(Part 2) Best economic history books according to redditors
We found 2,347 Reddit comments discussing the best economic history books. We ranked the 606 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
Except that first it involved an incredibly daring bit of espionage to steal the plant and the secrets of fermenting black tea from the Chinese, who were controlling it. It'd require a spy sortie at least.
The story itself is wild:
https://www.amazon.com/All-Tea-China-England-Favorite/dp/0143118749/
I find arguments like this exasperating and a bit willful.
For me, it brings to mind the moment, during the election cycle of 2012 and the debates, of Mitt Romney making his "binders full of women" gaffe.
Even the tiniest bit of charity would suggest that what Romney said was roughly like Clinton's coal thing here. But holy hell, the nice well-educated partisans I spend time around reacted like he had acknowledge that he beat his wife regularly, had no particular compunction about it, and planned to do it again. They recirculated that statement to the heavens. They made memes and snarky Facebook posts about it, and would not shut up. I didn't hear the end of it, the binders full of women.
But you know what? On reflection, I think it was Mitt Romney's fault. And it was his fault because, regardless of how good he would be as a technocrat, he's bad at being a retail politician and leader, he's not charismatic, he's awkward, he said things in awkward ways, people aren't inclined to like him, and when he messed up, people didn't want to react charitably.
He was like a 5'2" guy being the starting center on an NBA team somehow. He shouldn't be there. Nature has strongly suggested he shouldn't be there.
And that's how I feel about Hillary Clinton. Maybe it's unfair, and maybe it's partially because of sexism, but at the end of the day, being liked and treated charitably is a major part of the job.
One consistent thing I've seen about relatively successful presidents in my lifetime (and here I'm thinking about Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Obama) is that there's a constant voicing of frustration from their partisan foes that they're made of Teflon, that stories that would drag anyone else down somehow just slide off of them. And this is repeated as though it's something inexplicable.
But it's not, not really, or I don't think so. It's just a major part of being good at the job. Being President in a democracy like ours has a very large element of popularity contest to it. That's just in the nature of the job.
Frankly, this is part of what is so interesting about Trump, if you can emotionally take a step back. He is obviously very, very, very bad at a whole range of things that go into the actual day-to-day presidential job description. I think that's clearly true as much to people who want his agenda to pass as to people who don't. By most metrics, he should not be where he is. And yet, he had that one thing; somehow all of the (often very reasonable and well-sourced) attacks just aren't sticking to him correctly. I mean, look at this article from a few days ago:
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/13/teflon-trump-democrats-messaging-242607
Crazy, right? This is still happening.
It brings to mind the famous Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. statement about Franklin D. Roosevelt that he had "a second-rate intellect, but a first-class temperament."
And all of this is why I find pieces like this Vox one kind of exasperating and willful. Because I get this strong sense that they really, really, really want to live in a world where being Lisa Simpson is the right qualification for being in charge of things. And Lisa Simpson would probably make a marvelous technocrat, conscientious and knowledgeable and hard-working. I am fairly sure all those words apply to both Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney, and... well, let's just say fewer of them apply to Donald Trump.
But Lisa Simpson is annoying. And democracy is a popularity contest.
(And I understand that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2 percent or so, but she still managed to lose the election to Donald Trump - let's not normalize this. For any politician with even a modicum of political talent and instincts, it shouldn't have been even vaguely close)
I'm reading the book "Illiberal Reformers" right now (https://www.amazon.com/Illiberal-Reformers-Eugenics-Economics-Progressive/dp/0691169594), about Progressive Reformers around 1890-1920, say, and one thing that is interesting about it is it really emphasizes the extent to which the people who gave rise to the social sciences in universities and the modern expert-run administrative state really, really did not like, trust, or value democracy. They considered it a popularity contest that involved catering to uneducated people's worst impulses, easily demagogued, at odds with the efficient administration of expert-run government programs that could help more people and make a strong state. In short, they noticed that democracies were popularity contests that selected against technocratic Lisa Simpson's, and so their solution was to abandon any real trust in democracy - better to neuter it and let the administrative state, full of Lisa Simpsons, do its thing. Think of the Federal Reserve as an example, say.
And I think that's a possibly coherent place to end up, intellectually, and I understand the argument. But you have to be ready to actually name democracy and its elevation of charisma as the actual problem if you want to adopt that position.
I think writers like the ones here at Vox are not ready to accept that logic for obvious emotional / moral reasons, but not because of a flaw in the logic. They still want, somehow, for being Lisa Simpson to be the qualification for success in democratic leadership, and if it isn't, then there needs to be some sort of remedy in our institutions and press that makes being Lisa Simpson somehow popular.
That sounds like an nice idea, but sadly it's not true. On the flip side, I wouldn't be so critical as to call people stupid.
Lots of studies have pointed out consistent patterns where we humans regularly make incorrect economic decisions in certain situations. In other words, we have evolved all manners of mental shortcuts that work well enough in basic scenarios but are utterly trivial to exploit. As much as I'd like to blame the corporations, the truth seems closer to: user behavior comes first, the lies taking advantage of it come second.
In this specific case, people are wired to enjoy feeling like they got a great deal and obtained something more efficiently or at a cheaper price than the average person did. They enjoy this feeling much more than they enjoy the feeling of comfort knowing they are buying something at a fair price.
If this sort of stuff sounds interesting to anyone, I highly recommend Misbehaving, which particularly comes to mind as it uses the JCPenney case to talk about these flaws in our thinking and why the idea was doomed from the start.
http://www.amazon.com/Banana-Fate-Fruit-Changed-World/dp/1594630380
>"inflation and recession are basically mutually exclusive"
That's what the olden-style Keynesians said -- and that's why they left the field thanks to the stagflation of the 1970s, which they said couldn't happen.
In simplest terms: there's the real economy and then there's the price level, changes in which comprise inflation ... and as Milton Friedman famously said, "Significant inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon".
In the 1970s the big oil price shock hit. That was a real shock to the economy that was going to hurt it and cause unemployment.
The Fed reacted with the olden-Keynesisan prescription of stimulus to increase employment and prevent a recession, even if causing some inflation.
Friedman said that wouldn't work -- since the blow to the economy was a real external shock a recession was going to result whatever the Fed did, as the economy adjusted to the big change in the cost of oil. Adding a loose money policy on top of it would only result in inflation added to the recession -- stagflation.
Friedman as proved exactly right. He collected his Nobel shortly afterward. Old-style Keynesianism disappeared. (Krugman and the other "Keynesians" of today are Neo-Keynesians who have adapted to Friedman's insights.)
A really excellent book on all this written for the general audience is Friedman's Money Mischief. It shows how during the oil shock inflation in the USA surged, in Germany remained flat, and in Japan fell sharply -- because the Germans are never going to allow inflation again after their Weimar experience, and the Japanese had started an anti-inflation money policy when they had it at 20% a few years earlier, and stuck with the policy during the oil shock years. But all three had the same recession.
This absolutely refuted, among other things, the claim heard all the time then (and still today) that oil price increases cause inflation. "Significant inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon", not an oil price phenomenon, or a commodity price phenomenon.
The book also has an excellent history of the gold standard (and silver money in the USA) that some of the Paleo-Austrians around here ought to read to learn something.
Note that different recessions have different root causes. If the main cause is an external real shock such as a big sudden unexpected increase in the cost of oil, causing the economy to have to restructure, there's nothing money policy can do to avert it.
OTOH if the cause of recession is a sudden sharp fall in aggregate demand, then there is a lot that monetary policy can do about it.
This was very plainly clear in the current recession when in the last half of 2008 deflation very suddenly hit at a 13% annual rate -- not seen since the worst days of the Great Depression -- and the Fed reacted with QE1 which stopped the deflation dead in its tracks.
"Inflation and recession are mutually exclusive" pretty much fit the general pattern from 1948 though the 1980s, when the typical business cycle pattern was that the Fed got too loose, caused inflation, then tightened and caused a recession to cut the inflation.
The extreme example of that was during the Carter years when inflation went way up into double digits -- then after Reagan came into office Volcker put a hammerlock on the money supply to break the inflation, caused a recession with 11% unemployment (higher than in the current recession, though for not as long), smashed inflation down to near zip, then loosened to get the economy going at a good rate again with modest inflation, as it did for the next decade.
But the stagflation years were different (and so is today).
https://www.amazon.com/Money-Mischief-Episodes-Monetary-History/dp/015661930X
First chapter of Friedman's book talks about a Polynesian tribe that used giant stone wheels as currency and walks through the absurdity of the mechanics of that economy. How the Imperial Germans, when they occupied the island, spurred the islanders to action by painting the rocks with black paint as a punishment for non-compliance with their edicts (it worked). How the tribe developed basically a system of credit that no longer required physical ownership or the moving of the heavy wheels.
Then he turns it around and points out that the paper money and credit economy is basically the same thing.
People will always find a medium of exchange. Gold served perfectly for thousands of years because it was malleable (coinable), rare, you could not fake it (Archimedes solved that), and to a certain degree useful as jewelry. Still is useful as a store of value in that respect, but if you have a responsible money supply (which we've more or less had since 1982), money functions the same as gold
Noam Chomsky is the author of Profit Over People: Neoliberalism & Global Order, What Uncle Sam Really Wants, and countless others.
Naomi Wolf is the author of The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries, and others.
Chris Hedges is the author of "Someone You Love: Coming to a Gulag Near You", The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress, Death of the Liberal Class, and others
Daniel Ellsberg @ http://www.ellsberg.net/articles
Cornel West @ http://www.cornelwest.com/
Birgitta Jónsdóttir's website & twitter
Alexa O'Brien's website & twitter
Kai Wargalla's twitter account.
Tangerine Bolen @ RevolutionTruth; website & twitter
Indeed: to answer /u/Gmtom 's question, I suppose Jonah Goldberg put it best when he said much of the success of the Progressive movement comes down to marketing the movement under the name 'Progressive'. He (Jonah) likes to compare this to the Cult from Parks and Rec that calls itself the 'The Reasonabilists', because... well, who can disagree with a name like that?
To your point, there is a book (which, to be fair I haven't yet read) on exactly that point by Princeton Prof. Thomas C. Leonard, Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era.
Before going on, I guess the best way to answer the question of what is a "progressive" is to ask "what is the end goal to which the movement is intended to progress"?
Well, as Prof. Leonard's title alludes to, the original Progressive movement was at least superficially devoted to a Whiter, more Christian and more European West. They were obsessed with Eugenics, which one early Progressive intellectual referred to as 'bringing the principles of wildlife conservation to bear on humans'. Oddly I wrote a longish post on this earlier today.
Obviously, few Progressives today are advocating for Eugenics... although BLM seems to have resurrected the idea of 'Segregation being a benefit for the Negro'... But! That aside,by and large most of the policies (or, at least, the explicitly racist justifications) of the original Progressives have been jettisoned.
Which leaves a strange situation: today most Progressives will deny up and down that the progressive movement today has anything in common with the Progressive movement prior to, say, the 1960's. Putting aside the idea that the entire movement has been replaced (ala invasion of the body snatchers) and their ideology completely changed in the wash, what remains that connects today's Progressives with the Progressives of Woodrow Wilson,Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt and Margret Sanger? The answer is that while the justifications are different, the core of the movement remains.
A progressive is, therefore, someone devoted to the idea of Efficient Government, and by efficient I mean a government that is not constrained by individual rights (or natural rights, as the early Progressives referred to them).
I was going to expand on that, but I think I'm rapidly reaching obnoxious length here.
Quantitative Finance major here.
High Frequency Trading is insane. Everyone fights to shave off nanoseconds by putting their servers in the room as exchanges, orders are instantaneously cancelled in order to confuse other traders, companies have blasted through mountains in order to get perfectly straight fiber optic cables between point A and B. Order types complicated and predatory towards other traders. Goldman Sachs called the FBI on their own employee because he was suspected of stealing HFT code. On top of it all - the exchanges love HFT. More orders = more money. The exchange you trade on might pay you, or you might pay them but before your trade even gets there - a hedge fund or proprietary trading group might be paying to look at the order before anyone else.
If you're interested in the story, I highly recommend reading Flash Boys, When Genius Failed, and The Quants.
If you're interested in stopping whatever you're doing to learn how to develop machine learning algorithms and work on the street, PM me.
The hypocrisy is amazing. Britain, Germany, America certainly had no problems with stealing intellectual property [see below] or erecting huge barriers to trade [https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Samaritans-Secret-History-Capitalism/dp/1596915986/]. In fact, they even invaded and drugged a nation to steal wealth [https://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Opium-Wars-Jack-Beeching/dp/0156170949/].
 
IP theft is a century's long Western tradition
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-05-26/china-didn-t-invent-industrial-espionage
http://www.amazon.com/For-All-Tea-China-Favorite/dp/0143118749
http://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/internet-privacy/snowden--the-nsa-planted-backdoors-in-cisco-products.html
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/26/a_nation_of_outlaws/?page=full
http://www.amazon.com/Operation-Paperclip-Intelligence-Program-Scientists/dp/0316221031/
http://japanfocus.org/-Christopher-Reed/2177/article.html
Nudge by Thaler (Nobel Prize in Economics) & Sunstein
A book which is unquestionably about Economics and Public Policy
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I haven't read it yet but it's on my list:
Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics also by Thaler
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Thinking Fast & Slow by Kahneman (Nobel Prize in Economics)
Not strictly about economics but Kahneman essentially created the field of "Behavioral Economics" and the implications for his theories about decision making bias are extensive in Economics. In many ways Kahneman and Tverski's work is the foundation of Thaler's in Nudge.
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Also:
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
If you can't tell I like the Behavioral Econmics books...
It's refreshing to see younger adults resonate with Chris Hedges. He is one of the last true journalists of this country, and one of the few individuals from the press to openly speak out against the war in Iraq during the Bush administration.
He's one of the few individuals I consider my hero living today. Read his books, "Death of the Liberal Class" and "Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt", because he paints an accurate picture at the problems we face today: division of the middle class, the profiteers of corporations, the rape and pillage of our ecosystem. It's extremely sad to read and it will make you angry because only then will you truly understand at how backwards American society has become. If anyone is interested to learn more, watch this interview he was in with Bill Moyers. He single-handedly taught me not only to be an objective reader and investigator, but how to debate using facts and sources instead of ad-hominems and logical fallacies, what a true journalist should be in my opinion.
