain corporations and individuals. They promise to pay that money back with interest.

Additionally, depending on how much risk you wish to take on, the bank also buys stock in aggregate, using part of your money and the money of others.

> Yeah, so you are going to start a corporation by borrowing money from a corporation thru another corporation (a bank) so then you can lend money to another guy who wants to start another corporation in order to make more money? Where is any of this benefitting society?

I think I understand what you're saying. A corporation creates profit by providing immense amounts of value to people - which is how it makes money. For one reason or another, the corporation invests in securities(stocks/bonds).

So, without that initial startup investment from the bank/investors, the corporation likely wouldn't exist. By investing, the corporation allows other corporations to come into existence and provide value for many others.

Simply put, it's an equation of valuing money now vs valuing more money in the future(with some risk).

> So they make decisions to protect their own wealth like literally everyone else, how does that make them useful to society?

I addressed this. They allow efficient allocation of societal capital.

> By "overly confine" you mean bail them out and give them "free" money when they fucked up?

What are you talking about? The banks didn't have the wacky regional restrictions we did in the US.

> Yeah, so if you have money you give someone money and make money? Again, how is society being benefitted?

I addressed this repeatedly. At its most simplest, if I'm paying you to give me $50,000 immediately, it means that you're immensely valuable to me. You are benefiting society by giving my something I value. If I am able to pay you back, it means I've used your investment, earned it back, and with the interest I promised. The only way I can pay it back is to provide some service and benefit to others. That's why people paid me.

> Link one

Possibly the best and most succinct option

>Do you see how illogical that is? You are questioning the preferences of millions of people and instead trying to put your preferred value on somebody's labor.

Markets don't just exist sui generis and are also prone to failure, sometimes in surprising ways. A CEO's salary isn't just determined by his "skills" or by supply and demand; information assymetries; leverage; tax policies; and societal norms and customs also play a role. In the U.S., the average CEO makes 354 times more than the average worker. In Israel and Japan, two countries home to some of the world's more dynamic economies, the gap is 76 and 67 times respectively. Do you think that supply and demand and the skill gap explain the entirety of that disparity?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/the-pay-gap-between-ceos-and-workers-is-much-worse-than-you-realize/?utm_term=.7094064afc74

>Skill disparity. The further back in time you go, the simpler an economy was and the skill disparity between the most and least was less. The supply for the skills required at the time was higher and the price was lower. The more complex the economy gets, the more skills will be required for many of its positions and the higher that pay disparity will be.

I agree that skill differentials can help explain some of the disparities in income we see today. But I also think your argument offers a more compelling explanation for the differences in wages we see between now and 1850, not now and the 1970s. Do you think doctors have all of a sudden become vastly more skilled now than they were back then? As I said in my earlier comment, I think that tax policy, globalization (which you could certainly make a good argument has exacerbated the skill differential problem you cite), and the evisceration of unions explain the decline in workers wages relative to CEOs far better than just "the market." Put in other terms, markets don't exist in a vacuum, and each of the factors I've cited above had important influence.

>Source? If you bring up top marginal rates as your answer then I'd like to facepalm in advance. I'd like to see the source accounting for deductions and the income brackets of those marginal rates. I'll answer this one for you: you're wrong. Either way, how is this relevant to your point?

In 1953, the effective tax rate on income for the wealthy was 70 percent. The average effective tax rate, including capital gains, was 49 percent. Today, it's 29 percent.

Source:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2013-01-02/1950s-tax-fantasy-is-a-republican-nightmare

I get where you're going though, and I totally agree that the most effective way for the government to gain more revenue may not be to raise back income tax brackets back to where they were in the 1950s. We probably need a VAT, especially on luxury goods, and also to more aggressively tax obvious negative externalities (carbon emissions, cough cough).

>>The economy grew faster

Source: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth-annual

If you put in a trendline, you'll see that GDP growth in the U.S. has trended downward from over 4% in 1950 to about 2.5% today. My point is that there's very little evidence that higher taxes on the wealthy lead to slow economic growth, despite what supply siders think.

>They still do. Real wages may not grow as fast, but total compensation does. Compensation is a lot more than just the salary.

Source? About what about real compensation? Real compensation per worker? By most measures, real incomes for the middle and lower classes have stagnated or decreased for the past forty years, while incomes of the wealthy have skyrocketed.

>>Absolutely. The way to do that is to vote and get involved, isn't it? Most money in public policy by the wealthy and corporations isn't used to get some advantage, its used to prevent encroaching regulations on their activities which is what government has been doing aggressively since around WW2.

If you include "attempting to accumulate market power" in your definition of "preventing encroaching regulations," I'd agree with you. Most modern corporations don't really exist in a competitive free market - they're either oligopolies (Google, Facebook, etc), local monopolies (the telecom industry), or directly dependent on the government to keep their businesses competitive and afloat (defense industry, agribusiness). Many "encroaching regulations" are designed to shield companies from competition.

For excellent further reading on how the wealthy use their wealth and their power to make themselves wealthier and more powerful that will answer virtually all of your arguments more eloquently than I possible could, please read:

Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Winner Take All Politics
https://www.amazon.com/Winner-Take-All-Politics-Washington-Richer-Turned/dp/1416588701

Thomas Picketty, Capital in the Twenty First Century
https://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/1491591617

Anthony Downs, "An Economic Theory of Political Action in Democracy" :
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1827369?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Actually (I was the OP of this thread that you were talking to) I like more expensive recipes, but not becuase i feel it is more of an accomplishment when i make something. I just feel that the way modded usually works, you start playing and within a few days are extremely flush with resources, and then you can just sit around and craft craft craft all of the machines you need. Plus, with resources being so easy to get vs the cost of building things, there really is no need to worry about efficiency, other than for giggles.

So for example, forestry ethanol. People usually make oak trees, crush the apples for fruit juice for some of the saplings, then use water for whatever saplings they can't use. There is no push to find ways to get more fruit juice, or even make honey, to get more ethanol production. You make another tree farm, or just move on to a big reactor (not many people even make tree farms anymore, its nether lava right ot big reactor now).

If the cost of a tree farm was very high, then people would try to find ways to squeeze every bit of power out of the resources they got from it. Instead its far easier to just make another or another cheap power source, than it is to breed trees to get more Sappiness from a sapling, get more saplings to drop, etc.

If they cannot pay for the cost of another power source (due to cost being high) then they might say... hmm... i have a lot of redstone doing nothing, I could use it in an EIO vat for some rocket fuel. But people only do that now for fun (which is fine too). It could also be fun though to have to make that decision. Do you put some redstone into making some fuel for engines to power your stuff, or do you use it to build something new?

Compare it to a game like call of duty. Modded mc would be like playing COD where you can just carry every single weapon. Sure its fun! Snipe over here, LMG over here, toss 20 grenades over here.

But its also fun to only have enough 'resources' to carry a few items, and to have to pick what you want. Do you invest in Fast Hands to switch weapons faster, or Engineer to spot opponents Equipment and blow it up before it gets you? If you could just carry ALL of those things and have all of those abilities, it would get very bland. Of course cod is a competetive game, and people will argue that MC is not... but then again, MC is a sandbox game, right? Its not a competition against other people, but a competition against the 'world'. Can i thrive and survive in this world? Isnt that why they call it survival mode? TO me, the higher costs push the game more in that direction. But i dont like how IE:E has done it IMO. It doesnt seem more challenging, it just made the numbers more impressive. Which could be the narcissism thing you are talking about. People can post screenshots of the crazy expensive item they created.

My pack would go the other way, and no one would like it. :) I would reduce the amount of resources you get, make it harder ot make power, so then crafting normal items becomes more challenging. The pack i am working on for example cuts the amount of resources a quarry gets by 75%. So, quarries are a bit more balanced vs hand mining. They cost a lot of energy (configured to cost moer than default...) and dont give you the tons of ores that you normally get.

Your post got off on a tangant about society in general, I agree with you on most of it. It gets tiring sometimes how so many people are 'look at me look at me! see how great i am!' you might be interested in this book, it claims to explain why our sociey is becoming more and more narcissistic.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies/dp/1608193411

>What do people like Soros consider as real money?

Only power. He admitted that he though himself to be a god. That what I have seen in the other thread.

Your economy was lead by this people: Don't let em feed you shit, people!

TL;DR: admit that you can be fooled, don't let people, don't fool yourself. Humility is everything(That's why SJW don't have any).

>How do we hit them where it actually hurts?

There are many way in my shit list:

(1) Use money that is hard to tamper with like gold, bitcoin or barter. When and if possible.

(2) Learn how economics really work not neo-keynasian BS, but Chicago school is the best https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell-ebook/dp/B00L4FSSTA . You know how fed tells that "economy is better"? By GDP. It basically means that if I sell you a pen for $100 and you sell me it back to you for $100 then economy is $200 better! That's how they lie, to you! Trump said that there are no new bread winner jobs:

>"Don't believe those phony numbers when you hear 4.9 and 5 percent unemployment," Trump said

You can google this phrase. Basically Trump is quoting Stockman saying that:

>many people have three jobs as waiters, but every job like this is counted the same as a 200 000 a year bread winner job...

Basically bread winner jobs have gone down. Trumped! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin... And How to Bring It Back

Trump knows who he is quoting and how economy works.

(3) They feed on bureaucracy, so the most effective you are way is to destroy bureaucracy. Demand transparency.

You know who has private roads? Sweden. Yeap, that Sweden that left loves so much has all them private roads. And they are good an cheap. Free market is always more transparent.

If street where you leave needs to be fixed organize it yourselves and ask for tax deduction. Don't let money circulate in vain, this is how they cook their budgets and spread corruption.

(4) Always check your sources. People need to learn to think for themselves, stop being afraid of doubting authority. We are here because we trusted in legacy media. /r/the_donald is far superior source of news then MSNBC. But leave down your guard and you will be as brainwashed as SJW on streets of Portland. Remember that you have limited knowledge and media exploits it.

(5) Start rising trust and safety in your community. People should communicate and to know each other. Clinton went so far only because people are afraid of what their neighbor thinks. Rise the sense of community and let every one to speak out. This way you will always know what your neighbor thinks and he will know that you are not a racist.

In addition to seconding Qwill2's suggestion of the Harvey lectures, I'd also suggest reading Marx's Preface to the Critique of Political Economy it's incredibly short and is a good very first introduction to Marx, I think.

As a really simple introduction, you should look into getting Marx's Kapital for Beginners. It's made in the same style as "Marx For Beginners" by Rius which is linked to in this subreddit's sidebar. It's basically like a comic book documentary. It might seem silly but it's actually a very effective way of communicating the basics and I think serves as a great introduction. It's also pretty cheap to get used.

If you're looking for more substantial books to help you read it, I'd actually suggest David Harvey's Companion to Marx's Capital which has a lot of the same content as his lectures, but some additional info and has the added bonus of being text that you can make notes on, refer back to etc. I used it and found it very helpful.

I'd also suggest checking out Brenden McCooney's Law of Value Series as well as all his other videos which do a great job of presenting not only Marx's ideas but some ideas of later Marxists in a very accessible way.

Also, Ernest Mandel's Introduction to Marxist Economic theory is a popular resource. You can read reviews of that here.

Edit: I agree with Ksan's advice too.

> I actually think libertarianism is an incredibly naive worldview

I can see how someone might think that, but I don't think it's fair. Libertarians typically have the strongest understanding of economics, and libertarians are typically intellectuals. Also, transitioning from a typical Republican or Democrat to a libertarian requires a pretty substantial shift in how you view the role of government as a whole. You'll also never see a libertarian who confuses capitalism with democracy (which happens on the internet all. the. fn. time.).


But! I will admit that we have a potential blind spot that will make it difficult to ever become a major party: libertarians will choose the whole over the individual, which means we lose pretty much every emotional argument ever. The free market works most efficiency when prices aren't controlled at all, and libertarians will choose efficiency because it drives innovation and lowering of prices the fastest, which we believe is the best for the whole. It's through innovation that we raise the standard of living for everyone (e.g., Ford inventing the assembly line eventually led to cars being widely available). Where this gets tough for most people to support is that most people will choose stability over efficiency.


When you put money in a bank, you want to make sure the bank doesn't go under. When you rent an apartment, you want to make sure landlords can't force you out by raising rent. If you're working 40 hours a week, you feel like you deserve to make a living wage. If you've spent your entire life mining coal, you don't want the coal mine to go under, leaving you with no skills for another job and leaving your town w/o its largest source of income. If a hurricane hits your town, you don't want the local convenience store jacking up the price of water and flashlights. If your child gets diagnosed with cancer, you don't want money to get in the way of getting your child everything they need to survive.


All of those thoughts are completely reasonable, but libertarians put higher emphasis on the whole than the individual. Banks and auto-makers have gotten away with horrible business decisions because they're "too big to fail." Rent control works fine in the short term, but in the long term it always leads to an ever-increasing shortage of low-income housing while the quality of that housing consistently declines and no new low-income housing is constructed. Industries rise and fall all the time, and we're just no longer in need of so much coal or elevator operators or fast food cashiers. Increasing the prices on goods after a hurricane helps insure that people don't overbuy, leaving late-comers without a chance at supplies, and it incentivizes new sellers to enter the market to take advantage of the high prices, thus increasing supply, which will lower prices over time. A more free market approach to healthcare would result in much, much lower costs, and faster innovation.


The problem is that once you say that, yes, people will lose jobs and die because of poor luck, decisions, or timing, you immediately turn most of the population, and Jimmy Kimmel starts crying. It doesn't matter to them that it will be a huge net benefit for the vast majority of people if an unlucky few are willingly left behind.


I also feel like there's this huge misconception that libertarians don't care about the poor when they're probably our main concern. We believe so strongly in the free market because we think it gives the poor the highest standard of living. Anyway, I'm not a particularly eloquent person, so I recommend this book. It does a really good job of explaining why the free market best helps the poor over the long term at the cost of short term volatility. It's a pretty good read too.

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.

The title of the 538 article is, in a phrase, "click bait", and the article, while I'm sure well-meaning, presents a fairly shallow review of the problem it purports to address. When Ben Casselman writes that "the U.S. economy faces deep structural challenges", he gives the impression that these "deep structural challenges" are inevitable forces that we can only react to, and poorly at that. This is not the case. These deep structural challenges, in large part, are the product of our government's political choices.

NAFTA was a political choice. And the article acknowledges that NAFTA led to the loss of 4.5 million jobs. The TPP, if passed, will be another political choice, and that will likely lead to the loss of even more jobs. There is nothing inevitable about manufacturing jobs leaving this country, and there is nothing inevitable about them not coming back. These are both political choices.

Yes, automation is a factor, but even loss of jobs due to automation is not inevitable if we gave manufacturing workers protections. Automation may be a great way to get rid of worker wages and benefits and increase company profits and shareholder return. But who says company and shareholder profits have to be given top priority at all costs? What about workers? Why is the maximization of company profit and shareholder return put above every other economic priority, including allowing manufacturing workers to have good paying jobs? That is another political and policy choice that is not inevitable and is reversible if the political will to reverse it existed.

As a political choice, the U.S. has structured trade to make it very easy for corporations to invest in manufacturing overseas and ship their products back to the United States, thereby putting our workers in direct competition with low-wage workers in the developing world.

Trade globalization is not an inevitable and unstoppable force. Automation is not an inevitable and unstoppable force. These things are given preference and priority through well thought out political choices made by the elites and implemented in Washington. These choices are made by our leaders because large corporations currently have more say in our government's actions than anyone else. Workers currently have little or no voice at all.

Bernie and even Trump are right on the money with what they are saying in terms of corporate friendly trade deals evaporating American manufacturing jobs. And, yes, these jobs can be brought back if the political will to do so is there.

If you want a better understanding of the current state of how politics works, and the power of political choices, check this book out.

I don't want to sound like a dick, but you're making assumptions and treating them as fact. There is no reason manufacturing jobs NEED to move overseas other than the top echelons of corporate America want it that way so they can maximize their profits at the expense of American workers. The supposed beauty and inevitability of neoliberal trade policies have been touted for so long by folks like Paul Krugman, that many have just assumed this is the inevitable way of the world. It isn't. This is not to say that free trade between equals in the global community isn't good and sometimes in fact necessary to spur on needed competition and efficiencies. But the idea that the American worker, as well developing economies overseas and their workers, must submit to free trade policies over all other tools of trade policy, such as tariffs, is simply untrue. There needs to be a more healthy mix of free trade and protectionism. Otherwise America and the world community devolves into a feudal system that does much to contribute to unrest, dissatisfaction and even violence all over the world.

The manufacturing jobs exist, they just don't exist in this country as much as they once did. Sure, some of these jobs are being replaced by automation. But free trade globalism and technology do not have to leave American workers or workers overseas ravaged. That happens as a result of political choices made in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere around the world.

