Best economic condition books according to redditors
We found 3,523 Reddit comments discussing the best economic condition books. We ranked the 996 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 3,523 Reddit comments discussing the best economic condition books. We ranked the 996 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
I got about 25 minutes into the video; I'm not wasting more time. If you want to know serious data about the dangers of central planning of the monetary system, there are vastly better sources that talk in real, economics, and not lofty, sensationalist terms.
The International Role of the Dollar: Theory and Prospect by Paul krugman
Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell
The Creature from Jekyll Island by Griffin
Milton Friedman's Free to Choose videos
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My main objections in the first 25 minutes of this "documentary" are:
1) They're not correctly defining or using the terms currency or money and not identifying their economic role. Money is not the center of an economy, it is the lubrication that permits economics to happen. Economics is the analysis of how scarce resources that have alternative uses are allocated by people (by markets).
Money doesn't create those allocations, money enables those allocations.
Even in an economic system without money, there would still be allocations of scarce resources that have alternative uses by people; whether that is choosing to use your time to cut down a tree for your neighbor in exchange for beef or choosing to use your time to mow a lawn for your mother in exchange for a smile and a thank you; your time is a scarce resource and you're choosing how to allocate it with zero money being involved.
Money is any medium of exchange and is created as a store of one's labor.
You receive a dollar in exchange for X minutes of your labor. That piece of paper stores those X minutes of your labor and you can use it in exchange for something you value.
So anyway - this video does a shitty job identifying what money is at the outset... I don't think it'll get better.
2) The banking system, monetary policy, and politicians making a killing off of those systems has not been hidden from anyone. As they admit, almost in a very quick juxtaposition with their incorrect statement, the bankers, academics, and politicians are very open about their systems.
The problem is that people are just happy with their lives and are safer than they've ever been throughout history.
3) A complete misunderstanding of what "interest" is and what fractional reserve banking is.
Interest is the cost of lending money... it is the price tag on a product just like on the coat or iPod you buy. The baker isn't going to give you all his bread for free; why should a bank give you money for free?
Fractional reserve banking can be done responsibly. Much like the interest rate, it should be done at the rate set by free markets. A fractional reserve rate of 90% almost completely guarantees that when you withdraw, you will always be able to withdraw all of your money. In exchange, banks will give you vastly lower of an interest rate than at a 10% fractional reserve rate because it is higher risk and lower reward for the bank.
Anyway - like so many other documentaries out there about extremely complex matters, this one is just trying to sell a product like every other good capitalist out there. They need to catch your attention and get you to talk about it to others to make money - so of course they're going to play to the 8th grade education market.
If you read his book the basic premise is that right now there is a big focus on philanthropy when instead there should be a focus on fixing the broken system that allows a small group of people to accumulate massive wealth at the expense of 99% of others.
But using their philanthropy they are able to persuade the masses to keep the current system. How else can a democratic system exist where the top 5% own 66% of the wealth (United States).
The richest Americans would easily be defeated in a vote if the remaining population could get their act together.
Fun Fact: The stereotypical Jewish association with money and wealth goes back to Medieval Europe, especially Italy because under old church law Christians were not allowed to charge interest to each other on loans.
This meant that for shipping expeditions, which would have to raise large amounts of capital to fund and outfit a trade expedition, could really only borrow from Jewish lenders. The Jewish lenders could charge interest and therefore be in a better position to accept risk that these voyages may not return with a profit (or even at all). This was true for other large ventures that required the raising of large sums of money but would not see a profit for some time as well.
Combine with this a general and long historical antisemitism in Europe, which drove Jews out of other professions, and you've got a recipe for creating a class of fairly wealthy Jewish money lenders which exist in a fairly segregated community.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ascentofmoney/lessons/you-can-take-that-to-the-bank/lesson-activities/?p=46
http://www.amazon.com/The-Ascent-Money-Financial-History/dp/0143116177
Income inequality is also heavily correlated with a whole host of social and public health problems, with significantly worse outcomes in more unequal countries, whether rich or poor.
EDIT: The graph comes from The Spirit Level and is an aggregate of these indexes:
Just wanted to highlight the source at the bottom of the graph. The Spirit Level is an excellent book for those interested in reading about the myriad amount of social problems associated with increasing inequality.
What's even more interesting is that large amounts of inequality hurt all socio-economic classes, from those at the very bottom all the way to the top 1%. To quote from The Spirit Level:
>p.g. 84
>We also found that living in a more equal place benefited everybody, not just the poor. It's worth repeating that health disparities are not simply a contrast between the ill-health of the poor and the better health of everybody else. Instead, they run right across society so that even the reasonably well-off have shorter lives than the very rich. Likewise, the benefits of greater equality spread right across society, improving health for everyone - not just those at the bottom. In other words, at almost any level of income, it's better to live in a more equal place.
The world bank and the IMF aren't organizations who operate in the best interest of the world. It does what the biggest funder tells them to do (= USA).
You can read about it in [The Shock Doctrine] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Shock-Doctrine-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999)
Seems like the appropriate place to plug this book: Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell
Hitler didn't improve the German economy in any real sense. He and his henchman artificially stimulated the economy in order to produce arms and munitions, but their tactics had the country on the economic brink by the late 1930's. Many economic historians think he had no choice but to invade Poland in 1939 to keep the whole system propped up with new resources. See Adam Tooze's "The Wages of Destruction" for a very thorough and interesting discussion of the Nazi pre-war economic system.
Here's some advice you didn't ask for.
I retired early at age 54 in 2006. Had a military pension, life-long medical care, nice retirement accounts, owned a home, and so on.
Two things upset my calculus.
First, I didn't realize how boring it could be. And I'm a guy who's lived by the adage, "An educated man never gets bored waiting for a train." That's me. I had lists of things to do, books to read, hobbies to start, etc. But fundamentally it was boring, and after a couple of years I resumed working as a consultant, and now I'm back in graduate school.
Second, along came the 2008 crash. It did not have much of an effect on us financially, but that was just because we were luckily completely out of the market. It did, however, have a significant psychological effect. It made me realize that in the 30 or so years I hope to continue on, there's no telling what can happen. I mean, who ever dreamed the housing market would collapse? (A few people actually did, apparently.)
So I just toss it out there: don't burn any bridges. And by that I mean, don't get so completely divorced from work that you'll have a hard time getting back in the work force should you decide to do so. I was very, very lucky in that the stars aligned just right for my consulting gig, which led to other good things. But again, that was not planned for.
Anyway, good luck in whatever you decide to do!
Shock Doctrine, people.
Don't have time to watch or read (read the reviews)? Naomi Klein on MSNBC explaining the basics in less than 5 minutes.
While what you say is true, it is incomplete, and lets the banks off the hook for where they truly are at fault, namely in buying repackaged high-risk mortgages as if they were low-risk, but higher return. In the banking world, high return + low risk = too good to be true, but they bought them like mad anyways.
Basically, mortgage lenders package a bunch of mortgages into one group, then divide that group up by risk (and therefore varying interest rates paid) and sell the different pieces at different rates to financial institutions, like the bank the OP works for. What was new was taking a group of the highest risk loans from various different loan packages, bundling THEM together into a new derivative group, then ranking THOSE loans as being from low risk to high risk (surely not ALL of them would fail at once, right?), and lower to higher returns, accordingly. But remember, all of these loans STARTED as higher return loans already (they were high risk/high return to start with), so now you had a loan instrument that purported to be LOW risk, but with much higher returns than a normal low risk wedge. This made banks and hedge funds salivate.
When these high risk loans didn't default immediately (most were ARM or balloon payment loans and wouldn't become dangerous until the first major raise in rates a couple of years down the road), financial institutions like the bank OP works for started buying them up like mad. FREE MONEY!
This created a HUGE demand for the loans from the money side, not just the home-buyer side. So mortgage lenders started creating really risky and "creative" loans, and pretty much loaned you money to buy property if you had a pulse just to keep feeding the pipe to the banks and funds.
The fault from the banks' side was that they didn't have the financial sophistication to realize this was a bubble about to burst. And I use the term "sophistication" loosely. These are people who get multi-million dollar bonuses to be the "best of the best". Yet even a high-school econ teacher could have pointed the flaws in their reasoning out to them.
THIS is where they were driven by greed to make more money, warning signs be damned. If the bank next door is doing it and making money, it must be safe and we need to get some. They are guilty of being lemmings. Greedy lemmings (in the metaphorical sense, I know lemmings don't really jump off cliffs).
Read "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis (also author of "Liar's Poker", also about Wall Street). Very enlightening.
This greed and, frankly, stupidity, that continues to be rewarded, ignored, denied, and repeated, is what I find most despicable in "Wall Street's" behavior.
From an economics perspective:
From a social perspective:
From a moral perspective:
There's many more than just these, and there's a lot of underlying philosophy that modern conservationism is based on. I'd also categorize these books as a basis for "intellectual conservatism" as opposed to say "cultural conservatism". Something to note is that little of the conservative mindset is focused on policy and politics, per se. There is instead a strong emphasis on personal action and collective culture, the value of morals, and a focus on introspection. So while these books will perhaps help you understand a conservative perspective better, they will not likely provide a good basis for engaging in political debate. For that maybe you want a book by Ben Shapiro or something.
Let's think about libertarians for a minute:
☑ Fundamental belief that only the strong should survive
☑ Weird beliefs about genetic superiority
☑ Movement that consists almost entirely of white men
☑ Advocate overthrow of democratically elected government
☑ Armed militias
☑ Prone to believing in conspiracy theories
☑ Cult adherence to philosophy
☑ Belief that truth may only be found in official party documents
☑ Dismissive of actual experts and empirical evidence
☑ Identification of racial minorities as scapegoats for societal ills
☑ Rabid protection of corporate power
☑ Disdain for intellectuals and the arts
☑ Rampant sexism
☑ Advocating the suppression of labor power
☑ Obsession with central banks laced with anti-Semitic undertones
☑ Disdain for human rights and the rights of children in particular
☑ Single-leader rule preferable to democratic rule (see Hoppe)
☑ Rabid defense of reactionary and racist thought.
☑ Unwillingness to compromise
☑ Inexplicable obsession with firearms and military-style uniforms
☑ Broad connections with other right-wing and reactionary sects
☑ Appropriation of nationalist language and symbology
☑ Persecution narrative among the privileged
☑ Placing money and power ahead of human beings
Let's face it. There is a lot in common here. It's all uniquely Anglo-America-flavored. And they'll deny it up and down. But there are too many signs to ignore it completely.
Funny, reading about this exact same situation that happened in Chile and Argentina, The Shock Doctrine
Alex Kerr wrote a book critical of Japanese Culture and Government called Dogs and Demons: The Dark Side of Japan which is fascinating.
One of the things he goes into is how and why Japanese culture has become nearly completely infantalized over the last 30 years - Kurowsawa being replaced by Pokemon and Hello Kitty. Put simply, he posits that Japanese society has become so intensely bad that the only time of life that the Japanese are happy is early childhood, and so they turn to symbols of that childhood as comfort from 'real life'. It's deeper than that, but that's the tl;dr: Kawaii Culture
NYT Review:
https://www.nytimes.com/books/01/04/15/reviews/010415.15samuelt.html
>Alex Kerr, in his fascinating 2001 essay Dogs and Demons, after describing how the Japanese society infantilizes its own people because of an old obsession with control over everything (think about bonsai as the extreme control of nature, for example), quotes the writer Fukuda Kiichiro:
>> « One could say that social control in Japan has come to invade the private realm to an extreme degree. Of course "control" does not take place if we have only people who want to control. It's a necessary condition to also have a majority of people who wish to be controlled. It's the same mechanism that sociologists call "voluntary subjugation." That is, people who wish to be controlled struggle to bring about control over themselves. It's related to the fact that children in high schools and students in universities never tire of having their teachers advise them what to do. Japanese college students are not adults who bear rights and responsibilities - they should all be called "children." »
....
>The idealization of childhood creates a context in which its eroticization can take place. The term erokawaii describes something which is at the same time cute and sexy, but this usually applies to grown-up women or girls in their late teens and therefore can be interpreted as a Japanese version of Western «sexyness» (there is a common idea among Japanese girls that their beauty is of a different kind than the Western one, that they are 'cute' rather than 'beautiful'). However, another term refers to the eroticization of children: lolita complex (commonly lolicon) and its variant with little boys shotacon. Lolicon is a sexual deviance but also a subculture that flourishes legally, mainly through underground comic books with explicit sexual depictions involving characters who are visibly underage. This tendency is marginal but such products are nevertheless easily accessible as many Akihabara shops, for example, sell them in their adult sections (and by adult sections, I mean 5-story shops). It's a real market, and even in mainstream cultural products (video games, animés), including children in the cast (for example in dating simulation games) has become usual.
Japanese Culture has a large influence on other Asian countries. I don't know if Japan is the only reason for this infantalizing, but it's definitely a force in it.
You've discovered a theory that's actually orthodoxy in many History classrooms.
Unfortunately history indicates that if you remove color, the underclass is easily fractured along other lines. Most of early Industrial America was segregated by ethnicity -- color, language, origin and religion, are all powerful dividing attributes. The Marxist interpretation is that the ruling class is often dependent on fostering squabbling within the underclass and promotes these divides wherever possible. Look to the Presidential Elections in '00 and '04 to hear George W Bush simultaneously decry Democratic tax policy as "class warfare" against the rich while his party continued the argument that entitlements were a war waged by immigrants and minorities against the working class.
If you're interested in pursuing this further, I highly recommend:
[The Wages of Whiteness] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Wages-Whiteness-American-Haymarket/dp/1844671453/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top)
Not only that, their salaries are structured and referred to as "bonuses". It's just easier for people to repeat what they heard on TV.
I think almost everyone in this thread would benefit from reading The Big Short by Michael Lewis. I'm a former FA and Senate staffer, my dad was a banker now FA and we both learned a lot from that book.
Is "income inequality" a new way of saying "poverty"? Because I believe poverty is a real issue and every election cycle I gripe that it's now been over 20 years since the topic of homelessness came up in a Presidential debate. But the term "income inequality" carries the connotation that incomes are supposed to be equal for everyone, and that's a lot harder idea to get behind.
> , but for Bernie to be posting about it now just shows his true colors.
White. :-)
There was a book originally published in the UK called "The Spirit Level", summing up 30 years of research into inequality and purporting to demonstrate the significant benefits to society when things are more equal. As soon as Bernie started running I expected The Spirit Level to be brought up again and again as it's really the defining work on the topic.
As the weeks wore on I was surprised to note Bernie never brought it up. I read Sanders interviews and again, not only no mention but no mention of any of the research covered in the book at all. It finally dawned on me... Oh my God, he's never even read the book! That's when I started looking into his background. I imagined he had been an economics professor in a tweed jacket for 30 years at some rural Vermont college before entering politics. Instead, I discovered he reached his political conclusions circa the age of 18 after being exposed to Marx in college and apparently never questioned or expanded on those early beliefs. I realized his conclusions were determined by ideology, not investigation. Even if he was right about anything, it was by accident (much the same as Trump). That's when I got on the anti-Sanders bandwagon, relatively early on.
Some people might define it as socially liberal, fiscally conservative.
Some might define it by the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP)- which states no one has the right to use force or coercion against anyone else except in forms of self defense.
Either way you look at it, it's more of a philosophy than a mix-match of certain platforms other political parties just pick and choose from.
For a deeper understanding, please read these books in this order, each are available for free in pdf or eBook, just right click and save:
Once you’re done with those, I’d suggest purchasing the following books:
Afterwards, if you have any questions about monopolies, consider the resources in this thread. Enjoy! If you need further reading suggestions let me know.
Read this.
The short version is that the Nazis essentially ran the German economy and infrastructure into the ground through truly epic mismanagement and faced complete collapse immediately before the war and could only barely keep it ticking over during the war years by looting and forcing "loans" off the occupied countries, their allies and their own population.
Scratch a liberal, a fascist bleeds. Neoliberal foreign policy is one of torture, of both the people and the economy. Would you like to know more?
A small history of biological warfare and experiments:
Seems like it is irresponsible to rule out Disaster Capitalism type Shock Doctrine political tactics anymore especially after reading the book by Naomi Klein and studying historical events like Operation Gladio and the Strategy of Tension.
Actually, nobody should be afraid of anyone.
Most politicians are good people, and they joined politics because they wanted to change the world for the better. But they got stuck in the debt-based system. Just like everybody else. This leaves very little room for real change.
Everybody wants out of this system. But most don't realise, or don't know how.
Perhaps you've seen Oliver Stone's Nixon. There's this scene where president Nixon meets a bunch of young people, and they give him shit for Vietnam etc. He then realises that he was just like those kids twenty years prior, but once in office he simply wasn't left with much choice - he had to act like he did, that's what the system required him to do. (Stone's message, not mine - although I agree.)
Nobody is out to get us right now, nobody is our enemy, everybody realises that the banking system is shit at best, or downright evil at worst. Including most politicians. All we need is a way out.
Recommended books:
http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Good-Evil-Economic-Gilgamesh/dp/0199767203
http://www.amazon.com/Debt-First-5-000-Years/dp/1612191290/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381395901&sr=1-1&keywords=debt
http://www.amazon.com/Currency-Wars-Making-Global-Crisis/dp/1591845564/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381395926&sr=1-1&keywords=currency+wars
And please read these articles:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-30/bitcoin-the-perfect-schmuck-insurance.html
http://rt.com/op-edge/bitcoin-money-future-fad-761/
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/05/20125309437931677.html
The simple answer is that a better distribution is significantly less unequal than 1/10th = 50%+ of wealth.
There is a really large base of empirical data that shows a clear trend that more unequal societies have diminishing returns on aspects of quality of life for EVERYONE including the most wealthy and their lifespan (See: https://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies-Stronger/dp/1608193411 )
Inequality is associated less societal trust, empathy, effectiveness of social institutions and social services. Rich people in super unequal places have to spend money on security services and other things that rich people in places with well funded, distributed transport and social services etc. don't have to deal with.
yeah wages of destruction by adam tooze really spells out in detail how wrong this is. highly recommend
https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
pdf, epub, and mobi files are on libgen and also i have them, if anyone's really interested they can pm me
edit: also the last chapter in margaraet macmillan's paris 1919, which tells the story of the creation of the treaty of versailles, basically makes the case that it didn't really start wwii and the germans could easily have paid of reparations because their payments were literally scaled to their gdp or whatever. like they couldn't rearm and pay, but they could pay.
No, Hitler and the Nazis were not good for the German economy. Please read the actual history on this. The best book about it currently probably is The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze.
Jokes on them, I shall use that as a wishlist! >:D
(Also they forgot Basic Economics, so it's wrong)
Basic Economics https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465060730/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_2-ZSCb0VTCP1Y
The purpose of war is to weed out the lesser slaves (less strong, less smart, less obedient) and to acquire new slaves from other slave-owners (other nations, other governments). Everyone not running a government is a slave.
This is why understanding war and the economy, not women, is the true core of the red pill.
Thanks for posting this. I've been so desensitised by the waves of TED-worthy solutionism way of thinking. Locally, the Yale-NUS kids are especially notorious for such ideas because THIS is the way they gain prestige among their circles. Doesn't matter if the ideas actually work, just need that notch on their CV and they're ready to ride it all the way to an upper management level in McKinsey.
Unfortunately, this will be the norm among the upper-middle and upper classes for a long time to come. Here are some books for those interested to learn more.
Winners Take All
To Solve Everything, Click Here
Geek Heresy
Not to say that people shouldn't strive for social change, etc. But real change requires real grind and understanding. The people doing so aren't usually in the media limelight either.
Yeah let me just finish re-reading my copy of Wages of Destruction then maybe i'll get to your Wikipedia link you fucking scrub
That's great and all, but wouldn't it have been better if Gates had been taxed appropriately in the first place and then all citizens (at least theoretically, anyway) could have had a say in how that was allocated?
Relying on billionaires to allocate resources for public solutions seems more likely to just fund whatever billionaires care about, maybe not what is needed most, and definitely not toward anything which might pose a challenge to their status.
(Anand Giridharadas' Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World covers the subject quite well)
Both Economics in One Lesson and Basic Economics are golden, though for very different reasons.
Economics is One Lesson starts with a truth that is obvious and simple once you hear it explained. You think to yourself, "Well, yeah. Who could possibly think otherwise?" And then you hop onto Reddit and see that a substantial preponderance of Reddit are afflicted with a mindset and beliefs that fly in the face of this simple truth. It then spends time expanding on this truth and applying it to tons of different things that you wouldn't intuitively see it applying to.
Basic Economics is better though. Both are well worth reading, but Sowell's work is incredibly comprehensive. When I read it, it didn't come across as someone trying to prove any world view, as tends to be the case from so many economists. It is him simply seeking to explain economics to someone who is new to the field. To his credit, he uses terminology that is accessible to anyone and doesn't spend a single moment trying to prove to how smart he is. (Though his brilliance is immediately evident.) Its most important quality is that it doesn't ask you to partake in a string of thought experiments to reach some grand conclusions. Every assertion he makes is supported by multiple studies and historical examples. This happens time and time again. And the bolder the claim, the more evidence he provides. It's remarkable.
While it does weigh in at 700-ish pages, Basic Economics is almost certainly the perfect book for getting your feet wet when in economics.
Well, there's a lot of shit the government does, but it looks like you're most interested in the defense and regulation portions. Robert Murphy does very well on the topic and cleared it up for me when I was discovering anarcho-capitalism, but if you're looking for something to read on the topic, his book Chaos Theory is basically the same thing as the lecture.
The housing bubble was caused by The Federal Reserve lowering its interest rates, making easy money that made banks say "hey, we have more money to loan out to make money on," and by definition the only people to loan out to were those with the riskiest intentions: Building housing and hedging stocks. If I recall correctly, this is Tom Woods' lecture on the matter, and he also has a book on the matter.
I'm reading The Spirit Level at the moment.
It is a well-established fact that in rich societies the poor have shorter lives and suffer more from almost every social problem. The Spirit Level, based on thirty years of research, takes this truth a step further. One common factor links the healthiest and happiest societies: the degree of equality among their members. Further, more unequal societies are bad for everyone within them-the rich and middle class as well as the poor.
This is something that takes a lot of practice, and many schools don't or can't teach it. Fear not, it's easier than it sounds.
First, some background:
http://www.amazon.com/Global-History-Modern-Historiography/dp/0582096065
This will introduce you to most of the historical method used today. It's quite boring, but if you're going to study history, you'll need to get used to reading some pretty dry material.
For a styleguide, use Diana Hacker's:
http://www.amazon.com/Pocket-Style-Manual-Diana-Hacker/dp/0312542542/
It will teach you everything you need to know about citations.
As far as getting better at source analysis, that's something that comes with time in class and practice with primary and secondary source documents. If you're just going into college, it's something you're going to learn naturally.
However, I do have some tips.
-The main goal of a piece of historiography is to bring you to a thesis and then clearly support that argument. All REAL historiography asks a historical question of some sort. I.E. not when and where, but a more contextual why and how.
-Real historiography is produced 99.9% of the time by a university press, NOT A PRIVATE FIRM. If a celebrity wrote it, it's probably not history.
-Most, if not all real historiography is going to spell out the thesis for you almost immediately.
-A lot of historiography is quite formulaic in terms of its layout and how it's put together on paper:
A. Introduction -- thesis statement and main argument followed by a brief review of past historiography on the subject.
B Section 1 of the argument with an a,b, and c point to make in support.
C just like B
D just like B again, but reinforces A a little more
E Conclusion, ties all sections together and fully reinforces A.
Not all works are like this, but almost every piece you will write in college is or should be.
Some history books that do real history (by proper historians) and are easy to find arguments in, just off the top of my head:
http://www.amazon.com/Wages-Whiteness-American-Working-Haymarket/dp/1844671453
http://www.amazon.com/Economists-Guns-Authoritarian-Development-U-S--Indonesian/dp/0804771820/
http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Battalions-Crisis-American-Nationality/dp/0805081380
For the primer on social histories, read Howard Zinn:
http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-Present/dp/0060838655/
What you're going to come across MORE often than books is a series of articles that make different (sometimes conflicting) points about a historical issue: (I can't really link the ones I have because of copyright [they won't load without a password], but check out google scholar until you have access to a university library)
Virtually any subject can be researched, you just have to look in the right place and keep an open mind about your thesis. Just because you've found a source that blows away your thesis doesn't mean it's invalid. If you find a wealth of that kind of stuff, you might want to rethink your position, though.
This isn't comprehensive, but I hope it helps. Get into a methods class AS FAST AS POSSIBLE and your degree program will go much, much smoother for you.
That was the first serious history book I loved. The rise in particular is amazing as a primary source, as Shirer was a journalist in Austria before and after the Anschluss. Just don’t put too much stock in what he has to say about teutons.
Also, my French exchange student just about had a conniption when he saw the swastika on the spine on my bookshelf.
Edit: while I’m here I’m going to recommend my current favorite history of WWII, The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze. I’ve never found economics so fascinating, or been more thoroughly convinced that Speer should’ve hanged.
Before 2008 spirits were high and low depending on where you were invested. Remember that the .com bubble had just popped a few years earlier, which stung a lot of people, but that the real estate run-up began right about the same time the .com boom ended.
After the downturn it horribly, horribly sucked except for people who were foresighted enough to get short real estate-related derivatives.
Which I wasn't, so for us the downturn sucked, sucked, sucked.
Libertarians, specifically ancaps, literally started /r/EndDemocracy and wrote books like Democracy the God that Failed and articles like A Libertarian Case for Monarchy.
Whether you personally realize it or not, libertarians really do hate democracy and want to replace it with strongman dictators, or monarchs in polite terms.
Very interesting book, it's called Nickel and Dimed.
Meltdown By Thomas Woods is what you are looking for in regard to the causes of the collapse.
His later book, Rollback outlines the solutions.
https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/09/05/were-nazis-socialists/
https://www.reddit.com/r/JordanPeterson/comments/9jx6mb/i_thought_we_were_comrades/e6wclyf
IMO the higher the income gap gets, the more people will act like this. There is a whole book on this subject, and how it affects people.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies/dp/1608193411
Race is fake as fuck, it's a scam made up by rich whites in the 1600s to divide the working class. The Romans didn't see themselves as white, they hated "barbarians" to be sure, but their ways of categorizing people as subhuman did not at all line up with our modern conception of race (which itself doesn't line up with our pre-1900s conception of race, when the hell did those paddies get rights anyway?). The current system didn't begin until rich whites needed a way to justify slavery and to keep the slaves, indentured servants, and poor whites from working together to overthrow them.
Here's a long video about this,
a short video about this,
a book about this,
and another short video about fascism.
Also, "degeneracy" is unironically good, bourgeois social mores have to fucking die already.
> Sounds like more conspiracy bullshit with no actual proof
Dude, so many books and articles have been written about this. The fact that this is new to you does not make it a conspiracy theory. It's not even controversial.
Western economists at the IMF in the 90's prescribed a set of policies, now colloquially known as 'shock therapy', to emerging market nations. In Russia these were prescribed ostensibly to help clamp down on an incipient hyperinflation. The radical policies consisted of a simultaneous elimination of all price/currency controls, wholesale privatization of all state-owned industry, and trade liberalization. The results were devastating, and allowed for a looting of the Russian economy by Western capital and, later, by Russian oligarchs in collusion with Boris Yeltsin.
Jeffrey Sachs, who was one of Yeltsin's advisors, has written much about his role in the crisis, and still feels the need to defend his record. Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel laureate, has a chapter in his book Globalization and its Discontents called "Who lost Russia?" in which he lays the blame square at the feet of free-market economists prescribing economic shock-therapy. Some believe that Larry Summers lost his bid to become President of the World Bank because of his role in the Russian economic reform project(also see: How Harvard Lost Russia for more about Summers).
Other books:
Sale of the Century, by Chrystia Freeland(formerly the global editor-at-large at Reuters)
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein
How do we know you're really one of the first two redditors, and not just some guy trying to profit by pulling one over on the internet?
> Trappist brews
You got a favorite? How do you spell it?
> White Man's Burden
I assume you mean this one, right? Turns out it's a pretty popular title.
Free market to an extent.
Skimming the wikipedia page doesn't make you an expert on the economy. The markets were not planned, but the government stepped in when the health of the nation depended on it. Ebs and flows were common and expected. Subversion of the nation/the peoples would be dealt with.
Do actual research of the economy, don't be a retarded right winger who sees "socialist" and thinks "holy fuck nazis were left wing communists".
​
https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Revolution-Ideology-Programs-Foreign/dp/0988368234/ref=pd_rhf_se_s_cp_0_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0988368234&pd_rd_r=bd9c2c5d-283b-4811-bca8-9ac222f69ce3&pd_rd_w=nxQzY&pd_rd_wg=wBgVE&psc=1&refRID=PX3VCSQPKBMYN7FV82YS
>I think connecting usury to Judaism is incorrect, and offensive.
It's still the historical foundation of modern banking systems. One which gave Europe a decisive economic advantage leading to the Western dominated world we live in.
All Abrahamic faiths (Jews, Christians and Muslims) have prohibitions against usury. In Judaism's case, it only banned charging fellow Jews interest. A fact exploited by various Gentile city states looking to finance their mercenary driven proxy wars. This loophole provided an incentive to lessen Christian oppression while integrating/exploiting Jews into the Catholic dominated society.
Check out Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money if you're interested in going further forward or back.
Unrelated to this thread but to the OP, don't forget that the Bible craps on currency exchange too.
The Shock Doctrine. Pretty eye opening.
For a broader look at the military and economic coercion of Latin America from the 1950s to the 1980s, see The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. For her coverage of Argentina, she draws heavily on True Crimes: Rodolfo Walsh and the Role of the Intellectual in Latin American Politics, which provides a great feel for the economic and social changes resulting from the country's various coups and uprisings.
This is admittedly a very leftist point of view of the situation, and one based more in issues of populism vs. neoliberalism in general than in Argentina specifically. For more on your specific question, this seems like a great starting point, if you haven't looked into it already: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Argentina
EDIT: Here's a solid primary source on US support of the Argentine military junta in 1976: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB133/
This doesn't make any sense to me. If there is more capital, that means larger projects can be invested in. Roads, high speed rail, moon colonies, what have you. Speculation or investment can occur at any level of capital, and there's no reason to have more of one than the other.
People keep trying to make the point that speculation causes bubbles, but I don't buy it. People are always speculating, but bubbles only occur when that speculation is pointed in a systematic direction. There are so many investors with so many different ideas that there's no reason for a systematic unification of investment, unless there is some significant outside force operating on the market. There is a strong argument that the federal reserve system provided that outside force for each of our bubbles.
Here is a great source
Fannie and Freddie made up less than 1/5 of the crisis.
source source source
From what I can tell, the big frustration is the staunching of left-accelerationism by giving the rich a means to generate goodwill, thus depriving the left of an otherwise ideal political villain and causing perpetuation of the status quo.
The biggest thought leader to emerge from philanthropist-bashing seems to be Anand Giridharadas, who wrote Winners Take All and gave many popular interviews about a year ago e.g. this 1hr confrontational lecture at Google. Giridharadas' main punching bag is the Aspen/Davos crowd, who favor market-based solutions to social problems. Giridharadas claims these social entrepreneurs perpetuate the status quo at minimum cost. Norman Borlaug of the Rockefeller Foundation seems like a pretty damning counterexample. The left might counter that the government has also funded breakthrough research and multiple discovery would apply to Bourlag's wheat innovations. Another counter might be that we are now in a low growth zero-sum world, so these multiplicative investments are not realistic. I tend to side with Scott in advocating for more variation in funding sources, assuming billionaires remain as magnanimous and competent as they have been for the past ~130 years.
Vox is also attempting to make this issue more salient. The quasi-EA podcast Future Perfect spent a season arguing against billionaire philanthropy. It's about what you'd expect from Vox. I find biographies of turn of twentieth century industrialists much more compelling and informative than these mini-biographies nested in political arguments, but some might prefer the latter.
As /u/t8nlink has already suggested but what I think is worth reiterating is using /r/communism101, which will likely become the most important sub to you for learning about socialism and communism.
In my opinion, the best start to Marxian economics is Kapitalism101's Law of Value series on YouTube. These videos are highly accessible, easy to understand, and fun (at least compared to other resources of Marxist knowledge). /u/audiored has linked to Kapitalism101's WordPress blog, which is an essential supplement to the videos.
/u/Moontouch has linked to Richard Wolff's Introduction to Marxism series on YouTube - you should check it out.
You should probably also look over the Welcome to Socialism page on the /r/socialism wiki, as well as the Suggested Readings.
Eventually, you're going to want to read Das Kapital. If you want to read it as a .pdf, here's the link to the marxists.org file, but if you prefer a hard copy, I recommend the Penguin Classics edition. But don't feel at all pressured to read it just yet - it is a very dense work.
If you have any questions, please feel free to shoot me a PM anytime. I'm pretty busy most of the time, but I'll make sure to set some time aside.
>How did they ruin the economy?
Oh I dunno, maybe by forcing inflation on the country and then trying to shore it up by ransacking, pillaging and having many of the able bodied workers sent off to die.
>but the Weimar Republic had a torched economy.
It wasn't great, sure.
> Hitler brought unemployment from a high of 35% in 1932 to below 1% by the time Paul von Hindenburg died (1934).
Hitler and his cronies cooked the books on employment figures. That's Nazi Politics 101.
Of course, Global economic recovery was a pretty good thing for the whole world.
>. How does that qualify as 'ruining' the economy? Lol
Unsustainable industries
No ability to import goods
No ability to produce important domestic goods
Large numbers of people removed from employment record
Certain leaders, scientists and professionals barred from further work
>You have every excuse in the book.
Yes, [this book] (https://www.amazon.ca/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208)
Do your homework champ
>The Rothschilds: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothschild_family
Where's the evidence?
>Ludwig Wittgenstein: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein
Where's the evidence?
>You should know the Rothschilds. They are probably the richest family the world has ever known. Trillionaires. Of course, not so much anymore, but the story was different a few decades ago.
and?
Speaking on Germany, Hitler and other leading Nazis made a big point of not having women work outside the home to assist in the war effort as well as maintaining the idea that life would "continue as normal" even when it was apparent that life was anything but during the early stages of the war.
This meant mainly that German industry was not completely focused on assisting the German war effort, and the parts that were focused on war production drew heavily upon foreign and slave labor pools in order to free up German men for military service. Even then, Germany didn't officially enter a state of Total War until early 1943, and measures were still taken to ensure German women weren't prioritized to assist in the war industry when their assistance could have been useful. Slave and foreign labor were seen as the chief sources of labor to be capitalized before women were even considered a potential source of labor. This obviously began to change as the war closed in on Germany's borders.
Whereas in WWI, the German government did not have nearly as many reservations about employing German women in the war effort. I cannot speak as specifically about German industry and output during WWI (I'm not as well read there), but I do know that women were called upon to work in the industry without nearly as many reservations than the Nazi government had during WWII.
Further reading:
Germany At War by Richard Evans
Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze
The End by Ian Kershaw
I can think of a few
A pretty radical thing to say but a thing that must be said.
Democracy is the worst form of tyranny. It fools the mob into thinking it has the might of power, when in reality that power is most concentrated and unaccountable in a democracy.
Many libertarians have already theorized on why Monarchy is even a better form of governance than Democracy. For those interested in reading more check our: http://www.amazon.ca/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Monarchy-Natural/dp/0765808684
Great video Jeff! Keep them coming please!
People have no concept anymore just how well private organizations had the societal issues of welfare, healthcare, insurance and more, well handled through voluntary organizations, mutual aid societies, and fraternal organizations until the big government proponents started to expand their power and push those organizations out of the way. Libertarians are often accused of "hating the poor" because of our opposition to welfare, but the fact is those things were done better before the government got involved.
https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/mutual-aid-welfare-state-how-fraternal-societies-fought-poverty-and-taught
https://www.amazon.com/Mutual-Aid-Welfare-State-Fraternal/dp/0807848417
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFoXyFmmGBQ
Great post.
Highly recommended.
Is it possible that hierarchy itself causes massive social dysfunction? This was Bakunin's argument. He called it the "power principle." A similar argument is made in The Spirit Level.
Bakunin didn't reject the idea of hierarchy based on merit, but claimed that it should never be institutionalized. He and Kropotkin pointed out -- rightly -- that in "primitive" societies, hierarchies come and go. Someone is better at something? Great, let he or she take charge. But the moment that individual tries to hoard wealth or exercise power over others, we have a problem.
Here is a good book you should read on the subject https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Whiteness-Making-American-Working/dp/1844671453
Common sense doesn't stand up to the data.
> Give everyone shit, or give nobody shit, or you breed resentment.
This is true. We have lived in extremely egalitarian societies for about 95 percent of our history, so it's not surprising at all that human beings become extremely dysfunctional in hierarchical/unequal societies. The more inequality the more dysfunction. More unequal societies fare worse on every single quality of life indicator.
The right is fighting biology, essentially, a doomed mission that will probably end in extinction. The modern "left" -- also steered by billionaire psychopaths -- is no better, as they also support extreme hierarchy. Though the "left" at least talks about class and war, they reduce the most important issues to an afterthought, and focus relentlessly on ID politics.
>Ilman siionisteja slaavit olisi vapautettu kommunismin yöstä.
Ainoa asia mistä slaavit olisi vapautettu olisi ollut heidän omasta hengestänsä. Kannattaa myös lukea Adam Toozen kirja The Wages of Destruction jossa Tooze käsittelee sitä miksi Kolmas valtakunta oli vuonna 1939 tilanteessa jossa ainoat vaihtoehdot olivat puolustusleikkaukset tai sota ja velkaa oli suhteessa bruttokansantuotteeseen enemmän kuin Yhdysvalloilla oli sodan jälkeen vuonna 1945.
You might want to read this book and you might come to a slightly altered conclusion. Same end result yes, but the method emphasized more on absolute surprise on the German's part than the alleged French 'surrendermongering'.
Thought I would share that thought. It's quite an amazing read, especially if you believe the myth of Nazi Germany being an economic powerhouse.
I'm currently reading a book called The Shock Doctrine that explores how the southern cone was forced into extreme free market capitalism. The book actually explores the forced free market capitalism on a global scale but the first third of the book is mostly about South America.
I usually stick to the fantasy genre but this book is really well written and has been eye opening for me.
https://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999
Shock doctrine
You are better off reading The Shock Doctrine as it has more background and much better sources from several credible people.
Or of you are just literally challenged you could always watch the film of the book, but that is the lite version.
The IMF are gangsters and every where they go they leave a trail of debt and exploitation. Ukraine will be no exception.
Daily reminder that Democracy != Freedom, and is not even technically necessary for freedom to exist.
There's a great book called "race against the machine" on amazon for a few bucks:
http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-Machine-Accelerating-ebook/dp/B005WTR4ZI/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381504041&sr=1-1&keywords=race+against+the+machine
Well worth the $ and time for anybody interested in the topic.
Before the government took care of the poor, we took care of the poor ourselves. When the government started taking care of the poor, we figured we didn't need to anymore. Now, it's strange to imagine a world where the government doesn't take care of the poor.
This is true in the healthcare industry. Back before Medicare and Medicaid, the poor received treatment at hospitals for free or reduced cost through various private programs or through physicians donating their services.
From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967
Disclaimer: I haven't read this book, but it's on my list.
>pride in cleanliness?
Huh?
Read Alex Kerr's Dogs and Demons
I suppose there were two times when I debated whether or not to continue studying Japanese.
1-Grandma who was paying for my college basically told me I was a traitor to my country for wanting to learn about a culture/people that we had gone to war with in the past. It took many sessions of me explaining to her that people are people no matter where you go, and you can't blame a whole country for the actions of a few individuals. She eventually came around, and even started to show an interest in Japanese things (she actually went to acupuncture session). It really disheartened me to have my family tell me to stop dreaming and study something "real" though.
2-My friend recommended this book to me, and after I was only half way though I'm fairly certain I started to cry and actually gave up Japanese for a time. I suppose I was (rather) sheltered and didn't realize how dirty and ugly the world can really be behind the golden veil of news and media. It took me awhile to recover, but I did pull through.