The phrase, "ignorance is bliss" rings so true after reading these books for me, because it opened my eyes up to the greed and willingness of corporations to seek profit over human life. It was difficult for me to process at first because I was never aware of so many things he mentions in these books, I didn't want to believe they were true. The thought of Americans cities as disaster zones, or 3rd world countries, but also how easily they engineered this system of propaganda to an already apathetic and ignorant country upset me not because I was offended, but that it was painfully true. The overall narrative of his language is that very principle of Capitalism itself is to consume all the resources for the maximization profit until it will ultimately consume itself... and he hammers it home brilliantly.
Hell: PM me and I'll buy you a digital copy of these books myself, that is how powerful and impacting they are to me.
Edit: This also an open invitation for anyone else who wants to read these books. My Xmas gift to you guys...
I understand that the bottom right square is already overfull, but "marginal employers go out of business" belongs there too.
That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen:
http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LOP6H7U/
Economics in One Lesson:
https://fee.org/media/14946/economicsinonelesson.pdf
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003XT60KO/
Thanks for sharing. I hope this gets more up votes!
However, one thing I will say is that it would be interesting if this data took into consideration how many years into the bull market the market was. Cuz think about it. it makes sense that ~66% of the time you are better off investing all your money because the market's general trend is upwards. However, the longer into a bull market one gets (tautologically) the closer you are to a bear market. So, to me, it would be interesting to see a chart showing how the percentage changes every additional year into a bull market... unless I am think about this wrong.
In Jeremy Siegel's most recent addition of Stocks for the Long Run he explains that there has never been a time when an investor in the US market didn't make money on an investment left for over a decade.
Two important factors are at work when it comes to bubbles:
A good book on bubbles is Devil Take the Hindmost. It covers some earlier bubbles like the South Seas and the Dutch tulip market. Decent background reading on the historical aspects of these speculations.
I know exactly what you mean. My wife can't understand why I read mainly non-fiction type books. She reads all sorts of fiction, but to me, it's just not that interesting. I would rather read about something real.
A few interesting reads I read last year: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3872.A_History_of_the_World_in_6_Glasses
and http://www.amazon.com/For-All-Tea-China-Favorite/dp/0143118749 .That one about all the tea in China is a really awesome read.
http://www.amazon.com/For-All-Tea-China-Favorite/dp/0143118749
I am a little bit of a tea fanatic - for a yank - and also a nerd. This book is a great read on the subject - really fascinating stuff. Imperialism, drugs, botanical history, industrial espionage, Scottish dude passing himself off as Chinese...
They made better history back then.
Keynes balked when he had the chance to denounce capitalism. To make a very long story short, he thought that people could "tame the beast" whereas Hayek believed you could "starve the beast".
Notice what I'm doing here: I'm discussing the two right wing concepts of neocons and neoliberals. So let's explain what both miss.
Hayek, being the key figure of private markets and less government, lived with an idealized free market economy. Since the election of Reagan, we've tried that experiment of eliminating government in everything. What Hayek missed was that power can accumulate in more than one form, threatening individual liberty.
What Hayek missed is the concept of externalities. We tax businesses for societal problems which would be a bad waste of resources. One big example? Oil. We should be taxing it instead of giving it a subsidy. Hayek's main problem is essentially that this is the same work that can be undermined by an Excel error.
Now let's get into Keynes... They managed the economy well because they had IMMENSE pressure in the 30s from three groups: Communists, Socialists, and unions. Keynes was even a former Marxist who felt that Capitalism could be made more germane. Granted, with so much pressure from below, they had to do something, and Keynesians created a LOT of good ideas that helped out the people. But in the 70s, their ideas became quantitative and complex, pushing them to be cheerleaders of the system of capitalism instead of understanding it.
Honestly, I like Paul Krugman but reading some of his stuff is needlessly difficult. He talks about interest rates, investments, and all sorts of minutiae which is great but needlessly complicated. That's his job though... Making the layman understand as if his article is an episode of Frazier.
But let's take Keynesian economics to its extent. Still, it's a neoclassical economic study. What's going to happen in the end?
Well, unless you fix the problems that progressives ignore, you're going to have a failing of political democracy yet again. And what liberals and conservatives fail to understand is essentially one fundamental flaw of capitalism. It's undemocratic. We have shareholders, who appoint managers, who decide what you produce, where you produce, and how you produce. That's how a capitalist business is formed.
But think about what is left out here... You have a situation where someone has power over you and what you do. And if you're fired, you're no longer an effective part of your community. You are an employee, with few rights, little access to your government and even fewer chances to speak out. America is tailored to the employer!
So to me, that's where Keynesians forget or have yet to explore. As a Marxist who went from conservative to libertarian to liberal to Socialist in my life, it just felt that these notions are either ignored or downplayed by most liberals to the detriment of the entire political ideology. I actually enjoy discussions with neoclassical thoughts. I actually like debates. But you have to be honest about the downfalls of schools of thoughts in order to see them strengthened.
What has occurred in Congress is that the liberals are stuck advocating the same policies of the 1930s. The conservatives are stuck with the same failed policies of 1929. Both schools didn't seem to grow from the 1970s when Keynesian economic theory collapse under stagflation, economists were mainly discussing pure theories instead of reality, and most left wing groups were taken away from schools where they weren't able to become more effective in discussing alternative views.
Make no mistake, I don't look to discredit Keynes at all and hope I'm being sincere in showing the criticisms I have with right wing economics. What I hope to do here is to show that the main issues is in how it looks to tame capitalism which means it doesn't solve the problems inherent in capitalism that Marx already discussed: class. Not that class is the most important thing, not that it's ineffective. It's just a fact that class is the most ignored part of any economic theory that none other than left wingers talk about... That distinct separation of employer and employee which can undo any gains as evidenced by how most of the New Deal has essentially been undone.
Source for argument on Keynes
Source for comparison of Marx, Keynes, and Hayek
I would check out Paul de Grauwe's lectures. A good history on Behavioural Finance, including pioneers and specific papers, can be found in Richard Thaler's Misbehaving. Andrew Lo's Adaptive Markets is the most recent book for specifically markets. But all these books on markets tend to discuss the same anecdotes from Kahnemann and Tversky, without giving much thought to applicable models. De Gauwe's book on the other hand offers some ready-made code for matlab even.
As a general principle? No, I don’t believe so. It’s not even psychology; it’s game theory and economics. Read a book.
Here, I’ll get you started. Try this on for size and argue with an idea instead of attacking people’s motivations.
You should read books like this https://www.amazon.com/Misbehaving-Behavioral-Economics-Richard-Thaler/dp/039335279X
>Why is engineering a collapse a profitable event?
It's hard to sell high when you can't buy low.
Short before the collapse, buy after the collapse.
There is the classic tale of how Mayer Rothschild amplified his fortune when England and France were at war. One of his businesses at the time was transport between the two countries. As a result he was the first to learn England had won the conflict. He started selling, fooling British traders into believing that England had lost against Napoleon. After the resulting collapse, he bought his fill for a song.
Devil take the hindmost. In the implosion of the American economy, the "hindmost" are the American people and countries like China that have bet heavily on the US dollar. You can be assured that the insiders will be high and dry when the inevitable is undeniable. After they kill this currency they'll no doubt offer a shiny new one, such as the Amero, in its place.
Hey there. I'll give you a little summary of what I think most people on here will tell you in response to your questions.
Books: Blue Bottle ,Coffee Comprehensive and Uncommon Grounds are all good books to cover most of coffee and its processes.
This Capresso Infinity is considered a pretty decent burr grinder for the price. It will not do espresso but will be good enough for most other coffee brewing methods.
Getting a set up that is acceptable for "real" espresso is kind of expensive. A Gaggia classic is considered the bare minimum espresso machine for a "real" espresso. A Baratza Virtuoso is considered bare minimum for a decent espresso grinder. Now, you can (and many people do) find these items used, which obviously reduces the cost greatly. But depending on your area, finding these items up on craigslist or similar sites can be pretty rare.
I'm not from Rhode Island, but googling local roasters will provide some results. As for online ordering, tonx, blue bottle and stumptown are favorites around here for their price and quality. Beans are broken down on what region they came from, how they were processed and how dark they are roasted. Each region has different flavor profiles in their beans. African beans are known for being more fruity than other beans, for example. A little warning, most people on this subreddit believe Starbuck's espresso roast coffee to be too dark. However, many of Starbuck's light/Medium roast coffees have been reviewed as pretty decent. Most websites that sell the beans will list a flavor profile of the beans. The basic saying on this subreddit is that if you have crappy beans, no matter what, your coffee will be crappy. If you are going to overspend anywhere in the process, overspend on quality beans.
The espresso machines that you will be using at starbucks are machines that will basically produce espresso at the push of a button. They will grind, tamp and extract the espresso without any input from you. You should just know right off the bat that there is a whole other world to espresso making that is the exact opposite, with people grinding the beans to the right size, tamping by hand, and extracting shots with a lever that controls pressure. Neither way is right or wrong, you should just know that there are many different types of espresso machines and baristas.
I'll share a little bit of advise, take from it what you will. I was an ambitious college student coffee drinker just like you. I asked for a Breville espresso machine as my first real coffee making device (even before a grinder, how silly of me). I just wanted an espresso machine because that was all I was getting from these coffee shops. Since then I've gotten a nice grinder, a melitta pour over, french press, gooseneck kettle, aeropress, V60, moka pot, and chemex. I'm ashamed to admit that I haven't turned on my espresso machine in over a year. There is so much more to coffee than espresso. There are so many methods to brew coffee that are cheaper, more complex and more interesting. If I had a chance to do it all over again, I'd buy the burr grinder I linked, and an Aeropress or any french press (Starbucks sells some pretty nice ones. You could get one with an employee discount) and just learn to love coffee on its own, without frothed milk and flavorings.
There is a ton of info on this subreddit if you stick around for awhile. Questions like yours are posted all the time and answered by very knowledgable people. Your enthusiasm for coffee is extremely exciting to see. Please don't let any of my advise subtract from your enthusiasm. Everyone takes a different path while exploring coffee. That's part of the excitement. You will learn a lot at Starbucks and you will learn a lot if you stay here. Enjoy your stay.
No, no, no. The Hero With A Thousand Faces is still very much in print. I bought two copies in the last year.
http://www.amazon.com/Hero-Thousand-Faces-Mythos-Books/dp/0691017840
Yes, that's Luke Skywalker featured prominently on the cover.
The book should be required reading for anyone who is part of the reddit Atheist Brigade. There are essential functions fulfilled by myths and ritual that can't be replaced with the Internet.
You should read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Popular-Delusions-Madness-Crowds/dp/1463740514
This is how groups of people can help convince one another and how difficult it is to deny what your in-group believes. How people can be convinced without evidence based on in-group, or tribal mentality.
Some people really struggle with seeing loses in their portfolio. You should consider that maybe stocks are not a suitable investment vehicle for you if you are afraid you won't have the discipline to hold when the markets are down.
One thing that helps, is to realize that bear markets are normal and expected. If you have a long term strategy then it is nothing to fear, in fact, bear markets represent good buying opportunities to the long term investor.
I highly recommend this book - Stocks for the Long Run by Jeremy Siegel (You can probably find the pdf by googling it).
https://www.amazon.com/Stocks-Long-Run-Definitive-Investment/dp/0071800514
The book does a through analysis of historical stock returns and convincingly argues that holding a diversified portfolio of stocks for a long period of time is a very efficient way to invest. Even if you only read the first chapter, it may increase your confidence and help you create your own strategy.
>RF tem, por definição, um retorno fixo acima da inflação
Não necessariamente. RF tem apenas retorno CONTRATADO, que não é necessariamente atrelado a um índice de inflação ou acima dele. Pode perder da inflação (olha o resultado de overnight/CDI desde 1967, segundo gráfico).
Além disso mesmo RF atrelada à inflação pode perder não só da inflação mas até perder principal pela marcação a mercado. Ou pode perder com a manipulação dos índices, não esquece que o governo manda no IPCA (não é por acaso que costuma ser menor que IGP-M).
Quer um exemplo aqui e agora de RF perder da inflação? IGP-M de 10,80% nos últimos 12 meses, com CDI em 6,40%. Ta perdendo feio da inflação.
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>dizer que o risco é menor me é estranho
Não estou dizendo, é o que os números mostram.
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>Que cálculo de risco foi feito, exatamente?
Volatilidade de retornos quando pega janelas de longo prazo. Se você quer fazer ou postar outro cálculo com outra forma de medir risco, fique à vontade, eu também não gosto de desvio padrão de retornos como medida de risco, mas é o que tem estudos hoje.
Já está na própria mensagem inicial, só ler:
>"Stocks"? Nenhum índice parece refletir esse gráfico. Quais ações? Normalizado sobre o quê?
O gráfico que você citou é extremamente famoso, do Jeremy Siegel em Stocks for The Long Run. Vi agora que tem 5 estrelas na amazon, primeiro livro de investimentos que vi tão bem avaliado. E tem a fonte no rodapé, era só buscar.
Não é só um índice pois não há nenhum índice que pegue todo o período (desde 1800) de forma consistente. S&P500 começou só em 1957. Dow Jones é pouco diversificado, poucas empresas e começou pouco antes de ~1900, já na metade do período. Foram usados diferentes dados de diferentes estudos, até chegar em um índice "total market" de 1926 até agora. Diretamente do livro:
Referente a juros: See Sieg el, "The Real Rate of Interest from 1800-1990: A study of the U.S. and UK," Journal of Monetary Economics, 29 (1992), pp. 227-52, for a detailed description of process by which a historical yield series was constructed.
Meu Kindle ta longe e desligado, peguei esses dados de um pdf do livro no google e não da minha cópia, talvez nas edições mais atualizadas tenha alguma informação complementar.
Não tem mais detalhes sobre cada fonte e calculinho de cada número pois não estou escrevendo um paper acadêmico, são só informações úteis para o pequeno investidor, compiladas. Que me lembre todos os gráficos tão bem indicados do que se trata (por mais pouco usual que seja para um BR ler sobre índice de ações da Índia) para servir de ponto de partida a outras buscas para quem quiser ir além.
> the smartest people in the world and their collective knowledge is what makes up the stock market
Not really.
The market is made up of lakhs of people trying to outsmart each other. Humans, even experts, make bad decisions - and these bad decisions are made worse by emotions like greed, fear and envy when a lot of money is at stake.
> Doesn't the market "price in" everything?
Nope. There are a lot of unknowns. A steady rise in market prices makes everyone complacent. So complacent that they start ignoring the unknowns and start taking more risk. This is the sort of behaviour that leads to bubbles.