Obama and Hillary have employed "incrementalism" in a vain effort to keep workers and others in need placated while they keep their richest donors happy. It doesn't have to be this way and it shouldn't be this way.

We can eliminate and/or redo trade deals. We can let workers have a meaningful seat at the table as these deals are negotiated. We can do much to restore the middle and working classes. That we haven't, again, is in large part a political choice.

Check out these books if you want, or at least know they exist. (https://www.amazon.com/Winner-Take-All-Politics-Washington-Richer-Turned/dp/1416588701)

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

These authors don't have all the answers, but it's a good start.

>Socialists have lots of strategies in mind. What he’s arguing against is the idea that socialists must have 100% concrete and foolproof plans before they do anything, and the idea that what might work in one time and place would also work in another. It’s just not a realistic expectation.

That is fine as far as it goes and since Robinson is a Libertarian (and so I would assume Market) Socialist then iterating as you go might work. If you are a 'non-market we need a revolution' type Socialist that doesn't work as well.

> But if you have solid principles, you can cross bridges when you get to them. If you’re too rigid, you run the risk of not being able to take criticism or advice or sticking to plans that aren’t panning out. That’s what I got from this piece.

I think a big issue I have is I don't really see "principles" in his piece, or at least not the kind I am looking for when someone is talking about making significant changes to our economy.

I think he is using the definition of principles that is: "morally correct behavior and attitudes" but what I am looking for (and I think most people are thinking of when they here the term in this context) is: "a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning."

This is a major difference and I don't see anything in that article that points me to something I can use as a foundation for actual applied Socialism.

> I’m for what “works” too, but your morals factor into what your assessment of “working” is...

I don't actually disagree with anything you said in this paragraph. I would only caution against assuming that because something addresses the obvious symptom that it is in fact dealing with the real problem. But I think picking that apart would be too much of a tangent here.

> That actually isn’t necessarily incompatible with pacifism...

I get that but my point was more what I cautioned you against above.

> I don’t detect any insincerity when Robinson says something like: ...

The problem is that quote you gave doesn't say anything. Authoritarianism doesn't have to be a single dude running things from the top. Democracy is often called the tyranny of the majority and for good reason. Yes, it is better than having a dictator but that doesn't mean it can not crush people.

It is the principles, actual foundational stuff, we are operating under that really define how a society plays out. I would probably have to jump into the negative vs positive rights argument to really flesh this out (and I don't want to) but basically if someone tells me they are for democracy that's fine but tell me how you are going to handle the peaceful person who is morally opposed to the majorities decision. That is how I'll judge what you mean by democracy. Way too many people, on the Left & Right, cloak themselves under "Democracy" in an effort to destroy their outgroup.

Your quote also reminded me of a wholly separate issue I had with Robinson. He calls himself a Libertarian Socialist but everything he talks about is just giving Government ever more power & scope of control.

You want co-ops, great, lets remove any artificial roadblocks to their formation.
You want better healthcare, great, lets reduce government control there and bring back the insurance alternatives that were forced out of existence.
Want a better safety net, great, then let's create real mutual aid societies and rebuild community and family bonds.

And so on.

This is more of a pet peeve of mine but again, it's another signal that what this author has in mind is just a different form of government control over society and that just means more elites, maybe different elites but elites non-the-less, running things.

Both Economics in One Lesson and Basic Economics are golden, though for very different reasons.

Economics is One Lesson starts with a truth that is obvious and simple once you hear it explained. You think to yourself, "Well, yeah. Who could possibly think otherwise?" And then you hop onto Reddit and see that a substantial preponderance of Reddit are afflicted with a mindset and beliefs that fly in the face of this simple truth. It then spends time expanding on this truth and applying it to tons of different things that you wouldn't intuitively see it applying to.

Basic Economics is better though. Both are well worth reading, but Sowell's work is incredibly comprehensive. When I read it, it didn't come across as someone trying to prove any world view, as tends to be the case from so many economists. It is him simply seeking to explain economics to someone who is new to the field. To his credit, he uses terminology that is accessible to anyone and doesn't spend a single moment trying to prove to how smart he is. (Though his brilliance is immediately evident.) Its most important quality is that it doesn't ask you to partake in a string of thought experiments to reach some grand conclusions. Every assertion he makes is supported by multiple studies and historical examples. This happens time and time again. And the bolder the claim, the more evidence he provides. It's remarkable.

While it does weigh in at 700-ish pages, Basic Economics is almost certainly the perfect book for getting your feet wet when in economics.

Interesting content, but the introduction was written in a choppy way that made it hard for my brain to stay focused on it. Nonetheless, it was strongly reminiscent of the book Average Is Over by Tyler Cowen. The book obviously went in to more detail, but the premise is in the title: those who embrace and learn to work with intelligent machines will be few and exceedingly prosperous in decades to come, while those who do not will flounder. I wish I could share Cowen's optimism on that point, but my assumptions about human nature lead me to believe that those in power will (usually subconsciously) structure the system so that they remain in power, limiting the social mobility both authors prize.

Like me, the author of this article isn't quite so sanguine about Cowen's premise. And like me, the author of this article thinks the endgame of all this automation is a post-scarcity economy. We're both just worried about what happens to humanity on the road there. In the U.S., 25% unemployment is creeping up toward "torches and pitchforks" levels (and remains below what happened during the Great Depression, according to the Great Wiki). Is it possible to imagine a future where self-driving cars, a technology we will perfect in the next decade, create unemployment along those levels? I ask because I genuinely do not know the answer.

Regardless, this article asks a lot of the right questions, I think, and I'm glad to have read it. Also, obligatory link to the video Humans Need Not Apply.

>Regarding science, the flourishing of scientific development didn't start with the Enlightenment, but it exploded afterwards. Chinese science and technology was vastly better than Europe for about 400 years, but the Industrial Revolution still happened in Europe.

He isn't contesting that modern science and technology is mainly a European thing, what he is contesting is the idea that it happened as the result of Enlightenment thought.

Europe was already a world power before the first Enlightenment thinkers ever put pen to paper, and it had achieved this status through technological means.

When it comes to science, interest in performing scientific measurements with specialized instruments (such as astrolabes) was widespread in niche circles, and so was interest in Greco-Roman thought, before the Renaissance.

>Modern economics allowed science to be used by the average person, not just the elites. That was only able to flourish after the idea of individual property and innovation spread.

Modern economics (as in: capital markets, global trade) can be traced to the colonial companies (East Indian, etc), and to various Italian city-state ventures who traded on the Mediterranean, which happened before the Enlightenment. Niall Ferguson documents this in The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World.

>The fact that a woman can leave an abusive marriage and raise children on her own is pretty damn great, too.

That kind of implies that the "old view" would be ok with abusive marriages, but that really isn't the case. It is true that women are vulnerable to abuse by their husbands, but the kind of tight communities of the past where women also had the support of their extended family (many brothers, etc.) were a buffer.

And while the effort of single mothers is to be praised, as they do truly heroic work, it still remains the case that single-parent households are not the preferred way to raise children.

>there was no system of nobility or inherited titles.

That is true, but as the case of the British shows, that wasn't an impediment to them eventually developing a stable, fair and balanced political system. The British had had already gone through several steps in reducing the assymetry between the various ranks in the hierarchy. Elsewhere in Europe, the Habsburg regime was progressing towards decentralization, with more power accumulating into the hands of the merchants and artisans, simply as a result of their increased economic strength. By contrast, the economic activity of the nobility was land ownership, which didn't scale.

So my point here is that the good effects attributed to the political innovations which came with Enlightenment were also possible in regimes which were more conservative.

I see the Enlightenment as an expression of political trends that were already "in the air". Some of these trends introduced good changes, while some things turned out to not need changing.

This is by no means either academic or comprehensive, but it's short, fun, and just might kick-start your interest, so give it a watch. There are a couple others following up. I seriously recommend you get one of the more accessible books on economics. NPR's Planet Money has a reading list of books they recommend, and a quick peek at top results in Amazon also indicate bestsellers like Basic Economics, Economics in One Lesson, or the humorously titled and fun Naked Economics.

Any of those will do wonders. Just select whichever looks like a good time.

Or don't -- what to do with scarce resources like your own time is of course your choice. An economic choice ;)

I recommend just jumping into the first volume of Das Kapital. It isn't that bad. In fact, it's quite an enjoyable read (for the most part). The first part of it (roughly 200 pages) is fairly difficult and technical, but after that it becomes much more manageable. In fact you could probably even skip the first part and then go back to it later. In any case, you're going to want to re-read that first part multiple times as time goes on and you see more material. You could even read 2) and 3) in /u/jakehmw's post alongside it, and with those I'd also recommend David Harvey's companion. My own approach was to jump right in to Capital, following Harvey's companion and online lectures, and further consulting the other two books (which I didn't finish until after I finished Capital). I have found this approach very rewarding and not that strenuous. It opened up a lot of different directions that I could choose from depending on my interests.

It took me a summer to get through the first volume and those supplementary books. You just need to make sure to not go down too many rabbit-holes as you read it. Just get it done and you'll get a better idea of where you want to go next, and you'll be better equipped when you go there.

Edit: I recommend this copy of the first volume of Capital and here are Harvey's lectures. You can organize a reading schedule in terms of those lectures: one lecture (and the corresponding reading material) per week, for example.

Good luck and have fun!

> There are indeed fundamental philosophical and ideological differences between the far left and the far right - my point is that they are both similar in that the radicals on both sides care less about individual freedom and more about using any means necessary to achieve their goals and subjugate others to their thoughts. The goals are radically different: the techniques are not, nor is the lack of interest in discussion or questions. That is where they lose me.

But it's just not true that the far left is disinterested in discussion. The dialectic is a fundamental component of leftist thought. Marx, Bakunin, Prodhon, and Stirner- sort of the 'fathers' of modern leftist thought- were all young Hegelians, for whom the dialectic was an integral component of rational thought. In fact, if you look up 'dialectic' on wikipedia, and go to the section on modern philosophy, you'll find no more than two subsections, one about the hegelian dialectic, and another about the Marxist dialectic.

> Do you really believe that the radical left is any less interested in systematically oppressing others than the far right?

Yes.

> People like the Tea Party, PeTA, and others are more than willing to do whatever it takes to get the results they want, and they're not interested in a dialog, nor in thinking that maybe someone else's point of view can be valid.

PeTA is neither left nor right. They're a single issue organization who's issue is orthogonal to economic and political structure. Also, speaking anecdotally, I have spent quite a bit of time in far left circles, and I have only ever met one PeTA supporter. Most everyone else is extremely critical of PeTA. In fact, I have been routinely criticized for not being critical enough of PeTA. Keep in mind that I am a meat-eating egoist. PeTA seems more popular among liberals and social democrats than among radicals.

Actual radical leftist groups include Radical Science, Radical Statistics, the Center for a Stateless Society, The Industrial Workers of the World, The Socialist Worker, The CNT-FAI, and The Recovered Factories Movement.

> Yep, but as I've said often, ideologues care more about imposing their beliefs on others, and I hope you recognize that there are those on the left that are just as unreasonable as those on the right.

Once again, I am not arguing that it is impossible for a radically left group/person or group/person which appears to be radically left to be disinterested in good faith discussion or to be fundamentally oppressive, but that these are intrinsic qualities of the far right, where they are not intrinsic qualities of the far left.

> And is it any less oppressive to be told that you have to give up a large percentage of what you've earned to give to others so that there is a false economic equality?

I don't think you understand what the far left is even interested in. We're not interested in high taxes or creating a welfare state. The far left wants to dismantle or compete with the existing political and economic structure because we view it as a distortion of markets/exchange which allows for an idle class to exploit a large percentage of the value generated by the working.

> is there reading on socialism you'd recommend? I'm fascinated by the examples you cite and I'd like to learn more. Probably won't change my mind, but I am curious.

To understand the theory which underlies leftist thought, you'd be best off reading Marx' Capital. However, keep in mind that this is a very academic, 3 volume, 1500 page, behemoth of a book, which you might find difficult to digest. If you do decide to read it, it might be beneficial to read David Harvey's companion to Capital along with it, or to watch his lecture series. If you're lazy (and I don't blame you) you might want to just watch the lectures.

You might also check out An Anarchist FAQ, for a much more readable, though shallow, explanation of leftist thought. And the film I posted earlier, The Take, is an interesting look into what an anarchist strategy and an anarchist society might look like.

> Of course not - that's a ridiculous argument. However, people like Mr. Chomsky, who seem to think this country is intrinsically evil bother me. Are there things here that are wrong - without a doubt. And this country is far from its ideals (and seems to be getting further away every day). But there needs to be recognition of the good as well as the bad, and there are many on both sides that refuse to do that. And that, quite honestly, annoys me.

I'm curious, then, if you're critical of e.g., Harriet Beecher Stowe for the the same reason. After all, she wrote critiques of slavery, but never really wrote anything which focused on praising the upside of slavery and world she lived in. She's never written a novel about the wonders of the transcontinental railroad, nor the telegraph, nor just how cheap cotton was at the time.

Cross? Damn right I'm cross, I keep seeing people push the same old economic policies that have failed for 30 years, and they refuse to admit they are wrong. Meanwhile, the US goes down the shitter.

Question: Did china have cheaper labor in 1950 too, or is it just today? What changed? Why did people have decent lifestyles in the 1950s, but can't afford health insurance or housing today?

As for education, check out these books:

http://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies-Stronger/dp/1608193411/ref=wl_itt_dp_o?ie=UTF8&coliid=I1LVA7FT1O3IQ&colid=1KNYNPSWMYVDW

Of course though to people like you 'it's anyone's guess'. YOu claim to know exactly what economic policies will work, even though economics is a crap shoot at best, but anything that doesn't fit into your worldview is 'anyone's guess'

Also check out this book

http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Samaritans-Secret-History-Capitalism/dp/1596913991

>It is just that having a TV (or electricity) is not seen as standard, when even in the 1970s is was often a luxury.

It wasn't a luxury in the 1970s, how old are you? In the 70s my father had a $1000 stereo (actual cost!), a 25' solid wood cabinet tv, etc. He was a factory worker, and his wife didn't work. How could someone like this afford a $1000 stereo, in 1970s dollars? How does this fit into your narrow worldview OliverSparrow?

And now, people say 'oh but you can get a 40" flat screen, we are all wealthier than the 1970s!' Which is bullshit. So I get a flat screen tv, but can't afford health insurance? My factory working father had a house and a stay at home wife, but my wife and I make more than he did, and we couldn't buy a $1000 stereo in 2011 dollars? Shouldn't the average person be able to buy a luxury item that was adjusted for inflation? How much is $1000 converted from 1970 - 2011 dollars?

Do you see high school educated people buying $3000 (a guess) stereos? If not, then people have gone backwards. The trick was making junk goods cheaper, so that when people complained, people like you could say 'oh but you have an ipod and a computer! you're rich!' pfft.

Also interestingly, my father just bought a 1970s stereo receiver on ebay the other day - they still sell, and very well. Guess what? They were made extremely well. How does the currently produced crappy electronics that might last 5 years fit with the 40 year old stereo that still sells for over $100 on ebay? Are we really richer?

let me guess, you have a nice white color job? That would be interesting, as people who are successful are much more likely to make excuses for the system they exist in, as questioning the system that made them successful means questioning their own success. Try this book on some evidence on why educated, successful people are less likely to question the status quo.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_20?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=lies+my+teacher+told+me&sprefix=lies+my+teacher+told

I got about 25 minutes into the video; I'm not wasting more time. If you want to know serious data about the dangers of central planning of the monetary system, there are vastly better sources that talk in real, economics, and not lofty, sensationalist terms.

The International Role of the Dollar: Theory and Prospect by Paul krugman

Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell

The Creature from Jekyll Island by Griffin

Milton Friedman's Free to Choose videos

--------

My main objections in the first 25 minutes of this "documentary" are:

1) They're not correctly defining or using the terms currency or money and not identifying their economic role. Money is not the center of an economy, it is the lubrication that permits economics to happen. Economics is the analysis of how scarce resources that have alternative uses are allocated by people (by markets).

Money doesn't create those allocations, money enables those allocations.

Even in an economic system without money, there would still be allocations of scarce resources that have alternative uses by people; whether that is choosing to use your time to cut down a tree for your neighbor in exchange for beef or choosing to use your time to mow a lawn for your mother in exchange for a smile and a thank you; your time is a scarce resource and you're choosing how to allocate it with zero money being involved.

Money is any medium of exchange and is created as a store of one's labor.

You receive a dollar in exchange for X minutes of your labor. That piece of paper stores those X minutes of your labor and you can use it in exchange for something you value.

So anyway - this video does a shitty job identifying what money is at the outset... I don't think it'll get better.

2) The banking system, monetary policy, and politicians making a killing off of those systems has not been hidden from anyone. As they admit, almost in a very quick juxtaposition with their incorrect statement, the bankers, academics, and politicians are very open about their systems.

The problem is that people are just happy with their lives and are safer than they've ever been throughout history.

