Reddit mentions: The best economic history books

Here's a short rundown of some the various ways people can interact economically that might help you navigate various economic discourse:

-------Different kinds of "exchange": gift-exchange and market exchange:

Market-exchange is an exchange of alienable things between transactors who are in a state of reciprocal independence.

Noncommodity (gift) exchange is an exchange of inalienable things between transactors who are in a state of reciprocal dependence.

Market exchange establishes objective quantitative relationships (prices) between the objects transacted, while gift exchange establishes personal qualitative relationships between the subjects transacting.

Gift exchange differs from barter or market exchange because the value of the gifts is judged qualitatively, not quantitatively as in the case of commodities. Gift-exchange is based on ‘the capacity for actors (agents, subjects) to extract or elicit from others items that then become the object of their relationship’.

In his famous book Gifts and Commodities, Christopher A. Gregory (an economic anthropologist) suggests this is a general tendency.

Gift economies tend to personify objects. Commodity/market economies, do the opposite: they tend to treat human beings, or at least, aspects of human beings, like objects. The most obvious example is human labor: in modern economics we talk of “goods and services” as if human activity itself were something analogous to an object, which can be bought or sold in the same way as cheese, or tire-irons.

Gregory lays out a tidy set of oppositions. Gifts are transactions that are meant to create or effect “qualitative” relations between persons; they take place within a preexisting web of personal relations; therefore, even the objects involved have a tendency to take on the qualities of people.

Commodity exchange (market), on the other hand, is meant to establish a “quantitative” equivalence of value between objects; it should ideally be done quite impersonally; therefore, there is a tendency to treat even the human beings involved like things.

-------Some non-exchange: Demand-sharing, pooling, "everyday Communism":

It's similar to what David Graeber calls "everyday communism", which he defines as:

"An open-ended agreement between two groups, or even two individuals, to provide for the other; within which, even access to one another’s possessions followed the principle of ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’."

(‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’, the old communist formula, basically means if you have a need and I have the ability to meet that need, I do it.

Keeping count or reciprocating is very frowned upon in these sort of situations.

This sort of communism is quite common (even under capitalism), in families, between friends and there's a little of it in every non-hostile relationship.)

What characterizes a sharing context comparatively is that it extends the circle of people who can enjoy the good implicated in a resource, for instance accessing a certain resource such as water. In other words, sharing food or drink is an action done for its own sake, putting the good of nourishment in the place of any specific goals that may be derivative of the transfer of food items, for instance the attempt to create obligations for the future. In this understanding, sharing is not a manifestation of an altruistic move, putting the goals of others above one's own goals, but rather one of renouncing derivative goals altogether in the face of intrinsic goods—its intrinsic value if you will. In gift-giving contexts, by contrast, goals of various kinds (whether held jointly by the exchange partners or not, whether altruistic or egoistic) override the intrinsic good of whatever it is that is being provided.

It's important to distinguish exchange, which is usually for “external” and strategic benefits such as having a network of partners, creating obligations for the future, etc. (gift-exchange) or and more impersonal and violent benefits when it comes to market-exchange – from sharing that entails the intrinsic goods of receiving a share (sharing out) and of being accepted as a member of the community of humans with recognized needs (sharing in).

Unlike what the economic fundamentalists would have you believe, sharing is not governed by either ecological need and pressure nor a diffuse notion of generosity and altruism. The ethnographic record shows that sharing takes place not only under conditions of scarcity, and that it typically takes the form of demand sharing rather than apparently generous gift-giving. In fact, a number of cultural conditions have to be in place for sharing to work. Unlike the case of exchange systems, these conditions are not formally institutionalized normative systems but, instead, complex systems of habitual practice. In the ethnographic cases (including those in capitalist societies), sharing works because people have a shared history of mutual involvements as kin, because they master numerous ways of initiating sharing through implicature and other forms of talk, and finally because they recognize the presence of others as the (often silent) demand that it constitutes toward those who have and who are in a position to give.

Many acts of sharing took place, and continue to take place, because they are initiated by the taker and social strategies are in place that decouple giving from receiving. Sharing may therefore take place (as said before) without the provider enacting and expressing charity. Often it takes place in a way that downgrades the act of giving as part of leveling any potential attempts of the giver to take political advantage from his or her economically advantaged position. Demand sharing not only inverts the sequence of action but also the tone of the transaction that is known as “charitable giving.” There is no sharing without a demand. The demand need not be uttered, and it need not be the demand of a specific interlocutor since it is a demand for provisioning that emerges as a consequence of moral role relationships or as incurred by a particular situation of copresence, as I would prefer to call it. We need to recognize that one’s mere bodily presence, underlined by addressing the other person in particular ways, is always a demand for being acknowledged as a partner, a personal being with legitimate needs. An appropriate definition of demand sharing is therefore much broader than the use of explicit demands such as “Give me . . .” leading to the appropriation of what one may think one is entitled to. The explicitness of the demand may differ and it may be entirely implicit very much like a “silent demand”. Humans are sufficiently able to put themselves into the situation of others to be able to know what the intrinsic goods of shared objects are for fellow humans without any demand being uttered.

Sharing is generally characterized by the preparedness to suspend measuring objects against one another (which means that sharing does not necessarily entail that everyone gets the same) in that situation and by the unwillingness to hang on to something in a particular situation.

You can read more about this in Thomas Widlok's book "Anthropology and the Economy of Sharing": https://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-Economy-Sharing-Thomas-Widlok/dp/1138945552

​

If you're interested in reading about Libertarian Marxist theories of post-capitalism I recommend taking a look at:

The Beginning of History: Value Struggles and Global Capital by Massimo de Angelis.

Omnia Sunt Communia: On the Commons and the Transformation to Postcapitalism by Massimo de Angelis.

Crack Capitalism by John Holloway has the best take on abstract labor vs what he calls concrete doing.

Rupturing the Dialectic: The Struggle against Work, Money, and Financialization by Harry Cleaver has a very good analysis of the labor theory of value and the abolition of money.

> he's a Tuckerite. Completely false. Carson made it explicitly clear that his views did not change.




This is Completely false. Carson's views changed a lot after he incorporated into it the work of Elinor Ostrom on Commons, Michel Bauwens and P2P people, and some Autonomist Marxists.

He eclectically uses the work of anarchist-communists like Peter Kropotkin, Colin Ward, Paul Goodman and Ivan Illich.

He also uses the work of the (aforementioned) David Graeber.

He even incorporated some of the ideas of non-anarchist libertarian municipalist Murray Bookchin.

"Anarchist without adjectives" is a real historical school of thought, it's not just a word.


I must remind you that I said that he was "decent". I never said that he was right or that I agreed with him.

> You keep throwing this "disgusting" buzzwords around.

You're the one who's throwing buzzword.

You've repeated three times the bullshit myth about "voluntary exchange".

You whole ideology is based on old ahistorical and fictional stories about "markets" which you always speak about in abstract terms and never check to see or they work in reality, their history or their actual effects on people.

Other the simple fact that if you turn something like health into a commodity means that one's access to it is based on how much money one has instead of being based one one's need for it. That's already pretty disgusting and I haven't even mentioned the social effects markets have on people and their relations.

Markets as such, whether "free", "monopolized", blue or whatever are forms of impersonal domination.

(For their history, read the books mentioned above).

There are non-markets modalities we use that already exists ever under capitalism.

Here's a short summary of market and non-market forms:


Here's a little list of characteristics of 1.gift-exchange, 2.market-exchange 3. demand-sharing:

gift-exchange and market exchange:

Gift exchange differs from barter or market exchange because the value of the gifts is judged qualitatively, not quantitatively as in the case of commodities. Gift-exchange is based on ‘the capacity for actors (agents, subjects) to extract or elicit from others items that then become the object of their relationship’.

In the famous book Gifts and Commodities by Christopher A. Gregory (an economic anthropologist) suggests this is a general tendency.

Gift economies tend to personify objects. Commodity/market economies, do the opposite: they tend to treat human beings, or at least, aspects of human beings, like objects. The most obvious example is human labor: in modern economics we talk of “goods and services” as if human activity itself were something analogous to an object, which can be bought or sold in the same way as cheese, or tire-irons.

Gregory lays out a tidy set of oppositions. Gifts are transactions that are meant to create or effect “qualitative” relations between persons; they take place within a preexisting web of personal relations; therefore, even the objects involved have a tendency to take on the qualities of people.

Commodity exchange (market), on the other hand, is meant to establish a “quantitative” equivalence of value between objects; it should ideally be done quite impersonally; therefore, there is a tendency to treat even the human beings involved like things.

Demand-sharing:

It's similar to what David Graeber calls "everyday communism", which he defines as:

"An open-ended agreement between two groups, or even two individuals, to provide for the other; within which, even access to one another’s possessions followed the principle of ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’."

(‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’, the old communist formula, basically means if you have a need and I have the ability to meet that need, I do it.

Keeping count or reciprocating is very frowned upon in these sort of situations.

This sort of communism is quite common (even under capitalism), in families, between friends and there's a little of it in every non-hostile relationship.)

What characterizes a sharing context comparatively is that it extends the circle of people who can enjoy the good implicated in a resource, for instance accessing a certain resource such as water. In other words, sharing food or drink is an action done for its own sake, putting the good of nourishment in the place of any specific goals that may be derivative of the transfer of food items, for instance the attempt to create obligations for the future. In this understanding, sharing is not a manifestation of an altruistic move, putting the goals of others above one's own goals, but rather one of renouncing derivative goals altogether in the face of intrinsic goods—its intrinsic value if you will. In gift-giving contexts, by contrast, goals of various kinds (whether held jointly by the exchange partners or not, whether altruistic or egoistic) override the intrinsic good of whatever it is that is being provided.

It's important to distinguish exchange, which is usually for “external” and strategic benefits such as having a network of partners, creating obligations for the future, etc. (gift-exchange) or and more impersonal and violent benefits when it comes to market-exchange – from sharing that entails the intrinsic goods of receiving a share (sharing out) and of being accepted as a member of the community of humans with recognized needs (sharing in).

Unlike what the economic fundamentalists would have you believe, sharing is not governed by either ecological need and pressure nor a diffuse notion of generosity and altruism. The ethnographic record shows that sharing takes place not only under conditions of scarcity, and that it typically takes the form of demand sharing rather than apparently generous gift-giving. In fact, a number of cultural conditions have to be in place for sharing to work. Unlike the case of exchange systems, these conditions are not formally institutionalized normative systems but, instead, complex systems of habitual practice. In the ethnographic cases (including those in capitalist societies), sharing works because people have a shared history of mutual involvements as kin, because they master numerous ways of initiating sharing through implicature and other forms of talk, and finally because they recognize the presence of others as the (often silent) demand that it constitutes toward those who have and who are in a position to give.

Many acts of sharing took place, and continue to take place, because they are initiated by the taker and social strategies are in place that decouple giving from receiving. Sharing may therefore take place (as said before) without the provider enacting and expressing charity. Often it takes place in a way that downgrades the act of giving as part of leveling any potential attempts of the giver to take political advantage from his or her economically advantaged position. Demand sharing not only inverts the sequence of action but also the tone of the transaction that is known as “charitable giving.” There is no sharing without a demand. The demand need not be uttered, and it need not be the demand of a specific interlocutor since it is a demand for provisioning that emerges as a consequence of moral role relationships or as incurred by a particular situation of copresence, as I would prefer to call it. We need to recognize that one’s mere bodily presence, underlined by addressing the other person in particular ways, is always a demand for being acknowledged as a partner, a personal being with legitimate needs. An appropriate definition of demand sharing is therefore much broader than the use of explicit demands such as “Give me . . .” leading to the appropriation of what one may think one is entitled to. The explicitness of the demand may differ and it may be entirely implicit very much like a “silent demand”. Humans are sufficiently able to put themselves into the situation of others to be able to know what the intrinsic goods of shared objects are for fellow humans without any demand being uttered.

Sharing is generally characterized by the preparedness to suspend measuring objects against one another (which means that sharing does not necessarily entail that everyone gets the same) in that situation and by the unwillingness to hang on to something in a particular situation.

You can understand this better about this by reading Thomas Widlok's recent book "Anthropology and the Economy of Sharing":

https://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-Economy-Sharing-Thomas-Widlok/dp/1138945552

Hey eggshellmoudling! I'm at work so I can't pull up many references, but I'll see if I can help with some of your questions here.

First, the question of income inequality being a threat, and how it relates to redistribution. I definitely agree with your assessment of the last answer. It was more of a condonement of wealth redistribution than an explanation of the problem we (saying that as a libertarian, but I don't speak for all of us) have with calling income inequality a threat. In and of itself, wealth inequality is simply a consequence of how society is working. I think that a good argument could be made that inequality IS a threat in a system like we find ourselves in now, because money is so closely tied with power and rich people can use their money to influence the government and get richer. However, a small percentage of a population being incredibly rich isn't inherently bad. As long as they have come across their money in a fair (loaded word) way, as in without coercing or tricking people, they have given enough to society to merit having that amount of wealth. The only potential threat, which is a pretty minor one really, is that they don't spend their money responsibly. If, for example, they use their money to pay every person in the world to stop working, they would disrupt every market and people would starve to death. A more realistic example might be hoarding it in a place where it isn't effectively invested. If they are using the money to invest in other industries or employ people for tasks that add wealth to the system, which almost every rich person does, they aren't hurting anyone by simply being rich.
As far as redistribution goes, we believe that the current amount of inequality is heavily aided by things like redistribution of wealth and government regulations. For an example of that, say a really poor person finds out that they have a knack for orthodontics (not sure how they found that out :p) and that they could help a lot of people and make a ton of money practicing it. It wouldn't matter at all in today's system because they would be restricted by the barriers of entry to that field established by the government. Like I said before, you can argue that wealth inequality is bad right now, IMO, because the rich are so easily able to use their wealth to keep the poor poor through government coersion, which is unfair to the poor.


Second, how do we address the problem of a tiny minority controlling the wealth and allow people like you to thrive? I don't think you'll like my answer to this one, but please understand that I'm trying to be respectful and if anything comes off as rude or condescending I apologize. One way to think of wealth is as a big pool. Production adds wealth to the pool, and by adding to the pool people are allocated a certain portion of the pool. It might help to say this simple truth: there is only as much wealth in the world as is produced. That sounds simple but has huge implications. Mainly, it means that if everyone is doing the thing that they do most effectively, society as a whole benefits from a bigger pool. Now, back to your question. I have addressed the first part already, but when it comes to people that are trying hard but aren't getting a big enough portion of the pool, the fundamental reason (in a market society) is that they aren't contributing enough to earn a bigger portion. They are contributing less to the wealth of the world so they don't get as much wealth themselves. The ways to fix that are to either (1) grow the entire pool or (2) find a new way to gain more of the pool, thereby contributing to (1). That being said, I would be willing to bet that your situation is entirely different from that. For example, I highly doubt that you would feel maxed out on effort, talent, and luck if there weren't so many boundaries set up in society today.

I rambled a bit there but hopefully it was helpful. Let me know if you have questions about anything. If you are interested in why we (or at least I) believe that our system would be the best for every individual on average, I would highly recommend reading Economics In One Lesson or Capitalism and Freedom (this one is a little more difficult). They lay everything out very logically and had a huge impact on my belief system.

I would say in so far as one considers the overall question of who's interests are being served in the greater middle east, while clearly up until the 1960's or so, there was a favorable attitude towards Israel as a strong proxy in resistance to Communism , it could be seen as a secondary.

A fascinating book on neoconservative political though, Leo Strauss' "Thoughts on Machiavelli", pointed out that among what we would today identify as neoconservatives, they should endeavor to gain and keep literary and ideological influence in the US political structure.

Strauss makes a second major (although very obscurant) observation that given the Western penchant for representative government, if one really wants to lead, the "best" form of representative democracy is in fact totalitarian democracy, whereby people elect a leadership, but that leadership effectively has absolute power, during it's tenure.

Even a cursory reading of constitutional writings makes it pretty abundantly clear, this vision is not exactly what the founders had envisioned, and in fact can be seen as highly incompatible with the original intent of US constitutional processes.

Neoconservatives, however, during the later years of the 1960's (and this is a FASCINATING observation made by many early neoconservatives), especially after the 1967 days war and the attack on the USS Liberty, it became increasingly clear to Irving Krystol and others that polemic influence was rapidly declining as the "left" in the United States became increasingly difficult to gain reliable outputs from the political process ;Representative "Scoop" Jackson was being investigated for espionage, the Viet Nam anti-war movement was in full swing, and it was unclear the "left" would long remain uncritical of Israeli political/military positions, indefinitely)

So the notion to "switch" political affiliation started ,and astutely re-ordered itself slowly becoming rhetorically reflective of and ultimately part and parcel of the conservative movement - which was seen as far more capable of being managed rhetorically.

More painful to read was that what neoconservatism should do, first and foremost is decide what is wanted, and disregard the practical considerations , or reasons one might not want to do such a thing; this is a tragic element of neoconservatism since it encourages the political class to disregard the well being of any host society and perform at some political 'id' level of functioning - effectively giving philosophical sanction to sociopathy - that makes Ayn Rand look positively generative by comparison.

In this way we can attribute the decline of "realpolitik" to the political maneuverings and ascent of neoconservatism within the Reagan administration, ultimately consigning that political tradition to the last holders of those political views in the 1990's , (Schultz, Bush Sr, Scowcroft even Kissinger were marginalized)

Today we see this in the preposterous ideological stances of some Israeli leaders (Avi Lieberman for example) proposes that non-loyal Jews (and of course all Arabs/Sephardi) be required to take loyalty tests or be "relocated", how one fails or passes a loyalty test and when the disloyal Israeli citizen is relocated is not mentioned. More perverse is the notion of racial purity gangs sprouting up, that are not actively discouraged. That said, I'm not Israeli, these days, if they want to setup racial purity laws, or ethnically houseclean, it's not my concern, although history clearly shows that ultimately it does become our concern eventually (honestly, who in the US, wants to end up on the wrong side of another Apartheid argument).

In US politics, you get the notion of constant warfare, I dislike the polemic of Chomsky on this point but do find that there is a very strong element of don't ask whether it's in the interests of the United States, but rather ask whether it is in the interests of these ideologues and then push hard for whatever it is.

This operates in concert with the overall feeling of some in the US oriented political class that military might is the signature element of US power, rather than taking the traditional / historical view (Paul Kennedy makes this case in his excellent book "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" , that military power is a direct consequence of economic power, and that confusing the two / or failure to reconcile the relation has repeatedly lead to the self-destruction of more than one economic power in the past.

So it is for that reason , pretty much alone, that the United States, does very well for itself by constraining it's military expeditions to those which are strictly necessary and similarly keeping military and other social support expenditures well below our means if we mean to persist as a functional nation-state.

Zbigniew Brzezinski's "The Grand Chessboard" makes a grand statement about US presence and influence in the US, but does so in a surprisingly insightful way, it's an excellent counterpoint to alot of the geopolitical views that hold sway today, covering many of the same problems, but with a more US centered focus.

In recent readings, I think one of my favorite books on the subject was a short and easy read by Donald Kagan "On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace", or , both of which basically lays out the notion (although he NEVER states as much for obvious reasons), that US military dominance implies a duty to preserve US interests in the Eurasian sphere of influence, limiting the ascent of China and dominance of Russia.

Most of these positions are entirely counter to the positions taken historically in the US, and more disturbingly they are directly counter to the actions and policies of all of the major developed nations (Japan, Germany, England, France) which 40 years ago, made coherent energy ,infrastructure and industrial policies that slowly moved their nation-states away from oil, and the geopolitical instability of the Middle East.

More damningly I think this political worldview, rather abruptly disrupted, our educational system, both at the liberal arts and especially the scientific level;

There is a peculiar animus towards scientists who can counter the political views of absolutism, one of the best examples of this was very early on when Richard Perle got shut-down, from his hard-line and openly discredited idea that the Soviet Union was "breaking" US / USSR arms treaty conditions, here a knowledgeable expert destroyed Perle in a public forum, especially as the 1980's continued.

It was possible to see the vast efficiencies of computers and later communications (ultimately leading to the internet in later years), but these innovations are the legacy of the R&D and generous funding of the late 1950's and 1960's, today rather than innovate and engineer around the economic & resource constraints in our economy, we shuffle money around and hope someone else clever comes up with ideas.

Ultimately, however the sad tale ends up in the actions that warranted the removal from office of most of the political operatives and strong ideological advocates of neoconservativsm in the United States military / civilian establishment, in 2003-4, when FBI (CIA and DIA conducted similar investigations internally) all started to determine independently, that US interests, were not just being poorly served, but in fact were undermined, forcing the Bush administration to remove or allow to retire almost all of the major players, although , the damage was done, the US had overthrown the Iraqi leadership by this time.

In the run-up to the war in Iraq, and less successfully against Iran by stove-piping questionable information to the US administration, and in some cases there was evidence of at the very least questionable and arguably treasonous actions undertaken by some elements of the political/military administration under the Bush administration.

