(Part 2) Best economic condition books according to redditors

According to world renounced economist Thomas Sowell:

In the 50s, she would have been 20% more likely to have known who her father was. In terms of the decline of African-American family, welfare did more damage in one decade than slavery or Jim Crow did over generations. At-least, that is what the data concerning single parent households show.

> "appeared to show"

Appeared? What a horrible nightmare we are living through. Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia.

Canadian YangGang here. Disregarding all his policies (because we don't want a debate here), I'll be going over a few characteristics and achievements about Andrew Yang that appeals to me, and the majority of his supporters:

• He's not a career politician, he's an entrepreneur, humanitarian and problem-solver. He knows how to speak on the ground level and relates to a lot of people. Doesn't use "political-speak".
  
• He's not stuck to any ideologies but instead is very malleable and follows the data, or the "MATH" so to speak. If data points one way, you'll be sure to find Andrew Yang there. (Therefore his policies are also fluid).
  
• He speaks in numbers, which speaks to a lot of students, engineers, programmers, etc. (who are the majority of his supporters, myself included).
  
• He's a futurist (although he jokes he's a "present-ist" cuz everyone else is behind). He is very knowledgeable in the technology of the future and he is very aware of current internet trends (unlike the majority of his competition).
  
• He's the guy the Republicans thought Trump would be, but isn't. And a lot of his supporters consider him as the new Bernie 2.0 of the 21st century. In fact, the majority of his supporters were once BernieBros. Essentially he has a lot of bi-partisan appeal. His slogan is "It's not left, it's not right, it's forward!".
  
• He's a literal genius. The smartest candidate on that debate stage and I'm not even exaggerating this. At the age of 12 he completed in the 0.5 percentile in SAT scores. He has also completed the LSAT with a score of 178/180 which is insane. But probably one of his best educational accomplishments was that he completed the GMAT with a score of 780. To put this into perspective, the average score of someone that gets accepted to Harvard is 730. Yang is 50 points ABOVE that, which is a near impossible feat.
  
• He founded Venture for America which is a non-profit organization that helps facilitate new entrepreneurs into the current job market and start new businesses. He created thousands of jobs throughout the country. He was honored by the Obama administration for this work, and received medals.
  
• Despite being 44 years old, he's a really laid back, funny and charismatic guy. If you watch any of his long-form interviews, whether Joe Rogan, H3H3, or Ben Shapiro, you'll catch him throwing jokes and laughing quite often. Try this 9 minute speech and look at the faces of the DNC board behind him (skip to the last minute if you like).
  
• He's the resident bad boy of the Democratic party. Just check out his childhood and school photos, complete with anti-establishment gusto 😂
  
• He can play basketball, piano, skateboard, he's into video games and memes. Not sure if you caught it in last night's debate or the debate prior, but he even uses memes as ammo for the debates. For example, last night was Chapelle's modern solutions meme which he used against Warren. The debate prior, he used the Joker meme to defend his $120,000 give away to 10 families in an interview. I think the Yang subreddit has a lot to do with this.
  
• Yang's campaign advisers are young, and most likely check out Yang's subreddit quite often. I get the sense that they're people just like you and me, not corporate cogs in some machine. This is Zach, his campaign manager. Their bromance is very real :')
  
• Anyone who's read his book, the War on Normal People, will know that Yang was bullied in school and was often ridiculed. These were transformative years for him, and helped developed his personality. In parties, he would often find the wallflower in the room and start a conversation with them to make them feel appreciated. He's extremely wholesome, sympathetic, caring and forgiving.
  
  Anyways, my 2 cents.
  
  Edit: Links
  
  Edit 2: Thanks for the silvers strangers!

Careful now I know chavs who are not idiots or racists, no matter how useful stereotyping is, it should be avoided.

I appreciated this post, and I'm enjoying reading the arguments from various viewpoints, but there's something I'd like to add that I think is maybe the most important point of them all:

Rejection of Results-based Policy Decisions

I've had many discussions with American Libertarians, and something I always see them do is frame their arguments like so:

Government Action X is bad because of Distasteful Side-Effect Y. Instead, things should be like Fantasy Scenario Z.

There are several problems with the way this argument is reasoned:

• When chastising the evils of X and Y, the alternative is not properly considered. Example: "taxation is theft- the government robs you at gunpoint". Ok, what does a society without taxation look like? No law is enforceable in such a system. Rules require resources in order for them to be enforced. Would this be better, or worse than what we've got now?
  
  
• Fantasy Scenario Z relies on the assumption that some essential piece of human nature magically changes. Example: "Social services are unnecessary because voluntary charity will be sufficient to meet the needs of the poor"- No, we aren't that generous, especially given the current economic circumstances.
  
  
• The entire argument seems to presume that we would be engaging in a bold new experiment that is destined to produce a more ideal society, when in reality, the world has already been a rich testing ground, and people have been keeping track of what happened. We already have mountains of data, and can actually know what sorts of policies produce what sorts of results. For example, it turns out that if you want a happier, healthier, less criminal, and more educated population, you need to actively install policies that steer the society towards greater equality of wealth. Here's a book about analyzing that data.
  
  I think it really boils down to the fact that we have empirical evidence of policy effects, but Libertarians tend to reject these conclusions for some reason that I don't fully understand. I do grasp that there's a streak of idealism involved there, but I think it's a big mistake to let such idealism cause advocacy for policy that is destined to produce bad results. Even worse, such belief that people will behave in a way that evidence shows they won't behave is bound to be exploited by unscrupulous entities every single time. The bad guys win. Fuck that.

Check out Timothy Noah's Slate series about the causes of wealth inequity.


Another awful aspect of wealth inequity is that for the past few decades, as business profits have increased greatly, average wages have stagnated. That is against the traditional American view of economic fairness, if that means anything to anyone. Workers' wages are supposed to reflect productivity gains, are they not?

That, and it decreases the entire society's quality of life: link

Also, here's another great source for wealth inequity, if this topic interests you. It gives a breakdown of US wealth distribution, net wealth distribution, wealth across racial lines, and more.

Reading Nothing is True and Everything is Possible Modern Russia is a hall of mirrors, seriously fucked up.

> But I want to leave you this afternoon as I wrap up with truly the most detrimental imbalance which many will argue is the root to all the others and that is, ladies and gentlemen

Gay marriage. Everything else is just a bad thing that happens because gay marriage.

So...

9/11, government is bad, 9/11...

Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed https://www.amazon.com/dp/1594038414/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_ogy-BbRERKY8Y

Most of his evidence is provided in the first 2/3 of his book, The War on Normal people. There is an audiobook available on YouTube if you have time in your commute to listen.

The problem of present-time thinking in that immigrants or globalization is causing the loss of jobs is that, while that may be a factor, the entire world is investing in automation in a scale that's difficult to comprehend. The moment when the tech hits a productivity and cost point that exceeds human capacity, it will overtake that employment sector FAST.

You can't have self-driving cars on the road with a 2% accident rate. But you can bet on 5G being implemented within 5 years so tel-operation of vehicles is a reality, at least until self-driving tech is perfected.

For automation, the enormous task that economists can't undertake is looking at the investments that big companies are making. Billions in research and development, and that is only glanced at by investors (not economists). All you really have to do to get a glimpse at the future is follow the money. Make no mistake: AI is already creating art, music, and diagnosing health issues. The question is when it will come, and what we will do about it.

Please also note that Universal Basic Income is not mutually exclusive with a Federal Jobs Guarantee. They can co-exist together, but there are reasons why UBI should come first.

Implementation-wise, a FJG is prone to problems because it is guaranteed income with a work-requirement. What about those who cannot work like caregivers, and stay-at-home parents? They are doing some of the most important work in our society, so what are they owed? What happens in a FJG when I am bad at the job, hate my boss, or in general working towards an unclear goal? What if those job positions are on the verge of automation and will not exist in the future? Do we continue doing work inefficiently just for the sake of having a body to fill it? What happens if I don't want to work for the government? And even more terrifying, what happens if the government shuts down?

These are only a few of the logistical issues with a FJG, and there are much more. Those difficult-to-answer questions themselves have immeasurable costs and bureaucracy.

Let's go to UBI. One of the core things about universal basic income that you're misunderstanding is that it isn't all about the money; first and foremost it decouples economic value and worth from individual self-worth. The Freedom Dividend is a return from the government recognizing that every American citizen innately has value and potential. The Freedom Dividend is pegged at $12,000 at year for a reason: that is the US poverty line. What the Freedom Dividend provides is the bare necessity to survive, put food on the table, clothes, and perhaps when combined with other individuals, a roof over your head. It is the ability to ensure better outcomes for yourself and those around you.

If you ever studied Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, you'll know what I am talking about.

Beyond the bare necessities, it also provides agency to better your own life and to fail gracefully. Knowing that you have basic income, would you continue doing a job that you don't like? UBI gives some economic leverage and negotiating power such that you can better argue for better work hours or salary. It is assurance that you can cut hours if necessary to go home and spend time with your children knowing that your income won't disappear the next month. UBI provides consent in employer-employee relationships, where there is an out to toxic/abusive/manipulative work environments.

Regarding financial "failure," check out this article on how the current US welfare system is built in a way that punishes the needy. However, poverty isn't the lack of character... It's just the lack of money.

Regarding

• reducing incentives to work: This is untrue; if I were paid more, am I inclined to work less? People have an innate need for work and meaning, and UBI will not change that. All you have to do to inflect is ask yourself, family, and friends: what would you do if you won one of those $1,000 lottery scratch cards? Work is rarely on top of mind: they're going to spend it on other things like bills, debt, goods. These factors means it is pro-work because, where there is money being spent, there are jobs to be filled. Human-Centered Capitalism is important in this, because it puts economic value on more of the work society values and just not things that are great for GDP.
  
• cutting other social services: Social welfare programs will still be funded and staffed, people just have the ability to opt-in for the Freedom Dividend if it serves them better, see the Medium article I posted
  
• subsidizing employers: as mentioned before, UBI creates a scenario where a paid job isn't the only thing that provides the bare necessities to survive. Instead, it creates mobility and leverage for the employee; the employee can negotiate for better pay or hours thanks to UBI. If not, the employee can seek work elsewhere since the current employer no longer satisfies their needs and they aren't dependent on that sole source of income.
  
  Going back to FJG and UBI, I'd argue that UBI should come first. As mentioned before, it provides negotiating leverage where there wasn't any before not only in this specific situation, but in EVERY employee-employer relationship. Please check out this panel of interviewers for a discussion between candidates -- there are many questions relating to UBI and FJG.
  
  I apologize for such a lengthy and scattered response. There were many interconnected concerns that you had that seemed to be founded on misinformed foundations. I am not trying to change your mind, but I hope I framed the discussion and provided some resources that allows you do continue your own research from here. Please check out the many YouTube interviews with Andrew Yang and Scott Santens, who is a UBI advocate and expert.
  
  Finally, regarding some of Andrew Yang's weaker policies. Proposals can and will change once in office. One strength of Yang is that he provides substance to his flagship policies, which allows substantial discussions on mechanics and feasibility. For weaker policies such as blockchain voting, you have to look at it like other candidates: is the spirit of the policy moving the needle in the right direction? Experts in the field are unsure about the feasibility of blockchain voting, but that does not mean that we should not approach it with a problem set in attempt to understand how it can help in future voting tech. Same with geo-engineering in his climate policy: there has been research done to suggest that geo-engineering cannot be done at a scale that substantially changes temperature with current funds and the timeframe, but that should not stop the government from looking into the techniques and possibilities, researching it themselves to see if there is a viable path forward. That is the spirit of the blockchain policy: there is a lot of talk about why there is promise and why there isn't, but no one has tried anything.

Let's let the market determine the correct amount of block space to produce, and the cost for using it. Segwit's 75% fee discount is economic central planing on full display and the price is guaranteed to be wrong. If you are interested in understanding why central planning isn't just a bad idea, but is actually impossible to work, read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Socialism-Sociological-Ludwig-von-Mises/dp/0913966630

By every measure social democracies, with a higher level of wealth redistribution and lower levels of inequality do better than the US. That is just one metric, you can find hundreds of others in this book. Societies which are more equal have better qualities of life for both the lowest and the highest.

I read some article, and of course I cannot find it now, that the rate of death during childbirth in the US is on par with some country like Belarus. Can you really call that a success?

Obviously (I hope at least) they use the Russian words for those terms [Blue is a Russian nickname that roughly translates as 'faggot']. It's easy to not notice these things because they try extremely hard to make it look normal. But if you've ever watched a Russian political debat you'll notice that all the people fit a stereotype. The communists are all puffy red faced and fat, spouting ideology of marx, the liberals are thin and effemenate, the far right are stupid and lack rhetoric. This is done so the Russian people watch it and go "Who else but Putin can controll this mess?". All of it gets orchestrated by Vladislav Yuryevich Surkov. If you're really interested in how the Russian mis-information machine behind the media works then this book I can highly recommend.

> Also actually Russia supports far-right parties and Russia is almost total opposite of what Syriza stands for so it would be rather bizarre for me if the support would be somehow ideological because Russia is far from left ideologically since fall of Soviet Union.

Russia is a place where ideology dies. It is a place of absolute, overarching, post-modern cynicism, of institutionalized sociopathy.

Anyone having problem with comprehending this should read Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible, it encapsulates the dystopia of present day Russia.

Russia supports extremist, anti-systemic parties in its ever-more-overt pursuit of subverting and ultimately destroying "the West", regardless of said parties particular political sensibilities. Cold War never ended for the siloviki.

There is an excellent book that goes into great detail about this Russian style disinformation that the Trump administration has adopted: Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia.

You completely ignored the link I posted, which refutes virtually everything in your tantrum. As it is your post does not give a genuine answer or perspective to help answer the question. Please educate yourself on sources other than Wikipedia, here are a few book recommendations.

I read this guys recent book. It displays the problem with the American economy well. His book has a lot of rhetoric you have to shift through, and is a little repetitive, but all in all it's a good read.

People may also find this interesting. The reason inequality is an issue isn't because of some arbitrary moral reason, but because reducing it increases the length of long-term economic growth moreso than trade liberty does (see p. 12).

http://www.amazon.com/The-Price-Inequality-Divided-Endangers-ebook/dp/B007MKCQ30
Its not a question of them making their own money, its how much they should earn for doing so and whether they should get so many favorable tax benefits for being wealthy

Peter Pomerantsev, makes the argument Russia is ruled through that style of authoritarianism in his book. The short version can be found in Adam Curtis' nonlinear warfare.. The book's great and I highly recommend it.

>In contemporary Russia, unlike the old USSR or present-day North Korea, the stage is constantly changing: the country is a dictatorship in the morning, a democracy at lunch, an oligarchy by suppertime, while, backstage, oil companies are expropriated, journalists killed, billions siphoned away. Surkov is at the centre of the show, sponsoring nationalist skinheads one moment, backing human rights groups the next. It's a strategy of power based on keeping any opposition there may be constantly confused, a ceaseless shape-shifting that is unstoppable because it's indefinable.

excerpt from this 2011 article by Peter Pomerantsev about Vladislav Surkov.

>Or the noise-to-signal ratio will be so high that people won't know what to believe anymore. If most people are overwhemled by the sheer amount of bullshit that they are subjected to, they might as well shut down and become totally passive to the system. That would be in the interest of powers-that-be.

What kind of hellworld do you want? A mutating kleptocracy? A totalitarian panopticon? Spin That Wheel!

What drives prices up in housing markets more than just "nice jobs" and "density" is price of land. If the value of land increases, the cost of development increases, and who pays for that increase? Residents, companies using that space, etc.

One of the primary factors that led to skyrocketing housing prices in 1970s California and New York were stricter zoning laws. Politicians spouting phrases like "preserving farmland," "saving the environment," or "preserving open spaces" led to policies that had a direct market impact on the price of land.

This is your "basic economics" at play: the demand increases (baby boomers wanting houses) while the supply is artificially limited. What's the result? Rapidly rising prices.

Think Boston is different than 1970s California? Nope. In some neighborhoods in Boston, buildings cannot be more than 45 feet tall. Buildings cannot produce too much shadow over Boston Common (yes, seriously).

Thomas Sowell wrote a fantastic book on this.

Economic Facts and Fallacies, The Vision of the Anointed and/or Black Rednecks and White Liberals. Depending on your interests.

If you're interested in reading more on the subject, I'd recommend reading "The Lights in the Tunnel" which explores this hypothetical outcome further. Given the current state of globalization and extreme wealth inequality, we are looking towards a very real possibility that AIs will eventually supersede a human work force resulting in massive unemployment and worldwide poverty - unless we (economists, politicians, etc.) start treating this a lot more seriously.

great idea.

I recommend any book by Thomas Sowell.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Housing-Boom-Bust-Revised/dp/0465019862

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Rednecks-Liberals-Thomas-Sowell/dp/1594031436/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

But we need time to order the books.

Only about 2% of the workforce earns minimum wage. Of those, something like 70%+ are under 18 and have no dependents. Minimum wage is a conflated problem that is used to rally up support from folks who don't look beyond the headlines. Read a book.
http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Common-Sense-Economy/dp/0465002609
http://www.amazon.com/Economic-Facts-Fallacies-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465022030

I recommend these. By a fantastic economist with a solid record and written so everyone can understand it.

>You may not see life as 'fair' but stealing from others is no solution.

Call the police, if people are stealing from you there are laws against it. Taxation (i.e. the cost of living in a modern society) is not theft.

>Without mandated government education and high-taxes for it, maybe people would have more of their money in the first place and figure out lower cost solutions (think internet).

No. Without public education you would have an uneducated population. People wouldn't have more money because theyd probably be payed shit and the little bit they did make would probably go to paying off their debts they incurred just trying to feel happy. Fuck your stupid ideology. edit to add Aslo, what the fuck is with you people in your constant attacks against the poor? Why can't it be:

"lets cut military funding so we can make our education system the envy of the world?"

"Why do we give all these subsidies and tax breaks to large corporations and the rich? Why can't we force them to pay more and use that money to help negate the damage they cause and to help create a better society"

You people are useful idiots for the corporate elite, who youd gladly let shit down your own families throat all well blaming the ensuing e.coli infection on a minimum wage law...

>Maybe without monopolies on certain careers (licenses), maybe money wouldn't be an issue like it is today. The problem is status quo policy.

Money is an issue today because of the faults of capitalism and the governments inability to check it properly... Here is a book Read it...

Stiglitz wrote a book about inequality with suggestions. The book itself He rank #4 on Repec's most influential economists of all time.

Kruger made a speech about inequality and touched somewhat on the end with suggestions. He is also responsible for studying the effects of minimum wage increases.

I know Krugman has touched on inequality several times on his NY Times column.

ETA:

>Otherwise yes, they are for inequality.

TIL Stiglitz, one of the leading economist who focuses on the problems of inequality is for it. lmao

> lmao are you telling me what I don't understand?

Yeah, basically, that's what I'm doing. :) As evidenced by your statements such as:

> incentive is needed to drive people to go to work

The incentive for people to work, across all modes of production, is to survive and make better lives for ourselves and our communities.

> If we lived in a socialist paradise where everyone will work for the same profits then there is no incentive to work.

Under socialism, everyone has direct control over all of the value that they create with their labour. Your scenario "where everybody will work for the same profits" isn't even coherent.

> If lazy bob over there earns as much money as I do then I would have no reason to work and the result is chaos.

Lazy Bob gets as much value as the labour he puts in. Of course, I advocate some baseline coverage of good and services for all people, but that doesn't mean people can't earn varying amounts of "money" (if you will) under socialism.

> The invisible hand of the market is also the defining basis of capitalism, markets determine everything and there is an equilibrium to everything. Sellers and buyers must agree to a price in order to allow the passage of the good.

Okay, sorry, but this is the point where I'm starting to think you're trolling.