3) A complete misunderstanding of what "interest" is and what fractional reserve banking is.

Interest is the cost of lending money... it is the price tag on a product just like on the coat or iPod you buy. The baker isn't going to give you all his bread for free; why should a bank give you money for free?

Fractional reserve banking can be done responsibly. Much like the interest rate, it should be done at the rate set by free markets. A fractional reserve rate of 90% almost completely guarantees that when you withdraw, you will always be able to withdraw all of your money. In exchange, banks will give you vastly lower of an interest rate than at a 10% fractional reserve rate because it is higher risk and lower reward for the bank.

Anyway - like so many other documentaries out there about extremely complex matters, this one is just trying to sell a product like every other good capitalist out there. They need to catch your attention and get you to talk about it to others to make money - so of course they're going to play to the 8th grade education market.

As /u/t8nlink has already suggested but what I think is worth reiterating is using /r/communism101, which will likely become the most important sub to you for learning about socialism and communism.

In my opinion, the best start to Marxian economics is Kapitalism101's Law of Value series on YouTube. These videos are highly accessible, easy to understand, and fun (at least compared to other resources of Marxist knowledge). /u/audiored has linked to Kapitalism101's WordPress blog, which is an essential supplement to the videos.

/u/Moontouch has linked to Richard Wolff's Introduction to Marxism series on YouTube - you should check it out.

You should probably also look over the Welcome to Socialism page on the /r/socialism wiki, as well as the Suggested Readings.

Eventually, you're going to want to read Das Kapital. If you want to read it as a .pdf, here's the link to the marxists.org file, but if you prefer a hard copy, I recommend the Penguin Classics edition. But don't feel at all pressured to read it just yet - it is a very dense work.

If you have any questions, please feel free to shoot me a PM anytime. I'm pretty busy most of the time, but I'll make sure to set some time aside.

I can think of a few

• Paul Kennedy's "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" - WHY and how whole empires fall
  
  
• Niall Ferguson's "The Ascent of Money" - How money rules the world - here's how.
  
  
• Jarred Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" - his thesis might not be entirely correct - but it's a VERY fair look at how our history was influenced by these factors.
  
  
• Bruce Bueno De Mesquita's - "The Predictioneer's Game" - - How quantitative models are SCARILY accurate
  
  
• Emanuel Derman's "Models Behaving Badly" - And how sometimes quantitative models are totally wrong.
  
  
• Paul Roberts - "The End of Oil" - Probably the most serious and balanced read on what could be one of the most important economic problems facing our modern civilization in the next 20 years.
  
  
• Frank & Cook's "Winner Take All Society" - and why things are a problem.
  
  
• Richard Florida's "The Great Reset" - Florida is a pretty good author all around - far better than some others in the pitch.
  
  
• James Bamford's amazing "Body of Secrets" - Not all our enemies are external, and sometimes our allies turn out to actually be thuggish & deadly enemies.
  
  
• Iris Chang's "The Rape of Nanking" - Nobody here is exactly as they appear.
  
  
• Carl Sagan's "A Demon Haunted World"
  
  
• Robin Marantz Henig's "A Monk in the Garden" - Yeah - the priest that proved Darwin's theory, in 1865.....oh yeah and he invented statistics along the way.
  
  
• Brian Sykes' "The seven Daughters of Eve"
  
  
• Douglas Hofstadter's "Metamagical Themas" - Every page is practically amazing - a collection of amazing old articles from Dr. H's work
  
  
• Kristina Borjesson's edit of "Into the Buzzsaw" - the hard truth about a couple of things in the US media
  
  
• Richard Dawkins' "Climbing Mount Improbable" - a great work about such an amazing idea.
  
  
• Kim Sterelny's "Dawkins vs. Gould" - this is a REAL debate about evolution!
  

>Veterans unemplotement is currently around 30%, so I would argue that the provate sector is that shallow. Some businesses are very helpful and respectful towards the men and women who have served this nation, but most, sadly, aren't. And you're right, college degrees do not automatically create success. But, college grad. unemployment is around 4% right now, while non-college educated people have an unemployment above 10%.

Even if we sent all of those unemployed veterans to college (or all of the other non-college educated), they would still face a stagnant job market with a college degree. That’s why we must seek policies that favor robust, but sound, economic expansion. Even if we assume the private sector is that shallow, which it’s not, the best way to force their hand is to generate so much growth that demand for labor outstrips supply. Siphoning more and more of their operating capital and/or increasingly regulating every corner of business simply cannot logically have this effect.

>These are not jobs added, and they would be jobs whether the tax rates on the rich are 1% or 50%.

These are jobs added/maintained. It’s simple supply/demand in this case: when more people can afford yachts, cabins in exotic locations, expensive cars, and other luxury items, demand increases. Given the prospect of profit, supply responds by increasing as well. Supply increasing doesn’t mean only existing firms expand, it also means new firms open in hopes of soaking up some of the increasing market. By taxing, you’re diminishing the demand for these products by reducing the amount of consumers who are capable of purchasing these luxury products. When demand falls, supply must respond as well: downsizing, layoffs, bankruptcies, etc. The reason is simply that the demand market for these goods can no longer sustain the existing crop of suppliers. This concept applies across the entire economy over every sector. Some firms would stay, but more would fall the more we reduce income.

> Why should we all be slaves to the rich? Why should all of oour jobs depend on what they choose to pruchese or not purchase?

We’re not slaves nor are all of our jobs dependent on what they choose to purchase. I’m only highlighting that wealthy individuals do fully/partially support certain sectors of our economy. Enormous sectors of the economy are largely supported by lower-income individuals as well: Goodwill Industries and other discount clothing retailers like TJ Maxx, McDonalds, Dollar Tree, flea-markets, etc. all quickly come to mind. Similarly, large portions of our economy are supported by the middle class” most automotive companies, casual dining restaurants, Polo Ralph Lauren, American Eagle, etc. come to mind. Importantly, though, this only represents the consumer side of our economy and not the more-important capital-investment side, but I’ll just leave it at that for now.

>They were going into bankrupcy and then government came in, and loaned them money, which they payed back, and are now workign at a profit for. Government was not in control of them under teh Bush years when thigns got fucked up to shit. Obama's stimulus package saved us from a depression, but if it was bigger, I would argure that it could have saved us from a recession.

They didn’t pay all of it back. The government still owns large shares of GM and Ally Bank, for example. Tax payers are expected to lose over 25 billion on the former. The amount of worldwide derivative debt is even larger than in 2008 (ie, the “too big to fail” banks are only bigger). All of this was only made possible by government attempting to circumvent the natural market regulation, the profit-loss incentive, which would’ve punished the firms with real bankruptcy for their mistakes and allowed their capital to redistribute to more efficient uses. Instead, their inefficient and dangerous activities were only reinforced by government, and thus they will continue until market forces ultimately win out and another bubble bursts.

Furthermore, our economic instability far pre-dates Bush and Obama. The prevailing economic philosophy, Keynesianism, in this nation has largely been unchanged since the Progressive era and all of our woes have simply been compounding. The only difference really is that the philosophy has been painted red or blue, Republican or Democrat, and called “conservative” or “liberal”. We won’t fix the economy until we fix the philosophy, which is why a large number of libertarians favor the polar-opposite philosophy of Austrian economics.

Ultimately, I think a lot of the disconnect here, as it is with the rest of the typical capitalists and the anti-capitalists is a misunderstanding of real capitalism and the result of capitalist policies. The GOP has done a wonderful job of completely misrepresenting what it means to stand for free-markets and the Democrats have done an equally wonderful job of exploiting that flawed portrayal. For that reason and since we’re limited to responding to only specific pieces of the larger argument in defense of capitalism, I strongly recommend you read these books to understand where we’re coming from. The first three are available for free (Bastiat’s are both less than 100 pages as well). These five books, along with several others, are what turned me from a born and raised neoconservative war-mongering Republican to a Libertarian today.

• Frederic Bastiat’s The Law
  
• Henry Hazlitt’s Economics In One Lesson -- refutes a long list of common economic fallacies
  
• Frederic Bastiat’s That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen
  
• Tom Wood’s Meltdown -- examines the cause of the 2008 housing crisis
  
• Burt Folsom Jr.’s New Deal or Raw Deal -- examines how government stimulus does not promote recovery
  

I don't know of any that compare, but, the Napoleon's Buttons is SUPPOSED to be good.

http://www.amazon.com/Napoleons-Buttons-Molecules-Changed-History/dp/1585423319/

Other books, engineering related, that I liked are:

Norm Lieberman's Process Troubleshooting books, the guy cracks me up!

Working Guide to Process Equipment (3rd edition probably cheaper): http://www.amazon.com/Working-Guide-Process-Equipment-Fourth/dp/0071828060/

Process Equipment Malfunctions (not as good as the other one, some overlap, but still worthwhile, and covers more breadth for individual issues): http://www.amazon.com/Process-Equipment-Malfunctions-Techniques-Identify/dp/0071770208/

The Prize (mentioned above): http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1439110123/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/188-3799228-4803548

The Quest (Follow on to The Prize): http://www.amazon.com/Quest-Energy-Security-Remaking-Modern/dp/0143121944/

Oil 101: http://www.amazon.com/Oil-101-Morgan-Downey/dp/0982039204/

The Mythical Man Month (Not engineering directly as it pertains to software, but, projects and project management are huge in engineering, though this book is timeless): http://www.amazon.com/Mythical-Man-Month-Software-Engineering-Anniversary/dp/0201835959/

Piping Systems Manual (You can NEVER know enough about pipe!): http://www.amazon.com/Piping-Systems-Manual-Brian-Silowash/dp/0071592768/

Pumps and Pumping Operations (OMG it is $4, hardcover, go buy now! This book is great... did you know OSU didn't teach their Chem E's about pumps? I was flabbergasted, gave this to our intern and he became not a scrub by learning about pumps!): http://www.amazon.com/Pumping-Operations-Prentice-Pollution-Equipment/dp/0137393199/

Any good engineer needs to understand MONEY too:

The Ascent of Money: http://www.amazon.com/Ascent-Money-Financial-History-World/dp/0143116177/

It's Nial Fergesuon, who has had his own series of dramas and dumb stuff. The Ascent of Money has a SLIGHT libertarian tinge... but it wasn't bad enough that I didn't enjoy it. I consider it a history book, and he attempts to write it like one.

Have fun!

I would recommend one of three books to persuade your friend (you can read more about them to choose what you think may be the best). Hope you find a decent gift among the list:

• Democracy, The God that Failed, by Hoppe is an excellent read that shows how the state always slides into failure. Primarily a western critique, it can apply to Marxism easily as a whole. More historical, rather than an ethical critique, however.
  
  
• The Ethics of Liberty, again by Hoppe demonstrates how free associate is the most ethical way to organize society, even if Marxism could work.
  
  
• Mixing it up a little, For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, this time by Rothbard explains an Anarcho-Capitalist's perspective on ethics. While it does not explicitly show the downfalls of collectivism, it would be good for her to help understand our view of society.

> I was under the impression most benefit societies were highly conditional in nature.

This was true in some cases, but was totally irrelevant; the smallest minorities tended to have the most vibrant aid societies.

> I also don't see what is preventing an unconditional benefit society from working right now, you said they were heavily taxed but I'm having a bit of trouble finding a source for that.

The current insurance scheme is privileged for tax purposes, which makes alternatives relatively inefficient because they aren't.

> I see many complaints of regulation but none that don't also make a little sense (ensuring everyone has access to the doctors they are paying for being a standout).

Crowding out. Why would people pay for benefits (even if they're more efficient and effective) if they are already being taxed to pay for ostensibly similar (inefficient and ineffective) benefits?

> Habitat for humanity is going strong but funnily enough there are still homeless people in the world.

HFH is neither a mutual aid society nor an organization that serves the homeless community.

> I wonder what your opinions are on trade unions, since the principle is basically the same?

I... don't think you know what mutual aid societies are if you think that's the case. They're very, very dissimilar to trade unions (which I mostly don't have a problem with, until they lobby for particular government privileges... which is most of the time).

Check out David Beito's "From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State," which is considered to be the definitive history of friendly societies.

There are a couple of good textbooks I am aware of:

The links to Gouverneur's textbook are here

You may also want to check out Wolff's own textbook authored with Stephen Resnick, entitled Economics: Marxian versus Neoclassical. (If you want to have a look through it I'm pretty sure the pdf is on Scribd.com) Apparently he is a publishing an updated edition sometime this year, but I am yet to see any details of that happening.

Also, you've probably heard this many times before, but if you want to get into Marxian economics, I highly suggest you start out by purchasing a copy of Vol. 1 of Capital and going through it alongside David Harvey's lecture series which is also invaluable (everyone on /r/socialism probably knows Harvey but i'm not sure if they're all aware of his lectures). ALSO You would probably like to grab A Companion to Marx's Capital - It's probably the most recent and thorough introduction to capital you could ask for and goes great with the lectures if you want more detail.

While I'm on a role here, you would probably benefit from reading The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism, Harvey has a great interpretation of the "GFC" and goes through a great overview of how capital works.

Other than that I highly suggest you watch Kapitalism101's bibliography videos here. I've found his knowledge and extensive bibliography of recommendations of Marxian economics books extremely invaluable.

Sure!

This is kind of long, but it's the first video I watched. It gives you a nice intro into his thoughts, his style, and who he is. It's from the 1990's, but a lot of it still utterly relevant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2hPQ86lGV0

If you want something a little bit shorter, this is very good recent one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SDLBqIubCs

Also, it's a thick book, but Basic Economics is mind blowingly good.
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491578598&sr=8-1&keywords=basic+economics

Sowell covers a lot of issues, and I don't always agree with him, but he is highly intelligent, he makes very logical and persuasive arguments. When I was more left leaning, one of the things that started to change me was the examination of economics. I watched Sowell and found that I could not disagree with him, hence the red pill.

Interestingly, when I debate friends who are form the left, usually referencing Sowell's point stumps people. I don't know why, but a lot of people seem to have shaky basis for their economic positions, but economics is very important when taking into account who we are (and have been) as a nation, and what's in the national interest.

In short, nationalism is a fiction. There are no real, actual, natural nations - they're boundaries, ideologies and understandings that have come about through historical processes, just like every understanding of our societal relationships to others. I'm only American, for instance, because I reside inside of some borders that some white people made up way back when.

The industrial revolution paved the way for nationalism because it gave humans access to unprecedented, massively powerful tools. A gallon of oil yields roughly 25,000 man-hours of human labor in terms of energy (discussion here), to give a sense of just how powerful these tools are.

What happened over the last couple centuries was that small numbers of people (capitalists, in the Marxist sense), were able harness and control this power, and use its influence on massive numbers of people around them. This makes sense spatially, as oil fields, coal mines and the like are located in geographically specific places, allowing relatively few people to take ownership of them.

With few people controlling massive amounts of energy (and therefore power), they are able to impose influence on those around them by developing infrastructure on their terms, using their industrial power to amass wealth, centralizing political power, and creating a unifying culture around their locus of power. As the article you linked points out, nations could not have come about in the sense that they have without this centralized power, which itself has come about through the harnessing and controlling of industry.

Some excellent reading on the subject:
Karl Polanyi - The Great Transformation - This is essentially the historical transformation that the title refers to
Timothy Mitchell - Rule of Experts - My all-time favorite academic book, the first few chapters especially show how Egypt as a nation came about through this type of centralization of power.


tl;dr: Modern industrial economies allow for the requisite centralization of massive amounts of power necessary to put large geographies of people under the umbrella of one "nation".

> You mentioned our GDP. 2/3 of our GDP comes from consumer spending.

Consumer spending and the output of the economy is impacted by how much people have to pay for gas, heat, oil, etc ENORMOUSLY(think about how much the average citizen spends on gas throughout a year and then think about them spending that on other things). Like I said you are uneducated in subject matters that are essential to comment on these matters and you are going to go on as if you aren't. All while arguing a position no analyst in the world would(hyperbole).

https://www.amazon.com/Ascent-Money-Financial-History-World/dp/0143116177/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466453148&sr=8-1&keywords=Ascent+of+money

https://www.amazon.com/Prize-Epic-Quest-Money-Power/dp/1439110123/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466453203&sr=8-1&keywords=The+prize

Read these two books and you will have a clearer picture of this macro picture I was referring to and you will understand how absurd your position is. The ascent of money was made into a pbs documentary, albeit a 4 hour one. It doesn't do the book justice though.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ascentofmoney/

The Prize was a Pulitzer Prize, non fiction book that will educate you on oil and why the middle east is important.

https://careers.state.gov/work/foreign-service/suggested-reading
Click on the suggested reading list on that page.

To get the whole macro picture I was referring to, read these books. You may want to start with their recommended International Relations textbook. These are books the State Department recommends you read if you are going to negotiate and do diplomacy on behalf of United States government(pretty hardcore stuff).


