Reddit mentions: The best theory of economics books

Well this seems like a good opportunity to post a few of the lessons I learned in my 20s.

To my former self:

If you're depressed, here's how to turn it around

• Stop drinking, this is the main cause.
  
  
• Lift weights. This alone could also stop depression. It's likely related to low testosterone levels
  
  
• Fapping too much makes the depression worse
  
  Fap less, and never to porn
  
  
• Ejaculating too often removed your motivation to take actions and start tasks. You can consider porn like a poison for the mind. Pleasurable but it desensitizes you to all other pleasures, making life seem bland and boring. Until the only thing you want is porn. It perpetuates itself.
  
  
  Gratitude
  
  
• Whatever you are grateful for will grow
  
  
• Gratitude is the only way to be happy. If you think about what happiness is, it's appreciating what you have. When you think of something that would make you happy, you are imagining yourself appreciating it when you get it.
  
  Wealth
  
  
• You can have anything you want, as long as you create enough value for others first.
  
  
• To be wealthy, don't try and do tomorrow's work today, just have a successful day each day. If you have more successful days than unsuccessful days, your wealth will grow. As you have successful and productive days, opportunities will be attracted to you.
  
  Theories
  
  
• The key to success in any area is having the right theory. A small amount of work, or a massive amount of work, with the wrong theory, won't lead to success.
  
  
• With the right theory, success will be relatively straight forward. When you do the thing, it will basically work every time. Anything that has been done many times before, can be done yourself with the correct theory
  
  
• When most people speak of the 'years of hard work' they put in before they 'cracked the game', usually means they were laboring under the wrong theory, and then one day they found the correct theory, and when they applied it, it worked. (excluding world class athletes, talking about common things like starting a business or growing muscles)
  
  
• Theories can be gathered by spending tens of thousands of dollars on seminars or tens of dollars on books. Both can contain theories that work and theories that don't work. Higher cost definitely does not mean they have the right theory
  
  
• Some theories can seem like they are guaranteed to work, but on testing, actually don't. When someone says they have the right theory, it will seem worth any price. Often they actually don't. Beware. If possible buy their book and test it for yourself, it's just as good in book form.
  
  
• This whole list is a list of theories, as you can see, they are usually quite simple and easy to understand. Complexity is usually a sign the person doesn't really know how things work
  
  
  Girls
  
  
• You cannot make a girl like you, you can however find a girl who likes you
  
  
• They key to getting girls is to get in excellent shape (lift weights), dress well, and talk to girls until you find one that likes you
  
  
• If a girl is unsure if she you likes you, won't go on a date with you, or doesn't let you touch her in anyway. She doesn't like you. Find one that wants all those things. Don't be fooled by girls who seem to REALLY like you but doesn't have time to meet, or won't let you touch her. They do not like you like that.
  
  
• Hot girls are just as likely to like you as not hot girls
  
  
• If you like a girl more than she likes you, and she doesn't want to meet up/hang out/have sex. Let her go and move on
  
  
  Career
  
  
• It's very easy to get ahead if you just try, most people don’t
  
  
• You career will naturally progress just through normal learning, don't worry about it
  
  
  Flow
  
  
• If you want things to happen without effort and struggle, live a life with gratitude and presence. Things will seem to happen easily and naturally.
  
  
  Meditation
  
  
• Mediation gives you the ability to be your best. Very handy for improving at anything, particularly gaming, as you see more and learn more. It gives you access to creativity in solving problems and improving your performance
  
  
• Mediation allows you to 'stop the mind'. Do this if you're stuck in over-analysis
  
  
• To meditate, set a time on your phone for 20 minutes, sit still and don't move a muscle, and focus on your breath as often as you can. Your mind will try to stray, just focus on your breath as much as able. This is how you quiet the mind
  
  *****
  Edit:
  
  To answer some requests, here's my list of resources.
  
  Wealth/Metaphysics
  
  
• http://www.audible.com.au/pd/Health-Personal-Development/The-Science-of-Getting-Rich-Audiobook/B00FMUQVSI
  This audiobook has the best summary I've found of how wealth works
  
  Lifting
  
  
• https://stronglifts.com/5x5/
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Starting-Strength-Basic-Barbell-Training/dp/0982522738
  
  
• http://startingstrength.com/
  
  
• http://www.leangains.com/2011/09/fuckarounditis.html
  
  How Procrastination works:
  
  
• https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastinate.html
  
  
• https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/11/how-to-beat-procrastination.html
  
  How Business works
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Personal-MBA-Master-Art-Business/dp/1591845572
  
  What innovation actually is and how to do it:
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Innovation-Entrepreneurship-Peter-F-Drucker/dp/0060851139
  
  How economics works:
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/047052670X
  
  How to get things done:
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/0142000280
  
  Task Management tool:
  
  
• https://todoist.com/
  
  Spiritual Books
  
  
• Spiritual books won't make sense unless you've had an awakening, and you can't make this happen, it happens by chance/grace. If you have, anything by Eckhart Tolle will be amazing.
  
  How to be a man:
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Way-Superior-Man-Spiritual-Challenges/dp/1591792576
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Truth-Spiritual-Guide-Death/dp/1591792592
  
  Audiobooks (most of these can be found on audiobook):
  
  
• Audible.com
  
  Frame Control (Anytime you feel like you're trying too hard or begging for something, you lost the frame)
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Pitch-Anything-Innovative-Presenting-Persuading/dp/1501211811
  
  This is my favourite book of all. They talk about the new type of conscousness which is really really interesting to me. May not apply to all people.
  If anyone find this book interesting I'd love to talk about it:
  
  How the world works:
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Spiral-Dynamics-Mastering-Values-Leadership/dp/1405133562
  
  
• https://www.audible.com.au/pd/Spiral-Dynamics-Integral-Audiobook/B00FO5660E
  
  

Oh boy, this shall be fun, it's a little disappointing that people are downvoting this, as I think it's a fairly reasonable question given the idea's spat out about economics from politicians and journalists.

Edit (this paragraph is the edit, not the huge wall of text, that was always there): Also I think one of the other problems seen is often it's not actually the economists who even get to make the important decisions in the end, time after time I have seen politicians implement policies that economists will repeatedly facepalm over. My biggest issue with modern day politics is that it is a popularity contest, rather than vote between the most qualified people of who we think could do the right job, we vote mostly on unqualified people who we think would do the least bad job, or for most people, who they think appeals the best to their self interests. I don't have a perfect solution, but fuck, there must be a better way.

(also part of edit) I guess you also have the problem of the agenda of the economist, are they trying to optimise social welfare, their own interests, or the interests of someone providing for them by other means.

I myself am still only an undergraduate, I graduate at the end of this year with majors in analytical economics, computer science and pure mathematics. Next year I am doing an honours year in just mathematics, followed possibly by a 2 year masters in the same three area's my undergrad is in, then I'm not really sure what I will do my PhD in yet, other than the topic will most probably be on game theory. I also work as a research assistant for a somewhat well known macroeconomist at my uni who also has a research position at Cambridge (they're actually over there for a month at the moment).

What I will say I have come to find holds across all fields of science, only in the social sciences there seems to be a greater number of pseudoscientists (my personal branding of them). Basically, any of the topics termed a science, whether they be a natural or social science, are really complex. Most of the mathematics scientists find useful can be used across any of these fields, and one can't necessarily say that a physicist is smarter than say a political scientist, or that the work the physicist is doing is harder than that of the political scientist.

One can however, obviously, point out that the average (take any measure of that you want) person that studies physics is generally smarter, knows a lot more maths etc. than the average political science or economics student (hell, I even think the average economics student learns a lot more than the average political science student). I think this is sad, I don't necessarily expect quite the same level, but people are given economics degree's these days without even taking a multivariable calc course, that should be illegal! (only half /s).

Okay, now to kind of move onto what you were asking. If you want resources that debunk economic models, then you merely need to find an economic model you have a problem with and search for criticisms of that, I expect it works much the same for any other science.

If you as a mathematician were interested in actually learning a bit about how real economists model different aspects of the economy, here is a bit about some of the main subject areas (there are a lot of sub-areas to these and somewhat large area's that fit into multiple or none of the areas well), any of the texts linked you could acquire off rapidlibrary for a look if you want, or should be in the library of any uni you are at.

One must remember that economics deals with a subject that has a lot of randomness (much like biology, giving a natural science counterpart), so a lot of the models don't give an exact answer, or even model anything that you can assign good specific numbers to, a lot of the time you are just trying to model as many of the effects of different things as you can, then trying to see what happens when you control certain things like interest rates, or how consumers can optimally make decisions etc.

Microeconomics tends to deal with the economic decisions faced by individual entities, whether it be people/consumers or firms/producers etc. This is where game theory is probably used more than any other area of economics, but it certainly isn't the only area.

Consumer theory is basically built up on the idea of utility, which is basically defined as someone's "enjoyment" of consuming something (one can have negative utility for something, sometimes referred to as a bad rather than a good for obvious reasons). Utility is only defined to be ordinal, so one can say someone strictly prefers one good to another for example, but not that they like it twice as much or anything like that.

Utility also has to satisfy a few assumptions (which is where it is mostly criticized) for the theory that gets developed to mostly hold, but on the most part they aren't too bad if the person is actually trying to make an optimal decision, they are things like preferences should be complete, transitive, consistent etc.

One of the simple first models one would be taught in microeconomics is that of a simplified world where there is one consumer trying to pick a consumption bundle out of 2 existing goods that will maximise their level of utility (very straight forward constrained maximisation problem). If you ever hear someone say that microeconomics is just one simple constrained optimisation problem, it's because they are under the impression that "microeconomics == n-good utility maximisation problem", which it is not.

A lot of the main theory for micro now works with general equilibrium models, which has n-consumers and n-producers. The maths for this gets rather messy, and I wont try to explain it here, if you want to learn more about microeconomics with a background in mathematics I would suggest you pick up Microeconomic Theory. This is essentially the text used by most post grad micro courses at the better universities.

Macroeconomics tends to deal with the aggregate effects in economy. What's going on with the interest rate/price level, what is the aggregate level of income inside the economy, what is the average level of welfare for a person. For example a model I did in my third year macro unit was the central banks problem of setting the interest rate to help optimise an objective of the bank. Basically the bank has a target interest rate and target level of output, then it models the effects in the economy (which direction the forces are on inflation and output, given any output gaps and the interest rate) and sets the interest rate to minimise the weighted sum of difference from target inflation and target output. Looking back it was very much an optimal control problem in disguise.

From what I have been able to gather (I have managed a postgrad micro unit during undegrad but not macro) most of modern day macro models are built up using dynamic programming methods (I just took a course on calculus of variations with a large chunk on optimal control theory which was awesome, I love it). If you want to learn more about that go look at Recursive Macroeconomics.

Game Theory (which you might have actually learnt something about) is also vital for modern economic theories, as essentially it is the study of agents optimal decisions when interacting with other self thinking agents. This is where my main interest is along with micro, if you wanted to learn about this I would suggest Myerson's Analysis of Conflict book, or possibly Fudenberg or Tiroles, as it covers more, but I don't think it's as good for an introduction, and trust me, game theory takes a bit of work to learn properly.

There are many different kinds of games, strategic deals with situations where all players make their move (surprise) simultaneously, extensive form will allow turn based games. Then you have a whole array of others, Bayesian games deals with players having multiple possible types, differential games is basically multiplayer optimal control theory (set of state variables and control varaibles, each player tries to find optimal control function given others will be doing the same to maximise their utility of the terminal state), stochastic games is similarly pretty much multiplayer dynamic programming I think.

Like I previously mentioned, game theory is my main love, I am currently working on a fairly large game theory library in c++ which I'm hoping may end up being the standard tool for research in game theory, and economics certainly isn't the only area currently interested in game theory, there are biologists, computer scientists, mathematicians, political scientists etc. that are doing research with it as well. (<3 Von-Neumann!).

>>Sure, except there is not a finite level of wealth in the real world, nor is wealth gained by arbitrary or random means.

>Not sure what world you are living in, but in mine there is a finite amount of food, land, money, gold, trees, oil, iphones. How do you think the laws of supply and demand work?

In a closed system, with zero economic growth, I would agree with you. But the fact is, we are nowhere close to fulfilling our potential in wealth and technology. When somebody makes money, it's because they have found a way to generate wealth, not because they steal it from anyone else.

>Wealth is not gained by arbitrary or random means? Really? Lets tell the kid who was born in Congo that he really failed at picking his parents. Or an example closer to home - when you wanted to start your first telecommunications company, did your parents put up a few million bucks in venture capital for you as happened with Lachlan Murdoch and James Packer?

The overwhelming majority of millionaires today came from middle-class backgrounds. What's the point of bringing strawmen arguments into this? Being born rich helps, but not as much as you might think. Rarely does wealth last longer than 3 generations - a phenomenon known as "rags to riches to rags". As for luck, working hard helps. From WSJ:

" His study found that people who earn less than $20,000 a year, for instance, spent more than a third of their time in passive leisure, like kicking back and watching TV. By contrast, those earning more than $100,000 a year (more affluent than wealthy), spent less than a fifth of their time in passive leisure."

>Ohhh, I see where you're going with this. In Libertarian fantasy land wealth is allocated by hard work, and chance plays a very marginal role. Capital and inherited wealth pale against the billion dollar earning power of a hard working primary school teacher! In reality, labour does not out earn capital.

Again, most wealthy people came from middle class backgrounds. Do you have any evidence, whatsoever, to back up your claim that a majority of rich people are there because they inherited their wealth?

>>Why are countries with free markets so wealthy? Why do countries like HK, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan have such a strong middle class?

>Because for one, they aren't free market economies. Most of their growth was led by their governments. Singapore is basically a technocratic dictatorship ruled by one family - perhaps you're familiar with Singtel, owner of Optus or Singapore Airlines, both controlled by government investment corporation Temasek?

I agree that Singapore is an autocracy, but it doesn't mean it's not free market. Historically these countries have had the lowest government intervention of any. To claim that they're not free markets are laughable. For christ's sake, for most of Hong Kong's history it never had any public education, healthcare, or transport. It doesn't even have a central bank! Seriously man, I'm more than happy to have a debate with you, but let's at least agree on the obvious - the Asian tigers were (and still are) most definitely free markets.

>Korea is run by an oligarchy of family owned conglomerates called "Chaebols" - Samsung, LG, Hyundai, all of the drivers of their economy are too-big-to-fail and heavily state supported.

This is anecdotal evidence. I'm not claiming these areas have no government interference, merely that they are free markets. The best measure of this is their government spending as a % of GDP.

>Hong Kong and Taiwan were able to profit from proximity and cultural ties to China to build their economies.

Since when does geographical proximity guarantee wealth? This is not an argument in any way.

>And China's decades long double digit economic growth model wasn't thanks to the free market either. They call it "State Capitalism", which is a fancy way of saying fascism.

I wouldn't call China's growth anything exciting. They're growing slower than the Asian tigers, and there's no guarantee they'll break through the middle income trap.

>>Again, evidence and history does not support your claims.

>Yes it does. Most industries in market economies start out fiercely competitive but ultimately merge into an oligarchy if not strictly regulated by the government.

>6 companies control 90% of the USA's media, down from 50 in 1983.

>Since 1990, 37 of the USA's big banks merged to become just 4 too-big-to-fail megabanks.

I wouldn't call 4 banks an oligarchy. That's economies of scale. Do you have any evidence to suggest they are colluding?

