(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best economic policy & development books

Great post OP! I haven't seen the video in question (sorry) but as an anarchist I do feel confident in giving some of my views. First off, there are no right answers to these questions. Even within the same school of anarco-socialism, you'll likely get different answers to these questions from different people (ask 10 anarcho-socialists and you'll get 11 different answers) and in my view, that's a strength, not a weakness. However because I haven't seen the video, I don't know how much of what I'm about to say is addressed by it. I'm sorry!

I personally don't believe that lazy workers are as much a problem as you believe they will be and I base this on my personal experience. I have visited anarco-communes and also "temporary utopias" like climate camps and anti-globalization convergences. And, no, they were by no means perfect. In anarchist households dishes often don't get done to the extent that it's kind of a running joke. But there are lots of reasons for that. Houses aren't designed with communal living in mind. Under capitalism most of us suffer from depression and anxiety and it's hard to be motivated with that kind of thing when you're worried about your next deadline at your unfulfilling job or paying the bills by the end of the month. A more collectivist society could do things like ensuring no one ever has to do menial jobs alone (even by the simple provision of bigger sinks and bigger kitchens--ever notice how classically houses in western society were designed for use by a single-occupancy gendered labour force; my kitchen is barely twice the size of my wardrobe, but the living room, where the man of the house was expected to spend his off-labour time, is huge). And ultimately I would expect that anarchist societies would not only have a good working understanding of the sexism of gendered labour (most menial jobs are traditionally performed by women) but also be more lenient around all labour. Like maybe you can skip the washing up for that day if it's your period or if you're nursing, both of which are labour neglected by capitalism, just to choose a stereotypical and thought-provoking example. Going back to my own experiences, there were plenty of problems with places like the convergences and anarchist camps, but they never actually suffered from not having clean toilets because people understood that cleaning them was as important an activity as any other type of labour which needed to be undertaken. Ultimately, I agree with the point raised by the WNDWU (youtube link--above): "So you're asking me, who will do the dishes when the revolution comes? Well I do my own dishes now and I'll do my own dishes then. Funny that it's always the ones who don't, who ask that fucking question."

There are a lot of different thoughts about how economics can work in anarchist societies at large-scale. Most likely there would be several different economic models, possibly even within the municipal area, but certainly within different ones. In the future, Kim Stanley Robinson describes a system where small consumptive goods are created in situ, then optionally exchanged as gifts with traders. Underlying this, potassium is used as an exchange of hard currency and reserve, regulating the flow of resources throughout for the production of goods the solar system. Meanwhile, Ursula Le Guin envisaged a society organised by collectives (syndicals) where work was undertaken out of a sense of duty. Less speculatively, David Graeber has done a lot of good work documenting the use of gift economies throughout human history and it's hard to believe there's nothing there, given the overwelming preponderance and importance of gift economies to advanced human societies so far.

But I myself am not an advocate of gift economies. Michael Albert and co. have done a lot of writing on how non-gift participatory or democratic economies could be run and I highly recommend checking out his work. Albert's work is pretty much the closest to what I would like to see myself, I think and he also talks a lot about the psychological benefits of job rotation, e.g. a system where doctors also clean toilets. There is also a form of anarchism known as mutualism in which productive work is carried out by coops instead of companies or conglomerates owned by shareholders or an owner or owners. A coop can be structured along purely democratic grounds, where every decision requires a consensus meeting from relevant workers, through the whole gamut to a system with middle managers and bosses basically being like a company except that the workers form and control the board instead of vice versa. After producing goods, they are exchanged through a free-market mechanism as under capitalism. I myself am not a mutualist but really even mutualism would be a huge step forward compared to what we have under the current system, where productive labour is essentially organized by unaccountable and undemocratic corporate oligarchies.

The invention thing is quite interesting, I think. Just as in an anarchist society you might get several economic systems, so today we actually have several economic models under capitalism as well. One which I am quite familiar with as a software engineer is the open-source model of software development. Last year I invented a new and pioneering method for installing Wordpress websites using a fairly obscure collection of deployment software. The mechanism I invented is so niche that even I struggle to develop the enthusiasm to explain its benefits even to people within the same field but I was excited enough to develop it that I spent three months of my free-time doing that, and now that it is done I am still pleased with the effort even though no one uses it. So basically I invented something and released it for free which was the very definition of a project for which I receive no thanks: no economic compensation, no fame within my professional circles, etc. And yet I was still happy to create and distribute it for free, even allowing others to modify it if they found it useful. So I think that when you are very invested in a particular problem field it's actually very easy to develop the enthusiasm to figure out an invention for a better way of doing something, even if you know you'll receive nothing for it but the personal satisfaction of having simplified a particular problem. And of course in an anarchist society you could expect that most techniques and methods are open-source, and able to be modified and improved upon for free by any interested party. Receiving fame among one's professional peer group, being invited to prestigious conferences within your field to talk about your invention, maybe even being interviewed by the news media--these are all extremely good motivations for creating something, arguably a lot stronger than money actually. (Considering most invention these days is IP-protected and ultimately owned by corporations, I'm kind of surprised the myth of the solo inventor made rich by his own success succeeds actually.) And this happens a lot in software. The most common operating system software globally across all devices? By far, Linux. Windows only leads in the desktop, and that only because of entrenched capitalist user lock-in paradigms.

I too have struggled myself figuring out where it is that I fall on the somewhat arbitrary political spectrum. I grew up in a Republican household, shifted my views more to the left as I grew older and began looking at things differently and thinking for myself, found Libertarianism (which was a nice initial realization that there's more than just the two broad sets of left-to-right of ideologies), then kept sliding leftwards leading up to the 2016 election, mostly due to how I feel about the Republican Party in general at this point. Since then, I came across the books "The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics" by Ted Halstead and "The Centrist Manifesto" by Charles Wheelan. These two books honestly held the first set of ideas, not ideologies per se, that really made sense to me and reflected how I viewed the current state of US Politics. So... I now consider myself a Centrist, and more accurately, a Radical Centrist (see the bottom of this post).

Yes both sides have good ideas, yes both sides have bad ideas, yes Centrists may "borrow" ideas from both sides. However, Centrists are not necessarily simply the Republican- and Democrat-lites that the wings want people to believe. Framing everything in this mindset of left vs right, red vs blue, my team vs yours is counterproductive and if it continues the way it has been, this country will never get anything done. There are more than just two broad sets of ideas that exist, and that includes the moderate-to-extreme flavors of each of the two broad sets that are pervasive today.

In my opinion, Centrist thought and policy should use sound reasoning, logic, and science to work out the most pragmatic solution to any issue, regardless of what ideas turn out to be the best for the most people. No policy decision is going to make everyone happy and every solution is going to have a loser. The optimal solution to any issue is therefore that which minimizes the negatives and maximizes the positives.

Both the right and left have had good and bad ideas, but overall, neither sets of ideas nor the people who've been driving them for the past few decades has been working. We need brand new, 21st century-minded ideas based pragmatism, reason, and science. We must create policy that fosters innovation, promotes free markets, provides a solid social safety net that incentivizes people to better themselves, and is global-minded. We need people in power who are willing to compromise and also willing (and welcoming!) to be proven wrong. We need people who will do what's best for the country and for the world in general, not what's thought to be best for the loudest and most active tribes of one party or another.

--------------------------

Radical Centrism per Wikipedia:

> The "radical" in the term refers to a willingness on the part of most radical centrists to call for fundamental reform of institutions. The "centrism" refers to a belief that genuine solutions require realism and pragmatism, not just idealism and emotion. Thus one radical centrist text defines radical centrism as "idealism without illusions", a phrase originally from John F. Kennedy.

> Most radical centrists borrow what they see as good ideas from left, right and wherever else they may be found, often melding them together. Most support market-based solutions to social problems with strong governmental oversight in the public interest. There is support for increased global engagement and the growth of an empowered middle class in developing countries. Many radical centrists work within the major political parties, but also support independent or third-party initiatives and candidacies.

Hi Nath,

I'll reply to your points but will link through to places where we've already discussed some of these points.