Every time something came along to trip me up, I always remember the first time I tried to translate something from Japanese. I sat down at the kitchen table and didn't look up until almost 7 hours later. That's when I knew nothing would stand in my way. (Don't be impressed, I maybe made it like 10 pages and didn't understand a word of it.)
tldr; Haters gonna hate. Do what you want and don't worry about 'em.
The factors involved are very complicated, and I don't want to attempt to make concrete predictions other than to draw attention to the very subtle, but very powerful forces in play here.
We're in the midst of a currency war -- and Wikipedia will do a better job than I about explaining the basics, but essentially the Fed is actively and aggressively trying to devalue the dollar.
For a much more detailed analysis of the issues, and a great historical lesson in past currency wars, I can't recommend James Rickards book enough. It was really eye-opening.
Have you seen the movie The Big Short? Based on this book http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Short-Doomsday-Machine/dp/0393338827
The bailouts were a huge win for the banks. Our economy lost trillions. That's jobs, people's homes, huge amounts from their 401k. Americans killed themselves, because of what they lost.
I would add (to the chain, not that anyone will look) a read through Anand Giridharadras' «Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World»
It's not that Gates et al are not doing good, it's that their doing good is at the expense of public oversight. When a private interest (like Gates) has more say over a schools technology use, policy, and future than the public it is serving.
Billionaires absolutely need to give to charity—but they should not be able to mould the world with their "gifts."
Consider crossposting this to r/antiwork and r/latestagecapitalism
I would do it myself, but the Reddit mobile app is not working 100% for me right now
Edit: There's also a book called Winner Takes All by Anand Giridharadas that I've been meaning to read, seems pretty relevant to this sub. The author gave an interview on Democracy Now recently.
>even if the mob does graffiti up my website on occasion.
Or jump you and steal your money.
>A 230 year old legal document that has seen every President from Richard Nixon to George Washington wipe his ass with it when he finds it inconvenient doesn't protect people from anything.
Completely true.
>Democracy is - like it or not - the only real check on government.
Laughably foolish. Democracy is the God that failed, to quote Hans Hoppe.
>The American model – democracy – must be regarded as a historical error, economically as well as morally. Democracy promotes shortsightedness, capital waste, irresponsibility, and moral relativism. It leads to permanent compulsory income and wealth redistribution and legal uncertainty. It is counterproductive. It promotes demagoguery and egalitarianism. It is aggressive and potentially totalitarian internally, vis-à-vis its own population, as well as externally. In sum, it leads to a dramatic growth of state power, as manifested by the amount of parasitically – by means of taxation and expropriation – appropriated government income and wealth in relation to the amount of productively – through market exchange – acquired private income and wealth, and by the range and invasiveness of state legislation. Democracy is doomed to collapse, just as Soviet communism was doomed to collapse.
Source (translated from German).
Oh, I don't feel it because I'm voting against my own interests?
Let's say that's the case. Why don't I feel it?
On a side note, I certainly understand why some working class whites vote against their own interests. That's not some great mystery. There's been a lot of analysis on that question.
This book is a classic: https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Whiteness-Making-American-Working/dp/1844671453
In truth, pretty much all of them. Marx's criticisms of capitalism are generally seen by Economists as accurate. His predictions about where it would lead are where things tend to go astray. To belittle Marx because of what you think he said, and ignore all the incredible things he was bang on about, is to reveal yourself as pretty ignorant of his accomplishments and his legacy. Go read a good translation of Das Kapital vols. 1, 2, and 3, get some information from the source, think about it for yourself, then come back here and talk some shit.
A lot of those people are being fed by misguided food aid programs. Populations in Africa in particular (where birth rates are the highest in the world) are pushed beyond the carrying capacity of the local economies by perpetual food socialism. It's sort of like the opposite of the Ukrainian famine: instead of too little food, it's too much food, signalling abundance when the local conditions are actually those of severe poverty.
For more on this, books like Dead Aid and the White Man's Burden are great at explaining this phenomenon.
>I've heard of people advocating an "Ideal and stable population size" but I can't see how this would be implemented without the state. So basically, What do you think will happen in the future with regards to the growth of population and the demand it will cause?
This is complicated. One one hand, the people guided by Harvardprincetonyale dogma believe that it's their secular-sacred duty to feed the poor in Africa and to provide advice on how to manage and finance their affairs through the network of international financial institutions, NGOs, and UN-affiliated groups.
On the other, because central planning has a lot of trouble providing for growing populations (it's another variable to account for), they want to control that population growth at least somewhat. The same population growth that exceeds the capacity for those societies to provide for the new people caused by the foreign subsidies creates a problem that the same inept bureaucracy to manage through the promotion of population control programs.
There's no real way to 'solve' this problem in a clean manner. Billions of people are unfortunately reliant on the Harvardprincetonyale Axis of Ultimate Goodness for their continued survival.
Market signals provide critical information to people about whether to expand their families or to not expand them. When those market signals become distorted, people may either fail to produce sufficient children to maintain the prosperity of the society, or they may produce too many for the existing social structure to support to a general level of satisfaction.
The Soviet-Harvard delusion is that by providing food and by suppressing large-scale warfare, 'development' will proceed apace. What has resulted is that populations have exploded beyond the capacity of local economies to provide for them, and the same provision of welfare-food has empowered various dictatorial entities while preventing the emergence of local markets to help genuine society to flourish. Meanwhile, religiously-motivated armies threaten to break up some of the largest states (like Nigeria).
Unfortunately in their attempts to do good, the Axis of Ultimate Goodness has created a fragile series of powderkeg-countries where long-suppressed conflicts threaten to explode into horrific global warfare (see: Egypt). Modern humans in many parts of the world (including the developed world) have been cut off from accurate market information for a very long time, leading to distorted patterns of societal development that are ill-adapted to real conditions in the world.
My speculation that's not a prophecy at all is that three factors will prevent these population projections from being achieved:
These projections rest on a lot of ridiculous assumptions and naive math models. They're best understood at pitches for more funding. "If we don't get another billion dollars to promote condom usage, we're gonna have a big problem!" The problems are much more significant, severe, and inherently political in nature.
Population growth is neither a problem nor an unmitigated boon. It's just another factor for humans to calibrate with their desires and real conditions on Earth and within societies. Distorting price signals prevents humans from coordinating with one another in an effective way. The larger the society becomes, the more important that accurate market signals are to its continued functioning.
It would be impossible to study (as opposed to hypothesize), but waiting 10 years would almost certainly have been worse for Germany.
AFAIK, it's a commonly held view among historians that the Germans were only able to be as successful as they were because the timing was perfect for them. However, I am not a historian and I would love anyone who knows more than me to chime in (esp anyone from /r/askhistorians)
First, Stalin had just purged vast numbers of high ranking military officers (50% of the entire Soviet officer corps) and their replacements had not yet acquired the experience and knowledge necessary to be effective. The deep operation strategy that the Soviets used effectively later in the war had been developed by the 1930s. But almost everyone who was well versed in it was killed by Stalin and it was disregarded because no one wanted to be associated with the doctrines of people who were purged. In another ten years, the Soviet officer corps would likely have been better developed and the Soviet economy would have been stronger.
Second, the western powers were slow and late in preparing for war. The Germans had been preparing full-tilt since the mid-30s. If the UK and France had another ten years to prepare, I think their air forces would have been overwhelingly larger than Germany's (though they did overly rely on strategic bombers).
Third, the German economy would have collapsed by then. Germany went deep into debt to finance its military buildup, and it did not have the money to continue. Taking over Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, and Denmark allowed it to loot those countries successively and pay for more. A top source on the Nazi economy is Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction
In short: Regulatory capture in the US led to the US Government handing out large sums of money to US Companies for services that were never delivered.
See also: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Kline
yes, but who built the machines? this is why marx says that capitalists fetishize technological innovation.
yes, the idea is that labor is the only commodity available in the market which produces surplus value. Value, in marx, is defined as 'socially necessary labor time.' one should never lose sight of this definition and confuse value with either the money form of capital or which capital sui generis.
also, let us look at the reason why machines do not produce (absolute) surplus value, but only relative surplus value. machines, again, are commodities and as such are available to the market (or at least portions of it). Let us assume a certain business invests in a $25,000 machine which will eliminate several jobs, saving the company $50,000 a year. wow, thats really great, now the company can be more competitive with their pricing or, at the very least, will have a greater surplus this year. but what happens when this company's competitors start investing in these similar machines, and start undercutting our hypothetical company's profit margin. well now we see that the surplus value that the machine created was really only relative to that singular company. over time, as the machine or technological solution (or new organizational structure, or new process, or new space....) becomes the norm of the industry, the surplus value diminishes and it becomes an assumed cost of doing business.
marx again is making a class or macro-economic argument here: he does not care too much about singular capitalists making larger profits (he does in the sense that they are useful for his data on capitalists society), he is concerned with how a class of persons is able to exploit another class. within the capitalist class, yes, some are able to gain a better competitive advantage over other capitalists by being the first to utilize the latest technological achievement; however, that advantage will either spread to the entire industry as a commonplace necessity, or the company will begin to monopolize the industry.
labor as a surplus value producing commodity is useful for the entire capital class over the working class. it is the law of economics in general that labor must produce and it is the only thing capable of turning raw (or semi-raw) materials into use values. it is the law of capitalism that to produce a profit one must hire workers at a salary less than the sum of your revenue.
i would suggest reading some david harvey. he is a contemporary and really does a fantastic job at explaining marxism for the 21st century. i suggest either a companion to marx's capital vol i or the enigma of capital. the former address your question specifically in chapter 6 'relative surplus value'.
let me know if any of this is unclear or if you would like to discuss further. cheers and happy new year comrade.
I'm not precisely sure about which aspect of the problem you want to learn about, but The Spirit Level is a good introduction to the effects of inequality, whilst Capital in the twenty-first century discusses why inequality is growing.
> Your morals in terms of what's fair and what's not are yours but in order to operate a democratic state people must abide by the laws even if some dont see them as fair
Why? In the US, Martin Luther King Jr rejected the laws regarding protest while speaking out against injustice. Rosa Parks rejected the laws about blacks riding in the back of the bus. Muhammad Ali rejected the laws on conscription. If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so.
> The self determination right is an individual right
ONLY an individual right?
> includes infraeastructures, markets and territory that as of now are available to every European citizen, that the rest of Spain has contribute to sustain and create,
By that argument, the best approach would be a single, global govt. After all, why should the people of the US contribute to infrastructure ONLY they get to use. How can different countries POSSIBLY interact if they can't have shared infrastructure and markets.
No, what you're talking about is the cost of separation. It exists and is a discussion worth having once you recognize the group has the right to political autonomy. So hold the damn vote to see if you even need to get to that point. Maybe you're right and it will fail.
> the example of the job doesn't translate well.
Sure it does. After all, you quitting creates a cost on the company. They have to search and hire a new employee. They have to train them. The other employees will be less efficient and effective while they're finding someone new to replace you. So clearly there's a cost. You're trying to argue that there even exists a cost means that they shouldn't have the right to self-determination at all. That's a complete nonsequitur.
> Also since this is a nationalistic movement, they will drag the 49% of those who dont want that independence, even if huge chunks of them want to remain as spain or other free political organizations, calling for the unity of Catalonia (that by the way each year seems to be a bigger part of Spain for them). At the end of the day this is not about democracy or self determination, it's about nationalism
Maybe you're right. Maybe democracy is overrated.
Hah, you have to read Shock Doctrine to hear about some of the nasty shit Chicago-school economists have done to the world.
Read the book by Michael Lewis.
At the height of the subprime boom Fannie and Freddie's business was actually shrinking, while the large private lenders (Countrywide most notably) were expanding. It wasn't uncommon for them to push borrowers who could qualify for conforming 30s into the exotic types of mortgages. The selling, packaging, slicing, insuring and purchasing of loans was an enormously profitable engagement for everyone every step of the way.
Mortgage lenders won every time they handed out a nonconforming loan, which was a lot more valuable than a vanilla 30 year fixed. They did't care about quality because the banks were all but telling them straight out 'we'll buy anything'.
Banks profited on creation and sale of the collateral debt obligations and because the CDOs allowed them to hold less money in reserve to guard against borrower default. They didn't care about quality because they'd turn right around and package the loan into a CDO.
The insurance company AIG was winning on collecting premiums on AAA-rated securities that they thought had no chance in failing. Oh, and they got to be rated AAA because the agencies handing out the grades were paid by the banks. So if Moody's won't give Countrywide the needed grade, then Standard and Poor's across the street surely will.
Hell, even the man on the street profited by using the house's rising value as a piggy bank. Or they just speculated by buying investment property, waiting not too long of a time, and flipping it for a good profit.
If anyone wants to really understand the full extent of the crisis, pick up All the Devils are Here or Michael Lewis's The Big Short. For the tl;dr version you can read this
I wish I could say I was surprised at the level of stupidity. You realize stock is ownership of public companies that......provide economic value? I don't even want to bother correcting everything else you said. Rather, here's a link to an entry economics book that might help you begin to understand the topic. https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536700354&sr=8-1&keywords=basic+economics&dpID=41MDRqLIVoL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch
I recommend just jumping into the first volume of Das Kapital. It isn't that bad. In fact, it's quite an enjoyable read (for the most part). The first part of it (roughly 200 pages) is fairly difficult and technical, but after that it becomes much more manageable. In fact you could probably even skip the first part and then go back to it later. In any case, you're going to want to re-read that first part multiple times as time goes on and you see more material. You could even read 2) and 3) in /u/jakehmw's post alongside it, and with those I'd also recommend David Harvey's companion. My own approach was to jump right in to Capital, following Harvey's companion and online lectures, and further consulting the other two books (which I didn't finish until after I finished Capital). I have found this approach very rewarding and not that strenuous. It opened up a lot of different directions that I could choose from depending on my interests.
It took me a summer to get through the first volume and those supplementary books. You just need to make sure to not go down too many rabbit-holes as you read it. Just get it done and you'll get a better idea of where you want to go next, and you'll be better equipped when you go there.
Edit: I recommend this copy of the first volume of Capital and here are Harvey's lectures. You can organize a reading schedule in terms of those lectures: one lecture (and the corresponding reading material) per week, for example.
Good luck and have fun!
SERIOUSLY YOU CAN BUY IT ON AMAZON! 😂😂😂 THIS IS SO FREAKING FUNNY! 😂😂😂 I'M ACTUALLY CRYING RIGHT NOW 😂😂😂
how about we start with this one.
Shirer for sure, Speer should be the tenth book you read about that subject, not the first or even second. Speer is simply full of lies and omissions.
May I suggest "The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy" by Adam Tooze.
ps "Perhaps America will one day go fascist democratically." - William L. Shirer
>Would you support an invasion of Syria? Iran? North Korea? Egypt? Saudi Arabia? China? Or just one where Americans can happily watch death and destruction from their living rooms while cheering for "Muh cuntry nd muh freedom"?
Syria, yes, Iran, not if iran deal holds up and liberalization continues, north korea idk, egypt no, saudi arabia no, china no
>Neoliberals in support of the murder of civilians by the state, classy.
https://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999
Not a direct answer to your question, but if this is a subject you're interested in I cannot recommend Adam Tooze's Wages of Destruction enough.
read up on all of central and south america..plus the middle east, southeast asia, AFRICA...Oh! The list goes on and on!
Read John Perkins book Confessions of an Economic Hitman to get a good understanding of how things work.
Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine is a good supplement.
I'm referencing Tocqueville's most popular work, Democracy in America. In it he examines how American life works compared to what he has experienced in Europe and is amazed at the vibrant civil society in America. To be honest, I have not read it through, but American civil society is something that has been shrinking more and more over time as reliance on the state grows. For example, if you are interested to see how things such as unemployment insurance and aid to the poor worked before the state gave itself a monopoly on it, From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967 is the definitive work on that.
What all of this implies to me is a direct refutation of the charge laid against libertarians that we are anti-social and just care about ourselves. I think it is the exact opposite. In the absence of the state, we are forced to see the care of our neighbor as our own responsibility, not just some thing that we cast a vote for and feel good about ourselves and call it a day. We are forced to work together to solve problems more frequently instead of the society reliant on the state so much today that people now call the police to tell their neighbors to be quiet. What happens when we rely on government to take care of these things is it becomes much more impersonal. We somehow think that the money taken automatically out of our taxes is all that needs to be done.
1.) Answers will vary depending on what "wing" of libertarianism someone adheres to. I'll just focus on two.
Minarchists (Ron Paul/Gary Johnson types) would argue some level of taxation is necessary to maintain an exponentially smaller government than exists now. This vision of government would operate essentially only defense, courts, and police. Minarchists will generally argue for a simplistic consumption tax or flat tax of some sort. Some argue for limited tariffs instead so our citizens are not directly taxed at any point. Their approach is debated internally, but united in that the net taxation would be dramatically reduced. In this world, government continues to collect revenue and spend it on its very limited endeavors - not much has changed besides the scale of collections and operations.
Anarcho-capitalists (Rothbard types) would say that you cannot be logically consistent in arguing the inefficiency of government and moral issue of taxation, which minarchists do argue, and then still accept its role in society. These types will argue for a peaceful transition to an entirely pure market based economy via the privatization of all government services. They point that government services already have private equivalents which are always more efficient: Fedex/UPS vs USPS, government schools vs. private schools, privately operated toll roads, private airport security (which is already the norm in some other developed countries), private binding arbitration, etc. This includes regulatory bodies: NSF and Underwriters Laboratories are real examples of private sector regulators where companies pay to have their products evaluated and approved based on their objective third party standards. So, to answer your question: in their world, government doesn't operate at all and instead all interaction is through voluntary contracts in the market.
Minarchists are usually somewhat sympathetic to the anarcho-capitalism view, but will say it is fantasy because the general populace already views government as a wholly benevolent entity. Personally, I generally believe in anarcho-capitalism and do believe government as we know it is obsolete and unnecessary in the modern world. In the 20th century capitalism brought us a previously unfathomable increase in the standard of living while the institution of government meanwhile slaughtered hundreds of millions in the name of communism, World War I and II, etc. But, off my soap box for now.
2.) This is hard to answer concisely, so I'll instead recommend three books.
The first is FDR: New Deal or Raw Deal. It reviews objective data to argue that FDR & friends were not the godsent savior of the world that government schools teach. The, very oversimplified, conclusion of this book is that FDR terrorized the market with incredibly arbitrary and tyrannical intrusions during his tenure and prolonged what could have been a comparatively simple market correction into the "Great Depression" as we know it. After his death, it argues, the market was returned to a state of normalcy and we were given the incredible boom that followed the end of World War II. If you're really interested in the topic, I suggest giving it a read. It's rather dry, but very interesting since it goes against everything we're taught.
The second book is to review how the government, via the Federal Reserve, intrudes into the economy by manipulating interest rates and thus exacerbating the natural cyclical nature of the market. The Austrian School of Economics, the economic theory that is most often associated with all of libertarianism, argues this is where the Great Depression and, more recently, Great Recession, came from. An easy introduction to this topic is End the Fed. Its, very oversimplified, conclusion is that the Federal Reserve artificially stimulates demand by fixing interest rates below what they would be in an untainted market. This then leads to overconsumption (the bubble) in a whatever area of the economy the government decides is politically fashionable to push at the time.
The third book is to bring in a modern context about the government's role in the 2008 crisis: Meltdown. It applies the Austrian Economic view onto the most modern economic crisis. It's writing style is much more interesting than the first two books I offered and, frankly, it's just more interesting since it happened in our lifetime. The principles can also be applied to the Great Depression and it also references the mistakes made in dealing with it as well since we basically followed the same path. Its, very oversimplified, conclusion is that the government is wholly responsible for the 2008 crisis by setting up an environment that incentivized overconsumption. By violating basic economic laws, it argues, the government created a situation that was doomed to fail and nothing could have stopped it from all crashing down.
3.) To be logically consistent, yes. Heavily regulating economic activities will inevitably spill over into regulating social activities. As a small example, the IRS selectively targeted conservative groups because of their views and sought to destroy them. By having this economic intrusion into the market (the entirety of the IRS as an institution), the government attempted to purge these groups of their basic human right to self-expression.
4.) I do not believe in it. Simply by being born in a physical location does not enslave you into what a former generation believed was your "role" in society. As a small example, you are in no way morally obligated to pay for the inactivity of senior citizens through Social Security (or whatever similar program your country has if you are outside of the US). To say that you are because FDR & friends, before you were ever born, decided to deploy Social Security as a cash grab is sheer nonsense. You are not a slave to some ivory tower politician(s)'s whimsical views on what your "lawful role" in society is supposed to be.
edit: formatting, oops.
As mentioned in the OP the primary dataset is from Race Against the Machine by Andrew McAfee. For a more succinct version of data to look at you can read the Assocaited Press Article from January or Andrew McAfees TED talk. As for causality, that is detailed best in the book, i suggest you read it.
EDIT: I also just came across this infographic which also should help you understand what is happening.
Not only is inequality bad for people at the bottom of society; its also, surprisingly, bad for the people at the top too. The Spirit Level from 2011, lays this out in excruciating detail showing that for every conceivable metric of societal well being, more equal societies are better than than less equal ones. It does this by comparing both OECD countries and comparing between US states.
I'm willing to believe you that people do conflate politics and phenotype. However, I strongly doubt that, in the case of whiteness, such a conflation is warranted. Moreover, I'd be willing to bet that most of the people who interact with and observe the IOTBW phenomenon know this. This is because the struggle over left-idpol these days appears to be largely an intra-white phenomenon. There has been significant news coverage and discussion of this. Moreover, whites do not vote as a monolithic ethnic bloc.
Now, it's true that battles over the concept of "whiteness" map fairly cleanly onto some political divides (though you'll still see lots of putatively conservative outlets like National Review disclaiming "whiteness" in favor of the idea of the U.S. as a color-blind, propositional nation), but that's a fight over a sociological category, not an actual phenotype. Robin DiAngelo is phenotypically white. David Roediger is phenotypically white. Noel Ignatiev was white. Tim Wise is phenotypically white. Etc., etc. So yeah, IOTBW is an ideological statement as well as a racial one. But IOTBW is not the same as elevating phenotypic preference to within the same ballpark as culture and criminality in choosing neighbors and family. Phenotypic preference places bike-lock professor dude above Daryl Davis, which just seems [Edit: removed an unnecessarily inflammatory word] like an unacceptable result to me.
I think your idea of seeking assistance is an excellent one. Most people don't realize the impact of mental health in tackling intellectually challenging tasks. An athlete knows that to perform well, they must take care of their physical health by working out, controlling diet, etc... Similarly, one with intellectual pursuits need to take care of their mental health, but often they are unfamiliar on how to do so. Sleeping well, eating properly, etc. are very important, and instead of a coach, as in the case of an athlete, counselling services, psychologists, psychiatrists, etc. can help in training for mental health.
Be honest when working with Counselling Services or psychotherapists. If CS hasn't been working well for you, explain to them why you think that is. They will provide you with a list of psychologists / therapists in the area. The University Health Insurance Policy (UHIP) covers 80% of the costs of a psychologist. CS will explain this to you in greater detail.
Other than that, I can recommend a few things to get in better (mental) shape.
And remember, this is exactly why you're here in University! This is part of your education, and as you tackle these challenges, you will grow as a person. Good luck!
Definitely agree with you on the comment that using never is...almost never a good strategy.
Nonetheless I imagine what this overzealous individual is speaking to is a fairly legitimate point regarding how billionaires are highly invested in preserving the status quo. Much of their philanthropy, while coming from a good place (probably where I disagree with Oxytokin), serves to make society think that the current system will look out for the least fortunate when that is really not true. Significant reforms would be needed to do that properly, including but not limited to a return to very high marginal tax rates for extremely high earners.
The book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World speaks to this.
I would like to summarize JBP's position. Capitalism is not the best system but it works. It sucks on certain cases but it works. Also socialists ( most of them but a few are genuine caring individuals driven by compassion and horror at the poverty of the people. Most hate the rich , also George Orwell commentated on that in his book road to Wigan pier.) They seek to correct a system without correcting themselves first which proves they cannot correct the system. Also poverty is declining due to capitalism and it allows for creativity and a system which is in tune with natural law of inequality and the 80/20 rule.
as long as there is income and output there will be hierarchy and inequality. Humanity is corrupt and it will have corruption in every human endeavour.
also any system which tries to work against the natural law fails and falls short for numerous reasons.
Socialism cannot work in a psychological way due to human nature.
by the way , not my position , just a summary ( plenty of paraphrasing )
here are references https://youtu.be/f-wWBGo6a2w
https://youtu.be/6G59zsjM2UI
https://youtu.be/I8Xc2_FtpHI
here are some of Jordan’s looks on economics. https://youtu.be/bOMksnSaAJ4
https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Factfulness#
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730
$78b a year? Really?
Thanks for the meme, guys.
Basic Economics https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465060730/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_a6IPCbZHR1ZWY
https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Needs-Aristocracy-Peregrine-Worsthorne-ebook/dp/B0047DVIE8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539794329&sr=8-1&keywords=democracy+needs+aristocracy
https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Perspectives-Democratic/dp/0765808684/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539794369&sr=8-1&keywords=democracy+the+god+that+failed+by+hans-hermann+hoppe
https://www.amazon.com/Liberty-Equality-Challenge-Our-Time-ebook/dp/B0074B6T94/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539794438&sr=8-1&keywords=erik+von+kuehnelt-leddihn
Free to Choose
and Basic Economics
More modern look at the current state of the US - By the People
A few white Pastors I know are becoming more vocal and critical regarding POTUS and Friends, but in general I've found that while the conversation can be had, its next to impossible to actually change anyone's mind. Of course, we could just chalk it up to my poor persuasion skills.
It's truly tragic that the Republicans grabbed the 'God' theme. Sure, sure, we wanted to avoid the domino effect and wanted to unite the country, but hey, guess what? Jesus mentioned something about preaching to ALL nations, so I'd think that'd include communists and even countries labeled as an 'enemy'.
I'd also want to suggest that there are plenty of 'phony' Christians out there who are warping the image of "Christians voting for Trump", but I've met enough 'real' Christians who voted Trump. Something about economics and saving babies. It'd be nice if they read some literature, such as Basic Economics so that they'd actually have a basic understanding of the topic, and maybe even Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger so that they can better understand how well they truly have it (and might even stop griping about 'government handouts').
Despite the uphill battle, I'd encourage the conversation. Best case, they learn that Jesus wasn't a rich white man who bought off the Pharisees and only loved English-speaking peoples of pale complexion. Apologies for the minor rant, I'm somewhat annoyed with the world on this fine morning.
You want evidence that people buy less of something that costs more?
OK.
Some of the comments here are similar to some of the hypotheses in Andrew McAfee's book Race Against the Machine.
From the Amazon summary:
In Race Against the Machine Brynjolfsson and McAfee bring together a range of statistics, examples, and arguments to show that technological progress is accelerating, and that this trend has deep consequences for skills, wages, and jobs. The book makes the case that employment prospects are grim for many today not because there's been technology has stagnated, but instead because we humans and our organizations aren't keeping up.
http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-The-Machine-ebook/dp/B005WTR4ZI
Race Against The Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy
I was inspired by this, but can't make salad dressing. And White Man's Burden is breadpig required reading ;)
Historical inaccuracies in a Hollywood movie? Never!
>Germany controlled some 36 percent of European wealth by 1940, while the Soviet Union possessed about 28 percent (see Table 3.3). In the spring of 1940, Germany conquered Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, and Norway and immediately began exploiting their economies, adding to its wealth advantage over the Soviet Union.^65 The Wehrmacht then invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, and within six months Germany controlled nearly all Soviet territory west of Moscow, which was prime real estate. By late 1941, the Soviet Union had lost territory that held 41 percent of its railway lines, 42 percent of its electricity-generating capacity, 71 percent of its iron ore, 63 percent of its coal, and 58 percent of its capacity to make crude steel.^66 In the spring of 1942, the Nazi war machine further extended its reach by driving deep into the oil-rich Caucasus region. The Soviet Union lost roughly 40 percent of its national income between 1940 and 1942.^67 Germany appears to have held more than a 3:1 advantage in economic might over the Soviet Union by 1942 (see Table 3.4).
>Despite Germany's profound advantage in latent power, the Soviet war economy amazingly outproduced the German war economy over the course of the war and helped shift the balance of power in the Red Army's favor. As described earlier, the Soviet Union produced 2.2 times as many tanks as Germany and 1.3 times as many airplanes between 1941 and 1945. What is most astonishing is that the Soviets even outproduced the Germans in the early years of the war, when German control of Soviet territory was at its peak and the Allied bombing campaign was having barely any effect on the German war economy. The Soviet Union, for example, produced 24,446 tanks in 1942; Germany produced 9,200. The ratio of artillery pieces for 1942 was 127,000 to 12,000 in the Soviets' favor.^68 This asymmetry in weapons production eventually led to a significant Soviet advantage in the balance of ground forces. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Soviets had a slight advantage in number of divisions - 211:199 - the key indicator of military strength. By January 1945, however, there were 473 Soviet divisions and only 276 German divisions, and the average Red Army division was far better equipped with weapons and vehicles than the average Wehrmacht division.^69
>How did the Soviet Union manage to produce so much more weaponry than a much wealthier Nazi Germany? One possible answer is that the Soviet Union spent a larger percentage of its available wealth on the military than did the Third Reich. But in fact Germany devoted a slightly larger percentage of its national income to defense than did the Soviet Union. The German advantage in defense spending over the Soviets in 1942, for example, was 63 to 61 percent; in 1943, it was 70 to 61 percent.^70 The Allies' strategic bombing campaign might well have hurt German war production in the last months of the war, but as noted above, the Soviet Union was turning out greater numbers of weapons than Germany long before the bombing campaign began to have any significant effect on German output. The Soviet effort was also helped by the U.S. Lend-Lease program, although that aid accounts for only a small percentage of Soviet output.^71 The main reason that the Soviet Union produced so many more weapons than Germany is that the Soviets did a much better job of rationalizing their economy to meet the demands of total war. In particular, the Soviet (and American) economy was far better organized than the German economy for mass producing weaponry.^72
[Source.]
(http://books.google.com/books?id=lDzCD_C_ipoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=John+Mearsheimer&hl=en&sa=X&ei=EYHYU4PyFMKPyASh5YHgBA&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=snippet&q=soviet&f=false)
See also:
Accounting for War: Soviet Production, Employment, and the Defence Burden, 1940-1945 by Mark Harrison
The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze
>The Gross National Product had increased by ten-fold in 1938
GDP alone is hardly the measure of the health of an economy in this case. If you look at official numbers, about 10% of that GDP was tied into direct rearmament efforts. That doesn't include all the short-term borrowing that the Nazis had to do to push rearmament even further (ie: MEFO bills).
In addition to that, a lot of spending and investment was ancillary to the armament industry, for example while not counted as a direct military expenditure, the financing for expanding civilian truck factories. Or efforts in production of synthetic oil.
I also find it funny you used the GDP graph from the Economy of Nazi Germany wiki page, but clearly did not read the page. Let me help you out:
>The Nazis believed in war as the primary engine of human progress, and argued that the purpose of a country’s economy should be to enable that country to fight and win wars of expansion.[4] As such, almost immediately after coming to power, they embarked on a vast program of military rearmament, which quickly dwarfed civilian investment.[5] During the 1930s, Nazi Germany increased its military spending faster than any other state in peacetime,[6] and the military eventually came to represent the majority of the German economy in the 1940s.[7] This was funded mainly through deficit financing before the war, and the Nazis expected to cover their debt by plundering the wealth of conquered nations during and after the war.[8] Such plunder did occur, but its results fell far short of Nazi expectations.[9]
So why is this bad? Because weapons do not increase capital, they do not improve the standard of living, once they are produced, without a war, they do not create jobs. So tying a majority of your economy in military spending is really a dumb move.
Also there's a bunch of other issues like shortages of raw materials, the maintenance of the Gold Standard (lul), the terribad export policy of the Nazis, the mounting debt, the shortage of foreign exchange, etc.
If you really want to learn about the economy of Nazi Germany, read Tooze, who authored pretty much the best book on the subject, instead of a 2h30 Youtube video.
https://www.amazon.ca/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
This book. Read it.
Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life
http://www.amazon.com/Supercapitalism-Transformation-Business-Democracy-Everyday/dp/0307265617
Also:
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215629427&sr=1-1
My go to recs include a mix of articles, videos, and books. Check out Albert Einstein's Why Socialism? After that maybe watch Richard Wolff's Intro to Marxism. Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine is not a socialist book per se, but it illustrates the evils of capitalism and the real world consequences of historical atrocities committed in the name capitalist interests. Also, you should read primary texts. Read Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky. This Study Guide for Revolutionaries has essentially all of the canonized Marxist works categorized like a syllabus. If you haven't read the Manifesto yet, be sure to knock that one out too! Hope these suggestions help!
I wrote a paper analyzing Chilean politics last year. The thesis was that libertarianism, Friendmanite neoliberalism, etc., in pure form, can only exist under authoritarian or totalitarian (in the case of Ayn Rand's objectivist capitalism) regimes and are logically incompatible with democracy.
The conclusion was that if people are ever given a vote, they will by and large vote against purist constructs of these political theories, and I used Chilean politics to demonstrate the point. I presented the argument in class and the logic of it was accepted, even by the two libertarian leaning classmates, but sadly it didn't move them at all. They concluded essentially that political freedom is unnecessary for real freedom™.
EDIT: If anyone is interested in learning more about the very fascinating "libertarian" dictatorship in Chile, and how it was implemented with the help of Milton Friedman, I suggest checking out Naomi Kline's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. She's definitely a leftist, and so it should be read with her bias in mind, but she's a fantastic writer and journalist and there's enough factual information to form your own perspectives on the matter without relying completely on her analysis.
And read the Shock Doctrine. Some of Klein's arguments are iffy, but on the whole it is possibly the saddest book I have ever read.
https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-God-That-Failed-Perspectives/dp/0765808684/
Geez, where to start?
First of all, since WWII there has only been one election decided by 10% or more, and that was Reagan. Every other election has been nearly 50/50 between the two parties. No matter the changes in demographics, which states voted what, which issues matter, etc. Always basically a coin toss as to who wins.
So to say "We are imploding as a country" is just hyperbolic idiocy. We are, as we have been for 70 years, divided in half. Seriously, just stop. If the election results on one hand or the "protests" on the other cause you to think anything real has changed, grab some smelling salts, grab your fainting couch, grab a Xanax, get a therapist, whatever, but seriously stop being such a drama queen. Half the county is Republican, as it has been for nearly a century, and the Democratic left is a bunch of cry babies, as they have been since 1969 at the latest. Just stop.
Second, this whole massive angst is, again, such a great example of why democracy is not a great idea. It takes EVERYTHING related to government - law, economics, foreign policy, war, whatever - and transforms it into an ideological statement about life, the universe, amd everything. It makes it such a bigger deal than it ever would otherwise be. As everyone, from democracy's supporters to its critics acknowledge. It's not that important. Just let it go.
Have you read "Nickel and Dimed"? It was written and published long before the 2008 financial crash, but is still totally relevant today:
http://www.amazon.com/Nickel-Dimed-Not-Getting-America/dp/0805063897
or better yet, some non-fiction.
http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0805079831
While that article is great, also check out http://www.amazon.com/Mutual-Aid-Welfare-State-Fraternal/dp/0807848417
Furthermore, remember that you would need a lot less charity when all the large corporations aren't distorting the market with subsidies and favoritism and the Fed doesn't cause major business cycles and government doesn't distort the market by both taxing and spending.
Dogs and Demons: The Rise and Fall of Modern Japan by Alex Kerr.
This is an important read that bypasses a lot of the Japanophiles' microscopic worldview.
http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0809039435
You should read Currency Wars and The Death Of Money if you're interested in the collapse of the USD and others.
http://www.amazon.com/Currency-Wars-Making-Global-Crisis/dp/1591845564/ref=sr_1_1_ha?ie=UTF8&qid=1368855192&sr=8-1&keywords=currency+wars
But if you think about it for a second, it should be self-evident. If it was true, no investor would have more money than any other, as choosing an investment would reduce to statistical chance. Yet, many do.
Paul's position has that the market will regulate itself and that the government is there to enforce contracts and punish anyone who commits fraud.
I'll explain it in my own words about banks since I'm not sure if Paul would agree with me 100%. So here's the deal: if you open a bank account and deposit money in it, the bank is 100% obligated to allow you to withdraw your money on demand. If they are unable to return customers' money, the bank has broken the contract and has basically committed an act of fraud. It might be given say a 30 day period (I'm just making this up as an example) to come up with the money, and if not, the owners of the bank would be punished - personally I'd like to see life in prison or the death penalty for such incidents b/c ruining peoples' financial lives is equivalent to ruining their lives, so ruining the bankers' lives by giving them life in prison or taking away their lives is fair punishment (you can disagree, that's my personal view).
In a libertarian world, the market would regulate itself: bankers want to make money and they don't want to be thrown in jail. You don't need regulators watching over the bankers b/c bankers would police themselves in fear of being thrown in jail - it would be a whole lot nicer to live free and make money instead. But wait - why did the banks take the big risks and not police themselves and cause a financial meltdown? They had incentive NOT to do so provided by the government. Back in the year 2000 I believe there was a front page headline on the Financial Times talking about the "Greenspan Put". Let me copy a passage from Ron Paul's friend Tom Woods who wrote in his book Meltdown:
>Analysts have called this the "Greenspan put," what the Financial Times describes as the views that "when markets unravel, count on the Federal Reserve and its chairman Alan Greenspan (eventually) to come to the rescue." The Times reported in 2000, in the wake of the dot-com boom, an increasing concern that the Greenspan put was injecting into the economy "a destructive tendency toward excessively risky investment supported by hopes that the Fed will help if things go bad." "All the insane dot-com investment we've seen, all this destruction of capital, all the crazy excesses of the past few years wouldn't have happened without the easy credit accomodated by the Fed," added financial consultant Michael Belkin.
>Try letting a few major firms - yes, even the financial sector, where we superstitiously believe no failures can be allowed - actually go bankrupt for a change. Make perfectly clear once and for all that there will be no bailouts, no looting of the public, on behalf of any firm, period. That would do more to jolt the financial sector into being sensible and cautious instead of reckless and irresponsible than all the regulatory tinkering in the world
Did the bankers get bailed out? Yes. Did anyone get thrown in jail? No. That is exactly the opposite of what would happen in a Ron Paul world - in fact he did talk about in this debate how fraud was committed and no one went to jail.
I'm part of the underemployed and for now work part time at a moving & storage company. What would happen if you entrusted your household items to movers or to a storage house and they "lost" them? They would be liable to compensate you or be punished. Do you see a wave a movers and storehouses committing fraud? I don't. Yes there will be criminals, but there will always be criminals. You could defend your goods (or money in the case of a bank) by purchasing insurance. BTW, there are several first-world countries that don't have the equivalent of an FDIC.
Hopefully now you're starting to understand Paul's hatred of the Fed. For more information, see my essay on how the richest bankers of the world were responsible for creating the Fed, see Eliot Spitzer's outstanding article Fed Dread that describes how the bankers are still in charge today, and scroll down to the section 'economic renegade' in my other essay for more info on Ron Paul and the Fed.
So why did banks go bust before the days of the Fed? An article covering that is on my 'to do' list, but the short answer is that government gave them a license to commit fraud. Instead of saying "you're going to jail if you can't return depositors' money", it was more like "well its okay if you only keep 20% of depositors money on hand and if there's a run on the bank and customers demand 100% of their deposits, we'll that's just the way it is but you won't go to jail so long as you followed the letter of the law").
"[bailouts are] the most basic function of the Federal Reserve. It was why it was founded" - Paul Volcker
That's what happens when you have central banks destroying our currency.
There's a transfer of wealth from middle class/poor to wealthy. How? The money we use reflects our productivity. As they counterfeit our money (i.e. print out of thin air), our money loses value (since there are more of it chasing the same amount of goods).
So where does that stolen value goes to? Well, in order to artificially lower interest rates, central banks print money. Then they lend the money to banks at 0% who then lend it back to us at 5%. So as our money loses value, that lost value gets transferred (it is theft) to the banks.
I'm a hardcore capitalist but central banks and money printing are destroying our standards of living.