>This process happens even faster in a small economy like Australia's, where we have been stuck with an cartel of 4 too-big-to-fail banks for a very long time now.

Again...4 companies is not an oligopoly.

>You need to acquaint yourself with the basics of how markets work, and how unregulated markets inevitably become monopolistic. You can start with "Wealth of Nations" by the father of modern capitalism, Adam Smith.

Thanks for the advice. I guess my 4 years of economics study (with honours) at a top university was a massive waste of time.

This is where other schools of economics really fall short of the Austrians: spending does not grow an economy. Saving, reinvestment, and increasing production grow an economy. Simply having more exchanges means nothing if the number of things available doesn’t change. Macroeconomists love to focus on spending b/c it's something they can measure and it's a number they can push up or down, but it completely misses the big picture. You can certainly look at spending as a sort of measurement of the size of the economy, but it's a rough tool at best, and it's certainly not the driving force of economic growth by any means. I mean, Keynes was so myopic on this that he actually suggested that having the gov't pay people to dig holes and fill them back in would help the economy. How could that possibly make us richer? Who gains from that other than the diggers? You're just taking money away from the people producing the goods that improve our lives and giving it to those who are uselessly spinning their wheels. This is also why these same people think WWII got us out of the Great Depression, and if you just look at it with any sort of realistic view, there's no way that constructing tanks and planes and ships and sending them off to get blown up and take lives improves the lives of anyone. But creating labor-saving devices or more efficient ways to create food? That's the shit that actually matters. Everyone alive today that was born in the US has lived in a wealthier society than kings of the past could ever dream of, and we've lost sight of how we got here and what the mechanics were that created the wealth.

You got $13? Read this simple book, and it will put it all in perspective. Then if you want heavier stuff, you can get into Hazlitt or Rothbard.

https://smile.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/047052670X

Or you can start here for free: https://mises.org/library/one-lesson

>I don’t regret having one, just extremely ashamed of being sexual and communicating it to girls and also showing it to the world. Attracting girls’ attention and whatnot isn’t very hard but progressing things to dating, holding hands and eventually sex is impossible. I can’t even call them or message them on Facebook or Whatsapp because I just feel like an idiot for doing so. Making a move in clubs and bars is also difficult although I once got close to leaving with a girl but she didn't want to. I got made fun of a lot growing up for not having a girlfriend and this made me feel like i do not deserve one. It doesn't matter if I've got the green light to go ahead I just feel really ashamed do it. Even something like looking at a fit girl wearing a short skirt makes me feel bad for checking her out and that I shouldn’t be doing it.


I know what you mean. I've been there myself, but even when I was there I was entirely self-aware of my shame and I was skeptical of the validity of my emotional reactions; I realized they were ingrained. Being aware of your emotional reactions allows you to be emotionally proactive. Your sex-negative problem is mostly an emotional issue, and not much else, right? I've been there. I wouldn't doubt that you are also decent looking and have both latent and actualized social skills. Most intelligent introverts have a lot of potential to be who they want to be because they know themselves more deeply than others. You must use your introverted nature to your advantage and recognize the differences in others and yourself. In all honesty, there are an infinite number of unwritten rules; everyone's abstract/emotional logic is different. Many of them are foundational and predictable, however; including yours and mine. Like anything else, being emotionally predictable is not a black/white issue. It is a grey area, and you have to balance your reliability with creativity.


Being made fun of for not having a girlfriend is just as sexist as being made fun of for not having a boyfriend; gender equal too. Were you ever shamed for not having a boyfriend? It's clearly a matter of groupthink and extroverted style; not for everyone. Dating relationships, for extroverts especially, are often attention-getting and showy. They wear their relationships like trophies won. Usually introverts prefer a more private relationship because they have less social desire and are often shamed because of it. Introverts are “themselves” more often in private. Extroverts are “themselves” more often in public. There is no shame deserved either way, regardless of popular opinion. Both styles have their strengths and weaknesses, and you should try to introject some of the traits that you enjoy in others; regardless of type. That is how you become balanced.


>I’m receiving counselling from a pastor who advocates the whole “no sex before marriage” thing and believes that people should only date to get married and sex is only for making kids which is stupid IMO because I do not plan on getting married anytime soon.


Counseling from a Catholic pastor? Watch out, that is one of the most notorious sex-negative societies out there. They own the abstinence-only charade while they parade horribles. Marriage is not the answer to anything; it is an institution of the state. Anything else attached is sentimental.


If you haven't already, I recommend doing an in-depth study of animal sexual behaviors; especially the most intelligent animals. All animals have sex for pleasure, but some animals are only driven to have sex at certain times of the year; humans are on a 24/7 system.


>I’ve tried the no fap route and gotten very high days counts but that hasn’t really helped me at all.


Sexual frustration doesn't help anyone. If you are mindful, then you can use your libido to further your goals, but it is not an all-cure.


>Got any sources to help overcome sex-negative perspectives? I’m interested in recreational sex not baby making sex.


Absolutely. I recommend starting with actual sex science and learning about male and female psychology and neurology. Then work your way into reading about sex culture. You should also study developmental psychology as you will probably need the clinical context in order to objectively self-evaluate your childhood influences; it is necessary for self-therapy. The best therapy will always be self-therapy; no one will ever know you better than yourself.


Evolutionary Science and Morals Philosophy:

The Selfish Gene

The Moral Landscape

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do?


Sex Psychology, Science, and Neurology:

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

The Female Brain

The Male Brain

Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love

What Do Women Want

Why Women Have Sex: Understanding Sexual Motivations from Adventure to Revenge (and Everything in Between)

Sex: The world's favorite pastime fully revealed


Behavioral Psychology and Abstract Economics:

How Pleasure Works

Freakonomics

Quiet: The Power of Introverts In A World That Can't Stop Talking

Thinking Fast And Slow

We Are All Weird


Developmental Psychology:

Nurture Shock

Hauntings: Dispelling The Ghosts That Run Our Lives


Empathy Building:


Half The Sky

The House On Mango Street

Me Before You

The Fault In Our Stars

Also check out James Hollis' Understanding The Psychology of Men lecture if you can find it.



Movies: XXY, Tom Boy, Dogtooth, Shame, Secretary, Nymphomaniac, Juno, Beautiful Creatures, and The Man From Earth.



All of these things are related, but it is up to you to make the connections; pick and choose which material suits your interests best. These are the things that came to mind first, and they have all influenced my perspectives.

I'm in a similar boat as you; interested in continental, but surrounded by a lot of analytics.

Hegel is notorious for being dense and difficult to read, and while he was incredibly influential on many later continental thinkers, I don't think anyone who really wanted to help you get into continental philosophy would have you start on Hegel, unless they were committed to reading through it with you.

Heidegger's maybe a bit less obtuse at times, but he can also be confusing if you don't have a professor or more experienced student guiding you along. I asked a professor where I should start, and he recommended his published lecture notes from The History of the Concept of Time, which I admittedly haven't finished yet, but he spends a lot of time in it explaining Husserl's philosophy of phenomenology, which is crucial for understanding Heidegger, as well as a number of other continental thinkers.

As for some easier continental-esque thinkers, there are some that I think are a bit more accessible. Bear in mind that there isn't exactly a group of thinkers who all signed a document saying they were continental philosophers, but there are a number who seem to run in the tradition, and many others who were at the very least related to them.

To begin, I'd recommend some Kierkegaard. He was a Christian philosopher, and is often considered to be one of the earliest existentialist philosopher's. He did a number of works on concepts of faith, anxiety, dread and other elements of the human condition, adding his own angles on them to apply them to Christian philosophy. He wrote under a number of pseudonyms in order to create a number of different perspectives, although underlying all the chaos was a desire to get you to start thinking for yourself. A good place to start with him would be Fear and Trembling. Many of his ideas were influential on continental thinkers such as Heidegger, Jaspers and Sartre.

To go in a very different direction, Nietzsche is another thinker who was very influential on many continental philosophers. The self-declared Anti-Christ, he basically believed that we are about to enter a post-God world, with his writings often either trying to burn our bridges back to the Church or trying to point us in a new direction. Like Kierkegaard, he doesn't always say what he means directly, but much of his philosophy is ultimately aimed at getting you to start thinking for yourself. I'd recommend this anthology, as it contains a number of pretty crucial writings of his.

If after this you're still interested in Heidegger, I don't have as much background there, although I've read a few of his Basic Writings, which is a collection of essays of his. In one of my classes, we also read an essay from his Pathmarks which wasn't terribly dense, so that might be a nice place to start as well. Being and Time is generally considered to be his most important work, but it's renowned for being dense and difficult, although there are a number of commentaries on that book alone that may prove useful.

For one final recommendation, I'll throw in Kaufmann's anothology of existential writings, which has a number of essays on existentialism, which was heavily tied to many core continental thinkers.

And I wouldn't worry about your roommate.

This is the first book I read - Basic Economics By Thomas Sowell. The author is quite libertarian (which I am not) but I don't remember the book being particularly radical. I read the book 10 yrs ago but it stood out, definitely piqued my interest, and really helped things 'click' for me regarding basic economic theory. Diving directly into a micro 101 textbook or just reading 100 econ blogs would not be advised as you don't learn the basics and traditions. Give yourself a reason to be interested and the rest will follow.

Free to Choose is pretty valuable, though it can be more a work of political-economy. Freakonomics is also great because its easy/fun to read and gives you a good understand of just how super valuable numbers are.

These are all on the light side and not 'textbook' quality; however, I'm sure they'll pique your interest, give you a good foundation, and the rest will follow.

Here's my suggestions:

• Freakonomics is a fun introduction to economics. It has some caveats (most high-level economists disagree with the book) but I think it's a great way to get excited about economic concepts and see some of the things you can do with them.
  
• There are a bunch of excellent topic-focused lighter-reading economics books such as: Wikinomics, The Wal-Mart Effect, and Predictably Irrational, to name a few.
  
• I know you said "pop-sci" but if you're into mysteries at all then there's a fun series of two books written by a pair of economists called Murder at the Margin and Fatal Equilibrium. The books are murder mysteries in which the main character solves the mystery using economic principles. They are a little silly but an entertaining read.
  
• If you're interested in something a little more hands on there are a number of free (low expectation) online introductory courses. The University of Illinois in particular is offering a completely free course in Principles of Microeconomics. It's fairly unorthodox and should be both fun and informative. I highly recommend it from personal experience.
  
  Hope that helps!

>Since the free market would fail to provide products and services (defense, public infrastructure, water resources, sanitary services) equitably, the government necessarily exists to provide these services.

This is completely untrue. How would the private sector fail to provide such services? Currently the reason the private sector doesn't provide for some of these services in certain areas (many of these services are indeed provided by the market) is that the government has a monopoly on these services. Before government got involved these services were solely provided by the market place.

>The concept of equity (equal protection) is a constitutional concept that tends to necessitate government provision of certain goods and services.

This is not how it works in reality. Government offers greater access and protection to certain wealthy connected individuals and corporations. When the government takes $500 from me that I would have spent on say new tires for my car and gives the money Haliburton, how is efficiency created? When the Fed prints a few billion dollars (thus lowering the value of the money we hold) and gives it to Lockheed Martin, how is efficiency created?

>While I will concede the point that the production of the federal government is not nearly equal to the resources it takes in, it is fallacious to assert that the government does not produce.

Creating a monopoly on services and providing less than the resources it takes in isn't equal to producing a product or service. In the market place consumers can weigh the trade offs between capital and a particular product or service. With a government monopoly the consumer isn't given this choice and efficiency is greatly reduced. For some basics you can read How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes.

>I believe that a reasoned approach to governance, as asserted by Ron Paul in many respects, would bring us much closer to government efficiency...

Closer yes, but closer is quite relative. It still wouldn't be able to come close to efficiency that the free market could achieve.

>...and simultaneous effectiveness first by delegating more power and resources to state and local governments to provide those services that are best provided at that smaller scale and second by re-prioritizing the allocation of government resources within the federal government based on more appropriate measures of public health and safety.

Although Dr. Paul does indeed want to remove much of the power of the Federal government and return it to the states, he really would like to see most of government just get out of peoples lives all together. He understands that the free market would be far more efficient and that government will just continue to take away any liberties you might possess.

I've immersed myself in science and history my whole life and quite possibly the best book I've ever come across that condenses everything in a sequential order is "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson.

> In A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson trekked the Appalachian Trail—well, most of it. In A Sunburned Country, he confronted some of the most lethal wildlife Australia has to offer. Now, in his biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand—and, if possible, answer—the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world’s most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, traveling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds. A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it. Science has never been more involving or entertaining.

The book is simply amazing. I learn something new from it everytime I read it and I highly recommend it to everyone from an uneducated teenager to a PhD carrying senior!

While you're at it, I would also recommend the rest of his books. Bryson is an amazing nonfiction writer (I daresay one of the best in the world) and his penmanship will captivate you. Just search for him on Amazon and pick another one of his books up in a category that interests you as he writer about a very broad range of topics.

Edit: Also, I highly recommend "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared M. Diamond. and Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt

I was skimming these, and most of what I would say has been covered here, but I think three things may have been overlooked.

First, it's important to understand that most libertarians strongly favor local charities and community initiatives to give people a hand up who have fallen on hard times. I think the government has no business giving money to the poor for pretty much anything (also not a universal libertarian position), but I recognize that sometimes people are poor or in some other kind of long-term danger because of things they can't fix themselves. For example, I think that addiction is a problem that most people can't solve on their own because of lack of resources or lack of information. It seems to me that the most "progressive" response to this would be to demand that the government set up treatment centers and offer free healthcare (including mental healthcare). As a libertarian, I volunteer at and give money to independent, non-profit treatment centers. You could do the same thing with a number of issues (environment, food deserts, etc.) without government intervention. Because I am on the spot, instead of in Washington, I can address the needs of individuals more precisely. I can tell that James is a basically good guy who got mixed up with heroin at a young age but is genuinely working to improve his lot, so that when I buy him lunch, he can use the money he saves to buy some clothes for an interview or save up for an eventual security deposit. On the other hand, Rob is just out to scrimp together cash for another crack rock, so buying him lunch will just let him hoard the money he might have spent on a sandwich to get more rock.

If I'm wrong about the direction of my charity, it only hurts me. You can spend your resources more wisely if you choose. I can learn from my mistakes more quickly because they have direct and real consequences for me that I can measure and react to efficiently.

On paper, these two people might look exactly the same. The government has no particular interest in the individual here. As long as aggregate results are good exploitative individuals are irrelevant.

Another example that I don't directly deal with is people who are out of work due to disability. Maybe one person is genuinely disabled and won't be able to hold down a steady job for the rest of their lives. I can help them by giving them money directly for the rest of their lives or organize a group of people to help support them from within the community. Maybe someone else is just taking advantage of a particularly unscrupulous doctor, and they're essentially just lazy. The government has to choose between expensive oversight and mistreatment of the one (by forcing the genuinely disabled person to search for a job they can never get or by giving unneeded aid to a person who should be contributing to the economy).

Second, not all libertarians are the same. There's a wide swath of opinion within libertarianism. While we share similar first principals (economic and personal liberty should be radically and thoroughly defended from government encroachment), our expression of those principals will be different. For example, some libertarians support a limited welfare state while others feel it is wrong and/or inefficient. Another example, many libertarians oppose abortion on the grounds that a fetus is a living person whose right to life must be protected; others disagree and support abortion rights on the grounds that a woman should be free to choose her own family and reproductive destiny. These people can all be libertarians.