Primarily we're discussing things on our nascent forum:

http://aep.freeforums.net/

and on our Facebook Group:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/520023444868205/

Tim and I are also doing a weekly podcast which is posted on YouTube and iTunes and in an XML feed:

http://www.australianemploymentparty.org/podcast.xml
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt3B5PX86GE_IXgZtar8xXw
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/lets-get-fiscal/id1126315509?mt=2

This will give you a good feel for where everything is going in addition to the content on the website.

"I reckon MMT is like a cult sometimes. :)"

Yes it can feel that way.

"What exactly is the proposal for the specifics of the jobs - what is the nature of these jobs that couldn't be better done by automation or robots?"

The nature of jobs will change over time specifically because of automation, but in terms of work that could be done this year, there is a lot. The level of automation that will make human labour and thinking obsolete is, in my opinion, 1000s of years in the future but even if it's 50 years away that's still 50 years of work that needs to be done in the meantime.

I'm doing some posts in the forum today about specifics of a Job Guarantee but Tim and I have also discuss this in the following episodes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNi_4--KG9g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPn8T9MI9sc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlLa4jixzoc

"Are we going to guarantee people professional jobs"

The jobs are fit to the skills of the people, not the other way around. So if there are people with professional skills who want to put those skills to use they can certainly be incorporated into a JG programme.

"and professional salaries?

No the wage is a socially inclusive minimum wage, same for all workers in the JG.

This is not to be confused with public works spending and other government projects such as R&D which is just normal government employment.

"Or is it going to be unskilled stuff like picking up garbage/planting trees: something that if we automate it, can happen 24/7 and with no need for lunch/sleep/sickdays and not have people doing menial tasks for their dole."

Some jobs might be things like landcare or community beautification/restoration. If work is automated, then we find something else for JG employees to do.

The description of this as being "menial tasks for their dole" is inaccurate: the majority of unemployment people want to work, and a JG job can be a place to learn skills that will improve prospects of private sector employment.

The common characterisation of JG jobs as "menial tasks" is usually the result of a lack of imagination and research.

Here's an example: markets and festivals employ a very diverse range of skills from administrative, design, marketing to artists and performers, production crews etc. Think something like the Melbourne Comedy Festival. This provides public benefit, is enjoyable to work on, can expand and contract counter cyclically.

That's one example, obviously that one solution doesn't solve all unmployment but you can see the types of attributes we're looking for in work that can be done.

One of the main features of a job guarantee is that it's administrated locally and funded federally so it's up to the community (including those who are unemployed) to figure out specifically what needs to be done. The government will provide support for local administrators, this has been designed in a lot of detail by CoFFEE and we'll be working with that as our academic policy basis.

"I think a basic income is a far better model than job guarantee"

Basic income is just welfare so we can just call it that.

A universal basic income is a terrible idea. Just search "UBI vs JG" to see all the reasons why.

Having better welfare systems is not mutually exclusive to having a Job Guarantee, but it is certain that welfare doesn't solve unemployment, and in particular doesn't solve the problem of youth unemployment which is worst amongst 15 - 19 year old school leavers who are unemployed at a rate of 64%. They should be able to get work under a job guarantee that will prepare them for private sector employment. If we just give them money, how does that improve the prospects of our society to produce anything meaningful.

"And the old MMT government printing money to solve all problems"

All government spending is money creation. I have done some basic explainers here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOV_u-RWSCY&list=PLT4Jth7jJj8Z9FyAycR_WWuVmiP2Ou0gm

But even if you look at our current regulatory framework, you can see that government spending is money creation: the government issues bonds in order to deficit spend. Where do the bonds come from?

They're "debt", same as reserves are. In fact, bonds and money are virtually the same thing; bonds are basically "reserves on which we pay interest".

"I believe Pauline Hanson was in favour of that and she's in the system again."

So?

"In the real world of doing this you get inflation"

We always have a little bit of inflation (because it's much better than deflation) but a job guarantee maintains price stability.

"Just because austerity and neoliberalism is bullshit, doesn't make MMT right or better"

MMT is 100% right. You can disagree with the policy outcomes and have a progressive, conservative or regressive approach on top of MMT, but it is certainly the most complete description of how monetary systems work.

"In terms of austerity: Inflation impacts on the poorest too - so print too much money = eroding what little the poor have + increasing their costs."

So we shouldn't implement a universal basic income. A JG is the best way to decide how much the government should deficit spend in order to maintain aggregate demand at a suitable level without destabilising prices, and at the same time increasing the real capital resources available to the society.

"So I don't really see a job guarantee being a forward thinking policy"

That's because you don't really understand it. I'd recommend reading this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Money-Theory-Macroeconomics-Sovereign/dp/0230368891

and following along the discussions on our forum.

"much as its proponents want to believe it's "progressive""

I don't really think in terms of "what's progressive" but it's certainly a good idea.

"Sounds more like a conservative wet dream"

No, but UBI is.

"(it is a work for the dole scheme"

No, it's not. WFTD is a private sector wage subsidy for a poverty wage. A JG is very different from that.

"Abbott's "Green army" is an example of an MMT compliant concept)"

All concepts in economics are "MMT compliant" because MMT describes how money and economics works.

Abbott's Green Army is a terribly designed and implemented proposal created by a monstrous moron.

"and seems to have somehow ignoring that automation is an inevitable thing for the last several decades"

Everyone always says that at all times in history ever. Just because you can't imagine jobs that will exist when trucks are driven autonomously doesn't mean they won't exist.

We are 1000's of years from Star Trek. In the meantime (and especially in the very near term) there is lots of work that needs to be done.

"It's clinging to the idea that there is actually enough meaningful jobs to give everyone after all the progress via technology"

There are. You just have to stop thinking that the only thing unemployed people are fit to do is pick up garbage.

"- if that was the case then automation/technology and science would need to down tools."

No, we never advocate artificially constraining productivity in order to create jobs.

We do, however, acknolwedge that if the spoils of automation are shared evenly then we should all be working less! Just not zero.

Interesting video, even though it was originally made for an EU audience. It seems longer than it is because so much of it is subtitled. It's also unfortunate that the producers relied primarily on progressive and libertarian arguments for the UBI, when the hard-nosed, practical, dollars-and-cents case for it is so strong.

After all, most people would be for a UBI if they believed it wasn't some pie-in-the-sky liberal pipe dream that would drag down the economy. What they need to see is how and why it works financially, and how it can produce a better, more efficient system of government finance, a more productive, economy and a better future.

There is also some discussion of the problem of automation and the elimination of lower-skilled repetitive jobs, but not enough emphasis on the likelihood that it is going to make some kind of UBI almost essential in many industrial economies within a few decades at most.

That's too bad, because it would help a lot if more people understood how big a problem this is going to be. We're going to have armies of low-skilled and even medium-skilled people who have no chance of finding work and live at the mercy of the welfare bureaucracy. If we don't find a better way for them to live, the system will collapse or turn authoritarian.

As for whether the UBI is affordable, yes, there should be no question that it can be very affordable. If it is done right, it can actually save the taxpayers money. Charles Murray demonstrated this in In Our Hands. The existing "safety net" is so expensive and inefficient that scrapping it in favor of a well-designed system that incorporates a UBI would create a considerable overall economic benefit.

The key is redesigning the entire tax and welfare system from the ground up, instead of trying to patch the UBI onto the existing, grotesquely over-complicated and inefficient system.

If you want to see what that might look like, there's a proposal here that I like a lot.

The proposal describes a fiscally-responsible set of changes that would make the U.S. economic system much more efficient, abolish all means-tested welfare programs, get everyone covered by health insurance, and create a secure safety net for all citizens. The UBI is just one of the elements in the package, but it's a big part of what makes the whole thing work.

It's from a book-in-progress called Rethinking America: Getting Serious About Poverty, Inequality, and Economic Growth, by Morgan D. Kauffman, who teaches in the graduate futures program at the U of Houston.

Conservatives and libertarians will like the fact that it would:

• Radically simplify the tax code
  
• Eliminate all means-tested welfare programs (food stamps, TANF, housing, etc.)
  