Best of luck with your studies/investigations and enjoy the rabbit hole, it really is an eye opener into another world that is not really discussed in the media.

That book? nothing but scaremongering. returning to the gold standard? what a crock of shit. Tell me, what is the difference between gold and fiat currency? can you eat gold? can you live in it? can you burn it? Anything useful? no, you can't. Fiat currency works fine as long as their is a perceived value, much like the gold standard, but with the ability to print more to match growth, and to control inflation.

boom and busts existed long before the creation of the federal reserve, hell, the idea of a federal reserve system isn't purely american, the The Bank of England pre-dates the american one by several hundred years, so idea isn't new and it has been tested out before hand, with great success. Probably something about the Rothschilds in their, wouldn't be surprised if it their was a mention of them. Do you have any idea what the Fed does by any chance? You know what they do?

1. they release US t-bills, sovereign debt, in an attempt to balance the BOP (balance of payments)
   
   
2. they set inflationary goals that they try to meet.
   
   
3. they provide economic data.
   
   
4. they provide short term lending to banks, as a way of injecting cash in to the economy ( i stress the term loan, they arn't giving away the cash)
   
   
5. they attempt to catch bubbles and collapsing banks before they get out of hand.
   
   
   please, read these, they are wonderful reads and provide the bases to understanding economics and public financing.
   
   http://www.amazon.com/The-Wealth-Nations-Adam-Smith/dp/161382081X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335219858&sr=1-1
   
   http://www.amazon.com/General-Theory-Employment-Interest-Money/dp/1467934925/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335219936&sr=1-1
   
   http://www.amazon.com/The-Ascent-Money-Financial-History/dp/0143116177/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335220011&sr=1-1

All of what you've said about these other problems is absolutely true. In fact there's a very large correlation between proper economic development and reduced fertility rates (as people become wealthier, they generally tend to have less children). And your point about farm subsidies and avoiding the "cheap food is always better" fallacy is also very true.

But that doesn't make population a red herring; in fact it's the crucial outcome that has to be considered in the context of the problem of how to create sustainable human growth. If we don't properly promote economic development, increased contraception, women's education, then the result will be unsustainable population growth. If we don't fix our water/waste/climate/food production/energy problems, then the population we already have and the population we're projected to have in the future--even in the best case scenarios--will be unsustainable.

What I think you're trying to say is that population itself is not the problem, but rather that it is the result of other problems, and that's why you believe it is a red herring (correct me if I'm wrong). But the truth is that it is both. This is a complicated issue, and as you've mentioned there are many serious problems related to population that we need to focus on. But even though Malthus was wrong about a lot of things, he was right on the fundamental point: there is a limit to how many people can exist sustainably on this planet. We don't know exactly what this limit is, and it will change as technology progresses. But like any limit, it is possible to exceed it in the short run, just as you can spend more money than you make for a short period of time. Continuing to exceed the Earth's population limits will be disastrous over the long run, and our best estimates show that that is the direction we are headed. Population is the most fundamental metric we have for showing our progress toward a sustainable future for human civilization. It's important to mention it.

BTW, for anyone interested in reading more about sustainability and growth, I highly recommend Limits to Growth. It is intelligently written with quite a bit of data, graphs, and reasoning, and is an excellent read.

It's not quite unregulated. It's actually heavily regulated, but the regulations are just stacked against normal citizens.

Take "A corporation is a person". That's a legal concept that is maintained by the government.

Take "I can copyright something". That's a monopoly on ideas which is defended by the government.

Take "You can't photograph my mass farming". Another heavy regulation.

Or take, of course, the bail-outs themselves -- that's a perfect example of government not letting capitalism go its way, but rather, stepping in.

(An interesting book on the subject: The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer. On a related note, by Glenn Greenwald: With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful.)

So I would second Integrald's list as great, and I think everyone should read all of the books in the Core section. If you're interested in political economy, I'd specifically point out these from it as nice general-interest introductions:

• Guns Germs and Steel
  
• Why Nations Fail
  
• The Mystery of Capital
  
  If you're interested in alternative models, there are two particular works that I'd recommend reading. The first is probably obvious - get yourself the big old Marx reader. Marxist thought is less important than it used to be, but still worth getting acquainted with.
  
  The second might be less familiar but I think is also very important - Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation. It is basically a sociologically-oriented history of the rise of capitalism. Polanyi's argument is that the "free market" is no less a utopian vision than the communist one, and that in many times and places people seek protection from the market rather than a desire to participate in it. This is one of the very few books I've read as an adult that actually changed my perspective in a meaningful way, and if you're interested in the "big questions" of politics and economics I can't recommend it highly enough.

"... wealth created by labor is not returned to the laborer."

This is a fallacious argument. Wealth is indeed proportionately returned to laborers. Honestly, this is a juvenile position which serves to highlight a fundamental lack of economic understanding.

As a business owner, I personally bear all the responsibility and risks of owning my business. A worker does not. It was me, and only me, who put up the money, found my building, and built it out to serve my needs with my own planning and labor. I personally purchased my gear and did the research that led to these decisions. I personally decided on how my business would be presented to the market. I spent my own money on advertising. I can keep going, but you should get the point. If my business had failed, no one would lose any money but me. An employee of mine risks nothing, while I risk everything. That should be very obvious. I am entitled to the lion's share of the rewards for those risks. Businesses don't exist to provide people with jobs. They exist to create wealth for their owners/investors. In fact, labor is very expensive and is kind of a last resort expense for employers. This is very basic economics. You should read some Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard, and Thomas Sowell. Only a young person with little to no real-world business experience would give any credibility to these marxist ideals you're playing with. Successful small business owners are rarely marxists, and you would do well to exorcise this stuff from your worldview asafp.




As for the left/right stuff...

This is so important to understand -
The left/right divide is biological, and people really only 'switch sides' when they experience an epigenetic change. The left/right divide in politics is not what it seems; it's not a game where there's a 'team' that you pick because you like their uniforms or whatever. Politics are actually the manifestation of a literal war between competing gene sets. It is a struggle for survival, just like you observe in all of nature - our war is over the management and distribution of resources. Biologists recognize two different reproductive strategies in all organisms on Earth. One is called the r-strategy, and the other is known as the K-strategy. You are aware of these strategies, even though you've very likely never heard of r/K selection theory. Leftists/marxists are from the more r-selected camp, while conservatives/libertarians represent the K-selected end of the spectrum. You know, instead of me trying to fit all of r/K selection theory into a Reddit comment, I'll just provide a link to part one of a three-part presentation of it. This is probably the best introduction to this idea that I've ever seen. https://youtu.be/W8N3FF_3KvU
Highly recommended if you want to have an advanced understanding of what human society really is. I can't recommend that enough, honestly. (This link might drop you in the middle of the video, but definitely start it from the beginning)


Also, you should really read these books:

The Economics and Ethics of Private Property: Studies in Political Economy and Philosophy https://www.amazon.com/dp/0945466404/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_8tZ.zbEJ35P6A


Democracy – The God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy and Natural Order (Perspectives on Democratic Practice) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0765808684/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_QuZ.zbBN0PT33

Watch The Rubin Report on YouTube. Dave Rubin interviewed both Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, as well as MANY of the other names I see posted by others here. He interviews people from different political, social, and economic philosophies. I even fund him on Patreon because his channel is great (and important).

 

If I had to pick three people that made the most dramatic impact on my life in terms of how I think, seek and evaluate evidence, and use reason, these people would be at the top. While the people on my list did not always agree on everything, I do believe that they are/were intellectually honest:

 

Thomas Sowell

• One of many interviews
  
  
• Basic Economics
  
  
• Black Rednecks and White Liberals - this book changed the way I think quite a bit
  
  Carl Sagan (Science-related things aside, he wrote a bit on Philosophy of thought)
  
  
• MUST WATCH - Great excerpt read by him in his book Pale Blue Dot
  
  
• The Demon-Haunted World
  
  Ayn Rand
  
  
• Interview with Mike Wallace
  
  
• The Fountainhead
  
  
• Read Atlas Shrugged after Fountainhead - this book honestly changed my life
  
  I hope that helps! :)

Anarcho-capitalism 101:

• For a New Liberty [full text] by Murray Rothbard
  
  Anarcho-capitalism: Books on Private Law
  
  
• The Machinery of Freedom [pdf] by David D. Friedman
  
  
• The Market for Liberty [pdf or audiobook] by Linda and Morris Tannehill
  
  
• Chaos Theory [amazon] by Robert P. Murphy
  
  
• The Production of Security [amazon] by Gustave De Molinari
  
  
• The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State [amazon] by Bruce L. Benson
  
  
• Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice [amazon] by Edward P. Stringham
  
  
• Healing Our World [pdf or audiobook] By Dr. Mary Ruwart (some chapters on private law)
  
  
• Complete Liberty [pdf or audiobook] By Wes Bertrand (some chapters on private law)

https://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies-Stronger/dp/1608193411

Pick up this book if you like reading, the economy, ethics, any combination of the former. In essence, the book says how greater equality makes societies stronger. In ALL aspects, culturally, mentally, AND economically. It basically discusses how with the ever increasing wage gape in our society, there has been a paralleled increasing inequality. And the moral implications, therefore, of an economic system should be to promote equality.

No, it is not a book that argues in favor of wealth distribution or any other sort of socialist undertones one may have take away from what I just described. The book is supported by decades of research and statistics that support a clear message: Inequality and the economy are indisputably and intricately linked. Improve one. Improve the other.

> Okay, but it'd be much worse under socialism. Men would not be able to opt out.

They are not really able to "opt out" at present. Unless you want to go live in shack in the woods. I don't see why socialism would make that issue better or worse.

>No society has ever actually been completely equal men will always be competing and hypergamy will always exist to select the winners.

About 97% of our history was spent in hunter-gatherer bands where the defining ethos was egalitarianism. More equal societies are simply far healthier by all indicators. Which makes sense, since that was how we evolved.

Less inequality = less hypergamy.

>This is the most socialistic than America has ever been in

Not by a long shot. The most socialistic period in American history was the 1950's: huge taxes on the rich, huge job programs for men, strong labor unions etc.

>At the turn of the 20th century, we were ruthlessly capitalistic and so women had to act better.

Women had to act better because they didn't yet have reliable birth control and because it was a pre-feminist society. However the average man had few rights. Most men lived as virtual slaves in company towns.

As been mentioned a few times in this thread, mutual-aid societies were a fantastic way for the lower-class to provide health care and insurance to one another. David Beito has written a a truly excellent history about them.

In addition, workers' co-ops based on free association provided livelihoods for 300,000 people in California during the Great Depression, only to be crowded out by the Works Progress Administration.

>So one of my core believes is all people should have as much freedom as possible. Part of freedom is keeping the product of your labor. When we tax income, we are taxing labor.

and what is the product of the labor of Wall Street traders?

what is the product of the labor of cigarette makers?

what is the product of the labor of a mining company whose runoff pollutes the river and kills the fish that people downstream depend on for their livelihood or survival?

should they be able to keep the product of their labor and be free?

this is why economists, after much reluctance, now study (in their parlance) externalities.

>I would argue that the best result is achieved when individuals making choices for themselves is the clearest route to "best result for society", where society really means the sum total desires of the individuals in society.

the term society is not interchangeable with the sum total of individuals' behavior. society is an emergent construct with emergent properties. for example: how do people who have less feel about those who have more (regardless of whether the rich people really do work harder, or whether they are lucky)? so the poor start killing the rich people. or the poor people rise up and overthrow the social structure, which might be detrimental to everyone temporarily, but good in the long run. that is an oversimplified argument, but the point is this: people live in a society, and how that society functions is not just a sum of how every individual behaves. so we need to analyze how successful a society is, and how it can achieve that. it is ultimately defined in terms of concrete outcomes for people, to be sure. but you can't understand the world around you if you just want to reduce everything to individuals.

this is likely connected to why you value freedom more than equality. that and your physiology, which determines which outcomes you value more than others.

I would argue that the way you feel isn't any less valid than they a lot of others around here feel, but ultimately it will lead to worse outcomes. driven in some sense by these externalities, and by very foreseeable outcomes like social discontent and environmental destruction. personally I don't want to see those worse outcomes. I think that more equality will lead to better outcomes. please read The Spirit Level because it has lots of data on how equality affects societal outcomes.

Just wanted to highlight the source at the bottom of the graph. The Spirit Level is an excellent book for those interested in reading about the myriad amount of social problems associated with increasing inequality.

What's even more interesting is that large amounts of inequality hurt all socio-economic classes, from those at the very bottom all the way to the top 1%. To quote from The Spirit Level:

>p.g. 84

>We also found that living in a more equal place benefited everybody, not just the poor. It's worth repeating that health disparities are not simply a contrast between the ill-health of the poor and the better health of everybody else. Instead, they run right across society so that even the reasonably well-off have shorter lives than the very rich. Likewise, the benefits of greater equality spread right across society, improving health for everyone - not just those at the bottom. In other words, at almost any level of income, it's better to live in a more equal place.

SERIOUSLY YOU CAN BUY IT ON AMAZON! 😂😂😂 THIS IS SO FREAKING FUNNY! 😂😂😂 I'M ACTUALLY CRYING RIGHT NOW 😂😂😂

No, but I think all politics junkies regardless of ideology should be very familiar with his arguments.

I'm honestly a little intimated when it comes to reading "Das Kapital" directly. I plan on reading these two books and follow the accompanying course by Prof. David Harvey.

A Companion to Marx's Capital Volume 1

> Based on his recent lectures, this current volume aims to bring this depth of learning to a broader audience, guiding first-time readers through a fascinating and deeply rewarding text. A Companion to Marx’s Capital offers fresh, original and sometimes critical interpretations of a book that changed the course of history and, as Harvey intimates, may do so again.

A Companion to Marx's Capital Volume 2

> Based on his recent lectures, and following the success of his companion to the first volume of Capital, Harvey turns his attention to Volume 2, aiming to bring his depth of learning to a broader audience, guiding first-time readers through a fascinating and hitherto neglected text. Whereas Volume 1 focuses on production, Volume 2 looks at how the circuits of capital, the buying and selling of goods, realize value.

> This is a must-read for everyone concerned to acquire a fuller understanding of Marx’s political economy.



The course:
http://davidharvey.org/reading-capital/

A few white Pastors I know are becoming more vocal and critical regarding POTUS and Friends, but in general I've found that while the conversation can be had, its next to impossible to actually change anyone's mind. Of course, we could just chalk it up to my poor persuasion skills.


It's truly tragic that the Republicans grabbed the 'God' theme. Sure, sure, we wanted to avoid the domino effect and wanted to unite the country, but hey, guess what? Jesus mentioned something about preaching to ALL nations, so I'd think that'd include communists and even countries labeled as an 'enemy'.


I'd also want to suggest that there are plenty of 'phony' Christians out there who are warping the image of "Christians voting for Trump", but I've met enough 'real' Christians who voted Trump. Something about economics and saving babies. It'd be nice if they read some literature, such as Basic Economics so that they'd actually have a basic understanding of the topic, and maybe even Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger so that they can better understand how well they truly have it (and might even stop griping about 'government handouts').


Despite the uphill battle, I'd encourage the conversation. Best case, they learn that Jesus wasn't a rich white man who bought off the Pharisees and only loved English-speaking peoples of pale complexion. Apologies for the minor rant, I'm somewhat annoyed with the world on this fine morning.

This is devolving and becoming unhelpful to everyone. Tediously citing sources for every opinion is not helpful and often overburdens a social platform such as reddit. I'll finish off my thoughts here, but will leave you the last word if you want it.

• I listed infrastructure -- which would include utilities -- for you. We agree on utilities.
  
• The budget (https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collection.action?collectionCode=BUDGET&browsePath=Fiscal+Year+2018&isCollapsed=false&leafLevelBrowse=false&isDocumentResults=true&ycord=0) is 4 trillion dollars. Of that, the following i have stated would cost precious little:
  
  

• Military - 574.5B
  
• Energy - 28B
  
• DOJ - 27.7B
  
• Transportation - 16.2B
  
• TOTAL: 646.4B
  
  So, you see, that would be 16% of our current 4T budget. This is what I meant by the term "precious little".
  
  You seem to value citing papers, studies, and even an online course. I'll list some here to support my earlier claims.
  
  
• https://mises.org/library/myth-efficient-government-service
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730
  
• https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ari-herzog/why-83-of-us-government-m_b_173617.html
  
  

The simple answer is that a better distribution is significantly less unequal than 1/10th = 50%+ of wealth.

There is a really large base of empirical data that shows a clear trend that more unequal societies have diminishing returns on aspects of quality of life for EVERYONE including the most wealthy and their lifespan (See: https://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies-Stronger/dp/1608193411 )

Inequality is associated less societal trust, empathy, effectiveness of social institutions and social services. Rich people in super unequal places have to spend money on security services and other things that rich people in places with well funded, distributed transport and social services etc. don't have to deal with.