Third, for an excellent critique of the moral basis of progressive liberal economic thought, I'd recommend Hayek's The Fatal Conceit. It's addressing Marxism, but many of the arguments also apply to how most libertarians view the left in general.

>well, obviously you're always going to have some. but the gov't was too new at that time for business influences to infiltrate it deeply. Esp relative to the situation today.

Not true at all. The country was founded on the principle that the role of government should be to protect private property from the majority of people. Originally, you couldn't even vote if you weren't a landowner. Businesses didn't infiltrate it, they completely controlled it.

>how is that any different from having politician running things? who decides who gets to vote? doesn't direct democracy require that all citizens vote on all policy initiatives? what's to stop this small group of voters from colluding?

You honestly can't see the difference? If a factory (for instance) needs to make policy decisions, the workers all vote on what to do. They're all collective owners so they all get a say. It's not that difficult really.

>i don't give a fuck if i can survive on potatoes and a hut I grow and build myself. I want a plasma TV and to fly from New York to Seattle in 4 hours and a nice house and medical care. I think you're making a LOOOOT of assumptions about people's willingness to accept self-sufficiency for a horrible quality of life.

That's nice. I'm sure you also enjoy buying designer clothing that is drastically overpriced and made in sweatshops where the owners hire thugs to keep workers from organizing. I think you're also assuming that self sufficiency requires abandoning technology and living in a hut. It definitely doesn't. I can't tell if you're being deliberately ignorant or not.

>that's veeeery subjective opinion. i agree global warming is real, but it's a huge step to say it threatens life on Earth.

Then you must not know too much about global warming.

>this was not due to capitalism though, it was entirely the gov't bailouts, bank deposit insurance, and low interest rates.

According to Marx's social analysis, yes this is 100% capitalism. The bailouts and recession basically happened exactly how Marx predicted that the capitalist economy will function. According to Marx, it's not just about free competition, it's about the wealthiest companies using their wealth and power to stamp out competition and rig the system for their own interests. After all, they're only trying to make money so why wouldn't they? Money is such a strong incentive, isn't it?

>It seems our debate ends here. We seems to disagree on points that would take a lot of effort to explain to each other. And I'v got boards in a week. Take it easy. If you have time and interest to learn about Austrian Econ, I'd recommend http://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/047052670X/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1370971957&sr=8-4&keywords=peter+schiff

Peter Schiff is an idiot and a pseudo conspiracy theorist. I've already taken time to learn about Austrian economics. It has some decent ideas but if you're getting your view of Marx from Austrian economists then you're not going to know what you're talking about. All in all, it's one school of economics but it's not the only school or even the most practical school.

>Sure, except there is not a finite level of wealth in the real world, nor is wealth gained by arbitrary or random means.

Not sure what world you are living in, but in mine there is a finite amount of food, land, money, gold, trees, oil, iphones. How do you think the laws of supply and demand work?

Wealth is not gained by arbitrary or random means? Really? Lets tell the kid who was born in Congo that he really failed at picking his parents. Or an example closer to home - when you wanted to start your first telecommunications company, did your parents put up a few million bucks in venture capital for you as happened with Lachlan Murdoch and James Packer?

Ohhh, I see where you're going with this. In Libertarian fantasy land wealth is allocated by hard work, and chance plays a very marginal role. Capital and inherited wealth pale against the billion dollar earning power of a hard working primary school teacher! In reality, labour does not out earn capital.

>Why are countries with free markets so wealthy? Why do countries like HK, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan have such a strong middle class?

Because for one, they aren't free market economies. Most of their growth was led by their governments. Singapore is basically a technocratic dictatorship ruled by one family - perhaps you're familiar with Singtel, owner of Optus or Singapore Airlines, both controlled by government investment corporation Temasek?

Korea is run by an oligarchy of family owned conglomerates called "Chaebols" - Samsung, LG, Hyundai, all of the drivers of their economy are too-big-to-fail and heavily state supported.

Hong Kong and Taiwan were able to profit from proximity and cultural ties to China to build their economies.

And China's decades long double digit economic growth model wasn't thanks to the free market either. They call it "State Capitalism", which is a fancy way of saying fascism.

>Again, evidence and history does not support your claims.

Yes it does. Most industries in market economies start out fiercely competitive but ultimately merge into an oligarchy if not strictly regulated by the government.

6 companies control 90% of the USA's media, down from 50 in 1983.

Since 1990, 37 of the USA's big banks merged to become just 4 too-big-to-fail megabanks.

This process happens even faster in a small economy like Australia's, where we have been stuck with an cartel of 4 too-big-to-fail banks for a very long time now.

You need to acquaint yourself with the basics of how markets work, and how unregulated markets inevitably become monopolistic. You can start with "Wealth of Nations" by the father of modern capitalism, Adam Smith.

Much like you, I've also recently developed a strong interest in Levinas. I've yet to read him, though, so please take that into account when considering my recommendations.

I recently asked some of my professors and a friend of mine who wrote his master's thesis on Levinas to help me out with getting started. This is what they recommended:

• This introductory book by Colin Davis has been the most recommended to me. Davis succeeds in the difficult task of executing a clear exposition of Levinas' difficult prose without sacrificing too much of its nuance.
  
• Regarding Levinas' own writing, begin with On Escape. This work develops Levinas' fundamental ideas on Being and alterity, demonstrates how he does phenomenology, and reveals his engagement with Heidegger and Husserl
  
• The two next best works to read are Existence and Existents and Time and the Other.
  
  I'm not too knowledgeable of Husserl, so all I can really recommend from him is the Cartesian Meditations, which sort of serves as an introduction to Husserl's own method of phenomenology.
  
  For Heidegger, the most important work in this regard is certainly Being and Time. If you have the time, I recommend picking up the Basic Writings and reading through most of it.
  
  On a final note, Levinas was steeped within the Jewish intellectual tradition. Jewish philosophers often emphasize the role of community and social contextuality in general. It might serve you well to read works such as Martin Buber's I and Thou and Gabriel Marcel's Being and Having.
  
  EDIT: Another good compliment to Levinas is Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception.

Thanks so much!

As for what to read, it really depends on what you're interested in but I always recommend the classics when it comes to anything to do with the left first.

However, if you'd like something more modern and lighter here are some of my recent favorites:

• Why Marx Was Right - Terry Eagleton is a fantastic author and this book has sold more than one friend of mine on the concept of Marxism. A great resource to learn more about the socialist left and hear the other side of the story if you've been sold the mainstream narrative on Marx.
  
  
• A Cure for Capitalism - An elegant roadmap for ethically dismantling capitalism by the most prominant Marxist economist alive today, Richard D. Wolff. Very utility-based and pretty ideologically pure to Marx while still taking into account modern economic circumstances.
  
  
• No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy - this one is a great take-down of how modern NGO organizations (especially the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) are the premium outlet for soft imperialism for the US.
  
  
• Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair - added this because it was a very impactful, recent read for me. A lot of left-of-republican people support some kind of prison reform but we usually view it through the lens of helping "non-violent offenders". This book digs into that distinction and how we, as a society, can't seriously try to broach meaningful prison reform before we confront the notion of helping those who have done violent things in their past.
  
  
• [Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women] (https://www.amazon.com/Backlash-Undeclared-Against-American-Women/dp/0307345424/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1550926471&sr=1-4&keywords=backlash) - probably my favorite book on modern feminism and why it is, in fact, not obsolete and how saying/believing as much is key to the ideology behind the attacks from the patriarchal ruling class. Can't recommend it enough if you're on the fence about feminism.
  
  
• How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic - Written in the 70's by a couple of Marxists during the communist purge in Chile, this book does a fantastic job of unwrapping how ideology baked into pop culture can very effectively influence the masses. Though I can only recommend this one if you're already hard sold on Socialism because you might not even agree with some of the core premises if you're on the fence and will likely get little out of it.
  
  
• Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? - Mark Fisher's seminal work deconstructing how capitalism infects everything in modern life. He killed himself a few years after publishing it. My most recommended book, probably.

"Masters Level" Economic Textbooks.
---

I've picked these texts as they are ones that I ran across in the year I spent as a masters student, or in advanced economics classes when I was an undergraduate/undergraduate tutor.

Hal Varian, Microeconomic Analysis Relatively outdated graduate level textbook in microeconomic theory. I'd imagine his intermediate book would prepare you well for this text. It requires understanding of partial derivatives and some matrix notation to get through, but compared to today's texts comes off comparably light. I'd imagine it'd old and used enough that there exists comprehensive answer guides online that you can track down.

David Romer, Advanced Macroeconomics Romer's Advanced Macroeconomics is used in some undergraduate programs, and some masters/graduate programs. Again, compared to standard texts, it is wanting, but does a good job of covering many of the introductory models that are used in modern economic analysis. This text requires knowledge of at least single variable integration (might require multiple in the later chapters, but when I was tutoring students with it classes never got that far), and the usual multivariate calculus.

Jeffrey Wooldridge, Introductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach this was the textbook that I first saw econometrics through, and I still think its a fantastic applied text. It has a decent mathematical appendix covering some probability and math topics required for the text. On the flip side, the text gives you some pretty good how-to methods to implement a lot of the common econometric techniques and some intuition behind why they are used.

Simon & Blume, Mathematics for Economists This text is usually used in graduate programs math camps as a book saying "you should feel comfortable using these techniques before entering the program." Covers a wide range of topics from calculus, optimization, and linear algebra, to differential equations and some topics in real analysis. It has a fair amount of exercises to work through, and again, the book has been used enough that answer guides may be available online.

As you've probably heard, graduate school is very mathematical, and very little that I learned in intermediate micro ends up bridging the gap outside of some of the intuition I gathered through it. Most of the books I cited above are a solid jump up in difficulty from most intermediate books I've seen, and still a solid jump away from the common PhD level texts (Mas-Colell, Whinston, and Green "Microeconomic Theory". Sargent and Ljungqvist "Recursive Macroeconomic Theory". Greene "Econometric Analysis", respectively).

As a result, depending on what you plan on doing in the near to short term, its usually better to take more calculus, linear algebra, and other mid level mathematics classes.

I know this is a bit old but maybe it still helps. Simon and Blume is a very good book, I think at a similar level than A. Chiang. Also, Sundaram's book is very good for everything related to optimization. It's much narrower in terms of topics but it's great and pretty cheap for a textbook. Finally, you may be able to find Silverberg's book in your library. It's great for the mathematical approach to microeconomics. It's probably to advanced for an into to micro class but keep it in mind for more advanced classes.

The standard grad school text these days for dynamic macro is Ljungqvist & Sargent's Recursive Macroeconomic Theory. You won't need to go through the whole thing necessarily, but to be able to tackle the Woodford book, I would think chapters 1-4, 7-8, 12-13, 16-17 and 24-26 would be quite helpful.

There's also Simon & Blume's Mathematics for Economists, which is a good reference book should you need it. For example, the discussion and motivation of Lagrange multipliers and the Kuhn-Tucker optimization conditions is very good.

One noteable omission from both of those books which you will likely encounter at some point is continuous-time optimization/optimal control. This topic is often covered in the appendices of various grad-level macro textbooks, but perhaps the best I've come across is Chapter 7 of Daron Acemoglu's Introduction to Modern Economic Growth. The appendix to Barro & Sala-i-Martin's Economic Growth also has some pretty good coverage.

By the way, if you hunt around, all of these textbooks can be found online for "free".

Good one. For a great, broad critique of how free marketers of one era often turn into crony capitalists of the next, I highly recommend Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists: http://www.amazon.com/Saving-Capitalism-Capitalists-Unleashing-Opportunity/dp/0691121281

I worry that Uber, which is a great example of a company that is running rings around old, govt-connected forms of transport business, may well be cozying up to power once it feels like it can lock in its market advantage: http://time.com/3597186/uber-real-crime/

I like to think of libertarian as an adjective--as a descriptor of a tendency or a direction rather than a concrete, fixed in cement, set of policy positions. If your predisposition is to want people to have more autonomy and ability to choose in all areas of life, you're libertarian. And you'll likely be in favor of tolerance, peace, pluralism, drug legalization, marriage equality, lower levels of regulation, etc. But to me the most important thing is the sensibility not the specific policy positions.

> Right, because there is just one police over stolen cars

Start with one and expand. The point is to get something going so you don't have to wait until everyone signs off.

> How much do you think it costs just to securely store and realtime process and archive 880 video feeds originating in a remote location?

I'm not suggesting that. All you need is a single picture (to prove you saw it), the lat/lon of the occurrence, the text of the license plate and the time the picture was taken. It's not a lot of data.

> probably only costs a couple million dollars and probably covers hundreds of deliverables MORE than just 'scans license plates'

Potentially, but who's to say that extra stuff is legal or even useful? This solution is all about transparency while still solving the stated problem: car theft.

The problem with government is that they try to do too much when a much simpler solution would work just as well, if not better. The process should be:

• identify a problem
  
• solicit proposals to solve the problem
  
• sort by estimated effectiveness per dollar
  
• choose the lowest cost option that meets the minimum standard
  
  The problem should be posted publicly so lots of individuals (universities, private companies, etc) have a chance to pitch an idea.
  
  > > we should be reevaluating the requirements of the project
  >
  > No one here has those.
  
  And that's really the problem here.
  
  I work as at a private company that sells products to the government, and a lot of the time, we make our own requirements and our government customer uses those when evaluating competitors. Since we can set the requirements, it's very difficult for other companies to compete (though, to be fair, our product is pretty niche and there aren't many direct competitors).
  
  My uneducated guess is that's what happened here. I'm guessing some company proposed a huge solution, lobbied it through government and got the contract without the government getting additional bids (or they set the requirements such that nobody else wanted to bother).
  
  This is all speculation though, but I think the OP has a point. We should re-evaluate how government chooses solutions to its problems to see if there is a chance that a less custom, cheaper solution would work.
  
  > If those solutions were effective and easy to implement someone would have monetized them already like they have in other sectors
  
  That's just not true. I'm reading Superfreakonomics right now (highly recommend, it's also a pretty short read), which goes through lots of surprising sides of a variety of issues. In it, it lists typical government (read: political) solutions to problems (read: expensive) as compared to the much cheaper solution from the private sector. For example, they mentioned that the current solution to hurricanes is billions of aid to affected areas, whereas a few individuals have proposed stopping hurricanes in the first place by cooling the oceans (would cost far less than even a single year's expenses). Here's an article summarizing those types of solutions.
  
  My point here is that anytime there's a large projected expense (such as the one the OP mentioned), it should be put to the public (e.g. universities, the private sector, psychologists like Daniel Kahneman, etc) to propose solutions, and in many cases, that just doesn't happen, so we get really expensive solutions when a simpler, cheaper solution may exist. Many of the problems government has are very unique, so there isn't a prebuilt solution already (though, in this case it sounds like at least part of the problem has a solution already).

For intro sociology, I'd recommend some preachy nonfiction. They are written for laymen but introduce the sociological style of approach. Something like Fat Land or Uninsured in America.

Freakanomics is not exactly sociology, but could be an interesting read for someone interested in social economics / group behavior. Jonathan Kozol is a reporter, not a sociologist, but his stories mix investigative reporting with a human element to focus on topics of interest to the field of sociology. I remember Nickel and Dimed also being a good read.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is not a book about sociology, but rather a specific example of culture clash within the context of medical care. That being said, it is a big reason why I decided to become a social worker (which is a profession in line with the two fields mentioned in your post).