• Eliminate the ACA employer mandate and individual mandate
  
• Eliminate FICA and tax withholding by business, reducing the burden on small employers
  
• Eliminate nearly all existing tax credits and tax deductions for non-business expenses
  
• Reduce the top individual tax rate to 35% and the corporate tax rate to 15%
  
• Severely reduce corruption and crony capitalism
  
• Eliminate the possibility of voter fraud and greatly reduce cybercrime
  
• Create an "electronic wall" against illegal immigration
  
• Encourage marriage and make having kids much less of a financial burden
  
• Increase school choice
  
• Reduce the size of the federal gov
  
• Shift a lot of responsibility to states, local gov, and individuals
  
• Restore the dignity of people who fall on hard times
  
• Increase economic efficiency and GDP growth
  
  Populists and progressives should also appreciate that it would:
  
  
• Establish secure access to the banking system, even for the poorest of the poor
  
• Introduce an assets tax and a carbon tax
  
• Get ALL children and adult citizens covered by health insurance
  
• Get ALL children and adult citizens above the poverty line
  
• Provide substantial vouchers for universal daycare and education
  
• Increase geographic and economic mobility for the poor
  
• Substantially increase financial resources for poor communities
  
• Create a REAL safety net with no holes in it
  
  The political question is A) whether conservatives would support sweeping tax reform that eliminated many of their favorite tax breaks if that's the price for cleaning up the welfare mess, and B) whether liberals would support sweeping welfare reform that eliminated many of their favorite programs if that's the price for cleaning up the favoritism and corruption in the tax system.
  
  There are some things in this proposal that most conservatives would oppose if they were proposed individually (like new taxes), but in context they make sense as a way to balance the books. Other parts of the package are good for the country in the long run and are necessary to appeal to Democrats, and this is obviously not the sort of thing that can be passed without a good deal of bipartisan support.
  
  I don't know whether the politics will ever be right for a reform of this magnitude, but Trump's victory might just open a window for it by forcing both the Dems and the GOP out of their old rigidity into a more pragmatic and flexible frame of reference. If something like this were enacted, the end result would be a program that would be genuinely populist (in the best sense) and good for the country in the long run. The question is whether bipartisan support for something this radical is a pipe dream.
  
  [Edit: fixed a bad link and clarified the intro]
  

>How are you using the term wealth?

I suppose stuff that people want. If you reconfigure matter with your labour to make it more desirable, or perform services with your labour, then your activities increase the overall desirability of the world (neglecting externalities to non-customers) but you can also hoard things that are desirable that people want and then charge them rent for it. This doesn't increase the desirability of the world. Rather it reduces it by putting up a toll on desirable public goods. Ring- fencing desirable things and charging a toll for access can be very profitable. But it isn't productive.

> This is a critique, but it's not constructive criticism. You don't have a better option.

Releasing a modest trickle of new money evenly throughout the population is a better option. It would stop overall debt from increasing exponentially, it would reduce, perhaps halt, the trend towards ever higher wealth concentration in fewer hands and it would stabilize the financial system.

That seems like a better option to me.

It's true that loans have a useful role to play in society - but we should not solely rely on lending to create all money.

> The billionaires today are not the billionaires of yesterday for the most part.

Piketty's argument is that the world wars destroyed alot of capital and caused social upheaval. But inheritance is an increasingly high portion of GDP. Another effect is that self made people are more proud of their wealth and flaunt it more. Rich heirs are often a lot more discrete. We hear a lot more about Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk then about the Rothchild's. But the Rothchild's are still a phenomenally wealthy family, they and many lords are the billionaires of both yesterday and today - but they keep a much lower profile than Elon Musk, for example.

Also social inequality in the US is a relatively new phenomenon, it was less severe in much of the 19th century than today.

> Far better to help people through the process of becoming a carpenter rather than merely giving them $2k.

But with money you can buy an education. Indeed the Indian basic Income pilot showed definitively that poor people in receipt of basic income tended to send their children off to be educated at higher levels then in the control villages.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Basic-Income-Transformative-Policy-India/dp/1472583108

> Yes, and that's exactly how it works. AIG isn't backed by the federal government. FDIC is. Here's a wiki article on it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Deposit_Insurance_Corporation

From the word "reserves" in the article it sounds like the FDIC can be maxed out.

But in any case in our current system private banks create 97% of the money and then if they give bad loans or pay out too large bonuses, the state comes in and bails them out. Because we can't afford to let them fail.

IMHO a much better arrangement would be for the state to directly control the amount of credit that banks have available to loan out in the first place. Rather than letting private banks go wild and then pick up the pieces when it all goes wrong.

> Regardless, how is this "backed" by land if you cannot redeem it for land?

With a land value tax (basically a property tax calibrated to the unimproved rental value of land) you have to pay a fixed amount of national currency to the government to hold your exclusive claim on a piece of real estate. But this amount depends on how much other people bid.

​

In any case, if property taxes can only be paid in a particular currency then there will constantly be a demand for that currency.

Wow Mom, you said I would never have any use for this university degree in Socialist Economics and Political Economy, now here is my chance to shine :)

OK, given that mainstream economics is primarily a neoclassical game these days (with some liberals since the recession trying to revive Keynesian ideas) lets take a look at some good critical view points. The following is a list of books that come from a perspective of socialists living in the modern west. These are not commies from the USSR, but mostly anticapitalist thinkers and academics who think the system we have is unfair and ought to entail more economic democracy.

Robin Hahnel's ABCs of Political Economy is a nice primer to introduce fundamental economic concepts. Although the book goes over the basics it definitely covers the ideas from a critical leftist perspective. The guy also developed his own system for a post capitalist democratic economy, so he is an intellectual heavy weight.

If you would like to look more at international issues, Michael Yates's Naming the System is another great book. It takes a look at the economics of so-called globalization and explains some of the ways that richer countries use the idea of "free trade" as a mechanism of control through institutions such as the IMF, and World Bank, and also treaties like NAFTA.

Another great book, better than either of the previous, is Michael Perelman's Railroading Economics: The Creation of the Free Market Mythology. Perelman, a econ professor and lifelong economist, makes the case that economics is definitely not a science and uses real world economic systems (notably the railroad business) to argue that most capitalist economic theory is useless in practice. Of all the books on this list, this would be my highest recommendation to an average joe/jane who knows a little about econ and wants to check out a heterodox point of view.

One last one that I will mention is Murphy and Nagle's The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice. To so many friends I have recommended this book, but no one ever wants to read a modern philosophical piece on public finance and taxation. I may be a nerd but I was not the guy in college who read every assigned book cover to cover, but this one I couldn't stop. Murphy and Nagel examine theories of how we ought to tax people and how people view taxes. Then they take it a step further by questioning the idea of taxes in a modern state and take a particularly critical view to the idea of a "pre-tax income."

Again, these are all Left sided, outside the mainstream, books. If you'd like something quicker read Albert Einstein's Why Socialism? Full Text included! Also Paul Sweezy's essay Why Stagnation? does a great job explaining why capitalism tends toward stagnating, why it has had such periods of growth in spite of this tenancy, and how the economy and capitalists have tried to overcome this. I reread each of these essays every year on my birthday.

If you are still reading this thank you. I really loved studying economics from a critical perspective and feel that, in-spite of my ability to change the system, my life has been enriched by learning.

No offense but your grasp of Hayek's work and its importance in economics is pretty superficial at best, and wildly off base at worst (e.g. "basically one idea", though I'm not sure how literally you meant that). And you don't have to take my word on it, several prominent Nobel prize winners-- working in diverse fields in economics-- were deeply influenced by his work, and notably the fields in which they were most prominent seem to have little if anything to do with business cycles or political polemics like RtS (for what it's worth, in my view RtS is Hayek's least interesting work by a fairly significant margin). Just off the top of the head: Douglass North, Elinor Ostrom, Vernon Smith, James Buchanan, and Ronald Coase.

North himself is on the record in saying Hayek was the greatest social scientist of the 20th century. That would be an astonishing claim for someone of North's stature to make if Hayek's important work was limited to business cycles (which, as you correctly note, hasn't found any kind of widespread acceptance in contemporary econ) or political polemics. It's at least slightly less astonishing if you drop that assumption and instead recognize that Hayek worked on a number of other projects, and that his work in particular on institutions and how they structure human behavior laid much of the groundwork for North's own later work.