The best and easiest to read book on the subject is: Meltdown
The linked graph shows the negative correlation between economic inequality and societal health in general. I was disappointed that in the Frum and Sullivan talk, when they talked about how life expectancy had been decreasing in the US, they didn't even mention how when comparing cross culturally, income inequality predicts lower life expectancy.
Dr. Richard Wilkinson would be an amazing guest
I'll bite.
First and foremost, there are many different breeds of libertarians (or people that call themselves libertarians). For instance, Glenn Beck has even used the word to describe himself as such--however, I don't think many libertarians really take him seriously on that claim.
More seriously, libertarians tend to be divided into two camps: those that want small government providing basic protection of individual rights (called minarchy) and those that want no government at all (usually labeled as anarcho-capitalists, voluntaryists, agorists, etc.). I consider myself a voluntaryist, which in addition to being an anarcho-capitalist, also qualifies me as someone who does not wish to participate in electoral politics and views it as an approach that really cannot help--and also means that I only prefer voluntary means through which to achieve a voluntary society.
To make matters more complicated, the anarchists of us have two different ways to speak of a free market: a David Friedman approach which concentrates on how free markets solve problems more efficiently than States, and a more deontological approach made famous by Murray Rothbard. Usually, you'll see us taking both angles--sometimes it helps to show how a free market is ipso facto better than a State, and sometimes it's better to show that we have the ethical high ground. (And some of us can be absolute in this sense--some might even recognize a failing of a free market but say that it still doesn't justify violating the ethics of libertarianism.)
There is, however a hurdle that needs to be jumped, I think, to truly grasp the libertarian position: familiarization with Austrian Economics. Austrian Economics is usually regarded as a fringe school of economics, and not taken seriously--it is taught in only a few of the colleges around the United States. In spite of that, Austrian business cycle theory, which puts the blame on fractional reserve banking, and specifically, the Federal Reserve, for the ebb and flow of today's marketplace, has proven itself time and time again. Frederick Hayek, the pioneer of this theory (and a winner of a Nobel Prize because of it), predicted the 1929 stock market crash, and more recently, Peter Schiff used it to predict the current recession. (It also explains bubbles that have inflated and popped in the past, when applied.) The best layman's explanation and the theory's real world applications that I can give you is the recent book Meltdown by Thomas Woods. It's not too long and does a great job at explaining Austrian business cycle theory.
There are many differences between Austrian Economics and the more mainstream schools, but I highlighted Austrian business cycle theory because that is the really important one. To emphasize this even more, I can say that if I could change one thing about the current State (sans abolishing it), it would be to abolish the Federal Reserve by establishing a free market currency. Unhesitatingly.
I personally arrived to my conclusion through a deontological perspective, and later familiarized myself with how free markets can provide services that most people widely regard as services that only States can provide. The deontological perspective essentially leads up to the non-aggression principle (NAP): aggression, which is defined as the initiation of physical force, the threat of such, or fraud upon persons or their property, is inherently illegitimate. (I can hammer out the details of the NAP's justification if you like, but I've chosen to omit it here in the interest of brevity.) The most important thing to realize about the NAP is that it is proportional: if you violate my property, I don't have the right to kill you (i.e., the idea that I can shoot a little boy that trespasses onto my yard to collect his baseball). As once I have quelled your aggression, any further aggression on my part is an over-abundance, and therefore an initiation of aggression--and that is illegitimate.
So with this in light, you can see that libertarians (at least, my style, anyway) are a bit of a mix: we simultaneously believe that libertarianism is the only ethical stance consistent with the idea of liberty, and its natural conclusion, a free market, is an inherently better solution to the problem of "infinite wants" and "scare resources" then centralized control through a State. That is, the State is both illegitimate and inefficient.
So the key to the free market, or capitalism, is to understand its most fundamental truth: two individuals voluntarily committing a transaction. What does it mean to commit a transaction? It means that I am giving you X in return for Y because I value Y more than X, AND because you value X more than Y. It's a win-win scenario, and not zero-sum: we both get something we desire.
For example, if my toilet is clogged, and despite my best attempts, I cannot unclog it, I probably need to call a professional. When the plummer comes over, he tells me that it will be $100 to fix my toilet. Immediately, his actions indicate, "I value $100 more than the value of my services as a plummer." When I agree to his proposal, my action indicates, "I value your services as a plummer more than I value $100." At this most basic level, we can see the Subjective Theory of Value in action brilliantly. That is, things don't have intrinsic value, only the value that each individual assigns.
Now, with that background, I think I can answer your questions:
(Wow, I went over the character limit for comments... yikes...)
Inequality creates crime and many other social issues.
http://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies-Stronger/dp/1608193411?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0
I have read the book published by the scientists who gave the TED talk I linked, which is probably the best-known book on this subject. In the introduction they dealt with the question of causality at length. If you are truly interested in the subject matter then I would highly recommend giving it a read.
E: Also note that this discussion is about inequality, not poverty. The two are not synonymous. Incidentally, an interesting feature of inequality is that its negative impacts are not confined to the poor but reach right across society.
> I'd recommend getting a reader or companion version [like this](A Companion to Marx's Capital https://www.amazon.com/dp/1844673596/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_oBK9yb5GJRRTE).
Fuck that. How is this hack still being recommended? He says that there are three types of value. You only need to read the first fucking chapter of Capital to know that this is bullshit.
Look up the dictionary definition of something like Marxism and you get this: "The political and economic philosophy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in which the concept of class struggle plays a central role in understanding society's allegedly inevitable development from bourgeois oppression under capitalism to a socialist and ultimately classless society." While obviously that definition contains some of the rudimentary elements of Marxism, by no means can it capture the entire philosophy. So it is too with faith. The dictionary definition contains rudimentary elements that are then expanded upon. I see no intellectual dishonesty here.
>Ah yes, the theory that profits belong to the worker
No, it's a theory that the ultimate source of profit lies in the asymmetry between the value that a worker adds to a product and the value of his wage. It's a descriptive, rather than normative, idea.
>financing, company good will, marketing, sales, product development, all of that just runs itself
Nobody here is claiming that those forms of labor "run themselves." Surplus value is extracted from all kinds of labor and laborers.
>shareholders decide its worth paying a CEO billions
Surplus value has nothing to do with CEOs in particular. It's the mechanism by which capital valorizes itself. Whether the management is being done by a petit-bourgeois owner, by a single manager, or by a team, is utterly irrelevant.
>wiki article that internet teenagers found fascinating
I'm not a teenager. And since Wikipedia is beneath you, here's the original, in HTML and print.
By request, I am reposting this from a comment response further down about disagreeing with the idea that they could have ended poverty with their finances.
The sentiment in the article is wrong. I spent a while studying poverty and foreign aid in Africa and the idea of spending money to end poverty was something we looked at quite a bit.
Poverty is not a simple issue and throwing money at the problem is not just going to end it. For a real end to poverty there is going to need to be a genuine redistribution of wealth. We in the west live in a world of extreme abundance. Many of those who are poor have much more than those in other countries. If the rest of the world lived like we did, we would not be able to sustain our way of life. That would be the first big thing to changing poverty.
The next thing is trade/consumption. The economies of many countries in Africa are not sufficient right now to handle an influx of money. We have seen what happens in countries like Nigeria, where massive corruption meant that the huge proceeds of the oil industry did not do a ton of good. As well, many African countries do not have the geographical location to be a self sustaining country (see Niger). The borders were largely drawn by the Berlin Conference and were based on the whim of the Europeans there. What that meant was borders and countries were set up to benefit the colonial powers, not to actually be self sustaining countries. If we really wanted to end poverty, then corruption and trade issues would need to be resolved. The countries cannot escape poverty through an influx of money.
Lastly, poverty is a very complex issue. There are so many factors that coming in from the outside and thinking we can fix it is a very bad point of view, somewhat in line with colonial thinking (that we know better, etc). To really fix things, the efforts have to be driven by the residents of the countries for the people of the country. We can help, but there is no way as outsiders that we can solve poverty.
This is what I have seen and learned in my time.
Sources: Berlin Conference
The White Man's Burden (Foreign Aid Economics and Ethics book)
Nine Hills to Nambonkaha (Aid in Côte d'Ivoire written by a former Peace Corp Volunteer based on her notes)
Nigeria Corruption
Trying to find one last book on a microcredit NGO in Kenya.
> Hitler was able to build a booming economy off the back of large internal deficits. He leveraged a strong manufacturing sector to build a self sufficient state.
That's not really true
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wages-Destruction-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
> What does this book say that is different than what has gone before? Heaps. In recent years it has become clear that Germany lost the second world war because the Soviet Union was able to out produce them in the making of armored vehicles. Britain and the United States were able to produce huge numbers more aircraft. The conclusion has been that Hitler's gamble in invading the Soviet Union was the key behind the loss of the war.
>
> What this book suggests is that Germany had lost the war before it invaded the Soviet union and its success up to 1941 had been a lucky break. The author even suggests that Britain alone had some chance of over time developing a preponderance of military force. It also puts paid to what must be now seen as the myth of Munich. Previously it was thought that Britain and France failed to re-arm in time to fight Hitler effectively. What this book shows is that by 1940 Britain and France had armies that were superior in both numbers and equipment. Their navies were vastly superior to Germany's and their air forces at least equal. When France fell, although Britain lost its field army its air force was equivalent to the German in numbers and quality and its Navy vastly superior to anything the Germans and Italians could put to sea. More over the British were able to out produce the Germans in aircraft even prior to the German invasion of the Soviet Union.
>
> The success of the German armies in 1940 was due to the allied command failing to respond to the German strategy. If the allies had been a bit more aggressive they could have fought it out to at least a draw and Germany did not have the resources to fight anything more than a short war. The idea of blitzkrieg was an invention of allied generals seeking to rationalize their defeat rather than a meaningful analysis of what happened. The French never even fully committed their air force to the struggle and most of it was captured on the ground.
>
> The problem was that although Germany had access to the industrial plant of Northern Italy, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands they were not able to use it to match either the Soviets or the British in war production. The reasons are complex but relate to the patterns of European trade and the success of the European blockade. If we take aircraft for example the French production which flowed to Germany was miniscule. France had access to manufacturing plant and supplies of bauxite but it was not able to produce. The reason was that it used to import coal from Britain for its electricity production. With the British blockade the main source of coal became Germany. However Germany was not able to increase its production sufficiently to overcome the short fall. In addition the amount of food produced in Europe fell. Previously the production of meat and dairy products in countries such as Denmark had been dependant on the import of grain and stock feed from South America. That was not available and the amount of food available for the dairy industry collapsed as did food production. In the rest of Europe food production had been based on the widespread use of chemical fertilizer. Apart from the issues of the blockade huge amounts of the chemicals used for fertilizer production was diverted to the making of explosives. In addition to the fact that French workers were moved on to subsistence rations and there was no power available the country had been dependant on motorized transportation. Again most of its oil imports came from abroad. With the outbreak of the war the only available oil products came from Romania or from synthetic oil made in Germany. This was barely enough for the needs of the armed forces (there was in reality not enough to keep the Italian Navy operational) and France reverted to a pre-petroleum transport economy.
>
> It is this economic background that gave rise to Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had the natural resources that would enable European industry to out produce Britain and America. Rather than rashly starting a two front war Hitler knew that he could never develop the naval might necessary to conquer Britain simply by the occupation of Western Europe. The conquest of the Soviets was a key step in Hitler's strategy and not irrational. Of course none of the German general staff thought that the Soviets could stand up to an invasion of over 3 million men. However the Soviets were able to do so and then they were better able to marshal their resources so that they could outlast the Germans.
>
> This is a very good book which will force everyone to re-think their attitudes to not only the second world war but the historical run up to it. It is unusual to have a book which is of such significance.
Read the best book on the German economy:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wages-Destruction-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
It's a bullshit myth that the German Nazi economy was wonderfully efficient. In fact, the overlapping controls created huge inefficiencies that helped doom the nation when it went to war. Albert Speer's flair for spin during and after the war created a myth that the facts don't support.
Both Soviet Communism and USA capitalism (organized for war) probed MUCH more efficient and productive.
Naomi Klein does.
The Chicago School - the people who brought you the bloody revolution in Chile. Nice.
Very succinct and efficient post!
I also suggest reading The Big Short (the movie helps as well, but comes across as very anti-wall street while the book helps you understand wall street decision making), as the 2007-8 housing market crisis really is still relevant and directly effective Fed Rev policy.
https://www.amazon.com/Big-Short-Inside-Doomsday-Machine/dp/0393338827?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0
The government is not innocent in this as well, as bond institutions Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were both equally culpable, hence why they no longer exist.
The Big Short, by Michael Lewis, does a great job explaining some of the causes of the financial meltdown. It's told from the perspective of investors who saw it coming, and put their money where their mouths were.
IMHO, the credit rating agencies, like Standard & Poor's and Moody's, are the primary source of the entire meltdown. They gave top ratings to mortgage investments regardless of the quality of the mortgages. This led investors to sink tons of money into mortgage investments, thinking they were perfectly safe. This drove demand for banks to get more people to sign up for mortgages, whether they were qualified or not. The whole system was based on the premise that housing prices always go up. As soon as they started going down, everything fell apart.
The Big Short, by Michael Lewis
Lewis has a gift for explaining complicated concepts. And before he became an author, Lewis actually started his career working on Wall Street (which he chronicled in the book Liar's Poker). In The Big Short, Lewis explains what caused the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-08. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
If you're looking for something a little shorter to give you an idea of how Lewis writes, here's Wall Street on the Tundra, which is an article about how Iceland apparently became one of the richest nations on earth . . . on paper. And how that led to its own financial meltdown.
The financial crisis was not caused by the CRA or anti-redlining litigation. As Wikipedia helpfully summarizes,
> The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission reported in January 2011 that "the CRA was not a significant factor in subprime lending or the crisis. Many subprime lenders were not subject to the CRA. Research indicates only 6% of high-cost loans – a proxy for subprime loans – had any connection to the law. Loans made by CRA-regulated lenders in the neighborhoods in which they were required to lend were half as likely to default as similar loans made in the same neighborhoods by independent mortgage originators not subject to the law."[67] Critics claim that the use of the high-interest-rate proxy distorts results because government programs generally promote low-interest rate loans – even when the loans are to borrowers who are clearly subprime.[152] Several economist maintain that Community Reinvestment Act loans outperformed other "subprime" mortgages, and GSE mortgages performed better than private label securitizations.[2][27]
If you want to understand the behaviors that actually caused the suprime mortgage crisis, I suggest that you read The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. It is an account of the financial crisis from the perspective of a few people who made millions of dollars by shorting (i.e. betting against) the very mortgage-backed securities which caused the crisis. You can read it for free if you have a Kindle and Amazon Prime, or you can check it out from your local library.
Nobody forced these banks to make the terrible subprime loans that caused the collapse. The banks willingly gave mortgages to people that they knew would be unable to repay them. Why? Because the banks wouldn't be on the hook when the mortgages failed. They had invented a bunch of "mortgage-backed securities" (pools of mortgages, and later pools of pools of mortgages) specifically so that they could sell their mortgages (and the risk of people defaulting on those mortgages) to other unsuspecting institutions.
These "financial instruments" were like machines that could turn a pile of crap into 80% gold and 20% crap. The raw material for these machines were mortgages, which is why the subprime lenders wanted to make as many mortgages as they could. They didn't care about the quality of the mortgages that they made, because they were selling the (deliberately-misassessed) risk to other people.
You've probably heard of an insurer called AIG, which the federal government bailed out to the tune of $182 billion during the subprime mortgage crisis. AIG was one of the unsuspecting institutions that bought those bundles of crap mortgages. AIG bought them because the Big Three ratings agencies (Moody's, Fitch Group, and S&P) said the securities were safe investments (I believe they rated many of them as AAA, the same rating given to US government bonds). Of course, the securities weren't actually that safe. One reason for the incorrect ratings was that the investment banks deliberately manipulated their ratings criteria. For example,
> A pool of loans composed of borrowers all of whom had a FICO score of 615 was far less likely to suffer huge losses than a pool of loans composed of borrowers half of whom had FICO scores of 550 and half of whom had FICO scores of 680. A person with a FICO score of 550 was virtually certain to default and should never have been lent money in the first place. But the hole in the rating agencies’ models enabled the loan to be made, as long as a borrower with a FICO score of 680 could be found to offset the deadbeat, and keep the average at 615. [Source: The Big Short]
and
> Eisman learned that the rating agencies simply assumed that the borrower would be just as likely to make his payments when the interest rate on the loan was 12 percent as when it was 8 percent—which meant more cash flow for the bondholders. Bonds backed by floating-rate mortgages received higher ratings than bonds backed by fixed-rate ones—which was why the percentage of subprime mortgages with floating rates had risen, in the past five years, from 40 to 80. [Source: The Big Short]
There were other ways of deceiving the ratings agencies, too. The agencies paid too much attention to the FICO scores, and not enough to the actual credit histories that yielded those scores. So a California grape-picker with a sparse credit history making less than $20k per year could qualify for a very expensive mortgage, because he had never borrowed a lot of money and thus never had a payment to miss or a loan to default on. Worse, the grape-picker might actually be used as the "good" borrower in order to balance out a "bad" lender in the mortgage pool.
Part of the problem is that most of the smart finance people work for the banks instead of the ratings agencies. That's what happens when the banks will pay seven figures and the ratings agencies only five figures. But another issue was that the ratings agencies didn't want to look too closely at these mortgage pools. The ratings agencies were paid by the banks, and so an agency that rated the securities too harshly was an agency that would soon be out of customers. Some employees of the ratings agencies have attested that they were specifically discouraged by their superiors from strictly scrutinizing the securities that they were assigned to rate.
TL;DR: Banks were not forced to issue subprime mortgages. They willingly chose to, because mortgages were the raw material for a Ponzi-scheme collection of mortgage-backed securities. Blame for the subprime mortgage crisis rests primarily on the subprime mortgage lenders and the ratings agencies that enabled them.
edit: typos, removed unnecessary italics
Idée cadeau.
http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1450127393&sr=1-1&keywords=basic+economics+thomas+sowell
> I actually think libertarianism is an incredibly naive worldview
I can see how someone might think that, but I don't think it's fair. Libertarians typically have the strongest understanding of economics, and libertarians are typically intellectuals. Also, transitioning from a typical Republican or Democrat to a libertarian requires a pretty substantial shift in how you view the role of government as a whole. You'll also never see a libertarian who confuses capitalism with democracy (which happens on the internet all. the. fn. time.).
But! I will admit that we have a potential blind spot that will make it difficult to ever become a major party: libertarians will choose the whole over the individual, which means we lose pretty much every emotional argument ever. The free market works most efficiency when prices aren't controlled at all, and libertarians will choose efficiency because it drives innovation and lowering of prices the fastest, which we believe is the best for the whole. It's through innovation that we raise the standard of living for everyone (e.g., Ford inventing the assembly line eventually led to cars being widely available). Where this gets tough for most people to support is that most people will choose stability over efficiency.
When you put money in a bank, you want to make sure the bank doesn't go under. When you rent an apartment, you want to make sure landlords can't force you out by raising rent. If you're working 40 hours a week, you feel like you deserve to make a living wage. If you've spent your entire life mining coal, you don't want the coal mine to go under, leaving you with no skills for another job and leaving your town w/o its largest source of income. If a hurricane hits your town, you don't want the local convenience store jacking up the price of water and flashlights. If your child gets diagnosed with cancer, you don't want money to get in the way of getting your child everything they need to survive.
All of those thoughts are completely reasonable, but libertarians put higher emphasis on the whole than the individual. Banks and auto-makers have gotten away with horrible business decisions because they're "too big to fail." Rent control works fine in the short term, but in the long term it always leads to an ever-increasing shortage of low-income housing while the quality of that housing consistently declines and no new low-income housing is constructed. Industries rise and fall all the time, and we're just no longer in need of so much coal or elevator operators or fast food cashiers. Increasing the prices on goods after a hurricane helps insure that people don't overbuy, leaving late-comers without a chance at supplies, and it incentivizes new sellers to enter the market to take advantage of the high prices, thus increasing supply, which will lower prices over time. A more free market approach to healthcare would result in much, much lower costs, and faster innovation.
The problem is that once you say that, yes, people will lose jobs and die because of poor luck, decisions, or timing, you immediately turn most of the population, and Jimmy Kimmel starts crying. It doesn't matter to them that it will be a huge net benefit for the vast majority of people if an unlucky few are willingly left behind.
I also feel like there's this huge misconception that libertarians don't care about the poor when they're probably our main concern. We believe so strongly in the free market because we think it gives the poor the highest standard of living. Anyway, I'm not a particularly eloquent person, so I recommend this book. It does a really good job of explaining why the free market best helps the poor over the long term at the cost of short term volatility. It's a pretty good read too.
Well, as you probably know these Economic schools of thought are usually associated with some university or group of Economists. For instance, the Chicago School was associated with the University of Chicago. Thomas Sowell is a very popular Conservative economist that adheres to the Chicago School who put out his book Basic Economics a few years ago. Although it's a book about Economics, it's written from a popular perspective meant to appeal to the general layman. Many Libertarians follow the Austrian School and still read the books of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, both unorthodox economists.
Economics is one of those subjects that often takes on an ideological nature. As much as one wants it to remain scientific, people from all creeds are guilty of ideoligising Economics. The Left is not exempt from doing this, either. Marxist Economists still teach the Labor Theory of Value, an idea rejected by mainstream Neoclassical Economics. In fact, Marxists pretty much reject all of Neoclassical Economics in favor of Marx's approach to Economics. I remember listening to some lectures by Richard Wolff, a popular Marxist Economist, and he said when he discusses economics with other Economists they never know what he's talking about, because Marxian economics is so radically different from mainstream economics, since it has different definitions and premises.
> It also seems odd to disagree with the majority of universities teachings.
These schools of thought form due to disagreements in theory and interpreting data. Marxist, Neoclassical, Austrian, Modern Monetary Theorist, etc. economists remain scientific and objective in their approach to Economics, but each have different theories regarding how the Economy works. People tend to latch on to the theories that agree with them or confirm their bias. This isn't just a Conservative thing, it's an everybody thing.
What I've posted.
Here you go: https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-God-That-Failed-Perspectives/dp/0765808684
If you're actually ready to question our state religion of democracy, not just joke about it, you might enjoy this 1951 book by "ultraliberal monarchist" Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn.
Short summary: it's not true that the opposite of democracy is dictatorship. The opposite of democracy is the rule of law. Dictatorship, aka Caesarism, is the first cousin of democracy and generally its most stable endpoint.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe's Democracy: The God That Failed is also worth reading, but it's not on line as far as I know.
No, the fact that these people have German names doesn't mean they're Nazis.
I used to ponder on this, until I read the book currency wars! The author clearly explains , mainly game theory based scenarios where held, on how such a thing could trigger. There are many agencies who watch for massive movement of gold. More than stocks, I think massive accumulation of gold would be a start.
A violation of the rights of the person being taken from.
Put simply, Anarcho-Capitalism is based on the common understanding of private property and the rejection of the idea that anyone, particularly the government, can legitimately override these property rights for any reason. Ancaps may abbreviate this as "The non-aggression principle", understanding 'aggression' to be "violations of person or property."
For a complete treatment of the crash from an ancap perspective see the book Meltdown.
It's not a problem, or to the degree that it is, economics puts a check on it.
Yes. By institutions that society does not treat as having the legitimate authority to violate rights. E.g. The agents of the State murder innocent people and get away with it. Private security agents, in the rare circumstances where they do murder someone, are much more likely to be held accountable. The State collects taxes and people accept it, while the Mafia collects 'protection money' and everyone knows it's a racket.
https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Perspectives-Democratic/dp/0765808684
It's a pretty big tent. It's hard to point to one place.
There's a good community here in r/DarkEnlightenment. The learning curve for DE (AKA "neoreaction") is pretty steep, so perhaps a good place for the libertarian to start is From Mises to Carlyle.
There's also Hoppe. Many libertarians get skeptical about democracy and venture beyond libertarianism via him. Even Rothbard, in his later writings, started going in a somewhat Hoppean direction. Maybe try Democracy: The God That Failed. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn is another along these lines.
Bertrand de Jouvenel is another gateway drug. He's a classical liberal whose description of how power works utterly undermines classical liberal ideas of sociology and anthropology. Try his On Power, and then follow it up with The Patron Theory of Politics for a tour through the illiberal consequences of his ideas.
Jonathan Bowden was a great English intellectual who gave a series of lectures on various illiberal thinkers such as Heidegger, Evola, Carlyle, Spengler, Pound, Nietzsche, and even Marx and other socialist thinkers. He functions as a sort of TL;DR for the illiberal right, and so makes for a very good introduction. His lectures are engaging and can be found on Youtube, but probably the best of them is a Q&A he gave about his own views.
I don't find this argument very compelling - he basically just tries to form a link between progressive taxation and concepts that he assumes will elicit a favorable response from the listener (democracy and free market thinkers).
The first link is to democracy. Let's grant that progressive taxation and democracy go hand in hand. Even then, you'd still have to prove that democracy is inherently good. Which is difficult to do.
The second link is to free market thinkers. Even if we ignore the fact that he misrepresents the support of progressive taxation by free market thinkers, such support doesn't necessarily mean it's right. Just because Adam Smith or George W. Bush (really?!) spoke favorably of progressive taxation, we shouldn't take those ideas as truth. Heck, Smith and Ricardo believed in the labor theory of value, but that doesn't mean that we should too.
Interesting, I'm an an-cap and there is a good book about how monarchy may have been preferable to democracy. It espouses a school of thought that is very much hated by the left.
https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-God-That-Failed-Perspectives/dp/0765808684
>at the end of the day if you can convince enough people to think the way you do all the reasons in the world doesn't matter anymore.
And that's the issue with democracy. Well, one of them at least.
Recommended read
Sure.
Property rights include the right to own your self, your labor, real property and personal goods. Property rights mean that one has the right to sell, trade, buy, lease property with other consenting parties at their own discretion.
Democracy is a system where your neighbors claim to have the right to take your property or restrict your use of your property without your consent. To vote themselves into your pocket, and steal from you or place you into indentured servitude based on the arbitrary results of a popular vote.
Democratic government subjects free individuals to the tyranny of others. Persons holding no valid claim to the property of others vote to steal, appropriate or restrict the rights of free individuals and take their property without their consent.
Democracy in essence is a soft variant of communism. It is the belief that our property rights are subject the the whims of our neighbors, who can magically vote themselves the right to steal our property without our consent.
Edit: For the full breakdown, written by someone smarter than myself: https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-God-That-Failed-Perspectives/dp/0765808684
You might enjoy Democracy - The God that Failed by Hans Hermann Hoppe
Because you will get fired for slacking off on your job?
Read this book and get inside the head of a low wage worker. Until you've lived this reality you're just criticizing from your ivory tower.
And here's what should be required reading
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Not strictly ancap, but Albert Jay Nock's Our Enemy, the State is a fantastic take-down of the state's "monopoly of crime." He's also a revisionist when it comes to the Articles of Confederation.
In addition, David Beito's From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State is a history of mutual aid societies, which are a very potent alternative to the welfare state. Great intellectual ammunition for debating statists about how an ancap society would treat poor people.
A closer look at the underbelly of things Japanese:
The secret behind Japanese office workers always running about the office... written by future Japanese Nobel Prize winner...
Japan's numbers might be low because Japanese bureaucrats and companies historically lie through their teeth and don't even test for certain pollutants. So unless there's a reliable way of measuring CO2 output by satellite or similar, I'd take those figures with a grain of salt.
(I just happen to be reading a book about it at the moment.)
http://www.amazon.com/Dogs-Demons-Tales-Modern-Japan/dp/0809039435
On amazon
You should read up on the "Austrian theory of the business cycle". One book that might be a good starting point (and particularly relevant to our current era) is Meltdown.
It sounds to me like you're definition of "deregulation" is government-granted corporate privilege.
The Gulf: B.P. had a liability cap at $75 million. This is an artificially-imposed government-granted privilege. Actual damages are running in the 10's or 100's of billions. Under an actual libertarian system, damage to private property requires legal restitution. Full liability would be imposed, and oil companies would have to factor the added risk factor into their policies. This makes oil spills very expensive (think of all the class-action law-suits), and therefore the incentive to avoid them far greater. It's easy to pay off inspectors, but it's not so easy to cover up an oil spill.
I could go on if you'd like...
The Economy: This is quite complicated of course, but I'd like to suggest that you read Meltdown by Thomas Woods, if you want to understand the libertarian point-of-view on the subject.
It's certainly worth taking into account that throughout the lead-up to the economic collapse, members of the Austrian school of economics (closely associated with libertarianism) such as Peter Schiff, Thomas Woods, Ron Paul, etc., were all predicting an imminent housing bubble collapse. All the while, members of the Keynesian school (more commonly associate with liberal/statist theorists) such as Ben Bernanke and Paul Krugman were convinced that the bubble either didn't exist or wasn't a problem.
The reasons that the Austrian theorists gave for predicting that the housing boom was a bubble, and that it was ready to collapse (which turned out to come true), were several fold: First, the government created moral hazard (incentivizing risky behavior) in the housing market by A) subsidizing housing lenders and borrowers, creating a falsely inflated market B) putting pressure on banks to lend to lower-income, higher-risk borrowers in the name of 'equal opportunity', and C) rewarding risky behavior through bailouts.
And if you're going to try to blame libertarians for Bush's "cut taxes, but put spending on steroids" policy... well... I hope you understand why that's wildly off base.
If any of that is what you call deregulation, then I assure you, no true libertarian is for "deregulation".
I could add more to this subject if you're interested...
Ecuador: I don't know much about Ecuador, but here's what you said:
>Texaco came in, took what they wanted, and polluted the region beyond repair, destroying lives and property with impunity.
Again, libertarianism puts the protection of property rights above all else (as we believe the right to self-ownership is the primary property, and all else is an extension of that, etc.). A true "libertarian paradise" (as you put it) would protect the property rights of those who were harmed by the work of Texaco.
>Now that the courts there have found them guilty and ordered damages, Texaco, now merged into Chevron has simply declared the court ruling invalid.
I don't see how a corporation ignoring a just court ruling really makes a case against the theory of libertarianism. We're not against the rule of law, if that's what you're implying. Most libertarian minarchists would say that the courts ought to have had enough power to force restitution from Texaco or its new owners. Those of us who are anarcho-capitalists would make the argument that introducing market competition into the law-enforcement industry would solve the problem of inefficient government law enforcement (but that's a whole other topic).
>If you care about liberty, you should be at least as worried about this type of corporate tyranny as you are government tyranny.
I certainly am, this sounds like an outrageous affront to liberty. Corporate aggression is no less egregious than government aggression. I will admit that some libertarians can tend to seem blind to this fact, but that no more discredits the ideology than does a liberal who seems to think that government can do no wrong.
Meltdown and Nullification by Tom Woods.
Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek
Yeah, I stopped using youtube videos for my political education a long time ago.
I recommend starting here, at Capital Volume 1.
There are a couple of good textbooks I am aware of:
The links to Gouverneur's textbook are here
You may also want to check out Wolff's own textbook authored with Stephen Resnick, entitled Economics: Marxian versus Neoclassical. (If you want to have a look through it I'm pretty sure the pdf is on Scribd.com) Apparently he is a publishing an updated edition sometime this year, but I am yet to see any details of that happening.
Also, you've probably heard this many times before, but if you want to get into Marxian economics, I highly suggest you start out by purchasing a copy of Vol. 1 of Capital and going through it alongside David Harvey's lecture series which is also invaluable (everyone on /r/socialism probably knows Harvey but i'm not sure if they're all aware of his lectures). ALSO You would probably like to grab A Companion to Marx's Capital - It's probably the most recent and thorough introduction to capital you could ask for and goes great with the lectures if you want more detail.
While I'm on a role here, you would probably benefit from reading The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism, Harvey has a great interpretation of the "GFC" and goes through a great overview of how capital works.
Other than that I highly suggest you watch Kapitalism101's bibliography videos here. I've found his knowledge and extensive bibliography of recommendations of Marxian economics books extremely invaluable.
The most complete explanation of his ideas is probably Das Kapital, but it has a well-deserved reputation for being particularly difficult to get into. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy also has some good insights into his thoughts while the later Critique of the Gotha Progra has more detail concerning what a communist society might actually look like. If you're looking for a secondary source, Karl Marx's Theory of History is excellent.
For a more thorough exploration of this topic, check out The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by William Easterly. Title says it all really, this guy is one of the leading economic thinkers in the aid field, but very readable
For God's Sake, Stop the Aid.
It's pretty much all in-kind donations, including the infamous Super Bowl t-shirts. Bill Easterly makes some very interesting points against the Bono/Jeffery Sachs model of "we need just another billion dollars of aid".
Specifically regarding the First World War: Germany's reparations obligations to the western powers - already amended by international agreements reached in the 1920s - were abrogated entirely by the Lausanne Conference in the summer of 1932. For more on this, you might read the first couple of chapters of The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze, which deals with interwar Germany's competing economic philosophies within the context of the transatlantic political economy.
From Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze:
"Even if the war had not intervened, developments up to 1939 made clear that the entire conception of the 'people's car' was a disastrous flop."
Wages of destruction by Adam Tooze
History of the Third Reich Series which include:
The Coming of the Third Reich
The Third Reich in Power
The Third Reich at War
Rise and fall of the Third Reich
Thats very good reading material right there.
>No I don't agree with Nazi ideology but their economic system was brilliant.)
astonishingly ignorant
> The economy under Hitler prior to the war, and in the beginning years of the war was a hell of a lot better than the Weimer Republic.
Only if you believe Nazi propaganda.
Standards of living had not risen, quite the contrary, as consumer goods demand had been massively shrunk, the State was running a colossal deficit, so that by 1938, the State had defaulted on all foreign loans, and on the internal loans, it was running a pyramid scheme with IOU's, just to keep the economy going without actually putting much wealth into it, had no foreign reserves to import direly needed supplies, and no way of acquiring wealth, save from plundering it from central banks of the countries they invaded. Even before the war, there was already rationing of a number of items.
The Nazis took power in a country that was finally improving the economy and its living conditions, and managed to spiral it out of control and straight into the ground, by a combination of:
https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
Have fun dispelling the myths you've taken to be true about Nazi Germany!
Adam Tooze Wages of Destruction. https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
This is the magnum opus of the Nazi economics. Explaining and eye opening. If there is one book about the Nazi economy it's this. I won't be wasting your time but seriously, order it.
Here is the mobile version of your link
Niall Ferguson’s [The Ascent of Money](The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143116177/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_sDJ8AbYN50VVN)
Neo-liberalism's been an ecological and social disaster. IMO; Read Naiomi Klein's Shock Doctrine for a critical POV
I'm quite into reading politics related books so if you like I can recommend a couple that I'd buy myself :P
This book by Naomi Klein is FANTASTIC
I quite liked the look of this one as well
A really interesting book on Political Theory
If he doesn't like Chomsky, he doesn't like politics!
Can never have too much Chomsky!
Maybe a bit o' Lincoln too?
Way to plagiarize and spin Naomi Wolf's recent book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, into a right-wing screed.
What is both sad and laughable about this is that the basic premise may be sometimes true--that governments use crises (imaginary, real, or real but inflated) to motivate their citizens to support their policies--but attempts to suggest, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that it is only those on the political left that use this "road map."
EDIT: Adding a link to Wolf's book on Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999
Reminds me of the 'The Shock Doctrine'. http://www.amazon.com/The-Shock-Doctrine-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999
The idea is that you push through unpopular reforms in a time of crisis, with minimal scrutiny. Apparently it doesn't even have to be a real crisis to work in Australia.
I did actually, back when I didn't pay attention to how the real world worked, and just thought that the general, vague concept of "more freedom" sounded good. Maybe I didn't go full tilt into internet Libertarian where the closest thing to a structural critique comes down to "taxation is theft!!" and "Dale gets it!" and all real analysis is predicated on thought experiments, hypothetical fantasy worlds, and have no real foundation in the reality in which we live. Like honestly, if you do any actual examination of how society is structured, and you STILL think that government and taxation, as a concept, are the most oppressive forces in the world keeping you from success rather than the moneyed interests that manipulate and fuel legislative policy, then your vicious meme takedowns are going to contribute nothing to discussion or understanding beyond giving yourself a temporary right-wing dopamine rush of 0wn1ng the l1bz.
If you'd like a chance to broaden your understanding of some of the structural concepts I am referring to, rather than just a general title of "liberal" or whatever, here are just a couple pretty basic reading options to get you started.
​
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn (1980)
The Revolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem (1968)
The Shock Doctrine: Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein (2006)
​
​
You have not been paying attention:
Read Naomi Klein's book, "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism".
http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214151920&sr=1-1
You will read how Friedman's economic/political theories are implicated with current foriegn policy events starting with the assassination of Allende and the coup that brought Pinochet to power in Chile.
Friedman's theories and practices, taken together with Leo Strauss's political views of the world (neoconservativism), American foreign policy of interventionism, low-intensity conflict (dirty war) and Christian Zionism, Israel's Zionist Likud party's adoption of the Trans-Jordan Clean-break strategy has created a murderous toxic brew that has led to the current state of affairs both here and abroad.
Ultimately, 911 can be seen as an offensive counterintelligence operation (THE BIG WEDDING), an act of the deep state government that has run the United States since the JFK assassination, the purpose of which was to use the fear generated to create the security state, within which these criminal cabals have acted to carry out its agenda alluded to in my original post above.
You might be interested in the books of Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine and her latest This Changes Everything
It's the "shock doctrine".
He was really upset when he "came of age" and realized that our "wars" have little to do with being the leader of the free world and more about conquering new consumer markets.
My daughter said that one of the most popular languages in college today is Arabic. We are going to need people who speak Arabic to run those Mc Donalds and Starbucks one day, in the Middle East.
A good book if you have time: https://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=shock+doctrine&qid=1573402046&sr=8-1
Read that series on private equity the NYTimes has been doing that I linked earlier.
Shit's more of "nefarious plot" than I realized. Another good read is "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein.
Taking briefly from wikipedia
> Woods argues that government intervention in the form of support for housing and excessive monetary expansion caused the current crisis.
Banks did not need money lent to them, they were running a con where they could assemble a pile of garbage, and if it was big enough, it would be rubber stamped as AAA and sold for an instantaneous profit, turn around and do it again. This con would have worked without the federal reserve, freddy/frannie, or any other boogiemen the media is trotting out to spin the issue from a failure of the right.
But at least the 1 star discussion on amazon does look interesting though.
https://www.amazon.com/Meltdown-Free-Market-Collapsed-Government-Bailouts/product-reviews/1596985879/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_hist_1?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=one_star&reviewerType=avp_only_reviews#reviews-filter-bar
> Okay, but it'd be much worse under socialism. Men would not be able to opt out.
They are not really able to "opt out" at present. Unless you want to go live in shack in the woods. I don't see why socialism would make that issue better or worse.
>No society has ever actually been completely equal men will always be competing and hypergamy will always exist to select the winners.
About 97% of our history was spent in hunter-gatherer bands where the defining ethos was egalitarianism. More equal societies are simply far healthier by all indicators. Which makes sense, since that was how we evolved.
Less inequality = less hypergamy.
>This is the most socialistic than America has ever been in
Not by a long shot. The most socialistic period in American history was the 1950's: huge taxes on the rich, huge job programs for men, strong labor unions etc.
>At the turn of the 20th century, we were ruthlessly capitalistic and so women had to act better.
Women had to act better because they didn't yet have reliable birth control and because it was a pre-feminist society. However the average man had few rights. Most men lived as virtual slaves in company towns.
More equal societies generally have lower drug use and mental health problems, higher life expectancy and better overall health, lower rates of obesity, better educational performance, lower teenage pregnancy, less violence, lower rates of incarceration, higher rates of recycling etc.