If you want to know more about market stupidity you must read Devil Take the Hindmost
Uncommon Grounds is extremely thorough and accessible. It gives a very complete history of coffee.
Here's a short rundown of some the various ways people can interact economically that might help you navigate various economic discourse:
-------Different kinds of "exchange": gift-exchange and market exchange:
Market-exchange is an exchange of alienable things between transactors who are in a state of reciprocal independence.
Noncommodity (gift) exchange is an exchange of inalienable things between transactors who are in a state of reciprocal dependence.
Market exchange establishes objective quantitative relationships (prices) between the objects transacted, while gift exchange establishes personal qualitative relationships between the subjects transacting.
Gift exchange differs from barter or market exchange because the value of the gifts is judged qualitatively, not quantitatively as in the case of commodities. Gift-exchange is based on ‘the capacity for actors (agents, subjects) to extract or elicit from others items that then become the object of their relationship’.
In his famous book Gifts and Commodities, Christopher A. Gregory (an economic anthropologist) suggests this is a general tendency.
Gift economies tend to personify objects. Commodity/market economies, do the opposite: they tend to treat human beings, or at least, aspects of human beings, like objects. The most obvious example is human labor: in modern economics we talk of “goods and services” as if human activity itself were something analogous to an object, which can be bought or sold in the same way as cheese, or tire-irons.
Gregory lays out a tidy set of oppositions. Gifts are transactions that are meant to create or effect “qualitative” relations between persons; they take place within a preexisting web of personal relations; therefore, even the objects involved have a tendency to take on the qualities of people.
Commodity exchange (market), on the other hand, is meant to establish a “quantitative” equivalence of value between objects; it should ideally be done quite impersonally; therefore, there is a tendency to treat even the human beings involved like things.
-------Some non-exchange: Demand-sharing, pooling, "everyday Communism":
It's similar to what David Graeber calls "everyday communism", which he defines as:
"An open-ended agreement between two groups, or even two individuals, to provide for the other; within which, even access to one another’s possessions followed the principle of ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’."
(‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’, the old communist formula, basically means if you have a need and I have the ability to meet that need, I do it.
Keeping count or reciprocating is very frowned upon in these sort of situations.
This sort of communism is quite common (even under capitalism), in families, between friends and there's a little of it in every non-hostile relationship.)
What characterizes a sharing context comparatively is that it extends the circle of people who can enjoy the good implicated in a resource, for instance accessing a certain resource such as water. In other words, sharing food or drink is an action done for its own sake, putting the good of nourishment in the place of any specific goals that may be derivative of the transfer of food items, for instance the attempt to create obligations for the future. In this understanding, sharing is not a manifestation of an altruistic move, putting the goals of others above one's own goals, but rather one of renouncing derivative goals altogether in the face of intrinsic goods—its intrinsic value if you will. In gift-giving contexts, by contrast, goals of various kinds (whether held jointly by the exchange partners or not, whether altruistic or egoistic) override the intrinsic good of whatever it is that is being provided.
It's important to distinguish exchange, which is usually for “external” and strategic benefits such as having a network of partners, creating obligations for the future, etc. (gift-exchange) or and more impersonal and violent benefits when it comes to market-exchange – from sharing that entails the intrinsic goods of receiving a share (sharing out) and of being accepted as a member of the community of humans with recognized needs (sharing in).
Unlike what the economic fundamentalists would have you believe, sharing is not governed by either ecological need and pressure nor a diffuse notion of generosity and altruism. The ethnographic record shows that sharing takes place not only under conditions of scarcity, and that it typically takes the form of demand sharing rather than apparently generous gift-giving. In fact, a number of cultural conditions have to be in place for sharing to work. Unlike the case of exchange systems, these conditions are not formally institutionalized normative systems but, instead, complex systems of habitual practice. In the ethnographic cases (including those in capitalist societies), sharing works because people have a shared history of mutual involvements as kin, because they master numerous ways of initiating sharing through implicature and other forms of talk, and finally because they recognize the presence of others as the (often silent) demand that it constitutes toward those who have and who are in a position to give.
Many acts of sharing took place, and continue to take place, because they are initiated by the taker and social strategies are in place that decouple giving from receiving. Sharing may therefore take place (as said before) without the provider enacting and expressing charity. Often it takes place in a way that downgrades the act of giving as part of leveling any potential attempts of the giver to take political advantage from his or her economically advantaged position. Demand sharing not only inverts the sequence of action but also the tone of the transaction that is known as “charitable giving.” There is no sharing without a demand. The demand need not be uttered, and it need not be the demand of a specific interlocutor since it is a demand for provisioning that emerges as a consequence of moral role relationships or as incurred by a particular situation of copresence, as I would prefer to call it. We need to recognize that one’s mere bodily presence, underlined by addressing the other person in particular ways, is always a demand for being acknowledged as a partner, a personal being with legitimate needs. An appropriate definition of demand sharing is therefore much broader than the use of explicit demands such as “Give me . . .” leading to the appropriation of what one may think one is entitled to. The explicitness of the demand may differ and it may be entirely implicit very much like a “silent demand”. Humans are sufficiently able to put themselves into the situation of others to be able to know what the intrinsic goods of shared objects are for fellow humans without any demand being uttered.
Sharing is generally characterized by the preparedness to suspend measuring objects against one another (which means that sharing does not necessarily entail that everyone gets the same) in that situation and by the unwillingness to hang on to something in a particular situation.
You can read more about this in Thomas Widlok's book "Anthropology and the Economy of Sharing": https://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-Economy-Sharing-Thomas-Widlok/dp/1138945552
​
If you're interested in reading about Libertarian Marxist theories of post-capitalism I recommend taking a look at:
The Beginning of History: Value Struggles and Global Capital by Massimo de Angelis.
Omnia Sunt Communia: On the Commons and the Transformation to Postcapitalism by Massimo de Angelis.
Crack Capitalism by John Holloway has the best take on abstract labor vs what he calls concrete doing.
Rupturing the Dialectic: The Struggle against Work, Money, and Financialization by Harry Cleaver has a very good analysis of the labor theory of value and the abolition of money.
That's an awesome list. I'd echo that the two very best sources to learn about the exact crimes committed leading up to the financial crisis are The Untouchables and
Inside Job.
And I'd add a third:
Predator Nation (written by the guy who made Inside Job)
If people just want a single source, The Untouchables is where they should go. It shows how banks sold products they knew were defective. That is fraud, and it is criminal. Simple as that. The executives were knowingly selling those products (and there were many) should be in jail.
Here's a fuller list of selections I can recommend from a reading list at TooBigHasFailed.org. Any of these sources are good for learning what was going on leading up to the crash.
Podcasts
NPR: The Giant Pool of Money |
NPR: Return to the Giant Pool of Money |
NPR: Another Frightening Show about the Economy |
EconTalk interview w/ Simon Johnson
Documentaries
Addendum to Inside Job |
PBS: Money, Power, & Wall Street |
Aljazeera: Meltdown |
60 Minutes: The Speed Traders |
Quants: The Alchemists of Wall Street
Books
I.O.U. - John Lanchester |
Griftopia - Matt Taibbi |
Infectious Greed - Frank Partnoy |
All the Devils are Here - Joe Nocera & Bethany McLean |
Traders, Guns, and Money - Satyajit Das |
Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Report
ETA: I see that a moderator here is requesting academic sources. Here are three good ones: Fault Lines - Raghuram Rajan | Republic, Lost - Lawrence Lessig | This Time Is Different - Reinhart & Rogoff
To be honest, most of the academic sources I've read don't focus on criminality on Wall Street. I'd love to find more that do, though.
I suggest you read this book for a better understanding of this particular issue.
http://www.amazon.com/All-Devils-Are-Here-Financial/dp/1591843634
no joke bro, no joke.
To me the economic case for libertarianism was a very important factor in understanding the distortions and moral corruption caused by the State. So my recommendation is Hazlitt's excellent Economics in One Lesson.
Agreed that this is not a single essay but a small book with many (short) chapters. But the most-helpful rated review for that book in Amazon says -
Hazlitt's "one lesson" is simple, and told in Chapter 1. The rest of the chapters are all stories in which the lesson plays a prominent role. In short, Hazlitt doesn't merely tell us the lesson, he actually shows us the lesson -- over and over and over, until we've got it.
With stories on tariffs, minimum wage, rent controls, taxes. unions, wages, profits, savings, credit, unemployment, and so much more, Hazlitt takes some of the most difficult economic concepts and makes these easily accessible to the lay person who has no economic training, background, or even inclination.
My BookDepository order has arrived! Been hyped to read this book about tea since I drunkenly made the order two weeks ago!
Not quite your goal, but: quant.
(2) A good starting point for an investor is -
- [Stocks for the long run](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stocks_for_the_Long_Run) Big takeaway - dont be scared of volatility. Stay the course and you will rewarded.
- [Random walk down wall street](https://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall-Street/dp/0393330338) Big takeaway - true alpha is hard and other investors are equally smart so beating an index is not trivial.
- [Thinking Fast and Slow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow) Big takeaway - our biases are predictable and we can correct for them if we know them.
- [Devil Take the Hindmost](https://www.amazon.com/Devil-Take-Hindmost-Financial-Speculation/dp/0452281806) Big takeaway - risk is real.
Have purposefully kept it small and diverse. More than often people list 20 book and the task seems so overwhelming that a vast majority chooses to not even start.
It's was an interesting modern take on the Grimm fairy tales, specifically those about the hero's journey and a girl's coming of age myth/fable. Despite the plot holes, if you are at all familiar with Joseph Campbell's The Hero With A Thousand Faces you will immediately recognize the (at times over the top) symbolism of the various stages the heroine goes through on her journey from childhood into adulthood.
It's an action-flick version of a classic fable. Personally I liked the fact that someone made a movie about a teenage girl for a change. Haven't seen something like that since Mirror Mask.
But as with everything, haters gotta hate; 90% chance they are male.
このテーゼの主導者はプリンストン大学の経済学者であるThomas Leonardで、
OPのネタのブログの著者はAmazonで彼の著書（amazonリンク注意）を絶賛するレビューをしている。
当該時代門外漢の感想としては、20世紀前半の社会科学分野における優生学／社会進化論の影響は相当大きいので
誰でも叩けば埃が出る可能性がある以上、その思想に基づいて運動を行ったのか、
運動の「手段」としてのツールとしてもっぱら用いたのかは区分して考える必要があると思う。
※優生学Eugeneに社会進化論（社会ダーウィニズム）を併記
それと、もう一つ気になるのは「優生学理念に基づき設定された最低賃金が非熟練労働者の
排除に用いられた」という説を受け入れる場合でも、
優生学理念が件のブログやネット上の英語言説（ブログやコラム）で溢れている
人種差別主義者Racist的な発想で黒人（非熟練）労働者の排除に用いられた、という点について
Leonardをはじめ多少アカデミック畑の人間からの発言が見つけづらい点。
（しばしば引かれているウェッブ夫妻はそもそもイギリス人だし）
You are certainly correct that the quality of public education can vary widely, however no matter how well performing a public school may be they all suffer from the same fundamental issues. As references to this brief diatribe I will point you to (as in my other comment) the school sucks project, a book called Illiberal Reformers which details the frightening truth of the early progressive movement, and finally The Underground History of American Education which is a book by a decorated public school teacher who had a terrifying realization after a his long career. Note, that nothing I say here is an attack on any educators or teachers who might read this. I truly believe most teachers and the like get into the field for the right reasons, but the structure that they are faced with is the problem.
The problem with public school in the US, and many other countries (especially Western), is that learning/education is really only a secondary purpose. It is at all times subordinate, and therefore often undermined, to further the actual goal of creating a subordinate citizenry. The early progressives (Who as an aside were just awful, for example it was they who inspired the Nazis to eugenics. Once you go down this rabbit hole you'll never look at Woodrow Wilson the same again.) who championed the introduction of the American public school system were quite plain about where the idea for the modern public school came from. Namely, the Prussian aristocracy who inflicted it upon the populace in the 1800s for the express purpose of making them easy to rule. They made no attempt to hide this fact. The early progressives were somewhat more cautious in their language, dressing up the idea in Utopian language but their intentions are pretty clear if you go look at the academic papers and such they published at the times (which the two books I linked do).
So as to not get too long winded, let me just as a few rhetorical questions. How do you forcefully educate someone? How do you force someone to learn? How does mandating children show up at a building on pain of confinement for them or their parents further either of those goals? The Athenians are turning in their graves. The system forces children to show up at an arbitrary time, irrespective of their individual circumstances, and divides them into arbitrary groups. They are then forced to respect and defer to a person (i.e. Teacher/Adminstrators) arbitrarily. They have to seek permission to perform normal bodily functions (i.e. ask to use the restroom), trained not unlike you would a dog (not that I have anything against dogs!). They are trained to shuffle from one room to another at the sound of a bell, and to fill out meaningless paperwork and to perform meaningless tasks within an arbitrary involuntary hierarchy. It erodes at the mind and soul, creating an obedient populace that is used to dealing with a convoluted bureaucracy, and sometimes you learn something. To top it off, the curriculum is controlled via a political apparatus subject to all the corruption that accompanies politics. You can school, indoctrinate, and train people, but you can't force them to think critically and to really learn.
Never heard of this economist. His book summary sounds very interesting:
> In Illiberal Reformers, Thomas Leonard reexamines the economic progressives whose ideas and reform agenda underwrote the Progressive Era dismantling of laissez-faire and the creation of the regulatory welfare state, which, they believed, would humanize and rationalize industrial capitalism. But not for all. Academic social scientists such as Richard T. Ely, John R. Commons, and Edward A. Ross, together with their reform allies in social work, charity, journalism, and law, played a pivotal role in establishing minimum-wage and maximum-hours laws, workmen's compensation, antitrust regulation, and other hallmarks of the regulatory welfare state.
> But even as they offered uplift to some, economic progressives advocated exclusion for others, and did both in the name of progress. Leonard meticulously reconstructs the influence of Darwinism, racial science, and eugenics on scholars and activists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, revealing a reform community deeply ambivalent about America's poor. Illiberal Reformers shows that the intellectual champions of the regulatory welfare state proposed using it not to help those they portrayed as hereditary inferiors but to exclude them.
https://www.amazon.com/Illiberal-Reformers-Eugenics-Economics-Progressive/dp/0691169594/
I'll give this show a listen....
How Capitalism Saved America by Thomas DiLorenzo is a fast read that covers all of this well. The Myth of The Robber Barons by Burton Folsom is more in-depth.
Read the madness of crowds. Author really goes into depth on incidents in history. The section on inside jokes is funny as hell, amazing to see how long memes have been around for.