Personally, I found the investigation and continued influence of these guys totally disheartening, and it has made me very apathetic to continued US involvement in the Middle East whatsoever.

It seems simply far more logical , and in concert with our longer term interests, to just load up on static energy production - solar, thermal, wind , "cleaner" coal, and just do whatever is possible to maintain a small footprint in the region, and re-establish our governmental educational/industrial/military trajectory from - what - a generation ago?

uuugh - distant mirror was aaaaaawful. tuchman is so dry and boring. she drills down into more minutae than you can possibly handle. she did the same thing to ww1 in the guns of august. books like that make even a history buff like me cringe.

Leopolds ghost was good, but just watch the movie- I think seeing the severed hands and jungles visually makes a stronger impact.

Best book I have read lately is EASILY 1493.

http://www.amazon.com/1493-Uncovering-World-Columbus-Created/dp/0307278247

This 1 hour video by the author gives you a great start to what it is about. If you find the video interesting, the book is GREAT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bghLhJ-c8os

Its so good, I have PAID my relatives to read it because its not typically the type of book in their reading wheelhouse. They loved it. SUUUUPER interesting and very relevant to understanding our world to this very day.

THIS book is the best book oof any kind that I have ever read in my life. AMAZING, but quite long. It covers the whooooole of history from millions of years ago till 1900. That book changed my life. Watson has written some extrordinary books. Great, sophisticated writer.

http://www.amazon.com/Ideas-History-Thought-Invention-Freud/dp/0060935642

Both of these are more general history covering a longer period rather than more specifc as above

edit: guns germs and steel is good, but has a thesis that can be grasped easily with just a wiki article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel

the story, backround and color and other info in 1493 kinda overlaps guns germs, and treats it in a bit more of an interesting fashion. They are both kind of "why things are the way they are" books, which IMO is a super interesting topic

All these are my opinion, so take them with a grain of salt

The easy answer is "because that's where the Industrial Revolution happened".

But that's just pushing the question back a little bit. The next level is "Why did the Industrial Revolution happen in England?".

This is a very well-researched topic, and there are a couple of competing theories. I'm going to summarize one strain of research, which I personallyu know the best and find the most compelling: Greg Clark's theory that English primogeniture laws in the medieval period caused discount rates in England to decrease due to an increase in self-control capacity.

Needless to say, this is a fairly controversial theory.

*

Let's go back a bit to Clark's 2003 paper The Great Escape: The Industrial Revolution in Theory and in History. It concludes:

> The Industrial Revolution remains one of histories great mysteries. We have seen in this
survey that the attempts by economists to model this transition have been largely unsuccessful.
The first approach emphasizing an exogenous switch in property rights stemming from political
changes, despite its continuing popularity, fails in terms of the timing of political changes, and
their observed effects on the incentives for innovation. The second approach, which looks for a
shift between equilibria again fails because there is little sign of any major changes in the
underlying parameters of the economy which would lead to changed behavior by individuals.

> The most promising class of models are those based on endogenous growth. The problem here is
to find some kind of “driver” that is changing over time that will induce changes in productivity
growth rates. Previously these models seemed to face insuperable difficulties in that they find it
very hard to model the kind of one time upward shift in productivity growth rates that the
Industrial Revolution seemed to involve. But as we gather more information on the empirics of
the Industrial Revolution and the years before the discontinuity in TFP growth rates seems less
than has been imagined, and the transition between the old world of zero productivity growth
rates and the new world of rapid productivity growth much more gradual. This bodes well for
endogenous growth models.

Note that endogenous growth models are a fairly recent addition to our toolbox - primarily coming out of Paul Romer's work in the early 1990s.

Clark proposed a mechanism for this endogenous growth in Survival of the Richest: The Malhtusian mechanism in Pre-Industrial England.

Abstract**

> Fundamental to the Malthusian model of pre-industrial society is the assumption
that higher income increased reproductive success. Despite the seemingly inescapable logic of this model, its empirical support is weak. We examine the link
between income and net fertility using data from wills on reproductive success,
social status and income for England 1585–1638. We find that for this society,
close to a Malthusian equilibrium, wealth robustly predicted reproductive succapable logic of this model, its empirical support is weak. We examine the link
between income and net fertility using data from wills on reproductive success,
social status and income for England 1585–1638. We find that for this society,
close to a Malthusian equilibrium, wealth robustly predicted reproductive success. The richest testators left twice as many children as the poorest. Consequently, in this static economy, social mobility was predominantly downwards.
The result extends back to at least 1250 in England.

In his book A Farewell to Alms, Clark shows posits the following model:

• English law in the late medieval period made it easier for families to pass down inherited wealth.
  
• Consequently, families with more wealth were able to support larger families.
  
• Families that had lower discount rates (read: higher levels of self control) were more able to accumulate wealth.
  
• Higher levels of wealth and lower discount rates increased total investment.
  
• Higher investment levels leads to the Industrial Revolution.
  
  The data Clark presents is, in my opinion, quite convincing, and I haven't seen an effective refutation.
  
  While I think the institutional explanation is dominant within economics, it's worth noting that there are some adherent to a geographic explanation, such as the one Diamond explains in "Guns, Germs and Steel". It posits that the main driver of the English IR was geographic - England has more coal, and Europeans were in general more resistant to disease, which allowed for European expansion.

> They don't have permission to invade my headspace or take up storage in my meat.

That would directly conflict with the generally recognized (in the United States at least) freedom of speech. Keeping your headspace free of undesired ideas and thoughts would necessarily require others around you to only say things you deem acceptable.

> PS? Fuck property, It's a stupid fucking idea.

If I recall correctly from our conversation at the OccupyMN tent event you're an anarchist. This is where our two different form of anarchism certainly diverge as I believe in absolute property rights.

Societies sprout concepts of property rights when resource starts becoming scarce (scarce defined as a resource that can be depleted by the current technological capabilities of the society). An interesting historical example of this (but by no means the sole example) is look at American Indians. Before the introduction of the horse American Indians had very little recognition of property rights because none of the resources they relied upon were scarce (hard to make or acquire items were recognized property of specific individuals but that was about it). The techniques they had available to them for hunting buffalo for instance had too low of a yield to worry about wiping out entire herds.

After the introduction of the horse American Indian tribes started developing concepts of property rights. As the horses themselves were scarce they were kept and controlled by the recognized owner. Tribes also started marking off hunting land with stones containing the Tribe's symbol. The reason for marking off hunting territory was because the horse increase their capability to hunt buffalo. Increasing this ability had two side effects; many plains Indian tribes become more dependent on buffalo and they now had the ability to wipe out entire herds through hunting.

An excellent book on the subject is The Not So Wild, Wild West by Terry L. Anderson and Peter J. Hill.

Historically we can see property rights emerge is most societies at some point in the societies technological development. Oil is another resource that little thought was given to property rights until society started finding use for it (making it of value) and it became economically scarce. Interesting enough if we relied on property rights to trade for oil instead of using our military to take it there would be far less social strife in the world.

Usually when I bring up the fact I believe in absolute property rights I'm asked how can a large and influential corporation or individual be prevented from buying up all property and thus establishing itself as a de facto state. As corporations can't exist without a state that recognizes their limited liability I feel that question is self-answering when discussing a stateless society. Since the possibility of an individual grabbing up land is still a concern I will answer that question as I'm on the subject anyway.

Those who oppose property rights usually view the placing of ownership on an object as being an arbitrary act without justificable reason (basically people believe something only belongs to somebody because they claim it does). An opposing view to this, and one I subscribe to, is the idea that property rights are an extension of the self-ownership axiom (which states you own yourself). The only way to obtain property legitimately is by either homesteading or voluntary trade with a current owner.

Simply walking onto a piece of land and calling it yours does not make it yours. If that were the means of obtaining property (which is what our society uses as all land is declared as property of the government) I don't believe it would be accepted without the application of force. On the other hand the act of homesteading makes a logical argument for homesteading.

Homesteading is the act of mixing your labor with natural resources. For instance building a home on a piece of unowned property requires the expenditure of your labor on that land (you can also trade with somebody to build your home for you but again what you trade is a product of your labor at some point unless it was freely given to you). As you have expended a part of yourself on the land it is now an extension of yourself, it is mixed with you so to speak. Under such a system one could not simply stand on a piece of land and declare it theirs, they would have to expend labor on changing the land in some way.

And excellent writeup of this concept can be found in The Ethics of Liberty by Murray Rothbard.

> Do you think anyone would put up with this bullshit if someone DID NOT have a gun to their head?

Yes because property rights are mechanisms of conflict avoidance and ultimately are a system societies put into place when resources become scarce.

I don't believe what we recognize as property right in the United States today, where the government has claimed ownership over all, would be recognized without the use of force. But as most societies eventually develop some concept of property rights I can point to historical examples demonstrating the acceptance of such systems without a prerequisite of force.

Property rights are important for peacefully dividing scarce resources. Whether the rights of some of these resources become communal or individual can be debated but from my studies I find communal property rights generally don't work out well (tragedy of the commons is a common term for what often happens to communally owned property).

Property rights also become important because humans are, to an extent, territorial. If I build a home I don't want some schmuck coming by and spray painting graffiti on it, if I wanted graffiti on there I'd have either put it there myself or asked another to do it in my place. I also like keeping my stuff in good condition which is often difficult is others use said stuff. While I put great effort into maintaing my vehicle another person may simply drive the thing 10,000 miles without changing the oil. Without property rights I would have no way of ensuring my stuff stays in a satisfactory condition as others who don't have the same level of care are likely going to trash the truck. Since property rights are recognized on the truck I don't have to worry about this, were property rights not recognized it would be a point of great conflict.

Hey there. I'll give you a little summary of what I think most people on here will tell you in response to your questions.

Books: Blue Bottle ,Coffee Comprehensive and Uncommon Grounds are all good books to cover most of coffee and its processes.

This Capresso Infinity is considered a pretty decent burr grinder for the price. It will not do espresso but will be good enough for most other coffee brewing methods.

Getting a set up that is acceptable for "real" espresso is kind of expensive. A Gaggia classic is considered the bare minimum espresso machine for a "real" espresso. A Baratza Virtuoso is considered bare minimum for a decent espresso grinder. Now, you can (and many people do) find these items used, which obviously reduces the cost greatly. But depending on your area, finding these items up on craigslist or similar sites can be pretty rare.

I'm not from Rhode Island, but googling local roasters will provide some results. As for online ordering, tonx, blue bottle and stumptown are favorites around here for their price and quality. Beans are broken down on what region they came from, how they were processed and how dark they are roasted. Each region has different flavor profiles in their beans. African beans are known for being more fruity than other beans, for example. A little warning, most people on this subreddit believe Starbuck's espresso roast coffee to be too dark. However, many of Starbuck's light/Medium roast coffees have been reviewed as pretty decent. Most websites that sell the beans will list a flavor profile of the beans. The basic saying on this subreddit is that if you have crappy beans, no matter what, your coffee will be crappy. If you are going to overspend anywhere in the process, overspend on quality beans.

The espresso machines that you will be using at starbucks are machines that will basically produce espresso at the push of a button. They will grind, tamp and extract the espresso without any input from you. You should just know right off the bat that there is a whole other world to espresso making that is the exact opposite, with people grinding the beans to the right size, tamping by hand, and extracting shots with a lever that controls pressure. Neither way is right or wrong, you should just know that there are many different types of espresso machines and baristas.

I'll share a little bit of advise, take from it what you will. I was an ambitious college student coffee drinker just like you. I asked for a Breville espresso machine as my first real coffee making device (even before a grinder, how silly of me). I just wanted an espresso machine because that was all I was getting from these coffee shops. Since then I've gotten a nice grinder, a melitta pour over, french press, gooseneck kettle, aeropress, V60, moka pot, and chemex. I'm ashamed to admit that I haven't turned on my espresso machine in over a year. There is so much more to coffee than espresso. There are so many methods to brew coffee that are cheaper, more complex and more interesting. If I had a chance to do it all over again, I'd buy the burr grinder I linked, and an Aeropress or any french press (Starbucks sells some pretty nice ones. You could get one with an employee discount) and just learn to love coffee on its own, without frothed milk and flavorings.

There is a ton of info on this subreddit if you stick around for awhile. Questions like yours are posted all the time and answered by very knowledgable people. Your enthusiasm for coffee is extremely exciting to see. Please don't let any of my advise subtract from your enthusiasm. Everyone takes a different path while exploring coffee. That's part of the excitement. You will learn a lot at Starbucks and you will learn a lot if you stay here. Enjoy your stay.

Nicky Case of Evolution of Trust has another explorable, this time on Crowds.

I found the sandbox element less fun and insight-inducing in Crowds, but it feels like there is a lot of potential here. I would be interested in adding a kind of RTS element, where the nodes output resources based on contagious traits. Even the ability to play with thresholds and tie strength would be nice.

> A quick response to James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds
First off, I'm not dissing this book. It's a good book, and Surowiecki was trying to tackle the same question I am: “why do some crowds turn to madness, or wisdom?”

> Surowiecki's answer: crowds make good decisions when everybody is as independent as possible. He gives the story of a county fair, where the townsfolk were invited to guess the weight of an ox. Surprisingly, the average of all their guesses was better than any one guess. But, here's the rub: the people have to guess independently of each other. Otherwise, they'd be influenced by earlier incorrect guesses, and the average answer would be highly skewed.

> But... I don't think "make everyone as independent as possible" is the full answer. Even geniuses, who we mischaracterize as the most independent thinkers, are deeply influenced by others. As Sir Isaac Newton said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the sholders of Giants.”

> So, which idea is correct? Does wisdom come from thinking for yourself, or thinking with others? The answer is: "yes".

> So that's what I'll try to explain in this explorable explanation: how to get that sweet spot between independence and interdependence — that is, how to get a wise crowd.

Slide 3c paints Case as prosocial consequentialist: sever friendships to encourage self-sacrifice.

While this is an informative article, I feel like it should have touched on other key questions.

It would have been nice to see something mentioned about the viability of charity programs in the short vs. long term. Or how much more is received by direct recipients of private charities when contributions are received versus state welfare programs. Something about private spending on charity as a percent of GDP over time. As well as something about the impact on savings rates on direct aid, and the impact of state welfare programs on being able to give and receive aid; or the impact on poverty that welfare programs have had, which is an important figure for any debate on the merits of private charity.

>The public post office helped unite the national civil society Alexis de Tocqueville found and celebrated in his travels throughout the United States. From tariff walls to the continental railroad system to the educated workforce coming out of land-grant schools, the budding industrial power of the United States was always joined with the growth of the government. The government played a major role throughout the nineteenth century in providing disaster relief in the aftermath of fires, floods, storms, droughts, famine, and more.

This is an over-simplification of a complex historical period. Lysander Spooner(a libertarian anarchist) actually made his own successful and profitable post office company in response to the slow public office and was shut down by the government. The government enacted a law in 1851 that barred competition from challenging the authority of the post office for a period of time

And what about the story of James. J Hill who built the Great Northern Railroad: "without any government aid, even the right of way, through hundreds of miles of public lands, being paid for in cash" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_Railway_(U.S.)#cite_ref-9]

While railroad subsidies went a long way in building the US, the success that came out of this is overrated to some extent:

>While it has been long-assumed that the West coast benefited immensely from the transcontinentals that connected the West coast to eastern markets, in fact the overland railroads made little difference. The West coast already had its own economy founded on exports to Europe and Asia, and Californians and Oregonians obtained all the goods they needed by sea. Indeed, for years after their completion, the railroads of the West coast were unable to effectively compete with the steamship operators (many of them also subsidized by Congress) that provided cheaper transportation of goods. Naturally then, this situation degenerated into a political competition between railroads and steamship companies seeking more favorable treatment from the federal government.

>In general, however, the economy of the West coast turned to the more efficient and more competitive sea carriers. By the 1860s, the sea carriers were already taking advantage of well-developed trade with the Panama Railroad across Central America, completed in 1855, that was providing true transcontinental shipping at a much lower price over a much shorter overland route.

>In spite of massive subsidies and free lands equal in size to New England, the lack of overland trade made it difficult for the railroads to turn a profit, and after a series of bankruptcies, bailouts, and other schemes, railroad owners like Leland Stanford, Thomas Durant, and Jay Gould managed to make a lot of money manipulating federal largesse, but many others, including families and ranchers who followed the flood of money and capital west during the boom, but who found themselves as paupers on the western plains after the bust, were ruined by the railroad’s bubble economy.

On the Union Pacific

>Yet even during the 1870s and 80s, when it became apparent to many that the railroads were a gargantuan waste of money, and most of the railroad companies were in bankruptcy, the railroad’s supporters claimed that it had all been a great idea because, although the railroads were bankrupt, the railroads themselves were still there, and were now presumed to be an immutable part of the landscape forever available for future Americans. Even that argument held no water, of course, because it turns out that railroads require an enormous amount of upkeep and maintenance. This was especially true of the first transcontinentals which were poorly and cheaply constructed, and which required rebuilding in many places. The railroads were in fact huge white elephants that in many cases could only be maintained with cheap government financing and other forms of corporate welfare.

As for disaster relief, here's an interesting story:

>"Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions, constantly form associations. ... Wherever, at the head of some new undertaking, you see the government in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association."

>A notable example occured in 1871 when a fire tore through Chicago leaving 300,000 of its citizens without housing, basic necessities or work. Mayor Roswell B. Mason took measures to keep peace in the city both economically and socially. Donations poured in from around the country to the city, but the mayor did not place the city in charge of these funds. Rather he gave control of the relief effort over to the Chicago Relief and Aid Society, a private charity organization. Within two weeks Mayor Mason declared that work was available to almost everyone including the boys in the city and that aid was only to be given to those who were incapable of taking care of themselves.

***

>Business risk management through the law was crucial in building out this nineteenth-century capitalist economy. The limited liability corporation, for instance, allowed for a massive expansion of passive investments, which provided necessary working capital for business. Charles William Eliot, the president of Harvard University, called this “the most effective legal invention for business purposes made in the nineteenth century.” Bankruptcy laws were introduced in the wake of nineteenth-century economic crises to allocate losses and help the economy move forward.

According to Wiki the first LLC came about in the 1970s. It seems much of the history of bankruptcy laws began in the 20th century, and only voluntary acts existed beforehand with the exception of an act in 1898

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

Not exactly true, to quote some paragraphs talking about David Beito's book:

>"Mutual aid was particularly popular among the poor and the working class. For instance, in New York City in 1909 40 percent of families earning less than $1,000 a year, little more than the "living wage," had members who were in mutual-aid societies.[2] Ethnicity, however, was an even greater predictor of mutual-aid membership than income. The "new immigrants," such as the Germans, Bohemians, and Russians, many of whom were Jews, participated in mutual-aid societies at approximately twice the rate of native whites and six times the rate of the Irish.[3] This may have been due to new immigrants' need for an enhanced social safety net."

>By the 1920s, at least one out of every three males was a member of a mutual-aid society.[4] Members of societies carried over $9 billion worth of life insurance by 1920. During the same period, "lodges dominated the field of health insurance."[5] Numerous lodges offered unemployment benefits. Some black fraternal lodges, taking note of the sporadic nature of African-American employment at the time, allowed members to receive unemployment benefits even if they were up to six months behind in dues"**

I do like Basic Economics a lot, but it's Chicago School, not Austrian. Sowell tends to focus everything around allocation of scarce resources, and through that lens come to a lot of the same conclusions as Austrians, but for different reasons. That was the book I started with when I began my search to figure out how an economy works (well, not including when I took AP Microeconomics 15 years ago), but I was eventually won over by the Austrians (who I initially resisted). If you would like an Austrian view on monetary systems to supplement your research, the Mises Institute has a lot of resources available for free, such as Rothbard's What Has Government Done to Our Money?. But, instead of focusing on what the possibilities are under a fiat currency as the MMTs do, it argues that the system is entirely perverse. It was written before MMT was a thing though, so if you'd like to hear a lecture on the Austrian view of money against the MMT view, Mises U had a good video on it. Granted, this was my intro to MMT (and it obviously favors the Austrian view), but I looked into it more afterward from the people pushing it, and I thought that lecture was fair. I am fascinated by the MMT view, but I think that looking as money as being exempt from the laws of supply and demand is hazardous at best and reckless at worst. As far as I can tell, it completely ignores or devalues saving, which isn't exactly new as the Keynesians have been doing that for nearly a century. Peter Schiff's How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes actually does a magnificent job of illustrating the importance of saving, although the allegory slightly obfuscates the concept for the sake of grasp-ability by replacing gold with fish. It's easy to illustrate the value of saving when doubling your output of fish caught reduces the amount of time you have to spend producing food in half. It's also easy to see that having a bunch of fish stored up means that society has saved more than it's consumed. Having a build up of savings in real money like gold merely indicates that a society is producing more than it is consuming, but it's not as clearly visible.