The Spirit Level by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson covers these issues and more.
currently, yes. but historically, pitting whites against blacks has been extremely successful as a tactic to suppress labor rights for decades and decades. Whites have exchanged fair wages for psychological superiority. Check out The Wages of Whiteness:
https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Whiteness-American-Working-Haymarket/dp/1844671453
I'll attempt to tackle this question:
First, most historians would disagree with Chomsky in regards to the 20th century being the only time that African Americans had a chance of "entering" American society (despite the fact that they already inhabit American society, though we will give Chomsky a pass and assume he meant equitable access to meritocracy and large scale integration). For instance, many scholars, such as David Roediger, have written about the period of Reconstruction as one in which a multi-racial and inclusive society was possible, and the failure of this possibility is reflective of the prevailing influence of race, class, and the importance of the "wages of whiteness" in perpetuating racism and racial divide. If you are interested in this topic, I would recommend two of Roediger's influential works; The Wages of Whiteness and How Race Survived U.S History
In regards to Chomsky's statements on the Drug War, largely, I would agree. However, I would push them and state that the Drug War is part of a longer history dating back to Reconstruction in which the criminalization and institutionalization of African Americans was a means to control and subvert their population. Some historians have gone as far as to say that mass incarceration of African Americans has come to replace slave labor in the United States, as these prisoners (then and now) were forced to work for little to no wages for certain industries (picking cotton in the South for example). There are many scholarly articles and monographs on the subject, however, if you are interested in the post Civil Rights era I would recommend The New Jim Crowe as an a starting point.
In regards to the last fact, I suppose the claim is subjective to what one defines as "freedom". However, many historians have demonstrated that whatever "freedom" blacks have gained throughout their history, it has always been subjected and juxtaposed with the unequal access to particular rights, liberties, and resources available to whites. George Lipsitz has written that public policy and private prejudice has been intertwined throughout American history, leading to tangible benefits for whites in terms of education and employment and an "investment" in whiteness against Blackness. Moreover, Du Bois wrote in Black Reconstruction that whiteness provided particular "psychological and public wages" that promoted racial prejudice and racial stratification. It is through this paradigm in which Chomsky's statements must be viewed. Largely I agree with his statements, though I wish he would preface them with the scholarly and theoretical underpinnings in which I have attempted to provide you. If you are interested in the subject, I would highly recommend reading Lipsitz's work that I have linked and Roediger's How Race Survived U.S history as an entry point.
Harvey's book on Capital is pretty good as well. Having read both simultaneously, I kind of wish I'd just read Harvey on Marx instead of reading Marx himself.
It's not at all silly, it's a long-term trend in economics that has been happening for centuries. It will continue to happen. It's part of capital-biased technological change.
See, also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment
And
http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-The-Machine-Accelerating-ebook/dp/B005WTR4ZI
or the ted talk here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_mcafee_are_droids_taking_our_jobs?language=en
See, also:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2692352/the-future-of-artificial-intelligence-will-computers-take-your-job.html
I agree that those requirements were well-intentioned (at least from the perspective of the legislators) but fiscally foolish. Nonetheless, the crisis had more to do with collaterialized debt obligations (CDOs) and especially credit default swaps (CDSs) than with the home loans per se.
If it were just about the home loans, banks would have foreclosed, people who couldn't afford their house would lose them, and the broader economy would have been fine. The crisis was caused by many factors, but the dominant one was the huge derivative market that magnified the problem. Big banks don't fall because people can't pay their mortgage. They fall when they underwrite cheap, pseudo-insurance policies on risky / poorly-rated derivatives that generate orders of magnitude more debt.
So not only is there a debate, but the CRA stuff (laws requiring loans to unqualified borrowers) is considered a relatively small contributor.
Sources: Economist, Big Short, Wikipedia, This American Life
> Is there a comprehensive list somewhere of the loan types, lenders, loan amounts floating around?
Do you mean in general like kinds of loans and lenders, etc... Then I would start somewhere like investopedia or google.
Alt-A Loans, but it links to a number of other good definitions
Private Mortgage Backed Securities
CBO Report on GSEs
Banking and Finance Law Commons
If you mean in reference to the financial collapse there are lots of books and blog posts.
For questions 1 and 2.
Basically how the originator makes their money is by X amount of CDOs they sell. There was no incentive to pick and choose the best borrowers to sell a loan to because how the CDOs were sold they achieved the best rating regardless of the borrowers credit risk.
Due to this model, people are going to try and get as many people into the homes and sell the CDO asap. This caused questionable lending practices to result, NINJA (no income, no job, no assets) loans, manipulating borrowers income, assets, etc.
Things that could be changed to help not have this occur again:
a) Feds monetary policy was pretty meh during this period, due to low interest rates the banks had pretty much an endless supply of money and when all the reasonable ventures dried up they had to explore other opportunities to lend.
b) Ratings agencies need an overhaul in how they receive their commission, preferably they should be being paid by the investor not the person issuing the security. This will help to eliminate the bias that results.
c) Having X% (2-5) remain on the institutions books who created the CDO will help to make them responsibly lend. This is because if they are required to have it remain on their books, they will make better longer term decisions in who to lend to.
I'm pretty sure all of these issues are discussed in Nouriel Roubini's book Crisis Economics
Another Great book already mentioned in this thread is by Michael Lewis The Big Short
If your interested in the European Crisis Michael Lewis also just came out with Boomerang
The Big Short by Michael Lewis was an easy and interesting read
Same author. Guy also wrote The Flash Boys, a book on high frequency trading firms. The Big Short is what this movie is based on. Michael Lewis is really knowledgeable of the financial industry.
> Io al suo posto sarei crollato.
Pah, a me sembra il solito paraeconomista da strapazzo..
Se vuoi leggere la biografia di alcuni eroi dell'economia che hanno osato andare controcorrente (e hanno avuto ragione), piuttosto che Bagnai, leggi (purtroppo in Inglese) The Big Short - storia epica che include un manager autistico fanatico dell'Uomo Ragno (tutto vero), un team di maghi della matematica disposti a tutto, e molto altro ancora.
E' una lettura epica!
In no particular order, here are several non-textbooks that were either required or recommended for higher level economics courses that I have taken:
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis
All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis
by Bethany McLean
Fool's Gold: The Inside Story of J.P. Morgan and How Wall St. Greed Corrupted Its Bold Dream and Created a Financial Catastrophe by Gillian Tett
Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk among Us by John Quiggin
ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism by Yves Smith
You might also have success looking through the "Customers also bought" sections for these books.
Excellent comment! Also, this book seems right up your alley, have you read it yet?
https://www.amazon.com/Winners-Take-All-Charade-Changing/dp/0451493249
If you haven’t read Anand Giridharadas’s book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, it’s definitely worth a read. It’s about how the Davos crowd, the foundation people, the consultant class, the market apostles, they’re all about trying to change the world without having their world change.
That thinking created our environmental problems.
You might want to read Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World. I had the author on my podcast, if you want to hear him firsthand.
I started to make one a while back but didn't get too far. There are just too many great books to choose from.
Classics 1950-1970
What is Conservatism?
The Conservative Mind
The Road to Serfdom
The Constitution of Liberty
Ideas Have Consequences
The Quest for Community
Economics in One Lesson
Capitalism and Freedom
In Defense of Freedom
Age of Reagan 1970-1990
The Conservative Intellectual Movement Since 1945
Modern Times
Knowledge and Decisions
A Conflict of Visions
Anarchy, State, and Utopia
Roots Of American Order
Modern Must Reads 1990-Today
The Clash of Civilizations
A History of the American People
The Vision of the Annointed
Intellectuals and Society
Illiberal Reformers
Restoring the Lost Constitution
How To Be A Conservative
I would highly recommend this book. https://www.amazon.com/Conflict-Visions-Ideological-Political-Struggles/dp/0465002056
The author breaks down the underlying assumptions and values that create the phenomenon of two groups of people often lining up side by side against the same other group on issue after issue, even though these issues are not related to each other.
I'm paraphrasing Bill Whittle (https://youtu.be/_dwz_Z62e0s) who in turn is paraphrasing Thomas Sowell (https://www.amazon.ca/Conflict-Visions-Ideological-Political-Struggles/dp/0465002056) so forgive my oversimplification.
If you hold to the following ideas:
You will find that during your pursuit of bringing about your Marxist utopia, inevitably some people will resist your noble goals, holding onto toxic ideas of the past. As long as these people remain, they will spread their traditionalist ideas, and you will never be able to pull out all of the weeds. You may find the most expedient means is to imprison these people and cut them off from spreading their backward-looking ideas. This may be horrible, but since your intentions are so noble, to make a perfect world, the ends justify the means.
tldr: You can't make a Marxist omelette without cracking a few eggs.
The intellectual framework that explains many of the questions brought up in the podcast about the current state of American politics can be summed up
in two seminal books, A Conflict of Visions and
The Fourth Turning. After completing these two
volumes, Fox News will suddenly start making sense to you, since some of the language and terms used by the right wing are quite literally incomprehensible (what's "unconstrained vision"?) without these guides.
 
The first book in particular, about the distinction between people and processes, is very relevant today. Why does America tolerate a racist, misogynist, xenophobe? Because one won the election fair and square, while the other stole the
primary nomination from Bernie. So the right wingers are focused on the election process (regardless of candidate), and the left wingers are focused on the candidates (regardless of process). We are literally talking past each other when we don't
grasp this fundamental difference; no communication can take place.
 
About the creation of an Asian-American political voice, the right wing view is that more identity politics is NOT the answer. Again, the distinction between people and processes. We don't want to focus on Asian people (or Black people, or Green people...), instead we want to focus
on the process. BLM is an anger that exists because Obama didn't really make black peoples lives significantly better. Having a hypothetical Asian-American man in the White House wouldn't make our lives significantly better either. And having a racist, misogynist, xenophobe there won't make our lives
significantly worse either, and that's what processes are all about. Checks and balances built-in the system, as opposed to having a god-like dictator who's above the law.
 
If you are short on time, at least glance over the first 100 pages of A Conflict of Visions. The explanatory power of his thesis is profound, and reveals why we should fear the left much more (think 18th century French Revolution, which is what today's not-my-president protesters want).
I did some undergrad study in politics and economics, and although centre-left in my politics, have very fond memories of reading Sowell's autobiography A Personal Odyssey, it's little wonder he ended up where he did politically given his insightful and frustrating experiences in his non-academic life.
He's playing to a crowd here, in my opinion his best work is A Conflict of Visions which changed the way I understand personality and political ideology.
Fans of JP will probably get a lot out of Hayek's Road to Serfdom also.
I like Basic Economics from Thomas Sowell a lot.
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484677239&sr=8-1&keywords=basic+economics+thomas+sowell
Start with this one:
how economies grow and why they fail
This next book is a bit more cerebral but you understand the world if you read it
Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics
> can i ask for a source on that?
Basic Economics
Go pick this up at your library.
Value does not magically appear.
Bitcoin derives its scarcity and value from Proof of Work, Nano derives its value from "something for nothing" economics and a transaction system that is economically unviable from bottom to top.
Read a book. I always suggest:
Basic Economics
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0465060730/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_aQgDCb1NAPF63
As far as the book recommendations go, it would be good if you could qualify what kind of books you're interested in (e.g. philosophy, psychology, history, science, etc.).
Books I recommend:
Psychology (or: On Human Nature)
The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime
Thinking, Fast and Slow (my personal favorite)
The Undiscovered Self
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
History
Strategy: A History
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism
Economics
Economics in One Lesson
Basic Economics
Politics
Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government
As always, the list of books to read is too long, so I'll stop here.
http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-The-God-That-Failed-Economics/dp/0765808684
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CGGuZLjy1E
There are superior alternatives to democracy. Don't fall for the myth that "it's the best thing we've got".
No one mentioned dictatorships. A highlt individualistic society with a polycentric law system is far better than both dictatorships and democracy.
Democracy is the rule of the mob and a spiral towards communism. The reason you're paying that many taxes for all the "free" shit the government gives out to "needy" people is democracy. It's because women got to vote and voted for shit that women like.
Reading tip: https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-God-That-Failed-Perspectives/dp/0765808684
> no, that would mean, there are market opportunities to improve something there
How so?
> That would be feudalism or maybe some sort of pure version of utilitarianism like Mill.
What I described is what many prominent right-libertarian thinkers, for [Rothbard] (https://mises.org/library/ballots-and-bullets) to [Mises.] (https://mises.org/library/mises-fascism-democracy-and-other-questions) Pretty much the entire [austrian school of economics really.] (https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Perspectives-Democratic/dp/0765808684) I can get you specific relevant quotes from any of the above if you need them.
I do agree with you though that a market completely free of government interference would rapidly turn into fuedalism, but that's not the baseline libertarian position.
Regarding the system you're describing, I would wager that the regulations you call for alone create a market that isn't truly free, but also where does the government obtain the funds to carry out this role? If it's through taxation then we're again drifting away from a free market and we bump into that taxation is theft bit too, if you believe in that. These not-for-profit government services as well, you're describing social services and or a public option, again, no longer a free market. Also, what's to stop especially rich companies from buying out the government and using these regulations and taxes that you're cool with for their benefit?
I mean, what you're describing is essentially just Keynesian social democracy.
> There is no social Darwinism here, govt ensures base survival and rights of people.
Social darwinism needn't be life or death, just a sorting of society through competition with the idea that the best folks would end up on top and the worst at the bottom, that the most innovative, intelligent, and productive companies will overtake the others. The wealth the CEOs of that company obtain is justified and right, and so is the poverty of those who go fail and go bankrupt. The market working as intended.
Michael Lewis The Big Short
Why don't you start with this.
The blame the government holds? In not being involved ENOUGH, not for getting involved in the first place. In not being aggressive enough with regulation, and not just assuming from the get-go that the big banks were flat out lying to them.
The banks, who thought they could make a killing better against bad mortgages, put pressure on lenders to create MORE bad loans to bet against. That's how you get Countrywide giving a sharecropper with 13K in income a 450K loan.
Hell, when they ran out of junk debt to bet against, they simply repackaged existing loans and sold them again.
Please tell me you're not blaming this on the Fair Housing Act. You know, that little piece of legislation that's been around since 1968? How the hell is that to blame for this? If you're referring to the adjustments to the CRA in the mid 90's, I defy anyone to find the sections of that bill that force banks to give bad loans, or even reward them for doing so.
When you're done, order The Big Short. Absolutely fascinating read. It goes into plenty of detail re: CDOs and the rest of the alphabet soup surrounding the meltdown.
If you get a chance, read The Big Short by Michael Lewis. Fascinating book about the people who saw the fiasco coming.
You know what is harming UFOlogy? Ignoring the damn evidence. There is enough evidence here for people to stand up and demand disclosure. And what happens? 'meh'.
Apathy.
> It seems that he has gone down the route of a conspiracy theorist.
Oh wow, gee whiz. He should be tarred and feathered, what a kook!
In this world where we watched billions upon billions siphoned out of the housing market, by a literal, fraudulent market in operation, which was covered up for a long time so more money could be made.
When the 'canaries in the coal mine' should've alerted people, Moody's and Standard & Poor refused to downgrade anything. They downgraded AAs before they would BBBs because they wanted the house to stay up. When it was entirely apparent it was collapsing, the banks again, siphoned money out, and the traders who should've been capitalism all stars for calling it out, 1 was audited 4 times and investigated by the FBI. Michael Lewis - The Big Short
Did anyone go to jail? No. Of course not. 1 person did. And a year later they went after the bottom rung, the poorest in the scheme who were being encouraged to take loans. Aka: the people, not the criminals in charge. (Like charging a street vendor or courier after busting the Mob Don)
We live in a world of corruption. There's enough on Hillary and The Clinton Foundation to implode the government, but no worries, no indictment.
If you haven't noticed, we live in a conspiratorial world influenced and run by conspiracies by rich influential people in back room meetings. And if anyone has put even a modicum of effort and actually looked over UFO files themselves, they'd see a documented cover up, and a shit load of evidence staring them in the face. Not to mention the whistleblowers.
Yes there is disinformation, and yes, even good-natured or honest people fall prey to it. But that is far more destructive, and so is "insta-debunking" and pathological skepticism-in-the-face-of-evidence.
The only positive, is maybe Basset is actually on to something this time and if this is an actual leak from an FBI analyst, then Hillary's info can "implode the government" and Trump may leak it. Apparently it wouldn't be the first time leaked to /pol/ or that Trump did it
If the info is as classified and 'world imploding' as they claim, Trump & Hillary will be indicted and about the only thing that will get America out of that slump is Aliens...so.
Note: An FBI analyst likely wouldn't have had the access the leaker is claiming. More likely ISOO or someone leaked it to Trump from ISOO and the guy venting is from the campaign.
You've probably seen the movie, but The Smartest Guys in the Room book is a cracking read. I was engrossed the entire time by how fucked up Enron was and what the wall street mania was like in the late 90's. Superbly written, richly detailed look into how corporations go off the rails and how accounting practices and corporate culture and ethics (or lack thereof) intersect. It's a total page turner - even though I knew Enron collapsed and Skilling and others went to jail.
In a similar vein, The Big Short is a great movie and an even better book. Probably less accounting stuff than The Smartest Guys in the Room, but an engaging, informative and personal look at the sub-prime housing clusterfuck of 2008. Anything by Michael Lewis is a good read generally.
Other random books I've enjoyed recently:
Actually He's right. The Bank has the right to lend It to other people, Invest It and pretty much do whatever they want. What you have is the promise they'll give you back If you ask for It.
What regular people don't know is that the Bank has the right to take a USD100,00 deposit and basically lend those USD100,00 to about eight (E-I-G-H-T) different people. The law only makes them actually hold like, 20% of the money they put around.
That's why Bank runs are so frightening. If everybody wants to take their deposits out of the bank, the whole house of card.... err.. Bank collapses.
That's the world banking for you, normal folk. They are too big to fail.
Lesson 1 - The world financial system is designed to fuck with people's money and let them pay if something goes wrong.
Lesson 2 - That's why they don't teach financial education to the people, they only teach spending and debt.
Recommended reading: Griftopia and of course The Big Short. Please don't be a lazy man and just watch the movie (also awesome btw).
> understanding mortgage backed securities
The Big Short
He's referencing, I believe, a Michael Lewis book, my guess being The Big Short. It's a narrative-style journalistic piece. Personally, I'd recommend looking to more sources than this if you want to really get into a Glass-Steagall (or other financial reform) debate, this one is very much told as a story.
The situations you mention were all fairly different. No short explanation will give a good sense of what happened. I don't know that much about Amarath, but there are good books written about the other two.
There's an excellent book about the rise and fall of LTCM.
I don't think the definitive book on the mortgage crisis has been written yet, but Michael Lewis wrote one I thought was pretty informative.
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis. Fantastic book. Edited to add Amazon link.
This is a film adaption of the novel, which is excellent (amazon link) and worth a read. You'll learn more than you ever thought you'd know about the subprime mortgage crisis.
I'm not aware of a whole lot of books specifically about accounting, but here are a few recommendations of books about finance, economics, business or that I just think might appeal to /r/accounting.
Anything by Michael Lewis. Liar's Poker has been mentioned elsewhere, but The Big Short is excellent as well.
Ben Mezrich has written some good books about business, but not really accounting specifically. He's most famous for The Accidental Billionaires which is about Facebook (I believe it, along with The Facebook Effect were the main sources for the movie The Social Network) and Bringing Down the House which was about the MIT card counting team and inspiration for the movie 21. You might be interested in Ugly Americans or Rigged though.
Here's a few more that are a little less fiction-y:
Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin
Traders, Guns and Money by Satyajit Das
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay
Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It) by William Poundstone
EDIT: Now with links!
Absolutely serious. Philanthropy isn't inherently a bad thing, but when it comes from billionaires, it is just a means to keep control over their exploitative gains and prevent fixes to problems that would undermine their businesses.
Thanks for the recommendation. I've got a lot of "left-leaning" books (well, some of them) on my list now that all sound interesting, and Debt is definitely a high priority because people keep recommending it.
Have you read any of his other work? Bullshit Jobs sounds really interesting but a couple reviews said the original article he wrote on the topic pretty much sums the book up in a much lower word count.
A few of the books on my to-read list in case anyone sees this and is interested:
Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World
Bullshit Jobs: A Theory
The Moral Landscape
Team Human
Shameless plug for:
https://www.amazon.com/Conflict-Visions-Ideological-Political-Struggles/dp/0465002056/
The author, Thomas Sowell, is right-wing, but his book is a neutral, and in my opinion, very helpful description of the many dimensions of underlying beliefs and opinions that lead people to hold their particular political positions.
SECTION | CONTENT
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Title | Thomas Sowell - A Conflict of Visions
Description | Thomas Sowell discusses the visions that account for the wide political gulf between conservatives and liberals. http://www.LibertyPen.com
Length | 0:09:43
SECTION | CONTENT
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Title | The Constrained Vision and the Unconstrained Vision
Description | In this video, I summarise the enduring relevance of Thomas Sowell's masterpiece A Conflict of Visions (1987) and explain some of its crucial insights into modern struggles between social justice warriors and their opponents. I also focus on his discussion F.A. Hayeck on social justice. You can get Sowell's book here: https://www.amazon.com/Conflict-Visions-Ideological-Political-Struggles/dp/0465002056
Length | 0:15:23
****
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I think there are plenty of scientist that would make good leaders. I don't think being a scientist makes you inherently a good leader or policy maker.
Have you ever read anything by economist Thomas Sowell? Specifically his book The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy or A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles
I realize it's far-fetched for you to take reading advice from someone you disagree with so much but here is the author discussing the latter book if you're interested.
Thomas Sowell and a Conflict of Visions
His 30+ books are all great (though not the most exciting of reads), but Conflict of Visions his a pretty good analysis of the conservative/libertarian viewpoint compared to its alternatives.
Your first point about blaming seems absurd to me. How can anyone be blamed for evolution or biology? The idea of ascribing agency to someone for a factor beyond their control is absurd to me. In this case we're talking about evolution which is an extremely large scale abstract process. You can't blame anyone for that except whatever you call God, certainly not women. And as I said in the edit to my first comment, if you did "blame" women for this (blame having a negative connotation) it would be a hugely positive since the increased selection pressure on humanity is what drove us to evolve so far beyond the other species on earth. That said, I don't see how anyone is to blame for evolution. It's too large a process.
Your observation that the discussion hinges on my claim that status is human nature is pretty apt. Disagreement over human nature is the deepest conflict between left and right. The left leans towards a blank slate theory, and the right leans towards some sort of human nature. Most political ideas can be gotten by assuming something along that spectrum and then extrapolating from there.
This is the scientific concept I'm referring to. Unfortunately because of the political ramifications of these ideas, psychology is massively fractured into many different fields and some engage with evolution more than others. Evolutionary biology is an especially hard field to make firm pronouncements on. There are a huge number of competing theories and because of the political ramifications, social scientists and social critics get involved too. I doubt anything I link will be up to your standards of irrefutable proof by authority (status), because of the politics. Some theories of social dominance informed and were informed by Marxist conceptions of hierarchy, and that throws a wrench in things as well.
I think the most well established advocate of these ideas is professor Steven Pinker, who wrote a whole book on this exact subject.
There's a huge amount of evidence on hierarchy among animals and it isn't in dispute at all. There's also a lot on humans. There's no one study I can link you that proves this finding (it would be hard to prove with a single study), so I'll link what I can find.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/games-primates-play/201203/social-dominance-explained-part-i
This article explains a lot of the ideas.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/games-primates-play/201211/are-there-universals-in-human-behavior-yes
This one by the same author refutes a good bit of criticism.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01542229
Here's a study on economic status and partner selection. It found a woman would rather an unattractive partner in high status clothes than an attractive one in a burger king outfit.
David Buss has done a lot of work on this subject. Buss has done large studies spanning many cultures to figure out sexual preferences.
http://pzacad.pitzer.edu/~dmoore/2007_Buss_Evolution_of_human_mating.pdf
This summarizes a lot of his findings, you can find shorter ones on his wikipedia page. Men emphasize fertility and youth, while women prefer age and status across cultures.
https://labs.la.utexas.edu/buss/files/2015/10/buss-1989-sex-differences-in-human-mate-preferences.pdf
Here is a cross cultural study from Buss.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection_in_humans#Selection_preferences_in_females
This section summarizes findings in womens sexul selection preferences.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090513814001111
This study finds women prefer older men, which correlates with higher status.
http://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1722&context=soss_research
A study finding womem prioritize status and men prioritize physical attactiveness.
https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~seyfarth/Publications/tics.pdf
This one shows how the evolution of language can be traced to Primate knowledge of hierarchy.
There's also Jordan Peterson, who used to teach at Harvard and has numerous citations in his field. He constantly makes the argument of the lobster. It basically says that lobsters organize themselves into hierarchys, and we split off from them billions of years ago which means hierarchy's are something billions of years old. The reason he picks lobsters and not some other animal, is that they're so old, evolutionarily speaking, that it makes the example dramatic. The part of your brain responsible for hierarchy is ancient, and a core structure right up there with breathing and eating. Hierarchy is not caused by capitalism, or male power, or whatever social effects you want to ascribe them to, because hierarchy existed before any of that. Those things are rooted in hierarchy, but removing those things won't remove the hierarchy.
The more general argument is that hierarchy is observed in many many many animals in our evolutionary lineage. It is also observed in humans. Animals act based on instinct so if they organize and select for status, it is a biological behavior not a learned one. For your worldview to make sense, you'd have to reason that humans do organize themselves into hierarchys but that it has nothing to do with biology. Somehow that part of our biology, which is observed in our recent primate ancestors, got bred out but also that we arbitrarily made it the core of our social structures. It just doesn't make any sense. It's biological in animals, and it's biological in humans.
> Everyone needs broadband internet. Fiber is the future. It's infrastructure. Building better infrastructure now benefits everyone.
If they need it, then they'll choose to buy it. You mandating them buying it is useless. If they decide they don't need it, then you'll put a gun to their head and make them buy it. Why do you want to put guns to people's heads and force them to live their life like you? You build infrastructure because you need it, not because you want to spend money on infrastructure. You keep ignoring the costs. You realize buying and maintaining things costs money right? Why don't you own a 5,000sq ft house? It's better than the one you have now. According to you, everyone has to purchase a 5,000sq ft house as their next house. If they can't afford it, they'll just have to deal with their crappy house until they can afford the best house.
> Everyone needs high speed internet.
Have you spoken with everyone on the planet? Why aren't you demanding Nicaragua and Zimbabwe also adhere to your decree?
> And?
So you don't care if poor people can afford the basics of society. Got it.
> Why are you assuming that better internet connection won't improve their lives?
I'm not, but you are just assuming the opposite. Internet isn't free you know? People only pay for thing if they feel it's worth the price. Are you going to force the Amish to have internet? What will you do if they refuse?
> No that's just hoping that people down the road will be able to shoulder the slightly higher cost. This idea would better connect rural communities, make it easier for private or municipal ISPs to offer competitive service and save everyone money.
No, it's not. Buying new, more expensive roads funded by municipal debt is making future generations pay for it. Again, have you done the cost benefit analysis over the next 10 years for every community in America, or are you demanding that people do as you say because you feel like someone might benefit eventually? If people need internet and roads, they'll do it anyways, but if they don't roads AND internet, then you just forced them to waste money, or deal with shitty roads longer than they otherwise would have. You are ignoring the costs, and just hoping and assuming everyone will benefit.
​
Further reading if you're interested.
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730
It should cover some basics. The reason why corperations currently can do a bunch of bullshit is due to the regulations and the bribing of politicans that hinders the free market from working.
You need some Basic Economics in your life
It would be way too difficult and there's a very good chance you wouldn't come close to finishing it.
If you really have no background in economics whatsoever, the best introduction is Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics, assuming you don't want to buy an actual college textbook. It's a great combination of explaining the intuition of economic principles and illustrating them with numerous real world examples.
Sure!
This is kind of long, but it's the first video I watched. It gives you a nice intro into his thoughts, his style, and who he is. It's from the 1990's, but a lot of it still utterly relevant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2hPQ86lGV0
If you want something a little bit shorter, this is very good recent one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SDLBqIubCs
Also, it's a thick book, but Basic Economics is mind blowingly good.
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491578598&sr=8-1&keywords=basic+economics
Sowell covers a lot of issues, and I don't always agree with him, but he is highly intelligent, he makes very logical and persuasive arguments. When I was more left leaning, one of the things that started to change me was the examination of economics. I watched Sowell and found that I could not disagree with him, hence the red pill.
Interestingly, when I debate friends who are form the left, usually referencing Sowell's point stumps people. I don't know why, but a lot of people seem to have shaky basis for their economic positions, but economics is very important when taking into account who we are (and have been) as a nation, and what's in the national interest.
Okay
My arguments are listed here.
This is by no means either academic or comprehensive, but it's short, fun, and just might kick-start your interest, so give it a watch. There are a couple others following up. I seriously recommend you get one of the more accessible books on economics. NPR's Planet Money has a reading list of books they recommend, and a quick peek at top results in Amazon also indicate bestsellers like Basic Economics, Economics in One Lesson, or the humorously titled and fun Naked Economics.
Any of those will do wonders. Just select whichever looks like a good time.
Or don't -- what to do with scarce resources like your own time is of course your choice. An economic choice ;)
Thomas sowell has a plethora of books, even one named "basic economics"
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481691507&sr=1-1&keywords=thomas+sowell
https://www.amazon.com/Economic-Facts-Fallacies-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465022030/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481691507&sr=1-5&keywords=thomas+sowell
are the 2 books i have and recommend, although the second book is rather short so beware.
Watch The Rubin Report on YouTube. Dave Rubin interviewed both Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, as well as MANY of the other names I see posted by others here. He interviews people from different political, social, and economic philosophies. I even fund him on Patreon because his channel is great (and important).
 
If I had to pick three people that made the most dramatic impact on my life in terms of how I think, seek and evaluate evidence, and use reason, these people would be at the top. While the people on my list did not always agree on everything, I do believe that they are/were intellectually honest:
 
Thomas Sowell
Carl Sagan (Science-related things aside, he wrote a bit on Philosophy of thought)
Ayn Rand
I hope that helps! :)
Basic Economics https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465060730/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_yEyPCb84S1TQ4
This economics book by a previous Harvard professor and well known economist.
TIL
> A 2016 study estimated that global fossil fuel subsidies were $5.3 trillion in 2015, which represents 6.5% of global GDP. The study found that "China was the biggest subsidizer in 2013 ($1.8 trillion), followed by the United States ($0.6 trillion), and Russia, the European Union, and India (each with about $0.3 trillion)." The authors estimated that the elimination of "subsidies would have reduced global carbon emissions in 2013 by 21% and fossil fuel air pollution deaths 55%, while raising revenue of 4%, and social welfare by 2.2%, of global GDP." According to the International Energy Agency, the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies worldwide would be the one of the most effective ways of reducing greenhouse gases and battling global warming. In May 2016, the G7 nations set for the first time a deadline for ending most fossil fuel subsidies; saying government support for coal, oil and gas should end by 2025.
The stupidity of various parts of the US government continues to blow my mind. These oil companies are more than capable of being self sufficient. I don't understand why they are being subsidized....
> Global fossil fuel subsidies represented 6.5% of global GDP in 2015. The elimination of these subsidies is widely seen as one of the most effective ways of reducing global carbon emissions.
but but I thought it was evil greedy capitalist "big oil" companies that were responsible for most of the world's climate woes. Now I find out they are all being critically supported by (for the most part) elected government officials across the globe? Shocking.
0.6 trillion dollar a year in America alone is a massive amount of money, far bigger than the total revenues of all ExxonMobil business across the globe (0.23 trillion) which is slightly more than Apple. Imagine the effect that has.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies?wprov=sfla1
Who would have thought giving governments unbridled power to intervene in markets combined with a faux free market paint job in a mixed economy would result in vast misallocation of capital, and contribute to multi generational climate damage? Which would otherwise be less bad for the environment if it was just capitalism.
Thomas Sowell's book "Basic Economics" gave a hundred examples of unintended side effects of government intervention just like this, across a broad spectrum of industries. But this one takes the cake.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0465060730/
Just what I want, Reddit running my life.
http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Monarchy-Natural/dp/0765808684/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320015513&sr=8-1
We have this in Germany where elections are financed by a fixed amount that is distributed to the parties based on the results of the previous elections.
I can tell you that this does not change much and our politics suck just as much.
As long as you OWS people think that corporations are the problem and it can be solved by changes in government nothing will get better in the long run.
For those willing to think for themselves and not follow the OWS hive mind I suggest reading Democracy: The God that Failed
We got where we are because of Democracy.
http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Monarchy-Natural/dp/0765808684
Sounds like you might be a libertarian-leaning conservative. (Old type, before the neo-con takeover.)
Some question you should ask yourself:
What is your definition of utility, and how can the worth of a utility be measured?
When is it moral for a government to do something that it is not moral for an individual to do? Why?
How do you know Democracy is the least bad system of government? There are good arguments against it. Some examples:
http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Monarchy-Natural/dp/0765808684
http://www.amazon.com/Notes-Democracy-H-L-Mencken/dp/0977378810/ref=pd_sim_b_8
Without answering some of those questions, and many others like them, if only for yourself, you will be working with assumptions that you aren't even aware of.
Democracy: The God That Failed
http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-The-God-That-Failed-Economics/dp/0765808684
First off, understand that the people who are handling TARP control the message coming from the economic world. They've controlled it for years, so it's unlikely you're going to hear anything other than what a great decision was made and how great they're doing.
One chart or one article won't convince you of anything because you are hearing "green shoots" 24/7 from the media. It's their job, they're owned by (about 6) large corporations who depend on the public continuing to buy stuff. If the public perception of the economy begins to darken then the things will get messy very fast. We need people to spend money to keep the economy rolling.
So.. . you have massive amounts of influence telling you that what they did was aok.. it won't be easy for you to see another side to the story. Here's my suggestion on how to understand what went wrong and why the "solution" that has been used will only hurt in the long run:
either watch these videos
or
read this book
As one of those progressive jerkoffs (and big time Yang supporter & phone banker), the concern about the 1% is an entirely data driven perspective. Two points.
First, political science research has consistently shown that elite economic interests consistently suppress democratic outcomes, to the point that some have even labeled America as an oligarchy: see Gilens https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf and of course Pikkety https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/28/thomas-piketty-capital-surprise-bestseller&ved=2ahUKEwihmIzyvuDkAhUSjq0KHfR9C5oQFjAWegQIDBAB&usg=AOvVaw26KCDNjdkHZHP9l5l4QMSo&ampcf=1
Second, work by Payne, Wilkinson & Pickett, and other researchers has also shown that inequality, specifically - NOT just the existence of poverty or a sufficient economic floor, but there mere existence of deep socioeconomic differences - is a primary driver of social dysfunction: see https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/opinion/sunday/what-monkeys-can-teach-us-about-fairness.html and https://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies-Stronger/dp/1608193411/ref=asc_df_1608193411/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312111868709&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10151662887925155100&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9010330&hvtargid=pla-435491454448&psc=1
Democracy Dollars and the FD will go a long ways toward combating these political dynamics, but they will remain concerning in the long term. As an anarchist, I believe it is any citizen's right to secede from a nation that they no longer wish to be a part of. OTOH, as a scientist well-informed on the social dysfunction that is created by large socioeconomic inequality, the most stable societies are clearly those with the lowest inequality, which is the kind of society that I want to be a part of (even if it means me & you can't be billionaires).
Hope that sheds a little light on our perspective.
Because human beings are not Pareto efficient. This book summarizes a lot of research over multiple social indicators that people are significantly better off in a less unequal society, even if their absolute level of wealth is lower.
>So one of my core believes is all people should have as much freedom as possible. Part of freedom is keeping the product of your labor. When we tax income, we are taxing labor.
and what is the product of the labor of Wall Street traders?
what is the product of the labor of cigarette makers?
what is the product of the labor of a mining company whose runoff pollutes the river and kills the fish that people downstream depend on for their livelihood or survival?
should they be able to keep the product of their labor and be free?
this is why economists, after much reluctance, now study (in their parlance) externalities.
>I would argue that the best result is achieved when individuals making choices for themselves is the clearest route to "best result for society", where society really means the sum total desires of the individuals in society.
the term society is not interchangeable with the sum total of individuals' behavior. society is an emergent construct with emergent properties. for example: how do people who have less feel about those who have more (regardless of whether the rich people really do work harder, or whether they are lucky)? so the poor start killing the rich people. or the poor people rise up and overthrow the social structure, which might be detrimental to everyone temporarily, but good in the long run. that is an oversimplified argument, but the point is this: people live in a society, and how that society functions is not just a sum of how every individual behaves. so we need to analyze how successful a society is, and how it can achieve that. it is ultimately defined in terms of concrete outcomes for people, to be sure. but you can't understand the world around you if you just want to reduce everything to individuals.
this is likely connected to why you value freedom more than equality. that and your physiology, which determines which outcomes you value more than others.
I would argue that the way you feel isn't any less valid than they a lot of others around here feel, but ultimately it will lead to worse outcomes. driven in some sense by these externalities, and by very foreseeable outcomes like social discontent and environmental destruction. personally I don't want to see those worse outcomes. I think that more equality will lead to better outcomes. please read The Spirit Level because it has lots of data on how equality affects societal outcomes.
Here's one study on that issue: The Spirit Level
You are viewing whiteness as an innate, essentialist trait. What's being talked about here is whiteness as a social construction and how it functions. I recommend checking out The Wages of Whiteness or much of the work of James Baldwin if you're interested in exploring this idea at all. But ultimately whether you personally participated in genocide, for instance, is utterly beside the point.
If you have an interest in the topic there's no reason you shouldn't I guess... The books are often read together since the first one tries to describe the way people viewed race in America and how whites tried to differentiate themselves from blacks. The second talks about competition and struggle of groups we today consider Caucasian into entering the public perception of whiteness- and in turn the resistance they faced from the already established white category.
The Wages of Whiteness "in broadest strokes argues that whiteness was a way in which white workers responded to fear of dependency on wage labor and to the necessities of capitalist work discipline."
Whiteness of a Different Color really goes into detail describing each nationalities' assent into whiteness. The way race was spoken of, and how it changed meanings over time both in a scientific terms as well as public perception.
Mehring is a publishing company for cheap that offers Marxist and other Socialist books. I'd recommend any book (or books) from their Socialist Starter Bundle or their Marxist Theory bundle.
Interesting non-Marx essays to read are George Orwell's The Lion and the Unicorn and Einstein's Why Socialism?
If you do dig into Capital (I whole heartedly recommend it, but it is heavy reading) I'd bring along David Harvey's A Companion to Marx's Capital to help explain some of the more abstract parts, it helped for me.
I would suggest purchasing
"A Companion to Marx's Capital" by Professor David Harvey,
You can buy it from Amazon used for 14$ or see if your library has it- it helped me understand the book so much better
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1844673596/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_KIV.Bb88JDNK6
The Communist Manifesto can be found free on the internet,
and http://www.amazon.com/Companion-Marxs-Capital-David-Harvey/dp/1844673596/ref=tmm_pap_title_0 this is a fundamental companion to the Das Capital, which is one of the most scathing critiques labeled against Capitalism and how it functions. I have read it multiple times, once with Das Capital itself. It is very well written.
Well there's this book http://www.amazon.com/Companion-Marxs-Capital-David-Harvey/dp/1844673596
You can also look up things that feature the TSSI and MELT.
This MMT guy talks about it http://heteconomist.com/category/economics/
You should listen to David Harvey while reading capital.
Democracy: The God that Failed
Let's think about libertarians for a minute:
☑ Fundamental belief that only the strong should survive
☑ Weird beliefs about genetic superiority
☑ Movement that consists almost entirely of white men
☑ Advocate overthrow of democratically elected government
☑ Armed militias
☑ Prone to believing in conspiracy theories
☑ Cult adherence to philosophy
☑ Belief that truth may only be found in official party documents
☑ Dismissive of actual experts and empirical evidence
☑ Identification of racial minorities as scapegoats for societal ills
☑ Rabid protection of corporate power
☑ Disdain for intellectuals and the arts
☑ Rampant sexism
☑ Advocating the suppression of labor power
☑ Obsession with central banks laced with anti-Semitic undertones
☑ Disdain for human rights and the rights of children in particular
☑ Single-leader rule preferable to democratic rule (see Hoppe)
☑ Rabid defense of reactionary and racist thought.