A Place at the Table is a movie that might fit the bill.

Note: I'm American. I imagine other places would have different topics of interest.

Edited: add movie and fix format

A good book that is fun to read and has tons of anecdotes about scientific history is A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

In a similar vein, you can ponder the more mind-bending aspects of our Universe with Stephen Hawkings A Brief History of Time

Other than that you may find some interesting things in the works of Carl Sagan or Richard Dawkins (I personally recommend Dawkins's The Selfish Gene)

If you are sick of scientific titles you can also check out Freakonomics or The Worldly Philosphers

These Books are all written for a general audience so they go down pretty easy.

Deciding which major in College can be tricky - I was lucky since I knew exactly what I wanted to study before I left High School, but maybe some ideas in these books will pique your interest. My parents always told me to go to school to study something I love, and not to train for a job. I'm not so sure this advice carries through in "recovering" economy. You may want to factor in the usefulness of your degree post-college (but don't let that be the only thing you consider!).

Good Luck, and enjoy!

> I am fairly ignorant on the different options available to me as far as investing goes, but that's what investment companies are for, isn't it?

Absolutely. We have a financial advisor that keeps a close eye on our money, and he's more than earned his pay. But I think it important to educate yourself enough to develop a functional BS detector. Otherwise, you won't know what to expect in different market conditions and will have a tough time picking an advisor.

We got in with our guy nearly ten years ago because he maintained the value of his clients' portfolios in the dot-com crash while still delivering good returns during market upswings.

I'd recommend interviewing a couple of advisors before picking one. Don't be shy to ask how they get paid. Many of them get commissions based on selling particular financial products. Get up and leave as soon as you hear that. Others are limited to selling a particular set of products. That would also make me nervous. Part of the reason we picked our guy is that he takes a flat commission off the value of our portfolio (originally 1%/year, now around 0.75%) and can get us into all manner of financial products including options, commodities, etc. We primarily hold mutual funds and individual stocks, though.

> but if people who are making moves on Wall Street do what they have done recently, there is no guarantee that my retirement fund will have any value by the time I'm ready to draw on it. My dad has been investing in his retirement for decades, and in the last two years, it lost $50k in value.

There's no sure thing. You have to do something with your money and realize that holding cash has its own set of risks, particularly now that we have a madman with printing press in charge of our central bank.

FWIIW, our portfolio value dipped in 2008/2009, but we were fully recovered in value by mid 2009. We recognized the housing bubble for what it was and stayed out of that sector. My parents were blindly turning over their money to a manager who had them heavily invested in Fannie and Freddie. They lost a couple hundred large in the 2008 crash, and it's not coming back.

> Do you have any advice on where to start learning without having to spend every hour after work piddling with it?

Four of my favorites include One Up on Wall Street, Fail-Safe Investing, The Black Swan, and How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes. The first book talks about picking individual stocks (gave me the confidence to load up on AAPL back when it was trading under $100/share), the second about structuring a portfolio for growth while still playing defense, the third about common fallacies and hubris, and the last about what drives an economy (particularly useful for recognizing bubbles).

Is this at all helpful?

Highly recommended reading- Buy-In by John Kotter

It's an excellent read for anyone interested in the practical application of psychology & sociology knowledge in the business realm.

http://www.kotterinternational.com/book/buy-in/

Economics reading - Freakonomics

This was required reading in my Leadership course (for my MBA), with good reason.

https://www.amazon.com/Freakonomics-Economist-Explores-Hidden-Everything/dp/0060731338

You are on a path towards higher management and leadership.

From this point forward, the answer to the questions "do you think I made a good decision signing up for the post-graduate studies? Will potential employers look at it and consider this diploma as worthy?" will forever more be a resounding YES!!!!

High quality post graduate certifications, higher degrees, and continuously striving to learn, be better, & adapt to an ever changing business environment are hallmarks of those who are successful (& expected/required of those who are considered for higher level positions) in the business/management realms.

Edit: look for a post graduate course on leadership. If your employer is large enough, they may have an agreement with a respected University to offer discounts or special classes to their employees, & may even offer classes onsite. Sign up for them!

Okay lets start off with the move to electric as being "carbon" neutral. Most electric engines get their power in one way or another from coal. Coal is the dirties worst kind fuel you can pretty much get. Yet in the green new deal all of the existing energy sources are banned except coal. (Especially nuclear which is one of the cleaner sources). So if its really about the "science" why are only keeping one of the chief offenders at the exclusion of better cheaper cleaner energy sources?

https://www.enovaenergygroup.com/which-types-of-energy-source-produces-the-most-pollution/




Next, light rail. The left loves light rail mostly because between AM Track and the unions they own the rail industry in the united states. They can do as they please and reward their supporters. Light rail can and does make sense in smaller countries like Japan or in the nations of Europe because you have smaller more densely populated areas. By extension it could make sense for the coasts of the united states. Where is doesn't make sense is in the middle of the country. Its too big and too lightly populated for the numbers to really work. I would direct you to Freakonomics if you want some further reading material.

https://www.amazon.com/Freakonomics-Economist-Explores-Hidden-Everything/dp/0060731338/ref=sr_1_1?crid=RL6DWAUXJAKW&keywords=freakonomics&qid=1551233567&s=gateway&sprefix=freak%2Caps%2C186&sr=8-1

​

Lastly Air travel won out over rail a hundred years ago for valid reasons. For large heavy cargo and freight, ships and trains still make sense. Where it makes no sense is for people. People want to get where they are going as quickly and cheaply as they can. Thus the invisible hand did its thing and you have the modern rail and airline industries.


So here are a couple of questions. Why to be environmentally sound to we have do things more stupidly? Like regress from air travel back to land and sea travel. Why are pro environmentalist so obsessed with forcing others to their way of thinking? Seems to me that if they lived what they preached and we saw real benefits from those actions people would naturally get on board and then you wouldn't need to regulate anything. The people would regulate themselves. Why would we as a species want to spend 5 times the net value of all money and product of human existence on a program doesn't even promise to solve the problem to any sort of measurable effect?


Just some thoughts

You mentioned game theory but not exactly at what level he would want to read (textbook level, popsci level) etc. If you want a good textbook level (that is also readable), I would go with

http://www.amazon.com/Game-Theory-Analysis-Roger-Myerson/dp/0674341163/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1324407308&sr=8-5

If you wanted more of a popsci book, I would take a look at

http://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Dilemma-William-Poundstone/dp/038541580X/ref=pd_sim_b_7

I haven't actually read this one (I flipped through it a while ago) but I like Poundstone's writing style. It might frustrate you if you actually know some game theory.


In my opinion (as someone who is getting a phd in game theory), game theory really sounds a lot cooler and more profound than it really is. I don't think it really has the same type of allure once you peel away the fact that it has an awesome title.

My actual recommendation for this area would be
http://www.amazon.com/Networks-Crowds-Markets-Reasoning-Connected/dp/0521195330/ref=pd_sim_b_8

which is not strictly game theory but a really awesome way to view the world. I am biased since this book is a great primer for my research area but I think this might be interesting and a much better compromise between popsci and textbook.

I second this. Actually, even now, I think most of what I know about theory I must have picked up via osmosis from reading K-Punk a lot back in the late 00s. There's a few more of his lectures here btw. Along similar lines, a friend of Mark Fisher's, Jeremy Gilbert, has some [podcasts] (https://culturepowerpolitics.org/podcasts/) which introduce several key concepts and thinkers from theory and cultural studies. I haven't listened to all of them, but the first one where he gives an overview of Gramsci, hegemony and neoliberalism could be useful for those who liked Capitalist Realism.

If you're interested in Marx, [this] (https://www.amazon.com/Why-Marx-Right-Terry-Eagleton/dp/0300181531/) goes over most of the important stuff. I hesitate to say it's the best introduction to Marx available because I haven't read many but I found it pretty clear and to the point. And David Harvey's lectures on Capital on youtube are invaluable if you ever want to read Marx himself.

I know you already mentioned Huxley, but I have to first say Brave New World. Just because, man, nothing else could have really opened my eyes to a relative morality at such a young age. "Let's just purposefully grow people. Then let's have them embrace their sexuality at a really young age. Oh, and there are these other 'savages' that practice many of the old ways. We don't talk about them much. Oh, and all the old religion got mashed up when we put all the people together, so they sort of worship this Christ type mother earth type thing. It's cool. They're fine."

Then there's The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect (click for online free version published by the author.)

Where do I start with this book? First, I would say it's both sexually and violently graphic. That's not the point, though. The point is: What happens when we actually do have a god that can, and will, give us whatever we want? Whatever we want, that is, except death. Everyone is immortal and everyone can invent their own world to live in. What happens? Really really good stuff. A short book, but just blew my mind.

Finally, I'm finding it hard to decide between Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character, The Information, and Freakonomics. Each of these really expanded the way I think of things and how I look at the world around me. I'd recommend any one of them, it just depends on what you're interested in.

I had this moment back in 2006/07 when it became incredibly clear to me something was seriously out of whack and i needed to at least try to make sense of it all. It has been quite a journey but in the end i ended up basically changing my entire outlook on life, the economy and politics. I will come with some suggestions for reading and watching material but i just want to give one piece of advice: Every book you read, every article, every blog, every youtube lecture you see. You have do think, decode and analyze as best as you can. They will provide you with "lenses" that you can see the world through. The more you learn about a subject the sharper your lense will be able to focus information before it enters your mind. When you obtain new knowledge you might have to substitute a lens because this new one provides a better way of interpreting the world. When you have read so much that you have accumulated a good set of lenses about economy, history, philosophy, physics etc you can stack them and filter the information you perceive through all lenses at the same time, effectively they work like binoculars at this time. It is then that you will understand that you can maybe not grasp everything, but at least you will see a lot clearer than people only using simple and crude lenses. In addition you will be able to recognize, through their actions or words, the lenses that people around you use to understand reality. Im sorry if this was abstract.

1.
History, most undervalued subject when it comes to economics:
Read, watch listen to everything from Niall Fergusson. This man has a grasp of history that is very rare.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niall_Ferguson

2.
Do not be afraid to listen to fund managers, they are the most brutally honest, no nonsense people you will ever hear from. Their only goal in life is to obtain what they refer to as 'alpha', the truth. If you know the truth and everyone around has a clouded judgement or preconceptions about the economy you will win.
Of the most outspoken and knowledgeable managers:

• Ray Dalio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Dalio)
  
• Hugh Hendry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Hendry)
  
• James Grant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Grant_%28finance%29)
  
• Bill Gross (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gross)
  
• Mohamed El-Erian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_A._El-Erian)
  
• Kyle Bass
  I would watch all videos on youtube that any of these people are involved in, twice. Any term they use i would google and research thoroughly.
  
  3.
  Other notable economic/political figures:
  
  
• Robert Prechter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Prechter) You can choose to believe or ignore his wave theory, but his observations on human emotions and how they run our lives are incredible informative and mind opening.
  
  4.
  You also have to learn a lot of new words and what they mean. Everything your read or watch will refer to a lot of strange terms, people and philosophy, if you want any deeper understanding you have to read books on some of these specific terms. I would advice to learn in detail about:
  
  
• The bond market (http://www.amazon.com/Bond-Book-Everything-Treasuries-Municipals/dp/0071358625)
  
• The history of precious metals
  
• Keynesianism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes)
  
• Ludwig von Mises and the Austrian School of economics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises)
  
• Capitalism, Socialism, Fascism, Collectivism and Corporatism. These are extremely important to learn as much as you can about with as much depth as possible. Incredibly enough this is the topic most of the population struggles most with but at the same time have very strong opinions on. Correctly identifying objectively what kind of "ism" that is the current dominant one and what was the dominant one at different stages in history. This is an extremely difficult topic because people get so emotional so fast, its difficult to find rational conversation partners.
  
  5.
  I would be careful putting too much faith in these notable people:
  
  
• Peter Schiff (He is blind to the real possibility of a deflationary shock)
  Even if he is blind to this he has the most perfect introductory book to economics:
  http://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/047052670X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322700761&sr=8-1
  
• Paul Kruegman (He has blind faith that governments can allocate resources adequately good during a crises - a money printer)
  
• Max Kaiser (I dont know what to say, he is both a genius and a moron, you just dont know which one at which time)
  
• Gerald Celente (He seems very observant, but he always says the same thing, stagnant)
  
• Jim Rogers (He provides no real insight)
  
• Warren Buffet
  
• George Soros
  
  6.
  Be very weary of people who have a very binary view of economics or politics, they often only see the world through one lens. This gives them a very polarized outlook.
  
  7.
  Stay away from very technical blogs (like zerohedge) in the beginning. If you don't have a very clear and deep understanding of what you are reading it will just confuse. You need to know all the terms used and what they really mean, and not on a superficial level.
  
  I spent the last 5 years basically reading any book on any relevant subject, now i'm pretty content with my overview now. I have taken a somewhat negative short term view (the next 4-6 years) on behalf of the developed economies but an incredibly positive view on the long term outlook for the human race, the developing economies in particular. It is too late here now, i must sleep, i have probably forgotten a great deal of good names.

When a job is automated it creates consumer and producer surplus. That is distributed throughout the economy and increases the disposable income or living standard. As a result a new industry emerges, or another expands. These things happen on a macro-scale so it is not one job, it is millions simultaneously. The market is driven by incentives, so capital will seek out it's most efficient use (as opposed to government where the capital owners are not the ones deciding its use and seek out the post politically effective use.) A market is smarter than the smartest person in it, that's how prices and wages are determined. If you've watched Who Wants To Be a Millionaire you'll know that "ask the audience" is always more accurate than when the contestant calls a friend who is an expert in the area.

The standard of living has increased over time, despite technological advancements that reduce the amount of labor is a particular industry. Why would we expect it to be any different now, automation is a new technology. Once upon a time we were all farmers, but technology has allowed us to do many other things.

There are certainly people who are disable and for other reasons unable to provide for themselves, this is what charity is for. If people are not willing to voluntarily give their money to provide for the needy, I fail to see the morality of the government forcing them to through taxation.

If you are generally interested and not just trying to argue I might suggest you read The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. He was a pioneer of classical economics and describes how market forces provide the best outcome for society better than I could.

My impression is that the most prominent objection of an orthodox Marxist to characterising what they believe as "religion" would be that they are operating with objective, materialist, ontological naturalist, scientific criteria, and that reject revelation, faith, spirit, supernaturalism and mysticism. Under orthodox Marxism, the concept of science encompasses a much broader definition than most modern philosophers of science or scientists accept, particularly those working in the analytic tradition. Here's non-Marxist radical socialist Noam Chomsky on the concept of "Marxism".

The various definitions and connotations that terms like "religious" hold are situated in a social and cultural context which changes over time. It's matter of semantics, and comes across from the Latin root of the word "religion" in "religio" meaning "obligation, bond, reverence" and "religare" meaning "to bind" . For example, existentially speaking, committing oneself wholly to the revolutionary cause would be considered religious form of life in Kierkegaardian terms. If you aren't already familiar with what I mean, I suggest looking up Kierkegaard. Sartre was attacked by many orthodox Marxists for trying defining the purity of Marxist philosophy with his existentialist philosophy.