>Would anybody who knows more than me be kind enough to summarise why fractional-reserve won't cause the end of the world?

The world itself won't end, because the Earth doesn't care about the shenanigans of "fractional reserve banking" just like it doesn't care about some street huckster tricking people out of money with a "shell-game" or "3-Card Monty". The sun will still rise and set, the waves will still crash and, the tides will still rise and fall, and the seasons will still change and then return again.

---

Now if you meant TEOTWAWKI (The end of the world as we know it) -- then, yes fractional reserve banking will inevitably "implode" and the "world" as experienced by human beings in civilized countries will dramatically change (possibly for the better, probably for the worse).

A couple of REALLY good works to read in this regard are: This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly and The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World.

And if you're up for a series of videos of WHY growth cannot continued unabated (and why the anomaly of the past one hundred years have seemed to been "exception") I would highly recommend you spend the time watching Physic's Professor Al Bartlett's FREE presentation on Arithmetic, Population and Energy. His presentation doesn't deal with "banking" per se, but rather what the meaning/consequence of say "5% annual growth" actually means in the real world (which reflects back upon a banking system that is built on the assumption that such growth is sustainable... forever. Hint: it most certainly is not). The presentation is entirely "free" from what anyone would call "tin-foil conspiracy" and deals with fundamentals of exponential growth of systems versus fixed resources. Again I highly recommend spend the time to you watch it.

---

BTW, as to the "evil bankers" -- certainly there are fraudulent individuals and con-men, always have been, always will be -- but the massive con operations are always a collusion of government interests and those in positions of government power with the "capabilities" that such con-men can provide for them. A good resource on understanding how this phenomenon has worked in the past is William K. Black's book on the S&L crisis from the 1980's: The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry.

---

Finally, if you then want a presentation that "combines" all of the above and applies (from one man's view) to the current situation, and the likely consequences he predicts for the coming decades, then Chris Martenson's Crash Course (also free online) may be of interest to you.

---

But remember... the sun will still rise ...and set, trees will still grow ...and die, the world itself will continue. (The question mark is around humanity and what will happen to our civilization. Best to be prepared for the worst.)

>What if student loans were based on the job prospects their college experience grants? Degrees that result in high degree-related employment would have more loan opportunities (chemical engineering, petroleum engineering, CS, etc), while those with low degree-related employment would have fewer loan opportunities (history, [random language], etc).

This would be the case in a free market. Banks would A) look at a highschool students grades to estimate the likelihood of a student graduating college, B) evaluate the like job outlook of the career the student is getting a degree in, and C) hand out degree's to jobs that will actually make it available for the student to pay the loan back in the future.

The current student loans are going through the same process that created the housing bubble. Replace housing loans with student loans, and FannieMae/FreddieMac with Sallie Mae, and you get the same result. Banks give out student loans because they can turn around and sell them to the government sponsored entity (GSE) Sally Mae.

In a truly free market, the bankers would provide loans to students that would likely pay them back, likely graduate, and likely have a job offer after school. It would be a self regulating system.

Read Tom Wood's Meltdown, and you'll see the similarities to the housing bubble/collapse I just described.

>Ah yes, the theory that profits belong to the worker

No, it's a theory that the ultimate source of profit lies in the asymmetry between the value that a worker adds to a product and the value of his wage. It's a descriptive, rather than normative, idea.

>financing, company good will, marketing, sales, product development, all of that just runs itself

Nobody here is claiming that those forms of labor "run themselves." Surplus value is extracted from all kinds of labor and laborers.

>shareholders decide its worth paying a CEO billions

Surplus value has nothing to do with CEOs in particular. It's the mechanism by which capital valorizes itself. Whether the management is being done by a petit-bourgeois owner, by a single manager, or by a team, is utterly irrelevant.

>wiki article that internet teenagers found fascinating

I'm not a teenager. And since Wikipedia is beneath you, here's the original, in HTML and print.

Huemer is the most persuasive to me currently, simply by defeating all rival statist positions so completely (and without requiring you to accept some universal moral system), but if you're coming from a monarchist perspective, I would be derelict in my duties not to emphatically recommend Hoppe's Democracy: The God That Failed. He positions enlightened absolute monarchism as a solution only 2nd best to his "natural order" private property system (market anarchism). His perspective on shortening time preference, degeneration of morals and ethics (decivilization), revisionist history, critiques of democracy, etc. as the western world moved from monarchy to democracy are recommended.

From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State is a great book that covers this in great detail. It's a history without much narrative, so it's a dry read, but I think that's for the best.

https://www.amazon.com/Mutual-Aid-Welfare-State-Fraternal/dp/0807848417

It outlines how, for example, Mutual Aid/Fraternal Order societies were able to contract with doctors for groups. A wage worker could afford a year's worth of preventative and non-emergency treatment care for from a week's to a month's worth of wages.

The American Medical Association formed and lobbied the state for protections, was succesful, this was the downfall of these societies over time and played a major role in pushing the idea of state regulated healthcare.

In my opinion this opened up a nightmare on the American populace that has lasted ever since.

I would like to add couple more titles nobody has mentioned yet, but also worth reading.

• Anarchy and Law by Edward P. Stringham
  
  
• There are couple of titles written by Stefan Molyneux you might find interesting.
  
  

1. Everyday Anarchy: The Freedom of Now
   
2. Practical Anarchy: The Freedom of the Future
   
   

• Libertarian Anarchy: Against the State by Gerard Casey

definitely, but the cycle of infinite growth in capitalism seems to be coming to an end. it seems pretty unlikely that developing countries now will ever reach UK standards of living

if you'd like to read more here are some good books:

The End of Growth - Adapting to Our New Economic Reality

The Limits to Growth

Debt: The First 5000 Years

Make sure to tell your friends a little to the north!

Yes, wealth inequality is a major issue and the thing we talk about a lot is that Congress has been the single biggest factor in increasing wealth inequality in the last 40 years http://www.amazon.com/Winner-Take-All-Politics-Washington-Richer-Turned/dp/1416588701

Because the wealthy purchase our politicians and influence their decisions, Congress acts as a vehicle to transfer wealth from middle and lower income American households to the top 0.01% who fund their elections.

We've got to stop that. By accepting no more than $540, I'm setting an example for how I believe our Congress should work. Fix the money problem, you will start to see improvements in the way Congress does business. Fix Congress: Save this nation.

> no, that would mean, there are market opportunities to improve something there

How so?

> That would be feudalism or maybe some sort of pure version of utilitarianism like Mill.

What I described is what many prominent right-libertarian thinkers, for [Rothbard] (https://mises.org/library/ballots-and-bullets) to [Mises.] (https://mises.org/library/mises-fascism-democracy-and-other-questions) Pretty much the entire [austrian school of economics really.] (https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Perspectives-Democratic/dp/0765808684) I can get you specific relevant quotes from any of the above if you need them.

I do agree with you though that a market completely free of government interference would rapidly turn into fuedalism, but that's not the baseline libertarian position.

Regarding the system you're describing, I would wager that the regulations you call for alone create a market that isn't truly free, but also where does the government obtain the funds to carry out this role? If it's through taxation then we're again drifting away from a free market and we bump into that taxation is theft bit too, if you believe in that. These not-for-profit government services as well, you're describing social services and or a public option, again, no longer a free market. Also, what's to stop especially rich companies from buying out the government and using these regulations and taxes that you're cool with for their benefit?

I mean, what you're describing is essentially just Keynesian social democracy.

> There is no social Darwinism here, govt ensures base survival and rights of people.

Social darwinism needn't be life or death, just a sorting of society through competition with the idea that the best folks would end up on top and the worst at the bottom, that the most innovative, intelligent, and productive companies will overtake the others. The wealth the CEOs of that company obtain is justified and right, and so is the poverty of those who go fail and go bankrupt. The market working as intended.

From an economics perspective:

• Basic Economics, Thomas Sowell
  
• The Road to Serfdom, F. A. Hayek
  
• Wealth of Nations
  
  From a social perspective:
  
  
• The Conscience of a Conservative, Barry Goldwater
  
• On Liberty, John Stuart Mill
  
• The Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
  
• The Undiscovered Self: The Dilemma of the Individual in Modern Society, Carl Jung
  
  From a moral perspective:
  
  
• Mere Christianity
  
• The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  
  There's many more than just these, and there's a lot of underlying philosophy that modern conservationism is based on. I'd also categorize these books as a basis for "intellectual conservatism" as opposed to say "cultural conservatism". Something to note is that little of the conservative mindset is focused on policy and politics, per se. There is instead a strong emphasis on personal action and collective culture, the value of morals, and a focus on introspection. So while these books will perhaps help you understand a conservative perspective better, they will not likely provide a good basis for engaging in political debate. For that maybe you want a book by Ben Shapiro or something.

Life got busy again and i lost track of what was happening in terms of books. You said you read Ron Paul's book, so i thought i might throw out some of the books i enjoyed.

Henry Dent

George Soros

Tom Wood & Ron Paul

They're outdated, but provided some good economic thought behind what has happened and their forecasts. Tom Wood's and Ron Paul's book was interesting, but i'm not sure how relevant it ever was. At best, it served as a warning. Don't get me wrong, i'm a fan of Ron Paul, but the system will never remove the Federal Reserve. Also looks like there's some updated editions out too.

I'm looking at new books as we speak.

Honestly.... I am in favor of capitalism.


However, I still think that a lot of things are better off socialized. Healthcare, education, law enforcement, roads, power, and other forms of infrastructure and necessary services should be tax funded and transparently operated.


The government should also prevent private industry from abusing citizens and the environment.


If that makes me a socialist, then paint my ass red.



.....


On a side note....


I think that automation of America's workforce is going to escalate very dramatically in the next 20 years. Millions of truck drivers, delivery workers, taxi and bus drivers – well... ANYONE in the transportation industry really – face a very real threat from the coming automation of vehicles. We'll also soon see restaurant workers replaced by touchscreen kiosks and robots. Retail workers too.


I'm not a Luddite or anything, but I think we're getting to the point where automation will significantly outpace the rate of new jobs created.


Eventually we're going to end up with an economy that requires very little human labor. Kind of like the way farming and manufacturing used to involve tons of human labor, and now requires very little... that will happen to more and more industries.


When this happens socialism may be necessary... how will capitalism survive when there's almost no work? How will people keep spending money?


The only solution seems to be forcing companies to redistribute profits back out to the consumer base... or outright public ownership of industry.


I'm hard pressed to find a better solution.


P.S.

Interesting read about automation and the future economy:

The Lights in the Tunnel

> 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.

>High leverage risky loans from bankers crippled our economy and we are still hurting.

If you're interested in understanding a different perspective on this particular subject, the book Meltdown by Thomas Woods is an excellent resource. I greatly enjoyed it, and I think you might as well.

>it almost sounds like you are in favor of anarchy, which I believe libertarianists don't desire

You might be surprised how many of us r/libertarians are anarcho-capitalists. Don't worry, we don't throw molotov cocktails. If you're interested in learning more, here's a good start on understanding the basic theory.

Why?

Because average is over

https://www.amazon.ca/Average-Over-Powering-America-Stagnation/dp/0525953736

The widening gap between rich and poor means dealing with one big, uncomfortable truth: If you’re not at the top, you’re at the bottom.

The global labor market is changing radically thanks to growth at the high end—and the low. About three quarters of the jobs created in the United States since the great recession pay only a bit more than minimum wage. Still, the United States has more millionaires and billionaires than any country ever, and we continue to mint them.


In this eye-opening book, renowned economist and bestselling author Tyler Cowen explains that phenomenon: High earners are taking ever more advantage of machine intelligence in data analysis and achieving ever-better results. Meanwhile, low earners who haven’t committed to learning, to making the most of new technologies, have poor prospects. Nearly every business sector relies less and less on manual labor, and this fact is forever changing the world of work and wages. A steady, secure life somewhere in the middle—average—is over.

With The Great Stagnation, Cowen explained why median wages stagnated over the last four decades; in Average Is Over he reveals the essential nature of the new economy, identifies the best path forward for workers and entrepreneurs, and provides readers with actionable advice to make the most of the new economic landscape. It is a challenging and sober must-read but ultimately exciting, good news. In debates about our nation’s economic future, it will be impossible to ignore.

That's a big myth, but it's only "capitalism all the way" if it benefits corporations -- things tend to get very pampered, protective and socialist if a regulation helps corporations. Great books on the subject: The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer, and Republic, Lost.

> Accept cash for an online social media service? Are you well in the head, mate?

Yes, you have a physical address do you not? Could even get a PO box.

>Bitcoin, the service which goverments are actively trying to contain and is super volatile. Yeah, sound investment, guy.

And which is still going strong and holding steady despite having the bubble (predictably) burst? yes, it is.

>But, if you are content with getting fucked over into being a serf willing to drink leadwater all so you can claim to believe in this fanciful idea which will literally never happen, I can't convince you. I can only laugh at you.

Yawn. Same tired argument that falls apart when you realize in a market economy where people are free to choose you need to provide the best service and everyone is uplifited.

Here's some reading material for ya

>You realize, thanks to the glut currently on the job market, you're talking about decades before the numbers shrink to the point that this would actually happen. There would still be plenty of grads coming out every year.

Better late than never.

>And otherwise, it's a symptom of having too many people for the work at hand. We're getting too good at automation, and we're running out of make-work for people.

We're already at that point with auto production. Auto unions fight to give jobs to union employees that can already be done by machines.

>Giving people an education is the only thing that will give them a chance to find decent work.

Giving people an education in areas that can not be replaced by machines, or an education in areas that create and maintain said machines, will give them a chance to find work.

This book would interest you. http://www.amazon.com/Lights-Tunnel-Automation-Accelerating-Technology/dp/1448659817?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254087521&sr=8-1

Hello all,

I am a college student interested in learning more about the financial markets and how they operate through either textbooks or regular books. I think having a very basic investing knowledge would be helpful, then moving onto the markets in and of themselves.

I specifically want to gain a greater understanding of how they interact with one another (U.S. markets with Chinese markets), how they became to be so developed and deep, and how everyday occurrences come to affect the market.

I have the following on my list to read:

• The Intelligent Investor.
  
  
• Boglehead's Guide to Investing.
  
  
• The Ascent of Money.
  
  Does anyone have other suggestions that are of an appropriate level? I am not worried by dullness.
  
  Thank you!

> If there is a point at which utility out weighs human rights (an extreme example: killing one person to save the planet), then the state could [possibly] be justified in terms of its effects- despite the fact that from a rights based perspective the actions of tax collector and extortionist are morally equal.

Yes, you are correct. And note that I am a Huemerian anarchist libertarian agreeing with you. Huemer would agree as well.

Huemer critiques the rights-based approach to defending libertarianism himself by giving examples of scenarios in which he (and most people) believes that committing rights-violations is justified due to consequentialist considerations. See, for example, this part of a talk he gave titled Defending Libertarianism: The Common Sense Approach (summarized in next paragraph):

The first scenario Huemer describes is one in which a hiker lost in the woods and on the verge of starvation stumbles upon a cabin and decides to break in and steal some food. Even though this is trespassing and theft (rights-violations) Huemer holds that it is morally permissible for the hiker to commit these rights-violations because the outcome (surviving) is sufficiently better than it otherwise would have been if the hiker hadn't committed any rights-violations (starving to death).

However, Huemer is not a pure consequentialist--that is, he does not think that it is permissible to violate rights anytime doing so is likely to lead to a better outcome. It wouldn't be permissible to pick-pocket you on the street under normal circumstances, for example, even if the thief vowed to give the money he stole from you to an effective charity. The general rule to determine when rights-violations are justified is something like the following: Rights-violations are only justified if they are very likely to result in a much better outcome. Typically this occurs when rights-violations are necessary to avoid a disastrous outcome (like breaking into a cabin to avoid starving to death, or borrowing someone's car without their permission to rush a friend with a life-threatening emergency to the hospital).

The reason why I added the word "possibly" to your statement ("the state could [possibly] be justified in terms of its effects") is thus because the state could possibly be justified to avoid an inevitably disastrous Hobbesian anarchist outcome, but it remains to be seen that society without a state would actually necessarily be sufficiently bad to justify a state.

In fact, not only does it remain to be seen that a society without a state would inevitably be sufficiently disastrous to justify the rights-violations all state must commit in order to exist as states (at the very least: taxation and outlawing of competing defense agencies), but there is a very strong case that an anarchist society need not be anywhere near this awful. Huemer devotes the second half of The Problem of Political Authority summarizing this case. While Huemer's arguments are sufficient in my view, there are even more convincing analyses demonstrating the work-ability of an anarcho-capitalist system (see, for example, Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice.

(Aside: How bad would the stateless outcome have to be to justify a state? you might wonder. Huemer has said, and I agree, that there's no need to come up with a precise answer (at least, no need to do so in order to answer the question of whether one should embrace anarchist libertarianism or not) since "We're nowhere close to the case where government would be justified".)