What MMT book are you reading? I wouldn't mind delving into the school more. Btw, if you want the Austrian equivalent of Sowell's Basic Economics, that'd be Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson. It was written a long time ago, so the issues of the day have changed, but a lot of is still extremely relevant (and it's interesting to see him forecast things like our modern healthcare crisis). This is roughly the intro to that book if you want a preview.

The word (I think) you want is "Nonhierarchical."

In political science we call this sort of focus on organizational hierarchy "structuralism" however "neo-institutionalism" (which is not mutually exclusive) also discusses a lot of relevant concepts.

And organization (including governments) requires hierarchy of some sort essentially by definition.

That said, some hierarchies, especially those within government, diffuse decision making at the top. For example, a commission has 3 or more commissioners who vote on the final executive decisions of their agency. The Michigan Public Service Commission, for example, has three commissioners, who together make decisions about the regulation of the states regional monopolies (electricity/gas, auto carrier, cell phones, etc...). Another example of shared power, some city governments have a "weak mayoral" system where the mayor is simply chosen by the city-council from the city-council and who only has weak agenda setting powers and little to no independent executive capacity. That said, in many weak mayoral systems the city-council hires a city-manager who reports to them. Is that a pyramid, in your estimation?

Not all hierarchies are designed like a pyramid. Is a public traded companies hierarchically shaped like a pyramid? Not really. It has a CEO but, s/he answers to a board of shareholders where the residual interest and decision making power is highly diffuse. Coase argues that these sorts of imperfect pyramid shaped structures are far less efficient than pure single-manager hierarchies where only the "CEO" has a right to the residual interest of the organization (the profits/rewards/or ills). Coase, and others from the Chicago school tradition (like North), that same article the non-profits and (democratic) government must be extremely inefficient because of the extreme diffusion of power/residual interest.

Not even all hierarchies have a clear and narrowing path to the top. The hierarchies of some high-risk agencies (like-NASA), for example, employ a matrix hierarchy which creates more "veto points" (making it easier to avert disaster) but at increased personnel costs and greater ambiguity regarding the chain of command.

Elinor Ostrom however argues that extreme diffusion of power within the decision making environment can work really effectively to manage common pool resources. However, Ostrom only found that the common pool resource was only successfully managed in this way by really small groups where essentially everyone in the group owned a residual interest and everyone had near perfect information about the behavior of the other group members AND could effectively punish members who shirked their responsibility. These are really impossibly hard criteria to achieve in most situations. That said Ostrom also doesn't dismiss the possibility of some sort of leader existing in that scenario.

-----------

I think Miller's Managerial Dilemmas is a good first read which describes the importance of hierarchy on outcomes.

Hammond has a bunch of research on the impact of structures (hierarchy) in government too.

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Your question was really short and could be interpreted in lots of ways so I kind of took the shotgun approach here. Hope it was useful anyway.

Lots of great recommendations in this thread; I've added a few to my reading list. Here are my suggestions (copied from a previous thread):

• How to Win Friends and Influence People - Everyone with a mother should practice this.
  
• Tao Te Ching (S. Mitchell translation)
  
• Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy - I never cared about economics until after I was done with school, and didn't remember anything from university class. This helped explain a lot of common fallacies many people make.
  
• Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets - As Taleb says in the beginning of the book, anyone from any profession could have written this book, but a financial background makes this much more interesting. Anyone interested in science and what we can learn from the world of past experience should read this. This led to the next book:
  
• How to Live: A Life of Montaigne - A biography of Montaigne, a great skeptic, always curious, interested in what it means to be human. I found I could relate a great deal with the man, as many others have in different ways. The dust-jacket description made it sound like a boring historical overview, but I think the book flowed pretty well and was always interesting.
  
• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information - Anyone that ever creates a slideshow, or attempts to represent data visually should read this book. More than once. I'd say it changed my life.
  
  And, the following two are a look into the lives of two great men that lived in the 20th century; both offer many points worth emulating.
  
  
• Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
  
• The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer (once available in full on PBS website, seems not to be the case now ...)

Porn is particularly insidious, but yes we are far better off in almost every measurable way than days past.

Here's a quote from Matt Ridley's
The Rational Optimist, that helps put things in perspective:

> ... the vast majority of people are much better fed, much better sheltered, much better entertained, much better protected against disease and much more likely to live to old age than their ancestors have ever been. The availability of almost everything a person could want has been going rapidly upward for two hundred years and erratically upward for ten thousand years before that: years of life span, mouthfuls of clean water, lungfuls of clean air, hours of privacy, means of traveling faster than you can run, ways of communicating farther than you can shout. Even allowing for the hundreds of millions who still live in abject poverty, disease and want, this generation of human beings has access to more calories, watts, lumen-hours, square-feet, gigabytes, megahertz, light-years, nanometers, bushels per acre, miles per gallon, food miles, and, of course, dollars than any that went before.

But sentimental narratives are often much more easily tuned to the fight-or-flight base response mechanism. The "natural man" that turns mankind against each other (fight) can also turn mankind away from each other (flight). The gospel covenant rejects both of those and challenges to "turn the other cheek" but also to "love thy enemy".

I don't think it's any surprise that we see images like this once free market capitalism really began.

No amount of anecdotal evidence can taint the fact that by the 2050's, poverty will largely be eradicated throughout the entire world. All the while we are still growing in population (until about that time, where population will cease to grow in size, but instead start dropping).

>it does not appear to benefit the majority of the world.

Well that's like, your opinion man.

>Can you explain why you think that poverty solves itself, so to speak?

This question is, and should be treated as, separate to the other comments I've made above this. There is no question that poverty does indeed solve itself, as economies become free from central planning and brutal rulers.

However, the reason that poverty becomes reduced when no single institution tries to take the reigns (or rather, when the opposite happens--when each person is free to do as they wish) is simply because humans are amazing self-maximizing, social creatures that trade and specialize.

Each person generally has a desire to self-maximise, and the only way to do that is to create a mutually beneficial exchange, and the best way to do this is to specialize and trade one's labour, or the product of one's labour. Every time such a trade happens, both people involved benefit (profit)--or else, if one did not, the trade would simply not happen. The reason that two people can trade and both gain is because of the subjective theory of value; both subjectively value their incoming assets greater than their outgoing assets.

That's why I find economics so fascinating; it is only concerned with human action that is valuable enough for another person to pay for it. It's what makes capitalism the most humane and moral system to have ever been created.

If you're actually interested in how prosperity evolves and grows, you should totally check out Mat Ridley's The Rational Optimist:

• The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

> Debt usually has interest attached to it as it is considered as a loan, which needs to be paid back

This part is spot on.

> Credit is simply issuing value without expecting it to be returned with interest

This part isn't. When we talk about credit we typically are using it in one of three different ways.

1. We can mean it in the sense of "creditworthiness." When people are talking about having a good credit score, it means that the credit agencies have calculated that you are a "good" credit risk, i.e. that you will pay back the money that you borrow. (I'm assuming from your British English ("labour" vs "labor") spelling and the fact that you mentioned it was getting late while it was mid afternoon for me that you are somewhere in Europe, am I correct? If so, this may not apply to you, as I'm not sure how countries other than the US do these things.)
   
   
2. Buying things "on credit", which is just another way of saying "I'm using borrowed money to pay." It would be assumed that you will be charged interest and be expected to pay it back.
   
   
3. In a more technical accounting sense. When you incur a liability that you need to pay back, under standard dual-entry accounting, you would debit an asset account and credit a liability account. For instance, if you buy a $1,000 computer and pay with a Visa credit card, you would debit your "Electronic Hardware Asset" account the $1,000 value of the computer, and then you would offset that debit by crediting your "Visa Liability Account" the $1,000 that you now owe on it. Welcome to the world of accounting! Words don't make a whole lot of sense here, or at least they don't correspond well with their common sense meanings.
   
   > This is a very complex topic and you have made it slightly less complex for me..
   
   The whole thing is incredibly complex, and you're thought process has brought you into the convoluted conjunction that is Macro-Economics, Game Theory, and Financial Markets.
   
   If you'll accept a bit of unsolicited advice, I would really recommend reading:
   
   The Ascent of Money by Niall Fergusson. [Amazon Link] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Ascent-Money-Financial-History/dp/0718194004/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382204864&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Ascent+of+Money). It's not super technical, and overgeneralizes a bit, but I think putting all of the different aspects the currency system into a historical context might help you pin what all is going on, and give you a little clearer picture of how all of the moving parts fit together.
   
   Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. [Amazon Link] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Basic-Economics-4th-Edition-Economy/dp/0465022529/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382205024&sr=8-1&keywords=Basic+Economics+sowell). It's a bit dry, but is still a pretty easy non-technical introduction. Sowell is also a little over the top with his "Gung-Ho Free Market Fuck Yeah!" mentality, but it's probably the best introductory text that I know of that a thoughtful person could get themselves through without any outside guidance.
   
   (I hope this doesn't come across as condescending, I certainly don't mean it be)

insomniac84, your response is lengthy and it is obvious this is something you care about. I would first like to direct you to Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson. It is inexpensive, short, and concise.

Next, I would like to ask you how single-payer government healthcare would be any different from having insurance companies? Our problem right now is high insurance premiums. If federal healthcare was passed, wouldn't we be in the same situation with higher taxes (or deficit spending equaling inflation) replacing the insurance premiums, except without the option of not having insurance because we will be taxed for not having the government plan?

Think of Social Security. What was set up to make retirement an option to everyone by requiring lifelong payment has become a moneypit. The Social Security fund is spent annually by congress on other failing programs. Instead of people having the option of choosing different IRA plans through private banks, that money was pulled into the government, and never accounted for. I think everyone will agree Social Security has failed to do what it was intended and our seniors are not receiving enough if anything compared to what they paid in. What would make single-option healthcare any different?

Do you expect cell phone service to be "free?" Your 10 cents a kilobyte pays for the initial risk that company took when starting, the set-up of the network, the maintenance of the network, and the improvement of your network and cell phone service. Because there is profit in it for the cell phone company, there is motivation for them to continue service, hire smarter labor, and improve their service. Because there is profit in the cell phone industry, other companies are drawn to it, seeking to provide a better service, and lower cost to improve profits, resulting in the consumer having better, cheaper service.

I hope my response to your cell phone question also illustrates what Paul is trying to say about healthcare. Simply replace maintaining the network with medical school and drug research.

The monopolies you say run our nation are only allowed to do so by our legislators. A natural monopoly cannot exist unless it continues to provide the best product at the lowest cost. Utility, telephone, and other monopolistic industries are allowed to do so because laws have been passed by our politicians permitting it.

I know this is long, but I hope it has answered some of your concerns. Also, I have a close friend who took the PCAT today and would hope you don't want a shitty pharmacist. She is entering that field because it is profitable and she can make a good living while working with chemistry. She isn't paying for Pharm School to have her salary capped and do it "at cost" :)

Please read Hazlitt's book, he can explain this much better than I.

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.

> They would also be pretty unhappy if you told them that they had to walk to the grocery store instead of taking a bus or driving a car.

Actaully they would be unhappy, but only because they would see rich people driving by them.

If the entire country suddenly had to walk to the store, people would be fine with it. It would suck at first, but as I said, the issue is the income GAP, not GDP.

>Quick.. start informing people in China that economic growth isn't that important. Millions of people are being pulled out of poverty every day.

Standard /r/econ talking point. "Its ok, some people over there got out of poverty". No one who pushed free trade agreements ever gave a shit about poor people in china.

The thing is... China might have done just as well withotu those agreements. And mexico had better per capita income growth before NAFTA. The overall GDP has risen since then, but per capita income has stagnated... the reason for that is that mexico now has rich billionaires, so while GDP has gone up, NAFTA didn't really help the average worker. NAFTA increased the income gap. Interesting that free trade makes things worse.

>The article you cited looks nice, but it doesn't give us the entire picture. But it's good for cherry picking feel good stories to justify welfare.

Come on, /r/econ shouts 'lots of chinese are less poor now!' and that's not cherry picking?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/world/africa/02malawi.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Here is another article that explains why free trade and neoliberalism is a sham.

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

This book also talks about it.

Im not sure if youre the guy I already said this stuff to, if so, sorry. I just lose interest in these discussions, people are not open minded here much at all.

Lets get rid of copyright and patent laws, if you are so eager to remove global poverty. S Korea gained it's success by pirating the software and books to educate its people. If it had had to pay more for books and software, it would have been able to educate many less people. Instead decades ago they stole books and software and many people there were able to get educations.

So... we're all about eliminating poverty around the globe right? Lets remove patents and copyright laws, and allow our knowledge and IP to flow freely into these poor nations!

Suddenly, freedom isn't so appealing, is it? Now all the business and tech people suddenly get all protectionist. Funny how that is.

Coming to this a little late but wanted to say that (a) I completely agree, and (b) I'd take it a little further.

The thought that there was some Valhalla of wonderful food in earlier days is easily proven wrong. We live in the best time for eating there has ever been. For instance this article explains at some length and convincingly to me that food has only improved. Think about it - name one major city in the US where food was better 15 years ago. I can't think of any.

And if you go back further in time, you find that agriculture is coincident with higher population but also with malnutrition. This book is awful in some parts but it explains at length the accepted knowledge that agriculture = more people, but is also = disease and malnutrition at significant levels.

Skipping forward, I think 'modern' agriculture starts with crop rotation, Source, and pretty soon you have the British Agricultural revolution that kickstarts the industrial revolution.

Coincident with that you have the greatest rise in per-capita GDP there has ever been. Source, The Great Divergence.

And then that's why I get to work at a desk instead of doing mind-numbing, back-breaking work in the fields, and that's why I enjoy more material plenty than anybody could imagine 200 years ago, and why I can choose among multiple places, in my major urban center, to get pretty damn good pho. Lo those many years ago when I was young, sushi was a foreign concept. Now I can get it (or a rough approximation of it) in a strip mall in the middle of nowhere.

There is a downside to removing people from their food. There is also a downside to industrial agriculture. A lot of folks eat out more often. We have lost the spiritual connection to our food in large part that is created by hunting for your food or growing it and shepherding it the whole way through. We don't take food as seriously, and we don't contemplate as closely where it came from. We are complicit in the dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi and in the overuse of antibiotics in, and ill-treatment of, our livestock, to name but a couple examples.

But come the fuck on. I more than likely owe my life to my forebearers moving away from the fields and working in factories. I certainly owe my material comforts to that. I don't have to wonder whether I'm going to have a crop failure and starve to death.

That some of us can turn back and re-discover a better connection with food is a wonderful luxury. Appreciate it as such.

Okay, here goes the barrage of questions then. Forgive me for asking a lot of random questions...

• I'm pretty familiar with DFW, and lived there for some time, liked it a lot- not a bad area to live in, pretty cheap. Used to avoid heading south of downtown Dallas at all costs- definitely not an area that I would want to get lost in at night, if you know where I'm going with that. Are you in South Dallas, or south OF Dallas, heading towards Waco? How gritty/bad of an area is it?
  
  
  
• What's the average life of a diesel engine? Are overhauls required/highly recommended after a certain period, like how airplane engines have A/B/C checks?
  
  
  
• What do you do day-to-day?
  
  
  
• What's the size of the DC you serve (sq ft), and is it dry, reefer, mixed, what?
  
  
  
• In general terms, what kind of product do you push around (food, other household consumables, industrial, etc)?
  
  
  
• Does the DC you serve do break-bulk on pallets, or mostly just full pallets of the same SKU? How much automation is in it?
  
  
  
• What's the average life for tires on a truck and/or trailer?
  
  
  
• Do you have dedicated in-house mechanics for your fleet, or how does the maintenance program work?
  
  
  
• Does your fleet do mostly regional driving, more OTR, or what?
  
  
  
• What are you thoughts on APUs? Does your fleet use them? Why / why not?
  
  
  
• Average/typical cost of a tractor? Of a trailer?
  
  
  
• Weirdest reasons/excuses for missing the delivery time? I'll occasionally hear a "Driver quit" or "Driver had accident" kind of thing in my job, but nothing too crazy.
  
  
  
• How crazy does your life get in December and right around/before major holidays? I know that for shippers, trying to get trucks around that time can be a total PITA, but I'm curious how different it is for you, given that you run dedicated freight.
  
  
  
• Are you technically a trucking company, a 3PL, what? I'm a bit new to supply chain and don't know enough about the transportation side of it.
  
  
  
• Any good books/resources you'd recommend for someone looking to learn more about the transportation and DC sides of supply chain? For supply chain "beach reading", I highly recommend The Box, which is a great read about the history of the shipping container and how it has changed the world.
  
  
  
• Is there any way to make trucking transportation more efficient? It seems to me that it would be hard to eek much more productivity out of the system given that there are time limits on the drivers and weight limits on the trucks, but I'm curious to get your take on that.
  
  
  
• Does your fleet use truck skirts (or whatever the cheap steel panels along the bottom sides of the trailers are called), or anything else to try to get better mileage or help the environment?
  
  
  
• Average load/unload times in your operation? Do you typically deliver to a single destination, or multistop?
  
  
  
• Your biggest hassle? Biggest worry? Biggest "I love this job!" moment?
  
  
  
• Any other fun/weird/crazy stories?

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 ;)

Oh, wow! Well, if you're interested in learning about actual trading, then investopedia is pretty much the best single source I can give you. I linked that directly to the dictionary, but you can see the other options across the top. Fantastic stuff on that site for real, practical trading knowledge.

Never watch anything like Mad Money - those are mere advertisements for the businesses he is paid by. If someone tells you which company to buy, ignore them; if someone tells you how to analyze the market to determine which stock to purchase, pay attention to that source.

I've been absolutely stunned by the quality of Khan Academy. I linked you to the micro econ part of his videos, but he has other econ and finance topics which will be helpful.

----

The above two sources are rather unbiased and neutral explanations, the following are rather biased.

----

As a libertarian, I would be utterly remiss if I didn't expose you to Milton Friedman. That link is to video 1 of 10 in a series called "Free to Choose." Libertarian and Chicago economics legend, Milton Friedman debates various experts from around the world on "contemporary" issues (from the 1970's - but they are still remarkably germane today).

Milton turned me onto economics and gave gave me most of the examples I use today to explain basic concepts (my favorite is, how is a pencil created? It introduce one to the power of decentralized cooperation - that is, how markets function best without central control).

A comprehensive book regarding economics (which does have a libertarian tint) is Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. I regularly buy several of these and hand them out to interlocutors.

Good luck and let me know if you have more questions.

If you are interested in resources I would highly recommend the PERC (Property and Environment Research Center). They try to take these ideas from Coase, Ostrom and others and try to apply them to real live environment situations.

> https://www.perc.org/about-us
> here a video with one of the main guys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBcpal2le2Y

I would also recommend 'The Wild Wild West' a book about resource management in the West of the US before the government arrived. It is exactly what you are looking for.

> https://www.amazon.com/Not-So-Wild-West-Economics/dp/0804748543

I'm reading 'Elinor Ostrom: An Intellectual Biography' right now, that might interest you as well, but its more a overview over here hole research program. A bit more depth would be 'Challenging Institutional Analysis and Development: The Bloomington School'.

If you are more interested in case studies I would look at the individual papers by her and her students. Many of them are comparison between different resource management systems.

You might be also interested in something like 'The Parable of the Bees: Beyond Proximate Causes in Ecosystem Service Valuation'.

I would invite you to extend your research a bit. Collectively shared resources are only part of broader research on stateless interactions. You can also look at the law, law enforcement, court systems, defence and others.

> I'm interested in reading about how different groups have collectively shared resources without the state or market.

I would suggest to that what free market people talk about when they they say 'market' they include these kinds of common property systems. When they talk about a market solutions that includes thinks of that nature.

>So what? People are also pissed of at the pricing of HBO and still people pay for it.

People would like all prices to be lower, but they still pay them. That isn't evidence that consumers don't have power in the industry, as they clearly do, even in cases where people still wished that costs were lower. If the cost was high enough, they'd stop watching HBO.

>Until you realize you have to pay more, but don't get more in the end. And when you don't have net neutrality it also questionable if they even want to improve the infrastructure.

This might be true if we were only talking about poor customers who aren't able to move. However, many are able to move, and BUSINESSES can move even more easily. A company that offers fast speeds and lots of infrastructure will get the richest customers. As they continually upgrade the infrastructure, faster speeds are eventually passed onto lower paying customers as well. Net Neutrality actually takes money away from the suppliers of infrastructure and transfers the benefits to content creators, which consists of powerful companies such as google and facebook. I'm not seeing how that rewards more decentralized markets.

>At least they will make a wage they can live of in the end and aren't exploited by some corporations making billions in profit.

If you take the job voluntarily, and the government isn't preventing you from getting a better job, then you can't say that you were "exploited" in any malicious sense. Yes, it is important for people to have money to live, but this is not manna from heaven, and the economic process if very important for producing enough wealth to take care of all of these people.