This book is also good: Demon Haunted world
Hedges is right. The left was neutered by red scares. We have no societal counterbalance to fascist tendencies. The far right turn in society should give pause.
As far as the coffee beans go most would have bought them as green unroasted beans up until the end of the the 19th century. Depending on where in Europe and economic position is where the difference in roasting would be. Lower encome would use either a copper or cast iron pan/skillet and roast in that. Higher up would use a drum roaster. You can look up German coffee roasters for example of those. The roast type would very greatly but from what I understand a medium to a medium-dark roast would likely be a common roast. This is more to do with making sure that all of the beans reach what is called first crack.
Grinders would be burr grinders. If it was a "Turkish" or "Greek" style coffee house which were the earliest in Europe it would require a Turkish grinder. It is almost like powdered chocolate in consistency. But for something that you would likely see in the late 18th and through out the 19th century something closer to a French press grind.
The brewing method would be something similar to a cowboy coffee method but think more like a French press. In the 19th century coffee methods that are common today start to form flip coffee pots are like a halfway point to filtered drip coffee which is more or less invented in the first decade of the 20th century.
As for adding stuff to the coffee. The absolutely did. Turkish style coffee was the starting point of European coffee culture and it is common to add something sweet and often milk. As time goes on you also see coffee and tea culture converge in how it is consumed.
Now all of this is a very simplistic version of an answer to your question. The methods of brewing were far more diverse than what I have mentioned but most never gained wide adoption. An example is a vacuum siphon brewer. And there is some discussion that the "Dutch drip coffee" brewers go that far back. And I would not be surprised if cloth filter coffee was a thing during the period. But considering that the full immersion method is the oldest and easiest method that has continued documented use that is what I would place my bets on seeing the most.
A good book to read on the history of coffee is UNCOMMON Grounds by Mark Pendergrast https://www.amazon.com/Uncommon-Grounds-History-Coffee-Transformed/dp/046501836X
I know that this was a long and rambling response to your question but I hope it helps.
That's for you to find out.
This might help you get started.
THIS is why we can't divorce men's rights from the wider political context. I've been saying this for years, and I'm often subjected to a tidal wave of shame and guilt-tripping - these women were all Marxists and Communists, that's where all of their thinking comes from.
Progressives - 'liberals' - have never opposed sexism, racism, homophobia or xenophobia on a principled, moral or ethical basis. It's evident to all with the reading comprehension of a five year old that their 'principled' stance stops at the border of their own political objectives. Their opposition to sexism stops at the border of female perpetrators and male victims, their opposition to racism stops at the border of non-white perpetrators and white victims, their opposition to homophobia stops at the border of communism ('Castro is a hero!'), their opposition to xenophobia stops at the border of hating western nation-states and their advocacy of women's rights stops at the border of Islam.
This is what's truly terrifying - these are the people who rule over us. The 'conservatives' (of which there aren't any any more, nor am I one by the way) are held perpetually responsible for the actions of the KKK (a group of 2,000 people in a country of 320 million; they are so irrelevant, so devoid of power, they don't even warrant a mention), a group which is never out of the 'news', however here we have an equivalent extreme ideology which pervades every facet of the intelligentsia, across NGOs, the public sector, Governmental institutions, Higher Education, etc., and no-one blinks an eyelid at the root of its extremities.
They (progressives, liberals, etc., whatever they choose to define as from one generation to the next - it's all marketing and branding) aren't always explicit, but they filter ALL truth by the identity of the perpetrator or victim - when it comes to a bourgeoisie (white heterosexual men) perpetrator they'll accentuate and repeat the 'truth' (Trump is sexist!), however when it comes to a perpetrator from the new proletariat (non-white people, women, non-heterosexual people, non-British/American people, etc.) they'll either omit it entirely, or contextualise and rationalise it.
Only one segment of society has responsibilities, the rest have grievances. I've been writing about this for years on here: progressivism ('liberals', they always re-brand themselves!) was established in the 1920's to oppose classical liberalism. It is opposed to everything Mill argued. Here's a comment I made previously:
Why are we prioritising identity ahead of individuality? We aren't feminists.
Second-wave feminism was spawned by middle-class communists; like all class warriors, they wanted to manufacture conflict between identities (except it was no longer proletariat vs. bourgeoisie; to manufacture statism they had to co-opt an identity the purveyors of individuality could never oppose: women. Thus the debate is no longer big state vs minimal state, it's women vs. men, non-white vs. white, etc.). Prejudices were officially reversed, state-sponsored and deemed socially acceptable.
Betty Friedan's propaganda, that of the tired and frustrated suburban housewife, has been proven to be a sham of the highest order; she was a communist, with the intent to divide people along arbitrary, biological lines for her own political ends (in the same manner liberals play reductionist in most debates: they don't want to talk issues, they want to talk identities).
International Men's Day? Are we slowly manufacturing a similar narrative to that of the feminists? eg, you can only pass judgement on women if you are a woman; you can only pass judgement on men if you are a man.
This is the same form of cultural relativism - advocated almost universally but not explicitly by liberal politicians and mimicked by their followers - which erodes social unity, creates virtue out of weakness and creates preferential treatment and conflict in the context of ethnicity, sexuality, gender and religion.
It's the same form of morality (cultural relativism) which would have determined interfering in the holocaust was an act of racism (it determines passing judgement on another's culture, or identity, is a form of 'ethnocentrism').
It's why we've got a segment on 'Black Heroes' (white heroes?) and 'black culture' (white culture?) on the homepage of the BBC today; it's why Trump exists. I've written so much more about it here http://www.thelastcitizen.com/ and here http://www.thelastcitizen.com/the-liberal-wall-of-hate/
It's all relativist nonsense. Why don't we be genuinely radical and propose something that resembles, you know, ACTUAL liberalism (not Marxism) and assign rights and responsibilities to PEOPLE, not identities? That would be TRULY revolutionary; in a world where everyone has an identity, being an individual is a TRULY revolutionary act.
How about, rather than international men's day we call it international people's day? Better yet, how about we just don't have a day?
Better yet, how about on the day we refer to as 'international men's day' we do something even more radical: we talk about issues affecting humanity, a humanity which is divorced from the dehumanising categorisation it is forced to assume under the dictatorial, socially acceptable religion colloquially referred to as identity politics?
How about we talk about suicide rates of people; workplace deaths of people; rape and sexual assault of people; domestic violence against people; homelessness among people; education of people; and, most importantly, the liberty of the people?
What people forget (well, are never taught) is it was the progressives (the intelligentsia, the feminists, the academics, the Supreme Court Judges, etc.) advocating pro-white eugenics in the 1920's - it served, very directly, as the blueprint for Hitler's policies on eugenics in the 1930's and 40's. They ostracised and even sterilised those they deemed 'unfit', 'uneducated' and 'imbecilic' (the same rhetoric is evident in their hatred for Trump, and those who support him).
On what basis? Intellectual and moral superiority. They bastardised Darwinism; they determined it was possible to manufacture a biologically superior race (white people).
People also forget it was the prominent progressives like H.G. Wells, founder of the 'progressive league', who were calling for a 'liberal fascism.' There was mass, widespread support for fascism in the 1920's, and among 'progressives.'
Read the book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Illiberal-Reformers-Eugenics-Economics-Progressive/dp/0691169594
I'm a huge fan of Economix and Hypercapitalism and think it's worth sharing with people who are interested in knowing more about economics and capitalism.
I think that you can get some fascinating insights from non-fiction some recommendations
great stuff here!
I read this book a few months before: The Ascent of Money. Give it a go if you're interested in stuff like the history of stock exchanges, public companies, health insurance, etc.
This looks like it's exactly what i'm looking for!
I'll jump on the commodity history bandwagon: Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World
Agreed. The average annualized total return for the S&P 500 index (a broad based market index) over the past 90 years is 9.8 percent. In a ROTH, it compounds tax free which maximizes the return. As the investor gets closer to retirement, the asset allocation should get a little more conservative with a smaller percent in the stock market which will reduce the average annual return.
Stocks for the Long Run by Jeremy Siegel is an excellent guide to investing in the stock market with a "buy and hold" philosophy.
I'll just add that I am retired. I fully funded whatever IRA or 401Ks were ever available to me. With 40+ years to allow for growth and compounding, I think I got about an overall 8% return.
http://www.amazon.com/Stocks-Long-Run-Definitive-Investment/dp/0071800514
http://www.amazon.com/For-All-Tea-China-Favorite/dp/0143118749 < fun book on tea going from china to india
archive.org has a digitized copy of All About Tea Vol. I where you can read about the history of Assam tea starting here. The Bruce discovery of tea in Assam did predate Fortune's 2nd trip to China, but commercially nothing came of it. Bruce's cultivation was an experimental scale demonstration.
For All the Tea in China has a pretty lengthy description of how Assam came to be the dominant tea cultivation area in India, and how the cluelessness of East India Company personnel almost wrecked the Darjeeling industry before it got started.
In any event, even if you accept the claim that Singpho people were drinking a brew made from tea for 700 years before Bruce "discovered" them, the first plantings in Japan were earlier.
Underrated friedman book: Money Mischief
https://www.amazon.com/Money-Mischief-Episodes-Monetary-History/dp/015661930X
I'm currently reading the Misbehaving by Richard Thaler. It's a very engaging read. He has a nice writing style.
https://www.amazon.com/Misbehaving-Behavioral-Economics-Richard-Thaler/dp/039335279X#
Well, first of all, there have always been booms and busts. Does that prove that there necessarily must be such a cycle? No, it is not complete proof, but it is compelling evidence that, no matter what the level of technology has been, no matter what the language or culture of the participants have been, and no matter what form of government they were under, the business cycle has always been around.
The other piece of the evidence is that attempts to remove booms and busts from the economy have failed miserably. Our own Fed, designed to do just that, has never been able to eliminate booms and busts from the cycle. They have tried, and had success in certain cases, but often their actions simply reshape the boom and bust cycle in new forms. Socialist economies suffer economic cycles. Communist countries certainly do, and in some cases, their booms and busts are even more exaggerated than those in market economies.
There are no "institutions" that can prevent this. It has to do with fundamental aspects of human nature:
So, the question you ask is far too broad. The onus is on you to educate yourself about this phenomenon. There are plenty of resources, but I suggest Devil Take The Hindmost and Against The Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk.
How about a history of coffee?
Uncommon Grounds is an excellent book about the history of coffee, including the spread of the trees, the foundation of the major companies, the economic impact of beans flooding the market, slaves, corrupt officials and roasting history.
Link to the Amazon page
Edit - I added a word.
Uncommon Grounds
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/046501836X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1395407942&amp;sr=8-1
Save your time, this is the backbone she used to create it, even if she wasn't aware that's exactly what she did (at least Lucas admits it) : http://www.amazon.com/Hero-Thousand-Faces-Bollingen-No/dp/0691017840
If you don't want a traditional hero story then do something like GRRM does and copy the tragedies that befall normal human interaction and history, though then they'll just call you Shakespearean.
How about the eugenics/racist origins of welfare policies such as the minimum wage? There's a lot of good material in the new book [Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691169594/ref=cm_sw_r_taa_4BPAyb7BP61R6). Could be really provocative and enlightening!
See the new book Illiberal Reformers. I haven't read it yet so this isn't an endorsement, but it's on the exact topic being discussed.
I found Economix very helpful as a basic sort of primer. It helps lay out the path of the last few centuries of economic thought, and it does it in the form of a comic book!
Look you seem to have good intentions but you're completely immersed in the neoclassical economics bullshit.
So, I recommend taking at this particular book:
The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community by Harvard Economics Professor Stephen A. Marglin, who is also a reformed/ former neoclassical economist.
Philip Mirowski's book Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science, his book More Heat than Light: Economics as Social Physics, Physics as Nature's Economics and his latest The Knowledge We Have Lost in Information: The History of Information in Modern Economics deal with a lot of the bullshit coming from economics.
You can find a more anti-capitalist critique in [The Beginning of History: Value Struggles and Global Capital](http://www.lamarre-mediaken.com/Site/COMS_630_files/Beginning%20of%20History.pdf
) (I included a PDF to it).
As for books on what communism might look like:
https://www.amazon.com/Living-Edges-Capitalism-Adventures-Mutual/dp/0520287304
https://www.amazon.com/World-Gift-Jacques-T-Godbout/dp/0773517510
https://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-Economy-Sharing-Thomas-Widlok/dp/1138945552
The economic mechanism that Thomas Widlok talks about in his book is very to what Peter Kropotkin calls "mutual aid" and David Graeber calls "everyday communism".
If you want a best understanding of what Graeber provocatively calls everyday communism, I suggest you take a look at this book:
Anthropology and the Economy of Sharing by Thomas Widlok.
Thomas Widlok's book is the only book that I know of that talks about the issue of communism in any detail. He edited two books on the ethnography of equality that are also useful.
The anthropological term for that communism is "demand-sharing".
Demand-sharing is distinct from the gift, by the way. Demand-sharing is NOT a form of exchange (Widlok deals with this very well).
For Gifts, I would direct you to The World of the Gift by Jacques T. Godbout and Alain C. Caillé and Gifts and Commodities by C. A. Gregory.
Alain Caillé is the expert on the question of the gift.
P.S:
/u/LitGarbo
You deserve way more subscribers, this is some good quality stuff.
I just googled his name...
http://www.amazon.com/How-Capitalism-Saved-America-Pilgrims/dp/1400083311
There are a multitude of books that have been written and if you ask 100 people, you will get a 100 different answers on the best books to read. My recommendation is ignore all the flashy titles and strategy specific books that promise how to be a billionaire in 5 years or how to retire at age 25. Instead, for anyone just starting out, i recommend going with a solid foundation and once that is achieved, then find your individual specific plan. My three (actually four) books to get started in a serious entry into the investment markets are as follows (in order and assuming a starting point of Extreme Beginner)
https://www.amazon.com/Personal-Finance-Dummies-Eric-Tyson/dp/1119114292/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1518157495&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=personal+investing+for+dummies
And
https://www.amazon.com/Investing-Dummies-Business-Personal-Finance/dp/1119239281/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1518157731&amp;sr=8-4&amp;keywords=personal+investing+for+dummies
2)The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing by Benjamin Graham.
https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Essentials/dp/0060555661/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1518157481&amp;sr=8-3&amp;keywords=personal+investing
This one is much more technical than the first read but I consider it "The Bible" for forming a solid education in value stock investing. Written just after World War 2, this book has been invaluable in understanding how to evaluate good investments in the stock market. I still don't know how investors did it before the internet, but using the principles presented in this book and the resources available online, your stock performance should be far in excess of anything you might do having not read it. Interesting side story: When i was in business school circa 1998-2001, I had a professor of Financial Analysis who introduced me to this book and also called it the Bible. In his lectures he and the students had many heated debates regarding the validity of Grahams teachings and how the investing world had outgrown Grahams views due to the rapidly growing diversity of investments today and the impact technology had on investing strategy. We, the students, were all blinded by the internet boom and all the stories of people who had an IPO for their company and became overnight billionaires, provided the company ended in dot-com. The professor was adamant that every generation was doomed to learn some hard and expensive lessons by thinking the Old masters no longer applied to the "New Reality". As an exercise we spent the following months reviewing many of the skyrocketing stocks that were part of the Dot Com bubble. The professor claimed that, based on his application of Graham's principles the only Dot com stocks he would consider holding for a minimum of 10 years from 1997 were Amazon, Intel, Sony, SAP and Microsoft. By 2000 he had fared much better than many of the students who thought the were going to be Pets.com billionaires.