> What if there is no moral basis for the state apart from practicality?

Suppose for the sake of argument that an anarcho-capitalist society would be worse than society with a state, but not much worse. If this were the case, then the state would be justified under pure consequentialism (what I take you to mean by "practicality" above).

But, as I said previously, Huemer and I (and most people) aren't pure consequentialists. On the contrary, the "common sense" view (to use Huemer's terminology[1]) is that rights-violations are only justified when the consequences resulting from committing them are much better than the consequences that could be achieved without committing them.

So, under this much less controversial "common sense" view, since an anarcho-capitalist society would not be much worse than a society with a state, then a state would not be justified, i.e. we should adopt the anarchist position.

[1] From a footnote in Ch. 1 of The Problem of Political Authority. Huemer writes: "Herein, I use ‘common sense’ for what the great majority of people are inclined to accept, especially in my society and societies that readers of this book are likely to belong to."

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.

You may think it's common sense, but it's not all that accurate. When I get home i'lI edit in some books you should read.

EDIT:

Betrayal of the American Dream.

Winner Takes All.

The Price of Inequality This one in particular is great. It's written by Nodel Prize for Economics winner Joseph E. Stiglitz.

Reactionary Thought

Chartism – Thomas Carlyle
Latter-Day Pamphlets – Thomas Carlyle

The Bow of Ulysses – James Anthony Froude
Popular Government – Henry Summers Maine

Shooting Niagara – Carlyle
The Occasional Discourse – Carlyle
On Heroes, Hero Worship & the Heroic in History – Carlyle

The Handbook of Traditional Living – Raido
Men Among the Ruins – Julius Evola
Ride the Tiger – Julius Evola
Revolt Against the Modern World – Julius Evola

Reflections of a Russian Statesman – Konstantin Pobedonostsev
Popular Government – Henry Maine
Patriarcha (the Natural Power of Kings) – Sir Robert Filmer
Decline of the West – Oswald Spengler
Hour of Decision – Oswald Spengler
On Power – Jouvenel
Against Democracy and Equality – Tomislav Sunic
New Culture, New Right – Michael O’Meara
Why We Fight – Guillaume Faye
The Rising Tide of Color – Lothrop Stoddard
Liberty or Equality – Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
Democracy: The God that Failed – Hans-Hermann Hoppe

****

Economics

Economics in One Lesson – Henry Hazlitt
Basic Economics – Thomas Sowell
That Which is Seen and That Which is Not Seen – Frederic Bastiat***
Man, Economy, and State – Murray Rothbard
Human Action – Ludwig von Mises

****

​

That's great and all, but wouldn't it have been better if Gates had been taxed appropriately in the first place and then all citizens (at least theoretically, anyway) could have had a say in how that was allocated?

Relying on billionaires to allocate resources for public solutions seems more likely to just fund whatever billionaires care about, maybe not what is needed most, and definitely not toward anything which might pose a challenge to their status.

(Anand Giridharadas' Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World covers the subject quite well)

This is a really good (Free or donation) work on the huge changes coming due to technology.:

Amazon.com
The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future (Paperback or donation or free ebook)
Martin Ford

Donation or paperback: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1448659817

Free: http://ieet.org/archive/LIGHTSTUNNEL.PDF

I have one paperback copy of this book and I rarely buy physical books anymore. I just wanted to have a copy to have in my bathroom bookshelf for when friends are over. :)

I'll give you a reluctant upvote, because while I agree with every policy suggestion you have, we'd also do better as a society in most measures of well-being (polled happiness, crime rates, children's behavioral problems, drug addiction rates, mortality, etc.) if we merely enacted policy that sought to reduce the amount of economic inequality. There's growing evidence to support this... I'm reading about it right now in a book called The Spirit Level.

The easiest way to reduce economic inequality is to return to highly progressive taxation (like we used to have when we rebounded from the Great Depression), and to use the extra revenue to provide social services (including those you mentioned, like healthcare and education). My point is that adding the highly progressive taxation part improves the outcome.

I am never rude. I do press conservatives for answers supported by data. I was a former conservative from 1988 until about 2002. From that point I slowly evolved into who I am today: A working class citizen who digs into the data and supports a legislative agenda that supports the working class. By working class I refer to any and all citizens who earn their wealth through labor, not "rent seeking" (investments, real estate rents, copyrights, patents, inheritance, and so on)

>You really should look more into Marxist countries.

There are no Marxist countries. There are and have been totalitarian dictatorships run by individuals or groups with a deeply flawed concept of Marx.

> I’ve read Marxist philosophy and it’s no wonder why it leads to corruption and starvation.

I've read it as well and taken a college course on it and somehow missed that. Please explain.

> Try reading some threads on conservative subs at least.

I was a 20+ year subscriber to the National Review, charter listener to Rush Limbaugh, and subscribed to the Conservative Chronicles for about ten years.


I would recommend these to you:

Rigged:
How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer.

Download is FREE here

Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer--and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class

Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus at UMass Amherst and a visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York.

Other People's Money: The Real Business of Finance by John Kay

And of course, Piketty's book.

It's a pretty big tent. It's hard to point to one place.

There's a good community here in r/DarkEnlightenment. The learning curve for DE (AKA "neoreaction") is pretty steep, so perhaps a good place for the libertarian to start is From Mises to Carlyle.

There's also Hoppe. Many libertarians get skeptical about democracy and venture beyond libertarianism via him. Even Rothbard, in his later writings, started going in a somewhat Hoppean direction. Maybe try Democracy: The God That Failed. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn is another along these lines.

Bertrand de Jouvenel is another gateway drug. He's a classical liberal whose description of how power works utterly undermines classical liberal ideas of sociology and anthropology. Try his On Power, and then follow it up with The Patron Theory of Politics for a tour through the illiberal consequences of his ideas.

Jonathan Bowden was a great English intellectual who gave a series of lectures on various illiberal thinkers such as Heidegger, Evola, Carlyle, Spengler, Pound, Nietzsche, and even Marx and other socialist thinkers. He functions as a sort of TL;DR for the illiberal right, and so makes for a very good introduction. His lectures are engaging and can be found on Youtube, but probably the best of them is a Q&A he gave about his own views.

Thanks for your kind words. I started having these thoughts back in my early college days when I was majoring in econ. I found it odd how the theories I was being taught were so simple and clear, yet there was so much political disagreement. I thought, "Why is there so much argument over what to do when the answers are so obvious!?"

Then I started actually reading history and realized that things were not nearly so simple. That economics as it was taught to me is simplified and censored to the point of having almost no relationship to the real world. I eventually stumbled upon political economist Karl Polanyi's classic The Great Transformation and his concept of fictitious commodities, and that broke the dam/blew my mind.

Once I got into science, I found it very telling how all the economists and business people I had met were much more confident in their theories of the world than the chemists and biologists I was working with, despite the fact that the latter had much more solid empirical ground to stand on. That's the effect of ideology, I guess; you don't question it or even realize it is there.

If you are interested in these topics, I would recommend:

the aforementioned Polanyi book

Debt: the First 5,000 Years by David Graeber

The Origins of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama

This long academic paper by law professors Jon Hanson & David Yosifon

And some essays by Pierre Bourdieu, such as Social Scientists, Economic Science and the Social Movement and Neoliberalism, the Utopia (Becoming a Reality) of Unlimited Exploitation, which can be found in Sociology is a Martial Art

A quick Google or wikipedia search will reveal these authors' backgrounds and any possible biases they may have in your view. It is fun to see a founder of neoconservatism (Fukuyama) and an anarchist anthropologist who helped start Occupy Wall Street (Graeber) essentially agree on the total historical inaccuracy of modern economic thought and the corrosive impact of economics on the other social sciences.

Not specifically. It is sort of an unspoken assumption in much of the philosophy of law in anarchist circles, that we could produce a variety-tolerant legal society in which many types of law could co-exist peacefully.

The idea that there's only one right kind of law tends to lend support to the idea that law should be forced on people, and supports legal centralization.

Law as an asymptotic approach to social problem solving, however, suggests that the ideal legal means for a society would be competing legal entities that encourage rapid iteration and legal experimentation, all things that a decentralized-law society allow.

There's a book collection of essays called "Anarchy and the Law" by Stringham, perhaps you could start there.

[here](http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Marx/mrxCpA1.html#Part I, Chapter 1) is book one, and you can find book 2,3 on that site as well. there are also free audiobooks of Capital here. Happy reading and good luck!

Edit: you can find the hard copy on amazon but getting all 3 books are going to cost you around $40 + shipping, but you should be a good Marxist and read them online for free.

Not sarcastic! If you are interested in international finance, this book is super readable and goes through a lot of the history behind why we have currency, insurance, bonds, options, and all sorts of fun financial instruments. The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143116177/

Really like where your head is at - always pays to be skeptical as an entrepreneur. I'm bearish on bitcoin but I like to hang out here to see if there are any interesting projects or opportunities in the crypto space.

Have you read this book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005WTR4ZI/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title

It's a pretty good read, but shows some interesting data. I'm far from an economist, and I don't think that it prescribes a total loss of work in the near future, but I do think it makes a pretty good argument for things being a touch different this time around. It also show's that jobs have been steadily decreasing for some time now (more than even most people who peg it around '08).

While I don't know that the Dystopian outlook is the correct one, I'm not sure that I think things are going to be rosy unless we start having conversations (thankfully, much like this one).

Honestly it's a good quick read, and the one that got me to see things in a different light.

There may be some pointers here, even though I have not read it myself.

I suggest you take a loot at Wilkinson's work on inequality. Work is based on UN data, and also separate date from the US states. Trust is for instance something that is larger in equal societies. Health seems to be better also for rich people in equal societies.

One good direction into their (Kate Pickett and Richard G. Wilkinson) work is a book called The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger. Wilkinson has, however, held a TED talk, and also a 90 minute talk on the subject.

Their conclusion is that it matters, on so many levels. Then again, people on the right side of the isle disagree.

Fun Fact: The stereotypical Jewish association with money and wealth goes back to Medieval Europe, especially Italy because under old church law Christians were not allowed to charge interest to each other on loans.

This meant that for shipping expeditions, which would have to raise large amounts of capital to fund and outfit a trade expedition, could really only borrow from Jewish lenders. The Jewish lenders could charge interest and therefore be in a better position to accept risk that these voyages may not return with a profit (or even at all). This was true for other large ventures that required the raising of large sums of money but would not see a profit for some time as well.

Combine with this a general and long historical antisemitism in Europe, which drove Jews out of other professions, and you've got a recipe for creating a class of fairly wealthy Jewish money lenders which exist in a fairly segregated community.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ascentofmoney/lessons/you-can-take-that-to-the-bank/lesson-activities/?p=46

http://www.amazon.com/The-Ascent-Money-Financial-History/dp/0143116177

I don't find this argument very compelling - he basically just tries to form a link between progressive taxation and concepts that he assumes will elicit a favorable response from the listener (democracy and free market thinkers).

The first link is to democracy. Let's grant that progressive taxation and democracy go hand in hand. Even then, you'd still have to prove that democracy is inherently good. Which is difficult to do.

The second link is to free market thinkers. Even if we ignore the fact that he misrepresents the support of progressive taxation by free market thinkers, such support doesn't necessarily mean it's right. Just because Adam Smith or George W. Bush (really?!) spoke favorably of progressive taxation, we shouldn't take those ideas as truth. Heck, Smith and Ricardo believed in the labor theory of value, but that doesn't mean that we should too.

I'll keep it short, since I have other things to do.

1. As you should know if you read the links, the brochure is just a summarization, (made by third parties), of the detailed work contained in this book.
   
2. Meanwhile, your "real data" still says nothing that actually contradicts what I wrote.
   
   Edit:
   
   > ...so it makes no sense to say that the income equality is more beneficial than economic development.
   
   Again, that's not the assertion! I'll try to say it for the last time. The claim is that income equality is more beneficial than further economic development specifically for the rich countries. Notice the word "further". In other words: if we take the countries that are already rich, from now on they will benefit much more from increases in equality than increases in GDP. (The same is not true for poor countries. Poor countries still need both: more growth and more equality).

Is "income inequality" a new way of saying "poverty"? Because I believe poverty is a real issue and every election cycle I gripe that it's now been over 20 years since the topic of homelessness came up in a Presidential debate. But the term "income inequality" carries the connotation that incomes are supposed to be equal for everyone, and that's a lot harder idea to get behind.

> , but for Bernie to be posting about it now just shows his true colors.

White. :-)

There was a book originally published in the UK called "The Spirit Level", summing up 30 years of research into inequality and purporting to demonstrate the significant benefits to society when things are more equal. As soon as Bernie started running I expected The Spirit Level to be brought up again and again as it's really the defining work on the topic.

As the weeks wore on I was surprised to note Bernie never brought it up. I read Sanders interviews and again, not only no mention but no mention of any of the research covered in the book at all. It finally dawned on me... Oh my God, he's never even read the book! That's when I started looking into his background. I imagined he had been an economics professor in a tweed jacket for 30 years at some rural Vermont college before entering politics. Instead, I discovered he reached his political conclusions circa the age of 18 after being exposed to Marx in college and apparently never questioned or expanded on those early beliefs. I realized his conclusions were determined by ideology, not investigation. Even if he was right about anything, it was by accident (much the same as Trump). That's when I got on the anti-Sanders bandwagon, relatively early on.

> digging a trench, a roomba, a washing machine, a conveyor belt, an elevator...these more menial tasks are easily replaced by robots

Do you know why dog owners shouldn't have roombas? Ask anyone who has had dog shit spread all over the house by a roomba.

Simple TASKS have been automated, but many menial JOBS still evade automation. Like housekeepers and janitors. Read this book. It has a great description on the difficulties of automating the simple task of determining that those sunglasses shouldn't be there on the couch, let's put them over the table.

> this entire post's comment thread has convinced me that 99% of you have no idea what a lawyer does.

And your post has convinced me that you have no idea of what AI is. You only think automating the task of writing a will is harder than automating the task of seeing a pair of sunglasses on the couch because you've never written AI software.

Once we have perfected the software that finds all the nuances in a legal document we can start working on the software that finds all the misplaced objects in a household.

Ok. Insulin costs are high =/= why costs are higher?

Crony capitalism is why prices are high and getting higher. Competition helps with that. When the government create barriers to market entry, costs remain high and will grow higher.

Perhaps this book will help explain it to you. I would be happy to buy it for you if you would be so kind to put it on your Amazon wish list.

Voluntaryism at is finest.

cap·i·tal·ism

1. an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
   
   Yeah sounds like what I want. People voluntarily and spontaneously trading labor or capital for goods and services, unhindered by a coercive authority. A free market whose prices are reflected by consumers and production costs, uninterrupted by government protectionist policies, and so forth. It's obviously more complex.
   
   Here are some good books for ya. Read up.

David Harvey's notes on capital are really helpful and provide references to relevant texts by Marx and other theorists for understanding Capital. When I last checked, Harvey's notes were available for Capital vols. 1 and 2. The lectures are available via podcast (I like listening while I'm on the move) or they can be viewed on YouTube. These are free lectures so can't do much better for understanding Capital apart from the lack of interaction.

A copy of the book based on the lectures is also helpful. And there are also various sources other than Amazon for this (and other books)...

Besides Harvey, I find Prof. Ha-Joon Chang to be a great source of introductions to "other" schools of thought. The recent Economics User's Guide is a decent place to start for basic economics, but Bad Samaritans is great for challenging the hegemony of neoliberal approaches to developmental economics. These are both available in audiobook form so the information can be received as if by lecture.

On the other end of the spectrum from what /u/srilankan_in_london recommended (and I also recommend Freakonomics), a less versatile but more specific book that gives an interesting look at the history of financial economics is Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money. It won't go deep into economic theory like some of the other recommended reads here will, but it is an interesting overview and history of financial markets and monetary economics.

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)

I think working is an important experience, and I'm glad it brought positive things to you. Your post was an interesting read. But yeah, I was mainly referring to the macroeconomics of it.

In an ideal world with extremely low unemployment rates, it'd be excellent for everyone to at least have a small part-time job during their studies, if only for the experience of working 8 hours shifts and extra income. But right now, it's having an impact on everyone.

I'm from Quebec, where we had a major debate on rising tuition costs 2 years ago, and I was baffled to see a massive amount of low-wage workers screaming at the "entitled students" to suck it up and accept the higher tuition, and work their way like everyone else did. They never realized that the students would compete with them for low-wage jobs, and it'd make nearly everyone worse off.

Your comment on the respect for tradesmen is interesting, and I would direct you to Richard Wilkinson's TED Talk and even his book, which is absolutely a must-read for anyone ever I think, as far as social sciences go. Basically, the current research suggests that socioeconomic inequality increases tension between members of different classes/education levels and tends to push people to try really hard not to be associated with "lower classes". Conspicuous consumption and disdain for "lessers" are byproducts of that.