It's probably also worth pointing out his influence hasn't been limited to economists, e.g. see political philosopher Jerry Gaus's work. I think John Tomasi is another, though I'm not as familiar with his work.

For secondary sources, you might find Bruce Caldwell's intellectual biography Hayek's Challenge to be a useful starting point, or perhaps Peter Boettke's FA Hayek. For primary sources, I'd recommend starting with the first volume of the Law, Legistlation, and Liberty series, Rules and Order.

> If you reconfigure matter with your labour to make it more desirable, or perform services with your labour

I would call this value. When someone takes out a loan and turns it into a car, they have made value. Then they pay off the loan and keep the profits. However, in your model you have no driver to make profit or value because you have just given away the money. Far better to let that person make money, enjoy the profit, and then when they pass away, collect whats left. This would end the "hoarding" because they'd either need to spend it before they die or die with it.

> It would stop overall debt from increasing exponentially, it would reduce, perhaps halt, the trend towards ever higher wealth concentration in fewer hands and it would stabilize the financial system.

When people say that the debt is growing I feel like they're being very disingenuous. First off, debt is growing because we want inflation. It's a solution to a bigger problem, which is deflation. So to say that debt is this thing we want to avoid is really just to use a trigger word "debt" which is a bad word for most people. You cannot merely point at debt and call it bad. You have tried to link debt with a boom bust cycle. However, in your system debt still exists. In fact, you want the best of both worlds. You'd like the exact same levels of employment with some how lower levels of debt. Well giving individual people money isn't going to keep a business going. Maybe it helps their sales, but in order to produce products, they need capital first, which is generated by debt.

Furthermore a lot of people conflate the government debt with the debt you're talking about, and they'd like their government to stop spending. So people tend to agree if they don't understand the useful roll debt is playing in the economy.

> Piketty's argument is that the world wars destroyed alot of capital and caused social upheaval. But inheritance is an increasingly high portion of GDP. Another effect is that self made people are more proud of their wealth and flaunt it more. Rich heirs are often a lot more discrete. We hear a lot more about Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk then about the Rothchild's. But the Rothchild's are still a phenomenally wealthy family, they and many lords are the billionaires of both yesterday and today - but they keep a much lower profile than Elon Musk, for example.

Also social inequality in the US is a relatively new phenomenon, it was less severe in much of the 19th century than today.

That's why I've been advocating for my solution, which is to tax people upon their deaths. Furthermore, inequality is a real thing. It just seems unlikely that giving people money would solve their problems. I feel like the universal income tests have been failures so far. Far better to pay for their schools and healthcare. They also need a safety net and the option to live cheaply.

Also, it's fair to point out that there are people who have merely inherited their wealth, but we can't ignore that our system right now produces self made billionaires. Some people see that as a personal goal, and removing that from society is like removing hope. Don't focus there. From a psychological argument alone, that makes little sense. America has a very odd thing about it. Our poor think they're temporarily inconvenienced millionaires. Now, that's changing because people are beginning to stagnate, but that's a good thing. We should want people who are driven to succeed.

> But with money you can buy an education. Indeed the Indian basic Income pilot showed definitively that poor people in receipt of basic income tended to send their children off to be educated at higher levels then in the control villages.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Basic-Income-Transformative-Policy-India/dp/1472583108

I'll be honest, I think this issue is far too politicized to have honest data. If you search for people who are for it, you get successes, and if you search for the opposite, you get failures. One thing is for sure though, if you put that money into schools, then you will pay for people to go to school. Some people may not be able to go to school or may choose not to go to school. And in those situations I think that would require a deep dive into why that may occur. I personally think young child care might be next on the list social programs that might need to exist.

Furthermore, you need to realize that the world is changing too. Soon there may not be many jobs for people who don't hold some form of education. These people are not going to make it on $2k a year.

> With a land value tax (basically a property tax calibrated to the unimproved rental value of land) you have to pay a fixed amount of national currency to the government to hold your exclusive claim on a piece of real estate. But this amount depends on how much other people bid.


> In any case, if property taxes can only be paid in a particular currency then there will constantly be a demand for that currency.

Not sure what value a second currency necessarily adds. In fact, I'm not sure why you'd want the dollar if only one could pay off a certain thing... while I'm sure the other could pay off anything since it has greater intrinsic value.

If your as interested in this topic as it seems you are, there is a great book i can recommend (its a very fast read) called Follow The Money: Where is Alberta's Wealth Going

https://www.amazon.ca/Follow-Money-Where-Albertas-Wealth/dp/1550594354/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=follow+the+money&qid=1565053671&s=gateway&sr=8-4

It breaks down a lot of the questions you are arguing against here and might help give some clarity on the issues as it breaks down a lot of data to show whats happening.

Long story short of the book: Alberta is one of the wealthiest provinces, a significant amount of Alberta's wealth gets put into the profits of oil and gas companies who do not use their tax breaks to reinvest in Albertas infrastructure or Economy.

Its a great example of how trickledown economics do not work because unfortunately, the companies who get the tax breaks do not want the same thing as the government who is giving them tax breaks.

As I hear, outside the US, "libertarianism" retains its historical meaning as the anti-statist wing of socialism. Libertarian socialism.

(The political term "libertarianism" was coined in the 1850's by an anarcho-communist, in order to get around a French ban on anarchist writings. In the 1950's, the term was appropriated by US right-wingers, in response to the Progressive movement's appropriation of "liberal.")

Economics is important, but with a big caveat: it's a social "science," easily affected by politics. (Along the lines of Feynman's warnings.) This holds true for Marxism as well, not just neoclassical econ. The best introduction to econ I personally know was actually written by a libertarian socialist, Robin Hahnel. He makes clear that econ is a flexible science, despite claims to the contrary. When he discusses "laws," like "law of supply and demand," he takes care to put them in scare-quotes.

>It really isn't - I've read the Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy several times, and I think it's a pretty fair reading of what he says. If there is a more substantial resource out there, let me know - but it's certainly glossed over in the 7DIF.

I feel like Mosler's piece is politics, not economics. To the extent MMT has a foundational text, it's Wray's.

>As far as the central topic of discussion, isn't MMT pretty firmly on the "raise taxes" solution for inflation?

Yes, this is orthodox MMT. It's not the only answer, but it is the default answer, and one that will work reliably.

> Do you have links to the debate you're referencing?

It's pretty central to most literature on MMT.

This is a pretty readable piece to use as a starting point.

I'd pretty much agree with this assessment of how many people's opinions about China have changed (including mine). I remember a few years ago reading the widely-praised Why Nations Fail, which suggested that for China's growth to be sustainable, especially in more high-tech and service industries, it would have to embrace more inclusive forms of governance. Well, six years since the book was published, that prediction is looking a bit tarnished; we've seen the emergence of the BAT tech giants as well as a healthy startup sector, even as Xi Jinping is tightening the screws.

The non-realisation of these predictions - that China would need to liberalise to manage imminent political and economic transitions - is a big factor for me. I've also been impressed by some other factors. China's 'techno-utilitarian' government (to borrow a phrase from Kai Fu Lee's new book) seems stunningly good at the the kind of big infrastructure projects that the developed countries have seemingly lost the ability to do on time and on budget. China's government seems to lack the kinds of legal and ethical scruples that will hobble (or 'cushion', if you prefer) the adoption of disruptive and ethically complex technologies like driverless cars, genetic modification, smart cities (with integrated mass surveillance), and brain-computer interfaces. There's also been less political turmoil and unrest in China than I expected by this point. A familiar criticism of China's education system, that it was poorly suited to producing creative innovators, seems to have turned out to be bullshit, at least if we're going by China's success in domestic tech startups and growing academic clout. China also seems to have done a good job - so far - of weathering some of the disruptive technologies that were supposedly going to shift the economic balance of power to Western economies again; in fields like 3D printing, AI, and clean energy, China has done a great job of positioning itself at the technological cutting edge.