> In socialism there is a state run apparatus for this

A state apparatus isn't a necessary part of socialism. Plenty of socialists think it is possible to abolish private property and the state in one swoop.

> However, this process is not efficient and often leads to shortages.

You didn't even provide a process to critique...

If you'd like a good overall (and sever) critique of orthodox economics, I'd recommend this book.

The Labor Theory of Value (LTV) precedes Karl Marx. It was the dominant theory of classical political economy. Both Adam Smith and David Ricardo adhered to it. Leftwing Ricardians built a defense of socialism out of it. Marxists debate the extent to which Marx was a critic of these leftwing Ricardians and the extent to which he was largely a leftwing Ricardian himself.

​

The fact that Smith and Ricardo were also associated with this theory should tip you off that it is not as dumb of a theory as you are making it out to be. Ricardo thought the prices of different commodities could be explained in terms of the amount of labor that went into making them. That's what the LTV meant; it did not mean that "labor [is] inherently valuable." The idea that prices are determined by the quantity of labor required to make them shouldn't strike one as dumb as labor is a big input in determining price. Marx modifies Ricardo's theory in the opening pages of Capital, Vol 1, but the role of the LTV in Marx's writings (whether anything important for Marx hinges on it) and whether Marx's version of the LTV holds up is debated among contemporary Marxists. One recent scholarly text defending Marx's LTV is Anwar Shaikh's Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises published by the University of Oxford Press. If this is just meaningless, it's rather odd that Oxford UP chose to publish 900+ pages of gibberish. Some other Marxists (Michael Heinrich) think Marx broke with the LTV . Others think that most of Marx's analysis is not wedded to the LTV and so could be re-phrased using the rhetoric of neoclassical economics.

​

Regardless, anyone who read even a page or two of Capital should notice that the basic idea that consumers value stuff is incorporated into Marx's version of the LTV. There Marx writes, "the commodity produced by its owner’s labour must above all be a use-value for the owner of the money [who buys the commodity]. The labour expended on it must therefore be of a socially useful kind.... Let us suppose, finally, that every piece of linen on the market contains nothing but socially necessary labour-time. In spite of this, all these pieces taken as a whole may contain superfluously expended labour-time. If the market cannot stomach the whole quantity at the normal price of 2 shillings a yard, this proves that too great a portion of the total social labour-time has been expended in the form of weaving. The effect is the same as if each individual weaver had expended more labour-time on his particular product than was socially necessary." Value is objective in the sense that there is a definite quantity of labor time that goes into making it; it is subjective in so far as it is "socially necessary" and is thus "useful" for others.

​

As I read him, Marx is not arguing that all labor is valuable, nor does he believe in "labor value" (whatever that is), nor does he say that capitalists "rob" workers. Rather, he argues that in order to make a profit, capitalists must discipline workers, and in order to be disciplined, workers must be vulnerable. Capitalism, therefore, requires a vulnerable labor force.

I'd recommend "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis. It will shine some additional light on the collapse. A friend in finance recommended it after I had just seen "Inside Job" and called him about it.

http://www.amazon.com/Big-Short-Inside-Doomsday-Machine/dp/0393072231

Google scholar has a lot of articles, particularly by media studies academics.
In the UK, Milly Dowler is a good example. During the period in which she was missing police found the body of another missing. The media were all hyped up, but once it was discovered the body was not Milly's, they just moved on. The girl they found was Hannah Williams - because she wasn't Milly, wasn't middle class, was from a single aren't household and had body piercings, her case wasn't really observed by the media.
I did my dissertation along the lines of MWWS. I did a short case comparison analysis of Madeleine McCann, and Shannon Matthews. Shannon's disappearance took three weeks to hit the national newspapers, and £50,000 was offered for her return or information (compared to £2.8 million for Madeleine). The media only really started getting interested once it turned out Shannon's mother and her boyfriend were the ones who orchestrated the whole thing.

There is a book called "Chavs: the demonization of the working class", and the first chapter talks about Madeleine and Shannon.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Chavs-Demonization-Working-Owen-Jones/dp/184467696X

I wish Tucker would have some black conservatives on. Jason Riley from the WSJ would be great. His book...

Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed

https://www.amazon.com/Please-Stop-Helping-Us-Liberals/dp/1594038414

I really hate these articles. The child does not make you less happy, our screwed up society makes you less happy.

Hundreds of years ago, before the industrial age, people worked less than we do now. They worked 'sun up to sun down' only during the harvest or planting times. A farmer also saw his kids for lunch in his own home, and as the kids got to be a bit older, he worked with them on that farm. The mother saw the kids during the day.

Now parents feel guilty that their kids are raised by others, then feel even more guilty when they are torn between wanting time to themselves at night, vs spending time with the kids, which they know is important. It''s also important to have time to yourself, but this is hard with a 1 hour commute to work every day.

Then of course the media has you scared shitless than someone will steal your kid, so taking your kid to a park is stressful (if you believe the media).

And the coup de grace? A kid is a financial burden, unlike they were hundreds of years ago when kids wore hand me down clothes (in today's rat race, this gets you a lot of derision.) and helped do chores on your farm. Today a child is very expensive, which pushes you, at least temporarily, down the financial status ladder. And that status apparently is pretty important, causing us lots of stress. (this book explains it in detail)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies/dp/1608190366

Kids are great. Society sucks.

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

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

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

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

>No - you cannot dismiss my opinion in a political discussion forum by equating it to someone you do not like.

I mean, I think I can dismiss trite talking points that offer no substance. You offer no study, no statistics. You seem to feel so confident dismissing "opinion pieces" that cite IMF studies, and yet seem to be so taken aback that I may dismiss a rebuttal to statistical analysis that offers no more substance than a Rush Limbaugh-esque talking point. Perhaps even funnier is the way you essentially did exactly what you're railing against here,

>The IMF are simply economists paid by politicians.

As if you can simply invalidate the work of Nobel laureates and statistical analysis through a pithy remark.

>These statistics are no more than saying, "He's rich and that is not fair."

You are clearly woefully unfamiliar with the papers you're casually dismissing if that is what you think the analysis is.

You're trying to get into some weird pissing match with, it seems to me, someone you presume to think believes "hurr durr inequality=bad". If you would actually read these studies/articles you feel comfortable casually dismissing without giving more than a passing glance, you would realize the argument is that vast inequality ends up hurting everyone, including those who benefit from it in the short term, because it hampers overall economic growth and strangles the wallets of consumers.

It's not about what's "fair", it's about what makes the most economic sense. Read the IMF papers or the works of Joseph Stiglitz, to better understand why you just made a strawman.

Second the recommendation, as well as Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev, which was written in 2014 and gives the most comprehensive and in-depth view that I've seen of what's happened with the Russian media environment since Putin came to power.

It's very obvious that they're now deploying the same tactics that have been so successful domestically on an international level.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Growth-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/193149858X

No growth means...no growth

e; I'm not saying don't save, just don't trust that money to continue to exist as life goes on. Convert to non-depreciating physical assets often.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surreal/dp/1610394550/ref=nodl_

> In the office of the Soldiers’ Mothers the walls are lined with photographs of dead soldiers. I’ve come to interview four eighteen-year-olds who have recently fled from a nearby base called Kamenka. I’m late, but they’re all waiting quietly and jump to attention when I walk in. They wear hoodies and the football scarves of Zenit, the St Petersburg football team, and are desperate to prove they didn’t just run away because of common initiation, that they’re loyal, tough. They seem embarrassed by having to take shelter with fifty-year-old women. They never call the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers by its name, just ‘the Organisation’.

> ‘You get beaten up, that’s fine. I pissed blood but that didn’t scare me,’ says one, the skinniest.

>‘Stools broken over your head. It’s good for you,’ echoes another. ‘They put a gasmask over your face, then force you to smoke cigarettes while you do press-ups. If you get through that you’re a real man.’

>‘I’m not red …’ they all repeat. ‘Red’ means ‘traitor’. It’s a prison word: in the 1940s Stalin started to fill up the ranks of the army with prisoners, infecting the system with prison code and hierarchies.

>‘You need discipline. But what happens at Kamenka has nothing to do with discipline.’ ‘The “grandfathers” beat you to extort money, not because they want to make a soldier out of you.’

>The conscripts spend most of their time repairing and repainting military vehicles, which are then sold on the sly by Kamenka’s command. The ‘spirits’ are essentially used as free labour.

>The boys had run away after a night of non-stop beatings. The ‘grandfathers’ had been drinking all day, and then at night they began to whack the boys with truncheons. The commanding officer came by but did nothing; commanding officers need the help of the ‘grandfathers’ in their larger corruption schemes and let them have their fun.
They go to great lengths to cover up for the ‘grandfathers’. In one week, the Soldiers’ Mothers told me, five ‘spirits’ at Kamenka had their spleens beaten to a pulp. The commanders couldn’t take the ‘spirits’ to a normal hospital; too many questions would be asked. So they had to take them privately, paying 40,000 roubles (over £ 650) for each operation.

>At 6 a.m. the ‘grandfathers’ told the ‘spirits’ they needed to each bring 2,000 roubles (£ 35) by lunchtime or they would kill them. One of the conscripts, Volodya, decided to make a run for it. He slipped through the fence and made it to the road. His father had picked him up and brought him to the Organisation.

>Volodya mutters as he tells his tale. I have to keep on asking him to speak up. ‘Of course it’s because the commanding officer in the army is a darkie from the Caucasus. The darkies control the camp, it’s all their fault,’ he tells me. The women from the Organisation tut-tut and shake their heads. They hear this every day, especially in St Petersburg, the skinhead capital, and especially among the supporters of Zenit, Volodya’s team.

Latewire's summary of what FNMA and FLMC are are beyond reproach. To add, however, they weren't the only brokerages who made really poor decisions as far as lending.

You're basically asking "what caused the housing bubble" and the simple answer is

1. banks^1 loaned money to people who shouldn't borrow money because they created ways^2 to securitize (create investable, bettable product) absolutely everything, including the likelihood of risky mortgages being paid back.
   
   
2. Banks create investment vehicles whose risk is not assessed on the basis of whether or not mortgages will get paid or housing prices will drop, but whether or not 30-year mortgages will continue to be paid off every 3 years or whether or not housing prices will continue to rise over 7% a year.
   
   
3. People who borrowed money who shouldn't have default on their mortgages (surprising damn near everyone)
   
   
4. Banks that backed these securities based on the risk that housing prices would never, ever, ever go down again end up utterly and completely screwed^3
   
   
5. Governments (not just the US) step in to provide solvency to the market to avert global Thunderdome
   
   Against that backdrop, FNMA and FLMC aren't exactly minor players, but they're mostly guilty of "me-tooism." The real problem is that while Bear Stearns and Deutsche Bank can fuck up, the government thrifts are, as Latewire mentioned, supposedly overseen (at a more and more and more diminishing level) by the government. In essence, DHL can fuck up and that's a bummer. When the USPS fucks up, there will be congressional inquiries. This does not make their crimes worse. It does not make their crimes better. It does, however, make their crimes more kabuki.
   
   

1. For "banks" see "any financial institution, be it a hedge fund, Savings & Loan, insurance firm, what-have-you whose money is made by calculating risk in financial transactions because
   
   
2. Any dividing line between a "bank" and an "insurance" firm was erased with the repeal of Glass-Steagall
   
   
3. This stuff is actually fascinating reading, particularly to anyone even vaguely interested in finance. My two favorites of the moment are IOU and The Big Short, both of which are written from a decidedly human perspective and with a great deal of insight. MY takeaway? There's a great line in The Big Short where Michael Lewis compares stock traders and bond traders, saying that stock traders are like exotic island creatures that grew up in an environment with no predators while bond traders tend to be the most ruthless sharks in an environment where "kill or be killed" has been more than an evolutionary pressure, it's been a passionate avocation since the dawn of time. The stock market is regulated due to millions of personal investors such as yourself, which means its behavior is politicized. The bond market, on the other hand, is ruled by large institutions with no oversight who write their own rules and make their money entirely by screwing others. And, frankly, as the stock market is a pimple on the ass of the bond market, and since the "stock price" of a "bond company" is about as meaningless as meaningless could be, investing in FNMA or FLMC without any insider information or a healthy and jaded comprehension of the bond market is pretty much the equivalent of pinning the tail on the donkey and hoping that, rather thank kicking you, it turns around and hands you money.

I stand corrected. I should have said someone doing a fantastic job of imitating a SJW. However, I don't think he is faking the "smug" part.

The book from that video Economic Facts and Fallacies is a pretty non-mainstream economic take on many social issues in the US. It is also a pretty easy read.

See the book Race Against the Machine, by two economists at MIT, who argue that technological unemployment really is a serious problem, and provide data that it's already happening. (There's also a sequel, which I haven't read yet.)

I suggest you take a couple days to read this book:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising/dp/1589795474

It's quite telling and it debunks the idea that the majority of the wealthy are what is depicted in those pictures.

Also a great book: Lights in the tunnel; : http://www.amazon.com/Lights-Tunnel-Automation-Accelerating-Technology/dp/1448659817

This one focuses specifically on how to approach post scarcity without collapsing the economy. I'm not sure that it's the approach I 100% agree with, but we have to start the conversation somewhere. I'm hoping someone picks this one up to make a documentary out of it.

Well, the Marxian/Keynesian economist Kalecki did predict the 1970s and neoliberalism with stunning accuracy in 1943, which is pretty good going.

Anwar Sheikh has recently formulated a new Marxian economics that he claims has better empirical support than orthodox economic theory.

So one can certainly make a case for this argument. Study of capitalism tends to be obfuscated by politics.

For a more detailed analysis of the "AIs stealing human jobs" situation, see Race Against the Machine.

AIs will continue to take jobs from less-educated workers and create a smaller number of jobs for highly educated people. So unless we plan to do a much better job of educating people, the net effect will be tons of jobs lost to AI.

I have a wide probability distribution over the year of the first creation of superhuman AI. The mode of that distribution is on 2060, conditioning in no global catastrophes (e.g. from superviruses) before that.

If I was going to provide someone with a list of books that best expressed my current thinking on the Political Economy these would be my top ones:

1. The Law - While over a century old this books stands as the perfect intro to the ideas of Classical Liberalism. When you understand the core message of this book you understand why people oppose so many aspects of government action.
   
2. Seeing Like A State - The idea that society can be rebuilt from the top down is well demolished in this dense but important read. The concept of Legibility was a game changer for my brain.
   
3. Stubborn Attachments - This books presents a compelling philosophical argument for the importance of economic growth. It's hard to overstate how important getting the balance of economic growth vs other considerations actually is.
   
4. The Breakdown of Nations - A classic text on why the trend toward "bigger" isn't a good thing. While various nits can be picked with this book I think its general thesis is holding up well in our increasingly bifurcated age.
   
5. The Joy of Freedom - Lots of books, many objectively better, could have gone here but this book was my personal pivot point which sent me away from Socialism and towards capitalism. This introduction to "Libertarian Capitalism" is a bit dated now but it was powerful.
   
   There are, of course many more books that could go on this list. But the above list is a good sampling of my personal philosophy of political economy. It is not meant as a list of books to change your mind but simply as a list of books that are descriptive of my current belief that we should be orientated towards high (sustainable) economic growth & more decentralization.
   
   Some honorable mentions:
   
   As a self proclaimed "Libertarian Crunchy Con" I have to add The Quest for Community & Crunchy Cons
   
   The book The Fourth Economy fundamentally changed my professional direction in life.
   
   Anti-Fragile was another book full of mind blowing ideas and shifted my approach to many things.
   
   The End of Jobs is a great combination of The Fourth Economy & Anti-Fragile (among other concepts) into a more real-world useful set of ideas.
   
   Markets Not Capitalism is a powerful reminder that it is not Capitalism per se that is important but the transformational power of markets that need be unleashed.
   
   You will note that I left out pure economic books, this was on purpose. There are tons of good intro to econ type books and any non-trained economist should read a bunch from a bunch of different perspectives. With that said I am currently working my way through the book Choice and if it stays as good as it has started that will probably get added to my core list.
   
   So many more I could I list like The Left, The Right, & The State or The Problem of Political Authority and on it goes...
   I am still looking for a "manifesto" of sorts for the broad movement towards decentralization (I have a few possibilities on my 'to read list') so if you know of any that might fit that description let me know.

Here's the author's book Nothing is True and Everything is Possible

Talk to any Nobel prize winning economist. Read a book instead of Breitbart and InfoWars.

https://www.amazon.com/Price-Inequality-Divided-Society-Endangers-ebook/dp/B007MKCQ30/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1526398644&sr=1-2&keywords=stiglitz

These are all must reads if you haven't already

>For a New Liberty by Murray Rothbard

>Economics In One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt (free online)

>Chaos Theory by Robert Murphy (free audio online too)

>Power and Market by Murray Rothbard (this book doesn't seem to get the attention it deserves around here)

>Markets Not Capitalism (free pdf and audio on line too)

>Lessons for the Young Economist by Robert Murphy (free online too)

>Defending the Undefendable by Walter Block (audio and pdf free online)

>The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State by Bruce Benson (needs more love!)

It is great that you are reading Human Action. That book is amazing. These articles compliment it very well. They really helped me understand praxeology better. They are also good for anyone who didn't get a clear idea of Robert Murphy's position during his debate with David Friedman.

>Praxeology as the Method of the Social Sciences by Murray Rothbard

>Praxeology: The Methodology of Austrian Economics by Murray Rothbard

The other articles in part one here are good too but the ones I linked helped me the most.

He might choose to see himself as an individual rather than as a member of a racial group, if the identity-politics crowd will stop beating it into him.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1594038414/

I am going to disagree that there is not "unbiased" info on the conflict. That line of thinking plays into Russian PR tactic exactly as they want. Russia's whole thing is that "there is no truth" so there is no way to judge a situation that Russia is involved with. This book and many other essays go into detail and examples.

I think the conflict is clear as day when future generations look back. Nobody can dispute:

1. Russia opposed Ukraine making an economic agreement with Europe (EU association).
   
2. Russia brought armed forces into Ukraine and occupied Crimea.
   
3. Russia sustained the war against Ukraine in Ukraine's East.
   
4. 9,000+ Ukrainians have been killed.
   
   The rest of the details about the conflict are insignificant in the grand scheme of things. There is lots of biased opinions on whether some individual shells were fired by the Russians or the Ukrainians, etc etc. Those events should be discussed with an understanding that we don't know exactly what transpired.
   
   But as for a basic overview for people who never heard of Ukraine there is plenty of unbiased info because the basics are not disputable.

Russia - Where everything is possible

Chav is an ugly term. It encourages people to judge others based on their social position rather than their actions. I don't think it is useful to genuine honest debate. For further interesting discussion see, for example this.

I don't mean to be overly critical, lots of very right-thinking, decent individuals use the word. I just think it supports the sort of lowest-common-denominator thinking that leads to class prejudice.

I'd recommend the 30 year update.

OP, if this article interests you, I might suggest Peter Pomerantsev's Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia

It discusses the marriage between authoritarianism and reality television. Peter Pomerantsev is a television producer who worked for a number of different Russian television stations.

This is a great book on the Russian media complex:

Nothing is True and Everything is Possible

Perhaps the title is a reference to The Origins of Totalitarianism

The Big Short. Very good, non-technical way of looking at the housing bubble, by telling the stories of those who had the guts to short the subprime market.

http://www.amazon.com/Big-Short-Inside-Doomsday-Machine/dp/0393072231

The point in the Vox article about employers (and people generally) substituting stereotypes for information they don't have or can't obtain was made over five years ago in Economic Facts and Fallacies, also in the context of race and crime.