Some Christian philosophers, like John Macmurray, endorse Marx's critique of religion as a valid critique of institutional and established religion as false-religion, much in the same way that Kierkegaard rejected the established church. Atheist Marxists like Zizek and Badiou claim that Christianity is the foundation of the only true form of atheism, that Calvinist soteriology provides the model for earthly salvation, and that the Saint Paul the apostle is the founder of universalism and the left tradition. Terry Eagleton is another prominent Christian Marxist who emphasises the political revolutionary character of Jesus. I'd recommend his Reason, Faith, Revolution and Why Marx Was Right as better introduction to Marxism for where you are coming from than simply diving into Capital etc.

It's often pointed out that Marx was an eschatological thinker. However, these tend to gloss over Marx's view of theory of praxis as dynamic. Even so, many Marxists and anti-Marxists alike take their cues from Carl Schmitt in viewing all political traditions as being historically derived from theological traditions.

When speaking of Marx and "Marxists", it always pays to remember Marx's famous quote: "what is certain is that I myself am not a 'Marxist' ".

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.

If you want to get the basics in an easily readable and fun way, I highly recommend How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes by Peter Schiff

If you had limited time and wanted it to be a fun leisure read, that's the one. It's a great intro and great to loan out to your friends who haven't been exposed to these ideas, but have an open mind.

Other great books are referenced here to help to give you a more technical understanding. I personally like Economics for Real People

Finally, consider listening to the Tom Woods Show Podcast. Commute sized interviews with experts in different areas. I learn a ton listening to this.

just done something very similar. Took a year off and on my Msc now (broad core econ, haven't specialised). echoing whats been said below:

Was in a similar position with recommendation letters. pretty large UG cohort and I never went to office hours because i just liked to get on by myself. I recommend sending big essays or project examples of work from the classes with those professors. or just sending something you're proud of and reflects your style. that saves them having to dig it up and lecturers can glean a lot from just skimming a students work. dont worry about it, lecturers are such pros and will be happy you want to study more!
obviously give them lots and lots of forewarning.

get into the maths. depending on your program of choice, i would read any level UG econometrics book just to keep you fresh with the methods and lingo. I did quite a bit of metrics at UG but forgot it all after the exams; so useful to go through it at your own pace and see how it fits together.
Pure maths-wise i've stuck with Simon and Blume and the appendix of Greene for some techniques. Greene is pretty dry and scary though, don't be put off! both books and their solutions are available in pdf form everywhurrr

i'm in the UK (from your spelling and tone it looks like you're in the US/Canada?) but at masters level it's just a lot more technical. no more UG waffling about intuition and graphical analysis! I've only been going for a couple weeks but you're expected to derive that equation and really play around with it. a lot of programs i looked at offered preparatory maths courses beforehand but students with solid maths are a lot more confident now real econ has started. just being familiar with the concepts means you're not shocked by them as they're introduced in the micro/macro class. You can follow the lecturer rather than getting derailed at some earlier step.

do an internship, try and think where it's going to lead but failing that, do anything. just anything. they're easy to get, getting some part time work on the side will pay your bills. there really is no excuse. bit daunting applying for them initially and it can be a slog but its worth it.

good luck!

> That's just not true.

well, obviously you're always going to have some. but the gov't was too new at that time for business influences to infiltrate it deeply. Esp relative to the situation today.

> It would tend to be professionals who are trained in that speciality voting on how to go about their tasks

how is that any different from having politician running things? who decides who gets to vote? doesn't direct democracy require that all citizens vote on all policy initiatives? what's to stop this small group of voters from colluding?

> No because it's a system designed for self-sufficiency.

i don't give a fuck if i can survive on potatoes and a hut I grow and build myself. I want a plasma TV and to fly from New York to Seattle in 4 hours and a nice house and medical care. I think you're making a LOOOOT of assumptions about people's willingness to accept self-sufficiency for a horrible quality of life.

> You could just as well say that we're currently sacrificing our planet for more wealth.

that's veeeery subjective opinion. i agree global warming is real, but it's a huge step to say it threatens life on Earth.

> For one, money isn't the only incentive.

true, but it's the strongest one.

> America didn't just become rich because people 'busted their asses'

we'll have to disagree on this.

> if you look at what happened after the crash, the biggest losers were actually people in the middle class

this was not due to capitalism though, it was entirely the gov't bailouts, bank deposit insurance, and low interest rates.

> Basically, you seem to have a very romanticized vision of capitalism in your head that simply doesn't reflect historical facts.

I would say the same of you and communism.

It seems our debate ends here. We seems to disagree on points that would take a lot of effort to explain to each other. And I'v got boards in a week. Take it easy. If you have time and interest to learn about Austrian Econ, I'd recommend http://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/047052670X/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1370971957&sr=8-4&keywords=peter+schiff

It's short and explains things from scratch.

So I’m not sure if asking questions to a current economics student will be the best way to find out if you’re interested in the subject. Especially if you’re not very familiar with the subject. Instead. I’ll give you some resources that might give you a better understanding of the subject.

This link from the American Economic Association gives you an overview of the subject. Click all around the website because there is a plethora of information. As well, here’s a link from the AEA about careers for those with an economics degree (both undergrad and grad).

Next, I would read Freakonomics and it’s sequel, Superfreakonomics. They are much closer to the “pop-Economics” than “academic economics,” but the books give a very good intro into the “non-standard” topics that still fall under the domain of economics. And it would be true that many current graduate students and young professors’ interest in the subject was peeked by those books (myself included).

After that, I would read maybe an intro textbook. My recommendations on this depends on how comfortable you are with calculus.

Lol, thanks amigo!

I like to spend time and effort on good responses. Sometimes you just know that it was a waste of time. But other times it feels really good to have a dialogue with what I now presume is a pretty decent person. I really love reddit for times like these.

The intellectual quality and the civility of reddit has been on a steady decline, plus the corrupting influence of paid trolls and mentally ill people. But when the dust settles, its still a great forum for discussion.

I don't talk for a living, though I'm thinking about getting back into a white collar job. Your compliment is definitely encouraging. Thanks so much!

I agree with you on the desire of the currently incarecerated to want to change.

I don't agree with you AS much on the prison-as-deterrent point though. I think that the threat of incarceration is a bigger factor in discouraging crime than you might. I have nothing concrete to back that up though, just a gut feeling. You are right when the crime is a necessity though. But lets be real- how often is a crime an absolute necessity? On this note, the spelling of the word necessity is its own crime...

Assessing the outcomes of different prison policies is absolutely brutal. For example, the famous case of abortion vs tough on crime from Freakanomics

Setting prison policy is actually such a tricky and long term endeavor that its helpful to look at non-demorcatic and non western-shit I'll just go with "Free"- countries. At least for data.

Anyways, with the increasing of people being radicalized into Islam going on now, plus the changing drug laws, its prime time to look at the system right now.

Have a good night, and good luck out there!

My pleasure! Again, this is just my experience and I only have a masters in econ, not a PhD, so someone researching in the field could probably be more insightful.

If you're getting ready for a master's, your immediate best friend is something like this guy. This is the textbook we used in my program.

Before my masters, I focused almost exclusively on real analysis and as a result, found myself over prepared in the math that I wasn't tested on and underprepared in the math I was tested on. This book (and books like it) will make you much more prepared for the stuff you'll be tested on than the advanced math used in modern microeconomic research. Pay special attention to the chapters on optimization.

If you're well versed in Lagrange multipliers, KKT conditions, and optimization using matricies, you're probably all set.

Edit: I should add, this book is neither very advanced nor very rigorous, but I would have had an easier time in my masters program if I prepared with a book like that instead of the more rigorous stuff I was focusing on.

The Trusted Advisor is probably the best that I've read as far as general consulting is concerned. But, to be honest, any popular consulting book that you find is going to be 98% junk (fortunately, they're typically quick, if insipid and boring reads).

If you haven't read any strategy books, I'd start with Michael Porter's Competitive Strategy. There's such a love for Porter that even mentioning him in some circles earns you respect.

I might also recommend Crossing the Chasm, too. It's a book about innovation and market adoption which might not seem important if you're not doing startup strategy. However, whenever you're engaged in any effort to do anything (You're either providing a new product, new service, or making people change) you'll have to consider adoption down the road. This will help you segment your targeted audience and understand how and why they're responding the way they do.

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

Hi I'm not sure if these are the books you would enjoy, but I do have a couple of them in my pocket list:


Personally in recent years I'm interested in topics about algorithms/cryptology and economics, so The Code Book by Simon Singh, Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street by William Poundstone, The Physics of Wall Street: A Brief History of Predicting the Unpredictable by James Owen Weatherall, these are the ones of my all time favorite "history" books about math and science and their applications. : )


I can still come up with another (popular) book, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, but I didn't really enjoy the book, guess I didn't agree some of the conclusions in that book. But maybe you would find it interesting. :)


Hope this helps! ☺️

If you're interested for your own interest and not for college, I'd recommend starting with books written for a general audience like

The Cartoon Introduction to Economics

Freakonomics

The Armchair Economist

Spin Free Economics

Lastly, Lives of the Laureates offers biographical accounts of 23 Nobel Laureates in Economics. I find it interesting since it offers insights into the minds of the Laureates, their intellectual process, and some of the most important contributions within the economics community.

I also often recommend Economics in the Afterlife to people since it shows that economists have no shame and economics can really be applied to anything.

You could probably find PDFs online of some of these books if you were so inclined.

You're going to be getting a lot of counter-Austrian perspectives in your macroeconomics classes. Basically the majority of macroeconomics is oriented towards Keynesian/Monetarist economic philosophy. Honestly just pick up a macroeconomic book and go through the history of economic though in the 20th century and you'll see what I'm talking about. I'm not bitter about this, it's just simply oriented towards those avenues.

If you want to watch some videos: here is the Austrian perspective in a modern sense.. I especially like this one for its informative value. And if you want something for entertainment anything by Bob Murphy is great because he's just so entertaining but his bit on the Great Depression is probably my favorite.

As for books:

Principles of Economics

How the Economy Grows and Why it Crashes

Also for foundations of liberty you can go with Mises or Rothbard.

> The regressive left isn't just unable to tell the difference between Muslims and Islam, they have don't believe Islam is a problem at all. This is because of cultural relativism - all ideas are valid, including Islam. In addition, they are very Euro-centric. They think that supporting secularism, feminism, etc is "cultural imperialism," because they think that those are Western ideas. I can name many cultures and places which had versions of those ideas long before the modern West. I call this the Western monopoly on good ideas, and the regressives fully embrace it. At the same time, they can't imagine that many people around the world would like secularism, feminism, etc, because they think those are Western inventions and thus Western exclusive ideas.
> So while I recognize that the regressives may be helping fight bigotry, they are not only doing it the wrong way, they are part of the problem. Euro-centrism combined with cultural relativism (odd to see them together) don't help secularists outside of the West.

In my experience, such cultural relativism/euro-centrism is so minimal in its existence and effects, that it is negligible in the struggle to liberate free thinkers in Muslim World. I'm telling with all honesty, it is mostly hyped rhetoric. It seems to have amounted to scapegoating, out of fear of truly challenging the real decision makers (capitalist class).

I am sincerely and fully assuring you, as a person immersed in Western society and politics, that the so called 'regressives' are just an illusion. A strawman. To move towards any meaningful change we need to re-prioritize our finite energy and not use it all up attacking the strawman.

>It's important to note, which those on the Marxist side usually don't, that these are not "goals" of capitalism.

No Marxist analysis of Capitalism declares the three problems you listed as "goals". Instead, according to Marxist framework they are inevitable consequences of Capitalism due to it's built in inherent mechanism of capital accumulation.

A passage from here clarifies:

>The desirability of monopoly, from the perspective of a capitalist, is self-evident: it lowers risk and increases profits. No sane owner or business wishes more competition; the rational move is always to seek as much monopoly power as possible and carefully avoid the nightmare world of the powerless competitive firm of economics textbooks. Once a firm achieves economic concentration and monopoly power, it is maintained through barriers to entry that make it prohibitively costly and risky for would-be competitors successfully to invade an oligopolistic or monopolistic industry—though such barriers to entry remain relative rather than absolute. Creating and maintaining barriers to entry is essential work for any corporation. In his authoritative study, The Economics of Industrial Organization, William Shepherd provides a list of twenty-two different barriers to entry commonly used by firms to exclude competitors and maintain monopoly power.

>Monopoly, in this sense, is the logical result of competition, and should be expected. It is in the DNA of capitalism. For Karl Marx, capital tended to grow ever larger in a single hand, partly as a result of a straightforward process of concentration of capital (accumulation proper), and even more as a result of the centralization of capital, or the absorption of one capital by another. In this struggle, he wrote, “the larger capitals,” as a rule, “beat the smaller…. Competition rages in direct proportion to the number, and in inverse proportion to the magnitude of the rival capitals. It always ends in the ruin of many small capitalists, whose capitals partly pass into the hands of their competitors, and partly vanish completely. Apart from this, an altogether new force comes into existence with the development of capitalist production: the credit system.” Credit or finance, available more readily to large firms, becomes one of the two main levers, along with competition itself, in the centralization process. By means of mergers and acquisitions, the credit system can create huge, centralized agglomerations of capital in the “twinkling of an eye.” The results of both concentration and centralization are commonly referred to as economic concentration.

Now as far as transforming this mechanism that is driven by social relations of Private Property, Wage Labor and Rent, again I agree with the two things you listed. In some ways similar to ideas laid out in this book:

Inventing the Future

More on the mechanism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_mode_of_production_(Marxist_theory)

One of the most insightful things I've read on technology is Martin Heidegger's essay "The Question Concerning Technology." I'm on a mobile and it's the middle of the night, so I'm not going to go on at length (about a favorite topic of mine.) It's the attitude that goes with technology's domination, of other ways of seeing the world, that is a danger more than the technological artifacts themselves, he thought. Niel Postman has written about similar things (without mentioning Heidegger that I remember) in Technopoly. I don't worry about technology, though I am concerned by technocracy. THX 1138 is a great movie, and I've felt strongly that it's an apt metaphor for what life has been like as a software developer, for me.

[edit: I'm on my computer now, so sky's the limit...]There's a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode in which a people has a relationship to high technology that seems unusual to Captain Picard. They don't let it dominate their lives. They use it, but they don't live in a technocracy. They live in what seem like rural surroundings.

Philosophy of technology can have a dystopian twist to it, especially the little I've read that has been "Continental." I love dystopian stories. I have no solution but to read, read, read, real stuff about technology and our relation to it. Heidegger points out that it is not a thing but an attitude, as I've said. "The essence of technology is nothing technological," to quote him as well as I can. I firmly believe the solution to establishing a healthy relation to technology is to take other points of view -- other than the currently dominant (in the US) technocratic view -- and find out what they are. Phenomenology for me is right where it's at. I will understand it in my lifetime! xD If you can find these books at the library, they're ones I've read recently. Reading them may not be completely encouraging, and yet they'll take your mind off worries about the technological doodads and what they're doing. Just reading the book is a whole-body activity, it's so hard.