As for your second question, what could still go wrong with China's manifest destiny as global hegemon, well, a few possibilities. I still wouldn't rule out a major wave of popular or even elite rebellion in China, as existing governing structures creak and new interest groups see opportunities for power. China's history is absolutely full of extended periods of division and strife - "the empire long united must divide" - and it doesn't seem a foregone conclusion that the country will avoid similar power struggles in the next 10-20 years. If there is a major Chinese internal conflict, the West's response to it will be the most important geopolitical choice it's made in at least fifty years if not longer. I really hope the State Department and Pentagon have legions of brilliant planners who are considering all the contingencies.

If China can avoid major internal strife, however, then I don't see any lurking economic or geopolitical reasons why it wouldn't effectively displace the US as global hegemon in the next 25 years. That may not be an entirely bad thing from the point of view of things like stability (I can't see China pursuing expensive and bloody ideological agendas in far off countries a la Iraq), but it'll obviously be a disappointment for those of us who set great store by human rights and democracy and have enjoyed having the global superpower at least nominally committed to those ideals.

The other thing I wouldn't underestimate is the power of events (dear boy) to throw apparently ineluctable destinies off course, especially my uneasy suspicion that we're in sight of the end of the tech tree for human civilization in its current form. Maybe it'll be a good end, with superintelligence and/or fusion power ushering in a postscarcity era in which the old geopolitics looks irrelevant, or maybe it'll be a bad end, with malevolent AI, Cronenbergian genetic monstrosities, or plain old environmental collapse smashing us to the margins. Or maybe it'll be something smaller scale, but still disruptive to the old ways of thinking, like the emergence of virtual communities with their own ideals of citizenship that compete with older loyalties. So possibilities like these - both foreseeable and unforeseeable - could certainly flip the script on China's emergence as global hegemon, but whether or not they'd strictly preferable depends on uncertainties and unfathomables.

Exactly. You need someone well-read in political theory.

Ron Paul for example has written and published a number of books, mostly on monetary policy and foreign policy:

A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship

Pillars of Prosperity

The Case for Gold

Gold, Peace, and Prosperity

End the Fed

Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom

He provides READING LISTS to his political opponents, like Rudy Giuliani:

Educating Rudy: The Ron Paul reading list

Emulating is perfectly moral. IP law has been long corrupted and bribed into being by big media long before the videogame industry existed.

Technically all videogames should be going into libraries and the public domain at some point per the constitution. So go ahead and pirate and emulate, game companies have long since proved they are just as corrupt as any other big corporation buying up laws to prevent you from owning and controlling the stuff you buy.

Go read a book on the topic, most people on reddit are politically ignorant to an extreme degree. It's the exact opposite.

https://www.amazon.com/Against-Intellectual-Monopoly-Michele-Boldrin/dp/0521127262/

Here's the constitution:

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

Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, known as the Copyright Clause, empowers the United States Congress:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

Note the emphasis on LIMITED TIMES. Not infinite times.

>But without getting into politics, I am wondering if rules in and of themselves help to create a sense of understanding/calm within the broader market that act as a catalyst for growth and development.

No, it definitely depends on the nature of the rules. Some rules help stabilize expectations and thereby foster coordination and exchange, whereas others do not, and may in fact hinder it. Hayek's Rules and Order is a great short read that discusses the importance of and role played by rules in flourishing economies.

Multiple ways.

I current volunteer for my universities econ society. Our last event we bought soda (our own money) and handed out books about Bastiat (gifted from the Cato institute). Had lots of good talks with a lot of good people.

Writers from New York Times are lending a hand too, naming books like The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies "best political book this year" (2007).

Also these guys themselves do a pretty good job: http://www.econlib.org/ and http://www.cato.org/

Prior to starting this post I want to point out that I'm a hack who knows jack shit. If you hear an opinion of literally anyone else who is not me that is different than my opinions I would weigh their's much higher.

​

Ok, so for an empirical application of pressure group modelling, I think (one of) the best contenders is...

​

Accounting for the Growth of Government for the application of Becker's interest group model which he developed here, here, and here. Honestly, I think becker's model of pressure group competition is one of the most tractable and empirically relevant models developed. The issue with it is more along the lines that it's half-finished but lots of poli-sci and political economy folks use models based off of it anyways and Casey Mulligan talks about how it's ignored here. From 18:00 on. I would highly recommend watching the whole thing.

​

Another thing worth looking at is steve levitt's paper on sumo wrestling. The thing is about PE models is that like gorbachev mentioned, they're kinda hard to trace out empirically generally. So you take advantage of somewhat similar situations and hypothesize that they are similar enough that you can say what happens to sumo wrestlers is what will happen in political situations.

​

If you want to go for a long haul of a read, and have lots of math knowledge Public Choice III traces out a lot of the fundamental microeconomic models that have been made. If you actually read that book cover to cover you'll have a ton of theoretical weight under your belt that you can use to tackle Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy by Acemoglu and Robinson, which is kinda like WNF for grown-ups.

> share his invention to the world and not what you said.

Uhh you are politically ignorant, go read a book. It's the exact opposite.

https://www.amazon.com/Against-Intellectual-Monopoly-Michele-Boldrin/dp/0521127262/

Here's the constitution:

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

Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, known as the Copyright Clause, empowers the United States Congress:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and
Discoveries.

Note the emphasis on LIMITED TIMES. Not infinite times.

Why is everyone suggesting watching Cosmos and the like? I think the problem is right here.

>"She’s been having regular break downs because she can’t find a job despite being bi-lingual and graduating magna cum laude. She feels like she has no structure in her life at the moment and that scares her to death."

She doesn't need to watch videos about "the beauty of nature". She needs to find something that can act as a source of meaning in her life, because it sounds like she feels useless at the moment. Get involved with charity work or political activism. Positively changing the quality of life for a family or a community will make it clear that our actions have significance right now.

Edit: Once again plugging Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe, The Life You Can Save, Hopes and Prospects, and The ABC's of Political Economy

Your mixing up the FairTax with a Steve Forbes & Dick Armies flat tax.

The flat tax is usually a flat income tax for individuals and businesses. No deductions. A plain and simple rate that depending on the individual, says it should be set between 13 and 18%. 15% is the number I heard the most.

The FairTax is a consumption good on goods and services; a sales tax. It's 23%. In this scenario, the poor and middle class don't pay a higher percentage of taxes. Someone posted a couple weeks ago a graph, and it showed that the rich pays the same percentage of their income on several different areas. The difference was in savings. Where the poor save very little of their income and the rich save a higher amount. This is because the rich end up spending more on luxury goods such as lobster, Mercedes, and huge houses. Also, under the FairTax, used goods aren't taxed, so the poor and middle class can purchase used cars and houses and get further ahead. The FairTax also replaces death, gift, capital gains, corporate, and property taxes at the federal level. Imagine the growth that will occur with the US goes from number 1 highest business taxes at 35% to the lowest of 0%. The poor are also completely untaxed up to the poverty level.

Anyways, there is no perfect tax system since taxation philosophically is no different than theft. I do however favor the simplicity of the FairTax and love how it ends social engineering via the elimination of tax deductions.

Amazon shows you can get a used copy of the Fair Tax book for a penny plus shipping. Give it a read and bring it up more in discussion here at r/libertarian.

There's a section in the FairTax book that talks about how companies tailor their business plans around corporate tax breaks, then lobby for more tax breaks. The complexity of the tax code gives Washington lobbyists a huge amount of power, which is how they make their living.

The end result is, companies that succeed are not those offering the best service to the consumer, but those who achieve the best alignment between the type of business they do and the structure of the tax law. Higher corporate taxes will not change this. Every time you add complexity to the tax laws, the corporate lobbyists will be back, making sure the exceptions suit them.

I believe the answer is a SIMPLE tax code.

> yeah but what if i spent years coming up with my elegant solution. i bring it to market. and you copy it in a matter of days and compete with me. you saying that's okay?

I'm saying that's business. Besides, most peoples' inventions aren't really uniquely revolutionary. Look at the telephone, the steam engine, the television - all were being worked on by multiple people at the same time; they were more the natural progression of human advancement than one man's innovation. Besides, you can still reap more benefits from your technology by being the first to market, if you know what you're doing. That's nothing to sneeze at.

> i agree, government shouldn't be considered the oracle (especially these days). however, if 'we' could somehow keep special interests (polarizing interest away from everyone at large) out of it, i'd think there could be useful legislation.