☑ Unwillingness to compromise
☑ Inexplicable obsession with firearms and military-style uniforms
☑ Broad connections with other right-wing and reactionary sects
☑ Appropriation of nationalist language and symbology
☑ Persecution narrative among the privileged
☑ Placing money and power ahead of human beings
Let's face it. There is a lot in common here. It's all uniquely Anglo-America-flavored. And they'll deny it up and down. But there are too many classic fascist warning signs to ignore it completely.
If there was justice in the world he and his wife and kids would all have to work for a few years at in-and-out burger and try to live off the income and then during their off time listen to a recording of him being a jackass and saying that if people worked harder they'd be richer.
http://www.amazon.com/Nickel-Dimed-Not-Getting-America/dp/0805063897
Nickel and Dimed
Two sources of the outrage, the first is the emotional outrage people see when watching people in dirt poor areas slaving away to make a luxury good for someone in another country. That just solicits outrage from many people.
The second source is from people who see large companies use their resources to keep poor people perpetually poor for personal gain.
You are right the people have a choice to either work or not to work, but if not working means death for you and your family it is not really a choice. Many factory workers are not just working for themselves, but for their family as a whole.
I would suggest a couple of books that go into the issues you are asking about pretty thoroughly.
Nickel and Dimed:
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Also the first episode of 30 days
The 30 days episode shows how being poor can cause people to continuously be ground down to a point where even the smart and responsible ones find themselves unable to cope.
Worse yet, have you seen Glenn Beck's new book "Broke"? If that isn't the biggest insult to intelligence I'm not sure what is. He profits from people's misery and wants to suggest that what he earned from his book shouldn't be taxes accordingly, so its a double slap for those who cling to his words out of the fear he instills.
Now, as far as your comment on "raising taxes on everyone" I would add one thing. Some people are so down and out, there is nothing left to tax. Should we ask for a section of the cardboard box they live in? I agree that in hard times perhaps everyone across the board should pitch in, but don't forget in terms of discretionary income I would suggest that people at certain levels may pay more just to tread water which is the subject of "Nickeled and Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich. Now some people can argue with her methodology, but how about Elizabeth Warren? She can cite how the inequality across the spectrum grew.
I would rather take a page out of Warren Buffet's book that suggests that people of his level should pay at least the same percentage as their secretaries. I don't think he is making that up. And I think those who are well enough off are whistling past the graveyard knowing that he's right, and hoping no critical mass will ever put 2+2 together to swing the tide. (Edit: typo)
I don't know what to tell you man. If a company employs people at $5 an hour then they are probably on foodstamps, welfare, medicaid, etc. and the rest of society picks up the slack. The business makes increased profit.
Having more minimum wage jobs or a lower minimum wage is NOT going to help anybody really.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805063897?ie=UTF8&tag=iwillteachyou-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0805063897
Essayist and cultural critic Barbara Ehrenreich has always specialized in turning received wisdom on its head with intelligence, clarity, and verve. With some 12 million women being pushed into the labor market by welfare reform, she decided to do some good old-fashioned journalism and find out just how they were going to survive on the wages of the unskilled--at $6 to $7 an hour, only half of what is considered a living wage. So she did what millions of Americans do, she looked for a job and a place to live, worked that job, and tried to make ends meet.
As a waitress in Florida, where her name is suddenly transposed to "girl," trailer trash becomes a demographic category to aspire to with rent at $675 per month. In Maine, where she ends up working as both a cleaning woman and a nursing home assistant, she must first fill out endless pre-employment tests with trick questions such as "Some people work better when they're a little bit high." In Minnesota, she works at Wal-Mart under the repressive surveillance of men and women whose job it is to monitor her behavior for signs of sloth, theft, drug abuse, or worse. She even gets to experience the humiliation of the urine test.
So, do the poor have survival strategies unknown to the middle class? And did Ehrenreich feel the "bracing psychological effects of getting out of the house, as promised by the wonks who brought us welfare reform?" Nah. Even in her best-case scenario, with all the advantages of education, health, a car, and money for first month's rent, she has to work two jobs, seven days a week, and still almost winds up in a shelter. As Ehrenreich points out with her potent combination of humor and outrage, the laws of supply and demand have been reversed. Rental prices skyrocket, but wages never rise. Rather, jobs are so cheap as measured by the pay that workers are encouraged to take as many as they can. Behind those trademark Wal-Mart vests, it turns out, are the borderline homeless. With her characteristic wry wit and her unabashedly liberal bent, Ehrenreich brings the invisible poor out of hiding and, in the process, the world they inhabit--where civil liberties are often ignored and hard work fails to live up to its reputation as the ticket out of poverty. --Lesley Reed
http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0805079831
A bit longer, but all are solid suggestions, and although I could add two dozen more, I'm sure others will take up the cause.
God is Not Great, by Christopher Hitchens
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State written by David Beito
An article directly attempting to refute it is: The Conservative Myth of a Social Safety Net Built on Charity
> But there were a few major problems with these societies. The first was that they were regionally segregated and isolated.
^ This really isn't a problem. What works in Albuquerque, NM may not work for Providence, RI. (and any argument for consolidation is purely an argument for government control, and socialism in general)
> These forms of insurance didn't exist in places without dense cities, industry, or deep ethnic and immigrant communities. Even in states with large cities and thriving industries like California and New York, only 30 percent of workers had some sort of health-care coverage through fraternal methods. Moreover, the programs were fragmented and provided only partial insurance.
^ People had savings, a stronger family structure, and obviously didn't feel that complete medical coverage was economically feasible. Also, we don't know if this "30%" includes children, women, or immigrants - each has different reasons for not being a member of any aid society.
> Also, these were programs designed for working men—for the most part, they did not cover women. Health insurance contracts, for example, were explicit in not providing for coverage of pregnancy, childbirth, or child care (seen as women’s responsibilities at the time).
^ That was the medical standard at the time. I don't see how we cold expect different standards when everyone had children in their own homes with semi-professional midwives.
> The doctors the lodges hired were often seen as providing substandard care. And most of these societies had age limits.
^ Citation?
> Those over 45 were generally ruled out, and those that weren’t were charged higher rates. Those already in poor health were excluded through medical examinations. There were maximum and minimum limits on benefits, and as a result, long-term disability wasn't covered. As late as 1930, old-age benefits represented just 2.3 percent of social benefits given out by fraternal organizations.
^ It is very expensive to exceed these limits. I contend that basically none of the goods or services we interact with today has a price not affected by subsidy, tax, or regulatory burden. Also, consider the lives of people who lived past their mutual aid society's age limit. These people would have either a family with working children or a pension.
Then the Progressives came and forced workers to pay into programs that were set up to benefit them by people who would profit from the programs and politicians who would reap in the votes to keep the programs running. "...forcing employers to participate was fair because they would directly benefit from such coverage."
book available on amazon: From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967
>During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, more Americans belonged to fraternal societies than to any other kind of voluntary association, with the possible exception of churches.
>Much more than a means of addressing deep-seated cultural, psychological, and gender needs, fraternal societies gave Americans a way to provide themselves with social-welfare services that would otherwise have been inaccessible, Beito argues. In addition to creating vast social and mutual aid networks among the poor and in the working class, they made affordable life and health insurance available to their members and established hospitals, orphanages, and homes for the elderly. Fraternal societies continued their commitment to mutual aid even into the early years of the Great Depression, Beito says, but changing cultural attitudes and the expanding welfare state eventually propelled their decline.
The guy you're replying to probably doesn't know a ton about this area, but his answer is generally correct (though inexact). At the turn of the 20th Century approximately half of the population (predominantly lower and middle class, and weighted heavily towards blacks and new immigrants - the very people who could not afford direct-paid service) was covered through mutual aid societies, which hired "lodge doctors" (new doctors who could handle most things, and would send you to a specialist if it was more serious) to provide medical services - including basic surgery and medication - to lodge members and their families. This system was extremely efficient, but it dominated the field of provision of medical services. The typical yearly cost for members was $2 (an average day's wage for those in lower income brackets), while non-members could pay $2 per doctor's visit.
Then the AMA began to control the licensing of medical schools. There's a long literature of all the politics of this, but extremely well-educated and well-to-do doctors basically used the system to destroy less elite medical schools, halving the number of degree-granting institutions (and nearly doubling the cost of medical care). This put some lodges out of business.
Then came regulation of the reserves of lodges. Lodges had to show a gradual increase in reserve cash year over year to avoid being shut down (which, as anyone who has studied the economics of insurance can tell you, is incredibly stupid). Predictably, this reduction of supply also caused increases in medical costs.
Then came the clincher for lodges; every member was required to have a full doctor's examination annually. Predictably, this raised the cost of the service enough that many individuals were priced out of it, which (as is the nature of insurance) raised the costs even further.
Source: The respected historian David Beito's From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967
There's also the fraternal hospitals which functioned on a similar model (though I know less about those), and were driven out through some of the same regulations and then the initial regulations of the Medicare program (which actually hurt health care outcomes for low-income individuals by limiting their access to care).
>but I think there's a limit to how much out-of-pocket most people will pay before they start cutting corners on preventive care and on treatment for chronic illnesses.
Do you think that people will voluntarily diminish their own utility? Sometimes there are higher priorities than preventative care (food, shelter etc.)
> I challenge you to show evidence of any time or place in history before modern welfare where poor people had reliable access to anything even remotely approaching adequate care.
Have a look at http://www.amazon.com/From-Mutual-Aid-Welfare-State/dp/0807848417 . Its thesis is summarized here - http://mises.org/daily/5388
These are good questions, and there are good answers for them. I recommend a book From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967. If a book is more than you want to read, there are two good articles based off that book that fill in a lot of the general picture: Welfare before the Welfare State and From Mutual Aid to Welfare State: How Fraternal Societies Fought Poverty and Taught Character.
His other book, Dogs and Demons is really good. Looking for the Lost is an excellent read that's somewhat related to Dogs and Demons by the author Alan Booth. He walked the length of Japan in 1977 and wrote a book about his travels called Roads to Sata, which I highly recommend, especially if you liked Looking for the Lost (In fact you may want to read this one first).
And if you find you enjoyed Roads to Sata, then read Hitching Rides with Buddha by Will Ferguson, who hitchhiked the length of Japan.
> That's how Germany and Japan works.
Japan? Really? Japan's economy is in depression, corruption in government is atrocious (there's a modern book about it - Dogs and Demons). Japanese work culture leads to people constantly being overworked, and japanese appartments are much smaller than anything you can find in Russia.
> China and Russia have been doing the exact opposite and actually increasing their gold reserves dramatically in recent years
They have an energy pact together as well. Highly suggest Currency Wars to anyone interested in this topic.
It basically talks about how killing a countries currency is the better form of warfare now than bombing each other. Also describes how the west vs asia/russia try to attack each others currencies for power. Really interesting stuff.
There are incentives and disincentives.
Undermining the currency is a good strategy for increasing exports and therefore increasing employment. But as you say, that can only go so far.
I really enjoyed Currency Wars. It was a good read on the subject.
Kid... please... I have been hearing those words for over 15 years... They are not new...
Currency Wars - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Jim Rickards - Currency Wars
Peter Schiff - Currency Wars
I've referred to it as a currency war ever since reading the book currency wars
https://www.amazon.com/Currency-Wars-Making-Global-Crisis/dp/1591845564
Going to check out the economic warfare book though as they appear to be similarly about the role money plays with fighting each other now.
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.
He appears on TV, which I don't watch, and in Youtube videos, which I watch four times a year. So I mostly don't care about him. However:
So I think he must have some other good points. You're welcome to post questions like "Hey Libertarians, Glenn Beck proposed/opposed X. What do you think about that?"
Just read this:
http://jim.com/econ/
This is the famous "Economics in One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt. It is still the best introduction to economics that exists, and it's easy to understand.
If you're interested in more, you can try this:
http://www.amazon.com/Meltdown-Free-Market-Collapsed-Government-Bailouts/dp/1596985879
which is also easy to understand. Or this:
http://mises.org/books/mespm.pdf
which is a more systematic treatise.
>The reason we need a government is to regulate and control those who absolutely require it. If you did not figure that in 2008.
If you think greed and a lack of regulation caused the crash in 2008, you have not been paying attention.
The crash was caused BY government regulation.
Everyone is greedy. The whole point of capitalism is to channel greed into productive uses.
Government is the one that redirects it into disaster and gets in the way of the normal market forces that punish those who are not serving the greater good. Think about it:
The market reacts rationally to the dot-com slump by reducing spending to replenish savings (government also had a leading hand in the dot-com bubble but that's a separate discussion). Savings rates reached a 17-year high. Alan Greenspan decides that saving money is destructive because consumer spending supposedly drives economic prosperity and we need more consumer spending to get out of the dot-com slump. So he pushes interest rates down quarter after quarter. Government makes mortgage interest (a result of spending) a tax deduction while taxing interest on savings and capital gains, furthering the century-long goal of America's central economic planners of punishing savings and rewarding spending, which they wrongly view as the "engine" of economic growth. They ensure anyone trying to save dollars loses out via inflation, pushing even the more conservative savers and investors to jump back into the economy despite being uncomfortable with their capital levels. Fannie and Freddie make it possible for virtually ANYONE to get a home mortgage.
Who's irresponsible? The banks who make financial trades based on the government's rules, or the government who makes the crazy rules that are not based in reality and are ACTIVELY TARGETED at doing things that don't lead to a REAL healthy economy (like making sure investment comes from capital instead of debt, making sure overvalued assets are allowed to correct, allowing bad investors to lose their capital)?
The problem is you say you want "more" regulation -- you have to realize that Fannie, Freddie, Community Reinvestment Act, the FDIC, the Federal Reserve, these are ALL regulations. And if you think the problem is we didn't have ENOUGH regulations, I'm honestly afraid of what would have happened if we had any more regulations like those.
If you want to read a great book that challenges your view of who's fault the 2008 crash was, check out Tom Woods' very accessible book "Meltdown". Seriously, you'll thank me later.
Capital, Volume 1: A Critique of Political Economy by Karl Marx
I recommend the Penguin Classics edition, since it's widely available and unabridged. Check the link above.
Also, for a general overview of the text, see the book's Wikipedia page.
There are a couple of 'strands' of Marx's thought which you might investigate. I can't comment too much on shorter introductions to the philosophical side, as I'm more familiar with (and interested in, for the moment) works the economic side. For this, I can recommend the following:
I hope these will be useful, even if they aren't necessarily the aspect of Marx that you are most interested in.
Edit: I should state that I am a philosopher of language, and so one doesn't need any especial economics expertise to dive into the texts that I've recommended! I certainly knew very little about the field before I read these texts.
Reading the Manifesto of the Communist Party is highly recommended, but it glosses over things which at Marx's time were a living thing: The Paris Commune, for example. The memory was still fresh back then, that the French aristocracy denied Democracy with a bloodbath. There are subtleties a first reader cannot understand without a historical context.
The Defining moment for Marxism is Capital: Volume 1: A Critique of Political Economy by Karl Marx. You can also find it as PDF for free on Marxists Internet Archive.
If you are serious about reading Volume 1, you will need David Harvey's "A Companion to Marx's Capital". Also David Harvey has been teaching an introductory course on Marxism for the past 20 years at CUNY. He has released the videos of the lectures (playlist) . Harvey says so himself, by the way, but let me emphasize this myself: you have to stick with the book a bit. It is kinda typical British of its time: The problem is that the language is very, how do I describe it? Very late 19th Century, and even people back then had issues with it, cuz Marx basically invented the idea of critiquing economic systems.
If you want a small introduction to Marxism, Harvey's RSA talk on the "Crises of Capitalism" is very approachable, entertaining and very short (11 minutes long). Generally speaking anything by David Harvey is going to be extremely approachable, even to a reader with no previous engagement with Marxism or the Left.
Also, you can try Dr. Richard Wolff: Marxism 101: How Capitalism is Killing Itself . He is approachable, but he is definitely more academic. Nothing difficult, a term here and there; if you don't understand something write it down and look it up later. Also here is his talk on "Socialism For Dummies" (part1, part2)
By the way, Marx was one of the most prolific philosophers of the 19th century. You do not have to read everything he wrote.
If you want to see something more about modern Marxism thought, there is also the Slovenian Marxist philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek. You can give it a go with this one of his lectures. Here is his RSA lecture, very approachable and funny and serious at the same time.
Feel free to DM any questions!
PS: I suggest that you do not go to most of the Left subreddits with questions or hoping to learn anything. They are mostly identity politics and sectarian cancer. Props to Chapo Trap House: Bend those knees!
EditEdit: The Grundrisse is another seminal piece of work for Marx. I would recommend it after you have finished Volume I.
[here](http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Marx/mrxCpA1.html#Part I, Chapter 1) is book one, and you can find book 2,3 on that site as well. there are also free audiobooks of Capital here. Happy reading and good luck!
Edit: you can find the hard copy on amazon but getting all 3 books are going to cost you around $40 + shipping, but you should be a good Marxist and read them online for free.
>Just 1% of people could meet the needs of everyone and don't!
If it were only that simple, then it would have been done long ago. Money is fleeting and doesn't last. The truly poor third world nations have structural problems that need to be addressed, because they are the real road blocks to ending poverty.
Despite billions in aid, most African nations are actually WORSE OFF today than when they declared independence. There's an eye opening book on this subject, "White Man's Burden" by William Easterly. . He points out all the colossal ways that African nations have squandered aid by lining the pockets of corrupt politicians, purchasing equipment that the locals can't maintain, buying things they don't need, and even worse, putting African farmers and entrepreneurs out of business by donating food and goods so no one will buy them locally anymore.
To the points brought up in the book I would add overpopulation and subjugation of women as barriers to development as well.
This is the equvalent of giving a homeless person money, if you know he is going to buy alcohol with it. Have you really helped him?
Of course we need to help the world's poor, but we also have to be realistic that its not going to be solved by the billionaires handing over their cash.
I don't particularly like Dead Aid, although I think Ed Carr articulated its many, many problems better than I could.
As alternatives, I would recommend:
I definitely agree with you on fiction as a great source of learning about Africa. Along with your recommendations I would add:
> It seems like you are trying to blame poverty on assistance programs
I think poverty is a very very complex social problem that has scores of causes and assistance programs that are not designed well (and maybe even ones that are designed well) are a factor in some peoples poverty yes. Do I think it's a primary factor? Probably not, I'm not sure. Do I think we don't study the long effects of government programs closely enough. Absolutely.
>but I don't think you understand who uses them. Most people on assistance DO work.
I think your trying to toss me in with a lot of old people that bought into the welfare queen myth of the 80's which I am not one. I've seen the statistics and I do understand that many people on welfare work. My concern was on how welfare is structured and it's potential to trap people and not encourage them to work into higher income bracket where they can support themselves without assistance. My other concern was it's potential unstudied effects like destruction of fatherhood, class conflict, incentivizeing fraud, victim mentality, etc. I'm pro or con black or white issue. Again, I'm not completely against welfare programs I just think we should be very very careful about how they are used and should closely study outcomes. For the record I was raised very liberal and support welfare programs and called for more of them for years but have sense altered my position.
> And a large portion of the users are lower enlisted military families
I've actually never heard this. Most military families I know are not rich but are not hurting because of generous banking terms (very low loan rates), healthcare supplementation and housing/food support if living on base or near it. If this is true the military should look into this and possibly adjust wages. No military family should need food stamps (unless of course it's a single earning parent at the lowest rung of the military with a non working spouse who has chosen to have more then 3 or 4 kids and in that case that's incredibly irresponsible and should not be allowed or encouraged with benefits.) I'm also wondering if this is due to higher cost of living in certain areas? Which the military should again look into...
> Assistance alone isn't enough for someone to abuse the system.
I don't know what you mean by this. People abuse systems all the time regardless of what you think is worth abusing based on your moral compass.
> This country has a relatively efficient system.
This might be true but I'm highly highly skeptical. How would you really measure this. Is there a non biased non profit that's looked at efficiency of welfare systems and ranks the US highly on gov efficiency?? My original comment wasn't just about efficiency but about long term societal cost of creating potential people trapped in systemic poverty and welfare being a 'factor' in that trap.
I again want to just stop here and tell you I'm not against welfare and if you press a lot of conservatives many aren't for a complete break down of welfare either. Let's say you designed a government program that gave people a free bus ticket and housing stipend to move to areas with lower cost of living and more jobs. I think you'd find more support for a program like that. Or maybe you wanted to redesign the tax system and take benefits away but also pay people a small universal income. This idea actually came from conservative economists and is also called a negative tax. It saves a lot of money because it gets government out of a lot of administrative and enforcement costs of running these programs and stimulates the economy. I know that these programs also have drawbacks and potential pitfalls down the road but they should be on the table and the conservative talking points should be discussed not dismissed as racist or heartless. People go into fight or flight when they are dismissed and attacked. That's what's going on in our country we've completely stopped talking to people with opposing viewpoints and simply gone into attack mode, in group out group mode.
> Spending tax dollars on weeding out the abusers is an over glorified witch hunt.
Is catching speeders a witch hunt? Is fining litterers a witch hunt? I'm not sure I support the drug tests but you have to at least understand why people might want a drug test?? They don't want their hard earned dollar going to people sitting around all day doing drugs or doing drugs and working. If most people using welfare are normal working people then a drug test shouldn't be a big deal right? Again I'm just playing devils advocate.
> They came up with nothing significant and used millions to do it.
Agreed. It was a basically a stunt and the drug testing company was owned by one of the politicians pushing it. So it was just a way to fleece the conservative base. This is also a bad thing. But just imagine if dems would have come to the table and tried to make a compromise? Maybe it wouldn't have been such a fiasco.
> I don't want to pay for the road that gets you home but I still have to because you should have a road.
I think now you're trying to straw man me. I'm not stating that we shouldn't have taxes that pay for items for the common good. I'm saying that using guns to take peoples money and give it to someone else is not right it's a privilege that was given to the government through contractual consent. The people that founded this country agreed to be governed and they can un-agree if they feel that the contract is broken. (I know I sound like a bit of a militia nut with that statement but that's what our country was founded on, contractual agreement by men that really didn't like powerful central government controlled by a king or a massive populace).
> Gather multiple sources and educate yourself.
I'd like to believe I have actually (because I grew up reading and thumping it to people). I feel like I've heard both arguments but feel free to recommend pro welfare literature/sites. Personally I'd highly recommend you try out these books for starters.
https://www.amazon.com/Framework-Understanding-Poverty-4th/dp/1929229488
https://www.amazon.com/Life-Bottom-Worldview-Makes-Underclass/dp/1566635055
(This second book is very biased and written by a guy that was overexposed and probably burnt out by really shit people but at least he's honest about his bias)
https://www.amazon.com/White-Mans-Burden-Efforts-Little/dp/0143038826
https://www.amazon.com/Death-Common-Sense-Suffocating-America/dp/0812982746
> As for what affects culture, our President, the figurehead of our country, is stumbling through the presidency like a toddler
LOL. Totally agree. I grabbed a bottle of rye at 7am and watched the hearings and I think this guy needs to be impeached. Please don't assume because I'm critical of welfare design and long term societal impacts that I'm a Trump voter.
> He is not just using tax dollars, he is flagrantly wasting tax dollars. That is what affects our culture.
Yes. I agree with this as well. Lots of things waste our tax dollars. Waste will always be part of the system but that doesn't mean we give up the fight tpo monitor and adjust it.
> Who can trust government when they cut healthcare with one hand and sign up for millions in travel costs with the other?
You bring up a very interesting point here. Neither side is really getting it's way in the government and we are having such wild swings of political ideology that the next leadership team is undoing whatever the last one established. Trust of government is completely broken but this has only served to allow astro turf corporate candidates infest our government. Corporations have more say in our government then it's citizens and the plebs are busy having a bullshit culture war and arguing at each other while the golden goose is getting robbed. Neither base is really getting any answer or solutions to their problems because of graft, corruption and income inequality/class warfare.
You seem like an intelligent person. You might like this analysis written by a programmer named Michael O. Church about class in the US.
https://web.archive.org/web/20151006183427/https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/09/09/the-3-ladder-system-of-social-class-in-the-u-s/
> Maybe what you are saying is the reasoning behind certain ways of thinking but it just doesn't make sense.
It doesn't make sense because our political beliefs are largely influenced by deeply ingrained schema on how we see the world taught to us by our families. It's really difficult to see that the other-side has a legit argument without understanding their worldview.
Lakhoff nailed this in his book 'Don't Think of an Elephant'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4UfGZOPJjE
> Maybe it's easier to tear apart nameless "freeloaders" than accept one more problem with the President.
LOL. Why not both?? ....Just kidding. I don't think most welfare abusers see themselves as freeloaders. I think people in poverty are living day to day and think that abusing the system is just surviving and I think the white collar criminals are probably in a very warped way thinking the same way. Humans are gonna human.
In closing I just want to say that you can have a lot of compassion of other humans and want to see a better society with happier, well fed people and be against certain welfare programs. Humans are hell-a complicated and there are other ways to make people health and happy besides cutting a segment of them a check or a rebate or a voucher.
If you do read any of my sources and want to chat feel free to save me and PM me anytime. Have a great night!
The big 2 are:
The End of Poverty
and
The White Man's Burden
Which conveniently, disagree on most particulars. Also read every paper written at
JPAL
Try:
http://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1309493214&sr=8-1
In Economics, right wing is capitalism, left wing is a centrally planned government, and than there is mixed economy approaches which encompasses a large majority of economic systems. You said that the National Socialist Party was "inhereny right wing" economically. To anyone who studies economics and has taken beyond an introductory class, that means a capitalist system. Not a mixed economy. I have said this multiple times.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2597802?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
This is Peter Temin's original paper on the topic which led to all the pushback your papers were referring to. While I don't stand by 100% of what he says in here, he is one of the top economists in the world for a reason. This is the basis of where the socialist vs communist discussion in the academic community is founded upon.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1830929?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
This is a good paper analyzing the leviathan state and destruction of the free market and eventual civil liberties through Nazi Germany. This paper I have not combed through myself but a colleague of mine presented it's research at a conference I was at last year and this was the link on his LinkedIn profile so I presume it is the right one. I believe it also addresses the proposed inability to seperate social atrocities (in this case the Holocaust) and macroeconomics which while you didn't bring up, some people do. If this is the wrong paper, let me know and I will send him an email and ask for a link to the correct one.
The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143113208/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_QHH6CbMGJCNCQ
While Temin's paper focuses mostly on pre-war, this is the best research done into the wartime economy of Nazi Germany. It discusses in extreme depth the command economy of the party and how the seeds of the wartime command economy were planted in the centrally planned economy pre-war and how that transition came to be. It is extremely fascinating but is a slow read.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24563068?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
This paper goes through a lot of the misconceptions that you have presented and while isn't the best written, fits your particular view point quite well. It makes a few overreaches into modern day political times but if you take it for its historical analysis it is a decent article.
Listen dude or dudette. This is something I have studied a lot. Once I get my undergraduate, I likely will shift my focus towards microeconomics (if I don't end up in Law School) but this is something I have spent a sizeable portion of my life studying. I've given an academic presentation at a conference on this topic. I've heard every arguement possible. You can accept the fields opinions or not. It isn't as cut and dry as something like vaccines, but it's an issue with little wiggle room.
While the Nazi party may have claimed to be against socialist policies, they certianly enacted them. Even in the best light possible you can only really argue it is an extremely left leaning mixed economy. Vox tried to make this arguement quite well earlier this year for what it's worth.
If research by some of the best economists in the world, that has been defended for decades at this point, doesn't convince you, than I can't conceive of what possibly could. As far as I'm concerned this conversation is over. You can remain unconvinced but these are the conclusions people much more versed than you or I have reached.
Edit: Grammar
But they also seized, for example, a big aircraft company. Source, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, very highly recommended, especially about exactly what they ended up doing.
I was lurking in the backlogs of r/history when I saw this.
Make sure to read The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze. It is absolutely amazing.
> I suggest one of the reasons there was a WWII was to destroy Hitler for successfully challenging the private foreign Central Bank, for restoring economic prosperity to Germany through Germany being able to issue it's own currency.
Counter-suggestion.
There is a very informative book you might enjoy,
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wages-Destruction-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
Recommended.
> You mentioned our GDP. 2/3 of our GDP comes from consumer spending.
Consumer spending and the output of the economy is impacted by how much people have to pay for gas, heat, oil, etc ENORMOUSLY(think about how much the average citizen spends on gas throughout a year and then think about them spending that on other things). Like I said you are uneducated in subject matters that are essential to comment on these matters and you are going to go on as if you aren't. All while arguing a position no analyst in the world would(hyperbole).
https://www.amazon.com/Ascent-Money-Financial-History-World/dp/0143116177/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466453148&sr=8-1&keywords=Ascent+of+money
https://www.amazon.com/Prize-Epic-Quest-Money-Power/dp/1439110123/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466453203&sr=8-1&keywords=The+prize
Read these two books and you will have a clearer picture of this macro picture I was referring to and you will understand how absurd your position is. The ascent of money was made into a pbs documentary, albeit a 4 hour one. It doesn't do the book justice though.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ascentofmoney/
The Prize was a Pulitzer Prize, non fiction book that will educate you on oil and why the middle east is important.
https://careers.state.gov/work/foreign-service/suggested-reading
Click on the suggested reading list on that page.
To get the whole macro picture I was referring to, read these books. You may want to start with their recommended International Relations textbook. These are books the State Department recommends you read if you are going to negotiate and do diplomacy on behalf of United States government(pretty hardcore stuff).
Best of luck with your studies/investigations and enjoy the rabbit hole, it really is an eye opener into another world that is not really discussed in the media.
That's him. https://www.amazon.com/Ascent-Money-Financial-History-World/dp/0143116177
The Dutch East India company (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company#Formation_.281602.29) was chartered for 21 years. It ended up extending past that by a lot, but that was the idea. The business arrangement had an end time at which point stakeholders could get their investment back.
There's an amazing book about this kind of history and evolution of money called The Ascent of Money if you want to learn more https://www.amazon.com/Ascent-Money-Financial-History-World/dp/0143116177
The Ascent of Money is one of those interesting history/non-fiction books.
I think it might be overkill, but if you're going to the library for it, you might as well pick it up.
That book? nothing but scaremongering. returning to the gold standard? what a crock of shit. Tell me, what is the difference between gold and fiat currency? can you eat gold? can you live in it? can you burn it? Anything useful? no, you can't. Fiat currency works fine as long as their is a perceived value, much like the gold standard, but with the ability to print more to match growth, and to control inflation.
boom and busts existed long before the creation of the federal reserve, hell, the idea of a federal reserve system isn't purely american, the The Bank of England pre-dates the american one by several hundred years, so idea isn't new and it has been tested out before hand, with great success. Probably something about the Rothschilds in their, wouldn't be surprised if it their was a mention of them. Do you have any idea what the Fed does by any chance? You know what they do?
please, read these, they are wonderful reads and provide the bases to understanding economics and public financing.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wealth-Nations-Adam-Smith/dp/161382081X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335219858&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/General-Theory-Employment-Interest-Money/dp/1467934925/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335219936&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/The-Ascent-Money-Financial-History/dp/0143116177/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335220011&sr=1-1
Not specifically about modern economics but I found The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World very enjoyable.
If not already read, this book is a decent situationer:
https://www.amazon.com/Ascent-Money-Financial-History-World/dp/0143116177
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1355640/combined
DOCUMENTARY
An investigation of "disaster capitalism", based on Naomi Klein's proposition that neo-liberal capitalism feeds on natural disasters, war and terror to establish its dominance.
From yOU.tUbE description:
A documentary adaptation Naomi Klein's 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine.
www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999
Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly shows how disaster capitalism -- the rapid-fire corporate re-engineering of societies still reeling from shock -- did not begin with September 11, 2001.
You can start by finding out who your representatives are here.
Learn about what each office does and what they are responsible for.
What issues are you most concerned with? Taxes? Healthcare? Unemployment? etc. How has your represented responded to these issues (i.e. voting record)?
If you're a student in university, it may be helpful to take an intro political science class. If not, hopefully, some redditors can suggest some good reading for you.
Some websites or news programs that I find helpful in getting some info are NPR, BBC Worldnews, Al-Jazeera and Euronews. I'm not a fan of local news programming. I read a lot online for the local stuff.
You may enjoy The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or The Colbert Report. They're comedy shows but they tend to show the absurdities of it all. You can a learn a lot too. Sometimes, I enjoy the roundtable discussions on Real Time with Bill Maher. I've gone as far as to purchase some books based on the discussions they've had.
I can't recommend books for "getting to know politics" per se, but a few in my collection include that I found informative:
The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria
The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
Ghost Wars by Steve Coll
The Boys on the Bus by Timothy Crouse
Politics of the Veil by Joan Wallach Scott
Voices of Freedom vol. 1 & 2 by Eric Foner
Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken
The Parliament of Man by Paul Kennedy
I found them enlightening and some gave me a clearer look at the workings of government and politics in America. Some stuff you have to take with a grain of salt. Checking the references from anything you read is helpful imo. Hope this helps a little.
Read Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine. It explains these tactics perfectly. If you want to change a society's behavior, you create a false crisis and scare the shit out of people so they will accept something - anything - stable as soon as possible.
> Capitalism has been consistently proven to raise the standards of living wherever it has been tried.
Google the word neoliberalism sometime, and spend a day researching it.
> Meanwhile, every single attempt at socialism - the USSR, the PRC, the DPRK, Venezuela, Cuba - has resulted in disaster, and has lowered the standards of living wherever it has been tried.
In what sense are these socialist, apart from what they call themselves in name? An anarcho-capitalist can have some actual, justified criticisms against socialism in practice (I've seen many), but when people like you plow forward with such an elementary misunderstanding, believe me when I say you look bad, even to your own camp.
The Zapatistas? The Paris Commune? The Ukrainian Free Territories? Revolutionary Catalonia? The Israeli Kibbutzim? That is your actual target.
> There is a reason why every single country that was once considered communist has transitioned towards capitalism...
Because they were bombed to hell in the interest of the capitalist class?
> ... and it should be no surprise to anyone that the standard of living has raised in these areas.
Like the four asian tigers did through State intervention? (And like the US did, also). Nothing even close to a free market prescription, albeit a quasi-capitalist one nevertheless.
(For context I'm a Democratic Confederalist basically a form of Anarchism)
​
This shit is honestly tamed and creates connections of intuitions with forms of subversions without context ensuring his point is met across. Such as the situation of the bargaining of a worker saying bargaining power is taken away and given to the supposed lazy person who wants '$ 3.00' per hour compared to the "Hard worker" who can function for 2.00 or 2.50 without establishing the more complex implementations of why they need that extra dollar why ones perceived labor is seen different than another. Also, he misses that many of his arguments work against the power structures he agrees with such his arguments against mass consumerization and the profitable/ beneficial structural nature of the capitalist media. And his arguments of destabilization are correct to an extent but he is also underplaying the situations the 'other' groups had to deal with. Such as slavery, legal and social discrimination for black people, Wage, and cheap labor exploitation of Asians/Asian Ancestry, Dehumanization and chastising of Gay/GSRM individuals and many more situation of 'context' he misses. Such social animosity doesn't simply by the fact that the certain exploitative system has been done away with no the effects are already seen, they have come to past and the only way to subdue it or attempt to pacify is to seek amends or give compensation but such Abuses will be there as scar they will never leave. His criticization of bureaucracy misses why such systems were created and for what purpose. That purpose was the management of information and logistics to ensure the current order, without such a system it would have caused major destabilization among the order of the state or exploitation of individuals. And his critique of the media also serves as another failure of the capitalist system unable to bring unbias information in exchange for its profit and popularity. A better understanding of the study of subversion is Naomi Klien's well researched and detailed work of the Shock Doctrine. And his focus is more of the Soviet Union's actions of subversion which would be seen as anti-socialist for a reason but that doesn't matter to me considering Stalin wasn't committed to the ideals of communism or of the movement he was a thug made to help it in destroying the reactionaries but in turn took it over and did it his way. Also, he appears to miss the notion that the US has done such action for its own benefit long before and long after the creation of the Soviet Union. I find it laughable how much he is willing to give up his freedoms and the possible freedoms of minorities for a future under Fascism. I'm honestly disappointed how these people are slowly just being sucked into Fascist propaganda.
Read or watch the Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein its magnitudes better than any more garbage this pseudo-intellectual has to offer
Shock Doctrine Book
Shock Doctrine Documentary
Lots. In fact, nearly every book I have ever read has changed my worldview in one way or the other, some more than others. But, the most recent books to change my outlook on the world are:
The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for The 21st Century by George Friedman
Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein.
Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark by Carl Sagan
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins
Who Will Tell The People?: The Betrayal Of American Democracy by William Greider
Yeah no problem. While Blum's work shows the effect of anti-communist efforts and policies by US, it's not really a guide on ideology; it's an account of what happened and why. If you are interested in leftist ideology i would recommend the ABCs of socialism which provides laymen's terms answers to questions of socialist government structure (e.g. how authoritarianism can find it's way into the fray) and economics.
Also, anything by Noam Chomsky, Mike Davis, or Naomi Klein are usually very insightful for modern day analyses of power, politics, and economics. I've got a long list if you want anymore suggestions, mostly from the perspective of critiquing power (from the right or the left) and it's effects on societies
edit: also check out the Chapo Trap House podcast for cathartic sessions of shitting on asshole politicians across the spectrum and highlights of funny/bizarre political takes
https://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999
No problem. And, as /u/big_red737 said below, if you enjoy the People's History I suggest some Naomi Klein as well, especially The Shock Doctrine.
Ved ikke om det er godnatlæsning som sådan. Det er ikke for en god historie, men til at blive klogere.
Handler om den grimme side af ureguleret kapitalisme og om hvordan USA overlagt har fucket med flere lande i bl.a. sydamerika for deres egen benifit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine
https://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999
Genial bog af Freuds nevø, som handler om public relations. Hvordan de magthavende styrer masserne. Hvordan man får en masserne til at følge ens overbevisning. Skyggeregeringen som bag facaden styrer. Hvordan medierne anvendes til at hjernevaske folk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_(book)
https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Edward-Bernays/dp/0970312598
Mangler stadig at læse den færdig. Den handler om Snowden, NSA og overvågningsstaten. Den indeholder mange data og information som Snowden lækkede.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Place_to_Hide_(Greenwald_book)
https://www.amazon.com/No-Place-Hide-Snowden-Surveillance/dp/1501215523
Fantastisk og skræmmende bog. Dette er virkelig en øjenåbner. Den handler om USA's droneprogram. Hvordan det fungerer, hvor stort det er, hvor mange mennesker som hvert år bliver dræbt af det (hovedparten uskylige), etc. Det er hård læsning for det giver ligepludselig et andet perspektiv på det hele - med så mange uskyldige dræbt må man stille spørgsmålstegn ved om dette egentlig ikke er statsterrorisme og om dette egentlig ikke skaber flere terrorister end det dræber.
https://www.amazon.com/Assassination-Complex-Jeremy-Scahill/dp/1781257728/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1482844644&sr=1-2&keywords=the+assassination+complex
To allow companies access to cheap labor and resources. Low taxes & tariffs, minimal regulation typical neoliberal stuff. Access to financial markets bank loans, investments etc. Also to establish a network of military infrastructure to enable future conquest and prevent competing countries to do the same.
Some recommended reading:
http://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Change/dp/0805082409
http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427577478&sr=1-1&keywords=shock+doctrine
You can find PDFs of both, I just linked the amazon page because they're both good books and quite cheap.
A relevant book: Race Against the Machine.
At $4, the Kindle version is a bargain.
http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-The-Machine-ebook/dp/B005WTR4ZI
Check this book out - it was pretty interesting although their solution of educating everyone doesn't work out if you really think about it
Race Against the Machine
here's why workers are, and will continue to be left behind:
http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-The-Machine-ebook/dp/B005WTR4ZI/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1334160311&sr=1-1
Check out this book buy to Economists from MIT. They effectively outline this exactly problem in all it's details.
http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-Machine-Accelerating-ebook/dp/B005WTR4ZI/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1323155992&sr=1-1
MIT's McAfee and Brynjolfsson argue here that it will be a race between destruction of jobs through accelerating technology and creation of new jobs through a better educated population. At this point it's just speculation as to which will win out over any given time-frame.