Heidegger's "Basic Writings" collection (paperback is cheap https://www.amazon.com/Writings-Harper-Perennial-Modern-Thought/dp/0061627011)
After you've read Heidegger's essay, "The Question Concerning Technology," Don Ihde's little book is a gem
Heidegger's Technologies: Postphenomenological Perspectives (https://www.amazon.com/Heideggers-Technologies-Postphenomenological-Perspectives-Continental)
Neil Postman's "Technopoly"
William Barrett's "The Illusion of Technique"

Perhaps "going back in time" to the earlier of these will allow a little distance from your current concerns. Seeing that technology has been viewed as problematic, by smart people, for many decades, is comforting to me. Another book that really slammed everything, it seemed, home for me, was Herbert Marcuse's "One-Dimensional Man," which channels a lot of the frustration of Lucas' film. Finding another way, finding people who see differently than the company they work for does, if it makes paper clips, for example...to the paperclip company, everything has to do with making and selling paperclips. Nick Bostrom had a few funny things to say about a possible supersentient AI whose mission was to make paperclips, in the podcast (wonderful!) "The Partially Examined Life" (iTunes and http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/).

I gripe about how much of our communication is digitally mediated. Here I am on the Internet, speaking of the evils of technology. Ironic? I think a little story about Freud is in order here, then. When Freud observed that the train could take him to see his niece(?), who lived far away from Freud, he saw that this could be viewed as an argument against any of his objections to "progress"; but, he said, without the train she never would have been so far away in the first place. Without the Internet, I might spend more time talking with people face to face. It has always been one of my favorite things to do, in spite of all difficulties. It just seems so difficult now because so many people's faces are constantly pointed at screens instead of each other.

That entire fiishing analogy and the whole Irwin 'The Tax Dodger' Schiff and Peter 'The Gold Shill' Schiff book: How and economy grows and why it crashes is aimed squarely at shallow thinkers. It appeals very well to those who would like to believe everything is just so simple.

That said I do actually like the book from a stylistic point of view, it really does present Austrian Economics spam in a interesting and easy to understand format, the style is brilliant I think.

But unfortunately dunning krugerand libertarians read it and subsequently think they are experts at socio-economic policies because herp derp everything in society is just like two men on an island fishing.

Private ownership of natural resources, discrimination, historical oppression all doesn't real and doesn't matter even if they were.

Our complex society can just easily be hyper reduced to two men fishing in the sea. (Two men who started off on equal footing btw)

As you said once you change the scenario to where one man owns the entire island and everything on it and the second man only has the option to either pay rent by working as a chattel slave or rely on mother nature and hope he can evolve into an aquatic mammal before he runs out of energy and drowns in the ocean., the fairy tale doesn't sound as great any more does it.

Not occult in the 'requires the proper colored robe' sense, more in the 'nobody fucking knows this shit' sense.

http://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Making-Science-James-Gleick/dp/0143113453/

http://www.amazon.com/Dancing-Wu-Li-Masters-Overview/dp/0060959681

http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Path-Kiyoshi-Kuromiya/dp/0312174918/

http://www.amazon.com/Oh-Thinks-You-Can-Think/dp/0394831292/

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1402754744/

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Game-Theory-Martin-Osborne/dp/0195128958/

http://www.amazon.com/Finite-Infinite-Games-Vision-Possibility/dp/B006Q9RCV4/

http://www.amazon.com/Synergetics-Further-Explorations-Geometry-Thinking/dp/0025418807/

I don't know a single thing about you, who you are, what you are looking for, why you are interested, or why you care.

This just happens to be a great excuse to let people know about a couple books I care about.

A book is 'occult' by virtue of it containing information about which most people haven't a clue.

"Occult" anything need no special handshake.

Introduction to Game theory by Matt Osborne is a pretty good undergraduate level text geared towards economic applications (written by an economics prof at UToronto). I think some of the solutions are also posted on his webpage

I would start by making sure that you understand solution concepts for normal form games (i.e. Nash equilibrium, dominated strategies, simplex method, etc). If you are more mathematically inclined, you might want to focus a bit on Convex analysis/Fixed Point Theorems, which will help to elucidate the mathematical intuition behind these concepts.

After you are comfortable with normal form games, move onto extensive form refinements (subgame perfect/sequential/repeated games).

The only possible issue I see is your selection of textbook: Principles of Mathematical Economics - I've honestly never heard of this book.

The graduate school go-to textbook is Mathematics for Economists by Simon and Blume. However, I think this book would be overkill for you, as it is geared towards pure, PhD level, economics. Also, I was in a similar place to you, with respect to mathematical training at one point, and Simon & Blume proved to be too large a leap.

My advice would be to use one of the following books (in order of my preference):
1. Essential Mathematics for Economic Analysis by Sydsaeter
2. Mathematics for Economics
by Hoy
3. Fundamental Methods of Mathematical Economics
by Chiang

They'll bring your basic command, of the basic required mathematics up to scratch AND these books cover linear algebra. You will also then be in a good place to tackle Simon & Blume if you ever need to in the future. Another piece of advice: PRACTISE PRACTISE PRACTISE. For what you are doing, you don't need to have a deep understanding of the mathematics you are using BUT, you do need to be very comfortable with applying the techniques.

So, as you are working through (for instance) Sydsaeter, I would be attempting the related practice questions you find in:

1. Schaum's Outline of Calculus
   
2. Schaum's Outline of Linear Algebra
   
3. Schaum's Outline of Introduction to Mathematical Economics
   
   Hope this helps.
   
   P.S. Almost all of these books are available for 'free' on Library Gensis

Like mind_grapes said, if you really want to understand economics, you have to dive into a textbook. There's no shortcuts.

The best poular introduction IMO is is Robert Frank's The Economics Naturalist:

> Why do the keypads on drive-up cash machines have Braille dots? Why are round-trip fares from Orlando to Kansas City higher than those from Kansas City to Orlando? For decades, Robert Frank has been asking his economics students to pose and answer questions like these as a way of learning how economic principles operate in the real world--which they do everywhere, all the time.Once you learn to think like an economist, all kinds of puzzling observations start to make sense. Drive-up ATM keypads have Braille dots because it's cheaper to make the same machine for both drive-up and walk-up locations. Travelers from Kansas City to Orlando pay less because they are usually price-sensitive tourists with many choices of destination, whereas travelers originating from Orlando typically choose Kansas City for specific family or business reasons.The Economic Naturalist employs basic economic principles to answer scores of intriguing questions from everyday life, and, along the way, introduces key ideas such as the cost benefit principle, the "no cash left on the table" principle, and the law of one price. There is no more delightful and painless way of learning these fundamental principles.

I would recommend these:

• The Economic Naturalist by Robert H. Frank. It's a collection of explanations about microeconomics and industrial production (for example: why are milk cartons rectangular while cans are cylindrical? why do DVDs and CDs have different kinds of cases? why are supermodels paid so much?).
  
  
• The New Book of Lists by David Wallechinsky and Amy Wallace. Many lists feature short anecdotes you might enjoy.
  
  
• Schott's Original Miscellany by Ben Schott. It's not properly a "trivia book", it's a hodgepodge of charts, tables and lists that cover pretty much every possible topic, from the types of clouds to the slang used by the British gay subculture to the flag of Guadeloupe. By the way, every book by Schott is worth reading.
  
  Surely, there are others I've read and I don't remember at the moment.

I don't know much about Intel particularly, but if you invested in them because they were building chips for the cloud, and now you're second guessing it because other companies have decided to do the same, then you're probably investing for the wrong reasons.

You should rarely invest in a company because it's the first to a market. If that market is even remotely promising—let alone profitable—there will undoubtedly be competition. And more often than not, that competition is better capitalized, has more resources, better tech, etc.

The market oftentimes gets caught up in these short term views—new tech, first mover, etc.—but they are not long term drivers of business success. Everyone can adopt any a piece of technology or a manufacturing process, so these "advantages" are often just a mirage.

I'd recommend reading Buffett's thoughts on "moats" as well as Greenwald's Competition Demystified, Michael Porter's Competitive Strategy and Nick Gogerty's The Nature of Value

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.

Hopefully OP is still checking in on this thread.

You'll need to start with the basics by registering for 100 level courses at your school whether or not you're already familiar with the subject, so Intro to Microecon, Macroecon and International Economics would be a start.

If you'd like to do some independent reading (which I personally recommend), here is the recommended reading list from /r/Economics. Their wiki lists books by increasing difficulty starting form the basics.

I'd also like to throw in some non textbooks I've read (and are reading) that helped me get an understanding of important fundamentals and obtain an idea of how economists think.
Both of these authors do a great job of grabbing the reader with their outlandish and interesting examples to explain various theories.

Freakonomics - Steven Levitt
Naked Economics - Charles Wheelan

Well there's the sequel of course: Superfreakonomics. And everything by Malcom Gladwell kind of falls into the same genre: The Tipping Point, Outliers, Blink... Then there's The Long Tail by Chris Anderson of Wired and Bad Science by The Guardian's Ben Goldacre....

A Short History of Nearly Everything is also absolutely brilliant 'popular science' but not as 'generation now' as the ones above.

That's just top of my head. All of these books are a few years old but still a great read. I'd say they're all typical Redditor reading if that makes sense.

Off the top of my head:

The Psychopath Test is a wittily written personal study of detecting, treating and (possibly) rehabilitating psychopaths.

The Freakonomics books are written by both an economist and a journalist (so easy to read) and contain slightly left-of-centre economic theories with easy to follow research. These are excellent.

The Omnivores Dilemma is both engaging and though provoking. It's All about the production of food in the modern age. In particular, four different meals.

The Code Book is one of my all-time favourites. As the title suggests it's about all forms of cryptography. If you have a mathematical bent I also like Singh's book about Fermat's Enigma).

First, "clear choice" is absolutely subjective. Each player (voter) will assign a value to the outcomes based on their personal beliefs through their own payoff functions. If they are "rational," they will then choose the action which gets them to the outcome of highest value.

While I'm not the person you responded to, I am also a veteran of the US Army. For someone like myself, it is very easy to expect that /u/DominarRygelThe16th is influenced by our recent participation in Iraq. But, feel free to correct me, chief.

Of the 4 potential Presidential candidates, which are on record for supporting the War in Iraq? If it is all 4, then this will be a moot issue. If it's all three, then it is a "clear choice." If it is either two or one, then it's not "clear," but a method of pairwise comparisons would be better suited to address this. Candidates with a tie receive half a point.

It is my suspicion Clinton would not only lose that pairwise comparison, but is also the least ranked candidate of many's preference ballot. Thus, given the (false) choice between only Trump and Clinton; no, it's not clear. But, I hope it is now.

Sources:

Tadelis, Stephen. Game Theory: An Introduction, (Princeton University Press: Oxford), 1-93

Tannenbaum, Peter. Excursions In Modern Mathematics, (Pearson: Boston), 1-22

edit: Aww, just 3 days ago, everyone LOVED math. What happened?

There are many threads similar to this one, you might want to search for them in addition to what people are willing to post in this thread:

For a first intake of libertarian socialism:

"Basic Bakunin" by the UK Anarchist Federation

If you are interested in marxian tendencies of libertarian socialism:

"Theory and practice: an introduction to Marxian theory" by Root and Branch

To get more into moderate forms of socialism, where you seem to be at the moment if I look at your flair, read this:

"Why not Socialism?" by G.A. Cohen

or this:

"Why Marx was right" by Terry Eagleton

You might also be interested in one of the absolute classics of marxism:

"The Communist Manifesto" by Marx/Engels

You can find it online here

For a more "in depth" look at libertarian socialism, you can also look at Kropotkins main work:

"The Conquest of Bread" by Kropotkin

also available online on libcom

If you want a quick way to understand the revolutionary history of early 20th century Europe, you can also listen to this lecture series by left communist Lauren Goldner:

Goldner on: German Revolution, Luxemburg and Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky

Or you might be interested in socialist fiction to immerse yourself in the utopian ideas fleshed out by past and present comrades:

50 SciFi and Fantasy works every Socialist should read

To get a first impression of up-to-date marxian enonomic analysis of todays society, you can always listen to "Economic update" by Richard D. Wolff.

To further your understanding of socialism, you should also take a look at socialist feminism, maybe with this work (one click hoster!):

Liese Vogel: Marxism and the Oppression of Women /attention: new book hosted on a one click hoster ;)

To get further reading ideas and recs regarding problems like imperialism, fascism, biologism, critical psychology, materialist history etc. etc., you may want to check the Revolutionary Reading Guide

Knock yourself out, comrade!

Take a break from accounting and finance books. I have a few recommendations from my recent reading:

The Intelligence Paradox

The Evolution of Everything

Delusions of Power

Equal is Unfair

The Feminine Mystique

How an Economy Grows - And Why It Crashes

Floating City: A Rogue Sociologist Lost and Found in New York's Underground Economy

Buddha's Brain

The Red Queen

Obviously there's a political bend in some of those choices, but I can suggest others (it's always important to challenge your beliefs).

I love to read, can provide some other recommendations, but those were just some recent books I just pulled off my Nook. There's some fiction as well.

Go to your local coin shop and buy a couple of silver dollars, a US coin book, and look around and browse at the history and old coins. It'll be fun. Go every four to six months, and buy a few silver dollars more for your collection.

Go to an antique mall and look around and browse. Look at the prices of items and take in what you see. It's like a museum, except you can but something.

Experiences like this can teach you a lot about inflation, tangibles, collectibles, and appreciation of goods with value and that money left as cash, is always slowly losing value. Thus the reason folks invest.

Buy this book used as a paperback and read it: https://www.amazon.com/Whatever-Happened-Explanation-Economics-Investments/dp/0942617622

Dude,

Picard in First Contact:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T09uSM0PxcE

Jake & Nog:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx5I7uEEEYo

Memory Alpha: Description of Federation Economics:

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/New_World_Economy
Under the New World Economy, material needs were no longer the focus or driving force of many people, rather, it was self-improvement, self-enrichment and the betterment of all. This effectively eliminated social problems like hunger and poverty and, as a result, >>>>>money was no longer used.<<<<<<Humans took great pride in this, describing themselves as having "grown out of their infancy." >>>The Federation, however, continued to deal with other cultures which had money-based economies, using credits, trade or negotiation instead.<<<<< (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, TNG: "The Neutral Zone", "The Price", "Time's Arrow, Part II", Star Trek: First Contact)

Some cultures like the Ferengi did not appreciate the Federation's economic system. As a consequence, and in accordance with their extreme capitalist mindset, Ferengi historical records on 21st century Earth describe Wall Street with reverence. (DS9: "In the Cards"; VOY: "11:59")


DS9 was Bajoran territory. Bajor was not a member of the Federation. It used a money-based economy. Thus, Bashir was provided with a stipend by Starfleet to use outside the Federation.

Transporter credits does not apply use of currency. It implies a way of allocating a scarce resource. Every Federation citizen could be granted 30 transporter credit a month. This is akin to a monthly bus or train pass.

Kirk 'sold' his ranch is him speaking euphemistically. Kirk himself says money doesn't exist in Star Trek IV:
https://youtu.be/MEflt_tFRa4?t=268

Harry Mudd & Cyrano Jones operated outside the Federation. The Federation, as Memory Alpha notes, uses the Federation credit as a financial instrument with non-Federation societies.

Jones was a trader. He traded with non-Federation societies.

There are whole books written about Star Trek's post-scarcity, no-money economy: https://www.amazon.com/Trekonomics-Economics-Star-Manu-Saadia/dp/1941758754

You can ignore all the evidence if you like. But canon is canon (until it's retconned), money is not used within the Federation.

How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes by Peter Schiff is a great intro to what money is for, free market capitalism, free banking etc while being more subtle on the libertarian front. It touches on many of the ways that even a democratically elected government can be harmful. Controlling the market, inflationary currencies etc.
It even has pictures!