As others mentioned the Barbary Slave Trade enslaved whites and which continued years after the Emancipation Proclamation occurred in the US. Another more recent example was the Japanese Slave camps in WWII. The majority of people enslaved in these camps were Asians from Korea, China, and other countries. However American POWs were present in these camps as well. The Japanese company Mitsubishi used over 900 American POWs as slave labor in their Copper mines. I want to stress that some of our greatest heroes in WWII were African American. So there is no way of getting an actual statistic here on the demographics of the POWs. But it is safe to assume that a large number of the POWs were white.


If you want a World History view on the history of slavery there is a great chapter on it in Thomas Sowell's book Economic Facts and Fallacies. He goes into detail about the evils of World History and how every ethnicity has been enslaved at one point in time.

Money has always been a system of control. Nixon didn't invent it in 1970.
Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years gives a good account of the history, and his development of the "military-coinage-slavery" concept shows that it goes back to the time of the Buddha, Confucious and Pythagoras.

Hitler's Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State also gives accounts of how the Nazis used finance as a system of control.

The last jobs to go will be some low pay jobs, like housekeepers and janitors.

This book gives a good example why. Imagine you've left your sunglasses on the couch. How easy would it be for a robot to see that? First, a robot must know how sunglasses look. It would need to identify sunglasses folded as well as sunglasses open or worn on your face. It would need to know that sunglasses on your couch should be picked up, folded, and stored in the proper place.

Add all the different situations that may happen in any house and you'll see why it's difficult to train a robot to do that job.

An investment trader has an easier job than a housekeeper, and gets paid a much bigger salary, which means it makes perfect sense to automate the trader's job first. The trader's job is two-dimensional, it's market prices versus time. There's a huge reward for doing it right, so there are many experts working hard at automating that task.

Love it!

Elementary:

Pepper Zhang - Artist Extraordinaire - https://www.amazon.com/Pepper-Zhang-Artist-Extraordinaire-Jerry/dp/0999087703

​

Elementary / Middle:

American Born Chinese: https://www.amazon.com/American-Born-Chinese-Gene-Luen/dp/0312384483

Boxers and Saints: https://www.amazon.com/Boxers-Saints-Boxed-Gene-Luen/dp/1596439246/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=BXV52AHCYEFMJJCD3800

​

High School:

Making of Asian America: History - https://www.amazon.com/Making-Asian-America-History/dp/1476739412

Unlikely liberators: - https://www.amazon.com/Unlikely-Liberators-100th-English-Japanese/dp/0824810813/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Thread of Silkworm - https://www.amazon.com/Thread-Silkworm-Iris-Chang/dp/0465006787/ref=pd_sim_14_2/144-0076638-4640964?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0465006787&pd_rd_r=ad8c5d33-7907-11e9-a48a-7140e5d87a3d&pd_rd_w=ktZAa&pd_rd_wg=RsV9k&pf_rd_p=90485860-83e9-4fd9-b838-b28a9b7fda30&pf_rd_r=TZ2GX9JPAXD830B3XHN9&psc=1&refRID=TZ2GX9JPAXD830B3XHN9

The Chinese American: Narrative History - https://www.amazon.com/Chinese-America-Narrative-History/dp/0142004170/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=S6BSS5PB3VBNZZ38R2YY

Yellow Peril!" An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear - https://www.amazon.com/Yellow-Peril-Archive-Anti-Asian-Fear/dp/1781681236

New York before Chinatown: Orientalism and the Shaping of American Culture, 1776-1882 - https://www.amazon.com/New-York-before-Chinatown-Orientalism/dp/0801867940/ref=pd_bxgy_14_3/144-0076638-4640964?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0801867940&pd_rd_r=ebece189-7908-11e9-9511-65a57d25cf2b&pd_rd_w=IAkAV&pd_rd_wg=A0Twr&pf_rd_p=a2006322-0bc0-4db9-a08e-d168c18ce6f0&pf_rd_r=GXCC4HV5GNP5A9XX9ZM4&psc=1&refRID=GXCC4HV5GNP5A9XX9ZM4

​

​

On the distorted view on American Perception of China:

The Chan's Great Continent: China in Western Minds - https://www.amazon.com/Chans-Great-Continent-China-Western/dp/039331989X

The China Mirage - https://www.amazon.com/China-Mirage-History-American-Disaster/dp/0316196681/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=China+mirage&qid=1558141355&s=books&sr=1-1

The Problem of China - https://www.amazon.com/Problem-China-Bertrand-Russell/dp/0851245536

​

​

Of course, Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang's Books:

Smart People Should Build Things: https://www.amazon.com/Smart-People-Should-Build-Things/dp/0062292048/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=andrew+yang&qid=1558141081&s=books&sr=1-2

War on Normal People: https://www.amazon.com/War-Normal-People-Disappearing-Universal/dp/0316414212/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=andrew+yang&qid=1558141121&s=books&sr=1-1

This book explains the degree to which we reconstructed Europe, the alternate plan, and some political reasons why we decided to save half your continent from totalitarianism.

This book, p 340-460, details how Christian realists and statesmen like Herbert Hoover turned away from the Morgenthau plan, for moral and spiritual reasons, and instead fed the world and made it fit for living in.

This book destroys your typical European conception of nazi occupation outside the typical France/Ukraine dichotomy and shows how Germans starved Greek families and created orphans so they could have Christmas feasts.

This book is a magisterial account of the European contribution to reconstruction and shows that I'm not some halfwit barbarian that thinks everything in the world comes from my country. It just wouldn't have been possible without the help of my country.

This book documents the degree to which the nazi war machine violated the Hague Conventions of the 1890s and looted all countries under their control. They imposed inflation on France (RKK certificate to civilian -> civilian to bank -> bank to central bank -> central bank to trash can ; print franc), used their soldiers as mules, how they 'purchased' goods in the East etc. Very useful for debunking the 1950s Soviet disinformation that was based on the idea that American administration was bumbling. Did you know we sent them ground corn instead of baguettes, sausage, and free shoes? How incompetent! And if a German lost their home we didn't give them a fully furnished one. How mean-spirited! lol

Read those books or at least four on the reconstruction of Europe and ask me that question again.

I assume you're asking how that would be handled without a state. Of course the system I described could be implemented under a state and without implementing the entire anarcho-capitalist system, and in that case liability would be enforced just like any other liability is today in our current legal system. As for how it would be done without a state, that's covered by many descriptions of legal systems and enforcement under anarcho-capitalism:

• The Machinery Of Freedom [Illustrated summary][1]; [Second edition pdf][4]
  
• [Anarchy and the Law][2]
  
• [Chaos Theory][3]
  
• [For a New Liberty][5] - The Public Sector, III: Police, Law, and the Courts
  
  It may also be useful to understand that our current civil legal system is relatively new and that many different kinds of legal systems have worked throughout history.
  
  
• Legal Systems Very Different From Our Own
  
  [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTYkdEU_B4o
  [2]: https://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-Law-Political-Economy-Independent/dp/1412805791
  [3]: https://mises.org/library/chaos-theory
  [4]: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf
  [5]: https://mises-media.s3.amazonaws.com/For%20a%20New%20Liberty%20The%20Libertarian%20Manifesto_3.pdf?file=1&type=document
  

You hit the proverbial nail on the head. Make-work bias has been around for centuries and there is usually only temporary unemployment for those whose jobs get replaced by capital. But like you said it's not really worth worrying about at this point.
If anyone has any interest in technological advancement or capital from an economic standpoint, these are some great books to check out:

[Capital in the Twenty-First Century] (http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/067443000X/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=0ETBP81SYG4890W6R34T)


[The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Second-Machine-Age-Technologies/dp/0393239357/ref=pd_sim_b_6?ie=UTF8&refRID=0N2W244G0SF4XT3Q5MDB)

[The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Lights-Tunnel-Automation-Accelerating/dp/1448659817/ref=pd_sim_b_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=0Q1BR5DDQRM29TZPTGBN)

Also for /u/goinupthegranby


Markets Not Capitalism is I feel like the most well known modern Market Anarchist (LibSoc) book. Also you can look into Mutualism and Proudhon's thoughts on how society should be set up.

For those really interested, get his book "The Spirit Level" on this topic.

Speaking of class, the usual framing of the riots in non-class terms is again in full swing. It is either "the poor" (if you listen to well-meaning progressives), "the immigrants" (if you listen to the right) or most interesting, "the chavs" (if you listen to the center).

For instance, this Reddit-topic is a nice illustration. It depicts the "average London rioter" as the Little Britain character Vicky Pollard, the quintessential "chav", that is an delinquent, overweight, low educated, white, sexually promiscuous teenage mom, immediately recognizable by her inarticulate dialect/ethnic slang and tracksuit.

In other words, it is the an over-the-top combination of every possible white working class stereotype, typecast for the enjoyment of the middle class BBC-watcher (the series is, honest to habitus, quite funny). For Dutch comparison, think all the drunk deathbeats in Verhulst's Helaasheid der Dingen, the "hangjongeren" id. New Kids or the social-security scamming Familie Flodder.

This stereotyping and ridiculing of the lower classes is quite pervasive and possibly a way of dealing with the middle class cognitive dissonance of believing in an classless society while being acutely aware that this is not the case (ideas stolen from "Cavs: the demonisation of the working class", recommended reading).

And as long as lower class discontent, eventually ending in riots, can be effectively articulated in non-class terms/linked to cultural minorities (whether '"ethnic culture" or "chav culture"), it will lose a lot of it's political punch...

Per capita income (list). The difference between Norway and the US is not nearly large enough to serve as an explanation. There is, of course, Nobel Prize winning economist Stiglitz (yeah, I hate that particular fake Nobel Price and quite a few of those who got it but pointing to someone more famous is a sure way to get a point across) who points to inequality as a better explanation than GDP. Not that he's the only one, but in an Internet forum one tends to want to point the most famous person in support and neglect the others.

And a great book.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L4FSVZ6/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

https://www.amazon.com/Das-Kapital-Critque-Political-Economy/dp/145388632X

Luck is automatically equalized. That's the whole point of randomness.

Also, education, in countries where they have functioning public education systems and free college for everyone who wants/qualifies for it, that sort of thing, is not simply acquired through wealth. Because that's the whole point of their entire welfare state, it's structured to increase equality, instead of reduce it.

Read up on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient , http://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies-Stronger/dp/1608190366 , etc.

I highly, highly recommend you read the book Limits to Growth.

Exponential growth in a finite world eventually hits hard limits. There's evidence to suggest we're reaching (or have already reached) those limits on this planet right about now.

Samoin Stiglitzin The Price of Inequality.

The Spirit Level was the big book on the effects of inequality, but now it's the economist Joseph Stiglitz's The Price of Inequality, a monster of a researched book, with the biggest portion of a book with endnotes I've ever seen.

There have been books written and documentaries made on Donnie's mob ties.

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/mar/02/ted-cruz/yes-donald-trump-has-been-linked-mob/

"The problem for the brash New Yorker was that part of the land he wanted for his casino was owned by Salvie Testa and Frank Nar­ducci Jr, mafia hitmen known as the Young Executioners.

They worked for Atlantic City mob boss Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo. Even so, Trump did the deal, eventually buying the land for $US1.1 million, about twice the market price for the 465sq m block that had sold five years earlier for $US195,000.

It is deals such as this that have long fuelled rumours of Trump’s associations and connections with the mafia.

As The Australian reveals today, the NSW Police Board was so concerned about Trump’s suspected mafia connections in ­Atlantic City that, in 1987, it recom­mended that Trump’s bid to build the Darling Harbour casino be rejected."

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/investigations/donald-trump-the-deals-and-the-mafia-dons/news-story/40c61d98c72c3ba10064357c047ee8ce?nk=b5cc34a9b0f804cf73cafad3696671a8-1541655652

Here's the WSJ, who tries very hard to paint it in the most innocuous light, but even they don't deny he was involved with the mob.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-dealt-with-a-series-of-people-who-had-mob-ties-1472736922

Here's another one:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ppx7b9/a-brief-history-of-donald-trump-and-the-mafia

This is an extremely cursory glance at a much more complex story, and there is extensive evidence that Trump has been involved with the Russian mob ever since American banks stopped lending him money.

You really think all that can get unraveled in a year and a half? All the money trails to follow, all the lower level goons to roll up, and the evidence to collect, all the threads to unravel.

No, it would take a team of top investigators and prosecutors years to unravel such a tangled web, and by all appearances that is exactly what they are doing.

The Russian government and the Russian mob are one and the same. The collusion investigation is inherently related to Trumps extensive ties to Russian and former Soviet bloc oligarchs who are all involved in organized crime in one way or another.

See "Nothing is True and Everything is Possible" for further reading about the state of modern Russia.

https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surreal-ebook/dp/B00L4FSVZ6

> executive director of the Adam Smith Institute

Übrigens hing Adam Smith der Arbeitswerttheorie an und war kein Verfechter eines absolut freien Marktes.

> neoliberal subculture growing all over the internet

Naja. Es gibt zwar r/neoliberal, aber reddit war immer schon eher zentristisch/neoliberal geprägt in den meisten Subs, ich würde aber nicht behaupten dass es da eine Kultur gibt. Es gibt zwar einige Kabale auf YouTube und Twitter (Nightmare Fuel, etc.) aber diese sind eigentlich nicht zu unterscheiden von den "radikalen Zentristen" wie Sargon außer, dass sie eigentlich noch schlimmer sind (zumindest befürwortet Sargon und Co. keine ständigen militärischen Interventionen).

> What fascinates me (and convinced me to write up this article) is a trend of (left)neoliberalism becoming eerily close to social democracy. Welfarism was always held in common, but with figures such as economist and Bloomberg contributor Noah Smith and Vox founder Matthew Yglesias being embraced as neoliberal darlings, one has to wonder if both sides have finally met in the middle.

Das liegt in erster Linie darin, dass die Sozialdemokratie als Begriff derart aufgeweicht ist, dass neoliberale Politik wie die von Clinton und Obama als "sozialdemokratisch" bezeichnet werden, werden Sozialdemokraten die Sanders und Corbyn als "Sozialisten" bezeichnet werden. Wir haben es hier mit einem ökonomischen Drift nach rechts zutun.

> Neoliberals are perfectly happy to support cash-based welfare such as tax credits, Negative Income Tax or Universal Basic Income whereas social democrats would value the psychological benefit and dignity of earning your own money

UBI wurde ja auch schon von libertären und anarcho-kapitalistischen Vordenkern wie Hayek und Rothbart in Betracht gezogen. Ich bin da sehr skeptisch, ob das überhaupt zu finanzieren ist. Hier eine Kritik dazu. Letztlich kann das zur Inflation führen, Niedriglöhnen und generell eine Art festgefahrene Herrscherklasse, die den erzeugten Wert gnädigerweise zu uns nach unten wirft. Ein bisschen dystopisch.

> Neoprogressives combine a strong advocacy for the free market with a scepticism of centralisation of power, both in terms of the state and market actors.

Jeder Markt führt immer zu Monopolen und Oligopolen. Ich frage mich außerdem, wie sich diese Positionen mit einem politischen Establishment vereinbaren lassen, welches den Monopolkapitalisten sehr freundlich gesinnt ist, siehe Silikon Valley Kapitalismus u.Ä.

> We support the neoliberal argument that markets are, frankly, amazing tools to organise society and communicate resources efficiently and to the preferences of individuals.

Uuund hier geht die Ideologie los. Was bedeutet "effizient"? Akzeptieren Liberale den zweischlächtigen Charakter der Ware oder hängen sie immer noch der Grenzwert-Magie an? Märkte versagen doch ganz klar in vielen Bereichen, z.B. im Immobilienbereich wo es dreimal so viele leerstehende Wohnungen gibt als Obdachlose. Wie stehen Liberale zum Imperialismus, Sweatshops, Freihandel mit der Dritten Welt?

> free of corruption

Die beste Möglichkeit, Organisationen frei von Korruption zu machen, besteht natürlich darin, noch mehr zu privatisieren und Leute abhängig von Profit zu machen. Weil es ist ja nur korrupt wenn es illegal ist, wenn man Korruption legal macht ist es keine Korruption mehr *schwarzer Mann tippt sich auch die Stirn*

> liberal, open attitude to immigration

Labour Drain/Brain Drain für Drittweltländer.

> Our ideas of a more participatory economy come from thinkers like David Ricardo and John Stewart Mill, not Proudhon nor Marx.

Ricardo hing ebenfalls der Arbeitswerttheorie an. Und ironischerweise vertrat Proudhon etwas, was im Artikel vorher befürwortet wurde, Shared Employee Ownership.

Am Ende muss man sagen, dass der Autor versucht, eine Ideologie als ideologiefrei und wissenschaftlich zu promoten, geht aber nicht genauer darauf ein, was denn die systemischen Probleme des Kapitalismus sind. Genau diese Ideologie führte doch zu dem Crash 2008 und anderen Problemen auf der Welt. Und wieder der Begriff des "freien Markts" - einen unfassbar ideologisch aufgeladenen Begriff der wie so viele andere in dem Artikel verwendete Begriffe verschleiert, was denn eigentlich gemeint ist, und auf welchen Grundlagen diese Ideologie beruht - und hier sind wir wieder bei von Mises, Hayek, etc., die den Grenznutzen vertreten und es quasi aufgeben, zu einer Wert- und Preistheorie zu kommen, und gar nicht erst versuchen, der Kapitalismus in seiner Gesamtheit zu analysieren. Das macht Anwar Shaik in dem volkswirtschafltichen Werk dieses Jahrzehnts.

Nein, das ist nicht die Zukunft. Die Zukunft ist eine kybernetisch computerisierte Planwirtschaft im Sozialismus. Oder halt Barbarei.

If you want an understanding of Marxian crisis theory, Wolff has a paper [here](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/048661347801000103), this is from Mandel's [book](https://www.ernestmandel.org/en/works/txt/1990/karlmarx/9.htm) & Shaikh writes about it quite a bit in his [book](https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Competition-Conflict-Anwar-Shaikh/dp/0199390630). There is a more ecologically focused book elsewhere (though the leftcoms despise it).

If you want some more material you have got this 1000 page book which I believe uses some sort of Marxian econophysics with influences from other heterodox approaches.

I'm 57 and posting about college/jobs, but not about me. Im 57, dropped out of the corporate world in 1993, broke, started my own business, and doing well - I pay all my bills and my checks never bounce.

But posting to all the posts about college/jobs, most likely from the under 40 crowd. The BIG question that must be answered by YOUR generation is "what if we simply don't need everyone to work to provide ALL the goods and services needed and wanted by our society?"

It's only a theory (thus the LIE) that a capitalistic economy forever expands to provide (good) jobs for everyone who wants one.

Computers are in the 2nd half of the exponential curve of chip power, doubling in capacity every 2 years (Moore's Law) since 1958. Computers/robots/machines are now on-net eliminating human jobs.

READ: "Race Against the Machine": http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-Machine-Accelerating-Productivity/dp/0984725113/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333472572&sr=8-1

AND: "Abundance" http://www.amazon.com/Abundance-Future-Better-Than-Think/dp/1451614217/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333472597&sr=1-1

and if you want to read an ancient novel, there's the 1952 book by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. "Player Piano" about a society where machines do ALL the work: http://www.amazon.com/Player-Piano-Novel-Kurt-Vonnegut/dp/0385333781/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333472653&sr=1-1

This "lie" you've been told is not ever again going to become a "truth"... spoiled milk put back in the refrigerator does not become good again. This "recession" and/or high-unemployment is not just a cycle. True, there have been many "crying wolf" since the early 1800's when British laborers violently protested the automation of sock making, but I for one just don't see how "creating jobs" can happen in a world were we can produce so much stuff and services so efficiently with the aid of a computer.

No problem. Well in the comments here I point someone else to a source and a few legal systems. So, I suggest looking for that. It should only take a second. You can also google/YouTube the topic at hand and you will be met with a lot of introductory material. Going these routes will be far more comprehensive and easier than getting that info here on a thread.