Which brings us to the third book:
https://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Popular-Delusions-Madness-Crowds/dp/1463740514/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1518158993&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=Extraordinary+Popular+Delusions+and+The+Madness+of+Crowds+by+Charles+MacKay
If you though Grahams book was old this one is coming up on its 200th anniversary.
This one is really not about investing as much as it is about the understanding how social psychology leads to things like, bubbles, panic crashes and fads that leave ruined investors in their wake. Every time I hear the word Bitcoin, I think of this book, just as I did back when everyone of my friends was going to be the next multimillionaire house flipper or day trader ten years ago. I am not saying that these strategies are inherently bad, just that it is important to be able to distinguish the facts from the hype, even when the person hyping it is yourself because you got swept up in the public craze. Read about the Dutch tulip craze and realize that the same forces are in play every day.
Once you grind through these three, you will be more than ready to start on your individual path and well armed to make reasonable decisions. Good Luck!
Play Sekiro while listening to a audiobook of Death of the Liberal Class. Watch a few episodes of Deadwood after dinner.
When Money Dies: The Nightmare of Deficit Spending, Devaluation, and Hyperinflation in Weimar Germany by Adam Fergusson
It's also available on Audible.
if you are interested in detailed story, here is a good book:
Adam Fergusson: When Money Dies
All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis
by Bethany McLean, Joe Nocera.
http://www.amazon.com/All-Devils-Are-Here-Financial/dp/1591843634
That's about the long term average of of the stock market; source and source.
Technically I was a bit high, I should have said something like 2% interest 5% principal growth.
That's very achievable in a low load index fund. Yes, you will have down years where you loose 30% of your value, however, over a 20 to 30 year horizon, given any historical time period, the average return is a bit over 7%.
However that market fluctuation is exactly why 1m is not enough to live comfortably on; especially if you are young enough to be working at imgur. You've likely got a house, kids, kids college etc a head of you.
If you were retired with a house paid off 1m isn't too bad assuming you are only going to live 20 years , have no major medical (nursing care) and are pulling principle.
I highly recommend these books:
Madali lang kumita sa stocks. Madali din malugi :). Ginawa ko yung /r/phinvest a few years ago, pero hindi ko na halos nabibisita. May mga pinost ako doon na intro stuff sa investing at stocks.
Good luck! But, I highly recommend this book. If you know 0 about investing in stocks and the market. https://www.amazon.com/Stocks-Long-Run-Definitive-Investment/dp/0071800514 - Thank me later! great book down to the roots
> At first, there were several tea ceremonies that were customarily performed for and by those wishing to guarantee strong offspring
Sarah Rose briefly touches on this in For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World's Favorite Drink and Changed History
By the mid 19th century it appears that this particular ceremony may have been going out of fashion everywhere except in the rural areas. On Fortune's first visit to China for the East India Company he hired a man named Wang to act as his guide & interpreter and general gopher. Wang ended up taking Fortune to his home village which was deep in green tea growing country and Fortune apparently wrote about this strange custom.
He only gave it a line or two since his focus was almost entirely on gathering tea leaves, so Sarah Rose doesn't focus much on it either.
Edit: Sarah Rose said no such thing in For All the Tea in China. However Fortune (the man who stole the tea for the East India Company) really did hire a man named Wang, and Wang really did take him to his village in the heart of green tea country (though as Fortune found out green tea and black tea are actually the same plant).
Regardless of your opinion, inflation is purely a monetary phenomenon caused by a fiat monetary unit.
If the USD was defined as "X grams of metal Y", and some country Z, happened to accumulate a large reserve of metal Y. Z could then drive the value of the dollar down by selling a large quantity of metal Y.
In Milton Friedman's book Money Mischief he described how the US gov't accidently caused financial ruin in China in the 1930's and 1940's through change in US policy with regard to silver
Renaissance mainly hires engineering/math/science PhDs to work on systematic strategies. They've made hires from people with backgrounds in subjects like NLP and information theory. Besides that, no one really knows what they do in their flagship fund.
However, in their equity fund RIEF (Renaissance Institutional Equities Funds ), they were actually very correlated with other quant equity funds during the quant crisis. You can see from this letter to investors that they were down 8.7% from August 1 to August 9th 2007
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/files/renaissance_technologies.pdf
"While we believe we have an excellent set of
predictive signals, some of these are undoubtedly shared by a number of long/short hedge funds. For one reason or another many of these funds have not been doing well, and certain factors have caused them to liquidate positions. "
During August of 2007, several multistrat hedge funds were facing losses in their credit portfolios and had to sell off their most liquid assets which were their holdings in their quant equity portfolios. At the time, many quant equity funds were trading on the same signals so they all started getting hit with losses from other quant funds selling similar portfolios. This forced more quant equity funds to liquidate their positions, creating a sell off which affected all the major quant equity funds ( Blackrock SAE, AQR, GSAM Global Alpha, etc.)
You can read more about this in the book, The Quants:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quants-Whizzes-Conquered-Destroyed/dp/0307453383
or from this paper:
http://web.mit.edu/Alo/www/Papers/august07.pdf
I know I shot the mods a message awhile ago before getting caught up prepping for the CFA (and they said would be ok via a blog since we don't have text posts).
I was wondering about some events to bring the board together.
Would people be interested in some monthly or bimonthly book discussion? Devil take the hindmost was a ton of fun and might make for some interesting reading. We could start running into problems again because not everyone has the same background going into the book but as long as people stay fairly intellectually honest I'm sure we don't go overboard with source links and it could be a neat discussion.
Alternatively, if people had opinions on different coursera courses etc. I had a classic econ focused education on monetary policy but I'm finding the economics of money and banking class on coursera to be a very, very cool way to look at the banking system.
for those interested in reading further: Uncommon Grounds is a great general history.
This book, Uncommon Grounds, provides great historical context on some of the politics and trade conflicts the industry has been through. Can see a bit dry/drawn out in some parts but overall very good.
https://www.amazon.ca/Uncommon-Grounds-History-Coffee-Transformed/dp/046501836X
Hero with a Thousand Faces (Credit goes to an /r/atheism subscriber unbeknownst to him.)
Can be found very cheap on Amazon (I think I saw less than two dollars).
It's often referenced when discussing the Christian "hero" Jesus, and I think it'd be an impressive addition to any knowledgeable man's library.
They say there are only (3 or 5 or 7 plots, take yr pick) and one of the biggies is the Hero Myth, on which both Star Wars and Dune are based. See Joseph Campbell for more
The EO reinstating the Mexican Policy is definitely not what I want to see. I don't quite understand what the EO for the federal hiring freeze is trying to accomplish; I suspect it's intended to pave the way for contractors to start fulfilling jobs previously filled by federal employees instead of actually trying to cut down on labor costs in the Fed, particularly as those labor costs seems to amount to a rather insignificant portion of the budget. This sucks, if it's the case.
RE: The TPP, I was pretty swayed by the arguments against put forward in Economix and the concern of business entities being able to pursue litigation against sovereign nations for "inhibiting profits". On the other hand, global trade generally does help ours and other economies, although there is and has been plenty of abuse due to the lack of oversight in how trade is conducted. I am really sympathetic to the loss of domestic manufacturing jobs and its impact on lower and middle classes, but at the same time I think it's an inevitable outcome given the availability of labor globally.
Overall, I am severely distrustful of this administration acting in the best interest of the middle and lower class. Given the trend of growing economic inequity in the last four decades, this is particularly troubling.
It may not be the style you are looking for, but I liked Economix (http://www.amazon.com/Economix-Economy-Works-Doesnt-Pictures/dp/0810988399).
Nice post Noamsky!
For anyone interested in explaining capitalism to their kids - Economix - is a great book. http://economixcomix.com. Here's the link on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0810988399/.
This is a great point "the ONLY way anything gets done under capitalism is if a wealthy person stands to make a good amount of money" - however it's exactly what government should be providing - things like schools, hospitals etc.
(Chris A. Gregory's book is one of the most important books in economic anthropology. If you want to know anything about economic anthropology, that book has to be on your reading list).
Edit:
Commercialism/markets is just as bad a system of social relation as Capitalism.
Markets on their own are just as socially destructive and individuality-crushing as capitalism.
Markets may be distinct from capitalism, but they're inextricably linked to States.
I don't think markets CAN even exist without States.
The historical shows that they pretty follow each other.
Abolishing states would take markets and the commodity relation with it, which is why I think it's absurd to speak of them here, unless you're for some form of state to accompany the legalism and all the bullshit that comes with markets.
That's why most anarchists are very anti-market.
If you're interested in reading more radical perspective on the commons, I recommend reading the work of Massimo De Angelis:
Start with his book The Beginning of History: Value Struggles and Global Capital, here: http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=62F323FC4073EA6CF2C6586F50806911
Then his most recent book on Commons: Omnia Sunt Communia: On the Commons and the Transformation to Postcapitalism, here: http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=961FEA9AF31094CA0280E0F92B353AF7
As for good non-market stuff, I recommend taking a look at:
Anthropology and the Economy of Sharing by Thomas Widlok:
https://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-Economy-Sharing-Thomas-Widlok/dp/1138945552
The World of the Gift by Jacques T. Godbout and Alain C. Caille:
https://www.amazon.com/World-Gift-Jacques-T-Godbout/dp/0773517510
http://www.mit.edu/~allanmc/godbout1.pdf
In the end the republicans and the democrats are extremely similar. I'm going to vote for Rand Paul but there is no chance he will win. I recommend this book it helps show what makes this country work. Good luck!
If you like that book then you should check out Livermore's favorite book, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. It deals with times in history that the population has just gone nuts, including massive pump and dumps and other securities mischief. It would make a great mini-series as well.
I'm not aware of a whole lot of books specifically about accounting, but here are a few recommendations of books about finance, economics, business or that I just think might appeal to /r/accounting.
Anything by Michael Lewis. Liar's Poker has been mentioned elsewhere, but The Big Short is excellent as well.
Ben Mezrich has written some good books about business, but not really accounting specifically. He's most famous for The Accidental Billionaires which is about Facebook (I believe it, along with The Facebook Effect were the main sources for the movie The Social Network) and Bringing Down the House which was about the MIT card counting team and inspiration for the movie 21. You might be interested in Ugly Americans or Rigged though.
Here's a few more that are a little less fiction-y:
Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin
Traders, Guns and Money by Satyajit Das
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay
Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It) by William Poundstone
EDIT: Now with links!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Death-Liberal-Class-Chris-Hedges-x/dp/1568586795
You're welcome. If your looking to dive further down the rabbit hole, I'd recommend reading Death of the Liberal Class (2010) by Chris Hedges. It focuses on how we ended up with a political climate that presented the opportunity for some one like Trump and his cohorts to seize power.
From the promo:
> For decades the liberal class was a defense against the worst excesses of power. But the pillars of the liberal class— the press, universities, the labor movement, the Democratic Party, and liberal religious institutions—have collapsed. In its absence, the poor, the working class, and even the middle class no longer have a champion.
They think that they do now, and his name is Donald Trump.
Here's a video of him giving a lecture on the books topic.
I'll check it out. This one, right? https://www.amazon.com/Death-Liberal-Class-Chris-Hedges/dp/1568586795/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Death+of+the+Liberal+Class&qid=1571164612&sr=8-1
&#x200B;
Forgive the use of Amazon, it was the first search result.
https://www.amazon.com/Death-Liberal-Class-Chris-Hedges/dp/1568586795
Firstly, if you look at income quintile growth in the 1980's, everyone was basically flat or falling behind but the top 20%. If the middle class did better under Reagan, it was because of deficit-financed tax cuts and more women going to work out of economic necessity.
What we have in this country are a corporate conservative party (Democrats) and a radical theocratic conservative party (Republicans). People in this country don't even know what progressivism is anymore, because establishment liberals sabotaged radical leftists. Elizabeth Warren is the closest thing we have to a nationally viable progressive politician in this country, and even she's not talking about things like a guaranteed minimum income, which was last put forth by Richard Nixon. Yes, if Richard Nixon were a politician today, he would be considered too liberal for the Democratic Party.
Read when money die...
https://www.amazon.com/When-Money-Dies-Devaluation-Hyperinflation/dp/1586489941
LOL... yeah, read this:
Fergusson: When Money Dies
You have to have the right assets before hyperinflation to be able to really take advantage of the situation. The middle class and below will be squeezed because wages do not keep up with hyperinflation. So, the reality is that your mortgage may disappear as a percentage of your income you will still have trouble getting enough food for your family off of what you make. You just won't have the available money to pay off your mortgage like you might hope.
If you have a credit card, expect the interest rate to increase faster than inflation. Interest rates on all variable rate debt will skyrocket. You do not want to carry any significant debt at a variable interest rates if hyperinflation is a possibility. It will bankrupt you because the banks will control what they can in order to make money.
You might want to read When Money Dies it is a good book to understand the practical implications of hyperinflation.
Insider trading, shady lawyers, and Ponzi schemes are all as old as sin (or at least as old as markets and lawyers, so.. I dunno.. the 1500s). They are not problems that developed over the last 30 years, whereas the deregulation of the financial industry and the resulting institutionalized corruption are. To be fair, market bubbles and their inevitable popping are hardly new, either, but in this case, I would argue that this is more than "tulip mania" - this economic crisis is the culmination of dozens - hundreds - of fundamental flaws in the structure of our financial system an its interaction with our government. Other world governments, as well. Bernie Madoff had nothing at all to do with the crash in 2008 - it just so happened that his story broke at roughly the same time, so it might have seemed related. In reality, he screwed his clients (most of which were pretty rich to begin with). The SYSTEM screwed everyone else. For an excellent history of how this crisis was built over decades, I suggest reading All the Devils Are Here ...