Finally, your comment on the negative impact on your grades I can 100% relate to. I've always been at the top of my classes without working very hard, while maintaining massive interest in the topic we saw (mainly urbanism and economics), and I saw how different the experience was for people around me who worked during their studies. I don't think my experience was different mostly because I'm smarter, but because I managed to make sure I had enough time and mental energy to actually spend it on what was important at the time; understanding my scientific field. The semesters when I worked while studying, I noticed I was less interested and way more stressed, so I learned a lot less. It's all about balance I guess.

https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-God-That-Failed-Perspectives/dp/0765808684

Bonus: why monarchy is better than democracy. I'm not really embarrassed to have this on my bookshelf, but I'm not exactly proud either.

The biggest weakness of libertarian ideologies is the understanding of history and historical contexts. In a bubble, many of the ideas are consistent and logical, and in most cases admirable. In reality they are a bunch of conservative talking points with no increase in actual freedom for most people.

Great post.

Highly recommended.

Is it possible that hierarchy itself causes massive social dysfunction? This was Bakunin's argument. He called it the "power principle." A similar argument is made in The Spirit Level.

Bakunin didn't reject the idea of hierarchy based on merit, but claimed that it should never be institutionalized. He and Kropotkin pointed out -- rightly -- that in "primitive" societies, hierarchies come and go. Someone is better at something? Great, let he or she take charge. But the moment that individual tries to hoard wealth or exercise power over others, we have a problem.

Reading the Manifesto of the Communist Party is highly recommended, but it glosses over things which at Marx's time were a living thing: The Paris Commune, for example. The memory was still fresh back then, that the French aristocracy denied Democracy with a bloodbath. There are subtleties a first reader cannot understand without a historical context.

The Defining moment for Marxism is Capital: Volume 1: A Critique of Political Economy by Karl Marx. You can also find it as PDF for free on Marxists Internet Archive.

If you are serious about reading Volume 1, you will need David Harvey's "A Companion to Marx's Capital". Also David Harvey has been teaching an introductory course on Marxism for the past 20 years at CUNY. He has released the videos of the lectures (playlist) . Harvey says so himself, by the way, but let me emphasize this myself: you have to stick with the book a bit. It is kinda typical British of its time: The problem is that the language is very, how do I describe it? Very late 19th Century, and even people back then had issues with it, cuz Marx basically invented the idea of critiquing economic systems.

If you want a small introduction to Marxism, Harvey's RSA talk on the "Crises of Capitalism" is very approachable, entertaining and very short (11 minutes long). Generally speaking anything by David Harvey is going to be extremely approachable, even to a reader with no previous engagement with Marxism or the Left.

Also, you can try Dr. Richard Wolff: Marxism 101: How Capitalism is Killing Itself . He is approachable, but he is definitely more academic. Nothing difficult, a term here and there; if you don't understand something write it down and look it up later. Also here is his talk on "Socialism For Dummies" (part1, part2)

By the way, Marx was one of the most prolific philosophers of the 19th century. You do not have to read everything he wrote.

If you want to see something more about modern Marxism thought, there is also the Slovenian Marxist philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek. You can give it a go with this one of his lectures. Here is his RSA lecture, very approachable and funny and serious at the same time.

Feel free to DM any questions!

PS: I suggest that you do not go to most of the Left subreddits with questions or hoping to learn anything. They are mostly identity politics and sectarian cancer. Props to Chapo Trap House: Bend those knees!

EditEdit: The Grundrisse is another seminal piece of work for Marx. I would recommend it after you have finished Volume I.

related, but not exactly on topic is Lights in the Tunnel by Martin Ford.

It talks about the soci-economic impact of automation and was the first book I read that gave a logical ( as opposed to rhetorical) need for UBI. Basically as we approach post-scarcity and technological unemployment, the need for stability demands some sort of welfare, and it'll increase in line with productivity gains as a result of automation.

Really fascinating look at the big picture that I recommend every time welfare gets brought up. He's got a followup called "rise of the robots" that came out last year as well.

Well it's not crazy at all of course...free market socialism worked very well in the U.S. before legal monopolies created profit incentives for insurance companies. Back then one day's wages could provide for an entire year of healthcare and it was entirely voluntary. Unlike state socialism which always presupposes all kinds of economic things, like that people are always working. More info in this book.

While not specifically talking about technology this blog post (and a lot of other topics on his blog) talk about the limits of growth from all different aspects. He also talks about how spreading out through the universe doesn't change these limits in growth which is part of your speed of light question.

I also just finished reading this 'book' which is kind of backwards but talks about how the innovation in tech is changing the economy, which in turn will ultimately change the growth in tech.

Interesting stuff.

>The reason we need a government is to regulate and control those who absolutely require it. If you did not figure that in 2008.

If you think greed and a lack of regulation caused the crash in 2008, you have not been paying attention.

The crash was caused BY government regulation.

Everyone is greedy. The whole point of capitalism is to channel greed into productive uses.

Government is the one that redirects it into disaster and gets in the way of the normal market forces that punish those who are not serving the greater good. Think about it:

The market reacts rationally to the dot-com slump by reducing spending to replenish savings (government also had a leading hand in the dot-com bubble but that's a separate discussion). Savings rates reached a 17-year high. Alan Greenspan decides that saving money is destructive because consumer spending supposedly drives economic prosperity and we need more consumer spending to get out of the dot-com slump. So he pushes interest rates down quarter after quarter. Government makes mortgage interest (a result of spending) a tax deduction while taxing interest on savings and capital gains, furthering the century-long goal of America's central economic planners of punishing savings and rewarding spending, which they wrongly view as the "engine" of economic growth. They ensure anyone trying to save dollars loses out via inflation, pushing even the more conservative savers and investors to jump back into the economy despite being uncomfortable with their capital levels. Fannie and Freddie make it possible for virtually ANYONE to get a home mortgage.

Who's irresponsible? The banks who make financial trades based on the government's rules, or the government who makes the crazy rules that are not based in reality and are ACTIVELY TARGETED at doing things that don't lead to a REAL healthy economy (like making sure investment comes from capital instead of debt, making sure overvalued assets are allowed to correct, allowing bad investors to lose their capital)?

The problem is you say you want "more" regulation -- you have to realize that Fannie, Freddie, Community Reinvestment Act, the FDIC, the Federal Reserve, these are ALL regulations. And if you think the problem is we didn't have ENOUGH regulations, I'm honestly afraid of what would have happened if we had any more regulations like those.

If you want to read a great book that challenges your view of who's fault the 2008 crash was, check out Tom Woods' very accessible book "Meltdown". Seriously, you'll thank me later.

A couple of professors at MIT certainly see the difference.

It's very simple though to see why this will be different. When machinese became more powerful than human labor, people retreated to jobs that required dexterity and intelligence and creativity. Well, now, AI and advanced machining have made machines dexterous enough to automate most fine repetitive tasks. So humans retreat to intelligence and creativity and jobs that require human interaction. What happens when a computer can match the power of a human mind? What's left for the humans to do but entertain each other - and probably not as well as an AI can.

Just read this:

http://jim.com/econ/

This is the famous "Economics in One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt. It is still the best introduction to economics that exists, and it's easy to understand.

If you're interested in more, you can try this:

http://www.amazon.com/Meltdown-Free-Market-Collapsed-Government-Bailouts/dp/1596985879

which is also easy to understand. Or this:

http://mises.org/books/mespm.pdf

which is a more systematic treatise.

• Economics in One Lesson, by Henry Hazlitt
  
  
• The Law, by Frederic Bastiat
  
  
• A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
  
  
• Human Action, by Ludwig von Mises
  
  
• The Ethics of Liberty, by Murray N. Rothbard
  
  
• The Free Market Reader: Essay in the Economics of Liberty, by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, ed.
  
  
• Capitalism and Freedom, by Milton Friedman
  
  
• Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
  
  
• The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith
  
  
• The Constitution of Liberty, by F. A. Hayek
  
  
• Basic Economics: A Citizens Guide to the Economy, by Thomas Sowell
  
  
• Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville
  
  
• Anthem, by Ayn Rand
  
  
• A Nation of Sheep, by Andrew P. Napolitano
  
  
• Meltdown, by Thomas E. Woods
  
  
• Liberalism, by Ludwig von Mises
  
  
• A Foreign Policy of Freedom, by Ron Paul
  
  
• Rules for Radicals, by Saul Salinsky
  
  
• Blowback, by Chalmers Johnson
  
  
• Liberty Defined, by Ron Paul
  
  
• With Liberty and Justice for Some, by Glenn Greenwald
  
  
• We Who Dared to Say No to War, by Murray Polner and Thomas E. Woods, Eds.

The Ascent of Money is a great primer on the evolution of our financial system. It's a fairly easy read and explains concepts like financial bubbles and the rise of insurance. Highly recommend.

By the way, for those interested in reading the original Limits to Growth, the Donella Meadows Institute released it free online this past June:

http://www.donellameadows.org/the-limits-to-growth-now-available-to-read-online/

I'd also strongly recommend reading LTG: The 30 Year Update.

Who better to explain these views than Schiff himself!

A great introduction and entertaining read is Peter Schiff's own How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes

This video is a good intro to what he's talking about

And at the risk of sounding like a complete shill: The Real Crash: America's Coming Bankruptcy

> Everyone needs broadband internet. Fiber is the future. It's infrastructure. Building better infrastructure now benefits everyone.

If they need it, then they'll choose to buy it. You mandating them buying it is useless. If they decide they don't need it, then you'll put a gun to their head and make them buy it. Why do you want to put guns to people's heads and force them to live their life like you? You build infrastructure because you need it, not because you want to spend money on infrastructure. You keep ignoring the costs. You realize buying and maintaining things costs money right? Why don't you own a 5,000sq ft house? It's better than the one you have now. According to you, everyone has to purchase a 5,000sq ft house as their next house. If they can't afford it, they'll just have to deal with their crappy house until they can afford the best house.

> Everyone needs high speed internet.

Have you spoken with everyone on the planet? Why aren't you demanding Nicaragua and Zimbabwe also adhere to your decree?

> And?

So you don't care if poor people can afford the basics of society. Got it.

> Why are you assuming that better internet connection won't improve their lives?

I'm not, but you are just assuming the opposite. Internet isn't free you know? People only pay for thing if they feel it's worth the price. Are you going to force the Amish to have internet? What will you do if they refuse?

> No that's just hoping that people down the road will be able to shoulder the slightly higher cost. This idea would better connect rural communities, make it easier for private or municipal ISPs to offer competitive service and save everyone money.

No, it's not. Buying new, more expensive roads funded by municipal debt is making future generations pay for it. Again, have you done the cost benefit analysis over the next 10 years for every community in America, or are you demanding that people do as you say because you feel like someone might benefit eventually? If people need internet and roads, they'll do it anyways, but if they don't roads AND internet, then you just forced them to waste money, or deal with shitty roads longer than they otherwise would have. You are ignoring the costs, and just hoping and assuming everyone will benefit.

​

Further reading if you're interested.

There's a great book called "race against the machine" on amazon for a few bucks:


http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-Machine-Accelerating-ebook/dp/B005WTR4ZI/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381504041&sr=1-1&keywords=race+against+the+machine


Well worth the $ and time for anybody interested in the topic.

To be fair, cepheus42 was recalling Ben Stein's run-in with Peter Schiff, not Shiller and Ben Stein wrote a pretty nice review for Peter Schiff's most recent upcoming book, The Real Crash:

>“Peter Schiff is an original thinker, a man of startling insight and honesty, in many ways, a genius. I have learned that you disagree with him at your peril. He is one of the few men of finance of whom I wish I could say I had paid more attention to. Live and learn. Read and learn.” -- Ben Stein; author, actor, political and economic commentator

I can't imagine many other political commentators doing that.

My god. That is the most delusional and disingenuous thought process I've heard in awhile. Do yourself a favor and read these fantastic books before you belief system destroys the United States of America: Capitalism and Freedom, Why Government Is the Problem and Basic Economics.

Bonus points I think you hit almost every liberal regurgitated talking points.

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

From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State written by David Beito

An article directly attempting to refute it is: The Conservative Myth of a Social Safety Net Built on Charity


> But there were a few major problems with these societies. The first was that they were regionally segregated and isolated.

^ This really isn't a problem. What works in Albuquerque, NM may not work for Providence, RI. (and any argument for consolidation is purely an argument for government control, and socialism in general)

> These forms of insurance didn't exist in places without dense cities, industry, or deep ethnic and immigrant communities. Even in states with large cities and thriving industries like California and New York, only 30 percent of workers had some sort of health-care coverage through fraternal methods. Moreover, the programs were fragmented and provided only partial insurance.

^ People had savings, a stronger family structure, and obviously didn't feel that complete medical coverage was economically feasible. Also, we don't know if this "30%" includes children, women, or immigrants - each has different reasons for not being a member of any aid society.

> Also, these were programs designed for working men—for the most part, they did not cover women. Health insurance contracts, for example, were explicit in not providing for coverage of pregnancy, childbirth, or child care (seen as women’s responsibilities at the time).

^ That was the medical standard at the time. I don't see how we cold expect different standards when everyone had children in their own homes with semi-professional midwives.

> The doctors the lodges hired were often seen as providing substandard care. And most of these societies had age limits.

^ Citation?

> Those over 45 were generally ruled out, and those that weren’t were charged higher rates. Those already in poor health were excluded through medical examinations. There were maximum and minimum limits on benefits, and as a result, long-term disability wasn't covered. As late as 1930, old-age benefits represented just 2.3 percent of social benefits given out by fraternal organizations.

^ It is very expensive to exceed these limits. I contend that basically none of the goods or services we interact with today has a price not affected by subsidy, tax, or regulatory burden. Also, consider the lives of people who lived past their mutual aid society's age limit. These people would have either a family with working children or a pension.

Then the Progressives came and forced workers to pay into programs that were set up to benefit them by people who would profit from the programs and politicians who would reap in the votes to keep the programs running. "...forcing employers to participate was fair because they would directly benefit from such coverage."

His 30+ books are all great (though not the most exciting of reads), but Conflict of Visions his a pretty good analysis of the conservative/libertarian viewpoint compared to its alternatives.

> largely due to deregulation

No. It's as much about regulation (where it benefits corporations) as it is about deregulation (again, where it benefits corporations). Well worth a read., as "free market" is a popular myth held up by those same 1 percent.

Quote cartoon: "Lacking government oversight"? Not to defend the tea party, but "big business" in the US is getting a LOT of government push, bail outs, financing. Have a look at the book "The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer".

Your labor vs. automation question is kind of a Luddite fallacy. But, the idea that a gap of skill in labor will increase over time is an interesting one. Read Tyler Cowen's Average Is Over for more on that.

As for basic income, that is how it would work. Welfare economics rests on taxing to pay for a benefit. By no means is basic income ideal, but it is a massive improvement over the current welfare system, so long as it acts a replacement and not an addition. Less waste on bureaucracy, and more benefit to the intended recipients of welfare policies.

Edit: Including a link to a podcast w/ Cowen about "average" http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/09/tyler_cowen_on.html

Sounds like you might be a libertarian-leaning conservative. (Old type, before the neo-con takeover.)

Some question you should ask yourself:

What is your definition of utility, and how can the worth of a utility be measured?

When is it moral for a government to do something that it is not moral for an individual to do? Why?

How do you know Democracy is the least bad system of government? There are good arguments against it. Some examples:
http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Monarchy-Natural/dp/0765808684
http://www.amazon.com/Notes-Democracy-H-L-Mencken/dp/0977378810/ref=pd_sim_b_8


Without answering some of those questions, and many others like them, if only for yourself, you will be working with assumptions that you aren't even aware of.

Have you read this book called "Race Against The Machine". It was written by these smart guys at MIT. They have determined the same thing. It is a good read: http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-The-Machine-ebook/dp/B005WTR4ZI
I have researched this topic for my master's thesis and all the data points to the rate at which this is happening as the issue and the problem. The pace is not comparable to what happened in the past. So you can't compare what is happening now to what has happened in the past. It is an interesting topic. Thanks for posting it.

The very short and simple answer is that the Federal Reverse is the primary cause of the boom-bust cycle that constantly plagues our economy. The cycle is also sometimes called the "business cycle", bubbles and busts, downturns etc.

The Federal Reserve is the reason we had a housing bubble in 2007 and a dotcom bubble in the early 2000s. It's also the reason we had the Great Depression!

The Federal Reserve causes the business cycle when it artificially lowers the interest rate below what it would have be on the market, which in turn sends the wrong signals to entrepreneurs and investors and causes them to make bad investments (i.e. "malinvestment"). That's a bare bones explanation. You can find more information at the links below. It's a very interesting topic.