Inventing the Future

Postcapitalism This one is not explicitly "socialist", but it's got a lot of good stuff to convince your more moderate friends.

Malign Velocities

#ACCELERATE

I dunno, there are a few. I'm a filthy left accelerationist though. Here is the manifesto, if you're interested

I love economics. And I love that you can take the toolsets it gives you and apply it to almost anything (Freakonomics style or in movie version).

I did less on the money/macro side so if you're interested in something like banking you might want to find someone with that focus and talk to them. Economics is a science and tries to use those type of tools to answer questions about people and society. It is probably the 'hardest' of the soft sciences but is really broad. You can combine it with business, law, psychology, sociology, big data / computer sciences, or government so it gives you a lot of options going forward as well. So I look at it as giving the pay/challenge/fun of engineering/science but with a wider range of career applications.

When you wish upon a star

I believe my favorite Pixar Disney movie is Lilo and stitch. My favorite song would be the song Nani sings to Lilo in the hammock.

Both bring to mind great memories.

Because there is connections in everything

>Do you either know if there is previous research similar to this, or have ideas of how I could develop the necessary axioms for getting the robots to communicate?

This is definitely linguistics related (and close to my research interest!).

You may want to look into Evolutionary Game Theory and agent based modeling. If you don't have any experience with those, Tadelis is a good intro to Game Theory, and McElreath is a good introduction to EGT.

I can't think offhand whether Robin Clark has anything about this in Meaningful Games. You're going to want to look into Evolutionary Game Theory, and into agent based modeling. What you're talking about is an iterated cooperative game. Of course, you wouldn't have to build robots, given that you could just simulate the whole thing in NetLogo (or Python or whatever...).

You may also be interested in Gareth Roberts' work, especially the lab he's setting up as part of the evolution cluster at U Penn.

You may be interested in Thinking Strategically. This book seems like it will overlap somewhat with Strategy of Conflict - it also covers game theory from beginner to intermediate concepts, and talks extensively about real world applications of those concepts. I know that it gives some detail about both application of force and deterrence effects - any good examination of game theory will look at both, as you can't really separate the two ideas (any believable commitment to using force in a game-theoretic sense is likely to have strong deterrent effects on other players).

Edit: I haven't read all of Schelling's other books, but I'd imagine they may be a good place to look as well.

That's my next book project. =)

That aside, I'd recommend Thinking Strategically and The Logic of Life.

There is some hyperbole in each. The subtitle of Thinking Strategically makes me lol, and half of The Logic of Life is "academics were clueless for decades until an economist looked at the problem for a half hour and solved it." But I enjoyed both of them for what they are.

Edit: I guess my book on bargaining and my book on war are somewhat like that. But the big difference is that Thinking Strategically and The Logic of Life are very light on the actual formalization, whereas mine are not.

Say you want to open a small business or take vocational classes or buy a car. You go to the bank to take out a loan. You win by getting the loan and pursuing your goals, the bank and the depositor wins by getting interest.

If the depositor didn't deposit any money, the bank would just turn you away.

This is basic Econ101 stuff, so any introductory econ book would explain it in more detail. Also, you can read

http://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/047052670X

1. Get better at maths. 157 Quant signals to me that...you just aren't there yet.
   
   
2. Read a basic Game Theory textbook like this one by Tadelis.
   
   You can (and should) do both of these things in conjunction.
   
   You can move on to more advanced textbooks once you have mastered game theory basics.
   
   > I would like to be able to work at creating my own models for certain things-particularly relating to decision making, information flows and organizational structures.
   
   This is very vague. However, you need to start with a basic understanding of game theory.

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.

What jumps? You have only discussed income tax in our thread. You claimed you are "extremely overtaxed" and I showed you that was false. You said you wanted to be able to afford a house and I showed you that has little to do with taxes which was what you said right before claiming to be overtaxed.



I don't think this discussion is going to go much further. You have accused other commenters of being NPCs and not understanding Trump's "super complicated" moves, but you haven't shown much comprehension on basic economic and tax policies yourself. If you want to better understand why people don't seem to be as happy about a tax cut as you are then I would recommend starting with The Armchair Economist and Freakonomics.

The Undercover Economist might be one of the most enlightening books I've ever read, and it's what got me interested in economics in the first place. It's got pretty good explanations for the advantages and disadvantages of markets, and talks about when they cause good outcomes or bad outcomes.

Freakonomics isn't really about capitalism vs socialism, but it is a fun book written by economists.

If you're studying Mathematics and Computer Science I think you're already pretty good set up for Game Theory. Do you have some specific concerns? Otherwise I would recommend to start learning Game Theory and learn mathematical/statistical prerequisites when needed.

For an Introduction to Game Theory I can recommend

• Game Theory 101: The Complete Textbook by /u/wspaniel (who will most likely respond to questions here if you ask nicely)
  
• or Game Theory: An Introduction by Steven Tadelis

Try to read some of his lectures like "Was ist Metaphysik?" or "Vom Wesen der Wahrheit". I am sure there are english translations of these as well.

EDIT: "Was ist Metaphysik?" can be found in English in the bundle of texts called "Basic Writings" (for example: http://amzn.com/0061627011) which serves as an excellent introduction to Being and Time.

I enjoyed this book.
Short answer is that it's a "status economy" where reputation is what drives people to greatness instead of financial gain or accumulation of wealth.

TREKONOMICS
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1941758754/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1941758754&linkCode=as2&tag=trekonomics-20&linkId=JBNJBR57QMIKJI73

Get yourself some Chomsky, Hobsbawn, Foucault, Zizek and obviously if you haven't already, some Marx, Engels and more so some Lenin. Everyone and their granddaughter needs some Lenin.

The more you read and absorb the better you'll be versed in proper Socialist and Communist theory, which will in turn allow you to not only defend yourself against the imbecilic mouthbreathing conservative dumbshits that will inevitably spew 'Capitalism won cuz the USSR fell and, uh... Free markets! And...'Murica! And... Freedom!', but the more you'll be capable of applying what you learn to the world around you and acquire a more critical view of international relations, the global financial situation, the social makeup of society and of course the ramifications of your country's contemporary domestic and economic policies.

If you need some titles, you can't go wrong with Imperialism: The highest stage of capitalism, State and Revolution and Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State

Books I would add to balance this list out:

Anthropology

Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches by Marvin Harris. Unlike Germs, Guns, and Steel, this book is written by an actual anthropologist (sorry Mr. Diamond) and is a really easy read--it covers topics from the sacredness of cows to cargo cults. It's fun, too, as Harris is an entertaining and engaging writer, and it's a slim book.

Bonus Level Challenge Anthropology Read:

In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio by Phillipe Bourgois. This is another monograph written by an actual anthropologist. This book is more challenging subject matter, and I should put a big Trigger Warning on it for violence against women.

Economics

Wages, Price, and Profit by Karl Marx. It's a shame more people don't read Marx beyond the Manifesto, which he wrote fairly early on in his academic life. W,P and P is a preparatory work for Capital and outlines one of the arguments Marx makes in the much denser and more complete work that was to follow. It's short, and one of Marx's more approachable writings, dealing with something we are all familiar with: how much we get paid, and why.

Bonus Level Challenge Economics Read:

Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism by V. I. Lenin. This book contains much drier material, as Lenin draws upon common economic sources (I hope you like talking about tons of iron) to illustrate phenomenon like World War 1--which he saw as a competition of imperialist powers to redivide the Middle East and Africa--and even the Iraq Invasion that would come almost 100 years later.

http://www.amazon.com/Characteristics-Games-George-Skaff-Elias/dp/026201713X

and

http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Strategically-Competitive-Business-Paperback/dp/0393310353

are both great books about dissecting strategic situations. It will really help.

When playing with repeated partners, it's also a problem they know how YOU play. It's important to vary strategies sometime so you don't cede the field to your partner.

1. You are straight out wrong, your logic makes no sense.
   
   
2. Excuse me for oversimplifying.
   
   
3. Because you proposed this QE post EQ, the market values are already set. Devaluing the dollar will mean less actual value comes in. This is economic fact, creditors (anyone claiming insurance) prospoer through change of interest rates. But this is a long winded story.
   
   
4. All other negative effects on push-pull inflation
   
   GFC has everything to do with QE (book) and why the effects are so large.
   
   Since we're having the argument and /r/newzealand loves a good inequality post - Britain's richest 5% gained most from quantitative easing
   
   As has been mentioned. QE is a last resort. Not a luxury to help exporters.

Unless you have a particulat desire to learn macro, you'll probably be most satisfied learning micro or game theory. For micro, Bowles' Microeconomics provides a nice balance between mathematical modelling and psychological or institutional details. The standard graduate textbook is Mas-Collel, Whinston, and Green, which is a reasonable place to start with a math degree, although the models are a bit decontextualized.

On the game theory side, Gintis' Game Theory Evolving is structured around problems, with good solutions in the back. Myerson's textbook provides a little more standard approach.

Because it's easier to manufacture one type of ATM machine rather than making separate machines for drive-through (AKA an economic explanation). I'm currently reading this, and it has a ton of great economic explanations for everyday questions like that

Yes, but the buying power will still be equal to $200 do to inflation.

Why not buy him the book, "Whatever happened to penny candy?"

https://www.amazon.com/Whatever-Happened-Explanation-Economics-Investments/dp/0942617622

I buy my son a rare us coin ever so many months ($5 gold liberty). His coins have appreciated quite well over the last ten years.

Lists of the most popular black names only tell part of the story. Chapter 6 of the first Freakonomics book spends a lot of time analyzing data from black baby names in California (I'm not sure if California still tracks baby name date by race, but they did for the period of time the authors were looking at). One thing they found was that there were more one-hit only names for black babies during this time period than for babies of any other race, meaning that black babies were more likely to have a name that was not shared by any other baby born in the same year. They also found several instances of the name Unique, along with a few alternate spellings such as Uneek, Yoonique, etc. Both findings suggest that uniqueness is valued by many black mothers, even though some names are still bound to be more popular than others.

You should check out the book Freakonomics. In that, the author attributes the drop in crime in the 90's to the legalization of abortion. If I remember correctly, the thesis was that children stopped being born into low income (and crime-prone) families as often. Kind of harsh, but certainly interesting.

Also Gemermany sounds like an interesting place to visit.

That’s the whole premise of The General Theory. Inflation lags behind growth when intervention is properly implemented. Properly is obviously the operative.

That noted, it’s easy to screw up interventionism. See: Venezuela. It’s also easy to screw up laissez faire. If industry is allowed to acquire protectionist regulation, certain firms behave like leaches with the morals of goats. Granted, that’s not really laissez faire either, it’s rent-seeking interventionism. Federal Reserve economist Rajan & Zingler’s Saving Capitalism From The Capitalists explains the latter fairly well. Fortunately there are a plethora of remedies to the problem available under US law.

I'm getting a fast-paced, usually humorous vibe from your likes.

David Sedaris' humor essays have a difficulty level similar to Mary Roach, though he does daily life more often than science. Start with something like Me Talk Pretty One Day rather than his latest where there's useless filler pages. In a more data-driven vein, Freakonomics might make for a good read.

My Date With Satan is an oddball short story collection (about fucked up characters) with enough gems to make the book worthwhile. And Chuck Palahniuk should always be considered in the same vein as Christopher Moore.

If you want something humorous but more light-hearted, maybe A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears. Add philosophy to the mix and you get The Phantom Tollbooth.

Also, Feed and The Ear, The Eye, and The Arm should be considered as short reads if you liked World War Z and Neil Gaiman.

• The song of the dodo (if I were to recommend a single book that nobody else would recommend you, it would be this one)
  
• Collapse
  
• Guns, germs and steel
  
• Too big to fail
  
• Freakonomics
  
• Surely you're joking, mr. Feynman
  
• Gödel, Escher, Bach - an eternal golden braid
  
• A walk in the woods
  
• A brief history of time
  
  You will notice the absence of A short history of nearly everything, which is a good book, but frankly it didn't speak very much to me. Bryson is almost only interested in geography.

Other replies give overviews, so when you're ready for the full analysis, see What Has Government Done To Our Money? by Dr. Murray Rothbard -- also available as an audio book.

You may also be interested in Nobel prize winner F.A. Hayek's The Fatal Conceit wherein the author demonstrates that central banks cannot accomplish their stated aims.

Thank you, that actually makes sense as a form of government (though most Libertarians seem to be against some form of UBI or any environmental restrictions).

As for the "how do we get there?" yea I haven't heard a thought out idea. And over time power tends to coalesce together, not break apart. It would take an active move by a majority of the population to do that, which most likely will never happen without a major change in human nature or technology.

As a side note, I find it interesting you mentioned Star Trek in your examples, because I had just read an article about a new book before seeing your post. Its called Trekonomics and in the article they has some comments by the author, who said that it was a society without money (as is stated in many of the episodes) and thus no market between people. This is why you don't see corporation names anywhere, and even by the end of Deep Space Nine the "super-capitalist" Ferengi have become "Keynesian social democrats" with an NHS style healthcare system and a general IRL modern government due to its interaction with the Federation. Kinda interesting.

A PhD program with professors who study MD teaching a MD course while funding your life in order to give you free time to study MD is probably the best resource available.

Maybe this book? https://www.amazon.com/Game-Theory-Introduction-Steven-Tadelis/dp/0691129088?ref_=Oct_BSellerC_13922_6&pf_rd_p=69cae946-7b1e-5471-ad6b-68cb8cd88dee&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-6&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=13922&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=MSFW9P1T62G0KQXBDGPK&pf_rd_r=MSFW9P1T62G0KQXBDGPK&pf_rd_p=69cae946-7b1e-5471-ad6b-68cb8cd88dee

Cool. I would recommend checking out Freakonomics*, The Undercover Economist*, and 30-Second Economics. These are some (relatively) fun books that give a little insight into economics. ^*The ^sequels ^are ^great ^too.

And back to the experiment thing: remember that the decisions that people make when confronted with a choice is also economics, just like studying how a single photon moves is still physics, even though both are part of something much bigger.

I took a semester of an introductory course of Game Theory. We followed the textbook An Introduction to Game Theory by Osborne. The book is great for a first dive into the subject, has ample examples, easy explanations, and is not too mathematically involved. Don't trust the online ratings; this is a very clear-cut book that covers a lot of material.

We also had Theory of Games and Economic Behavior by Neumann and Morgenstern, the founders of Game Theory, as a reference. It covers the motivations for game theory, explains basic concepts (like utility) which are taken for granted, and also explains economic behavior using Game Theory. It's a 600-page monster.

If you're interested, Manu Saadia wrote a book I really liked called Trekonomics, where he lays out how the economics of Star Trek works. It's probably the most in depth any one person has delved into the topic, and he cites examples from the shows. He argues that it's rooted in a shift in technology, policy, and human economic behavior. People, for example, can't be motivated by wealth or showing off possessions that anyone would have easy access to, so instead they build capital in the prestige of personal and professional accomplishments.

https://www.amazon.com/Trekonomics-Economics-Star-Manu-Saadia/dp/1941758754

What part of finance are you interested in?

Asset pricing?

• Asset Pricing - Cochrane
  
• Dynamic Asset Pricing Theory - Duffie
  
  Corporate Finance?
  
  
• Theory of Corporate Finance - Tirole
  
• Theoretical Foundations of Corporate Finance - Matos
  
  Behavioral Finance?
  