You're exactly right. I just finished All The Devils Are Here recently (a fantastic read), it goes in depth to everything that contributed the housing bubble, which starts all the way back in the 70's.
There was large amounts of deregulation well before the second Bush administration, though they did carry through with a very lax regulatory oversight that was spearheaded by Greenspan, Summers and Rubin.
Simplest version is looking at the fees on your mutual fund options. Stuff like vanguard or fidelity mutual funds will be the cheapest on fees by 10x or more (vanguard like .06 where others may be .6-2.5%/yr). If you make 5% a year and fees are 2.5% vs making 4.5% a year and fees are .06, that's where people fail at math your 401k provider and employer don't tell you in the first place. You can still diversify into aggressive/international/mid cap/small cap/etc. When you click on changing your investments, some 401ks let you sort investments by fees. You may also see it looking at the investment disclosure doc.
It'll say something like example:
T Row Price fund:
Fees and Expenses
Total Annual Operating Expense 0.43%
Net Expense Ratio 0.43%
Versus:
Vanguard:
Management Fees 0.04
12b-1 Distribution Fee None
Other Expenses 0.00%
Total Annual Fund Operating Expenses 0.04%
Versus: Blackrock:
Total Annual Fund Operating Expenses After Fee Waivers and/or Expense Reimbursements
0.93% 1.64% 0.61% 1.24%
Quite a big difference just there alone. I don't even understand how blackrock splits who is in what category but .6-1.6 range no matter where you fall is a hell of a lot more than .04 Over a 10+ year period imagine how much that would impact your growth and how much the funds manager is making instead.
There is a book called the four pillars of investing, I'd start there, it's a summary of everything you need to know and counter to stuff like mad money and weird investment shit where people sell on making millions and prey on people's greed. https://www.amazon.com/Four-Pillars-Investing-Building-Portfolio/dp/1932378014. Feel free to *dm/pm and I'll help wherever I can, too.
No you have almost no diversity. You are 100% USA, strong growth tilt. 100% cap weighting for stock selection within size categories.
You obviously like growth. Being a bit old fashioned here I think you would love PRGSX (T Rowe Global Stock Fund). Reading the fund literature would help a lot and ideologically they are in tune with where you want to be. That fund would keep you out of trouble until you know what you are doing and frankly if you never learned that's a great fund to sit in for life. And I say that as a value guy who would want to vomit in many of the stocks they are picking.
If you do have a commitment to low cost passive cap weighted. Just do Vanguard Total Stock for now unless the portfolio is big. Again I don't like cap weighting (for lurkers start of a series on the topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/IncomeInvesting/comments/czqw1l/adversus_cap_weighting_introduction_part_1/) but you need international.
In terms of how you can improve, read at least one book portfolio design before you start designing a portfolio. https://www.amazon.com/Four-Pillars-Investing-Building-Portfolio/dp/1932378014 is my recommendation to start.
I havent read "Candlestick Charting Explained", but as far as candlestick charting goes... Steve Nison's "Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques" is considered the bible. Candlesticks is really a discussion on price action... I think candlesticks can get you into a lot of trouble.
I think that Edwards and Magee "Technical Analysis of Stock trends" is looked upon more more favorably than Murphy for an overview of TA and methods. Though, IMO they both leave a lot to be desired. Really the best way to learn technical analysis is to find someone who uses these methods to execute trades and can explain the reasoning and risk-reward metrics behind their trades. If this interests you, I recommend Peter Brandt https://www.peterlbrandt.com/ He has a track record and has even written a book.
If i were to recommend a couple books
For true beginners in investing and don't want to spend time doing the "work": I recommend "4 pillars of investing" it discusses asset allocation and investing in a broad sense 4 Pillars
For beginners that want an intro to stocks: Greenblatt's "Little Book that beats the market" is the best book that I know of for an intro to stock investing. And it can be read in one sitting. Little Book
If you want to be a more active trader/investor in the market then I recommend:
Oneil's [How to make money in stocks] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00916ARYS/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&amp;btkr=1)
Minervini's [Trade like a stock market wizard]
(https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C1NKPUE/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&amp;btkr=1)
Lynch's [One Up On Wall Street]
(https://www.amazon.com/One-Up-Wall-Street-Already/dp/0743200403/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8)
Cramer's [Real Money]
(https://www.amazon.com/Jim-Cramers-Real-Money-Investing/dp/0743224906/ref=pd_sim_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_i=0743224906&amp;pd_rd_r=156ZB32KPJ8XN7V9K1HQ&amp;pd_rd_w=Anlpz&amp;pd_rd_wg=aZn7O&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=156ZB32KPJ8XN7V9K1HQ)
Town's [Rule 1] (https://www.amazon.com/Rule-Strategy-Getting-Rich-Minutes-ebook/dp/B000GCFCQE/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1479913887&amp;sr=1-1-catcorr&amp;keywords=rule+no+1+investing)
These picks are all different styles and have something different to offer. A lot of the advice you are going to get is going to be bent towards value investing, diversification, and asset allocation... This is good advice, and will make you a smarter investor but not a richer one.
If you are interested in day trading or swing trading then you will probably need to find some personalized training and I wish you the best because there is a ton of crap out there... I dont think that many people are willing to put in the time and effort to be sucessful at this and so I don't recommend it.
Not directly related to the economic calculation problem or the importance of money and market price discoveries but, for me, 'Economics in One Lesson' by HH has been a effective but concise book on understanding why central planning and regulations fail.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003XT60KO
Can you also share the RBE material that you've agreed to read? I have watched Zeitgeist/Venus Project videos and spent some time on RBE forums but never really understand the basics of their economic theory. Also I cannot imagine how they will apply RBE to scarcity.
Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World Fascinating read.
ok. Greek. Hey, speaking of books, here's one you guys should read
Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics
Just apply for jobs. Nobody will care if you have a masters in technology policy. But do read a bunch of books on economics. I recommend starting with Economics in One Lesson.
Add me to the list of people who are curious about this. Were you on NPR, OP?
Ah, a few posts down he mentions he wrote this book.
And this is the link to the NPR story.
You want an "understanding of the long history of finance in the West" then you're better off reading The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World.
Or perhaps even more critically, This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly
Why the West Rules - for now is a good overview of history written in an easily accessible way - with history, social sciences and economics thrown in.
For a great easy read on financial history, I recommend Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money, which will teach you a ton - and it includes all of the above (how influential psychology can be is astounding).
Because all good things are three, I'll throw in Against the Gods. A book on the history of risk analysis, you do get a hefty dose of psychology as well as a great understanding of how that all-important field works.
Economics, read Economics in one lesson by henry Hazlitt
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Economics-One-Lesson-Understand-ebook/dp/B003XT60KO/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1381074713&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=economics+in+one+lesson
an excellent book and easy read that will educate you in real economics.
Rothbard's Man, Economy and State (MES) is more readable than Human Action, but neither a quick read... at all! I have not completed my copy of MES.
While a different category of Economics, more of an intro guide, I highly recommend Henry Hazlitt's Economics in one lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics. This book IS a quick read, yet still covers the KEY concepts! Many/most people likely only need Economics in One Lesson and will be enough in terms of reading a whole book on econ.
Economics in One Lesson is currently $9.99 on Amazon, and it'll look better than the PDF.
I think they forgot to mention it would be terrible for the economy. Everyone would make roughly 25% less money.
I think we need a law that requires all Redditors to read Economics in One Lesson before making a post about economics or politics.
Also, there are currently plenty of jobs that are 30 hours per week. If you want one of them, go get one.
Sure they do. But central planning and government isn't going to get rid of them, in fact, it exacerbates them.
https://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand-ebook/dp/B003XT60KO
Serious recommendation (no snark here). It's a great book on how to build a portfolio. Can be a slow read in some areas but very helpful.
Four Pillars of Investing
The Four Pillars of Investing
Sounds like a great father, he is working to build a desirable habit in you real early. But really your investing will start once you have regular income.
> Any sources to learn about such stuff?
Too many sources to mention. The book, The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham continues to be a gold standard. But it is pretty wordy and difficult for the first timer. Rich Dad, Poor Dad is exciting to read but very shallow and even misleading. Most of these books use the American market in perspective.
The Four Pillars of Investing. Great book for beginners!
Read/Listen to this, https://www.amazon.com/Four-Pillars-Investing-Building-Portfolio/dp/1932378014 . Follows what some folks here are saying, and is generally the Bible on investing for the average person.
Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World.
This article is basically a summary of this book:
Banana: The Fate of The Fruit That Changed The World
A very good book and worth the read.
There are a few out there but this is the one to which I was referring: Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan Koeppel
Here's a downloadable pdf
Yeah, what you say about the creation of money is essentially correct afaik. There's a really good explanation by G Edward Griffin in his Creature from Jekyll Island book. He call the money creation process the mandrake mechanism. There's a except of this chapter online somewhere. You'll find it if you google it.
Yes, the ever increasing money supply is a result of interest paid on the Fed loan. The government has to borrow more money to pay off the debt, hence the steady 3% rate of inflation. The following video explains this, http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5352106773770802849#
Nial Ferguson's, The Ascent of Money (http://www.amazon.com/Ascent-Money-Financial-History-World/dp/1594201927) is also very informative and interesting. There's PBS miniseries based on the book if you don't have time to read it.
The solution may not be a return to the Gold standard, though people like Ron Paul and Edward G Griffin would beg to differ.
My solution is a bit more broad. It requires a number of social transformations that will happen in stages. Some may overlap or even happen concurrently. Here's a really rough sketch:
Firstly, the central bank must be disbanded an outlawed. The issuance of money would be returned to the federal government. Perhaps banking would become more of a public utility (as michael moore has suggested) rather than a for profit enterprise.
Later on down the line, if feel it's very important for local economies to become more autonomous, i.e. less reliant on large franchises, imports and exports. This will require the decentralization of power generation, banking, agriculture as well as a deurbanization/desuburbanization of our communities. Cities like Los Angeles that depend on person transportation would be phased out in favor of more pedestrian friendly communities. Ideally, residents would be able to walk or ride a bike to and from home, school, work, the market, and main street.
These sort of local communities would be more like small republics, the kind that Thomas Jefferson imagined. Thus, the residents would be more politically empowered than residents of a large metropolitan area like new york. Participation in city councils or town-hall meetings would be much more worthwhile to the residents of these communties. People would be much more aware of their liberties and would rely less on federal government to secure them. The federal government, meanwhile would be stripped of most of its policy making authority. It would exist merely to implement policies decided by the republics, and to facilitate interrepublic interactoins for the sake of logistics.
Of course, this brings me to the currency. It should restricted to as small a region as is practically possible. Local currencies (such as the Ithica Hour) rapidly grow local economies, as people are encouraged to spend it where it's accepted. Local currencies will also insulate communities from systemic/instutional crises that plague our current financial system.
In the final stages of this transformation, these local economies will start to produce an abundance. The processes used to produce everything from power, to basic goods and services would be so efficient and cheap that they would become commodities. The means of living for every man woman and child would be accounted for.
Working for a living will become unnecessary, limited only to custodial work to maintain the machines or processes by which the staple goods and services are produced. Instead, people will be free to explore their own desires or pursue their own occupations or crafts. It will seem necessary to love ones work, not to work to live. People in these communitites would expect life to be necessarily marvelous (as Murray Bookchin has put it.)
Additionally, with this economic abundance, the concept and need of property will begin to disappear. Money wouldn't be as necessary or even as valuable. Things would merely become possessions.
This sort of society would necessarily be highly educated, organized, and technically advanced, populated by free thinking philosophers, artists, scientists, engineers, and craftsmen of infinite variety. They would shun all forms of illegitimate institutional/cultural authority, including government, the corporate form, and organized religion. There simply wouldn't be need for them as the individual would be capable of governing himself and formulating/dispensing his own spirituality.
A sustainable society like the one I've (haphazardly described) would not merely be a future possibility. It's simply what must happen if we are to survive and evolve as a species. Our current capitalist system, though brutish and cruel, has gotten us this far, but it's gone as far as it can. It's logical end, as we are just now beginning to perceive, is political and economic slavery, not to mention the destruction of our natural environment. We must evolve beyond capitalism, money and debt or else we'll wipe ourselves out of the gene pool.
Oh, now I see what you're getting at.
Yes, that is true. In fact, there's a very good series running on Channel 4 in Britain about this called The Ascent of Money. If you're in Ireland or Britain you can watch it on Monday nights or on the web. If you're not, well, Redditors have their ways...
There is also a book version.
In the book/series, Professor Niall Ferguson talks about how the Financiers helped decide the outcome of the American Civil War and how the Rothschilds almost last their collective shirt at the Battle of Waterloo.
He follows the invention of money to the invention of stocks and then bonds and so forth. It's quite good. He recognizes that money is where the power is today, and traces how this happened. Episode 5 of 6 airs tomorrow night.
As you know, Woodrow Wilson's term marked a watershed for the rise of financier power: the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank. They had power then, but not nearly as much as they do today. We can see this as we note that not only have we given them over a trillion dollars, but they refuse any accountability.
In fact, the Bush administration marks the final total takeover of the federal government.
The faction in the Republican party that was calling for war was backed by financiers. Wilson was a peace advocate and held firm until the Zimmerman telegram put him in a position where he felt he had no choice.
"We are citizens of the world. The tragedy of our times is that we don't know this."
>... what the imf did to the third world ...
Develop its industry? Build its infrastructure? Seed its capital markets? Bring its population from malaria-ridden jungles and into cities? Those heartless globalizing bastards!
But seriously though, get educated:
Niall Ferguson:
http://www.amazon.com/Ascent-Money-Financial-History-World/dp/1594201927
Milton Friedman:
http://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Freedom-Anniversary-Milton-Friedman/dp/0226264211
Matt Ridley:
http://www.amazon.com/Rational-Optimist-How-Prosperity-Evolves/dp/006145205X
Hernando De Soto:
http://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Capital-Capitalism-Triumphs-Everywhere/dp/0465016146
There's a nice book from niall ferguson about money:
http://www.amazon.com/Ascent-Money-Financial-History-World/dp/1594201927
There's also a 5 part tv miniseries based on the book.
Money is just a record of debt, and in fractional banking system the banks make it when they make loans.
Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.