Anyhow, here
are a few places to
start

This is a good book.

>The very birth of the marginalist school was during a period of time when the workers movement adopted the classical labour theory of value as the substance to their claim of economic justice. To construct theory in a way as to present the economy as purely technical, striving to clear in general equilibrium under the neutral aucioneer that is the market, filled an ideological purpuse for capital as strong as Marxism did for their adversaries.

How is it related to the question?

​

Is the labor theory of value true? No, it's not. It's bad historicizing, no amount of history can override that the labor theory of value is wrong.

​

You present it the way that they did it to fight with workers. Is it right in any meaningful sense? Do you have any proof of this or is it about general thoughts about class interests?

​

>My objection to neoclassical theory is not mainly that I dislike its political implications however, but that if you believe the economy to be a social entity, and driven, evolved and reproduced by contemporary relations of power, you can not find any answers to your questions about its motion using the neoclassical toolbox, because the theories was created to answer different types of questions (that is, questions stripped of social content).

Please present the concrete questions and people who answer them well, for our discussion they should be using quantitative methods. It's almost always handwaving and politically motivated stuff with some abstract narratives about global forces of history.

​

For the note, economic historians generally work on political economies and quite a big part of economic history is about political structure of society.

​

We can look at a star of New Institutional Economics, Acemoglu (I don't think that his stuff is really good, but it's a relevant example):

​

Books:

​

1. Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy --- Political economy
   
2. Why Nation Fail --- Political economy
   
3. The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty --- Political economy
   
   You can look at his recent articles:
   
   ​
   
   https://scholar.google.hk/citations?hl=en&user=l9Or8EMAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate
   
   ​
   
   It's mostly about the economy being "social entity, and driven, evolved and reproduced by contemporary relations of power".
   
   ​
   
   Are his answers bad for you? Why? Can you show people who answer his question better than him? Why they do it?
   
   ​
   
   If you are not being fine with the notion of Acemoglu doing neoclassical economics, why do you think so?
   
   ​
   
   >It is a bit ironical btw, that the theoretical framework that removed time as an analytical variable from the study of economics became the dominant methodology in the study of its history.
   
   Is your remark relevant? Does it make it wrong? In which way?
   
   ​
   
   >Quantitatively, when suitable; qualitatively, when suitable, with a theoretical framework designed to answer the relevant social questions at hand, instead of a framework designed not to answer social questions at all.
   
   This is a non-answer. You don't answer about quantitative methods, you don't answer about theoretical frameworks. You are doing abstract handwaving on the topic.
   
   ​
   
   >Quantitatively, when suitable; qualitatively, when suitable, with a theoretical framework designed to answer the relevant social questions at hand, instead of a framework designed not to answer social questions at all.
   
   We talk about economic history. The framework is designed to answer a question about the economy and it answers them quite well.
   
   The economy is a social question and people who did economics always were social scientists, neoclassicals are too, you engage in a weird redefinition.
   
   Why do you think that the majority of things in economic history journals are not social questions and/or why do you think that they are failing in answering them? Please, present examples.
   
   ​
   
   >Anwar Shaikh, at The New School, is a good example of how you can write good, mathematically sophisticated, economic theory that is not neoclassical and therefor not ahistorical and asocial.
   
   Why do you think that he is good? What he has to do with economic history? What questions did he answer well?
   
   ​
   
   From my point of view, his entire career is about misreading results in production functions, doing theoretical and empirical stuff from IO tables to prove LTV. He mostly has nothing to do with economic history.
   
   ​
   
   I read Capitalism, Conflict, Crises. It's his magnum opus that compiles his results from his life and it's just a hodge-podge of badly fit together mostly theoretical stuff.
   
   ​
   
   In which sense his theory is social in comparison with usual economic history? In which sense his theory is historical? I didn't see him citing almost anything related to economic history, only some time-series for badly done macroeconomics and stuff about interest rates. Talking about capitalists and workers in this particular way makes things historical and social? If you don't constantly talk about them or talk about them in a different way like in a majority of economic history papers, it's not social and historical anymore?
   
   ​
   
   I don't understand why this is fine economic theory for you and why neoclassicals doing economic history is a garbage route that doesn't really tell you about how the economy was in general and why they should be replaced with a "proper historical method" there.
   
   ​
   
   https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Competition-Conflict-Anwar-Shaikh/dp/0199390630
   
   ​
   
   If you look at (post)-Marxist, for example, Sam Bowles did more with interesting things about societies and economies. But he is a usual neoclassical economist with a lot of work in game theory, microeconomics both in theory and in practice from labs to anthropological research.
   
   ​
   
   Can you present people who do real quantitative history who are not neoclassical economists or related to them?
   
   ​
   
   At this point, it looks that you are trying to disqualify economic historians from being real historians without a particularly good reason and calling the thing they do "a garbage route". There is no reason why qualitative people or anyone else are and would be better at answering questions about the economy than current economical historians. You don't present these reasons in a meaningful way outside very abstract construction not very connected to anything I can think about.

Theres a lot of modern marxist books.

https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Competition-Conflict-Anwar-Shaikh/dp/0199390630

If you want all of the facts and figures behind what he's saying, check out his book The War on Normal People. Or spend some time listening to his longform interviews to get more familiar with his goals and what he's trying to accomplish. Just search for Andrew Yang on YouTube, he's done a ton of really great interviews recently. I can link you some if you'd like.

I suppose you can just buy from Amazon and Andrew will get 10%-15% royalties. https://www.amazon.com/War-Normal-People-Disappearing-Universal/dp/0316414212/r

Start here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTsEzmFamZ8

Extra credit: https://www.amazon.com/War-Normal-People-Disappearing-Universal/dp/0316414212/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=war+normal+people&qid=1568177230&s=gateway&sr=8-2

>Pete, to me, seems to be more thought out.

Have you read Andrew's Book?

2/3

Yang is a kind of defector from the knowledge-worker class he once epitomized as an Ivy League-educated corporate lawyer and chief executive of a test-prep company. The seven years he spent building a nonprofit called Venture for America, matching graduates of top colleges with start-ups in Rust Belt cities, made him acutely conscious of both the injury that his cohort has done (and is working tirelessly to expand) in the service of corporate America, and the volatile reaction this injury has stirred up. His campaign is an attempt to fashion a technocratic response to populist demands — by simply giving people money. The overt emphasis on being an Asian American math nerd frames his signature policy, a universal basic income (UBI) of $1,000 per month for every American adult, as a responsible, sober-minded and data-driven measure to “rebalance the economy,” rather than the giveaway it looks like. The core mission of Yang’s campaign is to get people to see UBI, which he calls the “Freedom Dividend,” as the former rather than the latter, and he’s exploiting every angle he can — including stereotypes — toward that end.

Frustration with how little conventional politicians have done to address the onslaught from the next wave of technological disruption drove Yang into the presidential race. It’s a phenomenon he describes at length in his book, “The War on Normal People.” He says: “Donald Trump in 2016 said he was going to make America great again, and what was Hillary Clinton’s response? America’s already great,” adding, “That was not the right answer.” In Yang’s view, the right answer is a permanent stimulus routed through the pockets of every American to help them build a post-automation economy.

His belief is that, eventually, an American working class told to accept an ever-reduced standard of living — while the corporate beneficiaries of our system show indifference toward the despair, suicide, alcoholism and opiate abuse afflicting those left behind — could lash out with a fury that makes Trump look like a mild precursor. When Yang explains that “Trump got many of the problems right,” even if the president gets many solutions wrong, it is this dynamic he has in mind, and it is this economic wound that he proposes to heal with UBI and a raft of other policies focused on rescuing Americans from the zero-sum “mind-set of scarcity” currently deranging our politics.

Yang has somehow used the bleakest vision of any candidate to generate the most fun of all the campaigns: He has tweeted video of himself playing Rachmaninoff on the piano, skateboarded, crowd-surfed, done the Cupid Shuffle and challenged Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) to a game of one-on-one basketball. The #YangGang calls out instances when their candidate is left off mainstream media infographics — neglect that only feeds their ardor. They love it when he revels in his underdog status, as he did when he tweeted, “It’s all fun and games until Andrew Yang passes you in the polls.”

Yang has cracked the code on how to be something that doesn’t have much precedent in our political culture: an Asian American man able to summon and inspire large, enthusiastic crowds across the country in support of his bid for national leadership, charismatic enough to commandeer a spotlight that no one had wanted to train on him. After interviewing him, Politico senior politics editor Charlie Mahtesian tweeted: “Yang was much better than some of the veteran pols we’ve seen before in the office — easy to see why he’s got a following. Authentic, comfortable in his own skin, able to articulate a coherent reason for running, minimal amount of b.s. in answers to a wide range of questions.” (Two other Democratic contenders, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) and Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif.), have Asian roots but don’t conspicuously frame themselves as Asian American candidates.)

It turns out that being this figure doesn’t entail being a scold about race. As Yang brought his Asian jokes to the televised debates (there’s also the one about knowing a lot of doctors), some Asian American progressives took him to task for embracing a facially positive stereotype that, in their view, is “reaffirming toxic tropes” and traps Asian Americans within a “model minority” framing. These critics were voicing the general strictness on matters of identity to which we are all supposed to defer these days. This month, Yang met with some of them and explained that while he respected and understood their objections, he sees it differently. And he’s not an outlier: In one 2018 study, when asked if people nowadays “don’t take racism seriously enough” or if they’re “too sensitive about things to do with race,” 73 percent of Asian Americans said people are “too sensitive,” more than the 60 percent overall who said the same.

Part 2 of 3:

Yang is a kind of defector from the knowledge-worker class he once epitomized as an Ivy League-educated corporate lawyer and chief executive of a test-prep company. The seven years he spent building a nonprofit called Venture for America, matching graduates of top colleges with start-ups in Rust Belt cities, made him acutely conscious of both the injury that his cohort has done (and is working tirelessly to expand) in the service of corporate America, and the volatile reaction this injury has stirred up. His campaign is an attempt to fashion a technocratic response to populist demands — by simply giving people money. The overt emphasis on being an Asian American math nerd frames his signature policy, a universal basic income (UBI) of $1,000 per month for every American adult, as a responsible, sober-minded and data-driven measure to “rebalance the economy,” rather than the giveaway it looks like. The core mission of Yang’s campaign is to get people to see UBI, which he calls the “Freedom Dividend,” as the former rather than the latter, and he’s exploiting every angle he can — including stereotypes — toward that end.

Frustration with how little conventional politicians have done to address the onslaught from the next wave of technological disruption drove Yang into the presidential race. It’s a phenomenon he describes at length in his book, “The War on Normal People.” He says: “Donald Trump in 2016 said he was going to make America great again, and what was Hillary Clinton’s response? America’s already great,” adding, “That was not the right answer.” In Yang’s view, the right answer is a permanent stimulus routed through the pockets of every American to help them build a post-automation economy.

His belief is that, eventually, an American working class told to accept an ever-reduced standard of living — while the corporate beneficiaries of our system show indifference toward the despair, suicide, alcoholism and opiate abuse afflicting those left behind — could lash out with a fury that makes Trump look like a mild precursor. When Yang explains that “Trump got many of the problems right,” even if the president gets many solutions wrong, it is this dynamic he has in mind, and it is this economic wound that he proposes to heal with UBI and a raft of other policies focused on rescuing Americans from the zero-sum “mind-set of scarcity” currently deranging our politics.

Andrew Yang speaks to voters at the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 9 in Des Moines. His emphasis on being an Asian American math nerd helps him pitch one of his central policy ideas: a universal basic income. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

Yang has somehow used the bleakest vision of any candidate to generate the most fun of all the campaigns: He has tweeted video of himself playing Rachmaninoff on the piano, skateboarded, crowd-surfed, done the Cupid Shuffle and challenged Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) to a game of one-on-one basketball. The #YangGang calls out instances when their candidate is left off mainstream media infographics — neglect that only feeds their ardor. They love it when he revels in his underdog status, as he did when he tweeted, “It’s all fun and games until Andrew Yang passes you in the polls.”

Yang has cracked the code on how to be something that doesn’t have much precedent in our political culture: an Asian American man able to summon and inspire large, enthusiastic crowds across the country in support of his bid for national leadership, charismatic enough to commandeer a spotlight that no one had wanted to train on him. After interviewing him, Politico senior politics editor Charlie Mahtesian tweeted: “Yang was much better than some of the veteran pols we’ve seen before in the office — easy to see why he’s got a following. Authentic, comfortable in his own skin, able to articulate a coherent reason for running, minimal amount of b.s. in answers to a wide range of questions.” (Two other Democratic contenders, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) and Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif.), have Asian roots but don’t conspicuously frame themselves as Asian American candidates.)

It turns out that being this figure doesn’t entail being a scold about race. As Yang brought his Asian jokes to the televised debates (there’s also the one about knowing a lot of doctors), some Asian American progressives took him to task for embracing a facially positive stereotype that, in their view, is “reaffirming toxic tropes” and traps Asian Americans within a “model minority” framing. These critics were voicing the general strictness on matters of identity to which we are all supposed to defer these days. This month, Yang met with some of them and explained that while he respected and understood their objections, he sees it differently. And he’s not an outlier: In one 2018 study, when asked if people nowadays “don’t take racism seriously enough” or if they’re “too sensitive about things to do with race,” 73 percent of Asian Americans said people are “too sensitive,” more than the 60 percent overall who said the same.

Dodd Frank is a net loss attempt to address symptoms. Greedy businesses and market failures didn't create 31 million subprime mortgages, government programs to increase home ownership did. Which businesses are hurt by Dodd Frank? Just take a look at the numbers. Billions are spent on compliance and lending has been cut down. The cost is passed onto everyone. Productivity and profitability are traded for unproven claims of protection. This has been the slowest economic recovery since The Great Depression. Average Americans are being hurt by a meddling government. It's terribly ironic that the federal government causes a crisis with bad policy and then uses it to justify more bad policy.


Here is some reading material:

https://www.amazon.com/Housing-Boom-Bust-Revised/dp/0465019862

http://financialservices.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hhrg-114-ba00-wstate-pwallison-20150728.pdf


https://www.hillsdale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/FMF-2015-Dodd-Frank.pdf

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.

Tomas Sowell is in my opinion the most eloquent conservative writer. I read a lot of his work that's published on the internet. The only book of his I've read personally is ["Economic Facts and Fallacies"] (http://www.amazon.com/Economic-Facts-Fallacies-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465022030). It puts together some good arguments on controversial economic issues.

Not really, I cited a book to them and they just said Thomas Sowell wasn't a reliable economist, so that tells me they aren't very familiar with economics.

It's quoted in this book but I can't find the source that he actually quoted from (google books doesn't show the bibliography, but does show the quote).

Yep, prime example for pop cultural revisionism.

If you want to "feel" the "German side of" WWII, read a book (1, 2), or at least Wikipedia, but stay away from bullshit like this.

The stated GDP of Germany is bullshit. They were up to their ears in debt in 1938. Yes, they were manufacturing lots of weapons and buidling autobahns but that was mostly borrowed money. On paper they looked good. Reaility was different.

Details here:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805087265/?tag=stackoverfl08-20

Even after WW2 Germany would have failed to its knees it it werent't for the US taxpayer. Some more here:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/economic-historian-germany-was-biggest-debt-transgressor-of-20th-century-a-769703.html

Well according to you the IDF should probably disband and/or lose their next conflicts/wars to Palestinians and Arab armies. I don't think your origins sway the people of Israel. Similarly it wouldn't have swayed the Eastern European nations victimized by Germanic imperialism for centuries, two world wars and who suffered far more civilian casualties and bodycounts. Holier than though people like you want to feel good by pretending to be above conflicts as if say you were vacationing in Israel and Arab armies did ever win -- they would give you any differential treatment for being an anti-Zionist traitor, or if the Nazis if they won would have dolt out treatment Jews based on their behavior instead based on their imposed racialized identity according to Aryanism. Even Jews that wanted nothing to do with Judaism and who wanted assimilation were sent to death.

The Germans much the like the Pallies you love are chauvinist enough and don't need your help. Germany/Germans/the Axis alone killed 20 million civilians in Russia, I am not gonna cry for perpetrators because in turn they were mostly expelled with their lives intact. Indeed the newest German national tactic is reframing history to see themselves as "victims of Nazism" who didn't either support or materially benefit from Aryanism -- a funny idea you apparently share:
http://www.timesofisrael.com/german-poll-indicates-dramatic-change-in-perception-of-wwii/

Instead of beneficiaries of conquest, booty, genocide:
https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Beneficiaries-Plunder-Racial-Welfare/dp/0805087265

>Not a single German who refused to kill a Jew was demoted, sent to concentration camp, assigned to a suicide mission or sentenced to death.

>On the contrary: such orders commonly included an offer that "anyone who did not feel up to the upcoming task could come forward." Nevertheless, this occurred only in exceptional cases. Those who did opt out were neither taunted nor pressured, but treated with consideration. They were given different duties, often back home. There were always others willing to take over the murders--the "proven pragmatist" Himmler could be sure of that. Men were generally eager for the job ,as, for example, on a November evening in 1942 in Lukow, Poland, when musicians and performers from the Berlin police department came to entertain Police Battalion 101: "They also learned of the forthcoming shooting," according to witnesses, "and offered, even pleaded emphatically for permission to participate in the execution of these Jews. This strange request was granted by the battalion."(page 395). This means that voluntary mass murder was seen as a social pastime and a thrill - without the necessity of orders.

>The book shows concretely how good the perpetrators felt before, during and after their "operations"; how they humiliated, beat, and tortured defenseless people and then shot them in the back of the neck without the slightest hesitation; how the men posed before their living or dead victims, laughing into the camera - bloodthirsty, sadistic, lascivious. After they had done their day's work, they celebrated with a "death banquet" for the Jews, went to bed with their lovers, or wrote home faithfully that these snapshots and extermination anecdotes would someday be "extremely interesting to our children."

--götz aly, the famous german historian
http://www.yadvashem.org/download/about_holocaust/studies/aly_full.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6tz_Aly


Some reccomeneded reading:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Good-Old-Days-Perpetrators/dp/1568521332

http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Beneficiaries-Plunder-Racial-Welfare/dp/0805087265/ref=pd_sim_14_7?ie=UTF8&dpID=514AHPryUJL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR105%2C160_&refRID=05Y7VNBGT0ENBSGJ0Y3B

http://www.amazon.com/World-Without-Jews-Imagination-Persecution/dp/0300212518/ref=pd_sim_14_8?ie=UTF8&dpID=51Ecr%2BivaDL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR107%2C160_&refRID=08WPD7EPW7WHM64VTB04

You seem enamored of a great myth, that germans were ignorant victims, forced into murdering millions of women and children by a small cabal of evil nazis. All the evidence suggests that's a lie, they gladly supported hitler and wanted "the germ of humanity" (jews in hitler's words) dead.

Economics:

Human Action

https://www.amazon.com/Human-Action-Ludwig-Von-Mises/dp/1614273545/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1543352715&sr=8-2&keywords=human+action

Socialism

https://www.amazon.com/Socialism-Sociological-Ludwig-von-Mises/dp/0913966630/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543352737&sr=8-1&keywords=Mises+Socialism

The Theory of Money and Credit

https://www.amazon.com/Theory-Money-Credit-Ludwig-Mises/dp/1620871610/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543352752&sr=8-1&keywords=the+theory+of+money+and+credit+ludwig+von+mises

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method

https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Foundation-Economic-Science-Liberty-ebook/dp/B008FXCZGQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543352794&sr=8-1&keywords=ludwig+von+mises+foundations+of+economic+science

And, for even more,

Man, Economy, and State by Murray Rothbard.

https://www.amazon.com/Economy-State-Power-Market-Scholars/dp/1933550996/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543352842&sr=8-1&keywords=Rothbard

https://www.amazon.com/Socialism-Sociological-Ludwig-von-Mises/dp/0913966630

If you want it for free: https://mises.org/library/socialism-economic-and-sociological-analysis

I'm just interested in economics for fun but I'm not an economist. However what you asked about is my particular area of interest. So I suppose take what I write with a grain of salt.