>I rather pay some taxes to provide for people who can't get a job instead of subsidizing big companies who cut wages and then giving out foodstamps to the people working there so they can make it rough the month.

Okay, this has little to do with what we're talking about here.

>And who pays the bill in the end when they end up in a hospital without insurance?

Nobody should be forced to pay for a bill for something they never asked for. That was the chance the worker took. It isn't our job to now take care of people who didn't have foresight to find a less dangerous job, even if it meant making less money.

>When a parent might even become unable to care for their children trough an accident?

Personally, I don't think that anybody should be having kids unless they are already very comfortable in life, but for these freak scenarios, charity often used to step in, before the government crowded them out. Their are also family members to turn to, as well as your local community.

>Yeah well tell that to the person who works in unsafe conditions not getting minimum wage. Or look to China, I bet some people would rather have their old farm live back instead of living in a small room near some factory.

For many, no, that isn't true. Statistically, and according to the evidence of the migration patterns within CHina, that's simply all false. For some, maybe so, and if they were forced off of their land, the government probably had something to do with it, which is usually the case when 3rd worlders are forced off of their land.

>Not if you would have passed it along with foodstamps.

Okay, I seriously suggest that you read some history from the time period. This is a good start:

http://www.amazon.com/Farewell-Alms-Economic-History-Princeton/dp/0691141282

People starved back then because there wasn't enough food. Even if the upper classes donated all of their money to charity, millions would still have starved.

Do you take me to be an idiot? Come on.

I've read Easterly's books...they are quite well known. Almost everyone here has, or atleast, should have. You'd be better off assuming that everyone here has read it. That's almost "development econ 101." I assume most people are familiar with Deaton's work as well.

Of course there are social issues associated with modernisation. To take the example of China, many factory workers are migrants and thus do not have the appropriate hukou to be eligible for benefits.

Their kids languish in the villages with no one but grandparents. This is a familiar story repeated millions of times. However, I do not know any Chinese person that says "yes, let's go back to the 1980s! Things were so much better then!"

>They are 'out of poverty' as in they are making more money than less than a dollar a day, but can not longer grow food for themselves

The beauty of specialisation.

The reason they choose to move to the cities and break up their families voluntarily at immense and often unfathomable personal cost is simple: a better life for their children.

Economists also look at measures that go beyond GDP such as the Jones-Klenow measure. I advise you to at least skim that paper.

>for example a man might work in the capital, but live outside it, so he might travel long hours to get there, or simply live at the factory,

Cast your eye back to the industrial revolution in England. Of course there was massive social upheaval. To suggest that future generations of Britons were not better off for it is lunacy. Also, while conditions were bad, life expectancy and income were growing by substantial amounts.

Even a cursory reading of Gregory Clark's excellent "A farewell to alms" will disabuse you of the notion that liberalisation, modernisation and the associated productivity growth are bad things, on net. That there are social costs is undeniable.

To bring us back to the present consider that political parties like the BJP didn't win in India by promising a return to some Jeffersonian farmer's utopia. They won, with 171 million votes in total, by promising to accelerate development (read simply: per capita income growth) not to mention a healthy helping of Hindutva. The opposing Congress party was also promising essentially the same thing: more rapid development so we should add their 100+ million votes to the mix as well.

If that doesn't send a message to you, then I don't know what will.

>you'd be better actually dealing with these critiques in a meaningful manner than 'shoving their faces in the shit that is poverty in the developing world'

There is a place for that. However, for this person to glibly suggest the liberalisation has not been a boon (on net) to tens of millions is insulting. Not to mention unfathomably stupid.

Did you even read what I said?

https://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/5hjt0i/venezuela_seizes_christmas_toys_to_distribute_to/db14hqn/?st=iwjxn7ek&sh=5db6c2c1

Economics is not a science. I've said so far that its not a science, that its a social science, and that knowledge of it is based largely on experience rather than on a formal logical system.

The fact that its not a science is irrelevant. To say that there is no value in the study of economics, and that you can't make claims about economics, given that they are imperfect and not scientifically rigorous truths, is asinine. And that is what you've said so far.

You are correct that many economists have tried to codify the principles of economics so that its like a science, particularly with the keynesians and neo keynesians. Within economic systems, certain things can be extrapolated. You can find a lot of truths in individual systems. Do they necessarily work in every sytem, all the time, to the same degree? No, they're more like a bunch of different levers you have to pull, some more at some times, some more at other times. Some systems work better with some groups of people than with other groups of people.

The reason why we haven't had ample data on socialism is because it doesnt work in practice. It always devolves too quickly to gain much data at all. Its a lovely idea, that everyone would be working for the good of everyone else and that we could implement all sorts of systems that make things better off. I bet that you could probably get it done with the japanese, they are so communally minded that they could make things work that even marx didn't dream of. The vast majority of people aren't as disciplined a people as the japanese though, and we can observe that even though they do tend towards a strong sort of isolationism and xenophobia, and towards having only japanese live in japan, that even given that that they are still importing other cultures and probably losing some of the virtues that made them so able to so widely adopt new political, economic and social systems in the past. I think that a socialist system could work, but it would probably be very isolated, and it would take a truly exceptional people to make it work.

We don't have the data on it because it takes such an exceptional people to make it work. If there are any cracks in those people, if they give in to their very human flaws, then the fact that it centralizes power so much tends to make the basis of their economies and political systems unravel.

Its simply better and more robust to not give such strong powers to the government. I find it fascinating that leftists these days are so pro socialism. Back in the 60s they were wary of "the man" and all that jazz.

I also recognize that its very likely that economists who have good views on things whom I agree with will get things wrong from time to time, but it's better to try to understand things imperfectly rather than just give up and say "oh well we can't be scientifically rigorous about this, we should just give up."

https://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232

https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Common-Sense-Economy/dp/0465002609

These are economists who recognize that its not a science so much as an ongoing process that appeals to it as a social science. They know that there aren't any scientifically rigorous proofs when it comes to economics.

Firstly, fuck the guy you're arguing with lol, what a moron. That being said, as a believer in free open markets and someone who strongly believes that government in the modern age is nothing more than a criminal organization, I feel like I need to jump on your final sentence.

> real capitalism doesn't exist because people with power don't play with the rules, the make the rules and you can be damn sure they will bend the rules of the market in their favour if they want WHATEVER IT COSTS.

You are very close to the truth, in my opinion, but not quite there. You are absolutely right that, under our current political/economic climate, capitalism will always be a tool for the rich to push their agenda and add to their wealth - that is exactly what it has been used for in the age of big government. The one distinction I would like to make is that "real capitalism" can exist... it just cannot coexist with a state. The state is essentially a group of individuals who we have decided can operate outside of the free market. You do not decide to pay your taxes, you are forced to under the threat of jail time. This is simply an interaction that devalidates all other actions within the market. A state existing and having the power to control entire industries undercuts the power of the consumer to decide on a better service. The police force in your area has started killing innocent people because of the colour of their skin? Get a new police force. Your military "defence" force is suddenly on a murderous rampage across the middle east? Stop paying them. The private company printing your money is starting to give it away to their friends like it grows on trees? Tie your economy to a different currency. Medical costs skyrocketing? Oh would you look at that, it coincides perfectly with the involvement of the state, what a shocker.

Capitalism is a word that has been demonized by so many, and to an extent, they are right, but they are uninformed. What we have now is crony capitalism, where massive super corporations use the power of government to assure their continued success, instead of providing a value to their consumers in a voluntary interaction. In a capitalistic society that cannot be allowed unless you want massive injustice and economic tragedy. True open market capitalism would unlock a freedom for the individual that has never been achieved before. I think the biggest factor is the economy. The USD is the most inflated currency in the history of the world, and it ain't a close race.

I would strongly recommend against blaming capitalism for the condition the world is in right now, as it is an ultimately ironic opinion. Capitalism is the voluntary exchange of goods between free people... that's it. The context in which the capitalism is taking place is the issue. We are not ruining our economy because of all the technological advances being pushed by innovative companies trying to compete for your dollar, we are ruining our economy due to irresponsible, malicious actions being taken by people to further their own positions in life under the veil of government. Bernie Sanders is a fucking capitalist for christ's sake. The man is making millions of dollars selling books about how evil it is to make millions of dollars, and he's got an army of tax lawyers itemizing all of his deductions and making sure the state sees as little of his money as possible, despite preaching that the state should be taking more of your money because they're so good with it.

I'm just now realizing how long this is so I will have to end it here kind of abruptly lol. I am absolutely obsessed with this stuff and I am currently rereading Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt, I could not recommend it enough, you seem eager to figure this out.

Here's a very simple 60 second video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN5XrGKoW3o

This is a more in depth, but still very simple and engaging video called The Philosophy of Liberty:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muHg86Mys7I

Here's an introduction to Libertarianism by the CATO Institute. I haven't actually read this, but I trust this organization:

http://www.libertarianism.org/introduction

Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt is a truly exceptional book and lays out the points so clearly and simply.

http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232/ref=sr_1_1

And of course there's the Reddit Libertarian community:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/

Come check us out. We'd love to have intelligent well spoken people like you with us

R1:

Today I bring you this WaPo Op-Ed on how the Carrier deal will return business norms back to ones that favor labor and community because firms will fear Trump’s wrath. Here the author offers a distorted view of America’s past, a dysfunctional view of how contracts and norms interact, and a wayward portrayal of economists as unable to fathom agents and systems which do not follow strict mathematical functional forms.

>There was a time in America when there was an unwritten pact in the business world — workers were loyal to their companies and successful companies returned that loyalty by sharing some of their profits with their workers in the form of higher wages, job security and support for the local community.

The author wistfully describes a past that did not exist when businesses and workers in long term marriages because it was what was right and good for the community.

At its heart this period existed because unionization (or more accurately worker bargaining power) made it possible. Certainly on the point of loyalty, unionization decline is the largest contributor to declining tenure (see Bidwell. As unionization fell, this loyalty also disappeared.
However, unionization's decline can largely be explained by the rule of law (right-to-work laws, unionization process etc.) though governing and business norms played a role (to be discussed).

With bargaining power largely reduce, workers had additional difficulty (for better or worse) attempting to hold their jobs in the face of international pressures and especially technological change as countless economist (Autor just to name check one) have documented.

>modern day economists tend to ignore such shifts in social norms because they can’t quantify them in the same way they can quantify trade flows or technological innovation or changes in educational attainment. They assume that social norms change in response to economic fundamentals rather than the other way around.

This is the sort of things that can ruin my work day as a nominally institutionalist style economist. To begin, several Nobel prize winning economists have done significant work studying norms formation and effects such as North, Ostrom, Akerlof, Akerlof again!.

Beyond this, others have built off these works (Ostrom was focusing on the importance of norms, but not specifically addressing the problem) to try to model norm development in game theory example.

In fact, in Samuel Bowles’ Microeconomics, discusses in detail the way contracts influence the norms and institutions of exchange (Chapter 8, p. 265). The long and short of Bowles’ discussion is that norms are well understood, evolutionary, and in the absence of complete contracting have significant influence on the results of exchange.

Norms matter greatly to economists in the event that contracting is incomplete. One would hope, it seems in vain, that contracting between the federal government and American firms is more complete than most contractual situations.

>the new norm is not longer acceptable, and [Trump] intends to do whatever he can to shame and punish companies that abandon their workers.
>He may even have to make an example of a runaway company by sending in the tax auditors or the OSHA inspectors or cancelling a big government contract.

Many economists see the potential change of market norms that will result from government contracts suddenly being less than 100% enforceable as a problem. Coming back to Bowles, he notes that said norms “are sustained by the structure of the market and other social interactions in which traders routinely engage.” If having government contracts and enforcement become less predictable is to be the new norm of enforcement, surely the market response will be to ask government from some premia in contracting to account for uncertainty. New firms may avoid starting their business under the supervision of this government altogether.

Tyler Cowen points out that the new norms that would arise likely involve more complex contractual agreements to skirt restrictions, degradation of U.S. tech advancement, a ramping of favoritism to levels not seen since the Harding administration, potential de facto capital controls, or at best a politicization of the economy with no real rule of law effects.

>Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt understood that. So did Ronald Reagan when he fired thousands of striking air traffic controllers and set back the union movement for several decades.

Perhaps most crucially, the author here references a variety of Presidents who enforced their support (or lack therefore) for labor, but did so through the rule of law via various anti-trust acts, the championing and enactment of a large set of labor relations legislation, and the decision to enforce laws enshrined in code 15 years prior that had been previously ignored. As opposed to potentially undermining the rule of law as Trump does by leveraging government contracts and regulation.

A bonus on this point is that—though Reagan’s actions may have signaled willingness from government to support changing business norms by supporting them through rule of law—unionization’s decline had already begun years prior to the changes in business norms Reagan’s ruling supposedly incited.

The study of economics is not one that lacks an understanding of how norms influence market interactions. Though I am not as well versed in studies accounting for changes in norms mathematically, I’d wager someone here could produce good examples of studies that do just this through the use of good instrumental variables.

The Carrier deal will likely change norms in business actions, but those are likely to be related to businesses’ certainty in contracting with government during the Trump presidency. Just as is seen in Trump’s cabinet, the only people left to provide work will be those certain they can take advantage of information asymmetry to get a better deal from U.S. governments. Any mass effort to enforce job retention on a scale much more massive than the Carrier deal will be enacted via law and will be just as harmful to business culture as Cowen and other economist predict, but it will be the changes to contractual enforcement that drive these results and not revolution in norms spurred on by backroom dealing.

A free market is the most efficient way to distribute scarce resources. Economics if the study of how this distribution of scarce resources happens.

Your ideals being well meaning are not rooted in reality. As of right now we don't have unlimited power sources, or even super efficient ones. We are coming to the point at which the basic necessities for humans can be provided with little effort, 3d built homes, food in abundance via advanced farming techniques (without oil though?), ubiquitous transportation thanks to computerized transport, an abundance of energy via new nuclear/solar/wind technologies. These will make the basic human life easy, but if you want to enjoy the scarcer resources, the nice property, the awesome vacations, the trip to Mars, then you will need to work and be more productive than the next guy. It is Basic Economics!

Since you like sci-fi, read about how this society deals with scarcity, this is the model we are moving towards.

http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

I think you need to decide if you want to be more of an investor or a speculator. I don't really have advice for speculators.

If you want to be an investor, I have found these books useful; Economics in one lesson is good, and if you are really keen The intelligent investor.

These books are highly focused on fundamentals of the economy and investing in something that help you think to recognise the fundamental reasons why something is or could become valuable, and not fall in the emotional pitfalls by speculating on emotional impulse based of a graph, media soundbites and reddit fomo and fud.

When you understand the fundamental reasons for a (un)healthy economy and currency first, then it should hopefully become clear why the fundamentals/monetary properties of bitcoin - once you learn those - can contribute to a much healthier economy and why has to potential to become very valuable itself.

I'd suggest to also research articles that teach you about 'the origins of money'. A useful take-away to realise is, is that historically money has always been attempted to be forged. A currency that has a monetary property that is extremely difficult forge, has more potential value.

> when have we ever increased our population by billions within decades?

Increased population means increased markets, more people producing but also more desires to satisfy.

> worldwide production per worker is also exploding do to automation.

This is a good thing. This is the foundation of economic progress.

> These factors are unprecedented.

Every generation says this. It's always "different this time".

> Take trucking... It is a low skilled job.

Your "low-skill job" didn't exist three hundred years ago (when people were running around smashing mechanical looms and making the same arguments about the destruction of society because clearly society stops functioning when we can produce cheaper textiles right?). Hell, how many people could pilot a 12+ tonne combustion engine driven vehicle travelling 100 km/h one hundred years ago?

You don't realise how quickly people forget and accept skills as normal, and then delegate them to low-skill! Fifty years ago the smartest investment an independent girl could make was to take typing school so she could operate a typewriter and be a secretary - nowadays kids grow up with an iPhone in their cot.

> It can easily be automated

And it SHOULD because it will make EVERYTHING cheaper. Why do you want things to be expensive? There will always be some losers from an economic change, but why do you think they are more important than the 99.99% of humanity which will benefit?

You should read the following book: https://www.amazon.com/Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller-Economy/dp/0691136408

It is a fascinating glimpse into how this economic world you take for granted came into being. 100 years ago, you see, you know how transport worked? People loaded ships by hand. Crates, barrels, bags, everything was carried by hand and loaded into small ships. Ships spent the majority of their time in docks, transport costs were enormous. Containerised shipping slashed transit times and prices.

You know what people did? Dockworkers fought tooth and nail to prevent it. Your whole trucking industry only came into being because they didn't succeed. And everyone in the whole world benefitted, because everything got cheaper.

Economies are complex. People can and will adapt. Some people don't pay attention and adapt too slowly. Bad luck to them. You will not make anything better or save anybody by trying to stop change to save them from themselves.

As far as the coffee beans go most would have bought them as green unroasted beans up until the end of the the 19th century. Depending on where in Europe and economic position is where the difference in roasting would be. Lower encome would use either a copper or cast iron pan/skillet and roast in that. Higher up would use a drum roaster. You can look up German coffee roasters for example of those. The roast type would very greatly but from what I understand a medium to a medium-dark roast would likely be a common roast. This is more to do with making sure that all of the beans reach what is called first crack.

Grinders would be burr grinders. If it was a "Turkish" or "Greek" style coffee house which were the earliest in Europe it would require a Turkish grinder. It is almost like powdered chocolate in consistency. But for something that you would likely see in the late 18th and through out the 19th century something closer to a French press grind.

The brewing method would be something similar to a cowboy coffee method but think more like a French press. In the 19th century coffee methods that are common today start to form flip coffee pots are like a halfway point to filtered drip coffee which is more or less invented in the first decade of the 20th century.

As for adding stuff to the coffee. The absolutely did. Turkish style coffee was the starting point of European coffee culture and it is common to add something sweet and often milk. As time goes on you also see coffee and tea culture converge in how it is consumed.

Now all of this is a very simplistic version of an answer to your question. The methods of brewing were far more diverse than what I have mentioned but most never gained wide adoption. An example is a vacuum siphon brewer. And there is some discussion that the "Dutch drip coffee" brewers go that far back. And I would not be surprised if cloth filter coffee was a thing during the period. But considering that the full immersion method is the oldest and easiest method that has continued documented use that is what I would place my bets on seeing the most.

A good book to read on the history of coffee is UNCOMMON Grounds by Mark Pendergrast https://www.amazon.com/Uncommon-Grounds-History-Coffee-Transformed/dp/046501836X

I know that this was a long and rambling response to your question but I hope it helps.

I agree, but current westerns are an interesting genre. The more respected entries tend to be "anti-westerns," which makes sense, as "the old west" is mostly a historical construct.

I read a fascinating book called Railroaded ( http://www.amazon.com/Railroaded-Transcontinentals-Making-Modern-America/dp/0393342379 ) that was a great look at that time in U.S. history as a sort of precursor to capitalism in 21st century U.S., and I think this side of that period in U.S. history is somewhat under-explored in the genre. Railroad magnates essentially shaped 150 years of American history, and I think Westerns as a whole have tended to be overly simplistic in either embracing a "cowboy" ethos or attacking it, rather than trying to create a new history, a different take on that period as a direct echo of (post) modern industry. Massive corporations (railroads) shaped the growth of the western U.S., and more thoughtful westerns about this aspect of the country's expansion seem to be rare and well-received. I don't understand why "the western" hasn't been entirely redefined recently as a genre that, instead of relying on or subverting expectations, explored history an a new light.

>The key difference is that the government controls corporations in China instead of the other way around.

that's interesting. I can't speak to the truth of that claim. but there is a lot of Propaganda in the US and Canada that the opposite is true. Corporations in Canada and the US are literally writing laws now. More so in the states. And there is a concerted effort my right wing media to promote this as a good thing.

>The whole concept centers around getting some people to become super rich first to act as the engine for economic growth

That sounds like the route that south Korea took in the 70's and 80's. This book talks about it.



http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Samaritans-Secret-History-Capitalism/dp/1596915986/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321403002&sr=1-2

Have you heard about this?

Haiti, Africa, Latin America. These are capitalist countries. And more free market than most (not that true free markets actually exist anywhere).

Many of the countries that have moved from poverty to prosperity did it with capitalism, but they did it with a highly regulated capitalism with large amounts of government regulation. S Korea, Japan, Great Britain, the United States. What then happens is when a country becomes rich with government intervention they then find it is advantageous to deny government intervention to others. They reach the pinnacle. They then kick away the ladder for potential competitors.

Ha Joon Chang's "Bad Samaritans" is a good primer on this.

> In the state of nature we have the right to do so, wouldn't you agree?

No. Certainly you can define a concept of rights and justice which holds that to be true, but there are alternative conceptions which hold that it is not just or right for one person to murder another. You've simply assumed that a 'social contract' is the only way to avoid the problems created by the conception of rights you're using.