Everyone is a special interest. Politicians are special interests. One of the problems with government is indeed the governors - human beings. There is no way to prevent that kind of corruption, because it's inevitable. Read Federalist No. 10; even the US founding fathers knew about the problem of "factions" two centuries ago and could do nothing to prevent it.

> it's not so much the government as an institution, it's the people allowed to harness it for their own selfish purposes.

People will always harness government for their own selfish purposes. That's part of why it is government as an institution - giving any one group of people that much power over any other group, no matter how many checks you try to impose, is dangerous. It's asking for abuse. At least if there were a market for protection services, there would be competition and accountability. As Bryan Caplan has astutely pointed out, Democracy is a commons, not a market, and it has all of the inherent problems of thereof.

It's 2 years out of date now, and I can't recall at the moment what years his data came from (at the time of writing it was recent) but I highly recommend Follow The Money by Kevin Taft. It doesn't deal with health care specifically, but looks at where the money is going in a province that is rich but with quite often subpar public services.

>But those are not solely the domain of a "Fair" Tax. Those things could be done in any system, so they're not an inherent advantage of the "Fair" Tax.

This is arguing for the sake of arguing. No other system proposes this. The FairTax is an actual bill introduced in congress. Part of it repeals these other taxes. The foundation of the bill is based on repealing these other taxes.

>Most drug dealers are not living the high life and getting rich. They're barely scraping by. Their rebate check from the government would probably outpace what they're paying in "Fair" Tax.

Cite your source and I'll address this.

>All of Europe also supplements their VAT with an income tax. By eliminating our income tax, we'd have to raise the VAT well above what Europe charges. The two situations are not identical and you know that.

You asserted that taxing tourists kills tourism. I proved you wrong with an example. Also, the FairTax isn't a VAT.

>And my point is that those lobbying activities are just as harmful to the integrity of our political system and they aren't addressed here. Arguing that a "Fair" Tax reduces lobbying is completely worthless as long as our politicians are still bought and paid for by a hundred other lobbying organizations that still have an interest in bribing officials. You're just shrugging and saying, "Well at least they're only getting bribed for favorable regulations now, instead of tax breaks." So what?

So we shouldn't reduce the means to bribe politicians in one way because we can't do it in every way?

>Which would still mean that the SSA would need to be larger than it is now, negating at least part of the savings you get from shutting down the IRS.

The IRS is HUGE and has way more responsibilities than just automating a bank draft. Again, you're just asserting that one would wipe out the other. Until you cite a source, I have no need to address your assertion.


It has become clear that you're engaging in partisan arguing. You're defending an imperfect system and attacking a new idea (very progressive of you). It isn't a Republican vs Democrat thing. I'd encourage you to read up on the FairTax to get a better idea of it. One of the books below is specifically written to address criticisms. From the opening it admits that it is not a perfect tax, but far superior to our current system. I'm not going to argue anymore because it's become clear that you're not even considering it, you're only acting to reinforce your existing opinions. It's healthy to question a new idea, but that's not what this is.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Fair-Tax-Book-Goodbye/dp/0060875496/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347053051&sr=8-1&keywords=fair+tax

http://www.amazon.com/FairTax-The-Truth-Answering-Critics/dp/B0027CSNOO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1347053051&sr=8-2&keywords=fair+tax

>it's retarded to the point of being a meme.

How on earth is it retarded? It's fine if your argument is it's nothing new, as your second statement suggests, but pragmatism isn't retarded to the point of being a meme.

Assuming your position is the latter, I'd certainly argue a wholesale rejection of partisan politics is pretty damn radical. The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics is a thought provoking and influential read on the topic:

>Record numbers of Americans describe themselves as “independents” and reject the conventional agendas of Left and Right. In this widely acclaimed book, Ted Halstead and Michael Lind explain why today’s ideologies and institutions are so ill-suited to the Information Age, and offer a groundbreaking blueprint for updating all sectors of America society. Taking on partisans and experts on both sides of the political divide, they propose far-reaching reforms for the way we provide health and retirement security, collect taxes, organize elections, enforce civil rights, and educate our children.

>Twice before the United States has dramatically reconfigured itself, shifting from an agrarian to an industrial society after the Civil War and successfully adapting to the massive technological and demographic changes of the early twentieth century during the New Deal era. Uniting a sweeping historical vision with bold policy proposals, The Radical Center shows us how to reinvent our nation once again so that all Americans can reap the benefits of the Information Age.

One of the authors, Ted Halstead has done a ton of good work toward bridging political divides, especially on climate change.

Do you think the way american politics currently functions is "just pragmatic"? Do you not agree that changing the system to a degree that enables the suppression or elimination of partisan bullshit would be pretty damn radical? For example, banning political parties and requiring everyone to run as independents with their own ideas rather than party talking points is radical IMO.

> Then I think my knowledge is truly lacking or I'm missing something simple. If I ask "How did you change the temperature of the system?"

I'm going to walk you through monetary policy in a really really simplified form.

> Answering "By setting a temperature target" seems insufficient and almost tautological. Better answers would be evaporative cooling, an adiabatic expansion, etc.

This is not what any one said. You misunderstand.

The tool is the interest rate. The target is inflation. The "temperature of the system," as you put it, is inflation. The Federal Reserve sets an interest rate that it thinks is consistent with an inflation level of 2% and adjusts periodically in order to hit the inflation target. This framework is referred to as inflation targeting and is the most common framework in use in central banks around the world.

It might surprise you to learn that monetary policy isn't about money at all. In fact, most papers in monetary economics don't even talk about money. It's about inflation and interest rates.

There are many interest rates in the economy. The one that the Federal Reserve targets is called the "Federal Funds rate." In other countries, the central bank's interest rate is referred to, variously, as the "policy rate," the "overnight rate" and the "benchmark rate." I'm sure there are other names. Regardless, the central bank's policy rate is the interest rate against which all other interest rates in the economy are "benchmarked" against. When the policy rate moves, all other rates move. See transmission mechanism.

The amount of money created at a certain level of policy rate is basically incidental.

Before the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve used OMO's or open market operations to target the policy rate (the Americans call theirs the "Federal Funds rate" as I mentioned). Since the crisis, there has been a change in the operating procedure. This short article explains.

>Well, that sucks. I think I still some years left on this earth, so I hopefully have more books on my horizon after finishing this 700-page tome. What would you recommend? I have a background in math and physics, if that helps.

Personally, I wouldn't bother with Secrets of the Temple. There are other books. Read some from central bankers themselves:

• Ben Bernanke (former Fed Chair)- The Courage to Act
  
• Sebastian Mallaby - The man who knew. This is a biography of Greenspan (fed chair before Bernanke). Greenspan wrote an autobiography too titled "the age of turbulence, but I found that book to be too self-serving).
  
• Mervyn King (former BoE governor) - The end of alchemy
  
  Fed History:
  
  
• Peter Conti-Brown- The power and Independence of the Federal Reserve
  
  There are many books that cover the 2008 financial crisis too. Bernanke's book is a good one among others. In short, I really wouldn't bother with Greider.
  
  
  

Submission Statement: European nations are lining up in opposition to China being declared a true "market economy status" nation by the WTO, which would afford it extra protections and rights under standing WTO regulations. Currently the target of one (and possibly soon several more) "anti-dumping" cases at the WTO, China does not have much leverage to ensure its "market economy status" will be awarded.

>"Securing market economy status would benefit China by requiring global trade regulators to compare the price of Chinese exports to its domestic market — instead of higher-priced third countries — in anti-dumping cases and thus limiting their ability to impose tariffs."

The close enmeshment of state/party/private interests in "Communist Party"-based (State Socialist) nations means that it is difficult to declare China a true "market economy" in the same terms as Western market economies.

====

----

^This ^link ^leads ^to ^an ^excellent ^book ^on ^the ^actual ^nature ^of ^Communist ^Party-governed ^nations ^as ^they ^actually ^existed.

I just got Ron Paul's book "A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship" in the mail the other day. It's a collection of foreign policy speeches he made in the House over the years with updated commentary. Can't wait to read it.

Side note: You can see the book displayed to the left of RP in the reddit.com Interviews Ron Paul video.