Yeah, I agree UBI is inevitable unless civilization collapses first. If you extrapolate increases in productivity indefinitely (reasonably or unreasonably) eventually very few people would actually be working. I suppose the traditional economic theory is that people would then develop other types of work to do instead. So for example in 1800 something on the order of 95% of the population was involved in agriculture. Now it's like 3%. Or in the early 1900s the US Gov tracked the use of time of the average housewife and something like 80% of their time was spent doing laundry.

According to the conventional theory, the increased productivity of those core things to survived enabled society to expand into other things like accounting, HR, law, scientific study, and more recently IT type jobs. But around 2000 productivity and automation increased even more. I haven't really read about it but there must be a sort of 'compound interest' with that productivity and automation too. Every year the effect will expand and increase, in my opinion. But aside from data scientists and cloud IT jobs, or biotech, what are other new jobs? Being a social media expert or youtuber, etc. I'm probably missing something but a lot of new jobs are like many of the old 'new' jobs. Different ways that subdivide or reprocess 'real' work that has already been done. By 'real' I don't mean that those jobs are pointless and don't exist for a reason. But an HR guy doesn't go home for the day having grown food for X number of people or having mined Y tons of copper ore.

But even the 'safe' intellectual and well educated jobs are not safe. IBM's Watson currently gives 'advice' to oncologists and surgeons. It processes thousands or millions of medical journal documents and papers, records, etc to synthesize the knowledge into a recommendation. Supposedly it's recommendations are very good. (The main backlash initially was it told the doctors what to do instead of suggesting, iirc.) So the version 1.0 of an 'helping' AI potentially makes an average doctor a great doctor. It's not hard to imagine that at some point the primary role of the doctor would be to be the human face of an interaction that simply gathers a massive amount of data and then figures out the likely best response.

I've also read about robolawyers who currently are focused on the discovery process. Which work 24/7 without getting sick, burned out, etc.

So I would say that you don't need to have an AI replacing civil engineers to affect civil engineer (overall) employment. I work in IT and there have been big increases in automation and standardization. This means that fewer and fewer people can do more and more work. (Increased productivity.) Obviously I'm not a civil engineer but if there were advances in software that allowed people to swap in standardized structural elements, or modular rooms, etc then productivity increases. Also, just in general with IT unless there is a monopoly the price of current features in software usually trends down and often quite quickly. The solutions get commoditized and it's a race to the bottom, which is why a lot of software firms are moving to a 'software as a service' model. But I digress.

(As a further aside, a lot of companies will offshore whenever possible, creating another race to the bottom there. However the cost/benefit appears to be unclear when higher skills are required. Anecdotally many IT shops that I work with offshored to India but the quality tanked so hard that it ended up actually being more expensive. Several are now onshoring that work again so they can keep a closer eye on the quality of work.)

So again, reasonably or not, if one extrapolates the current trends in automation almost everyone is unemployed, or has become a social media expert trying to sell each other shit. Or... something. Eventually if a large enough segment of the population is unemployed and threatened with starvation you would have social instability. Right now that percentage (apparently, since it's not a revolution) is not high enough. I have no idea when or where it would be. There definitely appears to be increasing tensions.

It would be logical to assume that eventually the elites get their heads out of their asses before it turns into a redux of the French Revolution. It would be logical that they would prefer some form of UBI as opposed to the world burning down around them. Then again with global warming it appears to be a similar situation and basically nothing is happening.

Anyways, sorry for the giant response but there's a lot of different things going on, I think. I think that one could argue about timelines but a lot of this stuff is inevitable unless we manage to kill ourselves off first.

*Edit some links:

In 1800 America had ~75% of workers involved in 'agriculture'
http://www.nber.org/chapters/c1567.pdf (page 3)

In 2014 it's ~1.5%
http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm

Article on Watson Oncology being trained by some of the world's best cancer docs:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/06/27/watsons-next-feat-taking-on-cancer/

Robolawyers:
http://www.techinsider.io/the-worlds-first-artificially-intelligent-lawyer-gets-hired-2016-5

Study stating that 47% of US employment is 'susceptible to computerization'
http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf

Book about the topic:
http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-Machine-Accelerating-Productivity/dp/0984725113/

Race Against the Machine by Andrew McAfee

http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-Machine-Accelerating-Productivity/dp/0984725113/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397898359&sr=8-1&keywords=race+against+the+machine

I recc. his book. Pretty quick and concise read on what is happening and might happen in the near future. I don't believe it was strong, at all, in describing steps to avoid catastrophe.

http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-Machine-Accelerating-Productivity/dp/0984725113/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373994025&sr=1-1

Your "wild goose chase" entails 3 seconds of Googling, but I would recommend Hedrick Smith's Who Stole the American Dream. There's a helpful timeline associated with the book here. Here's part of it:

>August 1971—Corporate attorney Lewis Powell sparks a political rebellion with his call to arms for Corporate America. Circulated by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Powell’s memo warns that anti-business attitudes and government regulation are threatening to “fatally weaken or destroy” the American free enterprise system. Powell declares that business must arm itself politically, battle organized labor and consumer activists, and mount a long-term campaign to change the balance of power and policy trends in Washington.

>1971–1972—The CEOs of America’s biggest corporations, responding to Powell’s memo, organize the Business Roundtable, which becomes the most potent political lobbying arm of Corporate America. The National Association of Manufacturers moves its headquarters to Washington. In one decade the U.S. Chamber of Commerce doubles its membership and the National Federation of Independent Businesses (small business) grows from 300 to 600,000 members.

There's also some great stuff about it in Hacker and Pierson's book Winner Take-All Politics. Here's an excerpt. Also, their most recent book, American Amnesia, details the rise of the anti-government movement in the U.S.

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

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

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

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

You might want to read this book.. It's not as long as it looks because a lot of it is footnotes at the end. They go pretty easy on Obama, easier than me anyway, and blame the Party of "No" and corporate money for the blocking of Obama's agenda. After reading that book, I still see in Obama a failure of leadership and resolve, but, yes, the Republicans and especially corporate money in the political process are also to blame. I think you blame the electorate too much--Obama and party leadership should have kept those fires stoked and given folks more of a reason to vote Democratic. But I think Bernie is right, real change will come from the bottom, not the "leaders".

Hacker and Pierson are even better at showing conservative explanations for growing inequality are hogwash. It is nothing but politics, somewhat under Democrats and greatly under Republicans policies are enacted that favor the super-rich. http://www.amazon.com/dp/1416588701/ref=tsm_1_fb_lk

In fact, judging by the summaries of those two books I would recommend to you, Winner Take All Politics and Oligarchy

The question is wether the slowing of economic development is greater than the economic and social costs of inaction.

For instance, access to preschool has been shown to dramatically lower the likelihood of adult criminal activity and incarceration, and greatly increase an individual's long-term earning potential. In general, it makes for more productive adults. If that productivity offsets the cost of daycare (incarceration is EXPENSIVE), then it makes sense for the state to invest in daycare.

France, Germany, Belgium, the Scandinavian countries, The Netherlands, etc. all have more generous social programs then we do here in the States. With the exception of Germany, those countries all have slightly to moderately less-dynnamic economies than do we. And yet the quality of life for the poorest in all those countries is much higher than it is for the poorest in the US. Hell, even the middle class have a generally-improved quality of life. If the relationship was merely between economic development and the quality of life of the poor, then the American poor would be much better off.

If I may be so bold to recommend:
http://www.amazon.com/Lights-Tunnel-Automation-Accelerating-Technology/dp/1448659817/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309792255&sr=1-1

That's just my interpretation.

I'd recommend reading Das Kapital by Marx and Engels. It's not too heavy going and gives an insight into how they envisaged communism turning out, rather than how it did.

It's been a long time since I read it and I'm sure my interpretation would change if I read it again.

Of course they're not capitalist. You know that markets can and do exist without a state-reinforced capitalist system right? The difference between those markets and capitalist markets is not vast, and I can tell you don't know what you're talking about because capitalism is merely an economic system, not some sort of replacement for the marketplace.

> So in a socialist system (public ownership of the means of production), prices and property are managed by the state

No. If no one owns the means of production in socialism(which is its definition), then there is no exchange in capital goods, labor, and factors of production. If theres no exchange, then theres no prices. Therefore there are no prices whatsoever to be "managed".

>state action is intrinsically socialist

Yes but to what degree matters. A government organization in a fairly capitalist system can acquire capital from private markets based on their market prices and has some idea about the costs involved in providing public goods and services(although not as efficient as markets).

A socialist system has no frame of reference of market prices, and thus cannot rationally allocate resources, This is the framework of Mises' calculation problem.

>but you offer compelling arguments against Keynesianism being socialist. However, clearly, Keynesianism is not a free market ideology, but also not a #realsocialism ideology either, so I suppose it deserves its' own ideological catalog?

>Would you consider Keynesianism capitalist?

Keynesianism, at least as an economic theory(and not as a policy framework) can exist in a perfectly free market. The free banking school has similarities in both Keynesianism and Austrianism.

> the feeling I've been having lately of distinguishing free markets from capitalism.

This book can further show how capitalism can be distinguished from the free market:

https://www.amazon.com/Markets-Not-Capitalism-Individualist-Inequality/dp/1570272425/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1506656351&sr=8-1&keywords=markets+not+capitalism

I remember my UberPool ride last year to my psych MRI research scan at Harvard. The co-rider Nigerian chick who was getting her hair did in the hood said there’s a lot of Nigerians at Harvard.

It’s nothing new here that the immigrant Afro-Caribbean blacks and African-Americans win the diversity/merit-based scholarships and benefit from Affirmative Action the most than the more impoverished/marginalized Southern Migration Blacks.

Black Republicans exsists BTW. It’s just that the Black Panthers and Republicans as a party itself have lost their way nowadays.

Coincidentially I was telling folks yesterday about these books by two prominent Black authors who are anti-leftist-liberal.

https://www.amazon.com/Please-Stop-Helping-Us-Liberals/dp/1594038414

https://www.amazon.com/Liberalism-Turn-Whiners-Weenies-Wimps/dp/1682612058

Man I really want to upvote you because I think you’re not entirely wrong but this study is not about the crimes it’s about the victims of the crimes. I’ll grant you that systemic racism ABSOLUTELY exists. I’ll grant you that your overall point about poverty and crime are absolutely linked and that crime statistics are skewed due to targeting and higher conviction rates against people of color. The fact that the average black or hispanic family income is lower than that of average white families is absolutely true, and due to an obvious visible clue that they may be part of a poorer demographic leads to them being targeted by LE. This then leads to a victim mentality and an aggression and disdain for LE particularly in minority communities. In order to have an honest conversation about this though, it is worth noting that the crimes are indeed being committed. Whether or not that’s at a higher rate of perpetration by minorities or whites below the poverty line is definitely debatable.

My best friend is a black male and though he is well spoken, drives a very nice vehicle and was raised in a wealthier community, he still receives some significant attention from police. He will be the first to say, that while he knows that he is going to be targeted for his skin color, he also just doesn’t commit the crimes or run in circles with those that do. There is a problem, a massive one, and I think it starts at very high level of government. The war on drugs and private prisons has created a slave trade of sorts. Not to mention Jim Crow laws or the CIA’s involvement in the large scale moving of crack, into poor Black communities. While legal markets and businesses tend to require significant capital for startup while black market businesses entail massive other risks they don’t require bank approval, venture capital or credit checks. When you’re surrounded by an underworld and criminal element, joining a gang for protection or camaraderie becomes a way of life. Seeing value in education becomes difficult and the vicious circle continues. Add that to an exploitable welfare system and culture that glorifies living on it (ex. First of the Month) and you can start to see why these issues are perpetual.

There is most definitely a systemic racism problem at the root of these issues and boiling it down to skin color is pure ignorance. However, POC have not done themselves any favors by creating a culture that glorifies violence sex and drug trade. To ignore the systemic issues is just as ignorant as ignoring their own involvement. There’s an excellent book by Jason Riley titled Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed. I recommend it as it sheds light on some of the results of programs intended to help poor minorities that have ultimately failed. In this thread there’s lots of boiling it down to skin color which isn’t fair, but is at a glance accurate. If you were an alien coming down to earth knowing nothing of the systems or history you would probably determine that the darker skinned humans have a propensity towards violence or poverty. I appreciate the effort in attempting to correct the thinking of some in this thread that have over simplified the issue. However, to not acknowledge the cultural issues that run deep in black communities isn’t taking an honest look at the issue either. In order to change things there should be an honest objective look at the issue from all sides and that includes harshly evaluating the fact that violence and crime is glorified in hip hop culture which is by and large aimed at POC.

TL;DR: siting a victim study isn’t good representation of the issue at hand, though conviction data is unreliable due to a myriad of issues. There are underlying problems that are more prevalent in POC communities.

I'd love our local rural library to be able to have a book called The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger which can be gotten for about $7 plus shipping from the independent sellers (no free shipping), or the paperback version is $12 from Amazon (free shipping). It's been highly recommended for folks interested in creating a more equal society, which I hope at least some of the more politically active folks around here do!

Oh, and you can see a little about our library at http://palermolibrary.wordpress.com/

Thanks!

A recent paper in the American Journal of Public Health entitled “Estimated Deaths Attributable to Social Factors in the United States“ tries to examine a link between social factors (such as inequality, racism, poverty) and mortality (i.e. death). It’s a meta-analysis of 47 prior studies, and the results,
>“…approximately 245000 deaths in the United States in 2000 were attributable to low education, 176000 to racial segregation, 162000 to low social support, 133000 to individual-level poverty, 119000 to income inequality, and 39000 to area-level poverty … The estimated number of deaths attributable to social factors in the United States is comparable to the number attributed to pathophysiological and behavioral causes.”

If you don't want to read the paper, the New York Times has coverage here. The upshot of this study is well stated by the author in his New York Times interview. I’ll simply quote him,
>“In some ways the question is not ‘Why should we think of poverty as a cause of death?’ but rather ‘Why should we not think of poverty as a cause of death?’ If you say that 193,000 deaths are due to heart attack, then heart attack matters. If you say 300,000 deaths are due to obesity, then obesity matters. Well, if 291,000 deaths are due to poverty and income inequality, then those things matter too.”

A lot of scientists and researchers in the United States have a tendency to overlook social factors (poverty, discrimination, barriers to access) when considering negative health outcomes (thinking mainly of personal choices such as smoking and exercise, and genetics), but the evidence is mounting that these factors are not just at least as significant, but actually more significant than the traditional individual risk factors (smoking, seat belt use, etc). About half of any person's health is already programmed by the time they are 2-years-old, and social factors (poverty, racism, mom's maternity experience -- whether she was working two fulltime jobs as a single expectant mom, etc -- are hugely significant).

Having lived in West Africa, I can tell you there is definitely a lot of poverty there. Many days I was without running water or electricity. I can also tell you that there is a lot of poverty here in the US. A well known Harvard researcher famously published a study that demonstrated that black men in our nation's capitol had shorter life expectancies than their counterparts in Ghana; this seems pretty fucked up, since I've lived in Ghana (see my aforementioned comment about lack of running water and electricity). I loved my time in Ghana, but it makes me ashamed that the health outcomes would be worse for our own citizens in a country that is many decades ahead of Ghana with respect to infrastructure. A New England Journal of Medicine study found that black men in Harlem have a shorter life expectancy than their counterparts in Bangladesh, again a scandalously tragic finding, since Bangladesh is quite poor.

So, in summary, although poverty and inequality are the root of much of the world's health problems, and while Africa in general does have a lot of both -- I can assure you of two things: we have plenty of poverty and inequality within the United States, and as a result, we have very poor health outcomes (50th in the world for life expectancy, 45th in the world for infant mortality, etc).

Sorry for such a long post -- I made this account a while back to occasionally post something about structural violence (the academic term that refers to the cause of these sort of deaths; deaths that occur when there is no person or direct behavioral violence to blame), and although I know this post will get lost in the shuffle, it was about time I actually wrote something meaningful here. If you are curious about other social factors and poor health outcomes in the US, there is a good chunk of digestible infographics here. If you like data and graphs, this is a fabulously well researched book that addresses a lot of important topics (or for a bit of the data from the book, see this TED talk.

Which is exactly the effect Russian propaganda tries to achieve in Russia. There's a book called Nothing is True and Everything is Possible.

I'm sure you can infer something about the legitimacy of Assad victory in 14. Does Syria have a history of legitimate and transparent democratic transitions of power? No.... oh boy....

Theres a fog of war in Syria, sure. Find good sources and sift through them to get a good picture. But the idea that theres no way of knowing what's happening in Syria is a huuuge stretch.

U find it curious that suddenly theres a media campaign claiming knowledge of Aleppo or anywhere in Syria is impossible when Russia is facing criticism over its bombings.

https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surreal/dp/1610394550

Yeah, sad to see this getting upvoted. There's a lot of shit going on in the working class, but guffawing at them from our ivory fucking towers does shit-all to help the situation.

I'd reccomend this book on the subject.

Please read this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chavs-Demonization-Working-Owen-Jones/dp/184467696X

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

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

The End of Growth - Adapting to Our New Economic Reality

The Limits to Growth

Debt: The First 5000 Years

Population growth is only possible when carrying capacity hasn't been reached or overshot. Carrying capacity of humans correlates to energy produced/consumed. We are running into energy limits.

Check this out: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2013/09/the-real-population-problem/
For more, try the book "Limits to Growth": http://www.amazon.com/Limits-Growth-The-30-Year-Update/dp/193149858X

Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L4FSVZ6/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

I've barely dipped my toes into the huge, complicated history of the USSR, it's fall, or the privatization myself... but here's some good stuff to start with:


-A super quick rundown of the Voucher Privatization program from the NYT, the year it started. https://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/02/world/russians-getting-share-vouchers-but-ruble-falls.html


-An interview with Paul Klebnikov of the London School of Economics. Talking about the ways the voucher program failed, first through honest mistakes, particularly a misplaced urgency to privatize quickly, and then a few years later through cynical/corrupt policy. https://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2002/02jan-feb/jan-feb02interviewklebniko.html


-Rundown of how the Clinton administration and Harvard economists guided the Russian Federation's process of Privatization and an accounting of some of the foreign money flooding into the country. https://www.thenation.com/article/harvard-boys-do-russia/


You can also check out Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia. The author is a Russian expat who came back to the country in the early 2000's to help them produce Western style television programming. It's written a bit romantically, feels a bit exaggerated at times, but it describes the modern Russia in all its corrupt glory. Every new quarter of the Trump Presidency the "exaggerations" feel a little less far-fetched. And excerpt:


>The Night Wolves are just one of the many stars of the new Ostankino cast. There are the Cherubims, who dress in all black emblazoned with skulls and crosses, calling to cleanse Russia of moral darkness; the neo-Nazis with MTV dancer bodies who film themselves beating up gay teenagers in the name of patriotism; the whip-wielding Cossacks attacking performance artists on the streets. And all of them are pushed to the center of the screen to appear on trashy talk shows and star in factual entertainment formats, keeping the TV spinning with oohs and aahs about gays and God, Satan and the CIA. Their emergence is not some bottom-up swell; only a tiny number of Russians go to church. Rather, the Kremlin has finally mastered the art of fusing reality TV and authoritarianism to keep the great, 140-million-strong population entertained, distracted, constantly exposed to geopolitical nightmares, which if repeated enough times can become infectious. For when I talk to many of my old colleagues who are still working in the ranks of Russian media or in state corporations, they might laugh off all the Holy Russia stuff as so much PR (because everything is PR!), but their triumphant cynicism in turn means they can be made to feel there are conspiracies everywhere: because if nothing is true and all motives are corrupt and no one is to be trusted, doesn’t it mean that some dark hand must be behind everything?