Here's one alternative some people use: Justice and rights are defined in terms of who may use or exclude others from what rivalrous goods. Those definitions are called 'property rights'. These definitions don't say anything about what kind of society will develop or how disputes would be resolved in practice. It's only a standard for determining what is or isn't 'just'.

Under this conception of justice what is or isn't just is invariant and does not change based on some collectively decided 'social contract.' What social institutions evolve and whether they promote or retard justice is irrelevant to the basic definition of justice.

---

> You know that is how it would be structured; it is like an insurance plan. You pay for certain coverage. The more money you have, the more coverage you can get. By that definition, the homeless could just be outright murdered in the street without repercussion. Jails would not exist.

You might be interested in reading some materials on historical examples of how well various things have worked. For example The not so Wild, Wild West, and David Friedman's Legal Systems Very Different From Ours (Draft) (It's not about a bunch of libertarian systems, but it provides a bit of perspective on different systems).

> My dystopia would be one where different laws apply do different people, and your ability to receive protection depends on your ability to pay.

With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful

Economics is combination of math, finance, and psychology. Most economic-math is just linear regression and whatnot, and even then it is incredibly inaccurate. ModularToil is right in that most Econometric problems are ones with too few constraints, so a talented mathematician can make the numbers do what he wants. If you only read one book, get Economics in One Lesson. It's a slow read, but it is a great reference book. Really, you only need the first chapter. If you get a second, get How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes. It is written cleverly as a children's book that furthers the points made in Economics in One Lesson, as well as giving a good explanation of why the economy is in the shape that it is right now. If you are still interested after that, find topics that pique your interest here.

I think you and I aren't going to see eye-to-eye here on these subjects. We both agree that these jobs are going to be automated, so I'm perfectly happy having these jobs that will eventually go away stay here for the interim. At least this way, folks have jobs before automation eventually removes them. Without a strong safety-net and public welfare system offshoring the jobs effectively creates the situation now that automation eventually will. And we're no where near ready as a society mentally and politically to deal with the fallout of automation.

As for tariffs, those have a long and sordid history. According to Ha-Joon Chang the countries that are doing well now, European countries, US, Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, and others got that way by using tariffs to their advantage. They keep tariffs high in certain sectors so that their budding companies and industries could flourish internally until they were ready to compete globally. So tariffs and free trade aren't necessarily as clear cut as "free-trade good, tariffs bad". If you have something you would like me to check out, send a link, I'd like to read more on the subject.

> Lol I like how you cherry pick. You totally avoided the bulk of my last comment

Lol, I like how you stand up straw men... like the bulk of your last comment which I ignored because it was irrelevant. I also like how you use "lol" as an argument... just pretend your debate opponent is missing some painfully obvious point which everyone is aware of... and you don't have to argue whatever that imaginary point was.

The bulk of your comment started with this:

> So yes we’re talking about the disadvantaged. You’re pretending it doesn’t exist and you need me to spoon feed you instances where the wealthy take advantage....." yadda, yadda, yadda.

I never said there weren't people who are disadvantaged. I never said that rich people never take advantage of others. The whole bit is irrelevant and I ignored it because it didn't pose a question and contained nothing of substance with which I really disagree... just some huffing about how exhausting you find it that someone you're debating with doesn't just agree with you.

But your position is NOT that the rich sometimes take advantage of people but that they are only be rich because they take advantage of people. It's not that I "can't say anything bad about rich people" but that I'm saying there's nothing bad with being rich in-and-of itself... a rich person has to have done something bad for me to condemn them, for you it's just enough that they are rich and you assume, wrongly, that they must have done something bad to be so rich.

That is the premise which I'm contesting. I'm not bothering to argue with you about stuff on which we already agree, that rich people can be bad people and do bad things.

> Anyway have you actually read anything about income inequality? Can you link please?

Sure, here, here, really any decent economics textbook not written by by a marxist would suffice.

Thankyou for the link. I appreciate it. I don't know about Medievil Iceland, but to use the American Old West a bastion of free market trade is beyond absurd. If you're interested, I can explain that comment in detail. For now, suffice it to say that the person most responsible for starting that myth is one Terry L. Anderson who is a tool of the ultra rightwing Hoover Institute that has argued for privatization of all federal lands and privatization of Indian lands as well. Nevermind the fact that he completely ignores the genocide of the Native Americans in his paper that led to his book on how tame the Old West was (for rich white people). That wiki should probably be edited for clarity.

Given your interests, I would suggest looking at the popular books of Charles Mann, especially _1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created_. Mann does an impressive job of covering a lot of ground in the book, and it's entirely readable.

It looks at what happened in the immediate years after the "Old" and "New" worlds started to have "exchange." It is very wide-ranging — it has lots of information on the obvious stuff (Spanish conquests in South and Central America, for example) but also plenty of unexpected things.

It also includes some pirates, some falling nations, some technological history, and even some local American history. I think it's too early for Lewis and Clark but there are plenty of explorers and other folk in there.

The way I think about learning history is this: you need to develop a "skeleton" understanding of the major trends and events, and really grok those. Once you have that sensibility, it is easy to drape additional details, sub-stories, and narratives onto that skeleton, and you start to see how everything is connected, everything fits together. A book like Mann's is a fun way to develop that skeleton for the late-15th through even the 19th- and some 20th-century topics, and once you have that, it'll be easier to figure out what the next step should be.

(Plus, it's a fun read!)

Actually the way it works out is actually fair and gives you freedom, something socialism and communism doesn’t give you.

It is fair because if you work hard and are successful then you will reap the rewards. If you are a bad businessman then you will fail, a good one will succeed.

You also have the freedom to choose whatever you want. If you want to be a boss you can, if you want to work for someone you can, if you want to be lazy and not work then you can be you just won’t have any money.

Socialism isn’t freedom. If you work hard you will still make the same amount. So guess what happens? People don’t work as hard, they don’t invent things like they do in a capitalist society because they don’t have an incentive to motivate them.


You make good choices then you get rewarded, if make bad ones then you suffer as you should.

You should really read a book on economics, you will be very surprised about how much you don’t know and how much people on tv and in Congress are either economically illiterate or are purposely lying about economics/ either way it’s not good.

Read this book and open your eyes. Link is below:

link

I think downward social pressure is an important point in this discussion and raises a bunch of interesting economic and ethical issues .

Side stepping those issues for a moment, an interesting data point is Gregory Clark's book A Farewell to Alms which is about how downward social pressure impacted England in the 1600's. Clark's argument is that limited land and the Malthusian trap (which was more prevalent in England than Europe because England is an island) caused the children of rich children in England to move down the social ladder which crowded out the poor and essentially pushed them off the ladder. Clark also claims that these new lower class workers had more upper class values which made them more industrious and better works which in turn provided England with the labor force necessary to get a jump start on the industrial revolution, though this second claim clearly has issues (e.g. did the morals really make that big a difference; couldn't economic incentives teach people to be industrious rather than the values needing to be taught by wealthy parents or grand parents). That said, I think the first claim is spot on as a positive claim (though I don't endorse the normative claim that it's good since that smacks of social darwinism).

Jumping back to today, we were already seeing some of this happening prior to the great recession where lower middle class men aren't able to get married and start families because of poor financial prospects, driven partly by lack of education. I think the great recession though is only making things worse as the generation that graduated from 2008 to today is seeing similar diminished opportunities and will increase that downward pressure.

So it will be very interesting to see how this plays out. There's clearly huge economic concerns at stake (e.g. how do you stop people from investing $200k into education for a career which pays $30k and how do you stop the educational arms race) but there's also huge ethical issues too (e.g. is there an intrinsic value to education? who deserves to be educated and on what basis? what do you do about those who get left behind?).

To finish the old debate:

> not everyone is going to be a scientist

That is fine. My problem with religion is that many who would cannot because of religious non-sense.

> assuming religion (which I would include atheism)

That is odd as many define atheism as lack of religion. Is bald a hair color? Whatever, I am just picking on your wording.

Now we are now moving into a totally different argument.

I personally have "replaced" far more than 10,000 jobs, just by writing software. I am not special, if anything I am going slow for a developer with my experience.

Like it or not the genie is out of the bottle and cannot be put back in. Automation is here and it is getting more prolific. If industry finds a better way to work it will, look at the destruction of the longshoreman's union by shipping containers. I like the book The Box by Marc Levinson, but any discussion of globalization or automation would do.

It is my opinion that "common sense" concepts like "earn" and "deserve" don't have a place in the modern world. They used to solve problems back when work was first being divided up as people specialized. Today, we have plenty and it is my opinion that these concepts actively get in the way.

There are a ton of people who just love to create things and do science. This will never be everyone. I would do it for no money, as long as I wouldn't starve. Instead because the economy works on "earn"ing things I sit in cube 8 hours per weekday and bring in an income that puts me in the 3% of Americans in one of the areas with the lowest cost of living. Do I really "deserve" all that money? What about people who are starving? What about people who would work if not for the insurance filing application I wrote that replaced their old job filing bullshit papers? Those people want not to starve and some percentage of will turn to crime to do so. Did I make the world better by making the thing I did? Do I "deserve" to be robbed when someone doesn't have enough money to pay their child support?

I am concerned about results. Not about deserving or earning. I know approximately how many jobs I replace. Some of those people, even if perfectly motivated will never be able to work again simply by virtue of ability. A 50 year filing clerk who has been filing for 30 years is now totally obsolete and bereft of skill to "earn" a living.

Maybe someday I will write some software to replace TAs that run microbiology labs ant universities. Does that mean you shouldn't do microbiology if you love it? Does that mean you shouldn't eat?

There is a simple solution separate results from earning the results. I am for a Universal Basic Income. Give everyone, every TA, every programmer, every microbiologist, every felon, every child every senior citizen, every ex filing clerk some money. We can afford it it we just stop being stupid.

The GDP of the USA is about 18 trillion dollars. Just those 5 companies (which are all growing), amount to 1/30th of that amount. If all businesses are taxed and some BS likely social security is cleaned up, then this can easily be done. We could even increase military spending while doing as long as the increase is slower than the rate the GDP increases.

People like me number in the low millions. We will replace enough effort that eventually when it comes to work Humans need not apply. Doesn't mean we need to shun them and doom them to mediocrity. Hell is a religious concept. Consequences are the concepts I work with. I think a consequence of our progress should be better quality of life, and we can choose this.

The advantages of learning about economics go way beyond understanding Bitcoin.

Economics (in the school started by Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, etc), is the study of how people act in order to achieve happiness. It asks: given people have certain goals (but without making any judgements on what those are), and limited time and resources to achieve them, how should they act to maximise their satisfaction? Even a man alone on a desert island is acting economically: should he spend another hour making shelter, another hour catching fish, or another hour relaxing in the sun? The economics of trade is built on top of this. Will one person with too much fish, and another with too much wood, discover they're both happier after trading than they were before, even though the total amount of wood and fish in existence has not changed? Indeed, the most important work on economics by Mises is called simply Human Action.

A few years ago I came across a book (Economics in One Lesson) which began with the following foreword:

>I strongly recommend that every American acquire some basic knowledge of economics, monetary policy and the intersection of politics with the economy. No formal classroom is required; a desire to read and learn will suffice. There are countless important books to consider, but the following are an excellent starting point: The Law by Frédéric Bastiat; Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt, What Has Government Done to Our Money? by Murray Rothbard; The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek, and Economics for Real People by Gene Callahan.
>If you simply read and comprehend these relatively short texts, you will know far more than most educated people about economics and government. … If you care about the future of this country, arm yourself with knowledge and fight back against economic ignorance.

I did exactly this and read them one by one. I summed up my findings in this blog post. I've found the books in the list above enough to defend against the biggest and most common fallacies you see in the news. I highly recommend reading at least one, if not all of them, and Economics in One Lesson is the one I recommend most.

I wasn't intending to "hit below the belt" but rather trying to correct you for your own benefit without starting a dick measuring contest.

Despite the cliche, Communism actually doesn't look good on paper. There is no sound economic theory behind communism since it denies the efficiency of a free market. That is to say that it ignores the basics of economics in practice and theory.

Anarcho-capitalism, on the other hand, is based in capitalism. There is no referring to the better nature of people, nor to a harmonious living arrangement for the sake of togetherness. Instead, it's based on sound economic theory of incentives and disincentives. Business is often characterized as a "Darwinian" enterprise. This is only true of directly competing businesses. In actuality, business is more about win-win negotiations between merchants of different fields. Efficiency emerges from market information that only individuals have, and that no single agency (government) could fully collect, analyze, and control the market without decreasing the efficiency by orders of magnitude. (I suggest the book Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt).


>but you also have a large part of the population that is poorly educated, and a large part of the population that wouldn't hesitate to take advantage of that group. I feel that without some sort of regulating body, your system would be the formation of a very corrupt group of people that would gain power over the less informed and easily manipulated without repercussions

First of all, you'll have to define "taking advantage of". Marketing is not coercion. If you mean that they will commit fraud in order to trick people into something, then it seems you completely ignored my statement about social credit, NAP, and DROs. Please take 30 minutes to listen to the podcasts I listed as they will answer your qualms more succinctly than I could in a wall of text.

The book below is a fantastic read that directly addresses your question...

The shortest version is ports (anywhere) are a function of the economy, the local labor market, and the entire supply chain of delivering "stuff" from A-to-B.

​

Once containerization took over post-war, the economics quickly and irreversibly shifted in favor of inland factories.

​

So no more factories in New York City meant there was no need to maintain and service the piers to bring raw materials to those factories. The factories were only built adjacent to the piers because it was so time consuming and expensive to transfer raw materials. (Even the layout of Manhattan's "grid" of streets took this into account, with the avenues more tightly spaced on the coasts than in the middle of the island. This allowed for good to move more efficiently between factories as they came off the ships.)

​

Now, what do I mean by "take over"? I'd have to read the book again, but I recall containerization allowed for moving most goods at, without hyperbole, ~10% the cost of traditional break bulk shipping. If it could fit inside a container, you could move it for really, really cheap. No one involved in shipping could ignore the economic advantages of containerization. And those who tried to resist slowly bled out as "the box" took over.

​

(Break bulk is where individual pieces are carried on/off a ship. Think "On The Waterfront" and a bunch of people carrying bags on their shoulders. With containers, what previous could take a week could be done in less than a day.)

​

You'll note the shipping actually increased too...but it shifted to New Jersey, which constructed new piers better suited to containerization rather than break bulk shipping. By the time Manhattan and Brooklyn tried to make new piers, it was too...the containerization infrastructure was in place on the mainland.

​

But what about the longshore men? Did they have jobs to do after the piers went away? Well...automation is always rough on manual labor. Lots of longshore men lost their jobs. Crane operators were the new king. The book is an interesting history lesson in the history of American labor/management relationships, particularly in how containerization was handled differently in New York vs. San Francisco, and even Manhattan/Brooklyn vs. Newark.

​

Here's a link to the book if anyone is interested. It's well written for even a novice and consumable for a non-academic. The writing style is not overly dry either. There is a narrative to understand. The bibliography is huge too. It's basically the history of shipping "stuff", which in turn answers the question "When and why did Manhattan's ports go away?"

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger By: Marc Levinson

​

EDIT: I'll add that any actual historians can perhaps comment in better detail. But if you want a resource to answer your question, and then some, this book is tailored to do so.

>Daily Caller

Shitty site. Wanna prove each fact incorrect though

Noted liberal writer Chris Hedges has written a book about the very topic

http://www.amazon.com/Death-Liberal-Class-Chris-Hedges/dp/1568586795

>And how a majority of Democrats continue to support civil liberties issues in Congress as evidenced earlier. Nobody is making the argument that ALL Democrats are civil liberties champions.

That's what you seem to be insinuating. I believe that the progressives like Alan Grayson and Jared Polis have done admirable work, but shits like the President deserve equal blame as the Republicans who have blocked civil liberties.

>Substantial - NOT MAJORITY. That's the BIG difference between the parties which you keep ignoring.

Some Republicans have opposed the measures too. The numbers are not too different.

Again, a better example of the difference would be health care, where nearly every Democrat voted for it, and every Republican against.

>And I countered it, nice spin but doesn't change the fact that Greenwald supported the invasion.

Again not even true. Greenwald was not even writing professionally at the time of the invasion.

>When did I say this at all? Can you even read?
Notice how you ignored the Ron Paul question that I posed?

Ron Paul was wrong to vote for the authorization. So was every other representative. Ok? I disagree with about 80% of what the guy says. I'm no fan of his.

And the Patriot Act? In the initial passage, both parties enthusiastically supported it. They introduced a totalitarian measure to capitalize on the fears of Americans. That's wrong.


But if you think Obama is anti-war you are stupid.

>Right, the issues that ACLU lists as civil liberties and defends them as such are not civil liberties but trivialities because the reactionaries who only read op-ed pieces from hacks don't even know that there are other civil liberty issues beyond surveillance.

Democrats are good on social issues (call them civil liberties if you like) like gay marriage and abortion. Shitty on surveillance issues like the Patriot Act and FISA

(funny I am having this exact conversation in another thread)

We are operating anarchistically every day. In many ways, we succeed in SPITE OF the state, rather than because of it. The vast majority of our choices are just made with voluntary, organic interaction. Organic is the keyword here because complex systems work best when allowed to find the best-path via "bottom-up" organization (for example, skin cells forming Voronoi patterns).

Economics, as the observation of human action, "maximizes value" because of these really fundamental mathematical truths. Even services like security and rights claims are better served by a system that can adapt both in context and efficiency like this.

EDIT:

For a good discussion of this, see Everyday Anarchy by Stephan Molyneux (written well before he became a weird race-realist nut and abandoned his own principles for some reason I dunno maybe just that he's getting old).

For a good discussion of how such a society has worked in the past, check out the not so wild wild west paper.

no, trade restrictions are there to safeguard budding industries in a rising economy. only when their industry is strong enough to compete in the global economy does it make sense to allow competition from the outside. why allow competition from the outside? because if you don't let them in, they won't let you in. if you really care about whether you are right or not then you should at least read this book and decide for yourself. he proposes a very convincing argument. bad samaritan

the book answers a very important question. why does the western world want everyone to have a free market economy when they did not rise to that position with a free market themselves?


>And that just happened magically based on its geographic location? Hardly.

no it's not the location. it's the reliable english speaking port with english laws that the western world can trust when doing business with. after traveling half way across the world, you want to dump your goods at a reliable place and be on your way. you don't want to deal with bribing the locals and things like that. that requires addition expertise and labor and have much higher risk. your response to me really shows that you have not thought about it thoroughly at all.

also, im not going to ever argue with anyone here again. i don't think i've received a reasonable and well thought out answer yet. basically the responses have been, i'm right and you're wrong. i thought like you guys too in my early 20s. i saw the same videos you did. i didn't do any research at all. as it turns out, persuasion is a skill that is not necessarily related to logic or facts. you should not so readily believe what you see. someone spend 100s of hours crafting that message that you just absorbed in 1 hour. you can't fully understand the message's true nature in 1 hour.

Firstly, if you look at income quintile growth in the 1980's, everyone was basically flat or falling behind but the top 20%. If the middle class did better under Reagan, it was because of deficit-financed tax cuts and more women going to work out of economic necessity.

What we have in this country are a corporate conservative party (Democrats) and a radical theocratic conservative party (Republicans). People in this country don't even know what progressivism is anymore, because establishment liberals sabotaged radical leftists. Elizabeth Warren is the closest thing we have to a nationally viable progressive politician in this country, and even she's not talking about things like a guaranteed minimum income, which was last put forth by Richard Nixon. Yes, if Richard Nixon were a politician today, he would be considered too liberal for the Democratic Party.

Progress of the past few centuries has been an overwhelmingly positive force for improvement in the lives of most humans. The downsides are small by comparison.

Does anyone really yearn to return to a world without electricity, modern medicine, transportation, communication, and most important: Reddit?

I recommend The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves for a nice debunking of nostalgia for the good ol' days before all this progress.

Anthony De Jasay is one the most smartest yet underappreciated libertarians I guess. Just look up on his books. Besides that Edward Stringham and Peter Leeson are important figures. I always liked Bruce Benson's works. You should also read his article enforcement of property rights in primitive societies

This article on wild west is excellent. It's based on their book Not So Wild, Wild West

I mentioned Peter Leeson, his article on pirates An-Arrgh-Chy is a different perspective on organization outside the state, his book on same subject, The Invisible Hook is a must read. Also his article on Somalia, Better off Stateless: Somalia Before and After Government Collapse is perfect.

And this is another article on law and justice by Bruce Benson.

I was going to reply to your points, but when I got to this:

>Yes, the government is spending 7.8 trillion additional dollars, but the citizens of the US are making an additional 7.8 trillion dollars.

I realized that you don't actually know anything about economics. That isn't an insult or me being flippant! Lots of people don't know anything about economics - it's called "the dismal science" for a reason. And lots of those people that know nothing about economics vote and have political opinions, because one is not a prerequisite for the other. So I'm not insulting you by saying that - it's just that no one who has ever stepped foot in an economics 101 classroom on the first day, opened en econ-related book of any kind, or even Googled the word "economics" would say that.