I read the whole volumes raw for the first time, then read them again with David Harvey's A Companion to Marx's Capital. Capital can be read easily by some people and harder by others, there's nothing really wrong with going on the internet/reading alternative guides if you can't understand the material.
No, but I think all politics junkies regardless of ideology should be very familiar with his arguments.
I'm honestly a little intimated when it comes to reading "Das Kapital" directly. I plan on reading these two books and follow the accompanying course by Prof. David Harvey.
A Companion to Marx's Capital Volume 1
> Based on his recent lectures, this current volume aims to bring this depth of learning to a broader audience, guiding first-time readers through a fascinating and deeply rewarding text. A Companion to Marx’s Capital offers fresh, original and sometimes critical interpretations of a book that changed the course of history and, as Harvey intimates, may do so again.
A Companion to Marx's Capital Volume 2
> Based on his recent lectures, and following the success of his companion to the first volume of Capital, Harvey turns his attention to Volume 2, aiming to bring his depth of learning to a broader audience, guiding first-time readers through a fascinating and hitherto neglected text. Whereas Volume 1 focuses on production, Volume 2 looks at how the circuits of capital, the buying and selling of goods, realize value.
> This is a must-read for everyone concerned to acquire a fuller understanding of Marx’s political economy.
The course:
http://davidharvey.org/reading-capital/
You need to readthis book
Any job can be automated with sufficent computer power
Have you read this book called "Race Against The Machine". It was written by these smart guys at MIT. They have determined the same thing. It is a good read: http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-The-Machine-ebook/dp/B005WTR4ZI
I have researched this topic for my master's thesis and all the data points to the rate at which this is happening as the issue and the problem. The pace is not comparable to what happened in the past. So you can't compare what is happening now to what has happened in the past. It is an interesting topic. Thanks for posting it.
A couple of professors at MIT certainly see the difference.
It's very simple though to see why this will be different. When machinese became more powerful than human labor, people retreated to jobs that required dexterity and intelligence and creativity. Well, now, AI and advanced machining have made machines dexterous enough to automate most fine repetitive tasks. So humans retreat to intelligence and creativity and jobs that require human interaction. What happens when a computer can match the power of a human mind? What's left for the humans to do but entertain each other - and probably not as well as an AI can.
wrong
Have you read this book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005WTR4ZI/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title
It's a pretty good read, but shows some interesting data. I'm far from an economist, and I don't think that it prescribes a total loss of work in the near future, but I do think it makes a pretty good argument for things being a touch different this time around. It also show's that jobs have been steadily decreasing for some time now (more than even most people who peg it around '08).
While I don't know that the Dystopian outlook is the correct one, I'm not sure that I think things are going to be rosy unless we start having conversations (thankfully, much like this one).
Honestly it's a good quick read, and the one that got me to see things in a different light.
here are some of Andrew Mcafee's talks: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=andrew+mcafee
They both have written this book together: http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-The-Machine-Accelerating-ebook/dp/B005WTR4ZI
Not directly related to programming, but about the implications of ubiquitous automation: Race Against the Machine.
He wrote a book on the subject as well: http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-The-Machine-Accelerating-ebook/dp/B005WTR4ZI
It was a good and quick read, I encourage anyone to get the Kindle version and read it on your kindle/iPhone on the way to work.
David Harvey's notes on capital are really helpful and provide references to relevant texts by Marx and other theorists for understanding Capital. When I last checked, Harvey's notes were available for Capital vols. 1 and 2. The lectures are available via podcast (I like listening while I'm on the move) or they can be viewed on YouTube. These are free lectures so can't do much better for understanding Capital apart from the lack of interaction.
A copy of the book based on the lectures is also helpful. And there are also various sources other than Amazon for this (and other books)...
Besides Harvey, I find Prof. Ha-Joon Chang to be a great source of introductions to "other" schools of thought. The recent Economics User's Guide is a decent place to start for basic economics, but Bad Samaritans is great for challenging the hegemony of neoliberal approaches to developmental economics. These are both available in audiobook form so the information can be received as if by lecture.
> There are indeed fundamental philosophical and ideological differences between the far left and the far right - my point is that they are both similar in that the radicals on both sides care less about individual freedom and more about using any means necessary to achieve their goals and subjugate others to their thoughts. The goals are radically different: the techniques are not, nor is the lack of interest in discussion or questions. That is where they lose me.
But it's just not true that the far left is disinterested in discussion. The dialectic is a fundamental component of leftist thought. Marx, Bakunin, Prodhon, and Stirner- sort of the 'fathers' of modern leftist thought- were all young Hegelians, for whom the dialectic was an integral component of rational thought. In fact, if you look up 'dialectic' on wikipedia, and go to the section on modern philosophy, you'll find no more than two subsections, one about the hegelian dialectic, and another about the Marxist dialectic.
> Do you really believe that the radical left is any less interested in systematically oppressing others than the far right?
Yes.
> People like the Tea Party, PeTA, and others are more than willing to do whatever it takes to get the results they want, and they're not interested in a dialog, nor in thinking that maybe someone else's point of view can be valid.
PeTA is neither left nor right. They're a single issue organization who's issue is orthogonal to economic and political structure. Also, speaking anecdotally, I have spent quite a bit of time in far left circles, and I have only ever met one PeTA supporter. Most everyone else is extremely critical of PeTA. In fact, I have been routinely criticized for not being critical enough of PeTA. Keep in mind that I am a meat-eating egoist. PeTA seems more popular among liberals and social democrats than among radicals.
Actual radical leftist groups include Radical Science, Radical Statistics, the Center for a Stateless Society, The Industrial Workers of the World, The Socialist Worker, The CNT-FAI, and The Recovered Factories Movement.
> Yep, but as I've said often, ideologues care more about imposing their beliefs on others, and I hope you recognize that there are those on the left that are just as unreasonable as those on the right.
Once again, I am not arguing that it is impossible for a radically left group/person or group/person which appears to be radically left to be disinterested in good faith discussion or to be fundamentally oppressive, but that these are intrinsic qualities of the far right, where they are not intrinsic qualities of the far left.
> And is it any less oppressive to be told that you have to give up a large percentage of what you've earned to give to others so that there is a false economic equality?
I don't think you understand what the far left is even interested in. We're not interested in high taxes or creating a welfare state. The far left wants to dismantle or compete with the existing political and economic structure because we view it as a distortion of markets/exchange which allows for an idle class to exploit a large percentage of the value generated by the working.
> is there reading on socialism you'd recommend? I'm fascinated by the examples you cite and I'd like to learn more. Probably won't change my mind, but I am curious.
To understand the theory which underlies leftist thought, you'd be best off reading Marx' Capital. However, keep in mind that this is a very academic, 3 volume, 1500 page, behemoth of a book, which you might find difficult to digest. If you do decide to read it, it might be beneficial to read David Harvey's companion to Capital along with it, or to watch his lecture series. If you're lazy (and I don't blame you) you might want to just watch the lectures.
You might also check out An Anarchist FAQ, for a much more readable, though shallow, explanation of leftist thought. And the film I posted earlier, The Take, is an interesting look into what an anarchist strategy and an anarchist society might look like.
> Of course not - that's a ridiculous argument. However, people like Mr. Chomsky, who seem to think this country is intrinsically evil bother me. Are there things here that are wrong - without a doubt. And this country is far from its ideals (and seems to be getting further away every day). But there needs to be recognition of the good as well as the bad, and there are many on both sides that refuse to do that. And that, quite honestly, annoys me.
I'm curious, then, if you're critical of e.g., Harriet Beecher Stowe for the the same reason. After all, she wrote critiques of slavery, but never really wrote anything which focused on praising the upside of slavery and world she lived in. She's never written a novel about the wonders of the transcontinental railroad, nor the telegraph, nor just how cheap cotton was at the time.
>I'm working my way through it this summer when finals end.
I know it will make it take much longer to read but I can't recommend enough that you watch Harvey's lectures and maybe even get a companion to read with it. It allows for a much fuller, richer understanding of not just Capital but Marx in general.
https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Perspectives-Democratic/dp/0765808684
I would suggest you look into how radically successful Rwanda is right now.
Here's a start:
http://specific-gravity.blogspot.com/2015/12/out-of-africa.html
Furthermore, democracy in America post 1947 illustrates why democracy is a failed utilitarian concept in my view. Most of what you cite as a positive is challenged rather succinctly by how history has unfolded.
http://www.amazon.com/National-Security-Government-Michael-Glennon/dp/0190206446
http://www.amazon.com/Democracy---God-That-Failed-Perspectives/dp/0765808684/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1449086577&sr=1-1&keywords=democracy+the+god+that+failed
Democracy, you say?
https://www.amazon.com.br/Democracy-God-That-Failed-Economics/dp/0765808684
I would recommend one of three books to persuade your friend (you can read more about them to choose what you think may be the best). Hope you find a decent gift among the list:
Reactionary Thought
Chartism – Thomas Carlyle
Latter-Day Pamphlets – Thomas Carlyle
The Bow of Ulysses – James Anthony Froude
Popular Government – Henry Summers Maine
Shooting Niagara – Carlyle
The Occasional Discourse – Carlyle
On Heroes, Hero Worship & the Heroic in History – Carlyle
The Handbook of Traditional Living – Raido
Men Among the Ruins – Julius Evola
Ride the Tiger – Julius Evola
Revolt Against the Modern World – Julius Evola
Reflections of a Russian Statesman – Konstantin Pobedonostsev
Popular Government – Henry Maine
Patriarcha (the Natural Power of Kings) – Sir Robert Filmer
Decline of the West – Oswald Spengler
Hour of Decision – Oswald Spengler
On Power – Jouvenel
Against Democracy and Equality – Tomislav Sunic
New Culture, New Right – Michael O’Meara
Why We Fight – Guillaume Faye
The Rising Tide of Color – Lothrop Stoddard
Liberty or Equality – Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
Democracy: The God that Failed – Hans-Hermann Hoppe
****
Economics
Economics in One Lesson – Henry Hazlitt
Basic Economics – Thomas Sowell
That Which is Seen and That Which is Not Seen – Frederic Bastiat***
Man, Economy, and State – Murray Rothbard
Human Action – Ludwig von Mises
****
​
might i suggest reading Nickel and Dimed? assuming you live in the US (or not), this is (still) a very interesting sociological take on whether or not it is possible to live on minimum wage.
I just finished reading Nickel and Dimed. I feel for a normal retail worker and hate the sam walton and his shitty morals. Hope you get out of your situation soon. Good luck.
You'd enjoy reading this Nickel and Dimed
You should check out Nickel and Dimed. The author is college educated, but pretends she has no education or employment background and tries to find employment/survive.
You can start here.
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich.
Here
I'll email you a free ebook version if you'll agree to bask the irony with me.
>real job that adds value to a product
Where have you been? All the manufacturing jobs have been moved to China now. And it's impossible to get by on a Wal Mart job. Really a presumptuous and ignorant statement you made there.
Something I think you'll enjoy.
It's full sourced and a good read.
From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State is a great book that covers this in great detail. It's a history without much narrative, so it's a dry read, but I think that's for the best.
https://www.amazon.com/Mutual-Aid-Welfare-State-Fraternal/dp/0807848417
It outlines how, for example, Mutual Aid/Fraternal Order societies were able to contract with doctors for groups. A wage worker could afford a year's worth of preventative and non-emergency treatment care for from a week's to a month's worth of wages.
The American Medical Association formed and lobbied the state for protections, was succesful, this was the downfall of these societies over time and played a major role in pushing the idea of state regulated healthcare.
In my opinion this opened up a nightmare on the American populace that has lasted ever since.
https://www.amazon.com/Primal-Prescription-Doug-McGuff-ebook/dp/B011AA2LZA
https://www.amazon.com/Priceless-Healthcare-Independent-Studies-Political-ebook/dp/B008B946EI/
https://www.amazon.com/Mutual-Aid-Welfare-State-Fraternal/dp/0807848417
Well, do you consider mutual aid organizations, religious institutions, and the like "charity"?
If so then those are how. A combination of economic growth with various forms of "charitable" institutions will do (have done) a better job of eliminating poverty than anything tried before.
These alternatives to 501c3 charities & government programs were purposely stamped out in America. Bring them back and stop constraining economic opportunity and watch what happens.
Statistical evidence? That question seems a bit nonsensical. Historical and logical evidence? Sure. Also, help to feed your family need not come from churches, particularly if you get together with enough like-minded people who believe that this should not be solely left to churches.
http://www.amazon.com/From-Mutual-Aid-Welfare-State/dp/0807848417/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344951300&sr=8-1&keywords=mutual+aid+society
>You are allowed to buy insurance across state lines, they just have to adhere to your states regulations.
When there are 50 different state regulations good luck and if you're an international company it's even worse.
>Yes, they should be able to buy medicine that is cheap because of government imposed price controls.
The point is the government should not be able to tell anyone where to buy medicine. It doesn't matter if it's because the Canadian people subsidize the industry or if in the case of cars the Japanese are more efficient. Government has no right to tell me where to buy products.
>No, they are priced out or straight out denied because of preexisting conditions and recision.
I address preexisting conditions in the next comment where I will provide citations. People are priced out because government intervention through tax code. The only reason people have insurance through their employer is because of government intervention.
No other insurance works like this, auto, flood, rental etc.
>Citation?
http://www.amazon.com/Mutual-Aid-Welfare-State-Fraternal/dp/0807848417/
There are many great reasons for loving Japan. I love Japan, despite all of its flaws (and there are many). However, in regard to environmental awareness specifically, I recommend reading Dogs and Demons by Alex Kerr. It may disabuse you of the notion that Japan is truly environmentally aware.
Please, read this book. It will make you re-evaluate your views of Japan.
> Ya, the thing is, they have too damn much steel and cement stockpiled up. So if they don't spend it on big projects aasap, they will expire and the economy will simply go downhill
This is exactly what Japan did post-war which is detailed in Alex Kerr's 'Dogs and Demons'. Japan rebuilt after WW2 but the institutions that benefitted from the rebuilding, construction companies, Japan Rail, etc. kept on building after no more was needed. So Japan has too much infrastructure it doesn't need, debt at absurdly high levels, and no natural rivers anymore (they are all lined in concrete).
I really recommend looking up David Leheny's Think Global, Fear Local http://amzn.com/0801475341 and Alex Kerr's Dogs and Demons http://amzn.com/0809039435 - both books are a little more on the political side of culture, but both are extremely interesting with regards to social norms.
I can't explain this myself. But the book Currency Wars by James Rickards is supposed to be a good overview. Here is a video of the author being interviewed by the absurd and sensationalist economics reporter Max Keiser.
Apologies if this reads a bit like a sales pitch.
No try reading a book:
https://www.amazon.com/Currency-Wars-Making-Global-Crisis/dp/1591845564/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469890793&sr=8-1&keywords=currency+wars
Here is a good resource for trump specific policies:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskTrumpSupporters/comments/4c67vk/modpost_psa_collection_found_here_muslim/?st=ir9b2n8b&sh=214773a2
If you are getting all your information from candidates websites... all I can say is you poor poor bastard...
Do you really believe that everything is okay after 2008? Do you really honestly and truly believe that giving free money to the bankers that facilitated the collapse was what was needed to make out market healthy again?
I don't care if you believe it or not, but you won't be able to say that no one warned you.
http://www.amazon.com/Currency-Wars-Making-Global-Crisis/dp/1591845564
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jsk1Ddm8LvA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EHdHm-n2JPE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ECi6WJpbzE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DA8PRMAOPs
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NyemAwLD2N0&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DNyemAwLD2N0
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-13/us-treasury-finally-admits-truth-its-all-pomo-and-no-one-dares-fight-fed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne__pTRAenc
	
	
	
> # Ministro de agricultura de Venezuela elogia el uso de Bitcoin como herramientas de liberación financiera
>
>
>
> Más adelante, sugirió que la economía puede salvarse si se rescata el patrón oro como referencia de valor, conjunto al surgimiento de las criptomonedas, señalándolas como “una de las grandes alternativas que tienen los pueblos de preservar la integridad de la humanidad, consolidar la paz y garantizar una vida, así como tener acceso a los bienes, servicios y alimentos”. El ministro basó su exposición en gran parte en el libro Currency Wars, que sostiene cómo en diferentes fases de la historia reciente se ha librado un tipo de guerra en la que los países roban a sus socios comerciales de distintas maneras en orden de fortalecer sus monedas y hundir las otras, para así facilitar el cambio.
>
> Esto de alguna manera es consecuente con la tésis impulsada por el presidente de Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, en cuanto a que actualmente se está librando una “guerra económica” contra el país y su gobierno; aunque es necesario destacar que la gran mayoría de economistas, actores financieros, politólogos y otras naciones del mundo, de diversas ideologías, tan dispares como Ricardo Hausman y Noam Chomsky, están de acuerdo en que los controles económicos, cambiarios y jurídicos del gobierno han sido excesivos, generando más problemas de los que pretende solventar y sumiendo a Venezuela en una crisis humanitaria y empobrecimiento general sin precedentes en la historia del otrora uno de los países más ricos del mundo.
>
> Sin embargo, el ministro Soteldo se mostró entusiasta con la idea de las criptomonedas, como “herramienta para alcanzar [la] soberanía y darle soporte [a las monedas]con sus riquezas a través del incentivo que establezcan para estimular la inversiones y el desarrollo productivo de esa economía. Puede ser una opción que cree una nueva etapa económica y financiera globalmente. Y se podría evitar la crisis que quieren generar regando dinero devaluado que se traduce en inflación”. Muy acertado en este sentido en cuanto a la devaluación del dólar como moneda durante los últimos años, particularmente desde que Nixon y la Reserva Federal de EEUU abandonaron el patrón oroen 1971 como principal referencia para emitir su moneda.
>
> En el caso de Venezuela, el país se ha mantenido al margen del desarrollo público y notorio de proyectos blockchain y de criptomonedas, aunque efectivamente ha destacado un proyecto local llamado OnixCoin, con el que CriptoNoticias tuvo la oportunidad de conversar. Venezuela es además un país fuerte en el consumo de tecnología, sin embargo las coyunturas económicas y sociales se han acentuado durante los últimos años, fomentando en cierto sentido la adopción de bitcoin, pero también evitando que la criptomoneda principal sea adoptada del todo en el país.
Owner | Source Code | Stats
Eh, your energy and climate change stuff is off-base; humans are too intelligent to let that get in the way. We will invent our way around that problem.
However, an economic end-game scenario is definitely something everyone should at least be aware of the possibility of. For a great introduction, this book was very enlightening.
http://www.amazon.com/Currency-Wars-Making-Global-Crisis/dp/1591845564/
I don't know currency wars was a pretty interesting read... The DoD asked this ex-trader to partake in this economic war games thing in Washington. Pentagon was involved it was a secret thing. They assembled a bunch of academic economists, traders and bankers from NYC and made them run economic war game scenarios. What would happen if China devalued their currency by half or if Russia switched to 50% Gold etc. was a pretty interesting read.
The title is a lit bit over the top, but it's a really good book.
About the Author from Amazon:
>"James Rickards is a counselor, investment banker, and risk manager with over thirty years' experience in capital markets. He advises the Department of Defense, the U.S. intelligence community, and major hedge funds on global finance, and served as a facilitator of the first ever financial war games conducted by the Pentagon. A frequent guest on CNBC, CNN, Fox, C-SPAN, Bloomberg TV, and NPR, Rickards also lectures at Northwestern University and at the School of Advanced International Studies."
http://www.amazon.com/Currency-Wars-Making-Global-Crisis/dp/1591845564/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427514578&sr=1-1&keywords=currency+wars
Life got busy again and i lost track of what was happening in terms of books. You said you read Ron Paul's book, so i thought i might throw out some of the books i enjoyed.
Henry Dent
George Soros
Tom Wood & Ron Paul
They're outdated, but provided some good economic thought behind what has happened and their forecasts. Tom Wood's and Ron Paul's book was interesting, but i'm not sure how relevant it ever was. At best, it served as a warning. Don't get me wrong, i'm a fan of Ron Paul, but the system will never remove the Federal Reserve. Also looks like there's some updated editions out too.
I'm looking at new books as we speak.
Actually, the stock market crashed because the housing market crashed. The housing market crashed because the government propped up ridiculously low interest rates on loans because they wanted 'everyone to have affordable housing.' The problem is, people with no money to buy houses, bought houses, because the government forced banks to have super low interest rates. But when the people couldn't pay, the market went bust. When that happened, the stocks plummeted.
Creating artificial 'opportunity' is a bad idea, and only messes things up.
If any of what I said didn't make sense, I suggest this book: Meltdown: A free market look at why the stock market crashed
> Yet the bankers just keep doing it again and again. They do it with and without central banks.
Fractional reserve should be prosecutable as fraud. Having said that, banks would be much more responsible if they faced a risk of going out of business. The occasional bankruns of the late 19th century, did not significantly impede the surging prosperity of the gilded age. They were a good thing -- just like when a crappy restaurant goes out of business.
> > but your own devotion to Keynesianism fails to live up to the standards by which you judge the Austrian School.
> I fail to see how. Keynesianism doesn't pretend to be deductive logic.
It seems to me that Keynesians are able to put numbers around little things. Unemployment, inflations (both of which are heavily manipulated). They have graphs and charts and look very much like their distant colleagues in the hard sciences. The play empiricism, but all the big things and important decisions are made by pure deduction, just like the Austrians. For example:
We need a central bank.
We need to bailout company/industry X
The economy can be centrally steared by manipulating the reserve rate in a positive way.
We need to force people to use their state's currency.
The liquidity trap occurs when there's a shortage of money circulating.
The free market is inherently unstable.
Crashes are caused by animal spirits / the bursting of asset bubbles.
> > it just restructures production for long-term projects.
> That directly contradicts the concept of "flight to liquidity".
Not a contradiction. A flight to liquidity can mean a flight to savings and checking accounts. That's money ready for lending.
> If savers were making long term investments, we wouldn't have a problem.
Ugh. Right now, you Keynesians think we need long-term investment, and your policies are creating an illusion of savings by lowering the interest rate to zero. In actuality, there are almost no savings. People need to work, busy consumer goods, and save (or not -- it's up to them). Keynesian policies have pushed a lot of land labor and capital into long-term projects at a time when people are thinking about the short term.
Your statement presumes a "correct" way for savers to be investing. The only correct way is one which is in harmony with the level of savings, and the market signal which creates that harmony -- the interest rate -- is centrally controlled and, for the moment, pushed to near-zero, creating an illusion of savings which don't really exist.
> How do you know? [regarding consciousness] . . . There is no evidence that the human brain consists of anything but physical processes
Because physics cannot even entertain (much less provide answers for) simple questions like what do you want to do? When there's meaningful progress on the Turing test, I'll reconsider.
> if you really believe it is such a great thing and will work well in the real world, go find a small country and convince them to adopt pure Austrianism. . . . Honestly, I'd write a letter … to advocate giving you guys an island in the Pacific ocean to test your system.
Liberty is a threat to the gov't. Allowing it would mean exposure of their fraud.
I'd love to, and I think about it often. Small states have many advantages over large ones. There's a theoretical project by Friedman's grandson which involves a nation consisting of floating barges.
> Even the anarcho-capitalist advocates say that there must be private militaries that are hired by insurance companies (which is really all a state is) to protect their customers. Overall, the idea that violence is magically going to disappear is very naive.
No one says violence is going to go away. A state is not a hired insurance company, because the client does not the right to walk away. The service of security is not subject to market pressure. The state unilaterally decides both the nature of security (invading Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, bombing Somalia and Yemen, TSA, full body scanners), and the cost of security. This is the difference.
> for placing the extreme long term conservation of value for mattress stuffers
It is not just mattress stuffers. Huge quantities of wealth are transferred from people in general to whomever is closest to the place where new money enters the economy. Even Keynes admits this:
"By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens."
And I think you're full of shit for trying to muddy the waters on the ethic argument I raised. The dollar is backed by force. Voilence will be used against Americans who attempt to work around the dollar system. Yes, violence has been used before in history. No, this doesn't justify today's.
> gold
You were comparing the dollar's 97% loss in value to the instability of gold. That dog don't hunt.
> As I said, the 1921 recession ended when the fed cut rates.
I'm going to look more deeply into this. It seemed that the 29 crash happened when they stopped their easy money policies. Do you think we can get out of today's easy money without a catastrophe?
>
> Please stop calling an increase in the money supply inflation... just say "an increase in the money supply".
No.
> voluntarily decided it likes fractional reserve banking. In 400 years or so of modern banking, full reserve banking simply hasn't emerged.
Not true. It's contradicted by the video you posted. Government enshrined and protected the fractional reserve system.
> That era was a miserable failure.
Not true at all. Yes, lots of banks went out of business. (It is good when bad companies go out of business). But it was a time of sky-rocketting prosperity.
Your baromoter is laughable. When banks go out of business this is bad. When today's commercial banks survive for a long time, this is good. Dark world. How much wealth has to be taken to give irresponsible banks a long life?
> So which is it? Do you support free banking or gold? A gold standard (at least in the form that the US and most other countries had in its past) is mandated from a central government, by the way.
Free banking gets my vote, though either one would be huge, mind-blowing progress. I'll mention again that fractional reserve banking should be prosecutable as fraud instead of enshrined by law.
> Except it has been done successfully that way for long periods of time. You shouldn't get your ethics confused with your evidence. You might not like central banking, but to say that it can't work is absurd given how successful the US economy was under the periods with central banks.
Typical of your positivist and keynesian approach, whenever you connect two data points you jump for joy. Can we likewise conclude that the Soviet system worked because it brought electrification, had zero unemployment and a growing GDP?
You know, Keynesian economist and Nobel Prize winner Paul Samuelson predicted into the late 1980's that the soviet union, the fucking soviet union!!!!! would outpace the US economically. He asked whether their surging economy didn't make the political oppression (43-62 million killed) worth while. But it's the Austrians who are cruel. Right?
Also, not all the evidence supports you. The biggest depression in American history. The only time there has been wide-spread malnutrition in the US. A 97% drop in purchasing power.
> I believe the burden of proof is on you if you want to make claims about government failure. You haven't done that with the CRA or with any other program.
The long history of bailouts are facts. What proving do they need?
Also:
FACT: In 2008, CRA loans accounted for just 7% of Bank of America's total mortgage lending, but 29% of its losses on home loans. Also, banks with the highest CRA ratings tend to have the lowest safety and soundness ratings.
FICTION: Only 6% of subprime loans were originated by banks subject to the CRA, so the vast majority of risky lending was not tied to the law.
FACT: Among other things, the figure does not count the trillions of dollars in CRA "commitments" that WaMu, BofA, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo and other large banks pledged to radical inner-city groups like Acorn, Greenlining and Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America (NACA) after they used the public comment process to protest bank merger applications on CRA grounds.
[Earlier this week I noted that I had changed my mind on the Community Reinvestment Act. Contrary to my initial conclusion, the evidence is overwhelming that the CRA played a significant role in creating lax lending standards that fueled the housing bubble. Once I realized this, I had to abandon my suspicion that the anti-CRA case was a figment of the rhetoric of Republicans attempting to distract attention from their own role in the mortgage mess.]http://www.businessinsider.com/the-cra-debate-a-users-guide-2009-6#ixzz1RTwfW5or)
Prior to 1995, such subprime home loans constituted less than 2% of new home loans, but by 2000 they were over 9% of new home loans, and by 2008 they were 20% of new home loans. To make matters worse, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae began to buy and/or guarantee more and more of these risky subprime loans.
If you want more opinions supporting my view, look here,
here, here.
The very short and simple answer is that the Federal Reverse is the primary cause of the boom-bust cycle that constantly plagues our economy. The cycle is also sometimes called the "business cycle", bubbles and busts, downturns etc.
The Federal Reserve is the reason we had a housing bubble in 2007 and a dotcom bubble in the early 2000s. It's also the reason we had the Great Depression!
The Federal Reserve causes the business cycle when it artificially lowers the interest rate below what it would have be on the market, which in turn sends the wrong signals to entrepreneurs and investors and causes them to make bad investments (i.e. "malinvestment"). That's a bare bones explanation. You can find more information at the links below. It's a very interesting topic.
A short and simple introduction on the cause of the business cycle: http://mises.org/daily/606
An entertaining speech on the topic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJzXEsmZP0w
This is a great book on the topic that explains the matter in a way that is very easy to understand: http://www.amazon.com/Meltdown-Free-Market-Collapsed-Government-Bailouts/dp/1596985879
A more advance explanation: http://mises.org/tradcycl/econdepr.asp
This Book is what got me started studying Austrian Economics. It covered the financial crash and why.
The Big Short. Although not necessarily about politics exclusively, this is a fascinating narrative of the 2008 financial crash.
Towards the end of this interview
Michael Greenburger says billions of dollars that the Fed gave to AIG for a bailout was simply turned around and sent straight to Goldman Sachs to pay off the same type credit default swap as Michael Burry "The Big Short" constructed (and probably with a LOT more money).
Maybe read the book if you want to learn more about the story? Maybe the plot synopsis even?
>It's a well documented fact that tons of "AAA" securities were in fact backed by shitty mortgages.
Jesus christ, are you literally brain dead?
Yes, you are right. unfortunately, it was not realized that this was happening until after the crisis was over, meaning that at the time, nobody knew the AAA's weren't actually AAA.
For someone that wants to send people back to school, you seriously lack even the most basic critical thinking skills that are acquired just by living.
>The whole point of the act was to prevent banks from investing deposits in securities.
No, it wasn't. Try actually reading the paper.
the seperation of investment banking and commercial banking by the glass steagall act would have done literally nothing to prevent investment banks from investing in mortgage backed securities.
Tell me, in 2008, when you found out about the crisis, were you still able to go to your bank and retreive your funds? Of course you were, because there was no bank run, thanks to the fed. Guess what the glass steagall act was originally intended for? Preventing bank runs. This clearly wasn't the problem, and thus, the act would do literally nothing to prevent it.
>This was the cause of the first great depression and reason the act was put in place.
Wrong again. Check out the first 2 paragraphs of the wiki entry. They have more knowledge than you do about economics at large, it seems.
Main stream economists widely believe it was due to under consumption, the exact opposite of what caused the 2008 depression, which was over utilization of appreciating home values to refinance, and thus, pay down mortgages.
Furthermore, your link actually doesn't agree with you either. The main cause of ratings agencies slapping AAA on things that didn't deserve it, was the deterioration of underwriting. Guess who created the model for underwriting a MBS? That's right, Goldman Sachs.
>In their book on the crisis — All the Devils Are Here — journalists Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera criticized rating agencies for continuing "to slap their triple-A [ratings]s on subprime securities even as the underwriting deteriorated -- and as the housing boom turned into an outright bubble" in 2005, 2006, 2007.
The big short movie is heavily biased against ratings agencies, and does a very poor job of showing the complete picture. "The devils are here," the book mentioned in your link, does a fantastic job of explaining why the final fault shouldn't lie with them, if you are picking only one player for wrong doing (there were several parties, in reality).
My degree is in financial economics, minor in behavioral studies.
You truly don't understand the 2008 financial crisis, and because you also don't understand 1929 or 1873, you are compounding even more wrong information on top of what you already don't know, and then questioning others education? That's scary.
>Go do some research on the subject matter.
Watching a movie, and reading a wiki article, is not doing research. If you want to do actual research, so you can start spreading information that is actually correct, here are some sources for you to read (NOTE: read, don't use cliffnotes or wiki)
Understanding the 2007–2008 Global Financial Crisis:Lessons for Scholars of International Political Economy
The economist
Themotleyfool (Best public returns on stock market in recent history)
All the Devils Are Here
The big Short (please actually read the book. It's very different from the movie)
That would be awesome. I loved The Big Short and Liar's Poker audiobooks but couldn't finish Flash Boys.
I don't have a Twitter. You should Tweet Joe/Michael and set it up! ;)
You could always read the book. You get a lot more detail, and no contortion of characters.
Pitt was also a key character in Moneyball which was written by the same author as TBS - Michael Lewis.
:D
I learned the word from Michael Lewis.
For investing and money management:
And for fun:
/r/SecurityAnalysis maintain a decent reading list.
The following is taken from it:
History
There's no margin call book, but the book I was recommending was the big short by Michael Lewis.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Short-Doomsday-Machine/dp/0393338827
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report
or alternatively for a more readable book (if more focused on the mortgage meltdown) The Big Short by Michael Lewis
After the financial crisis I read as much as I could about the subject, I read "All the Devils are here", The Big Short, Too big to fail, Crash of the Titans, The Chicken Shit club and many others. So I'm well aware of the culpability of the ratings agencies. But that doesn't excuse the big banks or their actions like you seem to be implying. The banks knew that the MBSs were stuffed with dog shit subprime loans, yet they also knew by getting a CDO from AIG they could get a Triple A rating. They deliberately gamed the system so individual bankers could make huge short term profits selling MBSs. Yeah, Moody's, Fitch, and Standard and Poor's were incredibly corrupt, but who was corrupting them? The big banks that were paying them. The Big Banks were not innocent players, who naively saw a short term advantage that they could use. They were an active participant, they gamed the system, then paid off the referees.
On your second point, I agree, the financial recession wasn't caused by bankers being malicious or evil, but I do think it was caused by short term greed, and willful ignorance. A see no evil, hear no evil, let's not rock the boat, while a good thing lasts greed.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Short-Doomsday-Machine/dp/0393338827
His story has been corroborated.
Dude, read [this one] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393338827?keywords=the%20big%20short&qid=1450542815&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1) and [this one.] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393351599?keywords=the%20big%20short&qid=1450542815&ref_=sr_1_3&sr=8-3) [The first one they already made a movie.] (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1596363/?ref_=nv_sr_1) The second one I'm only starting but people say it's brilliant.
Edit: forgot to say that I really liked the first one, The Big Short.
Hard engineering is ee, bio, Chem, and so on. Easy is mech, civ.
While I know of one guy who is a CS phd, generally I normally see the more applied math guys.
As for things to read. I think you should start at the beginning and not worry about job titles ... Everything will change a few times before now and when it will be your time...
Some fun reads:
The black swan
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/081297381X/ref=mp_s_a_1?qid=1348162692&sr=8-2
The big short:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0393338827/ref=mp_s_a_1?qid=1348163015&sr=8-1
This isn't about original thoughts, it's about engaging legit critiques of philanthropy. I'm not going to pretend I know more than I do, which is why I'm citing original sources to thinkers who've done more research on this than me. You're just going full reactionary on the internet.
https://www.amazon.com/Winners-Take-All-Charade-Changing/dp/0451493249
Spot fucking on! Check out Winners Take All, which speaks directly to this. Rich shitbags donate millions while the government they bought off cuts their taxes to the tunes of billions. Then the shitbags turn around and express concern that Universal Health Care will bankrupt the country.
It's just a game to these pricks, and we're the pawns.
Have you read Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas?
I know you're a big reader. Have you read Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas ?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0451493249/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
You should really read his book. Maybe then what you said would make more sense. https://www.amazon.com/Conflict-Visions-Ideological-Political-Struggles/dp/0465002056
I'd recommend A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell, not an anthropological work though.
https://www.amazon.ca/Conflict-Visions-Ideological-Political-Struggles/dp/0465002056/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1493093349&sr=8-1&keywords=a+conflict+of+visions
The conflict? Does a society mitigate the problems inherent to the human condition, or does a society constrain an otherwise boundless being from improvement. Presented as the constrained vision, and the unconstrained vision, conforming to the right and left, respectively.
From Russel Kirk's "Ten Conservative Principles" in the sidebar:
> Human nature suffers irremediably from certain grave faults, the conservatives know. Man being imperfect, no perfect social order ever can be created. Because of human restlessness, mankind would grow rebellious under any utopian domination, and would break out once more in violent discontent—or else expire of boredom. To seek for utopia is to end in disaster, the conservative says: we are not made for perfect things. All that we reasonably can expect is a tolerably ordered, just, and free society, in which some evils, maladjustments, and suffering will continue to lurk. By proper attention to prudent reform, we may preserve and improve this tolerable order. But if the old institutional and moral safeguards of a nation are neglected, then the anarchic impulse in humankind breaks loose: “the ceremony of innocence is drowned.” The ideologues who promise the perfection of man and society have converted a great part of the twentieth-century world into a terrestrial hell.
One of the most fascinating books I've ever read is A Conflict of Visions by conservative economist Thomas Sowell. The main thesis is that the differences in conservatives and liberals beliefs boil down to a philosophical dispute about human nature. On the whole conservatives adhere to the "tragic" view of an inherently imperfect, greedy, violent mankind with impulses that need to be constrained by social institutions, social norms, and moral values. The stereotypical liberal, on the other hand, has an "unconstrained" and optimistic view of humanity in which human nature can be changed by an ideal arrangement of social structures they're always striving for. Highly recommended.
Someone give that kid a book by Thomas Sowell. Perhaps http://www.amazon.com/Conflict-Visions-Ideological-Political-Struggles/dp/0465002056/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1341322886&sr=8-5&keywords=Thomas+Sowell
Thomas Sowell discusses something related to this in several of his books, particularly A Conflict of Visions and Intellectuals and Society.
He can explain it in his words better than I can, so here's a short interview with him about the first book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyG1zmdh1pA
And a Cato review of A Conflict of Visions:
https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/1987/11/cj7n2-17.pdf
> As Sowell conjectures, the commonly observable correlation and clustering in political opinions cannot be understood as simply reflecting some underlying structure of interests. A more appropriate account, he argues, must be given in terms of certain fundamental ideas or premises—referred to as “visions”—which, largely unarticulated, are behind and give coherence to people’s particular political opinions.
And an FEE review of Intellectuals and Society:
https://fee.org/articles/intellectuals-and-society/
Roughly, the distinction between the two "visions" is that one views the world through individuals operating in a way that is constrained by their circumstances and by how the world functions (the "constrained" vision). The other views the world in a purely "intellectual" way as though society as a whole can not only be understood, but manipulated, simply by defining how society ought to function (the "unconstrained" vision).
People with the unconstrained vision, in Sowell's view, simply don't need to understand ideas like Socialism or Fascism in terms of the mundane facts of how the words have been used in the past or how people behave under those systems, because they already understand these terms from their "intellectual" definitions. (That the people you're complaining about, unlike the academics Sowell is, don't know the academic definitions of the terms and instead go with their own definitions, is not particularly relevant; it's all about their "vision".)
The credit is due to Thomas Sowell. He says it many places. I came across it first in this book. This is a great book, as it spells out the assumptions about human nature one is required (at least subconsciously) to make to have certain political beliefs.
> and say, well, let's get justice and kill that fucker, case closed, without peering into the conditions that nurtured such reprehensible actions in the first place.
Here I think is the fundamental disagreement. Conditions are neither necessary for humans to commit acts of evil nor an excuse when they do so.
> But we do have some compassion for him, in as much, as he was also a victim of poverty, or perhaps abuse himself (which he more than likely was).
You look at a man who commits murder and rape in a jealous rage and can only see him as a victim.
> No liberal thinks that compassion for that man is the only relevant moral principle. Please, that's a strawman. it's impossible to see an act like that entirely divorced of its socio-economic context, which I think is true for conservatives.
To the degree that the first is a strawman I think your statement here one as well... perhaps the mirror image. Conservatives are just as capable of seeing the situation in it's socio-economic context as liberals are of considering moral principles beyond compassion for the criminal. It is a matter of emphasis and priority. Leftists prioritize socio-economic conditions as exculpatory: "It's not his fault really, society made him the way he is". Those on the right can fully acknowledge the way that his past and environment can contribute to criminality while still believing that the priority is and must be the individual's own freely made choices. I honestly find the liberal view to ultimately be dehumanizing in that it treats the criminal not with the dignity of human with the moral agency and capacity to choose between good and evil but as a robot helplessly programmed by their environment.
You might be interested in Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell. It's very much from the conservative position but it's a discussion of the philosophical conflict between what he calls the "unconstrained vision" (man is basically good, human nature is perfectible provide the right circumstances, ideal solutions are possible, structural flaws in society are root cause of various social ills and of individual flaws ) and the constrained vision (man is fundamentally flawed, human nature is ultimately immutable, perfect solutions don't exist only better or worse trade-offs, that flawed human nature is the cause the flaws in society)
You've touched on a rather poignant idea - how come both parties line up as they do?