​

These two pretending to fight is a sideshow to distract. Romney lied yesterday when he tweeted that the Mueller report indicated that there was "insufficient evidence to charge the President" with obstruction of justice. Romney is purposely trying to provide cover for the rest of the GOP while still placating Trump. The GOP operative "arguments" are theater, employing the most effective tactics of Russian propaganda to make it seems as though some GOP leaders actually take Trump's illegal actions and election seriously.

I suggest reading Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible.

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


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


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


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



.....


On a side note....


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


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


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


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


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


I'm hard pressed to find a better solution.


P.S.

Interesting read about automation and the future economy:

The Lights in the Tunnel

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

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

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

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

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

Marx. Das Kapital.

You should read it. Because you clearly have no fucking clue what you're talking about.

And then after that, there's a good bit more research you need to do into the nature of capitalism and markets and poverty. Particularly you need to look into success of development programs, and what has worked, and what has not worked to bring people out of poverty in a resource effective way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital:_Critique_of_Political_Economy

He's the wiki for Das Kapital.

https://www.amazon.com/Das-Kapital-Critque-Political-Economy/dp/145388632X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1518369337&sr=8-1&keywords=das+kapital+english&dpID=517xQUomVTL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch

There you can buy a copy on Amazon for 10 bucks. It's not easy to read, unfortunately, because Marx was overly influenced by Hegelian Dialectics. It's fucking dense, and it's a bit of a slow read. You should read it anyways.

https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/vinod-khosla-microlending-end-poverty


Here's an article on micro lending and how effective it has been in creating small entrepreneurial startups among the desperately poor in the developing world, and gave agency and poverty relief especially to women.

https://www.fastcompany.com/3065011/in-afghanistan-cash-has-become-the-most-effective-form-of-aid

https://news.stanford.edu/2016/03/08/cash-effect-insurgencies-030816/

https://www.cidi.org/how-disaster-relief-works/monetary-contributions-work-bestwhy-cash-is-best/#.WoCE7ufauUk

Here's a bunch of articles talking about why cash is such an effective form of aid.

It literally improves the local economy instead of dismantling it, which means everyone's livelihood is more secure and more productive than if you bring in direct resources.

But sure, keep pretending I'm the ignorant one, you fucking sack of shit.

Hey u/mlg_Kaiser, we fixed your our post

>our copy is.

we are a bot

Has anyone read this edition? Is this a good one?

http://www.amazon.com/Das-Kapital-Karl-Marx/dp/145388632X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1422219181&sr=1-1&keywords=das+kapital

What economics? Like this?

• https://www.amazon.com/Small-Beautiful-Economics-Mattered-Perennial/dp/0061997765
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Industrial-Revolution-CAPITALISM-Paperback/dp/B00QPR7PC8
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Going-Local-Creating-Self-Reliant-Communities/dp/0684830124/
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Debt-Updated-Expanded-First-Years/dp/1612194192/
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Economics-Money-Society-Transition/dp/1583943978/
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Buddhist-Economics-Enlightened-Approach-Science/dp/1632863669
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Economy-Wealth-Communities-Durable/dp/0805087222
  
• https://www.amazon.com/End-Laissez-Faire-Economic-Consequences-Peace/dp/1607960869
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Das-Kapital-Critque-Political-Economy/dp/145388632X/

For the second half I'd recommend Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici as a good starting point. It's going to respond to a lot of other thinkers, including Marx, so it can be a good starting point for further investigation on all the subjects I mentioned.

The first half isn't going to be the thesis of any works that I know of; but more of a truism that appears throughout a ton of works. I'll respond in part with an explanation and recommend some basic readings that might flesh out the ideas more.

The word "economy" comes from the Greek "oikos" meaning "home" and "nomos" meaning which refers to the function of it. It's very similar to the word "ecology" which is the combination of "oikos" and "logos", or the logic of the home. As a result, for the ancient Greeks, "economy" referred to the functioning of the household. The house and surrounding land in Athens was referred to a "demo" and constituted a single economic unit run by a single family. A government built with these units was called a "democracy", or a nation of "demos". You can read more about this in The Ancient City by Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges to understand the basic terms and theories going into the structures of our society today, which are based heavily on the ancient Greek language and understanding of the world (as the article above indicates as well).

A fun book that discusses the theme of economics and the formation of society is Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals. It's not full of references or citations, but more of a thought experiment on the subject that I think lays some good groundwork for understanding some of the motivations for the creation of a society. A more specific analysis on the goals and aspirations of an economy can be found in the general cannon, like Smith's Wealth of Nations and the critical response from Marx in Das Kapital. These are both introductory texts on the subject and a little outdated of course. If you want a more contemporary understanding of economic systems and what they do today, I'd recommend Wolff's Contending Economic Theories. These books aren't about why economies come first in society (other than the Genealogy of Morals), but they are a knowledge foundation as to why societies are organized in order to create an economy.

yeah i'd highly suggest a physical copy, I got this version. It's decent.

Markets not Capitalsim by Gary Chartier. It's what got me interested in Mutualism.

Here is your wikipedia page...

But if you want to get actual knowledge on the subject, you might these books :

What's Property? - Pierre Joseph Proudhon

Studies in Mutualist Political Economy - Kevin Carson

Markets Not Capitalism - Various Authors

If you want a simple answer : property doesn't exist as a right, only physical possession exists : ie. you live in a house = you own the house, you work in a factory = you own the factory, you have a paper telling you that "you own x% of this company" = it means jack shit

Like [THIS] (https://smile.amazon.com/Please-Stop-Helping-Us-Liberals/dp/1594038414/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1465590786&sr=1-1&keywords=please+stop+helping+us) book? One of the most widely-read, well-reviewed books on the subject of the Democrats' continuing enslavement of the black race? Move along, Lefty troll...you're out of your league here.

I'm not surprised people took negatively to Jason Riley's book, "Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed". I'm only surprised it was an Indian. I remember reading "Our Black Year" by Maggie Anderson of the Empowerment Experiment and she included a transcript of a radio interview she did in Chicago. There were callers who hadn't read her book that were immediately angered with their understanding of what she was proposing. As Elvis once sang, "Well a hard headed woman, a softhearted man, been the cause of trouble since the world began." And unfortunately, there is no group of people who fit that to a tee better than liberals.

You should read this book and get a different perspective

https://www.amazon.com/Please-Stop-Helping-Us-Liberals/dp/1594038414

>do you care when blacks who aren't criminals, or for that matter whites who aren't criminals, get shot by govt employees? Do you feel that this is acceptable collateral damage, or do you take issue with extrajudicial killings?

Of course I care, it should be clear from what I wrote. If they are not criminals and comply with orders and are not a threat they should not be shot. The thing people tend to overlook when they cry crocodile tears about black people being shot by even black cops, is that there is a rational, justifiable reason why cops are far more nervous about interactions with blacks than non-blacks, and it has to do with the fact that they commit multiple times the chimers of any other group. When was the last time an asian was shot by a cop?

>And what's your stance on ticket quotas and privacy shredding via stingray devices and ALPR's, are you okay surrendering select constitutional protections for a period of time solely at the authorities discretion? I see the logic behind a good deal of what your saying, but I think you're careening down the slippery slope of authoritarian radicalism. Really, the same brand that "liberal millennials" use to argue for increased censorship to protect their feelings.

Ticket quotas are unjust and the best way to solve that problem is to separate the powers, remove any and all fine, ticket, fee revenues from local coffers; remove the incentive to abuse power to fund your abuse of power. If you have a warrant, I don't see anything wrong with Stingray's use for devices tied to specific people and their direct connections, while also auto-immunity for anything other than major felonies not directly related to the warrant. ALPRs are not really unconstitutional and really just require some tightening of their use, maybe, again, only to be used for major felonies and major violations; because it will and is opening up the channel for the same kinds of abuse as ticketing where the financial incentive to abuse power funds the abuse of power.

>Liberals say "yea some speech isn't bad, but if it may hurt my precious feels, or someones precious feels, it needs to be banned".

>I suspect your saying, if you aren't please let me know. "Yea, government kills some innocent people, they shred our rights on occassion, sucks for the innocent ones killed, and all of our Constitutional protections, but better safe than sorry".

Ultimately, there are no cases that come to mind where the government killed people that did not have it coming whether due to foolishness or criminality. No person was ever shot where the person did nothing and complied with orders. The only case that comes to mind is the one where the cop asked for the guy's license and then when the guy went for it he shot him, and he was prosecuted. Where people were killed unjustifiably, it became a criminal charge against officers and officers are well aware that you simply do not want to find yourself in a prison as an ex cop, which is quite the motivator for may.

The problem is though, as with many of our problems, that the very people who claim to want to "help" are really just either creating, complicating, or making things worse with their "help". Take BLM and the cyst of making excuses that they are ... making excuses for why black people and black communities don't deserve to have the same standards and expectations as all other communities, is harming those very communities in so many different ways. It is even quite racist to essentially say "we know you blacks can't live by the same laws and rules and consequences, so we will have special rules and laws for you. Now get over here and let your liberal mommy coddle you."

What really needs to happen is that the black community is held to the same standards and is ridiculed for not being able or willing to, not celebrated and have excuses made for it. Society, if it really wanted to help black communities, it would band together in an intervention and say those behaviors are not accepted and crack down on them hard precisely to break the cycle that liberals keep wanting to perpetuate that causes nothing but suffering and misery. Coddling and enabling a person in a bad situation or addiction does nothing but damage, making excuses for someone with a problem does nothing but make the problem fester and worse with every single passing day. The same thing applies to black communities (or any crime infested community for that matter) that are terrorized and infested with crime and criminal behavior and culture. The very last thing the black community needed, was some self-loathing, white-guilt, bleeding heart, busy-body white people making excuses for criminals and validating criminality in order to make themselves feel better about themselves. Because that is what it's all about really, white people that have been guilted and psychologically abused that they are trying to make themselves feel better. When in realty it is just indulging and enabling the problem and addiction ever more. It's like grandma that has been so psychologically abused and blamed for all the problems that she keeps giving in to her granddaughter and feeds her addiction and makes excuses about how she is really helping her and makes herself feel better by paying to keep her stable as long as she can in an inherently unsustainable manner.

You might want to check out Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed

Considering the Cayman Islands are technically under British rule/oversight as a territory and that the vast majority of it's "success" is money laundering, tax evasion, international ship registrations for various illicit and unethical reasons, ... no, not really.

I know some of the fools out there want to smear me as a racist in typical fashion, but reality is that I would love nothing more than a successful, flourishing, developed black country to emerge as example and inspiration to others. I personally believe that it is precisely the "help" white liberal bleeding hearts with guilt complexes provide that is actually sabotaging the vast majority of them. Time after time and ever increasingly it is being revealed that all the "assistance" programs by bleeding hearts did nothing more than further poison and deconstruct and sabotage black countries and societies to prevent them from going through the various requisite phases of development. It's sad really how liberals simply cannot comprehend that their bleeding hear "help" is actually the cause of the vast majority of the very problems they lament. It's like they don't understand that the coddling and babying they want to provide does far more damage than teaching some hard life lessons and letting them figure things our for themselves would do. Everywhere you go, there is a trail of devastation through "development economics" and the aid industry. The emerging markets that are doing the best are the ones who have separated themselves the longest from the "help".

There's an interesting book called Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make it Harder for Blacks to Succeed that has a strong corollary. But no, whites need to stick their noses in shit they have no business sticking their noses in because they feel they know better, especially because they mean well, of course.

>this has the be the STUPIDEST thing I have EVER heard.

Then you haven't been listening to the liberals very much.

You see reality backwards. Let Jason Riley help you out:

Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for ...

📷https://www.amazon.com/Please-Stop-Helping-Us-Liberals/dp/1594038414In Please Stop Helping Us, Jason L. Riley examines how well-intentioned welfare programs are in fact holding black Americans back. Minimum-wage laws may lift earnings for people who are already employed, but they price a disproportionate number of blacks out of the labor force.

Relevent Book. Haven't finished the read, but basically makes the point that societies are better off (people healthier, happier, less crime, etc) when people are more equal (income equality).

"Spirit Level Films"... so it's these guys?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies/dp/1608190366

No, you don't. You just need a media ecosystem which spreads the message. It's about destroying the public discourse.

https://www.amazon.de/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surreal/dp/1610394550

Looks worse is a morality question. But if you are trying to create an amoral society you wouldn't care about how you look. They always try to distract from the things that are codified in law as wrong or unethical.

If you like this clip, you should read "Nothing Is True And Everything Is Possible". Also, that author with a piece on Surkov.

Give that a read when you can.

"I don't know a single person who took part." That's a bit daft, this could mean you are all kinds off things as to never interact with such people, not that you are inherently better than them. I don't know a single person who was on strike recently what does that prove bar I may work in the private sector?

leave your 1-star reviews here and here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

here you go, buddy

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

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

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

Hard question.

I haven't thought about the root cause much. Maybe inequality? Competitive society? Or education itself? The thought itself might be the root cause. As I stated 1st reply, many Koreans think that university is a must step of a life. (More than half? I guess)

I think we need to learn from other nations that students are happy and achieving. Obama's fondness of Korean education system is so ridiculous. Yeah, we achieves high education points from students who studies 10 or more hours every day. Very inefficient compare to other high achieving countries.

Parents need education for parenting. Many Koreans thinks they can do it very well naturally. Some parents do it well without learning or thinking much. But not many.

And I think the problem can not be solved in education system only.
It's much more deep problem. The thought "university must" have some foundations. Difference between life of "have a degree" and "haven't" are too big, or considered too big.

I think The Price of Inequality can explain something about it.
The book is about US, but Korea has many similar phenomena.

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

EDIT:

Betrayal of the American Dream.

Winner Takes All.

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

> Human Action, specifically the "Inequality of Wealth"

I take your six paragraph dismissal of the current out of control inquality of wealth and raise it by an entire (incredibly well referenced - half the book is devoted to references and footnotes) book devoted to the subject (and yes - I have read it): The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L4FSVZ6/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

FTFTFYFY

>Except you don't remotely act that belief out, much less live it, or you'd be in an insane asylum.

Or Russia.

Come on man, what is this!

It has been a nice conversation, why do you start insulting?

No need to do it if you have good arguments.

​

>So "good" that people are forced to pay for them against their will even when they won't use them. In other words not good at all. Good things survive on their own merits and not through force.

We were talking about economic performances, not moral issues. This isn't the place to talk about moral judgement about socialism and capitalism. I didn't talk about morality because we are discussing something really different, how well the public sector can achieve its goals.

Out of context.

​

>What I pointed out was that it's economic problems were due to the ECP which you haven't refuted.

I explained why in a synthetic way because it's a complex issue. The USSR had a dysfunctional dictatorship that was against any change of the status quo of their material balance planning, that led to stagnation. It was a system that was created for an underdevolped country with the need to develop capital intensive technologies. Look at what the great Polish economist Michal Kalecki had to say about that. Great soviet economists like Leontief advanced solutions, also Kornai and the Nobel laureate Kantorovich introduced linear programming models to change planning algorithms. The lack of clear knowledge caused by the dictatorship played also a role obviously: if the law is really harsh against dissent, economic planning can't work well.

However, Soviet politician didn't follow them. They made really bad decisions during the cold war, with a great focus on capital intensive military technologies and not on consumption. The Perestroika and the destruction of the tissue of Soviet society did the rest.

This is really synthetic. The book that I linked you above is good if you want to know more.

​

>No, we can't, because this is how you get shortages. People do respond to changes in prices which is why we don't have such shortages in market systems.

I mean, just read what I wrote until now to have a reply to this. It's like you forgot all the discussion.

​

>No it isn't. This is you going full retard and where I'm done with this conversation. You lost here.

Professor Anwar Shaikh wrote a great book that can explain better why the general equilibrium theory and in general the neoclassical model fail. Here.

Actually you don't need to go deep in heterodox economics, criticism of neoclassical model are really common.

​

I hope that you'll reconsider your decision, otherwise thanks for the discussion.

> Secondly, I'm reading Yuval Harari's Homo Deus right now, in which he makes the claim that Marx would probably want people today to study how the modern economy works with the advent of computers, genetics research, etc., rather than reading a book that was written when steam was the coolest technology on the planet

That doesn't give you an excuse to not read Marx though, just an encouragement to read some recent stuff after having read and understood Marx. What you're implying is equivalent to "I shouldn't read Aristotle, Kant, and J.S. Mill on moral philosophy because we have moral questions now that didn't exist back in their times, like those on ethics of human cloning".

EDIT:

If you really want something recent to read then I guess you could read Shaikh, at least he will be better than fucking Sowell

https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Competition-Conflict-Anwar-Shaikh/dp/0199390630 (libgen.io btw)

Shorter lecture series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmBHCiDd8ew&list=PLTMFx0t8kDzc72vtNWeTP05x6WYiDgEx7

Book lecture series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShIg-3NRQj4&list=PLB1uqxcCESK6B1juh_wnKoxftZCcqA1go

Help yourself.
The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316414212/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_apa_i_fgG1DbC39BDJV

• Phone/text bank
  
• Buy "The War on Normal People" - I think Yang is making personal contributions from the profits of this book? https://www.amazon.com/War-Normal-People-Disappearing-Universal/dp/0316414212/ref=asc_df_0316414212/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=334173482617&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2035394017383040635&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9052022&hvtargid=pla-659476821549&psc=1
  
• Donate to Steve Dannely's patreon. I just got confirmation from him that anyone (even foreigners) can donate to him, since he isn't an official PAC and not working with the campaign. https://www.patreon.com/stevedannely

Frustration with how little conventional politicians have done to address the onslaught from the next wave of technological disruption drove Yang into the presidential race. It’s a phenomenon he describes at length in his book, “The War on Normal People.” He says: “Donald Trump in 2016 said he was going to make America great again, and what was Hillary Clinton’s response? America’s already great,” adding, “That was not the right answer.” In Yang’s view, the right answer is a permanent stimulus routed through the pockets of every American to help them build a post-automation economy.

His belief is that, eventually, an American working class told to accept an ever-reduced standard of living — while the corporate beneficiaries of our system show indifference toward the despair, suicide, alcoholism and opiate abuse afflicting those left behind — could lash out with a fury that makes Trump look like a mild precursor. When Yang explains that “Trump got many of the problems right,” even if the president gets many solutions wrong, it is this dynamic he has in mind, and it is this economic wound that he proposes to heal with UBI and a raft of other policies focused on rescuing Americans from the zero-sum “mind-set of scarcity” currently deranging our politics.

Andrew Yang speaks to voters at the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 9 in Des Moines. His emphasis on being an Asian American math nerd helps him pitch one of his central policy ideas: a universal basic income. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

Yang has somehow used the bleakest vision of any candidate to generate the most fun of all the campaigns: He has tweeted video of himself playing Rachmaninoff on the piano, skateboarded, crowd-surfed, done the Cupid Shuffle and challenged Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) to a game of one-on-one basketball. The #YangGang calls out instances when their candidate is left off mainstream media infographics — neglect that only feeds their ardor. They love it when he revels in his underdog status, as he did when he tweeted, “It’s all fun and games until Andrew Yang passes you in the polls.”

Yang has cracked the code on how to be something that doesn’t have much precedent in our political culture: an Asian American man able to summon and inspire large, enthusiastic crowds across the country in support of his bid for national leadership, charismatic enough to commandeer a spotlight that no one had wanted to train on him. After interviewing him, Politico senior politics editor Charlie Mahtesian tweeted: “Yang was much better than some of the veteran pols we’ve seen before in the office — easy to see why he’s got a following. Authentic, comfortable in his own skin, able to articulate a coherent reason for running, minimal amount of b.s. in answers to a wide range of questions.” (Two other Democratic contenders, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) and Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif.), have Asian roots but don’t conspicuously frame themselves as Asian American candidates.)