So, instead of debating these specific points with you, I'm going to be as helpful as I can be. Here are the books you want to start with:

Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson (http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373957729&sr=8-1&keywords=economics+in+one+lesson)

Ludwig Von Mises' Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (http://www.amazon.com/Human-Action-Ludwig-von-Mises/dp/0865976317/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373957777&sr=1-1&keywords=ludwig+von+mises)

And Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics (http://www.amazon.com/Human-Action-Ludwig-von-Mises/dp/0865976317/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373957777&sr=1-1&keywords=ludwig+von+mises)

I don't mean to pile three books on you - honestly, you can just read one and get started (I would recommend Hazlitt to start). Once you have a bit more understanding of how things like GDP are calculated, how inflation affects purchasing power, how credit risk is evaluated, and so on, you'll have a better understanding of your own suggestion without needing me. Hazlitt isn't a long read - if you have an average amount of free time, you can probably be through it in a few weeks. I look forward to discussing it with you!

I've only got a BA in Economics, but one of my favorite class is "Economic History of US" with A New Economic View of American History: From Colonial Times to 1940 as one of the required readings. It's an amazing book with plenty of graphs and statistics to support their conclusions. It explains the importance of the Erie Canal or "wealth" of a farmers in the 1800s or what does USD500 means to someone in 1800s.

edit: another interesting book called "The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates" by Professor Peter T. Leeson, a Professor of Economics and Law at George Mason University. The book is about the economics of 18th century pirates/privateers/buccaneers, there's also a podcast episode of two Econ professor (writer & host) talking about this book.

> The student loan issue is a trillion dollar bubble

How are student loans a bubble? Who's reselling degrees?

>whose effects are going to change the future of the US for the worse, and no one is taking any responsibility for it. Instead it's easier to simply blame the debtors.

Having student loan debt payments is obviously bad, and ideally there'd be none for anyone. However (shamelessly stolen from badecon):

1. The last 30 years have been characterized by a huge increase in the college wage premium. In 1979, a college educated worker made 35% more than an HS graduate on average, by 1999, they would be making 80% more. The Race Between Education and Technology is a great overview of this. A college education is still a really good investment. This isn't because of selection effects - see The Causau Effect of Education on Earnings.
   
2. Virtually no one pays market price for a college education. The financial aid process allows universities to practice almost-perfect price discrimination. They can effectively charge a different price for every student, so that the market just follows the demand curve up until their maximum tuition level.
   
3. The is definitely is a sheepskin effect - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics)#A_basic_job-market_signalling_model - for college diplomas. But this is extremely well understood (Spence shared the economics Nobel with Akerlof for signalling theory). I think that separating bright, talented and hard working 18 year olds from bright, talented and lazy 18 year olds is a non-trivial process.
   
   >These people who went to Europe are the smart people who got out of a country that is falling apart from the inside out.
   
   ok

Woah, man. I don't know where you received your economics education, but everything you said in there is dead wrong. That is not how capitalism works.


>Impossible. For anyone to amass that much wealth, someone else has to suffer for it, there isn't enough to go around for everyone, so for someone to go with so much, someone else has to go without.

The economy grows when entrepreneurs take risk, hire more people, and offer superior products that enrich all our lives. The ability to utilize the savings of others to expand business is the source of wealth creation, not government programs. Individuals looking after their own self-interest, through the powers of supply and demand, benefit society. As someone else already pointed out, that is the zero-sum fallacy.



>It is inconceivable that someone could make that much money while running an honest business.

An overwhelming majority of businesses do make their money honestly. And those that don't are utilizing government power, which as I've already said, needs to be reduced.


>It is inconceivable that someone could make that much money while running an honest business. Someone, somewhere down the totem pole, is getting exploited and shit on. It might be 100% legal, but it sure as hell isn't "earning their money honestly".

This couldn't be more wrong. When an entrepreneur expands his business and needs help, he hires people. Maybe this is someone who had a job, or maybe it's someone who was previously unemployed. Either way, it's an improvement in his or her situation. Otherwise, they don't have to work for them. What happens if that entrepreneur or any other businessmen decided to stop seeking additional profits? Nobody expands their businesses, and nobody gets hired.

Check out Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson

Or maybe Peter Schiff's How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes

Everyone should read that book. I have some caveats though. For crowds to be wise, they must have four things:

1. Diversity of opinion: This is very hard in an age of mass mediated talking points. With cable news and the internet, you can get "facts" in any flavor you want.
   
   
2. Independence: People don't let their opinions be determined by those around them. HA!
   
   
3. Decentralization: People can draw on local (not top down/centralized) information.
   
   
4. Aggregation: Private sentiments can be converted into an organized collective judgment.
   
   I'm not saying that crowds can't be wise. They can under ideal conditions. For that to be the case though, the person has to be rational in how they construct their beliefs and all four qualities must be present. Good luck with that.
   
   I'm not trying to debunk a strawman. Surowiecki does say that all these qualities have to be present for the crowd to be wise. As is often the case with big ideas though, this one has taken on a life of its own, to the point where a lot of people think that crowds are always right, regardless of whether the qualities are there or not.

> Could you stop with the ad hominem?

Can you please stop using ad hominem incorrectly? "means responding to arguments by attacking a person's character, rather than to the content of their arguments. When used inappropriately, it is a fallacy in which a claim or argument is dismissed on the basis of some irrelevant fact or supposition about the author or the person being criticized."

I'm not attacking your character, I called your comparison ignorant, because it is.

> You've missed the point -- the point is that the market can't tell if the egg is broken or not; and behaves the same way for those twenty years until it is put to use (or not in the case of the broken egg).

I didn't miss your point at all. Your thought "experiment" is famously well known as Schrödinger's cat. The thing is, you can't use this paradox in economics. "The problem with Schrödinger's thought experiment is that the scientist doing it has to open up the box to see how the cat has fared. But the act of looking destroys the superposition. The quantum states “decohere” or collapse into one classical state or the other. In other words, whenever you actually look in the box, the cat is always either dead or alive."

You can't assume that simply because a bitcoin is not being used that it will never be used again. There has to be a consensus and way to prove to 100% of a degree that it will never be used again before it truly lowers supply.

> The act of holding is one of NOT spending. And as you seem happy with the idea that spending alters things, then so too, by definition does not spending.

Now, I'll agree that what I'm about to say is debatable, but inflation exists to encourage spending. Without it it's likely economies would collapse. Bottom line, not spending hurts instead of helps.

> Everyone does not do that though. And as I explicitly said -- that wasn't what I was advocating.

This is called Tragedy of the Commons - "an economics theory by Garrett Hardin, individuals acting independently and rationally according to each one's self-interest, behave contrary to the whole group's long-term best interests by depleting some common resource."

This is what I'm trying to give light to. Although you may think differently, your actions are in fact contrary to the whole group's long-term best interest.

> What on earth do you think "supply" means? You do understand that supply is a fluid thing, when we talk about supply and demand it is "supply at a particular price".

You are completely crossing supply with market cap. Price is completely irrelevant to supply when trying to analyze overall supply. And what price? Price compared to dollars? To gold? To tulips? It's completely arbitrary.

> I might be willing to sell my services at $100 an hour but not at $10 an hour -- hence, when I withhold my services at $10 an hour, the total supply of that service in the economy at that time is lowered.

This is called Fair market value. You don't set this, the market does. And if you think you do, well, then you're going to go out of business FAST!


> If I am a baker, and I choose not to bake some loaves does that not lower supply?

No, if it never existed in the first place it has no impact on the supply. A thought doesn't affect supply.


>If I am a baker and I choose to bake those loaves, but then throw them away, how is that any different from my not having baked them at all? Supply is lowered.

When you bake them, supply increases, when you throw them away, supply decreases. You may end up with the same total supply as there would have been if you had not baked them at all, but nonetheless, you still affected total supply during the time they existed. How do you not get this??

I don't mean to be argumentative, but I'm done trying to teach Economics 101 to you. None of your arguments have any backing and are completely suggestive. Do yourself a favor and please look at the links hyperlinked in this post and read this book. It will help you greatly.

http://www.rfe.org is good first stop if you're looking for raw data

Most university library (particularly my alma mater of UC Davis) is likely to have a large selection of previously published economic journals and publications available electronically.

The Nation Bureau of Economic Research Working Papers (https://www.nber.org/) has a pretty decent selection but you have to become a member to read beyond the abstracts

http://repec.org/ is also a great source for papers, though one should note that they tend to be working papers and lack full peer review.

If you're looking to gain a greater understanding of more basic economic theory I recommend you up pick up a primer) or textbook from amazon. Thats how most people get started (either through classes or self-study).

You should really read an economics book because your response is illogical. This book is very good. Technological innovation creates wealth and increases purchasing power, not the other way around. The time from the industrial revolution to the baby boomer generation involved massive leaps in automation, and yet the middle class became much better off. The period to which OP refers comes after massive automation. Your timeline is wrong. The wealth created from automation is specifically what gave individual men the purchasing power necessary to support a family.

No, the answer has to do with inflation - specifically the switch to free-floating fiat currency in Nixon's economic reforms - which led to a massive transfer of wealth to the top, which continues to this day. Inflation devalues a currency, which wipes out the effect of minimum wage laws, and folks at the top are the closest to the printing press so they benefit while those furthest from the printing press are disproportionately harmed.

Both concepts are discussed in the book I linked. You would do well to read it.

If you think you might want to go after some of the original stories, Bullfinch's Mythology is a really classic collection of myths, and of course there's Grimm's Fairy Tales and Aesop's Fables. Richard Burton's translation of The Arabian Nights is the English language classic there, The Tale of the Genji is something similar from Japan.

You might also like some related nonfiction, like The Golden Bough which is about the origins of myth and religion, The Hero With a Thousand Faces about the similarities across various stories of heroes, and more recently, The First Fossil Hunters which looks at how finding elephant and dinosaur bones may have inspired some of the Greek monsters like cyclops and griffin.

I'm going to go against the grain and say there is no student loan bubble - it doesn't even make sense. A bubble is when "asset prices that exceed an asset's fundamental value because current owners believe they can resell the asset at an even higher price" (source). This is impossible in this context - you can't resell your education and the debt is non-dischargeable (for good or ill).

Instead, it may be accurate to say college is overpriced, since bubble is makes no sense. I don't think this is accurate. Over the last 40ish years the college wage premium has increased. In 1974, an average college grad made 32% more than a high school grad, in 1999, the difference had risen to 80%. You can read more about it in this book. A college degree is still a really good investment. Maybe not as good as 10 years ago, but not negative.

Also, you can't evaluate returns to investment in college by looking at sticker price. Financial aid process lets schools do very precise price discrimination - they can basically just walk up the demand curve. Saying nominal tuition increased by X isn't very meaningful. College is pricey, dropping out is very pricey, but it is still worthwhile. The college premium is not just a selection effect.

I'll grant there is some signaling going on through the college process. But economists have shown pretty clearly that although a portion of college is signaling, not nearly all of it is signalling. And signaling isn't necessarily entirely wasteful, separating smart hard working people from smart lazy ones isn't easily achieved other ways.

This article suggests that online classes can replace college in some respects. Perhaps in some part, but not entirely. Lectures survived books and other recorded media, and learning with both was better than either alone. Plus, working with and around similar peers has real knock-on effects. And so far, the majority of for-profit universities have failed to produce the same graduation rates, quality of education, or lower costs than public and private universities - that could change, but we're not there yet.

A young person has spent his entire life having his needs provided for by his parents. So the only model he really knows is one where a benevolent authority figure takes care of people in need. Naturally he supports a strong welfare state.

As he grows older and becomes responsible for himself, he begins to understand that making good choices and working hard helps him do better in life, and helps him best provide for his family. So when the authorities take more and more of his earnings and give it to other people who he thinks are making bad choices and working less hard, he gets resentful. He wants the government to get stop interfering in his life. [Here I'm using a more classical understanding of conservatism, not the currently popular xenophobic, warfare-oriented understanding of conservatism.]

Also, in rare cases, as he gets older he'll learn enough economics to understand why welfare programs do more harm than good, and will advocate against them.

Some people really struggle with seeing loses in their portfolio. You should consider that maybe stocks are not a suitable investment vehicle for you if you are afraid you won't have the discipline to hold when the markets are down.

One thing that helps, is to realize that bear markets are normal and expected. If you have a long term strategy then it is nothing to fear, in fact, bear markets represent good buying opportunities to the long term investor.

I highly recommend this book - Stocks for the Long Run by Jeremy Siegel (You can probably find the pdf by googling it).

https://www.amazon.com/Stocks-Long-Run-Definitive-Investment/dp/0071800514

The book does a through analysis of historical stock returns and convincingly argues that holding a diversified portfolio of stocks for a long period of time is a very efficient way to invest. Even if you only read the first chapter, it may increase your confidence and help you create your own strategy.

> fertility rate and intelligence tend to be inversely correlated

They are now, but they didn't used to be.... Gregory Clarke's excellent "Farewell to Alms' includes tons of excellent evidence that intelligence and fertility were positively correlated for many many centuries.

Now, there is currently worry about dysgenics (i.e. the movie "Idiocracy") as a result of the switch to them being inversely correlated.

If your coming from the left I recommend In Defense of Global Capitalism

If your coming from the right maybe For a New Liberty (free online) or Rollback


Other classics:


Anarchy, State, and Utopia -Academic Philosophy, tough read

Economics in One Lesson - Econ, easy read

Man, Economy and State (also free) - Econ, tough read

As for critics of Libertarianism there are tons of them, from idiots like Naomi Klein and Michael Moore to well respected economists. I would check out someone like Amartya Sen. If you read about criticisms of the free market or capitalism for the love of god read someone who is actually criticizing capitalism and not corporatism.

I would say get employed in the cafe now and start to learn the rhythm and operation of it as it is today as well as the clientele. Learn the familiar faces and names of the regulars, make a connection with them and the community, and start to imagine the ways in which it could be improved. Ask the regulars what they like the most of this place and if there's anything that could make it better (you don't have to disclose you intend to purchase the place).

You could read Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World to get into the mindset of a coffee connoisseur.

These two things could begin to give you a better sense of the kind of world you are entering. I wish you success and fulfillment in this new endeavour.

Very interesting topic. The economies of Korea and Japan are not the neo liberal free market capitalistic states that the mainstream would like you to believe. I highly recommend reading Ha-Joon Chang’s book bad samaritans, which is basically where my knowledge of how Asian economies like Japan and Korea work https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Samaritans-Secret-History-Capitalism/dp/1596915986

I’ll try to phrase the spirit of your question the best I can, thanks!

Richard White gives a pretty good description of the way the Civil War was financed on the northern side in Railroaded. He doesn't discuss the specifics of the California Gold, but you do get a pretty good understanding of the process and how the bonds had to be backed with gold. This gold came from California.

Also, check out The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War by Leonard L. Richards.

Finally, take a look at this article where they claim that almost $200 million passed through San Francisco from California and the Comstock Lode and then moved on to the treasuries of the North.

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

****

​

Bernie is not "isolationist" in any respect, neither in foreign policy nor trade.

Isolationism is keeping the affairs of other countries at a distance. Bernie isn't proposing a withdrawal from world affairs. What he is proposing is a halt to the "bomb first, ask questions later" foreign policy of the United States that has contributed to displacement and chaos in the Middle East, and has cost the United States trillions of dollars without any real benefit. Unless you see establishing military bases thoughtout the region to strong arm our way to foreign oil access as a benefit, or see feeding the military industrial complex at the expense of peace in the world a benefit. I would argue that the economic and political downside of this way of engaging the world far outweighs any supposed economic or political gains.

As to trade, he is not against trade agreements. He's against neoliberal free trade policies that benefit large, multi-national corporations by opening new markets to them, but that are devastating to U.S. workers who are forced to compete with low wage labor in other countries.

These free trade policies are also devastating to developing economies around the world, because under these agreements, in order to get any money at all from the IMF and the World Bank, these countries are forced to open their borders, almost unconditionally, to U.S. goods and goods from other developed industrial nations. In this way, these developing economies are not allowed to engage in protectionist measures that would allow them to place high tariffs on foreign goods so that their own indigenous industries are allowed to develop until such time as they can compete on an even playing field with the developed countries. The exploitation of developing economies by the U.S. and other already developed nations is leading to a world where developing countries remain perpetually poor as they are not allowed to establish a foothold from which to establish their own developed economies. Our free trade policies actually exacerbate global poverty, which is ultimately bad for the entire world.

Countries like the U.S., Great Britain, and Japan would not have the industries they do today if not for years of protectionist policies that allowed them to develop their industries into world-class competitors.
This book is a bit dry, but it's a great introduction to the hazards of unbridled neoliberal free trade policies, and also makes clear that throughout history, a healthy dose of protectionism is what has allowed countries like the U.S. to become economic giants.

Anyway, I think Bernie, ultimately, is not isolationist, but is proposing a more constructive and productive way to engage the rest of the world. It's one thing to look at the Iraq war and NAFTA and TPP as "bad" or mistakes. It's another thing to imagine what the alternative to these actions could have been. I don't think those alternatives include isolationism, but do include diplomacy and a more equitable way of promoting world trade that doesn't come at the expense of workers and nations with developing economies.

Modeling incentives lies at the heart of almost all of modern economics. Not just game theory - even modern macroeconomics is really about modeling how agents respond to things.

If you are looking for pleasure reading, I wouldn't suggest macroeconomics.

Personally, I liked texts that examine interesting institutions or behaviors through the lens of incentives. Here are a few suggestions:

1. evolution of legal systems and the incentives they produce. http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Course_Pages/legal_systems_very_different_12/LegalSystemsDraft.html
   
   
2. economics of piracy.
   https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Hook-Hidden-Economics-Pirates/dp/0691150095
   
   
3. almost anything by Becker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Becker

If anyone else finds this area as fascinating as I do, I would strongly recommend Marc Levinson's excellent book: The Box. It's a well-written, comprehensive history of the shipping container and it's unbelievably massive impact on the world economy. As you might expect, everything in this video is covered in much greater depth in the book. I would bet the video was made by someone who read The Box, found it interested, and wanted to repeat what they'd just learned to a wider audience.

My girlfriend recently got her masters degree in sociology, and her thesis was about different types of polls and how they affect outcomes. It turns out that the differences between internet, written (snailmail) and telephone polls is not just slight, it's enormous. Of course, it's because you're tapping into different demographics. Remember who everbody in the internets was full of disbelief when noone actually voted for Ron Paul?

A better predictor for elections is probably a prediction market ('the wisdom of crowds' is an interesting read). Take a look at intrade. Over 60% of the 'investors' there predicts a win for Obama. Not only that, it seems that the Democrats were set for a win from the start, regardless of Clinton or Obama, although the grap has widened.

This is a wonderful and brief writeup. If you're interested in checking the whole situation out further, I highly recommend Richard White's Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America. It was an absolutely amazing read that points to the impetus behind those land grants and who exactly profited from railroads.

1. ''Young'' as in your 20s-30s. Teenagers are practically children. Most political pollsters don't look to ppl that young. These are children that largely can't distinguish between fantasy and reality. Thats why they're not polled. Undeveloped brains.
   
   
2. Right wing free market laissez faire economic policy hasn't developed a single 1st world country. Hamiltonian economics is what was used for every 1st world country. This required heavy government intervention that went against conservative economic theory. The parts about lack of worker rights fits conservative ideas, but that was reversed. This book explains it well https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Samaritans-Secret-History-Capitalism/dp/1596915986/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1500605237&sr=8-1&keywords=bad+samaritans
   
   >"a liberal anthropologist named J.D. Unwin did a massive amount of research trying to find a successful sexually libertine society at some point in history and wrote a book describing his findings, which were that virtually every society and civilization throughout history developed to great success when marriage, the nuclear family, and traditional morals and ethics became the accepted norm"
   
   Oh look, an anecdote. The Catholic Church is right I guess. You have to not wear contraception and stay in marriages you hate to stabilize society.

>college is such a fucking scam these days

This misconception is so prevalent on reddit I have a comment saved just to address it. Link

>It may be accurate to say college is overpriced, since bubble is makes no sense. I don't think this is accurate. Over the last 40ish years the college wage premium has increased. In 1974, an average college grad made 32% more than a high school grad, in 1999, the difference had risen to 80%. You can read more about it in this book. A college degree is still a really good investment. Maybe not as good as 10 years ago, but not negative.

>Also, you can't evaluate returns to investment in college by looking at sticker price. Financial aid process lets schools do very precise price discrimination - they can basically just walk up the demand curve. Saying nominal tuition increased by X isn't very meaningful. College is pricey, dropping out is very pricey, but it is still worthwhile. The college premium is not just a selection effect.

So yes, college can be expensive, but for most people it is a great investment and becoming more so over time as our economy becomes increasingly knowledge-based.

Thanks for sharing. I hope this gets more up votes!