State regulation hinders competition by definition.

In this case, imagine their worst case scenario: the single operating ISP in your area charges $50 extra for access to Wikipedia, but backroom deals with Fox News makes it your required homepage.

Now even if, against 99% of the history of the State, this legislation did not contain any specifically-designed bonuses for the entrenched ISPs (for them or against entrepreneurs), the Unseen Costs are what matters. They are often subtle, but still have immense impact on markets.

Perhaps consider that the big ISPs don't mind "Net Neutrality" if it means that upstarts that figure out how to provide the services you want at a lower cost (maybe by focusing on traffic of particular types, like streaming video etc) cannot start their business since they cannot handle ALL kinds of traffic that "Net Neutrality" requires. They can't start their business, so they can't compete with this local monopoly, so they don't have to lower their prices while providing lower and lower quality service.

That's just one possibility from the top of my head.

Here is a reading suggestion. Titled Against Intellectual Monopoly by Michelle Boldrin.

http://www.amazon.com/Against-Intellectual-Monopoly-Michele-Boldrin/dp/0521127262

It is also hosted for free as a digital version on UCLA.edu.

Capitalism.

If you say, "well hey now, all the technology you're enjoying? Yeah, capitalism buddy ... or Hey, all the benefits of modern culture? Yeah, capitalism" you completely miss the point.

The profit-motive is completely unsustainable as Naomi Klein just laid out in her new book

Have you read Against Intellectual Monopoly? There really isn't much innovation going on because no one is truly free to innovate.

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

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

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

There is some validity to having competition to motivate innovation though.

Anyone who's read the work of Janos Kornai knows what I'm talking about in this sense. He gave a fairly good explanation for why the "Socialist" system slowed down in the USSR and didn't innovate the way Capitalists did.

What he talked about was Socialism being supply constrained. So every project was worthwhile in a Socialist system. You wanted wages to be high. Etc. So because every investment project was worthwhile, no investment project received all the funds and resources it needed to do things properly

So therefore the only way you could maintain output targets which kept rising year after year was not to innovate. If you want to produce more of commodity X than you did last year, you use last year's model.

I always love how people try disputing thousands of polls with their own anecdotal evidence.
Okay, we get it. You trust your neighbors.
That doesn't mean everyone else does.
Robert Putnam has a very good explanation as to why Americans trust each other and society less and less.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12802663

Also check out, "Bowling Alone" and his newest book.

https://www.amazon.com/Our-Kids-American-Dream-Crisis/dp/1476769907/ref=pd_cp_14_1/143-6375753-4922557?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1476769907&pd_rd_r=T6SE2FXTX84FY82JCTS4&pd_rd_w=ipyvg&pd_rd_wg=TlDQO&psc=1&refRID=T6SE2FXTX84FY82JCTS4

The biggest problem I see is that I can't see a solution.

>Unlike real sciences, leading academic economists disagree wildly about almost everything, from the details to the foundations of what correct economic policy os.

This isn't really, strictly, true. Nearly every modern economic school of thought, for example, acknowledges that free markets allocate resources in a way that maximizes economic efficiency. What you are thinking of is the difference between normative and positive economics, what ought to be vs. what is. People, economists included, often disagree on what our goals should be and thus are likely to espouse different policies. Keynesian economists believe the market distortions are an acceptable sacrifice for the short term gains of stimulus spending, while Monetarists are not.

Here's an interesting (whether you agree with it or not) take on the topic. And here's a lecture by the author.

It's all in the book. They did statistical analysis of several cases where similarly situated countries with different patent laws. I highly recommend it if you are at all interested in intellectual property. It completely upends the entire premise of patent law.

I'm all for removing the restrictions of the FED audits and introducing more reforms, but to be more effective in leading this fight, all of us here need to have a better grasp of all the functions of the FED system. I suggest reading "The Power and Independence of the Federal Reserve" by Peter Conti-Brown. Although the author does not support an audit of the federal reserve, he does offer a sober view of what FED independence is.

https://www.amazon.com/Power-Independence-Federal-Reserve/dp/0691164002

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

Beyond the usual stuff regarding Belt and Road, this is a strategic move by China on multiple accounts.

First, I highly recommend reading AI Superpower by Lee Kaifu. Look past the conspiratorial-esque title and focus on the main points that Lee makes:

• The future of an AI dominated economy will largely be built on a mountain of data. China, through sheer numbers alone, has emerged as the Saudi Arabia of data.
  
• China's dominance in all things data revolves around building out a robust O2O ecosystem: Online-to-Offline is a huge part of the Chinese internet, and much of that is built off the fact that most of China's data comes from mobile phones that provide its tech giants like Tencent, Baidu, and Alibaba with unprecedented amount of data that allow their analytic AI to do things that their western counterparts can't.
  
• China's entrepreneurial class has acquired an edge through its heavy copying: Contrary to what is normally perceived, the pervasive amount of copying in the Chinese startup scene has bred an entire generation of entrepreneurs who not only must ruthlessly copy any and all new features from their competitors but simultaneously make themselves distinctive from their competitors. This means pushing out more features through an iterative process that relies less on innovation and more on speedy results.
  
  The article touched on the fact that India's vast population skews younger and are also more likely to make the technological leap onto mobile-first. With China being the leader in IoT (internet of things), opening a way for Indian users to provide Chinese tech giants with more data will only further cement China's position as a leader in the coming AI economy.

“Right to work”. Also there is a really fantastic book out there about the decline of social mobility in the US that I would highly recommend.

I can't lie, I thought it was pretty funny when I found out this book was copyrighted.

Thanks for the recommendation. Also, I've heard that Naomi Klein's new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate is good.

Well, aiming for world (or even national) revolution comes with the obvious downside that failure is really expensive in terms of human well-being, so the pragmatic approach would seem to be to design a system to try voluntarily on a virtual, city- or state-wide scale and only scale up once the system operates at a stable and satisfactory level.

But tbh, anything regarding organization of work and resource distribution that goes beyond workers councils would be interesting. The most hands-on approach to the subject I've found is Michael Albert's Parecon, and it still comes across as quite optimistic to me.

First that comes to mind is The Rebel Sell by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter.

I remember reading this book when it came out in 2005 and it really pushed me over the edge from the anti-capitalist, hard left perspective that I'd been attached to for many years. It was particularly important because it argued directly against Adbusters and their Culture Jamming practices that I thought were potentially, if not actually effective.

The way they described the cyclical nature of counter culture growth and co-option by mainstream commercial culture was something that I had noticed in the background of my mind but had never seen laid out so clearly.

I had also just finished reading Kalle Lassn's Culture Jam and Micheal Albert's Parecon prior to this. Those two books by people I really respected were so badly thought out and so obviously written without critical input that I was already starting to move away from their ideas anyway. The Rebel Sell was the catalyst that let me see how pointless and silly some of that stuff was and let me completely break away.

My problem is that Saudi Arabia has "legally" beheaded 26 individuals since August 4th, 2014! With friends like that... FFS

Edit: The Shock Doctrine was excellent. Her new book looks very promising, as well: This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

yes, since the purchase of stock is a purchase of a company, you would pay your taxes at the pruchase time of the stock. but, after making you returns, there is no taxes due. you would only pay taxes on the money from your investment when you went and spent it again. check this book out (http://www.amazon.com/FairTax-Book-Neal-Boortz/dp/0060875410). Also there is a ton of 1%ers like Steve Forbes that support this taxation and it gets shut down by congress each time, because they know the real implications of what would happen (they couldnt by pass taxation anymore).

The first article is by the man who quite literally wrote the primary text book on Modern Monetary Theory, L Randall Wray. https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Money-Theory-Macroeconomics-Sovereign/dp/0230368891 He's one of the most important theorists behind MMT. So, the point is that QE =/= MMT. You have a good weekend too.

Again, [A Foreign Policy of Freedom] (http://www.amazon.com/Foreign-Policy-Freedom-Commerce-Friendship/dp/0912453001) will go a long way.

EDIT - I understand you to be asking, what ought we do about the current threat of ISIL rampaging through our interests over there. To me it is evident that the US is unable to solve any problems in Iraq, let alone restore and maintain a peaceful, stable government. So any solution must come from the people who live there. How odd...