It turns out that being this figure doesn’t entail being a scold about race. As Yang brought his Asian jokes to the televised debates (there’s also the one about knowing a lot of doctors), some Asian American progressives took him to task for embracing a facially positive stereotype that, in their view, is “reaffirming toxic tropes” and traps Asian Americans within a “model minority” framing. These critics were voicing the general strictness on matters of identity to which we are all supposed to defer these days. This month, Yang met with some of them and explained that while he respected and understood their objections, he sees it differently. And he’s not an outlier: In one 2018 study, when asked if people nowadays “don’t take racism seriously enough” or if they’re “too sensitive about things to do with race,” 73 percent of Asian Americans said people are “too sensitive,” more than the 60 percent overall who said the same.

Yang with supporters at a campaign event in New York in May. Their signs reference the candidate's ideas about "human capitalism" and his "MATH" slogan: Make America Think Harder. (Andres Kudacki/For The Washington Post)

The criticisms fundamentally miss Yang’s objectives. His humor breaks the ice surrounding the first thing you notice about him — and the thing audiences are least prepared to parse. It has the paradoxical effect of highlighting how few of the identity-based hopes or antagonisms plaguing other candidacies affect the Asian American guy “who wants to give everyone $1,000 a month.” Asian Americans, only about 6 percent of the population and heavily clustered in a few states, are often overlooked as a group. But given the overheated rhetoric surrounding other identity categories, for Yang, this lack of visibility could turn out to be a strength.

In the hierarchy of the schoolyard, the Andrew Yangs of the world were often the quarry of white bros like podcaster and “Saturday Night Live” washout Shane Gillis. But in the world run by Big Data, it’s Yang who is the New York millionaire with ties to Silicon Valley. When Yang forgave Gillis for mocking him as a “Jew C----,” it wasn’t just out of electoral expediency (though it was that, too) but because he believes that the key to stability between America’s hinterlands and urban areas, to averting the civil disorder he spells out in his book, is a truce. After watching Gillis’s comedy, Yang decided he wasn’t the evil pariah that the progressive consensus assessed but instead “a still-forming comedian from central Pennsylvania.” This magnanimity isn’t a capitulation, it’s a sign of strength.

Yang grasps that, despite the grievances many Asian Americans justifiably hold about discrimination, members of the best-educated and highest-earning group in America shouldn’t linger on victimhood.

PART 2/3:

Yang is a kind of defector from the knowledge-worker class he once epitomized as an Ivy League-educated corporate lawyer and chief executive of a test-prep company. The seven years he spent building a nonprofit called Venture for America, matching graduates of top colleges with start-ups in Rust Belt cities, made him acutely conscious of both the injury that his cohort has done (and is working tirelessly to expand) in the service of corporate America, and the volatile reaction this injury has stirred up. His campaign is an attempt to fashion a technocratic response to populist demands — by simply giving people money. The overt emphasis on being an Asian American math nerd frames his signature policy, a universal basic income (UBI) of $1,000 per month for every American adult, as a responsible, sober-minded and data-driven measure to “rebalance the economy,” rather than the giveaway it looks like. The core mission of Yang’s campaign is to get people to see UBI, which he calls the “Freedom Dividend,” as the former rather than the latter, and he’s exploiting every angle he can — including stereotypes — toward that end.

Frustration with how little conventional politicians have done to address the onslaught from the next wave of technological disruption drove Yang into the presidential race. It’s a phenomenon he describes at length in his book, “The War on Normal People.” He says: “Donald Trump in 2016 said he was going to make America great again, and what was Hillary Clinton’s response? America’s already great,” adding, “That was not the right answer.” In Yang’s view, the right answer is a permanent stimulus routed through the pockets of every American to help them build a post-automation economy.

His belief is that, eventually, an American working class told to accept an ever-reduced standard of living — while the corporate beneficiaries of our system show indifference toward the despair, suicide, alcoholism and opiate abuse afflicting those left behind — could lash out with a fury that makes Trump look like a mild precursor. When Yang explains that “Trump got many of the problems right,” even if the president gets many solutions wrong, it is this dynamic he has in mind, and it is this economic wound that he proposes to heal with UBI and a raft of other policies focused on rescuing Americans from the zero-sum “mind-set of scarcity” currently deranging our politics.

Yang has somehow used the bleakest vision of any candidate to generate the most fun of all the campaigns: He has tweeted video of himself playing Rachmaninoff on the piano, skateboarded, crowd-surfed, done the Cupid Shuffle and challenged Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) to a game of one-on-one basketball. The #YangGang calls out instances when their candidate is left off mainstream media infographics — neglect that only feeds their ardor. They love it when he revels in his underdog status, as he did when he tweeted, “It’s all fun and games until Andrew Yang passes you in the polls.”

Yang has cracked the code on how to be something that doesn’t have much precedent in our political culture: an Asian American man able to summon and inspire large, enthusiastic crowds across the country in support of his bid for national leadership, charismatic enough to commandeer a spotlight that no one had wanted to train on him. After interviewing him, Politico senior politics editor Charlie Mahtesian tweeted: “Yang was much better than some of the veteran pols we’ve seen before in the office — easy to see why he’s got a following. Authentic, comfortable in his own skin, able to articulate a coherent reason for running, minimal amount of b.s. in answers to a wide range of questions.” (Two other Democratic contenders, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) and Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif.), have Asian roots but don’t conspicuously frame themselves as Asian American candidates.)

It turns out that being this figure doesn’t entail being a scold about race. As Yang brought his Asian jokes to the televised debates (there’s also the one about knowing a lot of doctors), some Asian American progressives took him to task for embracing a facially positive stereotype that, in their view, is “reaffirming toxic tropes” and traps Asian Americans within a “model minority” framing. These critics were voicing the general strictness on matters of identity to which we are all supposed to defer these days. This month, Yang met with some of them and explained that while he respected and understood their objections, he sees it differently. And he’s not an outlier: In one 2018 study, when asked if people nowadays “don’t take racism seriously enough” or if they’re “too sensitive about things to do with race,” 73 percent of Asian Americans said people are “too sensitive,” more than the 60 percent overall who said the same.

Last time I checked it takes both borrowers and lenders of loans to make crappy CDO's. Govt shouldn't have made laws to encourage and underwrite crappy loans, Banks shouldn't have lent to people with extremely bad credit history and sell them to WS, WS shouldn't have repackaged crappy BBB loans as sold them as AAA derivatives to Insurance companies and Pension Funds and Borrowers shouldn't have borrowed money they knew couldn't repay. So, as it turns out everyone was in on the easy money Orgy.

Might I suggest reading The Big Short

I highly recommend reading the book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis. Not only will it lucidly explain the events leading up to the financial collapse, but the characters interviewed for the book are really interesting and sometimes hilarious. This book provided insights that just didn't hit home in 'Inside Job'. I was picking my jaw up off of the floor by the time I finished it.

And, sorry. I know this isn't r/books...

The video in misleading. CDS can apply to a lof to things, but the pension funds that bought CDOs from Wall St were not the firms who bought CDS on the same securities from AIG. AIG's CDS were used by Wall St to create synthetic CDOs (CDOs with no real underlying mortgages), and were bought by investment banks and hedge funds. Pension funds got blown up when their CDO went to zero. Goldman, who sold them the CDOs, made money because Goldman (and hedge funds like John Paulson who personally made $4B in the crash) held CDS from AIG.

I recommend reading The Big Short by Michael Lewis to get a more comprehensive understanding than the video. http://www.amazon.com/Big-Short-Inside-Doomsday-Machine/dp/0393072231

Long story short - pension fund were not bailed out. Wall St was bailed out. AIG did not insure state pension from from their toxic CDOs. State pension funds got their faces ripped off.

>allows the actors to hide their intentions behind

Again it's the intention of the actors.

When you are raising kids, you have to have them buy into the system you are running, otherwise they will spend most of their time working around the rules you establish. Rules can't stop bad actors. Enforcement of punishment for bad actors stops bad actors.

The only real solution is to confront or replace bad actors. The beauty is that people external to the US will eventually be more effective than the domestic audience in doing this as the US loses ground internationally do to the short term policies pursued by these interests. The elite in the US that would natural counter-balance things domestically lack the courage and character so far to even effectively rebuke their fellow elites.

The bad news is that domestically life will just get worse for most people in the interim.

Clearly identifying bad actors and their backers with public evidence, followed by effective group action, namely boycotts of the corporations responsible, and the construction of competing businesses is a good start. There is a lot of wasted money and brainpower in the current insane direction of the country. The solution is to tap into that, rather than have it continue unchallenged. Doing things like the Big Short is a positive step in the right direction.

We have a multi-dimensional problem. Single dimensional fixes will never work and are guaranteed to have negative multi-dimensional side effects.

These guys:

http://www.amazon.com/Big-Short-Inside-Doomsday-Machine/dp/0393072231

no I am an economist who watched it happen. You can get this esteemed economists book for a penny & educate yourself https://www.amazon.com/Housing-Boom-Bust-Revised/dp/0465019862

Regulation is always justified with a very broad brush, because from a high level it always sounds good. To expose the problems with it, you have to drill down into the details and examine very specific effects.

The good news is you can start absolutely anywhere. I have yet to run into an example of regulation that didn't create worse problems than it set out to solve.

Take, for example, the VW emissions scandal. Eric Peters explains in a Tom Woods interview how it was caused by overregulation. He also has a gazillion blog posts on auto overregulation generally and VW specifically.

Or take the housing market. Sowell does a great job of showing how regulations pile up, layer after layer, trying to patch the problems caused by the previous round of regulaton.

Or take pharmaceuticals.

Or take childcare.

Or take healthcare.

Or take food waste.

Or take fisheries management.

Or take toilets.


Pick any regulation, and google the libertarian take on it. You'll find the case against it.

the rule of law and dispute resolution are good institutions to have, but those aren't regulations on the market, nor do they prevent monopolies, nor are all monopolies bad.

> you get a mass boom, as speculation kicks in, you see people get massively wealthy, everyone wants the same, they all pile in! "Me too!" but at the first scandal, the whole edifice crashes down around your ears. Welcome to unregulated derivatives

this is just all wrong. i'm not going to get into it since i don't have all day, but here's ben powell again to educate you; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRj2OSNWRC4

or if you prefer reading, i recommend The Housing Boom and Bust by Thomas Sowell

"Housing Boom and Bust" by Thomas Sowell.
https://www.amazon.com/Housing-Boom-Bust-Revised/dp/0465019862/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1540076536&sr=8-1&keywords=housing+boom+and+bust

It wasn't deregulation. You could maybe make the case that it was under-regulation of the unintended side effects of bad policy but it wasn't deregulation. A good book on this is The Housing Boom and Bust by Thomas Sowell. Here is an interesting discussion about the book worth watching.

It's exactly the case here.

Lack of housing development in California due to "open space" laws and protected lands is one of the primary drivers of their absurdly high housing prices. Thomas Sowell digs deep into this phenomenon in this book.

If you'd like to read more on the specifics of the issue you can find Sowell's book here. I use the library though as it's free.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0465019862/ref=redir_mdp_mobile?ref_=ntt_at_ep_dpt_5

Thomas Sowell and others debunk the claims that women and blacks earn less in the marketplace due to discrimination. When they are compared on equal footing, it is found they are not discriminated against, and in some cases even earn slightly more. For example, unmarried women without children tend to earn a bit more than their male counterparts. What is affecting the average woman? Having children, obviously. If you thought that women, on average, should be earning equal wages, you were clearly not using your brain effectively, as bearing children is such an obvious and enormous cost.

There is a cost to conducting irrational practices in the marketplace (racism, sexism in hiring and in customer discrimination are the examples we are concerned with in this discussion). For example, bus companies wanted to give equal treatment to Blacks during the era of segregation in the U.S., as Black Americans were their biggest customers. They were forced to conduct costly (in opportunity), racist practices in order to comply with government segregation laws. Most people simply are not willing to pay the cost if they are racist, but I also think that most people aren't racist.

If we look at Asian Americans and Irish Americans who's ancestors also experienced severe discrimination, as well as Irish in the UK who's ancestors experienced slavery, we find they don't have the same problems Black Americans face. Blacks immigrants do better on average than their American counterparts. It is clear it is not discrimination at the employer which is the problem. It is a culture of victimization that has been built around them by liberals attempting to "help" them through horrendous government policies--most notably education that amounts to nothing and subsidies of bad behavior--which has lead to alarming rates of single parenthood (usually mothers) which has destroyed the future of these young children. It really needs to stop.

> why real wages have stayed so stagnant in the face of such extremely low unemployment and strengthening inflation will be a huge economic puzzle for the next few years

it's not a puzzle.

there are two different data sets: HOUSEHOLD income, and PERSONAL income.

Household income is from Census data.

Personal income is from IRS data.

household incomes are basically flat over the last few decades.

personal incomes have more than kept up with inflation.

the majority of US individuals live in households that are in the bottom 20% AND the top 20% of incomes. just at different times in their lives. households are getting smaller, thus household incomes stay flat even though personal incomes rise.

see Economic Facts and Fallacies by Thomas Sowell (longtime fellow at the Hoover Institute at Sanford).

https://www.amazon.com/Economic-Facts-Fallacies-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465022030

the only puzzle is why so much of the media and policy makers are ignorant about these very simple explanation. mainly because to explain it simply, as Sowell does, would take a lot of wind from the sails of the political left. the two data sets are often lumped together, or the individual salary is obscured under averages and medians that don't track individual people. track individual people, and the vast majority of Americans see wage raises tha more than beat inflation.

just stop and think about it: do you know anyone whose personal income has remained flat for 20+ years? the only person I know who has, is an alcoholic who wants to stay at an entry level job so he has zero responsibilities to cut into his drinkin' time at 4pm. everyone else I know has gotten raises, often substantial raises, throughout their careers.

Not exactly post war, but Wages of Destruction and Hitler's Beneficiaries are both fascinating works of economic history.

Götz Aly, for example.

https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Beneficiaries-Plunder-Racial-Welfare/dp/0805087265

cap·i·tal·ism

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

Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, by Mises

Human Actiom, by Mises

The Theory of Money and Credit, by Mises

The Anti-Capitalist Mentality, by Mises

The Road to Serfdom, by F.A Hayek

The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism, by F.A Hayek



Economics in One Lesson, by Henry Hazlitt

‪No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority, by Lysander Spooner

If anything, you should read this because it is on topic with transportation.

Please, you cant just throw the names of movements out and say "this" pick 1 and tell me why it's different from what I said. It's like when Nazis tell me "FiNd ThE GaS ChAmbeRs DoOrs." Or "ThE rEcOrDs OnLy ShOw 100k DiEd" its toxic and it's not an arguement for Nazism.

As an example.

Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis https://www.amazon.com/dp/0913966630/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_9d11CbKBMASRK

ThIs Is wHy I'm rIgHt.

Throw me a weeks of research, jackass...

Your right, welfare states are not socialism, which is the point I was attempting to make, I fell short and I apologize. Also, I'm am going to have to make a point to read Anarchy in Action to understand the totality of "social justice" as I currently agree with the narrative that minority groups are being marginalized, but not by active measures or willful action, more so by taking shitty actions on good data. There is exception in area where the white supremacist movement has managed to gain power in regions by questionable tactics purposefully take shitty actions that installs the institutional racism. I disagree entirely with "social justice" on a pure economic class interpretation as in a democratic society I elect the rich with my money except in cases of "plunder" or "fraud" which we are dealing with currently. Fuels both sides of the anarchy spectrum. Now I understand that we are not Techno-primitivist so certain markets I have no choice in if i want to economically important but that choice is always there.

Would love to have a homestead and a tiny house... the market allows me to have both.

I'm currently trying to make my way through "Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis" by Ludwig von Mises, and this shit is like looking into the abyss.

I can feel it's pull.

His arguments seem solid and convincing. He's very thorough as he debunks socialism. I find myself tacitly agreeing with his criticisms of capitalism (e.g.: you can't have any economic activity without economic calculation, of which there is none in socialism because socialism doesn't generally concern itself with measuring the costs of production or distribution. Therefore, it's meaningless to say socialism would do X "better" than capitalism in an economic sense). But his assertions for capitalism are just absurd on the face of it and greatly contradict my experiences with it, so, in that, I have some solace.

Still though, I find socialism and anarchism attractive because of how they empower regular people like myself. Frankly, I think that's the greatest strength of socialism/anarchism.

Idk, this is a tough book. Never really read anything quite like it.

Then there's /u/Semisonic, he develops on the question and gets around 30 upvotes =) He did put it better by saying "economic benefits of automation are going to be skewed heavily in favor of corporations, business owners, and the wealthy."

If you're interested in this topic, I'd strongly recommend this book.

First off I'd like to mention the fact that nothing of what I said is racist, in fact I think all humans(bar mental issues) have the capacity to do any job, however the society structure we have forces minorities like the ones I mentioned to be over-represented in those low paying job spheres, those minorities are already being pushed on so much by the rest of the world huge unemployment like what you're suggesting is exactly the type of catalyst that causes social unrest.

I hold an Econ degree the problem is that the more you learn the more you understand how little we actually know. What was previously frictional unemployment will become structural as other sectors of the society fail to absorb the numbers of new no-skill job seekers. when once they could join the factories they have long been gone, and there are almost no retail jobs as everything goes online.

Here is a book I read recently on the topic I strongly recommend it, its called "race against the machine" this subject is being strongly discussed in some circles just not in the reddit circlejerk.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0984725113/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1427045217&sr=8-2&keywords=against+the+machine&pi=AC_SY200_QL40&dpPl=1&dpID=51tMnMC05LL&ref=plSrch

[edit non mobile link]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0984725113/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

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

The Ethics of Liberty by Murray Rothbard (full text)

The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman (full text)

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

Radicals for Capitalism by Brian Doherty

Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy

The Message in the Bottle by Walker Percy

Because polycentric legal systems are completely different than monarchies.... You should read up on what you are criticizing; this book would be a good place to start.

Sorry, as well as Benson I really should have recommended Anarchy and the Law, a collection of 40-odd essays on private property/free market anarchism. That's definitely what you should get if you're interested. It even has a glowing recommendation by Roderick Long..

> This nearly 700-page book is quite simply THE definitive collection on free-market anarchism. Its forty chapters include contributions from Randy Barnett, Bruce Benson, Bryan Caplan, Roy Childs, Anthony de Jasay, David Friedman, John Hasnas, Hans Hoppe, Jeff Hummel, Don Lavoie, Murray Rothbard, the Tannehills, and many more. (Full disclosure: it also contains a chapter by me.) In addition, it features historical classics by Voltairine de Cleyre, Gustave de Molinari, Lysander Spooner, and Benjamin Tucker, among others. It covers both moral arguments and economic ones; it ranges over both abstract theory and historical examples. It even includes important criticisms of market anarchism, like Tyler Cowen's and Robert Nozick's, along with anarchist replies.

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

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

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

• Libertarian Anarchy: Against the State by Gerard Casey

> Oh so you are just a crazy radical that wants change but you don't really know what the change is.

Actually I'm a crazy radical that knows what the change should be, a society where the initiation of violence is prohibited by all parties. This necessarily requires the elimination of the state as it is an entity built upon initiating violence.

> You will never be happy, you are just some crazy guy who "wants to do his thing" or you are some idealist that envisions an utopia of peaceful civilizations working together for no other reason than to maintain peace and promote humanity.

Your assumption are almost adorable, although wrong. Utopia doesn't exist, there will always be conflict amongst people. A stateless society doesn't mean one without violent, just one where the initiation of violence is prohibited.