However, one thing I will say is that it would be interesting if this data took into consideration how many years into the bull market the market was. Cuz think about it. it makes sense that ~66% of the time you are better off investing all your money because the market's general trend is upwards. However, the longer into a bull market one gets (tautologically) the closer you are to a bear market. So, to me, it would be interesting to see a chart showing how the percentage changes every additional year into a bull market... unless I am think about this wrong.

In Jeremy Siegel's most recent addition of Stocks for the Long Run he explains that there has never been a time when an investor in the US market didn't make money on an investment left for over a decade.

If you want a best understanding of what Graeber provocatively calls everyday communism, I suggest you take a look at this book:

Anthropology and the Economy of Sharing by Thomas Widlok.


Thomas Widlok's book is the only book that I know of that talks about the issue of communism in any detail. He edited two books on the ethnography of equality that are also useful.

The anthropological term for that communism is "demand-sharing".


Demand-sharing is distinct from the gift, by the way. Demand-sharing is NOT a form of exchange (Widlok deals with this very well).

For Gifts, I would direct you to The World of the Gift by Jacques T. Godbout and Alain C. Caillé and Gifts and Commodities by C. A. Gregory.

Alain Caillé is the expert on the question of the gift.


P.S:

/u/LitGarbo

You deserve way more subscribers, this is some good quality stuff.

Good luck! But, I highly recommend this book. If you know 0 about investing in stocks and the market. https://www.amazon.com/Stocks-Long-Run-Definitive-Investment/dp/0071800514 - Thank me later! great book down to the roots

Start here, maybe:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003XT60KO/

for an introduction to why tariffs are really just a tax on one group (almost always the poorest people) to benefit another group, and always to the detriment of the economy as a whole. It's such an uncontroversial idea in economics, even Krugman agrees. And now we have a "conservative" Republican president waving around tariffs like they were summer camp demerits. And I gotta explain it to conservatives. The Left hates freedom of speech! The right supports tariffs! Up is down. Black is white! :)

Here's it's even available for free online:

https://mises.org/system/tdf/Henry%20Hazlitt%20Economics%20in%20One%20Lesson.pdf?file=1&type=document

Highly recommended.

> (https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Samaritans-Secret-History-Capitalism/dp/1596915986) If post length were the basis for winning an argument, you'd win. However, you have little idea what you are talking about due to your neoliberal blinders. Try reading the book at the link, which exactly supports the point I made.

Why is your only source a book that supports your prior beliefs? Why is it that a huge majority of economists support free trade, and you choose to disagree based on one book?

Maybe "you have little idea what you are talking about due to your neoliberal blinders" corporate shilling.

> The world probably won't go crazy, but there will be some who will act against other.

Nozick's Anarchy State and Utopia draws on (and critiques) the work of so-called "anarcho-capitalists" (also called "market anarchists" and "individualist anarchists") like Lysander Spooner, Benjamin Tucker, Murray Rothbard, and David Friedman.

Market anarchists argue that the problem you identify - the possibility of widespread violence that could accompany the "power vacuum" of a stateless society - is solved by social coordination and market forces.

Put briefly (and oversimplified): In a stateless society, people would fear for their safety, and they would form protective associations that provide the police, military, and judicial functions normally handled by states. The only difference is that these "protective associations" would work on the basis of individual consent, like a club. You would not be "born into" membership in a protective association as you are today born into citizenship in a state. You could enter it and leave it on mutually agreeable terms. Associations might charge members for protection or require that members protect (and not assault) each other. Surely, they argue, the market for protection from the threat of violence would be as strong as the markets for other essentials like food and shelter.

If this seems risky, the market anarchists argue, that's only because you've trained yourself not to notice the considerable risks that come with state monopolies on the exercise of power. States oppress, abuse, invade, steal, and murder all the time. It's just that their doing so is the norm, and we've either been sheltered from it because of our extraordinary luck, or we've ceased to notice it. This is an example of the "nirvana fallacy" according to the anarchists, because we are comparing an ideal state (Norway) to a hellish caricature of anarchism (Somalia).

There are several common critiques of this argument. Here are a few:

1. Nozick himself argues that the market anarchist's approach is unsustainable. Markets for protective associations, he argues, have an inherent tendency to "collapse" into monopolies, because nobody has any incentive to be a member of the second-best protective association in their region. The strongest protective association eventually absorbs all of its competitors, and it becomes an "ultra-minimal state." The argument gets a little bit more complicated at this point, but the upshot according to Nozick is that ultra-minimal states (monopolistic protective associations) have the moral obligation to become full-fledged "minimal states" which require all of the people in a region to sign up, contribute taxes, and participate in mutual policing and protection schemes.
   
   
2. Economists like Milton Friedman (father of David, mentioned above) argue that this sort of anarchism is unsustainable simply because the goods in the market for protection are "public goods." Public goods are non-excludable and non-rivalrous. That means that you can't easily stop somebody from enjoying a public good without killing them, and the use of a public good by one person doesn't keep anybody else from using it simultaneously. Police protection, for example, is a public good because my enjoyment of police protection doesn't stop you from simultaneously enjoying police protection, and everybody in the jurisdiction of a police force benefits from that police force's presence whether or not they pay to support that force. Friedman and others have argued that full-fledged states are the only entities capable of providing for public goods. Markets can't do it - in fact, when markets try to do it, what occurs is one example of a phenomenon called "market failure." Other examples of public goods include atmospheric oxygen, knowledge, military protection, justice, and flood levees.
   
   
3. There's an historical argument against market anarchism, and this seems the most similar to your concerns. At least one of two things holds true of every society that has come close to market anarchism: That society has been a miserable place to live, and/or that society eventually evolved into a stable nation-state. Consider this an attempt to turn the "nirvana fallacy" argument against the anarchists: The anarchists are imagining an ideal anarchic state instead of the more likely and less appealing Somalian outcome. Market anarchists claim that this response is specious. They argue that market anarchism has worked in certain contexts, as with 18th-century pirate codes and Medieval Iceland. They also argue that the misery of many stateless societies would only be made worse by the presence of a state. Finally, they claim that it is not a good argument against a political ideal to say that that political ideal has never been tried in its purest form.

Yeah, hayek argued liberalism isnt enough. The proponents of free markets in the us, cato etc.


They tell people that regulations cause monopolies, then they lobby to get anti monopole regulations removed, then they consolidate and us monopolistic tactics that were formerly illegal.



The demonize money going to the poor, but say nothing about the 5 trillion going to their industry.




They arent stupid, they know socialism is the most effective way to raise productivity.


A whole nation will always be more productive than .01 percent of it.





Monopoly capitalism and the capitalists taking over the state is the natural outcome of capitalism.




Thats been known for years. They want brutal free markets for us and no benefits from socialism , and brainwash us to fight for it while they enjoy the benefits of socialism and capitalism as it pleases.



Thats why you need social Democratic states with a good mix of publicly owned industry and features.





And the data is in on free markets, its bullshit. We are getting poorer.


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

I would recommend Economics in One Lesson (which you can also buy here) because it teaches you how to use reasoning in economics and figure out where people are using bad logic in their economic thinking.

I would definitely recommend this as one of the first books you read because there are a lot of economic fallacies out there put forth by pundits, talkshow hosts, and even some economists; this book will allow you to see whether or not their economic thinking and logic is sound.

On a personal note, this is one of the first books on economics that I read, and I absolutely loved it. While it might not be the most entertaining read, it is certainly more interesting than your standard economics textbook.

After you finish that book, I would recommend you read How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes because it explains, in a way that even a child could understand, why an economy grows. The overall concept is fairly simple, but it is vital to fully understand it before trying to understand more important concepts.

The realistic answer is that private property is defined as "that which you can defend." If you have an apple tree in your front yard, the assumption is that a small percentage of that fruit will be taken by sojourners since guarding it 24/7 would be impractical and would not be cost effective. Likewise if you claim to own 10,000 acres of land but squatters occupy 1,000 acres, realistically only 9,000 of those acres are your property. Socialists would be totally okay with this if they had any semblance of ideological consistency or pragmatism.

But obviously private property as a construct is necessary for society. So in an anarcho-capitalist society people would take measures to secure their property in a communal fashion, i.e. arbitration and hired security guards. It would be similar to the system that early settlers had in Texas where the "homeowners association" you would willingly join would essentially fulfill all purposes that the government does. And it was very effective by the way.

> The concept of economic libertarianism depends on the notion that competition will always lead to the best winning out, but it ignores the fact that not everyone begins the race from the same starting line;

The philosophy does not ignore that. If you wish to learn about Laissez-faire economics I would start with this book http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232 It is an introductory book on the matter if only to help you better criticise it. I find that many on Reddit have a distorted cartoonist view of libertarianism, as if they learned about it from New York Times cartoons or something. I don't expect to convince more then three people of libertarianism in my lifetime, but would love to have more discussions about it with people who at least know what they are talking about.

Agreed. The average annualized total return for the S&P 500 index (a broad based market index) over the past 90 years is 9.8 percent. In a ROTH, it compounds tax free which maximizes the return. As the investor gets closer to retirement, the asset allocation should get a little more conservative with a smaller percent in the stock market which will reduce the average annual return.

Stocks for the Long Run by Jeremy Siegel is an excellent guide to investing in the stock market with a "buy and hold" philosophy.

I'll just add that I am retired. I fully funded whatever IRA or 401Ks were ever available to me. With 40+ years to allow for growth and compounding, I think I got about an overall 8% return.

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

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

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

So I recently read this book https://www.amazon.com/Not-So-Wild-West-Economics/dp/0804748543

Which provides a pretty good case study of anarchism in practice. People moved out west in the United States before governments and despite Hollywood portrayals of the West as a lawless place, people were able to create a number of informal institutions that keep the peace and allowed people to thrive and flourish.

Incorrect, virtually every rich country became rich because government protected their own industries until they could compete on their own. You probably think Japan setting import quotas on foreign cars and subsidizing failing companies like Toyota multiple until they stopped sucking is a good example of 'free markets'.

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

Virtually every other country that tried neo-liberal reforms of free trade/less government intervention stayed poor.

I think Japan was very protectionist in what products it would let in. Was and still is.

Korea did the same thing post Korean War to become the industrial power it is today. Went from poorer than Bottswana to what it is now.

Really great book discusses how great powers become great -- easy, wonderful read:

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

Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Characteristics central to capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, a price system, and competitive markets.

Again I am linking my definition. The Wikipedia references 1,2,3 are all economic textbooks and papers for this definition.

Ownership of means of production, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange and private property does mean "voluntary transaction of personal property and services" in layman's terms.

It's great you can regurgitate a definition from a book you didn't even link but you really should think about what it is you're regurgitating.

You really should read more Economics than Marx. I recommend starting with "Economics in one lesson" by Henry Hazlitt. It's a great, short read.

Unbelievable work. One of my all time favorites.
I'd recommend checking these out as well:

Modern Macroeconomics by Brian Snowdon (Really good historical overviews of Economic thought)

Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles by Jesus Huerta de Soto

Man, Economy, and State by Murry Rothbard

Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt (EXCELLENT if you are just beginning to study Economics)

Trumps trade policy is actually smart and dead on.

Free trade is not beneficial to 1st world countries that want to make stuff.
1st world companies cannot compete with a penny an hour labor 3rd world companies that have zero trade restrictions to sell to those 1st world customers. OR multi-nat companies that use 3rd world labor to make stuff to sell to 1st world customers (hint: what do the 1st world people do for work)

That's economics 101. Free trade is as crazy as a 3rd party corporation printing a sovereign government's money then charging that country interest on the "loans" that that 3rd party corporation (federal reserve) lends by printing money to give to the government.

see Ha Joon Changs book- bad Samaritans

http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Samaritans-Secret-History-Capitalism/dp/1596915986/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462382729&sr=8-1&keywords=Ha+Joon+Changs


About how free trade has always been lies and how good governments have a much stronger role in trade and commerce that we think.

take the red pill of business and economics.

Check out Greg Clark's work on this question. His hypothesis is that a change in primogeniture law in England led to a higher evolutionary advantage to high self control.

> Why are some parts of the world so rich and others so poor? Why did the Industrial Revolution--and the unprecedented economic growth that came with it--occur in eighteenth-century England, and not at some other time, or in some other place? Why didn't industrialization make the whole world rich--and why did it make large parts of the world even poorer? In A Farewell to Alms, Gregory Clark tackles these profound questions and suggests a new and provocative way in which culture--not exploitation, geography, or resources--explains the wealth, and the poverty, of nations.

> Countering the prevailing theory that the Industrial Revolution was sparked by the sudden development of stable political, legal, and economic institutions in seventeenth-century Europe, Clark shows that such institutions existed long before industrialization. He argues instead that these institutions gradually led to deep cultural changes by encouraging people to abandon hunter-gatherer instincts-violence, impatience, and economy of effort-and adopt economic habits-hard work, rationality, and education.

> The problem, Clark says, is that only societies that have long histories of settlement and security seem to develop the cultural characteristics and effective workforces that enable economic growth. For the many societies that have not enjoyed long periods of stability, industrialization has not been a blessing. Clark also dissects the notion, championed by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel, that natural endowments such as geography account for differences in the wealth of nations.

> A brilliant and sobering challenge to the idea that poor societies can be economically developed through outside intervention, A Farewell to Alms may change the way global economic history is understood.

I love this topic.

I highly suggest reading The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki. He goes deep into the special abilities of crowds, what factors are needed to make a "smart crowd", the different types of problems crowds can solve, and the limitations of crowds.

Also highly recommend The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind by Gustave Le Bon. It was published in 1896 and has a much more pessimistic view of the crowd, which I attribute to the lack of technology at the time.

Find the class which focuses on [system engineering/design](
http://web.mit.edu/6.033/www/) and take it slightly earlier in your undergrad career than you otherwise would. Spend time learning to communicate complex technical concepts clearly. If you find yourself interested in an area of system design like databases, networks, security, UI, etc then deep-dive into that.

In parallel with this, learn economic and technical history. Read Business Adventures and also be on the lookout for industries you might find interesting like container shipping

Nothing about the work itself was really all that interesting - we wrote pretty bog standard fleet management, revenue management, and data warehousing software. I do basically the same things now, but for the rental car industry, there are a lot of parallels. What was interesting about this job specifically was learning the history and seeing how much work goes into managing a fleet of millions of containers, which we produced in-house for quality control purposes. It wasn't something I'd ever really thought about before.

I always enjoy learning more about stuff that's normally taken for granted - without intermodal shipping, we wouldn't have the global economy. This book was really eye opening. Malcolm McLean was one of the biggest innovators in the history of the transportation industry.

> Giving things names does not make them true.

In my previous post i did not claim anything to be true, i claimed your assertion that supporters of free-market economics thought it fixes things "somehow". So i gave you one example on how it doesn't just "somehow" fix itself.

I invite you to read Economics in one lesson, its a good read and explains why free markets work. http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232

No offense, but you seem to have a knowledge of communism that does not go beyond the level of a youtube video or Wikipedia entry (maybe not even that).

For a better understanding of what Marx means by "value", I think you should check out the relevant chapters of Harry Cleaver's Reading Capital Politically while with re-reading Das Kapital:

https://libcom.org/library/reading-capital-politically-cleaver

You seem to be hinting at Commons and Common-pool resources, so maybe you should take a look at the book:

Omnia Sunt Communia: On the Commons and the Transformation to Postcapitalism by Massimo de Angelis:

http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=961FEA9AF31094CA0280E0F92B353AF7


Since you're posting in Marxist sub, I'm going to give you a take Marx's Communism leaving (Peter Kropotkin's and the anarchists' communism aside):


Marx doesn't thinks of communism in terms of ownership form of the means of production but in terms of the (social) relations of production.

This is one of many of the difference he has with the latter Leninist bullshit.

Paresh Chattopadhyay talks about this at length in his work:

https://libcom.org/library/socialism-marx-early-bolshevism-chattopadhyay


Marx's Associated Mode of Production: A Critique of Marxism:

http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=D06B95D8E25C74E8B16BEFB5C4B9C165


He talks about about "associated mode of production".


Speaking of wikipedia entries, here's one on that subject:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_association_%28communism_and_anarchism%29


I think you should also look into the concept of "demand-sharing", Thomas Widlok explain this concept in detail in his book "Anthropology and the Economy of Sharing":

https://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-Economy-Sharing-Thomas-Widlok/dp/1138945552


What anthropologists call "demand-sharing" is a kind of an open-ended agreement between two groups, or even two individuals, to provide for the other; within which, even access to one another’s possessions followed the principle of ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’.

(‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’, the old communist formula, basically means if you have a need and I have the ability to meet that need, I do it.

Keeping count or reciprocating is very frowned upon in these sort of situations.

This sort of communism is quite common (even under capitalism), in families, between friends and there's a little of it in every non-hostile relationship.)

A government agency isn't a part of the free market. The hypothetical free market solution would be having multiple completing licensing agencies (like you have with some goods like plastics/oils) that other companies require to work with them (at the community level or otherwise) and if any of them were to openly violate trust they would be thrown out and one of the other companies would be preferred. Would require very different infrastructure but that's not surprising as you'd have to be a bit confused to call the current system a free market.

It's also not mythical it's a pretty clearly explained and defined thing. Here is a good intro book.

https://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232/

I enjoyed "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely, and am currently loving "The Wisdom of Crowds" by James Surowiecki. Behavioral Economics is fascinating.

> I think things like financial technology and so forth are the future of the UK economy.

Things like that do not increase the productivity. Financial sector is already too big in comparison to real economy. I think that is especially true in UK.

> I just do not think industry is really our strong point, compared to Germans and Dutchies etc. I do not see us being able to compete well on this.

Nokia's electronics branch was generating losses for 17 years (was subsidized by Finnish government). Korea's LG even longer (40 years?). Lack of free trade, protectionist tariffs, etc. have often led to increase of competitiveness of domestic industry. At, least that's what some books say.

As you said in your other comment, the government is not (I maintain that it currently is, but shouldn't be) a business, so it shouldn't be investing in anything besides national defense and maybe some research. We shouldn't be subsidizing green energy any more than we should be subsidizing oil (which we do).

I'm okay with a temporary solution to fix the problem that government subsidies and market interference has caused, but once it's resolved, the government should leave the market alone. For example, a doctor doesn't keep a patient on medication forever after a surgery, but only until the patient is healed.

I could also consider bounties from the government for solving ecological problems, such as cleaning up atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases, cleaning up oil spills, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions through science (e.g. using seaweed to reduce methane production in cattle).

Perhaps in just an optimist (great book BTW), but I honestly think that at can come up with innovative solutions that don't require government intervention.

>So where are they or their civilizations today?

Lehite successor states were ground to pieces by a combination of disease epidemic, climate change, and European aggression like the rest of America's endemic nations.

If you haven't read them, I highly recommend 1491 and 1493.

>Where were they when they were at their peak?

That's a great question that is not answered by modern revelation. John Clark thinks Joseph Smith believed that Book of Mormon events occurred around the Yucatan peninsula. I agree with him but I'm happy to cede ground if future evidences don't support that.

> Based on DNA and archaeology, it's a tough case, no?

Not really. This is an article you may (or may not) enjoy:

https://www.lds.org/topics/book-of-mormon-and-dna-studies?lang=eng

I found that its cautions were very prescient.

I cringe every time I say this because, being married and gay myself, the author has some fairly horrific social beliefs on equality for people like me. If you read his other writings (he's prolific) please do not attribute them to me or think I support them in any way. The guy would be perfectly happy to rip my family apart and have us enjoy limited protections under the law.

That said, I believe in being impartial and judging people by the quality of their work. Professionally, he wrote what is simply the best introductory topic for the layperson who wants a real-world understanding of the fundamental laws of economics and how they influence day-to-day life. It's called Basic Economics by economist Thomas Sowell. It is the book I gave members of my own family when they reached adulthood and took an interest in what I do.

Read it. It will be one of the few things that can pay dividends for the rest of your life. You'll end up with at least a freshman or sophomore level understanding of college economics in terms of the big ideas; the things that matter. Just as importantly, you'll know enough to be able to research topics that interest you further and that seem counterintuitive (e.g., understanding why economists hate rent control because it always leads to worse housing conditions and out-of-control housing costs for the poor and working class due to manipulation in the supply/demand curve.). It's far easier to get through than a textbook and will give you a lot to consider.

As for tax policy, not off the top of my head. I think the big thing is to get the fundamental economic ideas right because then you can at least understand how your stated goals relate to tax policy which involve, to some degree, moral decisions about fairness. When you get into tax policy, it's more about numbers; learning to analyze the data yourself to decide whether you are being manipulated.

You make excellent points. In-group boundaries can indeed align with cultural experience, and we cannot discount the importance of past experiences - especially for groups that have been the victims of persecution, for example.