  
• Inefficient Markets - Schleifer
  
  Financial Econometrics?
  
  
• The Econometrics of Financial Markets - Campbell, Lo, Mackinlay
  
• Analysis of Financial Time Series - Tsay
  
  Market Microstructure?
  
  
• Market Microstructure Theory - O'Hara
  
• Empirical Market Microstructure - Hasbrouck

Check out the book, "Freakonomics" by Levitt & Dubner. Fascinating chapter on it, and other things related. Great read.

For everyone else: This is a pretty good example of the Hayekian Fatal Conceit: That is, that individual men have the knowledge and capacity to "solve" social problems.

To neuromonkey: You ought to beware of this line of thinking. Claiming the market is "wrong" (whatever that may mean) is rather meaningless if you understand what markets are and do, but to claim that you have the "solution" to the market problem is pretty wacky. You can probably find lots of people who will agree that the market was "wrong" in providing this, that, or the other good or service. You might even find people who can agree that something ought to be done about it. But you shouldn't claim to know what to do to fix it. That's crazy at best and irresponsible at worst.

Just ask yourself: How is it that Little Ol' You knows that this or that policy change will produce the desired effect, whether approximately or precisely?

I submit that you simply cannot know because of the complexity and unpredictability of individual human behavior.

Thoughts?

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

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

His books:

Crash Proof

The Real Crash: America's Coming Bankruptcy

How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes


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

Michael Pollan's [The Omnivore's Dilemma] (http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals/dp/0143038583/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1324994963&sr=8-4)
[Freakonomics] (http://www.amazon.com/Freakonomics-Economist-Explores-Hidden-Everything/dp/0060731338/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1324995084&sr=1-1)
Nathaniel Philbrick In the Heart of the Sea

Agree with others on Erik Larson, Mary Roach and Bill Bryson.

1. Academic finance and academic economics are joined at the hip. PhD students in Economics programs get jobs as Finance professors, and Finance professors will publish in Economics journals. Finance research uses the tools of economics, both theoretical (optimizing agents, equilibrium) and empirical (econometrics).
   
   
2. Finance research and finance industry is less connected. PhDs in Economics tend to go into economist positions in banks, or analyst positions on the buy side. Their perspectives are very different from the traders who are making markets or executing orders for customers.
   
   
3. Do you want a practical introduction, or do you want an introduction into how economists study those topics? If the former, try /r/investing or /r/finance. I hear good things about Expected Returns.
   
   
4. For behavioral finance, some old-ish classics are Shiller's Market Volatility and Shleifer's Inefficient Markets. A more recent text might be Pedersen's Efficiently Inefficient.

I'm all over the place, I have a few books in progress.


Jitterbug Perfume - Tom Robbins

Packing for Mars - Mary Roach

Freakonomics - Levitt & Dubner

Outliers: The Story of Success - Malcolm Gladwell

Life as Literature by Alexander Nehemas and Nietzsche as Philosopher by Arthur Danto are my some of my favorite secondary Nietzsche works.

When you move on to Heidegger... Heidegger's writing style is super difficult to parse and I prefer him in smaller bits. I would recommend his essays in the Perennial Basic Writings compilation if you haven't checked it out yet.(https://www.amazon.com/Writings-Harper-Perennial-Modern-Thought/dp/0061627011)

Now that classes are out, I'm working on Competitive Strategy by Michael Porter, and I'm going through How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. If you're preparing to go on a mission, read the latter now. Also, if you're a human being, read the latter now.

I would also recommend Mathematics for Economists. It covers a lot of the different fields, but only as they apply to economics.

It's not as rigorous as a whole course in optimization or real analysis, but it covers the important bits.

These two books convinced me that Marxism was actually a workable system, and are excellent introductions: http://www.amazon.com/Why-Marx-Right-Terry-Eagleton/dp/0300181531/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1417687545&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/The-Revolutionary-Ideas-Karl-Marx/dp/1608461386/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1417687500&sr=1-1

I'd recommend Freakonomics because it shows economics as the awesome discipline it really is.

Not everything I'm going to list is really libertarian per se but I think they do give important context for the libertarian/broader right wing movement

Economics in One Lesson. It's repetitive but gets the point across

Anarchy, State, and Utopia is a philosophical perspective

IThe Moon is a Harsh Mistress. It's difficult to call Heinlein a libertarian but this book definitely is. Also where the 'rational' part of my flair comes from!

There is No Alternative. I'm not sure how many people would consider Thatcher a libertarian but she's an important part of the history of the modern struggle against socialism that I think is overlooked in the United States

The Fatal Conceit. One of Hayek's must read works. A much shorter one that is I think just as important, Why I Am Not a Conservative

Atlas Shrugged. I'm not saying it's a good book or that you don't know of it but it's worth thumbing through just to see what all the hubbub's about. Prepare yourself for a latent S&M fetish.

Capitalism and Freedom. Maybe reading this will help you figure out why Naomi Klein seems to hate Friedman so much. Also very good and much more digestible is his television series Free to Choose and the similarly titled book

The Communist Manifesto. Provides good context. And maybe a chuckle.

How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes. https://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/047052670X

It's got pictures, and teaches very easy to understand concepts which will allow you to refute economic nonsense. This is the best choice because non-avid readers aren't going to read Bastiat or Hayek or anything heavy.

Sorry that was a typo, I meant the 1940s. Probably the best scholarly case against Socialism was made by F. A. Hayek, in "Road to Serfdom", and again in the more recent book:

https://www.amazon.com/Fatal-Conceit-Errors-Socialism-Collected/dp/0226320669

The point remains however, that all the innovative thinking in the last 100 years has not been in leftist ideologies, but in market-based economics, which is currently supported ONLY by conservatives and conservative-leaning libertarians

> Ummm.... maybe because of the large poor urban population that more commonly plays lottery games everyday?

Spoken like a true intelligent economist. See this.

R1: This voting system is non-optimal. Please read this.


Did I win the contest?

>Oh, I think you're just trolling now.

You got me there, I went into the land of unreasonable with that.

But really, if you'd rather debate with someone more noteworthy than I,
please read this. I'd certainly be interested in your thoughts on it.

It was Freakonomics, yes. That chapter was fascinating. I wonder how much of it is accurate.

When wondering why people make certain decisions and planning your response game theory is key. This book is a great start to game theory. http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Strategically-Competitive-Business-Politics/dp/0393310353

Read Imperialism by Lenin. I'm a high school student myself, I read this in about three days. Absolutely fantastic read and provides a fair introduction to the fundamental flaws of capitalism.

Try this if you really want to know what went on and why we aren't going to "recover" from this "recession" but are heading into another collapse.

http://www.amazon.com/Meltdown-Free-Market-Collapsed-Government-Bailouts/dp/1596985879/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371881724&sr=1-1&keywords=meltdown+tom+woods

Anything by Peter Schiff is also a great read.

I wouldn't recommend Paul Krugman myself, though you might want to read him and then compare what he says to something like this,

http://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/047052670X/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371881329&sr=1-5&keywords=peter+schiff

by Peter Schiff.

Those are good non-mathematical introductions to behavioral economics. If you want to get more into behavorial finance specifically, you'll want to sources which talk more about how to use behavioral evidence to modify existing pricing models. I like Shleifer's Inefficient Markets for a technical introduction to the subject.

I think this is a difficult question to answer without more of an idea where you stand now.

In general, assuming someone has a bachelor's degree and didn't completely skip on all the math, I'd suggest Mathematics for Economists by Simon & Blume, and after or concurrently with that, Advanced Microeconomic Theory by Jehle & Reny. Simon & Blume should cover most of the math that you need to understand Jehle & Reny in sufficient detail.

If you want to read and understand macro papers, I'm pretty sure things are going to be a lot harder. I'm not the person to ask in that case, anyway.

[edit] Also I should mention that acquiring these books in a perhaps less than legitimate fashion is possible, and not very hard.

Just to fill out the list by throwing in some right / conservative ones:

1. Black Swan
   
2. Freakonomics
   
   And as an absolute must, you should read this:
   
3. Ascent of Money: this one is very, very conservative and gives you a good perspective on how financiers really view history.
   
   Also, you'd understand these books more if you had a good foundation in economics and finance.

OK see when you say that non-substantive buzzword salad it shows me that you don't understand economics at all, you're just repeating things you've heard.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/047052670X

Here's this. It's a quick read, as it's meant for children, but it lays out basically how the economy works. Really good book, don't let its juvenile appearance put you off. I'm actually serious, too; I just read this again recently and it explains a lot of things that I sometimes have trouble articulating very succinctly and neatly.

Submission Statement

In essence this article is a book review of Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, but delves deeper into the themes discussed in the book. The article talks about the history of neoliberalism and draws some interesting parallels with it as a utopian concept as much as any left wing ideals of the post-war period.


Quite a long read, but insightful. First of a series on the site discussing neoliberalism.

i recommend: http://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/047052670X it's really easy to read and understand

I recommend reading Inventing the future. It argues for full automation and universal basic income. If we tax the robots it will discourage automation and productivity increases which will be detrimental to everyone's standard of living. Instead we should encourage automation and the sharing of the gains made by it.

This. Chiang is the easiest to read and comprehend, while Simon and Blume go into the technical aspects with more proofs and rigor. I took the graduate level mathematical economics as an undergrad and we used Chiang. As a PhD student now, we use Simon and Blume; although I certainly reference Chiang a lot.

Chaing : http://www.amazon.com/Fundamental-Methods-Mathematical-Economics-Wainwright/dp/0070109109/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382493346&sr=8-1&keywords=chiang+economics


S& B : http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Economists-Carl-P-Simon/dp/0393957330/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382493357&sr=8-1&keywords=simon+and+blume

The best book for economics. A follow up to that is Peter Schiff's book How and Economy Grows and Why it Crashes.

Another is The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek

Totaly agree. Maybe you heard about the book called 'inventing the future' it talks about full automation :) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Inventing-Future-Postcapitalism-World-Without/dp/1784780960

I highly suggest Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? book series, the author remains unbiased in this first book is especially great for younger kids, you can read about the author and his views here https://www.earlywarningreport.com/

I still like it, and I stubbornly still think it focuses on the right institutions (financial, contractual, property rights). Another good book that cheerleads economic institutions, especially in the developing-country context, is Solomon's Knot. For the developed-country perspective, see Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists.

This book Freakonomics by Steven D Levitt has a section on how much money drug dealers make (it's not as much as you think), and contains lots of other interesting discussions like it.

Why Marx Was Right https://www.amazon.com/dp/0300181531/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_du4MybVB4AV1F

This one is great it counters common objections to Marxism

Your dealer's profit margin would depend entirely on his overhead and expenses. The book Freakonomics has a chapter on the profitability of street-level drug dealing.

> It's hard to tell what Star Trek's actual society is like ...

Here's a good analysis of The Economy of the Federation from what evidence has appeared in the shows.

And here's another such analysis just posted on Reddit a month ago.

And that thread also included a link to an entire book on the subject (with mixed reviews): Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek: Manu Saadia

If you enjoy statistical analysis in this article you might like book Freconomics. It has two chapters dedicated to spotting fraud using statistical analysis.

Freakonomics: by Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner

Just very fascinating, makes you think.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060731338/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_1cPxCbMR2SG2J

>the unemployed student that used financial aid to pay for school and now collects unemployment and wefare.

Money which was taken from others and 40% of it was borrowed or just printed out of thin air by the federal government.

... and what has all that "assistance" from the federal government accomplished? The tuition has gone up (why should colleges and universities lower costs when their profits are guaranteed by the federal government??), higher taxes, inflation, more profits for the "too big to fail" banks, etc. Yay central planning.

Have you read the latest version of this story by his sons, Peter & Andrew Schiff called Why an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes? If so, your thoughts on their changes/updates would be greatly appreciated.

Sudhir Venkatesh, perhaps?

His book is very interesting--he's mentioned repeatedly in both "Freakonomics" books as well. Suhir, as well as Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner (authors of Freakonomics and Super Freakonomics) are the reasons Behavioral Economics is kind of a "hobby" of mine.

Martin Heidegger's Basic Writings (an anthology of his work). Some pretty mind bending philosophy that will challenge your view on "Being".

I gotchu fam, been saved in my amazon wishlish all this time. "How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes" by Peter Schiff.

A Short History of Nearly Everything, A People's History of the United States, Freakonomics, The Botany of Desire, Sun Magazine

Here are some links for the product in the above comment for different countries:

Amazon Smile Link: http://smile.amazon.com/Freakonomics-Economist-Explores-Hidden-Everything/dp/0060731338


|Country|Link|
|:-----------|:------------|
|UK|amazon.co.uk|
|Spain|amazon.es|
|France|amazon.fr|
|Germany|amazon.de|
|Japan|amazon.co.jp|
|Italy|amazon.it|
|China|amazon.cn|




This bot is currently in testing so let me know what you think by voting (or commenting). The thread for feature requests can be found here.

More info can be found here and, if you're feeling like getting the whole story and more, here.

Yep, it's a good read.

This is a good, substantive intro: http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Strategically-Competitive-Business-Politics/dp/0393310353

Thinking Strategically by Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff is a good one.

Chiang is a classic. Another good one is this: http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Economists-Carl-P-Simon/dp/0393957330

Try and get either one used.

Better yet. Trekonomics

Without hesitation for me, Competitive Strategy by Michael E. Porter and his five competitive forces.

http://www.amazon.com/Competitive-Strategy-Techniques-Industries-Competitors/dp/0684841487/

>no worker would accept to create value for someone else in exchange for a small wage unless he was forced to do so by the conditions he is in.

False.

His "condition" is that he has 2 choices: Grow and hunt his own food, or starve to death. Is he being exploited by nature, since nature forces him to do some work to survive? No.

So then why couldn't he take option 3, which is to do work that's not hunting and farming, in exchange for a wage that will allow him to acquire what he needs to survive, and then some.

Socialists make the mistake of assuming that 100% of the value associated with a product is due to the input of the direct laborer. You conveniently ignore the fact that the very production of that good or service would not be possible without the capital supplied by the capitalist. Why shouldn't the capitalist be paid for the contribution his capital made to creating the goods?

Did you really just link to the Labor theory of value? Hate to break it to you, but that theory was proven bunk quite a while ago.

You'd benefit from reading this book, a beginner's guide to economics that even a 7th grader could read and understand.

If you haven't heard of them, Freakonomics and the sequel Super Freakonomics are fascinating reads on microeconomics, but it also draws in on other social studies disciplines.

Peter Schiff's How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes. More of a illustrated novel than comic.

About five years before Bitcoin started, these two books enlightened me as to what was really going on in the world:

https://mises.org/money.asp
https://www.amazon.com/Whatever-Happened-Explanation-Economics-Investments/dp/0942617622

When I saw Bitcoin it sounded like it was proposing to be a solution to this problem. I had trouble believing that it was possible to create a cryptographic currency, though - "How could the currency be useful if people could just make more of it by copying the file that contained it?" I thought. I had actually considered this on my own (my background is computer science and engineering and I was familiar with asymmetric cryptography) but to me creating a copy-proof, inflation-proof, central-authority-free cryptographic currency was an unsolvable problem.

There were people on Slashdot urging naysayers to read the whitepaper, so I did. I was blown away: Satoshi had solved the problem that mystified me. Here was something the government could never get its hands on. Here at last was the tool to smash the state.