> One of the curious things about political opinions is how often the same people line up on opposite sides of different issues. The issues themselves may have no intrinsic connection with each other. They may range from military spending to drug laws to monetary policy to education. Yet the same familiar faces can be found glaring at each other from opposite sides of the political fence, again and again. It happens too often to be coincidence and it is too uncontrolled to be a plot.
> A closer look at the arguments on both sides often shows that they are reasoning from fundamentally different premises. These different premises—often implicit—are what provide the consistency behind the repeated opposition of individuals and groups on numerous, unrelated issues. They have different visions of how the world works.
It isn't the issues per se, it is the underlying political philosophy that expresses itself as the differing opinions. Rather than choosing an a la carte selection of political issues, try delving deeper as to why you hold the opinions that you do, and ask yourself which party reflects those better.
Jeg kan anbefale https://www.amazon.co.uk/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOMksnSaAJ4
Stalin was the opposite of perfect. He was a tyrant who stole from, imprisoned, and killed his political opponents. Whatever trend you're observing economically in the post-war period resulted from the reconstruction of half the globe after WWII, which created new jobs for everybody; it's the same reason the US economy boomed in the 1950s despite having a 90% top marginal tax rate, which was also bad policy. It had nothing to do with Stalin using the force of government to take from a bourgeoisie to give to the proletariat.
What's ironic is that you're telling me to stop blindly believing some made up propaganda when it seems like you're the one who has swallowed the communist kool aid. Do yourself a favor and put down Das Kapital and read this.
>The swamp thinks that if you cut taxes and magically business will return. It won't.
Yeah, it's not like Trump has some magic wand he can wave, right?
>Companies will just pocket the money and continue shipping jobs overseas.
That's what liberals say, and they're wrong. You need this: https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730
A couple chapters into "Basic Economics", you get into why the government trying to manipulate prices can completely fuck everything up.
I'm not a CEO of a steel company, but I feel like a CEO of a steel company should know these things.
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466772568&sr=1-1&keywords=basic+economics
Here is a real source.
Seriously.
cap·i·tal·ism
Yeah sounds like what I want. People voluntarily and spontaneously trading labor or capital for goods and services, unhindered by a coercive authority. A free market whose prices are reflected by consumers and production costs, uninterrupted by government protectionist policies, and so forth. It's obviously more complex.
Here are some good books for ya. Read up.
I don't have the patience to explain economics to you so here's a handy book: https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?ie=UTF8&qid=1522714734&sr=8-1-spons&keywords=basic+economics+thomas+sowell&psc=1
> Secondly, you can't just assume 100% of the population will take some action you've arbitrarily decided.
Again, laws of economics exist for a reason dude. You can't just decide they don't "because reasons."
>but it's known that keeping people off the streets is cheaper in the long run than forcing them out on the street and paying for the inevitable healthcare.
Then stop paying for their healthcare.
> I just think your arguments are absurd. You should do some research into critical thinking and come back with something sensible.
You should read this or attend even a basic Econ class, and then you will go "Ohhhhh!" and it will all hit you, and you'll realize that what is "absurd" to you, is common sense to anyone who knows what they are talking about. It is common sense to realize if we jacked minimum wage up to 80$ overnight, that every person who works a job that produces under $80/hr is going to lose their job, businesses aren't going to employ people at a cost just out of the goodness of their hearts.
I also never said 100% of people would do anything in particular. Your entire argument is "yeah, but some people won't!" Give me an actual argument and a reason I'm wrong, because you haven't yet.
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730
Give it a shot. You might learn something.
It also helps those with moderate money buy more property than they can afford in the free market, and thus hoard it. Then there is no housing for the truly poor because what should be low income housing has been hoarded. It becomes a first come first serve market. Same thing happened after rent control was used to help soldiers get homes. There was a massive national shortage even thought the physical supply never changed. Here is the book, I highly recommend the read.
Det er godt at vi generelt er enige. Det var også derfor jeg gik lidt tilbageholdende til dig, fordi jeg kun følte at det var insinuationer, og ikke eksplicitte påstande. Det er også fuldstændig rigtigt, hvad du siger. En virksomhed bliver ikke nødvendigvis bedre bare fordi at man gør den privat, og ikke gør andet. Det allervigtigste element er konkurrencen. Det er ligemeget om en virksomhed er privat eller offentlig, hvis der er lige stor mangel på konkurrence.
Hvad jeg så bare lader til at være lidt uenig med dig i er, hvor ofte private monopoler opstår. Vi er vel enige om, at man ikke er et monopol baseret kun på den simple observation af hvor meget af et givent marked man sælger til. Så hvorvidt man er et ægte monopol, har vel primært at gøre med hvor høj graden af adgangsbarrierer er og hvor meget konkurrencen er sænket i forhold til hvor den ville være under "reelle frie markedsvilkår" - selvom det jo naturligvis er en ting der er essentielt umulig at kvantificere.
Private monopoler er yderst yderst sjældne, fordi de ikke selv kan kontrollere mængden af konkurrence i et frit marked. Det der næsten altid sker i monopoler og i monopollignende situationer, er at virksomhederne skaffer hjælp fra staten, så staten kan lave regler og reguleringer inden for et bestemt erhverv, så udbudet af konkurrenter kan kontrolleres.
Jeg er desværre ikke interesseret i at gå meget mere i dybden hvad dette angår, men hvis man har lyst til at lære lidt om basal økonomi i sin fritid, så kan jeg bestemt anbefale Basic Economics af Thomas Sowell.
Check out Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics. It's probably the best place to start for basic econ. But for something more data sciency, check out Carter Hill's Principles of Econometrics
This is devolving and becoming unhelpful to everyone. Tediously citing sources for every opinion is not helpful and often overburdens a social platform such as reddit. I'll finish off my thoughts here, but will leave you the last word if you want it.
So, you see, that would be 16% of our current 4T budget. This is what I meant by the term "precious little".
You seem to value citing papers, studies, and even an online course. I'll list some here to support my earlier claims.
>And again I'd argue that because it has never happened, is it a safe bet to argue that it won't? It just seems funny to me that so many conservatives will willfully agree that they'd love the lower price that automation will bring because it will be displacing workers, but refuse to believe those workers won't be able to find jobs. Economists like the one in your article talk about small disruptions like the cotton gin that have affected one industry. Automation seeks to disrupt them all, from cleaning people, stock traders on up to doctors etc.
That's not the point. The point is that while it remains a possibility, there is little to no historical precedent for your claim. It's likely, based off of past advancements in technology, that a reduction in workplace opportunities will decrease overall. Now, you point to things like the cotton gin, but it's not like there is a huge necessity in the marketplace for people to pick cotton. Other opportunities in the market have came as a result of technology, which is exactly why it's perfectly reasonable to think that those workers will be able to find employment elsewhere even in the face of automation; it's not like cotton picking is a particularly skilled trade.
Going back to your cotton gin example, I'd like to actually extend that out to the agricultural industry in general. Today, we have giant mechanical harvesters, machines that turn soil, plant seeds, etc. So what happened to all of those people who used to work the land? Did they disappear? No. They moved to the cities. Why did they move to the cities? Because there was employment opportunity in urban areas as opposed to rural farmland. And a lot of those jobs in urban areas came from - you guessed it - technological advancements. Factory jobs became a big part of the urban economy. Assembly lines, textiles, manufacturing, you name it, became the new place for low-skilled work. And on top of that, we get a large production of cheap goods from the rural areas since vacated by low-skilled workers.
>I take it you've never visited a third world country where that's the case.
Two things here:
For the record, I'm a military veteran, and I've been to more third world shitholes worse than what you have ever dreamed of.
>We as a species produce more than enough food to feed everyone yet we willfully throw a lot of food away because giving it away means no profit.
We also give a lot to these people too. There are more factors at play than just the fact that we can't give these people food. A lot of it is politics; a lot of it is the unfortunate and dangerous situations that these people find themselves in aside from starvation. It's a little disingenuous to think that the only driver here to hunger is a profit motive.
>Food vendors will sell to people with money, my argument is without a UBI there will be a lot less people with money, and they'll just adjust their prices to reflect that.
So this statement you've made here is what is going to make me stop talking to you after this post. You're either not listening, or you're not sophisticated enough to listen to reasonable arguments and data. I've literally just got done explaining to you how this is not even close to being the case. Even in the face of automation without a UBI, there are employment opportunities without having to hold a gun to my head and take what I have earned to give it to someone else. Again, what happened to all of those farm workers that got displaced by mechanization? Did they just up and die, or did they move somewhere where technology had created more opportunities? I really don't understand why this is such a hard concept for you to grasp.
>Supply and demand doesn't mean there'll always be a competitor who's going to come in and lower prices, in fact the opposite is more often true, vendors create artificial shortages to increase demand and raise prices in many sectors.
Ok, so you don't understand basic supply and demand. All of your focus is on the supply side without any consideration for demand. If there is no demand (meaning nobody can pay for their products), then the vendors can't sell to anyone. With diminishing demands, come lower prices. If fewer people can buy my product, and I need to move more volume than is allowable at the current price of my product, then I have to lower my prices. Vendors can create artificial shortages all they want, but if few people are able to afford their product in an environment where many people have been displaced from the market due to automation and somehow have not found other forms of employment, then they would be forced on the demand side to make their products available for less. If they don't, then their own businesses would suffer.
>You seem to be conflating my argument to mean that automation will put businesses out of business.. it's not, I'm arguing again that automation will put people out of work.
No. I'm not, and I have continually debunked the idea that automation will put people out of work (see multiple citations above).
>Less people working means businesses will raise their prices to adjust for less customers.
Again, you don't seem to understand basic supply and demand. If businesses aren't getting enough customers, then the solution isn't to raise prices, it's to lower prices. I'll make a simple example to illustrate my point.
Johnny sells tomatoes for $10 (I know, those are some damn expensive tomatoes). Johnny usually has 10 customers a day, and they each buy 2 tomatoes, so Johnny makes $200 per day. Now, the market has shifted, and people can no longer buy $10 tomatoes or they just don't want to spend that much on tomatoes. Due to the change in the market, Johnny now only has 5 customers per day. So what does Johnny do? Johnny needs to sell more tomatoes. He could raise his prices, like you say, to $20 per tomato, and if he's fortunate enough to keep his remaining 5 customers, then he will restore his gross profits, but that's not likely. The market demand doesn't have as many people who can and will buy $20 tomatoes as there are people who can and will buy $5 tomatoes. If Johnny raises his prices, all he's going to do is drive more of the market out, so instead, due to market demands (remember demand is a key driver in a capitalist market), he has to lower his tomato price in order to attract more customers.
>Maybe I just have a different perspective on things because my grandfather lived through the depression and I can't fathom telling someone who survived only because the government had bread lines that people nowadays would be shouting that those from the greatest generation would have been better off dying in the streets.
Well this is just a complete strawman.
My grandparents lived through the depression too. Government economic policies like Herbert Hoover's trade protectionism and FDR's socialism kept us in the Depression until the advent of WWII. Nobody is shouting that your grandfather or my grandfather would have been better off dying in the streets. This also has absolutely nothing to do with what we're talking about right now. The Great Depression wasn't a result of automation.
>If you put it so far out of bounds then yeah, it's easy to dismiss. This isn't sci-fi though, if automation displaces 10% of workers you're talking recession, 20% and it's at a 30's era level of great depression. So it's completely hyperbolic to say it's got to displace 100% of workers.. the number is much lower.
It is sci-fi because there is no historical precedent or any basis in reality of technological advances resulting in lower employment rates, and just about every economic study has actually concluded the opposite: advancements in technology are usually consummate with increases in employment. You're talking about some fantasy world that does not exist where all of the sudden technology has the exact opposite impact on labor opportunities than what has ever happened before to the point where 10% (or greater) of workers are all of the sudden, not just displaced to new jobs, but completely unemployed. There is no rationale to the idea that this would happen, and if you would just bother to read the studies I posted above, you would see that.
I also recommend that you educate yourself a little better on economics. Here is something that I think everyone should read.
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1498257169&sr=8-1&keywords=thomas+sowell+basic+economics
basic economics
I doubt any Bay area politician has any grasp on the matter.
> Accept cash for an online social media service? Are you well in the head, mate?
Yes, you have a physical address do you not? Could even get a PO box.
>Bitcoin, the service which goverments are actively trying to contain and is super volatile. Yeah, sound investment, guy.
And which is still going strong and holding steady despite having the bubble (predictably) burst? yes, it is.
>But, if you are content with getting fucked over into being a serf willing to drink leadwater all so you can claim to believe in this fanciful idea which will literally never happen, I can't convince you. I can only laugh at you.
Yawn. Same tired argument that falls apart when you realize in a market economy where people are free to choose you need to provide the best service and everyone is uplifited.
Here's some reading material for ya
Here, go read this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730
If you refuse to read every single word, it means you're stupid. I won't tell you how this book refutes your point. You'll have to figure it out for yourself. You'll know the argument when you get to it.
See, I can stoop to your level too. I hope you had fun wasting your own time.
Goodbye.
If you're really interested and want a more full explanation (still in easily digestible language), check out Basic Economics, especially Chapter 3.
Here's a book for you
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730
Which format would you prefer?
Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465060730/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_NvkODb2B251FY
Or audio:
https://youtu.be/dQiBD-crrvA
>Dude, the average Chiléan suffered immense economic devastation from Pinochet's reforms.
Agreed. Pinochet wasn't a proponent of free markets. He nationalized many of the same industries that were nationalized under Allende. I suggest you re-read my posts again. Slowly if you need to, so you don't hurt yourself.
>You measure the economy in GDP and stock market trading.
GDP per capita is one of the best indicators we have for baseline quality of life, yes.
>Read Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine.
Oof. Not a fan of Naomi.
If you still don't understand the significance of GDP per capita as an indicator for QoL, I suggest you pick this book up.
Math for the Frightened by Colin Pask
https://www.amazon.com/Math-Frightened-Symbols-Everything-Mathematics/dp/1616144211
Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730
There's a good argument presented in a Thomas Sowell book for the privatization of air frequencies.
http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1450137893&sr=8-1&keywords=basic+economics
It is censorship. Claiming a monopoly over the resources the press uses and leveraging that to your advantage is the same as controlling the press directly. Who controls Barter Town? Master Blaster.
Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell.
Before you bother with getting rich, see if you understand economics... its more fundamental.
P.S Thanks for the links!
Your ad-hominem proves you have nothing, i'm not being paid, i'm a conservative who has been fed up with Elon for years, i thought the donald would wake up on this one, seems not.
Try basic economics here: https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730/ref=dp_ob_title_bk
Give this a read
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465060730/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_a6IPCbZHR1ZWY?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app
Here, you could use this
https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-God-That-Failed-Perspectives/dp/0765808684
Hans Hermann Hoppe is himself a market anarchist, but in this book he argues that democracy has fatal flaws which make it inferior to monarchy. A very short gist of his analysis is that an elected official in a democratic system has no incentive to maintain the longterm value of the country, since the official doesn't directly benefit from prudent, wise longterm policy. Rather, the overwhelming incentive is for politicians to milk the value of their power while they have it, and leave the mess for the next guy to sort out. So they buy votes by increasing pension guarantees or by creating subsidies which go into effect a few years down the line. The politician gets immediate credit, which translates into votes/support, while the bill may not come due in the form of higher taxes for many decades. Monarchy, on the other hand, allows for the ruling class to "own" the capital value of the country and to pass it on to their heirs, which gives them a much greater incentive to keep spending in check. If they destroy their economy, they only harm their own property in the long term. Historically, the 18th-19th century european monarchies were much better at maintaining balanced budgets than 20th century democracies have been.
Again, he isn't a monarchist. The point of the book is to highlight the flaws of democracy. The fact that all modernized nations carry massive debt and operate on keynesian economic principles is taken as evidence of the perverse incentives in democracy.
https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-God-That-Failed-Perspectives/dp/0765808684
Bonus: why monarchy is better than democracy. I'm not really embarrassed to have this on my bookshelf, but I'm not exactly proud either.
The biggest weakness of libertarian ideologies is the understanding of history and historical contexts. In a bubble, many of the ideas are consistent and logical, and in most cases admirable. In reality they are a bunch of conservative talking points with no increase in actual freedom for most people.
"... wealth created by labor is not returned to the laborer."
This is a fallacious argument. Wealth is indeed proportionately returned to laborers. Honestly, this is a juvenile position which serves to highlight a fundamental lack of economic understanding.
As a business owner, I personally bear all the responsibility and risks of owning my business. A worker does not. It was me, and only me, who put up the money, found my building, and built it out to serve my needs with my own planning and labor. I personally purchased my gear and did the research that led to these decisions. I personally decided on how my business would be presented to the market. I spent my own money on advertising. I can keep going, but you should get the point. If my business had failed, no one would lose any money but me. An employee of mine risks nothing, while I risk everything. That should be very obvious. I am entitled to the lion's share of the rewards for those risks. Businesses don't exist to provide people with jobs. They exist to create wealth for their owners/investors. In fact, labor is very expensive and is kind of a last resort expense for employers. This is very basic economics. You should read some Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard, and Thomas Sowell. Only a young person with little to no real-world business experience would give any credibility to these marxist ideals you're playing with. Successful small business owners are rarely marxists, and you would do well to exorcise this stuff from your worldview asafp.
As for the left/right stuff...
This is so important to understand -
The left/right divide is biological, and people really only 'switch sides' when they experience an epigenetic change. The left/right divide in politics is not what it seems; it's not a game where there's a 'team' that you pick because you like their uniforms or whatever. Politics are actually the manifestation of a literal war between competing gene sets. It is a struggle for survival, just like you observe in all of nature - our war is over the management and distribution of resources. Biologists recognize two different reproductive strategies in all organisms on Earth. One is called the r-strategy, and the other is known as the K-strategy. You are aware of these strategies, even though you've very likely never heard of r/K selection theory. Leftists/marxists are from the more r-selected camp, while conservatives/libertarians represent the K-selected end of the spectrum. You know, instead of me trying to fit all of r/K selection theory into a Reddit comment, I'll just provide a link to part one of a three-part presentation of it. This is probably the best introduction to this idea that I've ever seen. https://youtu.be/W8N3FF_3KvU
Highly recommended if you want to have an advanced understanding of what human society really is. I can't recommend that enough, honestly. (This link might drop you in the middle of the video, but definitely start it from the beginning)
Also, you should really read these books:
The Economics and Ethics of Private Property: Studies in Political Economy and Philosophy https://www.amazon.com/dp/0945466404/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_8tZ.zbEJ35P6A
Democracy – The God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy and Natural Order (Perspectives on Democratic Practice) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0765808684/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_QuZ.zbBN0PT33
No. Keep politics out of bitcoin. Miners will respond to market incentives without the need to force policies on others simply because a majority of w/e body voted on something.
Democracy is the original 51% attack.
"Democracy the god that failed."
http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Monarchy-Natural/dp/0765808684
A republic is a more effective form of government though. Someone really should tell the protesters...
What's logical about allowing corruption to infiltrate the halls of power on the grounds of fairness and democracy? How about a constitutional monarchy. California wouldn't be a deficit state if Jeff bezos was the lord of the east coast
Low taxes, stupid shit like marijuana wouldn't be illegal, no national military means we won't be isreals kebab removalist
I don't see what isn't logical about wanting to go to a system less retarded than ours is right now. read real 21st century literature
Secretly?
https://mises.org/library/introduction-democracy-god-failed
ill start with this and see where it gets me.
judging from amazon reviews, I don't think itll do anything good reading the book, as I disagree with monarchy and his preference for aristocracy.
reviews
Não acharia má idéia não, melhor que o sistema atual.
A idéia retardada de idade média de ter um cargo definido por herança é colocar um incentivo em alguém para essa pessoa pense em termos mais perenes de país, e não se preocupe tanto em ganhar as eleições.
O argumento tá mais dissecado aqui
https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Perspectives-Democratic/dp/0765808684
No entanto, sendo honesto, eu não li esse livro, então não posso dizer se concordo com tudo que está lá ou se eu fiz juz a argumentação apresentada neste livro.
Democracy is so flawed, one of its flaws is that it leads to a large state as the people keep voting for more stuff.
Whilst we may all be equal in the eyes of God we are not all equal in our attributes, so how is it that we all have an equal vote? majority rule is a dictatorship of the mob. How is it that 50.1% of people can impose their collective will on the rest?
Democracy the God That failed
https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Perspectives-Democratic/dp/0765808684
Try reading for once.
This
Huemer is the most persuasive to me currently, simply by defeating all rival statist positions so completely (and without requiring you to accept some universal moral system), but if you're coming from a monarchist perspective, I would be derelict in my duties not to emphatically recommend Hoppe's Democracy: The God That Failed. He positions enlightened absolute monarchism as a solution only 2nd best to his "natural order" private property system (market anarchism). His perspective on shortening time preference, degeneration of morals and ethics (decivilization), revisionist history, critiques of democracy, etc. as the western world moved from monarchy to democracy are recommended.
Read a few pages of the book he's talking about here. I'm sure there are also articles about it like this one.
Meltdown by Tom Woods.
https://www.amazon.com/Meltdown-Free-Market-Collapsed-Government-Bailouts/dp/1596985879
See here:
http://mises.org/story/3128
http://www.amazon.com/Meltdown-Free-Market-Collapsed-Government-Bailouts/dp/1596985879
http://mises.org/story/3165
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw
The Austrians predicted the boom-bust perfectly, just as they always have.
You should all check out Meltdown by Tom Woods. He thoroughly shows how the fault lies with the incentives the government set for banks, new legal requirements, and the Federal Reserve. Blaming the 2008 crash on greed is like blaming an airplane crash in gravity.
The Law - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1936594315/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1936594315
Economics in one lesson - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0517548232/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0517548232
That which is seen and is not seen - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1453857508/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1453857508
Our enemy, the state - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001E28SUM/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B001E28SUM
How capitalism save america - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400083311/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1400083311
New Deal or Raw Deal - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1416592377/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1416592377
Lessons for the Young Economist - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933550880/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1933550880
For a New Liberty - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1610162641/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1610162641
What Has Government Done to Our Money? - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/146997178X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=146997178X
America's Great Depression - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/146793481X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=146793481X
Defending the Undefendable - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933550171/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1933550171
Metldown - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1596985879/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1596985879
The Real Lincoln - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0761526463/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0761526463
The Road to Serfdom - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226320553/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0226320553
Capitalism and Freedom - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226264211/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0226264211
Radicals for Capitalism - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1586485725/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1586485725
Production Versus Plunder - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0979987717/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0979987717
Atlas Shrugged - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452011876/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0452011876
The Myth of the Rational Voter - http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0691138737/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0691138737
Foutainhead - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452273331/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0452273331&linkCode=as2&tag=thmariwi-20
Anthem - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452281253/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0452281253&linkCode=as2&tag=thmariwi-20
There are of course more books, but this should last you a few years!
Amazon.com link to book here
I have nothing to do with the project, but I am interested in how both the book and, presumably, the film, delve into the effects of inequality on the psyche on both micro and macro levels.
By the way, this is the other book, just looked it up on my shelf:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies/dp/1608193411
The authors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Pickett
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_G._Wilkinson
I think working is an important experience, and I'm glad it brought positive things to you. Your post was an interesting read. But yeah, I was mainly referring to the macroeconomics of it.
In an ideal world with extremely low unemployment rates, it'd be excellent for everyone to at least have a small part-time job during their studies, if only for the experience of working 8 hours shifts and extra income. But right now, it's having an impact on everyone.
I'm from Quebec, where we had a major debate on rising tuition costs 2 years ago, and I was baffled to see a massive amount of low-wage workers screaming at the "entitled students" to suck it up and accept the higher tuition, and work their way like everyone else did. They never realized that the students would compete with them for low-wage jobs, and it'd make nearly everyone worse off.
Your comment on the respect for tradesmen is interesting, and I would direct you to Richard Wilkinson's TED Talk and even his book, which is absolutely a must-read for anyone ever I think, as far as social sciences go. Basically, the current research suggests that socioeconomic inequality increases tension between members of different classes/education levels and tends to push people to try really hard not to be associated with "lower classes". Conspicuous consumption and disdain for "lessers" are byproducts of that.
Finally, your comment on the negative impact on your grades I can 100% relate to. I've always been at the top of my classes without working very hard, while maintaining massive interest in the topic we saw (mainly urbanism and economics), and I saw how different the experience was for people around me who worked during their studies. I don't think my experience was different mostly because I'm smarter, but because I managed to make sure I had enough time and mental energy to actually spend it on what was important at the time; understanding my scientific field. The semesters when I worked while studying, I noticed I was less interested and way more stressed, so I learned a lot less. It's all about balance I guess.
https://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies-Stronger/dp/1608193411
Pick up this book if you like reading, the economy, ethics, any combination of the former. In essence, the book says how greater equality makes societies stronger. In ALL aspects, culturally, mentally, AND economically. It basically discusses how with the ever increasing wage gape in our society, there has been a paralleled increasing inequality. And the moral implications, therefore, of an economic system should be to promote equality.
No, it is not a book that argues in favor of wealth distribution or any other sort of socialist undertones one may have take away from what I just described. The book is supported by decades of research and statistics that support a clear message: Inequality and the economy are indisputably and intricately linked. Improve one. Improve the other.
In English and Norwegian.
I'll give you a reluctant upvote, because while I agree with every policy suggestion you have, we'd also do better as a society in most measures of well-being (polled happiness, crime rates, children's behavioral problems, drug addiction rates, mortality, etc.) if we merely enacted policy that sought to reduce the amount of economic inequality. There's growing evidence to support this... I'm reading about it right now in a book called The Spirit Level.
The easiest way to reduce economic inequality is to return to highly progressive taxation (like we used to have when we rebounded from the Great Depression), and to use the extra revenue to provide social services (including those you mentioned, like healthcare and education). My point is that adding the highly progressive taxation part improves the outcome.
I don't think there is any single right answer to that. Although I give a lot of weight to Marx's analysis of capitalism and his musings on human nature and alienation, I disagree with his proposed solutions. I think class war and revolution are outmoded in the modern world and in the past have lead to corrupt, domineering and incompetent political parties.
I think the answer is still out there and it is up to us to find it. My own two cents would be that a re-envisioning of democracy would be the best way forward: a situation where policies and economies are controlled by the people rather than capitalists and political parties. A de-centralised, participatory democracy. This won't always lead to socialist policies, but I think over time the human species would be able to find its balance, its equilibrium, according to its own will and nature, as opposed to being dictated to from above by rigid ideologies, parties, privately owned media, corporations, economic forces, religions and so on. But that's just my view. If I had the answers I wouldn't be sitting around typing shit on Reddit.
Regardless of how we get there, there is an overwhelming amount of evidence to suggest that equality is the most suitable environment for human beings: I strongly recommend this book if you've not read it.
There may be some pointers here, even though I have not read it myself.
I suggest you take a loot at Wilkinson's work on inequality. Work is based on UN data, and also separate date from the US states. Trust is for instance something that is larger in equal societies. Health seems to be better also for rich people in equal societies.
One good direction into their (Kate Pickett and Richard G. Wilkinson) work is a book called The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger. Wilkinson has, however, held a TED talk, and also a 90 minute talk on the subject.
Their conclusion is that it matters, on so many levels. Then again, people on the right side of the isle disagree.
Wilkinson & Pickett's The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger is written by two British social epidemiologists who talk about the social and individual effects of inequality globally based on international research, and it's wonderful. Here's a link if you're interested: http://www.amazon.com/The-Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies/dp/1608193411
    The book The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger argues, as do other works, that inequality itself very often tends to produce harms.
    Indeed, that book found the following. Take someone, call her Sarah, who is near the economic bottom of a rich society. Compare her to someone, call him Omar, who is near the top of a much poorer society, and has, in absolute terms, much less money than Sarah. In many ways, Omar has a better life than Sarah, the book found. I think.
EDIT: Also, and if I may ask this despite not really providing any data myself, do you have some figures or sources for your claim that 'poverty levels decreased significantly'?
> yet still i was referring more to the abject poverty and deplorable conditions of the proletariat. which i think has still improved considerably
Understood. The problem with comparing that is any comparison is completely arbitrary. Systemic problems arise from vast inequalities, or as Smith said Social Distance, not from the relative comparative condition of the bottom 20% in 2010 in contrast to, say, 1700. Because at that point what 'good', 'prosperous', and 'healthy' even mean become utterly meaningless. I'm sure Genghis Khan would've considered having a refrigerator or cellphone awesome; doesn't mean he didn't live as a king.
--
I'm not a huge fan of this book, but will recommenced it anyway. It presents some complex subjects in simple terms, sometimes to its detriment. But all-in-all it will give you a good understanding, if only to serve as a jumping off point, of the relationship between vast inequalities and social health.
--
Furthermore large disparities are bad for the economy anyway. If the majority of citizens cannot afford cars, homes, or even take-out, the demand for consumer goods falls, decreasing supply, and resulting in further unemployment.
I'll keep it short, since I have other things to do.
Edit:
> ...so it makes no sense to say that the income equality is more beneficial than economic development.
Again, that's not the assertion! I'll try to say it for the last time. The claim is that income equality is more beneficial than further economic development specifically for the rich countries. Notice the word "further". In other words: if we take the countries that are already rich, from now on they will benefit much more from increases in equality than increases in GDP. (The same is not true for poor countries. Poor countries still need both: more growth and more equality).
She sounds incredibly diluted.. If you have time to put towards some actual study, I recommend The Wages of Whiteness. The basic premise is that racism are the branches of a tree rooted in classism. Bourgeoisie owners found that if they turn the working class against each other based on race, they have less to worry about. I think this book would give you some really good insight. While it isn't the instant gratification you were looking for, it will help you coalesce the bigger argument and prepare you for any future similar interaction.
If you haven't read them, you may also be interested in some of this author's previous work... specifically, The Wages of Whiteness and Working Toward Whiteness.
Also, Noel Ignatiev's How the Irish Became White.
PS The promotional flyer for the new book includes a code for 20% off preorders from the Oxford University Press website.
I happen to be reading Professor David Harvey's A Companion to Marx's Capital as I go along. Would that be enough to cement my understanding or would you really recommend me to go through it a second time?
A friend told me about this a while back and said it was very helpful, I've been meaning to get around to it https://www.amazon.com/dp/1844673596/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_IMf6yb5Y7QKAN
https://www.amazon.com/Regulating-Poor-Functions-Public-Welfare/dp/0679745165
Still the most cogent and definitive answer to the question you raise. Well, that and maybe this one too.
https://www.amazon.com/Capital-Critique-Political-Economy-Classics/dp/0140445684
i bought the penguin versions of volume 1, 2, and 3 on amazon. volume 1 is the ben fowkes translation and 2 and 3 we're translated by david fernbach. it looks like that review is for an old version of the book. this version on amazon should be the ben fowkes translation of volume 1. that review is a couple years old too and i think that most online retailers carry the ben fowkes version now.
on the surface I know my stance sounds absurd but it's actually something I'm involved with and very passionate about. I direct you to some accessible reads from William Easterly White Man's Burden and The Tyranny of Experts or there's a recent popular documentary, Poverty, Inc, which I'm a fan of. Things like the Gates Foundation do not help long term.
Do you agree with William Easterly's theory that all international aid, including the Gates Foundation, is bad?
You've stumbled onto a whole subfield of economics: Development Economics.
Here is a list of all NBER papers tagged with development.
This is a good resource regarding the EITC (check the citations).
If you are looking for "lay person friendly" books, I'd recommend:
This is a really wide field in economics.
Read The White Man's Burden amazon. Easterly has a lot to say about helping the world's poor and why many efforts have failed in the past.
>Hitler kicked them out and put them in camps.
Who is Alfried Krupp? Stop getting your ideology from memes and read a history book. Here's a start: https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
>(i.e. he went to prison)
Actually just a few DWIs but no prison time.
>Doesn't sound like any sort of fascist at this point.
What is a fascist? I'm afraid that's the actual bulk of the movement. It's just bigoted morons with horrible taste and their politics are just wrapped up in worshipping the brute force of the state.
I have. You clearly haven't, because if you had, you couldn't possibly think there was anything capitalistic about it. As for Pinochet, fascism is not a synonym for "military dictatorship".
http://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
Read it. Its a long read, but if you are interested in the subject you will thank me later.
See Adam Tooze's Wages of Destruction for a complete refutation of A and B.
Please educate yourself before spouting misinformation.
If you want an even better and more easy on the eyes book take a look at The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze. You can get it used for $10 and it's good for people who want an introductory book on the subject.
Interesting. Castles of Steel is on the top of my book stack I've had it for months just haven't gotten around to and I'll read it after I finish Wages of Destruction.
You mean the basically facade economy funded by mefo-IOU's, looting of whole peoples belongings and unsustainable and corrupt policies, and book cooking along with employment percentage scams by basically writing unemployed women out of the workforce?
https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
i don't think the reich had an effective long-term strategy. it was very militaristic and essentially required the plunder of other nations.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wages-Destruction-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
Archives for the links in comments:
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Mods deleted my post, so, too briefly: Issue is whether or not the risk is worth insuring against. Re: precedents for Ps causing PROBLEMS when they perceive themselves to be imperiled:
From 2019 book Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill, and the Road to War:
>Of course, the overwhelming responsibility for the Second World War rests with Adolf Hitler. Only he and his most fanatical henchmen desired it [my emphasis]. Only he willed the series of events that led to it. Yet while Hitler was uniquely responsible for the tragedy, the question remains: How was he allowed to inflict such misery? How was it that a country defeated in 1918, reduced in size, restricted in arms and surrounded by potential foes, was allowed to rise in twenty short years to a position where she was able to mount a challenge for global supremacy and almost achieve her objective?
Re: Hitler and said henchmen believed they were IMPERILED
From 2008 book The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy:
>Since 1938 Hitler had seen himself as locked in a global confrontation with world Jewry.
>
>. . . For Hitler, a war of conquest was not one policy option amongst others. Either the German race struggled for Lebensraum [i.e., territory] or its racial enemies would condemn it to extinction.
Precedent for resistance by IMPERILED Ps who have a large war chest and don’t govern a country
From a 2018 article titled “Los Extraditables, the Pablo Escobar-Led Gang That Launched a Bloody Campaign Against U.S. Extradition”:
>The terrorist group . . . claimed “we prefer a grave in Colombia to a prison in the United States . . .”
Escobar was a drug-trafficker whose net worth reached $58 billion (in 2018 dollars). The other leaders of Los Extraditables were wealthy drug-traffickers.
From 2001 book Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw (my emphases):
>“[Escobar] intended, he said, to use the public’s weariness with [Escobar-funded] violence to his benefit. He planned to turn up the violence until the public cried out for a solution, a deal.
>
>. . . A communiqué from the Extraditables not long after hammered home the point:
>
>We are declaring total and absolute war on the government, on the individual and political oligarchy, on the journalists who have attacked and insulted us, on the judges that have sold themselves to the government, on the extraditing magistrates . . . on all those who have persecuted and attacked us. We will not respect the families of those who have not respected our families. We will burn and destroy the industries, properties and mansions of the oligarchy.”
>
>“At his [Pablo’s] peak, he would threaten to usurp the Colombian state.”
>
>“Ever since Pablo’s men had blown that Avianca flight out of the sky . . .”
>
>“[A] total of 457 police had been killed since Colonel Martinez had started his hunt. Young gunmen in that city were being paid 5 million pesos for killing a cop.”
Completely agree. Surrounded in fact not just by smart people but some of the smartest on the planet, at least in the sciences and military. Here's a fantastic book by Adam Tooze regarding the ruination of the Nazi economy, that basically doomed Germany, if anyone's interested
As the blurb says 'an extraordinary mythology has grown up around the Third Reich that hovers over political and moral debate even today'. That mythology is one of competence.
I loved The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze. It's a great economic history of the Reich, and the role of monetary policy is discussed there as well.
Well, "the economic crisis" that Hitler rose to power in was quite unrelated to the hyperinflation crisis. The economics behind Hitler's rise was quite complicated, but at the root, it is driven by a feedback loop of deflation. The precise mechanics of it is a bit too complicated to explain in a post, but this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1292517108&sr=8-1
Does a pretty good job of explaining everything.
If he's up for it, you might want to have him read, The Ascent of Money, by Nial Fergeson. It does a good job of rooting finance and credit in world history, which makes it seem less new-fangled and untrustworthy.
Niall Ferguson - Ascent of Money
Gave me a deep realisation of how much money rather than will moves the world.
The Ascent of Money is a great primer on the evolution of our financial system. It's a fairly easy read and explains concepts like financial bubbles and the rise of insurance. Highly recommend.
>Regarding science, the flourishing of scientific development didn't start with the Enlightenment, but it exploded afterwards. Chinese science and technology was vastly better than Europe for about 400 years, but the Industrial Revolution still happened in Europe.
He isn't contesting that modern science and technology is mainly a European thing, what he is contesting is the idea that it happened as the result of Enlightenment thought.
Europe was already a world power before the first Enlightenment thinkers ever put pen to paper, and it had achieved this status through technological means.
When it comes to science, interest in performing scientific measurements with specialized instruments (such as astrolabes) was widespread in niche circles, and so was interest in Greco-Roman thought, before the Renaissance.
>Modern economics allowed science to be used by the average person, not just the elites. That was only able to flourish after the idea of individual property and innovation spread.
Modern economics (as in: capital markets, global trade) can be traced to the colonial companies (East Indian, etc), and to various Italian city-state ventures who traded on the Mediterranean, which happened before the Enlightenment. Niall Ferguson documents this in The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World.
>The fact that a woman can leave an abusive marriage and raise children on her own is pretty damn great, too.
That kind of implies that the "old view" would be ok with abusive marriages, but that really isn't the case. It is true that women are vulnerable to abuse by their husbands, but the kind of tight communities of the past where women also had the support of their extended family (many brothers, etc.) were a buffer.
And while the effort of single mothers is to be praised, as they do truly heroic work, it still remains the case that single-parent households are not the preferred way to raise children.
>there was no system of nobility or inherited titles.
That is true, but as the case of the British shows, that wasn't an impediment to them eventually developing a stable, fair and balanced political system. The British had had already gone through several steps in reducing the assymetry between the various ranks in the hierarchy. Elsewhere in Europe, the Habsburg regime was progressing towards decentralization, with more power accumulating into the hands of the merchants and artisans, simply as a result of their increased economic strength. By contrast, the economic activity of the nobility was land ownership, which didn't scale.
So my point here is that the good effects attributed to the political innovations which came with Enlightenment were also possible in regimes which were more conservative.
I see the Enlightenment as an expression of political trends that were already "in the air". Some of these trends introduced good changes, while some things turned out to not need changing.
Hello all,
I am a college student interested in learning more about the financial markets and how they operate through either textbooks or regular books. I think having a very basic investing knowledge would be helpful, then moving onto the markets in and of themselves.
I specifically want to gain a greater understanding of how they interact with one another (U.S. markets with Chinese markets, etc.), how they became to be so developed and in-depth, and how everyday occurrences come to affect the market (news, appointments).
I have the following on my list to read:
The Intelligent Investor.
Boglehead's Guide to Investing.
The Ascent of Money.
Does anyone have other suggestions? I am not worried by dullness.
Thank you!
Aligns almost exactly with Niall Ferguson's history The Ascent of Money base on book of the same title.
Worthwhile read, not quite ELI5 but pretty darn close.
http://www.amazon.com/Ascent-Money-Financial-History-World/dp/0143116177/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416424333&sr=8-1&keywords=history+of+money&pebp=1416424338150
I don't know of any that compare, but, the Napoleon's Buttons is SUPPOSED to be good.
http://www.amazon.com/Napoleons-Buttons-Molecules-Changed-History/dp/1585423319/
Other books, engineering related, that I liked are:
Norm Lieberman's Process Troubleshooting books, the guy cracks me up!