However, I think it is a testament to the larger project of human civilization that we can transcend our own personal experiences and use a more abstract form of compassion and empathy to inform policy, law, planning, and our collective efforts to structure and govern society. For example, even in the aftermath of the Holocaust following World War II, the international Jewish community made extraordinary contributions to the advancement of the humanist project worldwide. If ever there were a time when an in-group might have justification to demonize out-groups as "the enemy" that was it. And yet a broader, more abstract compassion arose as a guiding ideal. So I don't agree that hardship and persecution necessarily lends itself to a cynical view of "foolish empathy" as you phrased it.

Having said that, there is undoubtedly a tension among values like self-preservation and magnanimity, and I would never suggest that simply expanding one's sphere of empathy and the broadening of how an individual defines his or her self-interest flatly negates the reality of these types of tension. But these finer details are not an area for speculation or conjecture. Instead, this is a place where science can get to work trying to reveal what is actually going on. Jonathan Heidt has done some interesting cross-cultural research on political orientation, and so I would start by looking at his work.

As for the question of how cultures change with shifting economic, environmental, and geopolitical circumstances, there is a large and growing scientific literature that is trying to us give some answers. The disciplines where I have seen the most work along these lines are cultural anthropology and geography. There are some wonderful popular books on these topics, and I would recommend Charles C. Mann's 1491 and 1493 in particular.

If you're interested in reading more radical perspective on the commons, I recommend reading the work of Massimo De Angelis:

Start with his book The Beginning of History: Value Struggles and Global Capital, here: http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=62F323FC4073EA6CF2C6586F50806911

Then his most recent book on Commons: Omnia Sunt Communia: On the Commons and the Transformation to Postcapitalism, here: http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=961FEA9AF31094CA0280E0F92B353AF7



As for good non-market stuff, I recommend taking a look at:




Anthropology and the Economy of Sharing by Thomas Widlok:

https://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-Economy-Sharing-Thomas-Widlok/dp/1138945552

The World of the Gift by Jacques T. Godbout and Alain C. Caille:

https://www.amazon.com/World-Gift-Jacques-T-Godbout/dp/0773517510

http://www.mit.edu/~allanmc/godbout1.pdf

Economist here! A common definition of a government/state is a "legal monopoly of coercion." Anarchy is simply a situation where that is absent. And just as some governments have been awful and others benevolent and good, anarchy per se is neither. The real question is whether anarchy can allow a flourishing and peaceful society to exist? Of course there are also important normative questions: is a radically decentralized system of power likely to be better or worse than one with fairly centralized authority?

A great place to start is Bruce Benson. There are people who write about "Anarcho-Capitalism" mostly from the Austrian economics enthusiasts, and as fringe as these folks are, there's something to it. Benson attacks an important part of the problem by asking about the workings of the legal system in a state setting and in non-state settings.

A book I haven't read, but that I've heard good things about is The Invisible Hook. Ask yourself this: where do you least expect social cooperation with decentralized authority? Maybe a place filled with short-sighted, uneducated, criminals. An 18th century pirate ship is just such a place. And yet it turns out pirates were among the first to establish checks on central authorities with constitutions.

Another hard case is the case of prisons. And yet the prison economy is flourishing with drugs, cell phones, and other contraband changing hands in a market dependent on trade and cooperation. This happens in spite of a central authority outlawing this activity. Think Soviet black markets in music, except instead of innocent Russians you've got some pretty un-peaceful dudes.

All of these situations shed important light on the possibility of anarchy. They show that some of our basic assumptions about the role of government rest on shakier foundations than we might have thought. People can, and probably will cooperate. Just as surely, they will try to rip each other off. But of course that's true in government too.

I get what you mean but there is potential though.

https://www.amazon.com/The-Wisdom-Crowds-James-Surowiecki/dp/0385721706?tag=w050b-20

>Surowiecki argues that "under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds

It's not always "right" but overall mostly not "wrong".

That's about the long term average of of the stock market; source and source.

Technically I was a bit high, I should have said something like 2% interest 5% principal growth.

That's very achievable in a low load index fund. Yes, you will have down years where you loose 30% of your value, however, over a 20 to 30 year horizon, given any historical time period, the average return is a bit over 7%.

However that market fluctuation is exactly why 1m is not enough to live comfortably on; especially if you are young enough to be working at imgur. You've likely got a house, kids, kids college etc a head of you.

If you were retired with a house paid off 1m isn't too bad assuming you are only going to live 20 years , have no major medical (nursing care) and are pulling principle.

I think a better question is why did /r/economics significantly improve in quality.

To begin, libertarians are a very vocal, opinionated, stubborn group who thrive in fringe internet communities. Paleo-libertarians ("Austrian" school followers) in particular think that their ideology is not just an ideology but actually Very Serious Intellectual Economics, so of course they'd find /r/economics to be a natural fit for themselves. I mean think of how many libertarian writers conflate their politics with "basic economics." You don't usually see liberals or moderates pulling that.

A few things happened over time though:

• Moderators stepped up to improve the quality. /u/besttrousers in particular deserves a lot of credit.
  
  
• Reddit itself became a more mainstream site, and libertarianism isn't exactly mainstream. So an influx of mainstream thinkers crowded out libertarians.
  
  
• The Ron Paul 2004/2008 hysteria died, so libertarian "recruiting" (sorry if that's a loaded term) slowed down.
  
  
• This is just postulation on my folk, but I think among younger folk, libertarianism is starting to look crazier and crazier. I mean I'll just take climate change as an example. Many libertarians deny climate change (they call it "AGW"), which is becoming more and more irrefutable... and yet they're all science-touting atheists? Oh...kay. There's also straight-up no purely libertarian solution to climate change. None.

Automation creates a whole new world of job creation. Who designs, builds, and maintains the robots? The more accepted it becomes, the more competitive it will get. This creates even more jobs.

You're not seeing the other side of this coin. To gain insight into the indirect effects of economics, read 'Economics in One Lesson' by Henry Hazlitt.

From Ron Paul's review of Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson on Amazon (apparently Amazon believes he's a Senator...):

> "I strongly recommend that every American acquire some basic knowledge of economics, monetary policy, and the intersection of politics with the economy. No formal classroom is required; a desire to read and learn will suffice. There are countless important books to consider, but the following are an excellent starting point: The Law by Frédéric Bastiat; Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt; What has Government Done to our Money? by Murray Rothbard; The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek; and Economics for Real People by Gene Callahan.
If you simply read and comprehend these relatively short texts, you will know far more than most educated people about economics and government. You certainly will develop a far greater understanding of how supposedly benevolent government policies destroy prosperity. If you care about the future of this country, arm yourself with knowledge and fight back against economic ignorance. We disregard economics and history at our own peril."

> —Ron Paul, Senator [sic] from Texas

> Edit: Basically, what would get you to group invest?

1. A group of investors; not gamblers.
   
2. Either long term investors or DayTraders or Swing Traders or Algo Traders; but one group for each category, no mix & match
   
3. A venue where people would share their trades before they execute them, as well as their portfolio. No need to give proof, trust is key
   
4. People sharing what they do and everyone else is free to get inspired. No wishy-washy or people short on funds and long on overbloated egoes only looking to troll.
   
   This idea is not new, it is based on The Wisdom of Crowds (great book), the key is to have like minded people, serious, and with the same outcome (sharing of info, not trolling); and that's something that's missing on Reddit as we know it.
   

How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes is a really good primer for macroeconomics and will set you on the right path.

Economics in One Lesson is a great book that will give you a solid theoretical foundation and perspective.

I also recommend anything by Thomas Sowell, such as Basic Economics or Applied Economics.

Seems like you are arguing along the lines of what Douglass North articulated in this book. For what it's worth, I found it to be a pretty persuasive argument, but seeing as how it was a pivotal publication in terms of his winning the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, and still studied two decades later in the social sciences, I submit that he may have been onto something.

>If you don't understand calculation problem, marginal value, global capitalism, freedom, income mobility, regulations, innovations in the first place of course you'll end up as a commie. What did you expect?

Lmfao. I see somebody just finished Economics in One Lesson

https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Crowds-James-Surowiecki/dp/0385721706

Evaluating the merits of a work of art and/or gameplay experience, as well as its worth in the marketplace is not a 'basic' task, it's a monumental one in which peoples' biases and preferences will surely factor in. And larger numbers of people attempting to do so will almost always end up with a better result than smaller numbers of people.

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

 

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

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

 


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

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

This looks like it's exactly what i'm looking for!

• A free html version
  
• A 193 page free pdf version
  
• The kindle version for $10
  
• The paperback version is 218 pages and $11 on Amazon

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

I don't think it is bullshit. This is the value of BTC as money, and money only. Bitcoin is also a store of value, a speculative asset, an edge against mainstream assets, etc...

The amount exchanged on exchange do not really matter as they are off chain and very high velocity, so don't contribute to the value of the asset as money.

Even if I assume your $200M is right, then the points still stands, most of BTC's value do not come from it's monetary use.

EDIT: Getting downvoted for reminding basic economics, bravo bravo ! You guys should spend less time on reddit and start reading this: https://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232

I may have completely missed part of the discussion, but has anyone recommended Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0679720197

It seems like the quintessential book for the overarching topic.

It is actually pretty mainstream. It is a great book on trade and human development, but it touches on the topic. Its a great read. https://www.amazon.com/Rational-Optimist-Prosperity-Evolves-P-S/dp/0061452068

For the layperson, Richard White's "Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America" is a great read and effectively critiques many of the popular myths about our work on building this railroad.

No doubt some (or even most) of his sources will overlap with those that would be of interest to a professional historian.

To me the economic case for libertarianism was a very important factor in understanding the distortions and moral corruption caused by the State. So my recommendation is Hazlitt's excellent Economics in One Lesson.

Agreed that this is not a single essay but a small book with many (short) chapters. But the most-helpful rated review for that book in Amazon says -
Hazlitt's "one lesson" is simple, and told in Chapter 1. The rest of the chapters are all stories in which the lesson plays a prominent role. In short, Hazlitt doesn't merely tell us the lesson, he actually shows us the lesson -- over and over and over, until we've got it.
With stories on tariffs, minimum wage, rent controls, taxes. unions, wages, profits, savings, credit, unemployment, and so much more, Hazlitt takes some of the most difficult economic concepts and makes these easily accessible to the lay person who has no economic training, background, or even inclination.

The trend is that crops that could not grow in certain latitudes due to colder climates can now tolerate the slightly warmer temperatures. A good example of this is french grapes that traditionally could not grow in England can now do so.

So we can reasonably expect any plant that used to only grow in, say, Southern California or Texas to now tolerate Oregon and Iowa. In the future, this may move even further north.

I should also mention that the same effect is occurring in the southern hemisphere, so weather patterns typical in the northern parts of Argentina are shifting south toward the higher latitudes.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the recent IPCC report stated that we have already experienced 1 full degree of warming since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Somewhere between 2030 and 2050 we will gain another half degree of warming. There's a chance that we might be able to hold it there if we go 100% carbon neutral by 2050, but otherwise the world will continue to warm to 2C by 2100.

My point is that the "5*C world" will not happen in our lifetimes. That's not to say we shouldn't care about the future, but rather we can't make a reasonable prediction about what the world will be 500 years from now.

Coming back to your question, where will agriculture be possible with 2 degree of warming? I believe that agriculture will continue to be possible in most places, as long as we do not exhaust the soil of nutrients or ruin it with poor irrigation practices. The crops we plant might change though - corn uses a tremendous amount of nutrients despite only producing a couple of cobs. A more calorie/nutrient dense crop might be beans, rice, etc. but that's depends on politics and economics more than anything else. There's a reason why Iowa is known for it's endless fields of corn instead of wheat or lettuce.

Likewise, modern Americans eats an enormous amount of meat without really paying for the environmental cost of it. I'm not advocating for veganism, but having a hulking chunk of steak every night isn't sustainable across billions of people.

I recommend you read a couple of books about sustainable agriculture - it's a fascinating subject and it may answer a lot of your questions. Some of my favorites include:

• The Third Plate
  
• 1491
  
• 1493
  
• The Wizard and the Prophet (I'm reading this one right now but it's very enlightening).
  
  

I recommend reading this:

https://www.amazon.com/1493-Uncovering-World-Columbus-Created/dp/0307278247/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1492224969&sr=8-1&keywords=1493

if you are interested in a counter-argument. Europe got a massive leg up from exploiting the Americas' natural resources - it gave them a huge advantage sometimes inadvertently (like flooding China with silver, which demolished the Chinese economy) and sometimes unexpected ways (the potato and many other plants from the Americas made Europe's nutrition much better than the rest of the world, or access to rubber, etc.)

Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. I studied economics in college, this is the best introductory book I have come across. Many books on the subject are dry, but Hazlitt is concise and engaging.

I've also read quite a few books on investing. I think more people should take the time to learn basic money management principles. It doesn't take long to learn the basics and, if applied, it can have a big impact on your finances in the long run. Two great books that require no prior knowledge on the subject are: (1) The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing and (2) The Four Pillars of Investing.

Sharing economy might help. It pretty much shows how ridiculous the whole "no one else in the world can ever use these resources" is. Keep in mind sharing economy is distinct from gift or exchange.

Here's a book on it https://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-Economy-Sharing-Thomas-Widlok/dp/1138945552

You can not look at things like that in a vacume. The rules of the game very much depend on local situation. If you want to see how this can work, the american west has many good examples. The devopment of mining right for example were very complicated and specific to that situation. The cattle farmers handle there property rights in a diffrent way.

There is not one way of doing everything, the hole point of anarcho capitalism is that you allow a broad range of possible solution and people wo can come up with workable solutions.

Check out the book: The Not So Wild, Wild West: Property Rights on the Frontier (http://www.amazon.com/Not-So-Wild-West-Economics/dp/0804748543/ref=sr_1_1)

From the Ferry Building, Sausalito is better than Oakland/Alameda for departure view; Sausalito heads north along the waterfront past Fisherman's Wharf, while Oakland/Alameda heads SE under the bay bridge, missing the classic SF downtown.

Or you can take the Sausalito ferry from Fisherman's Wharf, that has a direct view back over the city including the bay bridge in the background, with the golden gate on your right.

Edit: this google map shows the ferry routes well

The Oakland/Alameda is a great ride though, with going under the bay bridge, and views of the oakland docs, especially at night. (Disclaimer: I like watching the cargo ships load and unload, after reading this book on the history of cargo containers and how it affected the shipping industry in the SF & Oakland )

Edited for clarity on where ferries leave from

Try The Rise and Fall of Great Powers by Paul Kennedy. It was writen in the early 80's before the fall of the soviet union so it has some dated world views, but it offers a great narrative of how the world power structure we know today evolved over the centuries from the 1500's.

> I understood it to be the ACLU’s goal to delicately balance competing rights to ensure that any infringements are narrowly tailored

What? This woman actually believes it is possible to "Narrowly Tailor" ANYTHING that happens in the public sphere?

Where do liberals get this belief that the world of human behavior CAN controlled? It's the same belief that lets them look at something as mind-numbingly complex as the economy and think that it can be centrally planned. It's the same hubris that causes them to believe that passing a law to ban a fire arm will actually cause people to not own it.

It's SO AGGRAVATING. The foundation of my conservative political views is the simple consequence of two facts:

1. Humans nature has only ever changed a five times that I am aware of (the development of Language, Writing, Agriculture, the Wheel, and the Industrial Revolution). (You might think that the last two on the list aren't actual changes to human nature, I recommend the books The Horse, The Wheel, and Language and A Farewell to Alms to defend their placement on the list). All of these have been technological changes to the capabilities of man and have only ever had behavioral changes as secondary consequences (with the possible exception of the industrial revolution if we accept the conclusions of A Farewell to Alms book on face value). None of these have been moral/ethical/spiritual changes to human nature. None of them have been instituted as changes to human nature intentionally.
   Therefore, I conclude that Human Nature can not be changed by human intention... and we shouldn't try!
   
   
2. There are systems that are unpredictable. There are basically 4 reasons this is the case.
   First, for many systems (such as the economy) sufficiently accurate and detailed information can not be collected fast enough to predict the consequences of that information before it actually happens. This feeds into Chaos Theory.
   Second, for many systems (such as the economy again) the fact that predictions are being made from data is itself altering the system... this creates a feedback loop where looking at the system alters it to the point where your tools to look at it are no longer effective.
   Third, all systems are subject to the incompleteness theorems that in non-mathematical-terms means that they always have either a flaw in their own rules, or their rules are incomplete. Connected to this, there are certain classes of problems that are literally "unsolvable"... that is they have properties that simply can not be derived except by experimentation... no amount of computation, even with perfect data can ever derive the answer, and as has recently been proven, this includes material properties of at least some things in the real material world, not just abstract math problems.
   Fourth, humans have a proven inability to figure out complex systems with multiple interlocking feedback loops leading them to attempt simple direct fixes that have unpredicted and disastrous effects well out of proportion to anticipated effects. Perhaps the most classical solution is Rent Control... a policy meant to increase housing availability that actually reduces it.
   Therefore, we should never assume that we can simply figure something out by looking at it and assuming that we're smart enough to manipulate it.
   
   Seriously, accept these two ideas, both of which are incredibly well supported by history and math, and small government conservatism is the natural result.

I have a container in my side yard that I use as a shed. It made a fairly large Lull lift work hard to get it in place and in this image they look like toys!
I'm facinated by the container industry, The Box is a great book about it if you are interested.

Also jesus christ asterios not to be mean or anything but it seems like you don't even have a basic understanding of taxes and just regurgitate talking points about rich people.

https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Common-Sense-Economy/dp/0465022529

Read this book please

You're both arrogant and willfully ignorant.

Post all the regulations you want, and post all the positive effects they've ever had if you want. It doesn't change my argument one bit, that government regulation is neither the best nor the most moral way to fix problems. You don't want to acknolwedge the great, great harm that regulations do? I can't stop from sticking your head in the sand. You may want to read a little, though, and educate yourself, so that you know what you're talking about. Start off with Thomas Sewell's Basic Economics, then we'll have an educated discussion about the harm that comes from government regulation. Next you can read Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson (it's free online). Then maybe you can open your eyes and "see reality" the way it really is. Perhaps you'd benefit from a reading of Bastiat's That which seen, and that which not seen, since you like to point to existing laws so much.

The thing about the market is, it adapts, it changes, it retains choice. Doesn't use violence or coersion, or jail people just because they want to take a drug, but the FDA says, "no". Who is the one who believes in absolutes?

I think we're done here, until you feel like educating yourself about economics a little bit.

It's a pretty large subject, roughly split into two parts: microeconomics (looking at the market for a single type of product, important for running a business) and macroeconomics (looking at the entire economy as a whole, important for analyzing things like taxes, government spending, imports/exports, outsourcing, etc). For voting you mainly want to learn macro, but it depends on core concepts from micro ("supply and demand" is the phrase you will hear many times, and it's important to learn exactly what these are). I'd recommend Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy by Thomas Sowell. This book is often used in university economics courses for non-majors (the main difference being that economics majors have to do a lot of math that most of us don't need if we just want to understand the concepts).

> In a small community - say a village of 350 people - I would say 'Yes, we are all in this together and our collective success or failure is intertwined with one another and we must all contribute to helping each other by specializing in different things which together allow the best functioning society.

This is one of the many arguments for federalism, its why services should be supplied by states and local communities, the states can act as laboratories and people can move in and out of areas they favor.

> Capitalism measures success by the amount of money we have

No, capitalism doesnt measure anything, it is simply the economic system that allows individuals to exchange their goods or services as they see fit.

Dont anthropomorphize an economic system. Capitalism allows for taco bell to sell taco's at 2 for 99 cents and a Jackson Pollock artwork for a few hundred million dollars, it doesnt measure success.

I measure my personal success different than you do, it has nothing to do with an economic system.

> is a very difficult one when we get into details and I am unresolved in where I stand on it (where is the line drawn? Cue a reference to 'death panels'...).

All the more reason why putting a bureaucrat who does not care about you or even know you exist in charge of your health is such a bad idea.

> I am of the belief that our entire nation is stronger when we are looking out for each other.

I agree, but having the government forcing people at the point of a gun erodes the voluntary individual responsibility we have with each other. Looking out for eachother doesnt mean forcing one group of people to pay for another.

It is certainly not society's job to fill in the gaps where you have failed. It is your job to pick yourself up.

If you are actually genuine with your questions and actually want to learn I strongly recommend reading Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy (https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Common-Sense-Economy/dp/0465022529) I think it would help a lot with your understanding of economics.

You're welcome. If your looking to dive further down the rabbit hole, I'd recommend reading Death of the Liberal Class (2010) by Chris Hedges. It focuses on how we ended up with a political climate that presented the opportunity for some one like Trump and his cohorts to seize power.

From the promo:

> For decades the liberal class was a defense against the worst excesses of power. But the pillars of the liberal class— the press, universities, the labor movement, the Democratic Party, and liberal religious institutions—have collapsed. In its absence, the poor, the working class, and even the middle class no longer have a champion.

They think that they do now, and his name is Donald Trump.

Here's a video of him giving a lecture on the books topic.