Stocks in the long run
There is a lot of really interesting data in this book, and it covers everything
I’d highly recommend reading this book - Stocks for the Long Run by Jeremy Siegel
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stocks-Long-Run-Definitive-Investment/dp/0071800514
It’s US focussed but the same principles apply anywhere. You can get a free pdf online if you search.
I would really encourage you to pick up anything written by Milton Friedman but especially this to gain a different understanding of the underlying problems in the US economy: http://www.amazon.com/Money-Mischief-Episodes-Monetary-History/dp/015661930X/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1317849962&amp;sr=8-4
If you know a bit more about the Fed, You can come to your own conclusions. I don't think the people behind Fed are evil. I just think its a very very difficult problem to design a fair currency for the whole planet.
The only argument Fed has is "The Fed made this world a better place. It provided stability to the world by providing a system on which people can trade backed by US military. And we took the moral liberty to do it because we are the good guys". What does it mean? It means, if you don't follow our currency or build a competing currency we take you down, this is true for private companies ref (liberty dollar, Ripple), countries (Libya, Iraq) etc.
Fed is not fair by any means, It does not have any rules for money creation, its operation is secret. One set of people control it and decide who gets a free pile of cash to do their fancy projects. Fed is the primary reason for income inequality and Fed created a system where one layer of people make the rules for the rest of the population. For the First time in its history it now has a competition from china and 6 other developing countries. Right now there is a demand for dollars in the world, the moment there is a competing currency you will see in news everyday what Fed has been hiding for last 50 years.
I have a whole bunch of videos and books for you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu_VqX6J93k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFDe5kUUyT0
http://www.amazon.com/Money-Mischief-Episodes-Monetary-History/dp/015661930X
Well, I think it goes back to what you consider "inflation". Is your definition prices going up? If let's say, everyone starts buying tulips so the price of tulips goes up, is that "inflation"? I don't think so. Inflation is caused by an increase in the money supply. Let me flip this question on you, what do you think has happened that so caused the stock market to magically go up since 2008? Did all of our problems with the mortgage market simply disappear? All those shit variable rate loans, all of the student loan debt, all of the traunching of mortgage back securities? Did all the banks just magically become all better? No. The Federal Reserve lowered interest by purchasing government bonds from commercial banks, lowering their price artificially and thus lowering their yield, and recapitalized the banks. They just handed the commercial banks a bunch of money. When you do that, producers of real goods see that and will end up raising prices as ultimately more money chasing the same amount of goods increases the prices of goods. How long this takes is dependent on "monetary lag" and basically how liberal the banks are with re-lending this money out through the fractional reserve banking system/ spending it themselves. Obviously if they just sitting on this money, they are just sitting on cash and the quantity of money doesn't necessarily increase in the actual economy. Again, if you are let's say for a hyperbole, the only producer of diapers and you see this going on and you know you have a monopoly on diapers you just raise prices.
Over time you will continue to see those goods, that you have the most inelastic demand for with the least amount of competition, prices go up. This is why theoretically the price of gold should go up as there is a limited supply; however, bankers know that and buy it up to drive down the price. This is also why gold was historically used as a backing for our currency- because it's real money.
Here is a good book to check out for more information and probably a better explanation than I can give late at night-
http://www.amazon.com/Money-Mischief-Episodes-Monetary-History/dp/015661930X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1462511792&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=The+monetary+history+of+the+united+states
Haha, your perception is pretty spot on. Minus the bad gaming habit; I simply don't have the time for it. It's much more towards I fantasize about having a bad gaming habit. And yes, I'm a big fan of the Socratic method; Have you read Plato's Allegory of the Cave?
Yes, I am somewhat similar to a moderately successful small-business owner, and somewhat not.... And someone who has otherwise benefited from the capitalist system. And yes, I am a software engineer. I'm 25 if you are curious, and I'm married to the most beautiful & wonderful woman in the world (who does have a bad gaming habit.)
My name is Martin by the way, its a pleasure to meet you.
As for your question; the truth is it is rather difficult for me to put into words why it is I believe a wealth redistribution like you suggested is a bad deal not just for the wealthy, but for the poor too. My belief is based on many other beliefs, and the knowledge that there are many negative effects that will often outweigh the benefits of a well-meaning policy (such as doubling everyone's income, halves everyone's wealth.)
The reason it is difficult for me to put it into words directly is simply because I am not skilled enough at this kind of discourse to do so. I am trying my best to lead you to your answer. I did not find the answer myself until I had gone through many pages of many books, conversed many hours with opposite thinkers, endured a few years of great hardships, and enjoyed hard earned success. I do not think I am completely capable of giving your question the justice it deserves.
If you are still interested in having your question answered, let me get you a list of resources that helped me change my answer.
Free To Choose - TV Series from the 80's-90's originally hosted on PBS, its a good overview for the general principles of the capitalist system.
If you are not the type of person who likes to watch media, and more of a reader, I can make a few recommendations for starters.
The Road to Serfdom - written by Fredrick A. Hayek in the early 1940's. This book is a bit dry and a difficult read, but is a very interesting adventure into history and the ideas of capitalism. I HIGHLY recommend reading at least the foreword of this version. You might see some parallels between it and what is happening today.
Money Mischief: Episodes in Monetary History - If you like history, a good story teller, and truly have a desire to learn more about the funny effects of money, this is your book. This doesn't go over the capitalist system exactly, but explores man-kinds relationship with money. This book is a beautiful work of art which forces you to contemplate the nature of those little pieces of paper in our wallets.
Freakonomics is a goodie that makes you think about the nature of our own personal beliefs, and the beliefs our society has taken for granted.
By the way, my personal transition from socialist to capitalist started with me arguing against a (as she would have me describe her) 'big, fat, old, and alcoholic jewish lady'. We were arguing over legalization of heroin, she was for, I was staunchly against. Life is very strange sometimes.
I'm not saying you must or even should transition from what seems likely communist (based on word choice) to capitalist. Diversity of Ideas is the only thing that matters in a world where all people are equal.
One last thing, remember, if you never try to do more than you can, you'll never be more than you are.
Econometrickk and Integralds' lists are great. A few additions:
Wealth of Nations
Money Mischief
and
Nudge
The top two present a one sided view of economics, but are incredibly useful for providing a framework for thinking about it. Nudge gives some behavioral. You're mostly missing Keynesian which is available on the other lists. These are non-technical books.
>>Yeah that's what YOU said. Not me.
>
>You wish it was at any rate.
Nope. You were the one who made the claim that everyone missed "all the signs" of the previous collapse because they were too busy watching game shows.
Forgetting the major institutions that collapsed. You did that. Not me.
>Yeah, a dishonest analogy.
Nope. Perfectly apt.
Math is merely the basics of Economy.
Things like game theory, and economic models are all based on human psychology.
>Show me some titles, I'm always open to reading new stuff.
https://www.amazon.com/Quants-Whizzes-Conquered-Street-Destroyed/dp/0307453383
>>Other than that we are done here.
>
>LMAO that's exactly what I said.
In this we agree.
The two most recent books I've read on the topic:
Automate This
The Quants
I would say HFT is long past frontier stage and is more mature than you realize, and is infact, very influential as is. In fact, in may 2010, there was a HUGE market crash that was primarily computer driven and the consulting firm Accenture dropped down to $0.02 when it's usually valued at $30-40/share and it was largely attributed to a cascading computer error.
http://youtu.be/TDaFwnOiKVE that's a good ted talk just to get your feet wet.
In fact, some of the best and brightest physics and mathmatics majors are recruited by wallstreet for this express purpose.
I liked this book
http://www.amazon.com/Quants-Whizzes-Conquered-Street-Destroyed/dp/0307453383/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320701972&amp;sr=8-1
This can give some insight as well.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant?currentPage=all
Finally
http://www.slideshare.net/davidbuechner/low-latency-fpga-based-hft-solutions. Keep in mind that most HFT shops are fairly mum about what they use and who they go to in order to maintain a competitive advantage. What you read and what's actually in practice is likely very different.
exactly. For anyone else who'd like to look into this topic, be sure to read this book.
I have two books here that I'm willing to part with, which you may or may not find interesting. Broadly speaking you might call them political, but more specifically they're both on the subject of politics and finance. Public economics, we might call it.
The Ascent of Money- Niall Ferguson
The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It- Scott Patterson
Let me know if these interest you.
The Quants is a pretty good read.
Amazon
It's a book about behavioral economics. I just got past a point where he argues against efficient market and price-is-right by looking at closed-end funds vs the sum of the positions in them. Long story short, efficient price-is-right would dictate the prices be the same, but you can often get a closed-end fund that is cheaper than the sum of its parts. Moreover over time the delta tends to decrease, so someone could reasonably point at a deeply-discounted closed end fund and expect it to rise closer to parity with the sum of its parts.
An ETF that does this for you would be a great way for me with no time to get in on that action.
So I usually tell my MBA students to just read books, not textbooks. Here are a few of my general suggestions:
Nudge, Thaler and Sunstein
Misbehaving Thaler
Superforecasting Tetlock and Gardner
Zombie Economics Quiggin
If you need more suggestions or want to discuss any of the ideas in these books, don't hesitate to ask.
Sorry for the misleading link label. Thanks for pointing that out!
About the job hopping and compensation paper:
I've read the paper a few years back, yes. I used it to justify my job hopping for a few years. But, even if you consider the act of "finding your calling" science, to have that result you'd have to job hop between different professions. Most of the job hopping I'm seeing is between almost identical companies (IT firm making websites to another IT firm making websites, marketing agency to another marketing agency). Sure, if you're finding your calling by trying different jobs, this post doesn't apply to you.
Also, I'm writing about achievement and happiness. Not compensation. And money helps with happiness up to a certain point, which most smart people reach quite easily. After that, your compensation doesn't have any lasting effect on your happiness. The driving force, in that case, is a combination of Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose (model from the amazing Drive book). This post is about your purpose and how you can build your way towards it.
Finally, consider the fact that this is an observational study that found a correlation between switching jobs and salary. There is also a high correlation between Nicolas Cage movies and Swimming Pool drawings. On a more serious note, economic papers create generalized models which are great for certain things (studying unemployment rate), but aren't good tools for making personal decisions (I suggest looking into behavioral economics for better advice on personal improvement) .
Don't take this the wrong way, though. I will on my argumentation so that my points are more compelling. Thanks for that, as well!
PS: The post is supposed to be my opinion. Most of psychology is not backed by actual trials. It's backed by observations and correlations aka informed opinion. Also, the rules clearly state that [Advice] posts are "where users want to share key information about what worked for them when getting disciplined."
Only as much as seatbelts and airbags encourage bad driving.
Seatbelts won’t stop your car from crashing but they will help you, the squishy human. Similarly having some % of your investments in bonds and CDs won’t stop the stock market from crashing, but will help human beings make it through without selling their stocks. Especially if they lose their job, get hit with a surprise expense, or they or a family member gets really sick.
You can try to take the emotion out of humans, or you can accept them as they are and give them appropriate advice. Check out the book by the economist who won the novel price last year, Richard Thaler, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics for more about the differences between humans and rational robots.
I recommend you give this book a read:
http://www.amazon.com/Misbehaving-Behavioral-Economics-Richard-Thaler/dp/039335279X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=&amp;sr=
It's a summary of the results of behavioral economics since the 1960s. The upshot is this: If you gave most people that money, they wouldn't prepare for retirement, as most human brains don't come wired for that sort of long term financial planning, and most people simply haven't had the sort of lifetime cultural experience required to overcome those evolved deviations from "rational" behavior.
This isn't about assuming people are "stupid". Very intelligent and sophisticated people often deviate from economically "rational" behavior without realizing it. Until we have a comprehensive system of education in place which gives people the tools to be individually rational, we need structures in place to compensate for perfectly normal "irrational" behavior. Social Security is one of those structures.
Hey, awesome! Can I add two things to the order:
Thank you!
/r/SecurityAnalysis maintain a decent reading list.
The following is taken from it:
History
Devil Take the Hindmost - fun, readable book about the history of investment https://www.amazon.com/dp/0452281806/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_xIpbBbSMEKR7X
The Boglehead's Guide to Investing https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JUV01RW/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_gKpbBbSYVVXS7 has a lot of practical info on wealth maximization through minimizing taxes, long term consistent debt such as frequent new car purchases, and general buy and hold investment strategies
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0041842TW/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_6LpbBb1PVZEMX solid, classic book about foundations for building wealth
OH! I have just the book for you! It's currently one of my bathroom books next to The Billionaire's Vinegar.
Uncommon Grounds
I would say get employed in the cafe now and start to learn the rhythm and operation of it as it is today as well as the clientele. Learn the familiar faces and names of the regulars, make a connection with them and the community, and start to imagine the ways in which it could be improved. Ask the regulars what they like the most of this place and if there's anything that could make it better (you don't have to disclose you intend to purchase the place).
You could read Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World to get into the mindset of a coffee connoisseur.
These two things could begin to give you a better sense of the kind of world you are entering. I wish you success and fulfillment in this new endeavour.
-All of Scott Rao's books, including the Espresso e-book.
-Uncommon Grounds by Mark Pendergrast
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/046501836X?pc_redir=1412274560&amp;robot_redir=1
-Coffee: A Comprehensive guide to the Bean, the Beverage, and the Industry
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1442214406?pc_redir=1411853065&amp;robot_redir=1
-The World Atlas of Coffee by James Hoffman
http://shop.squaremilecoffee.com/products/the-world-atlas-of-coffee
-Coffee: Growing, Processing, Sustainable Production by Jean Nicolas Wintgens
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/3527332537?pc_redir=1413970300&amp;robot_redir=1
If you think you might want to go after some of the original stories, Bullfinch's Mythology is a really classic collection of myths, and of course there's Grimm's Fairy Tales and Aesop's Fables. Richard Burton's translation of The Arabian Nights is the English language classic there, The Tale of the Genji is something similar from Japan.
You might also like some related nonfiction, like The Golden Bough which is about the origins of myth and religion, The Hero With a Thousand Faces about the similarities across various stories of heroes, and more recently, The First Fossil Hunters which looks at how finding elephant and dinosaur bones may have inspired some of the Greek monsters like cyclops and griffin.
Try reading Hero with a Thousand Faces.
It's called the monomyth or the hero's journey. Read Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
What about those accused for interactions outside of work environment?
> For example, we have minimum wage laws that prevent companies from paying people below a reasonable wage. If left to their own devices, many companies would pay people pennies. Likewise, those who were desperate enough for opportunity would agree to those meager wages, thus emboldening companies to further exploit people for their own profitability. In addition, there is a culture of silence and fear encouraged in most workplaces around disclosing wages and salaries to maintain bargaining power. Some companies will even fire you for discussing your pay with coworkers.