Working Guide to Process Equipment (3rd edition probably cheaper): http://www.amazon.com/Working-Guide-Process-Equipment-Fourth/dp/0071828060/
Process Equipment Malfunctions (not as good as the other one, some overlap, but still worthwhile, and covers more breadth for individual issues): http://www.amazon.com/Process-Equipment-Malfunctions-Techniques-Identify/dp/0071770208/
The Prize (mentioned above): http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1439110123/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/188-3799228-4803548
The Quest (Follow on to The Prize): http://www.amazon.com/Quest-Energy-Security-Remaking-Modern/dp/0143121944/
Oil 101: http://www.amazon.com/Oil-101-Morgan-Downey/dp/0982039204/
The Mythical Man Month (Not engineering directly as it pertains to software, but, projects and project management are huge in engineering, though this book is timeless): http://www.amazon.com/Mythical-Man-Month-Software-Engineering-Anniversary/dp/0201835959/
Piping Systems Manual (You can NEVER know enough about pipe!): http://www.amazon.com/Piping-Systems-Manual-Brian-Silowash/dp/0071592768/
Pumps and Pumping Operations (OMG it is $4, hardcover, go buy now! This book is great... did you know OSU didn't teach their Chem E's about pumps? I was flabbergasted, gave this to our intern and he became not a scrub by learning about pumps!): http://www.amazon.com/Pumping-Operations-Prentice-Pollution-Equipment/dp/0137393199/
Any good engineer needs to understand MONEY too:
The Ascent of Money: http://www.amazon.com/Ascent-Money-Financial-History-World/dp/0143116177/
It's Nial Fergesuon, who has had his own series of dramas and dumb stuff. The Ascent of Money has a SLIGHT libertarian tinge... but it wasn't bad enough that I didn't enjoy it. I consider it a history book, and he attempts to write it like one.
Have fun!
I have two books here that I'm willing to part with, which you may or may not find interesting. Broadly speaking you might call them political, but more specifically they're both on the subject of politics and finance. Public economics, we might call it.
The Ascent of Money- Niall Ferguson
The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It- Scott Patterson
Let me know if these interest you.
I first read about him in Niall Ferguson's book The Ascent of Money, which was also a TV series. I think you can watch the episode on John Law online.
Just to fill out the list by throwing in some right / conservative ones:
And as an absolute must, you should read this:
Also, you'd understand these books more if you had a good foundation in economics and finance.
Not sarcastic! If you are interested in international finance, this book is super readable and goes through a lot of the history behind why we have currency, insurance, bonds, options, and all sorts of fun financial instruments. The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143116177/
Really like where your head is at - always pays to be skeptical as an entrepreneur. I'm bearish on bitcoin but I like to hang out here to see if there are any interesting projects or opportunities in the crypto space.
I like non-fiction that doesn't get too technical. I figure I'm reading to be generally informed on a topic and for entertainment- not studying for a course. So when an author manages to get to the meat of the matter while telling an interesting story I'm rather happy as I was with this one:
The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson
Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of our financial system, from its genesis in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals on what he calls Planet Finance. What's more, Ferguson reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history, arguing that the evolution of credit and debt was as important as any technological innovation in the rise of civilization. As Ferguson traces the crisis from ancient Egypt's Memphis to today's Chongqing, he offers bold and compelling new insights into the rise--and fall--of not just money but Western power as well.
I recently read his book The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World and the man definitely knows what he's talking about.
>Sorry you keep saying that free markets are not capitalism. I do not know of other people who share that definition of capitalism.
Every single one of these links describes just how integral the government and government intervention is to functioning capitalism.
>Free market capitalism is a form of capitalism, not the system we have in the total sense of the word, but it is a form of capitalism.
Where has this existed?
>Inequality has been shown to be reduced through government intervention within capitalist economic systems. This is not to speak of other systems that do away with capitalism.
No, it hasn't.
>You keep saying that government invention has increased income inequality, but I would like evidence of that.
I have linked you several articles and an entire book that describes this.
>What I have never understood about AnCaps...
I am not an AnCap, nor is the author of this article.
My typical spiel regarding "capitalism"
You'll be surprised to hear that Rail ticket prices are much higher today (its quickly becoming a rich man's toy), and tax payers subsidise private companies running the trains far more than they ever did under BR. It wasn't perfect admittedly, but by the end of the 70's BR had managed to turn itself around, despite having the lowest investment in western Europe. Nevertheless they managed to run the intercity routes at cost, compare that to today where those routes are heavily subsidised (except East Coast which went from being a massive loss making private route, to just about being in profit, with the highest customer ratings, all after it was nationalised a few years ago), BR managed to run so efficiently that they actually consulted the continental railways, which you will notice are still nationalised and in fact ultimately own many of the companies running our routes. If we had had a similar amount of investment to the continent, and BR hadn't been run into the ground in preparation for privatisation we might have a service to rival the rest of Europe (take Ireland who have over a 99% record on being on time, thats with a 5 minutes window of the eta, after privatisation here in the UK we now have a 30minute window and don't get anywhere close to that on time rate.
As for state owned, invested, or guaranteed industry, well yes it would be mad to subsidise clearly uneconomic projects, no ones talking about that. The point is more Mines were closed under the Wilson government than Thatcher, the difference was that uneconomic mines were identified in partnership with the Unions, closed, and new jobs found. A good example of this is with Michael Foot, who had to close the steel works in his own constituency Ebwr Vale, he genuinely thought he was going to be lynched when it was announced. When it closed they re-tooled, and up-skilled the workforce and opened a steel plating plant, which was a huge success. What happened under Thatcher was a politically motivated attack (this is all coming out with the 30 year rule cabinet papers) to close both uneconomic mines yes, but a huge number of profitable mines also (there was one mine which was targeted as 'uneconomical' which was taken over as a worker coop that only closed a couple of years ago, there is still a small amount of mining in the UK). They cynically left entire communities with no other option when they were closed, no investment to create new jobs, nothing. And it turned out to be a false economy, it costs a lot more to put thousands on the dole, destroying local economies and satellite businesses etc, than it is to wind down one industry as you build up another.
Ok as for the deficit, you have to go back to the planned mixed economy period to find constant budget surplices, its under the neoliberal, hands-off, economy where we find budget deficits. Both Thatcher and Major ran bigger deficits than Labour, Labours deficit compared very favourably to other countries in fact, to the point that George Osbourne promised to match Labour spending pound for pound. Then the crash hit, and because we had shifted our economy so far away from industry towards the service and finance sector we were far more exposed than any other country (say like Germany which maintains a strong SME industry). As people lost their jobs, and we bailed out the financial sector the deficit ballooned, we weren't living beyond our means, we were simply too exposed, thanks in part also to light touch regulation (Osbourne was calling for more deregulation beforehand if you remember).
We're not a poor country, private wealth in this country has never been higher, £7 trillion, wealth inequality has never been higher either and this is the reason were having such issues with growth and deficit reduction. The fact that the top earners contribute 30% of tax revenue is a huge problem, not something to boast about as the Tories keep doing. A huge amount of money is being withheld from the real economy. Start ups, and even long established companies simply cannot get the investment they need to expand to create more jobs, this is where the state needs to step in.
The 'good times' under Constervative and New Labour were built on a fib, it required unsustainable amounts of private debt, the subsidising of companies through tax credits, and the madness of subsidising private landlords rather than building social housing. It also required a large amount of people circulating through unemployment, in a job - on the dole for 6 months - in a job - repeat (there are only 2000 families with two generations out of work, and those out of work for more than 2 years has only skyrocketed after the crash) this kept wages low, as full employment allows for much stronger bargaining power.
So if our country is so rich, whats there to do about it? Well actually crack down on tax evasion and avoidance, currently HRMC have 3000 people investigating benefit fraud, but only 300 people investigating tax evasion which represents 170 times the loss than benefit fraud. a 5% one off wealth tax on the very richest in this country would eliminate the deficit for a year, allowing that money to spent on investing in new jobs. Full employment with well payed productive workers paying tax will pay off the deficit quicker than the massive shift to low pay and no pay weve seen.
Anyway I've gone on too much, sorry about that, I probably havn't explained the position too well as there is a hell of a lot of factors to it. If you're interested in seeing another side than the Austerity narritive I recommend two books which will explain it a lot better than me.
Richistan by Robert Frank shows how trickle down economics is a fantasy, and also shows an insight into how the other half live, really well written, a bit like an American Louis Theroux - http://www.amazon.com/Richistan-Journey-Through-American-Wealth/dp/0307341453
And Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, which was published not long after the crash, and explains scarily presciently the ideological underpinning to Austerity, as well as the roots of neoliberalism. http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395079797&sr=1-1&keywords=Shock+Doctrine
Edit Sorry, missed off a point about taking over industry etc costing money. Things like the railway you can simply allow the franchises to pass, or allow the Nationalised East Coast company to bid on the other franchises. Things like Water, or industry you want to support, you simply swap their shares for government bonds, it doesnt cost anything, and the shareholders get a secure longterm invetment, everyone wins.
More manufactured crisis to justify closed door meetings to ram through unpopular legislation.
Naomi Klein wrote a great book about it.
Not a stupid question.
I noticed most of these posts are about fiction. I feel like all the books I read change my life, but the biggest ones that changed the way I look at the world have been:
Pop Science books by Steven Johnson (Emergence, Everything Bad is Good For You, Where Good Ideas Come From) and Malcolm Gladwell (Blink, Tipping Point, Outliers). These books changed all of my preconceived notions, and gave me a drive to search for intelligent outside perspectives. Emergence was especially influential. I approach Emergence in an almost religious way, you can see "God" or whatever you would call it, in Emergent intelligent behavior, a more science-friendly conception of God, I feel the same way when I watch Koyaanisqaatsi.
A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber. Most people either like Ken Wilber or hate him. To me, he gives a good model of looking at religion, spirituality, science, society, myth, and the way different people think similar to Joseph Campbell. If you ever wonder why religious people think a certain way, and scientific people and postmodern philosophers think a different way, this is the book.
The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. I didn't even finish this book because I got to depressed. It may be pretty biased, but it is really one of the best geopolitical books out there. I learned everything I needed to know about foreign policy and the economic conflict going on around the world.
EDIT: Another great one is The Book by Alan Watts
This comes to mind:
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Naomi Klein
Library
Amazon
it's funny you bring up wagner because milo is a jew. do you think his rise in popularity was coincidental?
he might say some correct things, but his purpose to maintain the status quo; that's why they sent him in. that's why i don't advise reading his work or supporting him. if you want something genuinely red-pilling, here's a good one.
>Hope we learned something from that, so we don't do that again to some other country.
that is never the point (it assumes some kind of "goodwill" but it never even comes into the equation except in name only)
https://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999
obviously she is a leftist and you should have that in mind. Likely there are books that would describe the same disastrous events differently. for sure that applies to Chile because there is a wide-spread myth about how Pinochet economic policies were a "big success story", but even in Russia there is a bunch of assholes (e.g. Chubais) who maintain that Gaidar and his boys were a godsend to the country.
End unfettered disaster capitalism. And shift to a more balanced social/capitalism hybrid model.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Shock-Doctrine-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374060122&sr=8-1&keywords=shock+doctrine
Check out "The Shock Doctrine"
The U.S. funded a lot of horrendous regimes and committed all kinds of war crimes in the name of "fighting communism."
... and then they wonder why so many people are pissed off at our government.
>Hitler utilized some socialist policies and talking points, but he also oversaw massive privatization as well
No he didn't. this is a lie.
>as the murder of many socialists including the more socialism-inclined members of the Nazi party (the Strasserists)
Stalin murdered more socialists than hitler could shake a stick at in the purges. killing fellow socialists is a well established socialist tradition.
>The Nazi party may have had the word "socialist" in their name, but they were an explicitly anti-left party, certainly after the Night of Long Knives.
anti marxist does not mean they weren't socialist.
>That doesn't make it socialist or communist.
No, but calling your fucking party that and teaming up with other socialists does.
On the other end of the spectrum from what /u/srilankan_in_london recommended (and I also recommend Freakonomics), a less versatile but more specific book that gives an interesting look at the history of financial economics is Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money. It won't go deep into economic theory like some of the other recommended reads here will, but it is an interesting overview and history of financial markets and monetary economics.
>Would anybody who knows more than me be kind enough to summarise why fractional-reserve won't cause the end of the world?
The world itself won't end, because the Earth doesn't care about the shenanigans of "fractional reserve banking" just like it doesn't care about some street huckster tricking people out of money with a "shell-game" or "3-Card Monty". The sun will still rise and set, the waves will still crash and, the tides will still rise and fall, and the seasons will still change and then return again.
---
Now if you meant TEOTWAWKI (The end of the world as we know it) -- then, yes fractional reserve banking will inevitably "implode" and the "world" as experienced by human beings in civilized countries will dramatically change (possibly for the better, probably for the worse).
A couple of REALLY good works to read in this regard are: This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly and The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World.
And if you're up for a series of videos of WHY growth cannot continued unabated (and why the anomaly of the past one hundred years have seemed to been "exception") I would highly recommend you spend the time watching Physic's Professor Al Bartlett's FREE presentation on Arithmetic, Population and Energy. His presentation doesn't deal with "banking" per se, but rather what the meaning/consequence of say "5% annual growth" actually means in the real world (which reflects back upon a banking system that is built on the assumption that such growth is sustainable... forever. Hint: it most certainly is not). The presentation is entirely "free" from what anyone would call "tin-foil conspiracy" and deals with fundamentals of exponential growth of systems versus fixed resources. Again I highly recommend spend the time to you watch it.
---
BTW, as to the "evil bankers" -- certainly there are fraudulent individuals and con-men, always have been, always will be -- but the massive con operations are always a collusion of government interests and those in positions of government power with the "capabilities" that such con-men can provide for them. A good resource on understanding how this phenomenon has worked in the past is William K. Black's book on the S&L crisis from the 1980's: The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry.
---
Finally, if you then want a presentation that "combines" all of the above and applies (from one man's view) to the current situation, and the likely consequences he predicts for the coming decades, then Chris Martenson's Crash Course (also free online) may be of interest to you.
---
But remember... the sun will still rise ...and set, trees will still grow ...and die, the world itself will continue. (The question mark is around humanity and what will happen to our civilization. Best to be prepared for the worst.)
I appreciate that you're coming at this with an open mind and asking reasonable questions. That's a great start.
The problem is that you've "listening" to the people on the right instead of reading a variety of material. There's way too much background manipulation going on in right-wing media, and what it does is create urgency and rage to open up your limbic brain (the part that controls feelings) to attach emotion to what the speakers are saying to your neocortex (the part that processes reason and language).
This is how marketing works. It's how branding messages bypass our rational thought and make us identify with the brand. It becomes a part of us. It's how commercials are designed to make you want that brand of fast food right now.
By reading, you use your rational brain to decide what you agree or disagree with. I personally feel that if the right had any actual good ideas they wouldn't have to resort to this kind of propaganda technique (Rush Limbaugh's drive-time-rage-show), gerrymandering, vote suppression and election voodoo, and other kinds of dirty tricks.
If they can't compete on a level playing field in the battle of ideas, then their ideas are simply too weak. They had 9 years to replace ObamaCare, so where is it? It doesn't exist because they lied to you. They never wanted a better plan at all.
If you want to understand the reality of what's going on today, stop listening to these talking heads and read Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, Al Gore's The Assault On Reason and Sam Harris's The End Of Faith.
These three books are excellent primers to understand the issues facing us today, how we got here and where we need to go.
I did.
I highly recommend Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine for more details on the historical role of the US in South America (and beyond) during Op Condor.
>But there's a huge difference in deficit spending to....
errrrr... NO.
There are different "crisis" excuses that will come from either side:
... and on and on.
If you think that bullshit has ended with Obama and he's suddenly going to be more fiscally responsible than the other clowns who have been in the White House recently then you're sadly mistaken. A government that can print it's own money out of thin air will continue to grow with every new crisis.
> by reality i mean everyone who's not on reddit with an economics major that's about to get switched to communications, trying to trigger people who read books
ftfy
Barbarians at the Gate
The Box
And obviously The Big Short
Hollywood didn't write the book.
*rolls eyes* Troll much?
No, the biggest reason why the Senate didn't allow President Obama to do some of the things he wanted was because they politically opposed it. Republicans don't stand in the way of Democrats because Democrats are the party of light-bringers and Republicans are all paid-off neanderthals clinging to their guns and bibles standing in fear of a glorious future.
Both parties oppose each other because they have deep philosophical differences, philosophical differences which then manifest in different ideas about how to govern this country.
If you want an idea about the different philosophical ideas that are at the bottom of the stack which may cause the two sides to come to different answers, it's worth reading A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell.
And Dr. Sowell is black, so, um, you can't exactly use the race card here...
If you're interested in learning about Libertarian ideas and the philosophies of freedom, here are some good resources:
https://fee.org/articles/these-five-freedom-philosophers-will-liberate-your-mind/
https://mises.org/
​
Another good book (although a long one) is Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions, which lays out the underlying worldview differences between the Left and the Right. It does a pretty good job answering questions like, why do most people who believe abortion is wrong also believe that people should have the right to own weapons that can kill people? Why do the same people end up on different sides of the debate on so many different issues? Why is there this phenomenon where people who tend to disagree on one particular issue tend to disagree on a lot of other issues that seem to be completely unrelated? If you weren't interested in putting in the time to read the whole book, I think you might find that just reading a summary of the book yields some interesting insights into how each person's worldview shapes so many different seemingly different political views about life.
here you go
Well since you so better at reading than me, you should check out this book by Stigler's protegee: https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730
" it is very easy to understand if one actually knows what capitalism is and how it operates."
Which you obviously DO NOT.
" i did explain why money has a strong tendancy to flow to the top under unfettered capitalism."
No, you did not. You just keep saying it, that doesn't make it true.
"There are reasons why capitalistic countries have welfare and high taxes,"
Welfare is socialism and high taxes are how they pay for the socialism. None of that has anything to do with capitalism. What are you smoking.
Get off the internet and read this: https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522576341&sr=8-1&keywords=basic+economics+thomas+sowell+5th+edition
Seriously, you have NO idea what you are talking about.
Because these are plebs we're talking about. If I wanted to experience some #blackexcellence, I wouldn't watch some capeshit blockbuster, I'd read Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics.
You might enjoy this book.
>If you are an illegal immigration who was a witness to a crime, how likely is it you are gonna come forward knowing you will be deported?
When you're an illegal alien you don't deserve fair treatment, you deserve jackboots kicking down your door at 3 am to pack you up and send your ass back across the border.
>Educate yourself
Hmmm...
>TheGreatWolfy is a moderator of
>r/communistreadings
>r/socialistPartyUSA
Indeed, educate yourself.
Lol. No U
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730
If you can't acknowledge that someone who owns a business has more to lose than someone who works for a business, it's pointless to discuss further anyway.
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536252220&sr=8-1&keywords=thomas+sowell+basic+economics
I'm sure that's as real as your other degrees. You sure don't talk like you have one junior. I think I've wasted enough time on you. Go to the pub and spend your rubles. Maybe save some to buy this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1521687927&sr=8-1&keywords=basic+economics+thomas+sowell
You haven't refuted anything I've said. You might want to read this. https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730
Here, do yourself a favor.
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730
http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-The-God-That-Failed-Perspectives/dp/0765808684
Democracy – The God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy and Natural Order (Perspectives on Democratic Practice) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0765808684/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_YQLPBb5KYSYRD
I highly recommend this if you haven't already read it.
Have you ever taken statistics? Have you ever seen or used a pie chart?
If every reddit account EVER CREATED voted for Jill Stein -instead of Obama- he would lose ~2% of the popular vote.
In fact, if humanity is truly this vast and stupid then I should just stop trying.
I read this book a few months back. The author is criticized for his little experiment, but his personal experience aside, he does point out how the experiences of people he met as an "undercover poor person" differed—and they differed, largely, based on the choices the individuals made. So, it would seem like there are some working poor who do adapt, and manage to better their situation. What they do isn't magic; what they do is defer gratification.
What you describe is basically the point of Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed. I've read a good portion of that book. The people in it are sympathetic, but many of them make bad choices as well.
*Nickel and Dimed"
Sometimes i'm confused as to reddits official position on naomi klein.
http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0805079831
> When there are 50 different state regulations good luck and if you're an international company it's even worse.
You know there are companies that currently do sell insurance across state lines, right?
> The point is the government should not be able to tell anyone where to buy medicine. It doesn't matter if it's because the Canadian people subsidize the industry or if in the case of cars the Japanese are more efficient. Government has no right to tell me where to buy products.
Yes, I agree that people should be able to buy cheap medicine by government enacted price controls. I wasn't disagreeing with you.
> I address preexisting conditions in the next comment where I will provide citations. People are priced out because government intervention through tax code. The only reason people have insurance through their employer is because of government intervention. No other insurance works like this, auto, flood, rental etc.
That's how it started. Now it works because it is a good way of pooling risk and is the only way many people with preexisting conditions can even get insurance. If people just bought it individually, there would be no way for these people to get into the risk pool.
> http://www.amazon.com/Mutual-Aid-Welfare-State-Fraternal/dp/0807848417/
Nice try David T. Beito. Trying to get me to buy your book. If you can find the relevant passage of that book that supports your claim, post that. Otherwise that is useless to me.
Before dismissing capitalism, you should consider that the recession was not caused by "free market capitalism." It was caused by Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Community Reinvestment Act. You should read Thomas Woods' book Meltdown
Great Depression > https://mises.org/library/americas-great-depression
Great Recession > https://www.amazon.com/Meltdown-Free-Market-Collapsed-Government-Bailouts/dp/1596985879
Ron Paul predicts the housing crisis... in 2001
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kFd8YluIVG4
https://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies-Stronger/dp/1608193411
From the article:
" this Halloween is like every Halloween of the last two or so decades, at least one white college student or minor celebrity will arrive at a party wearing dark-brown face paint as part of a costume imitating a famous black person, photos of the incident will emerge on the Internet, and condemnations will rain down from authority figures.
In recent years, Facebook surveillors discovered and publicized photos of six University of Southern Mississippi students who colored their white skin to depict the Huxtable family from The Cosby Show, two Northwestern University students who painted themselves coal-black and dressed as Bob Marley and Serena Williams, Raffi Torres of the Phoenix Coyotes and his wife dressed and darkened as Jay-Z and Beyoncé, and a blonde Dallas Cowboys cheerleader appearing at a costume event as the rapper Lil' Wayne, complete with gold teeth, long black braids, tattoos, and chocolate-brown makeup covering her body.
As with all blackface performers since the civil rights era, charges against the latest range from insensitivity to outright racism. But virtually all critics of blackface agree that, as the Northwestern University president put it, the practice "demeans a segment of our community."
Some recent instances of blackface were obviously and viciously hostile toward African Americans. A photo of a 2001 Halloween party at the University of Mississippi showed a white student dressed as a policeman holding a gun to the head of another, who was wearing blackface and a straw hat while kneeling and picking cotton. A year later, two fraternity brothers at Oklahoma State were photographed wearing Ku Klux Klan robes and holding a noose over the head of another sporting black face paint and a striped prisoner's uniform.
But while blackface is nearly always assumed to be anti-black, the most common charge against contemporary blackface performers is that they are ignorant of its meaning and history—that they don't "know" that it's necessarily bigoted—which suggests that their intentions were not in fact hostile.
In fact, blackface performances are not always unambiguously antagonistic toward African Americans. Several scholars of the phenomenon have argued that blackface has usually been, to some degree, an expression of envy and an unconscious rebellion against what it means to be "white." There is substantial evidence that this was especially true in the first half of the 19th century, when white men first painted their faces with burnt cork and imitated slaves on stage in what were called "minstrel" shows.
Some early blackface minstrel performance was clearly little more than anti-black parody, but many historians see the songs and dances of T.D. Rice, Dan Emmett, Dan Rice (Abraham Lincoln's favorite), and other originators of the genre as expressions of desire for the freedoms they saw in the culture of slaves. "Just as the minstrel stage held out the possibility that whites could be 'black' for awhile but nonetheless white," David Roediger, the leading historian of "whiteness," has written, "it offered the possibilities that, via blackface, preindustrial joys could survive amidst industrial discipline." Similarly, the Smith College scholar W.T. Lhamon argues that slave culture represented liberation to blackface performers and fans, who "unmistakably expressed fondness for black wit and gestures." In early blackface minstrel shows, whites identified with blacks as representations of all the freedoms and pleasures that employers, moral reformers, and churches "were working to suppress."
The latest addition to this revision of our understanding of blackface is Yuval Taylor and Jake Austen's book Darkest America: Black Minstrelsy From Slavery to Hip-Hop. The authors focus on the many, largely unknown, African Americans who performed in blackface from before the Civil War to the middle of the 20th century, but they also rescue white blackface performance from the simplistic moralizing that normally greets it. "If you dismiss [minstrelsy] as simply 'demeaning,'" they write, "you miss half the picture."
Taylor and Austen's book is an encyclopedic record of not only the black performers who coaled their faces but also of the minstrelsy's many contributions to what is now considered respectable popular culture: "If we were to throw out every song originally composed for the minstrel stage, every joke first uttered by painted minstrel lips, every performer who blackened up, every dance step developed for the olio (variety) portion of a minstrel show, our entertainment coffers might seem bare." They show that much of American music, dance, and comedy originated in an art form that was "wildly popular with black audiences" but is now reflexively dismissed as mere racism. For whites, they argue, minstrelsy offered the opportunity to indulge in a "carefree life liberated from oppression, responsibilities, and burdens"; and for blacks it represented freedom as well. "Despite the appearance of minstrelsy as a servile tradition, there were elements ofliberation in it from its very beginning, and these were instrumental to its popularity."
The enormous popularity of blackface in the 19th century cannot be explained without understanding that it coincided with a period in American culture in which Puritan values merged with Victorian ideas about work, leisure, sex, and emotional expression. Nineteenth-century children's books, school primers, newspaper editorials, poems, pamphlets, sermons, and political speeches told Americans that work in itself was a virtue, regardless of what one gained from it materially. European visitors frequently commented on what they called the American "disease of work." Typical was a popular textbook of the time, which instructed children that "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do."
There was no such idea of work as godly in Africa, nor among American slaves. According to the African-American social scientist W.E.B. DuBois, the slave "was not as easily reduced to be the mechanical draft-horse which the northern European laborer became. He was not easily brought to recognize any ethical sanctions in work as such but tended to work as the results pleased him and refused to work or sought to refuse when he did not find the spiritual returns adequate; thus he was easily accused of laziness and driven as a slave when in truth he brought to modern manual labor a renewed valuation of life."
​
​
Seriously, everyone in the /r/news thread didn't even read PCC's mission statement with this project, and instead only read the editorialized headline. This isn't about shaming white people, it's about deconstructing what the idea of "white" even means. People should read David Roediger's Wages of Whiteness. if they want an idea of what PCC is exploring here.
Edit: And for those that want to read PCC's mission statement, and not a biased article:
http://www.pcc.edu/about/diversity/cascade/whiteness-history-month/
Wow. Did you read what you posted?
"The only thing that ought to matter on a loan application is whether or not you can pay it back, not where you live."
Hard to disagree with that. This reg did not instruct anyone to give a lone to anyone who could not pay it back. I understand you would like to blame the government for all problems, but you really should read a bit more. Here is some suggestions:
https://www.amazon.com/Big-Short-Inside-Doomsday-Machine/dp/0393338827/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1521419400&sr=8-2&keywords=the+big+shorthttps://www.publicintegrity.org/2009/05/06/5449/roots-financial-crisis-who-blame
https://www.amazon.com/All-Devils-Are-Here-Financial-ebook/dp/B005DIAUN6/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521419495&sr=1-2&keywords=2008+financial+crisis
Really, lots of real info out there if you really want to know what happened and not just some political opinion.
Read the following books:
You'll find documented proof in those books (and in the other 15 titles I've read on this subject) that everything I wrote is factual.
I have in these books. Please excuse the fact that I wrote them under a few pseudonyms :
https://www.amazon.com/Free-Choose-Statement-Milton-Friedman/dp/0156334607
https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Freedom-Anniversary-Milton-Friedman/dp/0226264211
https://www.amazon.com/Road-Serfdom-Documents-Definitive-Collected/dp/0226320553
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730
https://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Democratic-Capitalism-Michael-Novak/dp/0819178233
https://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Nations-Annotated-Adam-Smith/dp/1611040485
I don't yet have a newsletter but as soon as I do I will let you subscribe to it.
Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality?
And
Basic Economics
Here you go.
http://www.aei.org/publication/stagnating-wages-dont-tell-the-whole-story/
As for the rest of your comments, you again show ignorance
> Sure, I’m just telling you that this is not nor has it ever been the current state of things.
... or faulty reasoning
> Of course there has. Redistribution. That’s what taxation is. We alleviate poverty (or at least the suffering related to poverty like starvation and homelessness) by shifting money from those who have it to those who need it.
and I have been in enough internet arguments to know there is no chance of this ending any time soon. So I leave you with books to read
Naked economics, very accessible
https://www.amazon.com/Naked-Economics-Undressing-Dismal-Science-ebook/dp/B07FB1NPNY/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1549832108&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=naked+economics
Basic Economics, well recommended
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1549832161&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=thomas+sowell+basic+economics
And something to get you to think about things objectively, when you're ready: Macroeconomics
https://www.amazon.com/Macroeconomics-6th-Olivier-Blanchard/dp/0133061639/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1549832256&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=olivier+blanchard%2C+macroeconomics+7th+edition&dpPl=1&dpID=41qnmgYJD5L&ref=plSrch
Here you go!
> they have to go on SNAP or receive other forms of welfare
Yeah
So
I don’t know if you know this or not, but that’s the point of welfare. I mean unless you’re saying you want to completely dismantle the welfare state, as long as firms payed a “living wage” whatever the hell that means.
>Maybe the EITC is the solution or maybe not, or maybe its only one step of many that includes raising the minimum wage.
Okay so the problem poor people have is they don’t have enough money from their jobs, when they work 40 hours a week.
An expanded monthly EITC completely (100%) solves that problem, and doesn’t reduce employment and doesn’t cause inflationary pressure. As a republican I’m handing a massive compromise here.
>at what point should my pay increase
Idk what’s your competition in your labor pool? What would you deny someone the right to work for whatever wage they wish?
“It’s not enough money,” okay so expand the EITC problem solved.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0465060730/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1517897542&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=basic+economics&dpPl=1&dpID=41MDRqLIVoL&ref=plSrch
You will not find a single nation that operates in the way you’re advocating, not one. Serious try to find a country in which working minimum wage means you don’t need welfare. I’ll give you gold if you find one.
As Hans-Hermann Hoppe hinted in his Democracy: The God That Failed, in monarchies the character of the leader can be good or bad, it is random and determined by sheer lucky; in dictatorships, the leader will come into scene because he is power hungry and generaly competent to conquer and maintain that power; but in democracies, on the other hand, the best liars and manipulators are the ones that tend to be consistenly elected, with no relation whatsoever to their competence and actual responsibility toward the country...
When I read that book perhaps a decade ago, Hoppe's ideas looked intelligent but mildly crazy. As the years passed, though, the book became ever more prophetic in retrospect...
There are more compelling arguments for why democracy is an unworkable paradigm.
That's a monster of a question. Hell, development economics is an entire academic field, you might as well ask 'ELI5: Physics'. Anyone who seriously thinks they can give you an answer here is lying to you, and probably to themselves as well.
That being said, for my money there are three books that are really required reading on the topic of how countries end up poor, plus two books that are required reading on why it's so hard to fix. I'd call them the bare minimum to call yourself literate on the subject.
Two that you should read on why it's so hard to fix global poverty (Poor Economics sits at the intersection).
Nothing on this earth will ever be perfect, but democracy is one of the worst forms of what we have had. Hans-Hermann Hoppe did whole book on the topic.
https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Perspectives-Democratic/dp/0765808684
This relates to The Shock Doctrine
Well it's not crazy at all of course...free market socialism worked very well in the U.S. before legal monopolies created profit incentives for insurance companies. Back then one day's wages could provide for an entire year of healthcare and it was entirely voluntary. Unlike state socialism which always presupposes all kinds of economic things, like that people are always working. More info in this book.
Some food for thought:
1)
https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/aw/d/4770018487/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?__mk_ja_JP=%E3%82%AB%E3%82%BF%E3%82%AB%E3%83%8A&qid=1497715637&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=Straitjacket+society&dpPl=1&dpID=51W2BFZZGEL&ref=plSrch
2)
https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/aw/d/0809039435/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?__mk_ja_JP=%E3%82%AB%E3%82%BF%E3%82%AB%E3%83%8A&qid=1497715742&sr=8-3&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=alex+kerr&dpPl=1&dpID=512x9dkcRcL&ref=plSrch
The Shock Doctrine goes into great lengths to describe how governments around the world used shock therapy on people in experiments to try and erase the mind, in order to start them over / reboot their personalities.
To great failure.
\>> every mainstream economists agrees its a horrible system
That's not true at all. Lots of economists are saying today's fiat system is inferior to a gold standard. And not just people trying to sell gold. A gold standard would force the government to balance their budget and bound interests rates by market forces instead of political.
I could bury you with names and links but have to go to work. Try James Rickards for one. He doesn't sell gold, he consults to the government. And read this book, for one.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591845564/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i2
There shouldn't be a minumum wage period.
Economists debunked that garbage back in the 70's.
Now instead we have a ton of TFW's , Slaves being brought up from Mexico, and huge unemployment among youth/low skilled workers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4SIEl1j8e4&t=3s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-BGi4NIFww
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730
This book is such a must read.
There has and never be monopolies without government intervention in the form of regulations or anything else. People cannot get bought up if they refuse to sell. Also they cannot collude between them to any avail because none of them have the right to use force like the government does, so groups of corporations will need to serve their shareholders by serving customers.
edit: https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730
A couple of things. It seems like income inequality is a huge problem because it has a deleterious effect on society. I thought The Spirit Level (http://www.amazon.com/The-Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies/dp/1608193411) presented good evidence for that because of the broad range of measures they showed inequality effects.
Also, I mean, Sanders might say socialist, but he's really talking about social democracy, so Kasparov's argument seems like a giant straw man of misunderstanding. And there are also lots of examples of functioning social democracies.
Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine looks at how Friedman's economic theories have actually played out when put to the test. What he says sounds plausible. But the real world doesn't conform to his plausible sounding theories.
Tu fuente es una zurda, maestro, menos objetivo no tenias?
Perdón, es una zurda anticapitalista que tiene sus libros en venta en Amazon, adquieralo a menos de 15 USD, o en sus versiones en kindle, audiolibro, CD, paperback o hardcover.
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism https://www.amazon.com/dp/0312427999/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_hybwDbYA8ZVWG
Neoliberalismo
Dictadura
Pick one again.
Currently making my way through Thomas Sowell's work. Brilliant man, highly recommended!
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730
So much for reasoned debate & facts & logic. Proving how ideology indoctrinated and compromised you are.
Here's just a FEW of my sources on agricultural policy. As you can see, none but 2 are from left wing sources.
https://www.heritage.org/agriculture/report/farms-and-free-enterprise-blueprint-agricultural-policy
https://www.heritage.org/agriculture/report/how-farm-subsidies-harm-taxpayers-consumers-and-farmers-too
https://www.cato.org/commentary/should-united-states-cut-its-farm-subsidies
https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/bringing-economic-sanity-agricultural-trade
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-8268.00020
https://www.amazon.com/White-Mans-Burden-Efforts-Little/dp/0143038826
https://www.cato-unbound.org/2006/04/02/william-easterly/why-doesnt-aid-work
https://www.rt.com/usa/414931-ron-paul-america-meltdown/
http://priceofoil.org/2017/10/03/report-trumps-energy-dominance-plans-rely-on-billions-in-fossil-fuel-subsidies/
https://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/food-agriculture/advance-sustainable-agriculture/subsidizing-waste#.WueNqtMbNfY
http://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries/planetary-boundaries/about-the-research/the-nine-planetary-boundaries.html
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/federal-dollars-are-financing-the-water-crisis-in-the-west/
https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2016/08/Subsidizing-Waste-full-report.pdf
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/01/farm-subsidies-trump-budget-cuts-has-agriculture-industry-worried.html
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/175292/2/11%20EP%202%202014-11.pdf
https://grist.org/food/our-crazy-farm-subsidies-explained/
http://www.nber.org/chapters/c8073.pdf
https://www.thenation.com/article/totalitarianism-famine-and-us/
https://isreview.org/issue/79/politics-famine
Edit:
Here's four more AnCap Sources
https://c4ss.org/content/25615
https://www.mutualist.org/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/MPE.pdf
https://www.mutualist.org/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/otkc11.pdf
https://c4ss.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/intellectual-property-a-libertarian-critique.pdf
A critique of IP Monopoly that's relevant:
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/imbookfinalall.pdf
Some Leftish work on how state sanctioned monopoly starves the world
http://resistir.info/livros/imperialism_john_smith.pdf
http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/4625512/917882442/name/michael_parenti_against_empire.pdf
https://books.google.com/books/about/Extracting_Profit.html?id=WYqZnQAACAAJ
https://vimeo.com/259759925
No, I think Germany was poor because it was poor. https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 That book very thoroughly explains it. Also, Hitler's whole reason for starting the war was because Germany was poor!!!
Yeah, government spending can make a temporary boom. Duh.
All else being equal, the obese contribute more to income inequality, which is the largest cause of hunger worldwide. Read this book, it cites sources: https://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies-Stronger/dp/1608193411
Europe is able to have such a massive welfare state because we pay for their defense budgets. And destructive "fuck you, I'll do what I want" individualism is a result of the state. [Society is emergent, people cooperate to reach common goals without government and through the market] (http://www.amazon.com/Quest-Community-Background-Essential-Conservative/dp/1935191500/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377371743&sr=1-1&keywords=the+quest+for+community). [After the welfare state was expanded in the 60's, people could engage in destructive behavior that most people disproved of (out of wedlock pregnancy, divorce, promiscousnous, addiction) because that behavior was subsidized by the government] (http://www.amazon.com/Losing-Ground-American-1950-1980-Anniversary/dp/0465042333/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377371787&sr=1-1&keywords=losing+ground). Libertarians are the greatest friends of poor minorities. Even after desegregation, [the war on drugs] (http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Crow-Incarceration-Colorblindness/dp/1595586431), [occupational licensing laws] (http://www.amazon.com/State-Against-Blacks-Walter-Williams/dp/0070703787/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377371682&sr=1-1&keywords=state+against+blacks), and the lack of school choice are institutional barriers that have kept minorities poor. [Public institutions have always been erected to take care of the poor, whether there is government involvement or not] (http://www.amazon.com/Mutual-Aid-Welfare-State-Fraternal/dp/0807848417/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377371988&sr=1-1&keywords=david+beito).
This
This
This
This
My god. That is the most delusional and disingenuous thought process I've heard in awhile. Do yourself a favor and read these fantastic books before you belief system destroys the United States of America: Capitalism and Freedom, Why Government Is the Problem and Basic Economics.
Bonus points I think you hit almost every liberal regurgitated talking points.
relevant link http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-The-God-That-Failed-Economics/dp/0765808684
An initiated "flash crash" is the most immediate way to cause long-term economic chaos in the West. In one afternoon, they could eliminate 10%+ of our major companies' market capitalizations while injecting a very real fear into all stockholders going forward. Trillions in accumulated wealth would disappear; there goes your father's retirement.
Disclosure: I'm an investment manager and oversee a Large Cap Growth stock portfolio.
Want to learn more, read Michael Lewis. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World, and Flash Boys, in that order.
Oh look a complete non sequitor. If you kids bothered to learn basic economics maybe you'd actually make arguments based on facts and not feelings of what people "deserve"
I see a lot of people asking about "living wages" in the comments
https://www.usnews.com/education/community-colleges
usnews has a list of community colleges by state, the vast majority offer introductory economics classes. Tuition for community colleges is usually under 1k for a semester, which is within everyones reach with careful saving and spending habits.
You can also learn basic economics by doing the research yourself:
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730
there are websites and a plethora of pdf documents that you can read online for info as well:
https://www.thoughtco.com/economics-for-beginners-4140372
Happy reading!
This might then however we both are aware you have no interest in challenging your point of view so why bother?
Heres an explanation why Trudeau’s economic policy is destroying the economy: https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730/ref=la_B000APQ7EI_1_2/141-0036348-7831353?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1526004973&sr=1-2