A short and simple introduction on the cause of the business cycle: http://mises.org/daily/606

An entertaining speech on the topic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJzXEsmZP0w

This is a great book on the topic that explains the matter in a way that is very easy to understand: http://www.amazon.com/Meltdown-Free-Market-Collapsed-Government-Bailouts/dp/1596985879

A more advance explanation: http://mises.org/tradcycl/econdepr.asp

Daily reminder that Democracy != Freedom, and is not even technically necessary for freedom to exist.

It would be way too difficult and there's a very good chance you wouldn't come close to finishing it.

If you really have no background in economics whatsoever, the best introduction is Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics, assuming you don't want to buy an actual college textbook. It's a great combination of explaining the intuition of economic principles and illustrating them with numerous real world examples.

>didn't the events of the last 18 mos get anyone to understand that unfettered free-market capitalism isn't going to work either?

I hate to break it to you but we had nothing close to unfettered free-market capitalism, so that certainly is not the cause of our economic situation. We have a mixed economy.

If you're truly interested in the situation, I recommend this book.

Wilkinson & Pickett's The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger is written by two British social epidemiologists who talk about the social and individual effects of inequality globally based on international research, and it's wonderful. Here's a link if you're interested: http://www.amazon.com/The-Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies/dp/1608193411

> When there are 50 different state regulations good luck and if you're an international company it's even worse.

You know there are companies that currently do sell insurance across state lines, right?

> The point is the government should not be able to tell anyone where to buy medicine. It doesn't matter if it's because the Canadian people subsidize the industry or if in the case of cars the Japanese are more efficient. Government has no right to tell me where to buy products.

Yes, I agree that people should be able to buy cheap medicine by government enacted price controls. I wasn't disagreeing with you.

> I address preexisting conditions in the next comment where I will provide citations. People are priced out because government intervention through tax code. The only reason people have insurance through their employer is because of government intervention. No other insurance works like this, auto, flood, rental etc.

That's how it started. Now it works because it is a good way of pooling risk and is the only way many people with preexisting conditions can even get insurance. If people just bought it individually, there would be no way for these people to get into the risk pool.

> http://www.amazon.com/Mutual-Aid-Welfare-State-Fraternal/dp/0807848417/

Nice try David T. Beito. Trying to get me to buy your book. If you can find the relevant passage of that book that supports your claim, post that. Otherwise that is useless to me.

Fair enough. I don't disregard the possibility of ending up as blabbering idiot who got sidelined by corporate propaganda. That's why I want to live at least 50 more years - so that I'm able to witness how this all plays out.

My sources are mostly those around systemics science - the Limits to Growth people, and others. Mainly, this book, the follow up, and then some up-to-date doom & gloom. It looks like science, the numbers seem to add up as predicted, and it has bearded wise old guys -- so it must be correct, right? :)

To clear things up, preparing for the collapse does not interfere with doing one's own thing. If it all collapses, one who hath prepared, lives. If it doesn't collapse, one at least gets a bit more self-reliant. Or a nice hobby.

So far I've gotten the impression that this subreddit may not be the best place to discuss the topic of potential collapse. And I don't mind. Still, to discuss it further (elsewhere, if needed be), that's what I'd like to do.

) Yet i have to ask: why corporate propaganda? Here I was, thinking that corporations want us as obedient, mindless, debt-trapped 9-5 cubicle slaves (IMHO, it's not about the money; it's about control where money plays the role of the carrot on a stick). So if the corporate talking heads were to say all was gonna bite the dust, wouldn't they be contradicting their own agenda/message? 'cause in my perspective, if it all actually does collapse, the wage slave is the one who gets hit the hardest, oblivious to their own impending annihilation. Meanwhile, the rich are at it, building luxurious underground shelters...

You can read https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GTSJAJ4/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Only $2. The deceleration of independence is the example.

We have an example of limited government. It’s ours. You and people like you have and are changing that by confiscating lawful property to give to others whom you deem more worthy of it.

A working family has to move because they can’t afford rent. Just like how I would have to move if I can’t afford rent.

Some quality time with an economics books would serve you well. https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell-ebook/dp/B00L4FSSTA/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=basic+economics+thomas+sowell&qid=1563764131&s=gateway&sprefix=basic+economics&sr=8-1

Throwing out feel good platitudes doesn’t change 1. The constitution. 2. Basic laws of economics and 3. Human nature.


Everything you are railing against is from democracy driven decision making from local and state politicians and direct ballot initiative. You do realize this right? Limited government would allow someone who owns property to easily build housing that would lower prices. Now the grafters that make up government have to all get a cut or mandate certain “ideals” are meet that drive up the price considerably so that the poor and middle class can not afford to buy/rent.

The most complete explanation of his ideas is probably Das Kapital, but it has a well-deserved reputation for being particularly difficult to get into. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy also has some good insights into his thoughts while the later Critique of the Gotha Progra has more detail concerning what a communist society might actually look like. If you're looking for a secondary source, Karl Marx's Theory of History is excellent.

https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-God-That-Failed-Perspectives/dp/0765808684

Hans Hermann Hoppe is himself a market anarchist, but in this book he argues that democracy has fatal flaws which make it inferior to monarchy. A very short gist of his analysis is that an elected official in a democratic system has no incentive to maintain the longterm value of the country, since the official doesn't directly benefit from prudent, wise longterm policy. Rather, the overwhelming incentive is for politicians to milk the value of their power while they have it, and leave the mess for the next guy to sort out. So they buy votes by increasing pension guarantees or by creating subsidies which go into effect a few years down the line. The politician gets immediate credit, which translates into votes/support, while the bill may not come due in the form of higher taxes for many decades. Monarchy, on the other hand, allows for the ruling class to "own" the capital value of the country and to pass it on to their heirs, which gives them a much greater incentive to keep spending in check. If they destroy their economy, they only harm their own property in the long term. Historically, the 18th-19th century european monarchies were much better at maintaining balanced budgets than 20th century democracies have been.

Again, he isn't a monarchist. The point of the book is to highlight the flaws of democracy. The fact that all modernized nations carry massive debt and operate on keynesian economic principles is taken as evidence of the perverse incentives in democracy.

Not much in my area people are fond of the ones I have I could mostly do without. It has nothing to do with their life to find a real way towards freedom. But if you take some time to think about what was obviously going to happen any time soon, and for purposes of oppression. http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Transformation-Political-Economic/dp/080705643X. But I think socialism needs to be supported by a scientific consensus, simply on the basis of inequality.

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

http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Transformation-Political-Economic/dp/080705643X

I mean, I get how C-M-C and the like might be confusing (heck it is for me) but Capital has some great literary value just for the stories and aside's Marx uses to show how shitty and exploitative capitalism is. I mean, if the images he paints of the factories aren't enough (though I suppose Engels' condition of the working class is also good since he was actually there), then surely hearing it laid out how waged labour appears be be paid for its entire duration when in fact its not would be enough to piss anyone off.

Well, there's a lot of shit the government does, but it looks like you're most interested in the defense and regulation portions. Robert Murphy does very well on the topic and cleared it up for me when I was discovering anarcho-capitalism, but if you're looking for something to read on the topic, his book Chaos Theory is basically the same thing as the lecture.

The housing bubble was caused by The Federal Reserve lowering its interest rates, making easy money that made banks say "hey, we have more money to loan out to make money on," and by definition the only people to loan out to were those with the riskiest intentions: Building housing and hedging stocks. If I recall correctly, this is Tom Woods' lecture on the matter, and he also has a book on the matter.

SECTION | CONTENT

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Title | Thomas Sowell - A Conflict of Visions
Description | Thomas Sowell discusses the visions that account for the wide political gulf between conservatives and liberals. http://www.LibertyPen.com
Length | 0:09:43


SECTION | CONTENT

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Title | The Constrained Vision and the Unconstrained Vision
Description | In this video, I summarise the enduring relevance of Thomas Sowell's masterpiece A Conflict of Visions (1987) and explain some of its crucial insights into modern struggles between social justice warriors and their opponents. I also focus on his discussion F.A. Hayeck on social justice. You can get Sowell's book here: https://www.amazon.com/Conflict-Visions-Ideological-Political-Struggles/dp/0465002056
Length | 0:15:23






****

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As Hans-Hermann Hoppe hinted in his Democracy: The God That Failed, in monarchies the character of the leader can be good or bad, it is random and determined by sheer lucky; in dictatorships, the leader will come into scene because he is power hungry and generaly competent to conquer and maintain that power; but in democracies, on the other hand, the best liars and manipulators are the ones that tend to be consistenly elected, with no relation whatsoever to their competence and actual responsibility toward the country...

When I read that book perhaps a decade ago, Hoppe's ideas looked intelligent but mildly crazy. As the years passed, though, the book became ever more prophetic in retrospect...

Sad to see that noone seems to have mentioned "Limits to growth" yet. The book came out 40 years ago, and has shaped a lot of the important (but still nascent) discussions on sustainable development (which is what Hedges is getting at here). It was updated 10 years ago, and has been elaborated on in countless books, a recent, good one is "2052: a global forecast for the next 40 years" by "Limits to Growth co-author Jørgen Randers, who collects both analysis and possible solutions from several other scholars. Randers: http://www.amazon.com/2052-Global-Forecast-Forty-Years/dp/1603584218 Limits to growth: http://www.amazon.com/Limits-Growth-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/193149858X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341618252&sr=1-1&keywords=limits+to+growth

A pretty radical thing to say but a thing that must be said.

Democracy is the worst form of tyranny. It fools the mob into thinking it has the might of power, when in reality that power is most concentrated and unaccountable in a democracy.

Many libertarians have already theorized on why Monarchy is even a better form of governance than Democracy. For those interested in reading more check our: http://www.amazon.ca/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Monarchy-Natural/dp/0765808684

Great video Jeff! Keep them coming please!

The best, because you get a big of everything is: Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice

http://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-Law-Political-Economy-Choice/dp/1412805791

It includes the most importend parts of some of the books you (and others) have allready posted and it also includes debates between AnCaps and Minarchist. It includes a intellectual history of the idea und much more. It is really a 'all in one'.

(Part of) Book Description:
> Section I, "Theory of Private Property Anarchism," presents articles that criticize arguments for government law enforcement and discuss how the private sector can provide law.

> In Section II, "Debate," limited government libertarians argue with anarchist libertarians about the morality and viability of private-sector law enforcement.

> Section III, "History of Anarchist Thought," contains a sampling of both classic anarchist works and modern studies of the history of anarchist thought and societies.

> Section IV, "Historical Case Studies of Non-Government Law Enforcement," shows that the idea that markets can function without state coercion is an entirely viable concept. Anarchy and the Law is a comprehensive reader on anarchist libertarian thought that will be welcomed by students of government, political science, history, philosophy, law, economics, and the broader study of liberty.

The credit is due to Thomas Sowell. He says it many places. I came across it first in this book. This is a great book, as it spells out the assumptions about human nature one is required (at least subconsciously) to make to have certain political beliefs.

He appears on TV, which I don't watch, and in Youtube videos, which I watch four times a year. So I mostly don't care about him. However:

1. He likes Meltdown;
   
   
2. He appears on Freedom Watch, which I take as good by association; and
   
   
3. /r/obama seems to rabidly hate him.
   
   So I think he must have some other good points. You're welcome to post questions like "Hey Libertarians, Glenn Beck proposed/opposed X. What do you think about that?"

MIT professors Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee have a response:

http://www.ted.com/talks/erik_brynjolfsson_the_key_to_growth_race_em_with_em_the_machines?language=en

Basically, they suggest that we "race with the machines" instead of against them.

Effectively, what they mean is that individual humans and teams of humans need to harness the power of computing.

They suggest that human+computer is better than individual human or individual super computer alone.

Economist & blogger Tyler Cowen suggests the same thing in his book 'Average is Over'

http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-The-God-That-Failed-Economics/dp/0765808684

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CGGuZLjy1E

There are superior alternatives to democracy. Don't fall for the myth that "it's the best thing we've got".

I'm paraphrasing Bill Whittle (https://youtu.be/_dwz_Z62e0s) who in turn is paraphrasing Thomas Sowell (https://www.amazon.ca/Conflict-Visions-Ideological-Political-Struggles/dp/0465002056) so forgive my oversimplification.

If you hold to the following ideas:

1. That human behavior is infinitely malleable by means of social engineering (social constructionism)
   
2. You have a desire to bring about paradise on earth, free from greed, corruption, envy, inequality, and oppression
   
   You will find that during your pursuit of bringing about your Marxist utopia, inevitably some people will resist your noble goals, holding onto toxic ideas of the past. As long as these people remain, they will spread their traditionalist ideas, and you will never be able to pull out all of the weeds. You may find the most expedient means is to imprison these people and cut them off from spreading their backward-looking ideas. This may be horrible, but since your intentions are so noble, to make a perfect world, the ends justify the means.
   
   tldr: You can't make a Marxist omelette without cracking a few eggs.

You should look at the upward distribution going on in the USA. I recommend The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer.
It is largely accurate.

For convenience, here is the book list from Professor Casey, with links:

The Ethics of Liberty by Murray Rothbard (full text)

The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman (full text)

Anarchy and the Law by Edward Stringham (full text: http://anarcho-capitalist.org/wp-content/pdfs/Stringham%20(Edward%20P.)%20-%20Anarchy%20and%20the%20Law.pdf)

Radicals for Capitalism by Brian Doherty

Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy

The Message in the Bottle by Walker Percy

I suggest you do a little research yourself. Schiff is a spectacular talker and debator - he's probably better on camera than he is on paper. He's regularly on business/economic TV shows, he very often gives lectures, and he hosts the 2 hour "Peter Schiff Radio Show" 5 days a week.

That said, he has written 3 or 4 great books, detailing the reasons for previous crash (and future ones!), and how an economy grows and why it crashes, as well numerous articles that I'm sure won't take long to google.

His books:

Crash Proof

The Real Crash: America's Coming Bankruptcy

How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes


Btw, Schiff, being an American, focuses primarily on the US economy, but 90% of what he says can be applied directly to here in the UK. We are the United States little brother.

I like non-fiction that doesn't get too technical. I figure I'm reading to be generally informed on a topic and for entertainment- not studying for a course. So when an author manages to get to the meat of the matter while telling an interesting story I'm rather happy as I was with this one:

The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of our financial system, from its genesis in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals on what he calls Planet Finance. What's more, Ferguson reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history, arguing that the evolution of credit and debt was as important as any technological innovation in the rise of civilization. As Ferguson traces the crisis from ancient Egypt's Memphis to today's Chongqing, he offers bold and compelling new insights into the rise--and fall--of not just money but Western power as well.

Harvey's book on Capital is pretty good as well. Having read both simultaneously, I kind of wish I'd just read Harvey on Marx instead of reading Marx himself.

That's what happens when you have central banks destroying our currency.

There's a transfer of wealth from middle class/poor to wealthy. How? The money we use reflects our productivity. As they counterfeit our money (i.e. print out of thin air), our money loses value (since there are more of it chasing the same amount of goods).

So where does that stolen value goes to? Well, in order to artificially lower interest rates, central banks print money. Then they lend the money to banks at 0% who then lend it back to us at 5%. So as our money loses value, that lost value gets transferred (it is theft) to the banks.

I'm a hardcore capitalist but central banks and money printing are destroying our standards of living.

The best and easiest to read book on the subject is: Meltdown

He wrote a book on the subject as well: http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-The-Machine-Accelerating-ebook/dp/B005WTR4ZI

It was a good and quick read, I encourage anyone to get the Kindle version and read it on your kindle/iPhone on the way to work.

you should watch this video by Andrew McAfee or better yet, read the whole book on the topic Race Against the Machine. Intellectual labor automation is why we have suddenly had a problem. Automation of physical labor was the industrial revolution, that is to say, nothing new. The steady acceleration of the erosion of demand for every other kind of labor in addition to physical labor is the nature of the world we live in. What is more concerning is this decline in demand for labor is accelerating. And every time you come up with a new thing for people to do, I can assure you personally, that we roboticist can automate it cheaper and faster then you can re-train a workforce to perform that job sector. This is not hyperbole, the robotics and software that now exists can replace any job that is simple enough to train "most people" to do. And every tick of the Moores law curve makes my ability to provide those services faster and cheaper then before. There is absolutely no job sector that could employ most people that is safe from automation, seriously, none.

My suggestion is to push through these old ideas of scarcity based economics to a post scarcity society. I believe that distributed, open source manufacturing should be the most important development effort we all should be dedicating our efforts. My project is The Technocopia Plan, and if you see the same systemic problem that I am seeing, we can always use more help.

Mehring is a publishing company for cheap that offers Marxist and other Socialist books. I'd recommend any book (or books) from their Socialist Starter Bundle or their Marxist Theory bundle.

Interesting non-Marx essays to read are George Orwell's The Lion and the Unicorn and Einstein's Why Socialism?

If you do dig into Capital (I whole heartedly recommend it, but it is heavy reading) I'd bring along David Harvey's A Companion to Marx's Capital to help explain some of the more abstract parts, it helped for me.