If somebody brings violence against you it is your right, as a self-owner, to retaliate or seek just compensation for the damages done to you. A good read on the subject is The Ethics of Liberty by Murray Rothbard. If you're willing to hit up a library or plunk down some change Anarchy and the Law is also an excellent read as are the works of Lysander Spooner (which are freely available). His No Treason series do a great job of decimating the idea of "social contract."

Either way I don't believe in utopia, but I do believe in a society where violence isn't the answer to all problems. More can be accomplished through market forces and mutual aid than state violence.

> Both of these are foolish and childish to believe in.

Because medieval Iceland, medieval Ireland [PDF], and the old American West [PDF] never happened? Stateless societies have thrived in human history, thus your statement is without ground.

> There will always be leaders, no matter what.

You're mistaking voluntaryism (what I subscribe to) with traditional collectivist anarchism. Volutnaryism doesn't believe in the abolition of hierarchy, leaders can exist but they have no powers beyond anybody else. In other words you can choose to work for somebody, or to follow the plans of another, but you can't be coerced into doing so, your decision to do so must be voluntarily made.

> You want no government?

You're mistaking the state for government (not unusual, we use the terms interchangeably in our society). I believe in voluntary governance, as stated above you can follow leaders, there would be private courts, and arbitration is entirely legal. What isn't acceptable is one or more individuals declaring themselves rule and forcing others to obey their decrees.

> Then someone will become strong enough to force you under their control and then that will be the government.

The three previously mentioned societies would beg to differ. Refutations of your claims can be found within the linked material, read and learn.

Anarcho-capitalism 101:

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

I think its a very low misconception regarding libertarian against crime. It doesn't mean libertarian okay with crime, you can view this video regarding basic libertarian approach with crime.

Further read would be this. I seriously think that the world is a better place if we put libertarian approach against crimes/coercions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source:

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

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

>>The economy grew faster

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

>You really should look more into Marxist countries.

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

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

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

> Try reading some threads on conservative subs at least.

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


I would recommend these to you:

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

Download is FREE here

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

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

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

And of course, Piketty's book.

I humbly suggest you read Winner Take All Politics, or if you're a voracious reader: Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems. These will free you of some fetters.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A couple of related books are:

a) [The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies] (http://www.amazon.com/Second-Machine-Age-Prosperity-Technologies/dp/0393239357/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407946623&sr=1-1&keywords=the+second+machine+age)

b) [The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future] (http://www.amazon.com/Lights-Tunnel-Automation-Accelerating-Technology/dp/1448659817/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407946576&sr=1-1&keywords=the+lights+in+the+tunnel)

They are both pretty sobering

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

http://www.amazon.ca/The-End-Work-Decline-Post-Market/dp/0874778247

http://www.amazon.ca/The-Lights-Tunnel-Automation-Accelerating/dp/1448659817

Its really too wide of a concept to provide evidence for in a simple fashion. At the same time it's easy enough to say that large sectors of the economy will be massively downsizing their human resource component while still meeting demand, while other sectors that are also currently meeting all demand don't need more people. Unless some magic new sector comes along to employ people in a way that robots or software can't accomplish, there will be massive structural unemployment.

You may want to check out this book:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Lights-Tunnel-Automation-Accelerating/dp/1448659817/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1342190948&sr=8-7&keywords=end+of+the+tunnel

Personally I think it's only a question of exactly when it's going to fall. History tells us that it will, and that it does so when not many in the masses expect it. I've got a decent sum in fund which bets the decline. That's my long term investment. Check out Anwar Shaikh maybe:https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Competition-Conflict-Anwar-Shaikh/dp/0199390630?tag=duckduckgo-d-20

​

But yeah, isk is the way to go if you don't invest with your corporation. Hmmm i don't know why i got downvoted...

Actually I read this book

http://www.amazon.com/Big-Short-Inside-Doomsday-Machine/dp/0393072231

And I have a few conversations with my hs friend who graduated valedictorian of Wharton undergrad and some of his friends.

edit: The book is "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis

Add to reading list: http://www.amazon.com/Housing-Boom-Bust-Revised/dp/0465019862/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418350654&sr=8-1&keywords=housing+boom+and+bust

Look I know about RKK certificates and the full scale looting of the European continent. I am not going to be bullshitted into believing that you got a fair deal.

https://www.amazon.com/Preponderance-Power-National-Security-Administration/dp/0804722188

https://www.amazon.com/Inside-Hitlers-Greece-Experience-Occupation/dp/0300089236/

https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Beneficiaries-Plunder-Racial-Welfare/dp/0805087265

https://www.amazon.com/Sword-Spirit-Shield-Faith-Diplomacy/dp/1400043239/

And in case you think I haven't been exposed to the European contribution to recovery..

https://www.amazon.com/Postwar-History-Europe-Since-1945/dp/0143037757/

Okay again.... community owned centralized control of the means of production is a widely accepted definition of socialism. If you want to add on equal representation then go for it, but equal representation =/= community owned. There are several forms of community ownership that have nothing to democracy or representation. You are arguing semantics and saying the only real socialism is democratic socialism. You are making socialism, facisism, plutocracy, etc. a binary definition when all of our social contracts and thoeries are a matter of scale. Some people in America hate socialism/communism and think their government is the farthest thing from socialism the world has ever seen. Yet they have socialized education, socialized roads, socialized retirement, all sorts of socialism. They are somewhat socialist, just like Canada or EU socialism are a little more socialist.

I have only claimed that china has a socialist form of government as well and your responses is China is fascist. There is a such thing as social fascism, even if you do not want to think so.

Do you think the majority of chinese citizens hate their government? If China had a democratic vote today, do you think they would throw Winnie the pooh out of office? What if the democratic socialist Canadan voted to implement the same regulations, governmental power, social credit score, etc. as the chinese have now? Would Canadian no longer be socialist? You're view is so limited. You telling me you know how to define words doesnt me shit. Your argument is literally those governments are not socialist because there is no equal representation of the citizens for decision making, which is a requirement you have added. Your idea of western democratic socialism is more neo-capitalist than all of the governments you who say are just claiming to be socialist but arent really......

Honestly help yourself to a fucking political science book.

https://www.amazon.com/Socialism-Utopian-Scientific-Frederick-Engels/dp/1406878200

https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Socialism-Democracy-Perennial-Thought/dp/0061561614

https://www.amazon.com/Socialism-Sociological-Ludwig-von-Mises/dp/0913966630

https://www.amazon.com/Communist-Manifesto-Karl-Marx/dp/0717802418

https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Citizens-Guide-Economy/dp/0465081452

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_socialism

>I find it very funny when Americans talk about socialism

Here's an Austrian fellow who wrote a book on socialism, if you're interested: http://www.amazon.com/Socialism-An-Economic-Sociological-Analysis/dp/0913966630

The PDF is online for free, as well.

>I'll just say that total deregulation, total free market, will lead to catastrophe

I don't really see any evidence that's the case.

Non-mobile: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0984725113/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1427045217&sr=8-2&keywords=against+the+machine&pi=AC_SY200_QL40&dpPl=1&dpID=51tMnMC05LL&ref=plSrch

^That's ^why ^I'm ^here, ^I ^don't ^judge ^you. ^PM ^/u/xl0 ^if ^I'm ^causing ^any ^trouble. ^WUT?

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

Better late than never.

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

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

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

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

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

This is not a conspiracy. This is a r/politics self post if they didn't do link only.

Well then I think this is a good time to plug Das Kapital. Marx would definitely approve of you just reading the entire thing online

> Arguing that capitalism would create an ever-increasing division in wealth and welfare, he predicted its abolition and replacement by a system with common ownership of the means of production.

> If complying with the law results in profit, the company will comply. If it results in loss, the company will not comply

That's the whole point of law. Cause and effect. That is what most people on this planet called preventative. Congratulation for discovering the basic concept of law, though taking a long winded road to it. You are still extremely confused about it though.

> The next time somebody comes to kill you go ahead and hold that law out in front of you and see if it stops a bullet or a knife blade. Then we'll see who is living in reality.

What the fuck are you talking about? Law isn't a physical object you moron. How the fuck are you going to "hold that law" out in the first place? The fact that law is in place deters people from coming to my place and trying that in the first place.

> Well my society isn't lawless, so I find this to be a moot point.

Laws in your society is fucking useless and thus lawless. Law in your society is no different commandments from the Bible.

> Whose repercussions? The governments?

Yes. Governments prevent me from hitting your face.

> I could fly to your house, punch you in the face, leave immediately, and if your lucky an officer might take your statement.

Yea, do that. I have cameras set up that provides enough evidence for the officer to hunt you down. Obviously the threat of being in jail (criminal law) doesn't deter you from hitting people but it deters you from cheating taxes (tax law). You contradict even yourself.

> You've placed me in a situation where I am forced to concede property in order to protect my freedoms or my life.

No shit moron. I'm place in a situation where I am forced to not punch you in order to protect the freedom of my life. This is the whole point of the law. You don't like to concede property, I don't like to not punch your face. But we both have to follow the law due to repercussions.

> I must give money to the government or I lose more money, freedom (prison), or death.

Yes. That is the law and thus it prevents you from trying to not pay tax. See how preventative it is? It works because it has repercussions. This is an example of law preventing you from acting out a behaviour (not paying tax).

> Explain to me how a mugger with a gun to your head ("Your money or your life") is different from taxation.

LMFAO, every idiotic libertarian always trot out this bullshit like it's on automatic playback. Explain to me how a mugger with a gun to your head ("Your money or your life") is different from paying rent to your landlord.

> You used a word made up by a comedian with a satirical political show to insult my argument

Yes, that's the point. Your arguments are based upon nothing but GUT INSTINCT. What you lack in knowledge, you made up in confidence. That word, "truthiness", describes you extremely well.

> It's an insult made up by a different person.

It can't be an insult when it is true. Calling a fat overweight person "fat" is not an insult. Likewise with you. You are IGNORANT and you WANT TO and LIKE TO remain IGNORANT.

> These types of law do not prevent anything.

Holy fuck you are dumb. Two sentences ago you admit to having to pay tax. The tax laws prevents you from cheating tax. That's what it prevents. The environmental laws prevent companies from polluting due to financial disincentives. That's what it prevents.

> Tort law is by definition only relevant to disputes. Two parties who settle their differences on their own are completely outside the purview of the law. The case must be brought to court before the law applies.

No you dumb idiot. Tort laws specified a companies or a person can be fined for misconduct. THis is made aware to everyone and thus prevent people and companies in engaging in misconducts.

> You moved the goal posts here.

Wrong. 1+1 is not 5.

I said laws encompasses MANY (M for Mary, A for Asshole, N for nelly, Y for Yellow). MANY, not ALL (A for Asshole, L for Lily, L for Lily) but MANY. See how I have to spell it out for you?

> That's largely irrelevant though, seeing as you missed the point entirely and provided a faulty example of your own point.

Er no dumb ass. I didn't miss my own point. I set the point and you missed it and interpret into something else. You purposely moved the goal post and you blame me for missing my own point. Do you see how fucking stupid you are?

> In your example the law recognizes marriage for heterosexuals and civil unions for homosexuals.

Yep, support both set of moralities - people who hates gay, and gay people who want to be recognized as couple.

> What if I believe gays shouldn't have civil unions? What if I believe marriage should be outlawed? What if I believe government recognition of union, marriage or civil, should be banned? Maybe only gays should be allowed to marry.

So fucking what? What you show is only an example of a subset of ethics.

> The law can only support ONE ethical and moral outcome.

Nope. It supports many morality and ethics. It takes some from each group. Do you understand SET Theory? Each morality and ethics contains a set of beliefs. For example, Morality of person A has { BeliefA1, BeliefA2, BeliefA3, ...} Morality of person B has { BeliefB1, BeliefB2, BeliefA3, ...}

The law accommodate some beliefs from each morality. It is an intersection of belief sets. It never has to accommodate ALL beliefs from everybody or one set of the other beliefs.

> You repeatedly ignore my attempts to provide detailed resources that explain how a DRO type system might form in order to enforce law.

NO! ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTION IN YOUR OWN WORDS

I'm not going to waste time and read your bullshit if you never bother to pick up a book and read about the core concept of the legal systems and the foundation of human civilizations.

> Once again: The Machinery of Freedom

Yea, read these first: Concept of law, Republic, The Prince, Das Kapital, History of Civilization

Yea read those books first and understand that you are a complete fucking moron, before you even suggest to me to read your filthy masturbatory junk literature.

You've purposely throughout this ENTIRE conversation dropped arguments you cannot addressed. You are ignorant and are intellectually dishonest with me as well as yourself.

• You dropped the point where Google is used instead of the US.
  
  
• You dropped the point where the Mother having the enforcement power to carry out justice.
  
  
• You dropped the point where Murdoch and his massive empire could easily take your land in your shitty society.
  
  
• You dropped the point where your entire family actually want to stay in this country despite your insane lunatic ass.
  
  
• You dropped the point where you have to pay to use roads regardless of your private property.
  
  
• You dropped the point where you in fact never actually own a property, read the fucking property contract and only argued from ignorance.
  
  
• You dropped the point where bitching about signing contracts "under duress" is no different to all renters who are "under duress" when they have to signed contract for rent.
  
  Fuck man, you're like a child with a leaking diaper. You purposely dropped so many fucking points that inconvenient the way you think in your shitty bubble of alternative reality.
  
  > so I'm done arguing this point with you.
  
  Meh, I don't really give a fuck in continuing this conversation with a wilful moron, who is most likely a shittiest of engineer, whose ideology is nothing but a fucking fairy tale for adults.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

> WTF are you talking about, you condescending asshole? Do you really think I don't know the difference between Marx and Putin? Because I'm not your doctrinaire reddit liberal I must be some kind of ignoramus? Fuck you.

No, in that context you'd be an idiot (who uses ignoramus, really?) because you're a liberal. But, no, you're an idiot because you say stupid things; your political and economic leanings have very little to do with it (though they are often indicative of intelligence in and of themselves).

> If you'd like to read a good book on Marx (and Lenin and Stalin), I'd suggest starting with The Rise and Fall of Communism by Archie Brown.

Any book that conflates Marx with Lenin or Stalin is fundamentally flawed, given the vast differences in their philosophy. I suggest you read Communist Manifesto and Das Capital.

I'd also point out that Neo-Marxism is alive and well and ruling in the majority of the first world.

> And my point stands. If /r/socialism always takes the side of Putin's Russia against the West, can he really be a Republican-style conservative?

I'm a Socialist. I disagree with the vast majority of things /r/socialism says. Surprisingly, /r/socialism doesn't speak for all socialists or socialist movements, any more than /r/conservative speaks for all conservatives or /r/communism speaks for Marxists (in fact, this one is doubly true, /r/communism should be better called /r/bolshevism or /r/stalinism).

Either way, not a single front-page post even mentions Putin, and in fact a trivial search of the forum indeed shows a large number of anti-Putin posts, not surprising given that Putin's political philosophy is closer to Fascism than Socialism. Either way, Putin isn't left-wing, nor is he right-wing. His views are largely fascist, and therefore don't fit into the Left-Right spectrum in the first place; there's a reason fascists referred to themselves as 'the third way'. So, your basic premise, regardless of how irrelevant it is, is also highly flawed in that it is fundamentally incorrect.

> o direito à da propriedade privada é adquirida após assinar um contracto?

Isso nem faz sentido. A propriedade privada pode ser transferida de uma pessoa para outra por contrato, mas não é criada por contrato. Se um pedaço de terra não tem dono, que tipo de contracto é que pode atribuir propriedade dessa terra a alguém?

Se estiveres interessado em filosofias que defendem a liberdade contratual mas não necessariamente a propriedade privada, aconselho o livro "Markets, Not Capitalism": https://www.amazon.com/Markets-Not-Capitalism-Individualist-Inequality/dp/1570272425

> "whataboutism" é mesmo o fundo da capacidade de argumentar.

O whataboutism é dizer que os outros não pode criticar porque também o fazem. Não estou a ver como se aplica aos meus posts.

> E aliás, pegando no teu argumento, és comunista mesmo querendo liberdade contratual mas abolição da propriedade privada. É um conceito puramente comunista

Lá está, e no entanto cumpre os critérios que tinhas definido originalmente. Penso que devias rever a tua filosofia, em vez de andares a chamar comunista a toda a gente que não segue a linha capitalista à risca.

I like Markets Not Capitalism: http://www.amazon.com/Markets-Not-Capitalism-Individualist-Inequality/dp/1570272425

Edit: down-voted but no reply? Why? Markets not Capitalism is a very good book.

Relevant

I think a few people would benefit from reading this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chavs-Owen-Jones/dp/184467696X

Here you go redditors, get this for Christmas - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chavs-Demonization-Working-Owen-Jones/dp/184467696X .

And maybe by next Christmas we will see this for what it is, a crass stereotype, no different from your standard racist or sexist cartoon. Conceived to make us feel better about our own situation, safe in the knowledge that we have a "feral underclass" to kick. Pathetic.

A big chunk of the human race will have died off by then. We're overpopulated, we hit peak oil production around 2005, and we've fucked up the climate. All the elite already know this. You should read Limits to Growth and 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next 40 Years.

The future ain't gonna be pretty.

https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Growth-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/193149858X

https://www.amazon.com/2052-Global-Forecast-Forty-Years/dp/1603584218/ref=pd_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&dpID=41BwfGQIE-L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL320_SR214%2C320_&refRID=4HF0T4T5RW4MPK30G09Y

Instead of a 3 minute video maybe you should look into it a little deeper.

http://www.amazon.com/Big-Short-Inside-Doomsday-Machine/dp/0393072231

Also, based on the editing and her tone, she pretty clearly only learned what she is teaching a few minutes ago.

Other option, If you don't like this horrible situation you can move to Venezuela, there people are equally poor in misery. I have a good idea I can move to United States and you come to live In Brazil :p.

Socialism doesn't work, read Socialism by ludwig von Mises and you are going to understand.

https://www.amazon.com/Socialism-Sociological-Ludwig-von-Mises/dp/0913966630

Alveda King doesn't think that Trump is a RACIST. Ben Carson doesn't think that Trump is a RACIST.

MSNBC - race pimps. Progressives - race pimps.

Race Pimping: The Multi-Trillion Dollar Business of Liberalism: Kevin Jackson: 9781619339521: Amazon.com: Book
https://www.amazon.com/Race-Pimping-Multi-Trillion-Business-Liberalism/dp/1619339528


https://www.amazon.com/Please-Stop-Helping-Us-Liberals/dp/1594038414/ref=pd_sim_14_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=4HZDQ3GP21ZDWD2GVYHS

Progressives are the sort of people who obsessively call other people racist right after they imply black Americans are too stupid, poor and lazy to get voter ID like everyone else in America. Racists here, racists there, racists everywhere. Racist, racist, racist.

In what direction? For the socialism inner contradictions, look no further to the dismantling of money as an distributed information system of resource and labour availability and need. See Mises's Socialism for an excellent explanation. Mises posterior works aren't as good, especially the pseudo science called praxeology, but as an analyst he was right on.

For the historical basis to Russia's empire, look into Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700-1930 and especially into Empire: The Russian Empire and Its Rivals, which is much more 'russian' in viewpoint - and sadly, in style, being more academic, stilted and rambling than the quick read of the first book.

For the demonization part, just read the dreck that passes for 'analysis' in the western media. People are paid to write that? It's either absolute ignorance or just propaganda trying to raise back the cold war fears.

Germany pulled itself up by their bootstraps after looting Europe and being bombed to oblivion, right? We messed up by feeding them corn feed (they thought it was for chickens) instead of nice sausages from the East and baguettes from France, right?

https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Beneficiaries-Plunder-Racial-Welfare/dp/0805087265