Here is a good book about political economy. The author is self-described libertarian socialist.

This is why get out and vote campaigns are actually harmful. It convinces uneducated voters to go out and essentially vote randomly, bringing down the overall quality of the public discourse.

Bryan Caplan lays this argument out nicely in his book The myth of the rational voter

>What books on politics do you recommend?

• The Republic by Plato.
  
• Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville.
  
• Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy by Daron Acemoglu and Jim Robinson
  
• The Logic of Collective Action by Mancur Olson.
  
• The Calculus of Consent by Gordon Tullock and James Buchanan.
  
• The Strategy of Conflict by Tom Schelling.
  
• Principled Agents? by Timothy Besley.
  
• Social Choice and Individual Values by Ken Arrow. (Free, legal pdf here).
  
• Liberalism Against Populism by William Riker.
  
• Duck for President by Doreen Cronin.

If you do not like the current system there are plenty of alternatives out there being pushed. Start looking into alternative tax systems.

I support the Fairtax because it moves the power directly to the citizens of the United States. Of course that is not the only benefit.

Do your homework. I suggest reading the book and perhaps the follow up book.

Just remember the people who wrote the book are obviously for this system so keep that in mind. It is hard to read anything without it having a bias towards one thing or another. Use your own discretion for information you find that is pro-fairtax and anti-fairtax.

Undercover economist by Tim Harford is a really good intro to the issues we've been talking about

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Undercover-Economist-Tim-Harford/dp/0349119856

Why globalization works by martin wolff is a more in depth look

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Globalization-Works-Yale-Nota-Bene/dp/0300107773/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374514554&sr=1-1&keywords=why+globalization+works

Autogenerated.

I’m Martin Wolf and I have been the Financial Times chief economics commentator for over 20 years. I write about many aspects of the global economy - finance, trade, economic development, the rise of China and a great deal else. AMA!

I have been the FT's chief economics commentator for over 20 years. I write about many aspects of the global economy - finance, trade, economic development, the rise of China and a great deal else.

I view the policies of Donald Trump - his huge tax cuts, his criticism of the Federal Reserve, his protectionism and his trade war with China - as very dangerous to global economic and political stability. I think the UK's decision to leave the EU was a big mistake.

My books include The Shifts and The Shocks: What we’ve learned – and have still to learn – from the financial crisis, Fixing Global Finance, and Why Globalization Works.

I'm happy to try to answer questions on the current state of the global economy, China-US relations and anything else in the broad sphere of economics that interests you.

Proof: https://i.redd.it/da3w8411fzt11.jpg


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Comment 1 of 1
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Yes. I think the flat tax is a great plan. It eliminates all of the loopholes and thousands of pages of tax codes.

The book Fair Tax lays out exactly how the plan would work. I would suggest reading it if anyone is interested in just how screwed up the US tax code is and how much money is wasted dealing with taxes.

This article is completely wrong. This article is from 2004 and every single one of these problems was addressed in the book The Fair Tax. If you don't want to buy the book just goolge Neal Boortz and Fair Tax. There are plenty of free sources of information on the fair tax out there.

>Property is the coercive exclusion of others from entering certain areas or touching certain objects. That's what it is.

Aside from alll those times when it isn't.

Not enough words to make all the citations: more and more and more and more and more

His book is a good read

https://www.amazon.com/AI-Superpowers-China-Silicon-Valley-ebook/dp/B0795DNWCF

What's really interesting is that the author is a Libertarian, but he makes a pragmatic argument for why we should support a UBI. This is his book on the subject.

Use google, you'll find plenty. IIRC, the Myth of the Rational Voter has some good ones in it.

And yes. I think everyone should have to pass some sort of citizenship test, just like immigrants do. I go back and forth on what that test should consist of, but at the very least a basic literacy test would be a good idea. And anyone who gets more money from the government than they pay in taxes (welfare recipients, people on SS, defense contractors, government employees) should be banned from voting, though the math on that can get tricky.

> Also ridding yourself of simple black and white solutions. Such as believing greed, malevolence and stupidity just disappearing when everyone is given a fair share.

Capitalism is a system which encourages greed and exploitation down to its core. Contemporary leftists are campaigning against the standard of living divide between sweat-shop conditions and top-1% wealth. If anyone thinks that the existence of these two dichotomies, as stark as the differences are, are in any way ethical, then their beliefs are absurd. We're not fighting against ending greed and malevolence - just economic and social justice and equality.

> Nothing about capitalism defies the sustainability of the environment.

https://www.amazon.de/This-Changes-Everything-Capitalism-Climate/dp/1451697384

Mountaintop-removal mining programs, fishing industries, carbon pollution, auto-industries, unsustainable corporate agriculture brought to you by Tyson and Monsanto - you name it. Capitalism and the culture of consumption is going to destroy swaths of the planet within the century, and pro-establishment politicians are entirely ignoring it.

You might be interested in the books of Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine and her latest This Changes Everything

Parecon: Life After Capitalism

This one will cover all the bases:

Modern Money Theory: A Primer on Macroeconomics for Sovereign Monetary Systems

MMT: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0230368891

http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm

​

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Against-Intellectual-Monopoly-Michele-Boldrin/dp/0521127262/ref=asc_df_0521127262/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=273092222521&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=255991395196188241&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1006886&hvtargid=pla-568371974806&psc=1&th=1&psc=1

> https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0795DNWCF/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Sounds like you have a problem with patents.

Honestly, I just had lunch and I dont have enough blood in my brain to have a coherent deep political argument. But the idea is that voting is just more of a process where uninformed people elect a 4 year dictator. And they are not uninformed because they choose to, they are uninformed because its impossible to know about every little detail of what is happening. You should learn about public choice theory or read "The myth of the rational voter" (http://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Rational-Voter-Democracies/dp/0691129428). Youll realize that a lot of the problems we have now is because we live in a democracy.

Standard Shipping was only $3.99 for me (to HI no less), might be worth not buying something else.

But here are a few suggestions anyway:

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Paperback - Aug 23, 2005)

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Hardcover) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Author)

I ordered these recently too, but haven't received them yet. The idea of shifting the entire tax burden from production, saving, and investment to consumption intrigues me:

The FairTax Book by Neal Boortz and John Linder (Hardcover - Aug 2, 2005)

FairTax: The Truth: Answering the Critics by Neal Boortz and John Linder (Paperback - Feb 12, 2008)

Well said. I couldn't agree more. Have you read, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, by Bryan Caplan?
>http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Rational-Voter-Democracies-Policies/dp/0691129428

Hidden in form of failing enterprises that employed thousands upon thousands of people more than they should.The labor participation rates were artificially high behind the iron curtain due to over manning to achieve full employment with no concern for efficiency
https://www.amazon.com/Socialist-System-Political-Economy-Communism/dp/0691003939

I think what has not helped the cause is that, in the 70's...scientists were saying that global cooling was a danger. In the 80's... it was the hole in the ozone layer. In the 90's...it became global warming. Then it became climate change...now it's "climate disruption."

There were dire predictions made that have not come to fruition.

Most of us, I think, are in favor of exploring all energy options. We don't agree with the government funneling money to alt energy companies that end up going bankrupt.

We are not in favor of people arguing that the capitalist system needs to be dismantled and all the wealth needs to be taken from people who have it.

http://www.amazon.com/This-Changes-Everything-Capitalism-Climate/dp/1451697384

We don't understand why the USA, which is working to become more Earth friendly, is the focus of the hatred when other nations are pumping way more pollution into the world.

I guess, in short, I don't like it that science has gotten into bed with politics.

Also ... some in the green movement seem to be incredibly cruel. There's been talking about criminalizing "deniers."

When you decide that [this](http://www.youtube.com /watch?v=zR73mcZW7B4) is an effective case for your cause...you might have some issues.

So then I would ask what would be correct. Using you examples.

I didn't want to get into this but what the hell.
Personally I believe in a national sales tax. It is based on consumption. Currently, basing a tax on income is counter-intuitive. You are punishing the very thing that drives our economy and the welfare of the nation. For more on this, read http://www.amazon.com/FairTax-Book-Neal-Boortz/dp/0060875410