Actually, minimum wage laws were intended as eugenics plot to drive out "infirm" (including minorities) out of job market.
Read more in the book.
Asks for sources and provides zero sources.
I literally googled "minimum wage and racism" and 10 pages of sources and book suggestions popped up. See minimum wage Act of 1925 in South Africa. Here is the book of a self described "progressive" that highlights it further: https://www.amazon.com/Illiberal-Reformers-Eugenics-Economics-Progressive/dp/0691169594
Also, you are economically illiterate.
Archives for links in comments:
----
I am Mnemosyne 2.0, Upvote? Downvote? I'm the one with the archives.^^^^/r/botsrights ^^^^Contribute ^^^^Website
I'm a fan of Freakonomics
http://freakonomics.com/
I'm also partial to this book explaining fundamentals of economics:
https://www.amazon.com/Economix-Economy-Works-Doesnt-Pictures/dp/0810988399
Sample of his stuff:
http://economixcomix.com/home/net-neutrality/
Oops, forgot to crassly self-promote.
Ahem.
Hey, if you liked that, you might enjoy my book:
http://www.amazon.com/Economix-Economy-Works-Doesnt-Pictures/dp/0810988399/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1375057094&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=economix
Dude - read this book
Sharing economy might help. It pretty much shows how ridiculous the whole "no one else in the world can ever use these resources" is. Keep in mind sharing economy is distinct from gift or exchange.
Here's a book on it https://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-Economy-Sharing-Thomas-Widlok/dp/1138945552
The credit situations he was referring to were gift exchange situations:
https://www.amazon.com/World-Gift-Jacques-T-Godbout/dp/0773517510
http://www.mit.edu/~allanmc/godbout1.pdf
There's also the non-market and non-gift stuff he calls "communism", or as Widlok calls it simply sharing:
https://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-Economy-Sharing-Thomas-Widlok/dp/1138945552
No offense, but you seem to have a knowledge of communism that does not go beyond the level of a youtube video or Wikipedia entry (maybe not even that).
For a better understanding of what Marx means by "value", I think you should check out the relevant chapters of Harry Cleaver's Reading Capital Politically while with re-reading Das Kapital:
https://libcom.org/library/reading-capital-politically-cleaver
You seem to be hinting at Commons and Common-pool resources, so maybe you should take a look at the book:
Omnia Sunt Communia: On the Commons and the Transformation to Postcapitalism by Massimo de Angelis:
http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=961FEA9AF31094CA0280E0F92B353AF7
Since you're posting in Marxist sub, I'm going to give you a take Marx's Communism leaving (Peter Kropotkin's and the anarchists' communism aside):
Marx doesn't thinks of communism in terms of ownership form of the means of production but in terms of the (social) relations of production.
This is one of many of the difference he has with the latter Leninist bullshit.
Paresh Chattopadhyay talks about this at length in his work:
https://libcom.org/library/socialism-marx-early-bolshevism-chattopadhyay
Marx's Associated Mode of Production: A Critique of Marxism:
http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=D06B95D8E25C74E8B16BEFB5C4B9C165
He talks about about "associated mode of production".
Speaking of wikipedia entries, here's one on that subject:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_association_%28communism_and_anarchism%29
I think you should also look into the concept of "demand-sharing", Thomas Widlok explain this concept in detail in his book "Anthropology and the Economy of Sharing":
https://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-Economy-Sharing-Thomas-Widlok/dp/1138945552
What anthropologists call "demand-sharing" is a kind of an open-ended agreement between two groups, or even two individuals, to provide for the other; within which, even access to one another’s possessions followed the principle of ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’.
(‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’, the old communist formula, basically means if you have a need and I have the ability to meet that need, I do it.
Keeping count or reciprocating is very frowned upon in these sort of situations.
This sort of communism is quite common (even under capitalism), in families, between friends and there's a little of it in every non-hostile relationship.)
> he's a Tuckerite. Completely false. Carson made it explicitly clear that his views did not change.
This is Completely false. Carson's views changed a lot after he incorporated into it the work of Elinor Ostrom on Commons, Michel Bauwens and P2P people, and some Autonomist Marxists.
He eclectically uses the work of anarchist-communists like Peter Kropotkin, Colin Ward, Paul Goodman and Ivan Illich.
He also uses the work of the (aforementioned) David Graeber.
He even incorporated some of the ideas of non-anarchist libertarian municipalist Murray Bookchin.
"Anarchist without adjectives" is a real historical school of thought, it's not just a word.
I must remind you that I said that he was "decent". I never said that he was right or that I agreed with him.
> You keep throwing this "disgusting" buzzwords around.
You're the one who's throwing buzzword.
You've repeated three times the bullshit myth about "voluntary exchange".
You whole ideology is based on old ahistorical and fictional stories about "markets" which you always speak about in abstract terms and never check to see or they work in reality, their history or their actual effects on people.
Other the simple fact that if you turn something like health into a commodity means that one's access to it is based on how much money one has instead of being based one one's need for it. That's already pretty disgusting and I haven't even mentioned the social effects markets have on people and their relations.
Markets as such, whether "free", "monopolized", blue or whatever are forms of impersonal domination.
(For their history, read the books mentioned above).
There are non-markets modalities we use that already exists ever under capitalism.
Here's a short summary of market and non-market forms:
Here's a little list of characteristics of 1.gift-exchange, 2.market-exchange 3. demand-sharing:
gift-exchange and market exchange:
Gift exchange differs from barter or market exchange because the value of the gifts is judged qualitatively, not quantitatively as in the case of commodities. Gift-exchange is based on ‘the capacity for actors (agents, subjects) to extract or elicit from others items that then become the object of their relationship’.
In the famous book Gifts and Commodities by Christopher A. Gregory (an economic anthropologist) suggests this is a general tendency.
Gift economies tend to personify objects. Commodity/market economies, do the opposite: they tend to treat human beings, or at least, aspects of human beings, like objects. The most obvious example is human labor: in modern economics we talk of “goods and services” as if human activity itself were something analogous to an object, which can be bought or sold in the same way as cheese, or tire-irons.
Gregory lays out a tidy set of oppositions. Gifts are transactions that are meant to create or effect “qualitative” relations between persons; they take place within a preexisting web of personal relations; therefore, even the objects involved have a tendency to take on the qualities of people.
Commodity exchange (market), on the other hand, is meant to establish a “quantitative” equivalence of value between objects; it should ideally be done quite impersonally; therefore, there is a tendency to treat even the human beings involved like things.
Demand-sharing:
It's similar to what David Graeber calls "everyday communism", which he defines as:
"An open-ended agreement between two groups, or even two individuals, to provide for the other; within which, even access to one another’s possessions followed the principle of ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’."
(‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’, the old communist formula, basically means if you have a need and I have the ability to meet that need, I do it.
Keeping count or reciprocating is very frowned upon in these sort of situations.
This sort of communism is quite common (even under capitalism), in families, between friends and there's a little of it in every non-hostile relationship.)
What characterizes a sharing context comparatively is that it extends the circle of people who can enjoy the good implicated in a resource, for instance accessing a certain resource such as water. In other words, sharing food or drink is an action done for its own sake, putting the good of nourishment in the place of any specific goals that may be derivative of the transfer of food items, for instance the attempt to create obligations for the future. In this understanding, sharing is not a manifestation of an altruistic move, putting the goals of others above one's own goals, but rather one of renouncing derivative goals altogether in the face of intrinsic goods—its intrinsic value if you will. In gift-giving contexts, by contrast, goals of various kinds (whether held jointly by the exchange partners or not, whether altruistic or egoistic) override the intrinsic good of whatever it is that is being provided.
It's important to distinguish exchange, which is usually for “external” and strategic benefits such as having a network of partners, creating obligations for the future, etc. (gift-exchange) or and more impersonal and violent benefits when it comes to market-exchange – from sharing that entails the intrinsic goods of receiving a share (sharing out) and of being accepted as a member of the community of humans with recognized needs (sharing in).
Unlike what the economic fundamentalists would have you believe, sharing is not governed by either ecological need and pressure nor a diffuse notion of generosity and altruism. The ethnographic record shows that sharing takes place not only under conditions of scarcity, and that it typically takes the form of demand sharing rather than apparently generous gift-giving. In fact, a number of cultural conditions have to be in place for sharing to work. Unlike the case of exchange systems, these conditions are not formally institutionalized normative systems but, instead, complex systems of habitual practice. In the ethnographic cases (including those in capitalist societies), sharing works because people have a shared history of mutual involvements as kin, because they master numerous ways of initiating sharing through implicature and other forms of talk, and finally because they recognize the presence of others as the (often silent) demand that it constitutes toward those who have and who are in a position to give.
Many acts of sharing took place, and continue to take place, because they are initiated by the taker and social strategies are in place that decouple giving from receiving. Sharing may therefore take place (as said before) without the provider enacting and expressing charity. Often it takes place in a way that downgrades the act of giving as part of leveling any potential attempts of the giver to take political advantage from his or her economically advantaged position. Demand sharing not only inverts the sequence of action but also the tone of the transaction that is known as “charitable giving.” There is no sharing without a demand. The demand need not be uttered, and it need not be the demand of a specific interlocutor since it is a demand for provisioning that emerges as a consequence of moral role relationships or as incurred by a particular situation of copresence, as I would prefer to call it. We need to recognize that one’s mere bodily presence, underlined by addressing the other person in particular ways, is always a demand for being acknowledged as a partner, a personal being with legitimate needs. An appropriate definition of demand sharing is therefore much broader than the use of explicit demands such as “Give me . . .” leading to the appropriation of what one may think one is entitled to. The explicitness of the demand may differ and it may be entirely implicit very much like a “silent demand”. Humans are sufficiently able to put themselves into the situation of others to be able to know what the intrinsic goods of shared objects are for fellow humans without any demand being uttered.
Sharing is generally characterized by the preparedness to suspend measuring objects against one another (which means that sharing does not necessarily entail that everyone gets the same) in that situation and by the unwillingness to hang on to something in a particular situation.
You can understand this better about this by reading Thomas Widlok's recent book "Anthropology and the Economy of Sharing":
https://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-Economy-Sharing-Thomas-Widlok/dp/1138945552
Sorry that I couldn't respond sooner, I was pretty busy all yesterday. That being said, I have a couple objections to what you said.
>People lived in absolute grinding poverty during that period
Yes, they did. They also lived in poverty before that and before that and before that and so on. Poverty was never a new thing. Now during the 1800 and 1900s people saw ways out of poverty and that was working in factories.
I am going to assume that you are talking about the industrialization of the United States and the poor living conditions that these people had. Tell me, what sense would it make for people to move to cities from farms, poorhouses or even the streets if they did not think that they could have a better opportunity in the city? Factory owners did not force these laborers to the cities, these people went voluntarily. To quote Ludwig von Mises who says it better than I ever could:
“The factory owners did not have the power to compel anybody to take a factory job. They could only hire people who were ready to work for the wages offered to them. Low as these wage rates were, they were nonetheless much more than these paupers could earn in any other field open to them. It is a distortion of facts to say that the factories carried off the housewives from the nurseries and the kitchens and the children from their play. These women had nothing to cook with and to feed their children. These children were destitute and starving. Their only refuge was the factory. It saved them in the strict sense of the term, from death by starvation."
> women couldn't vote, black people were second class citizens subject to terrorism from the Klan and corrupt public officials, Asians were excluded from entering the country. You call that a golden age?
All of those things that you listed were government regulations that were put on these people. I approve of none of those things. Yeah, it definitely sucked that these people were oppressed, but if the government was smaller or non-existent, none of those things would have happened.
>The entire progressive movement in American sprung to combat the human misery and excesses of the Robber Barons during that period.
No, it wasn't the progressive movement that dealt with human misery and allowed humans to work less, children not to work, etc. It was capitalism that allowed for all these things to happen.
Think about this for a second. Before the industrialization of America and other countries, no one thought that escaping poverty was possible. People worked long hours because they had to work long hours. Children worked because if they didn't, their family would starve. It wasn't the progressive movement that allowed us to no longer be oppressed by nature.
You can’t outlaw starvation by saying “Okay, no more children working and everyone now has a 40 hour work week.” You get time off and children have to stop working once laborers are earning enough money for the work that they are doing.
Look at the situation in Bangladesh. Child labor was outlawed and now look where the children are. They are now taking jobs as prostitutes because they have no other way to make money. Thomas DiLorenzo says:
"Those who deplore "child labor" and "sweatshops" fail to recognize or acknowledge that as deplorable as these conditions may seem by the standards of modern-day America, these people are much better off for having the opportunity to work in a higher paying factory. In many parts of today's world starvation is still the alternative to budding capitalism. To child laborers in parts of the world, the alternatives to "sweatshop labor" are malnutrition and starvation, child prostitution, and begging and stealing."
You also mention the Robber Barons and how they were awful capitalists. I’m going to suggest two books for you to read.
However, I can sum those two books up for you real quickly. The “Robber Barons” that you know from US History, were definitely not as awful as you think they were. Also, I’m getting all my information from How Capitalism Saved America in the seventh chapter called The Truth about the “Robber Barons”. Everything has citations in the book.
John D. Rockefeller, “Even though John D. Rockefeller’s company, Standard Oil, had at one point 90% of the market share of oil, the company greatly improved the quality and availability of kerosene products while reducing the costs of them by about 80%.” - Burt Folsom. So apparently providing much need products for a cheap price is a bad thing.
He also never purchased insurance on his plants because he knew that they were incredibly safe. His kerosene products were so cheap that it ended up replacing whale oil which was used a whole lot in the late 1800s. He paid his employees significantly more than his competition and he also believed in rewarding his most innovated managers with bonuses and paid time off.
Rockefeller never had a monopoly on oil in fact by the time that government got involved and was “Hey you have too much of the market share”, free market capitalism and competition already did the work itself and Rockefeller’s market share was only at about 60%.
There is plenty more that you can read for yourself in those books, but I really hope this made you think and reconsider.
SECTION | CONTENT
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Title | The Myth of Natural Monopoly | by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
Description | Buy 'How Capitalism Saved America | by Thomas J. DiLorenzo': http://amzn.to/1GUXmEK --- My website: http://www.vforvoluntary.com/ Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/austrian_economics/ The 2006 Steven Berger Seminar: Thomas DiLorenzo on Liberty and American Civilization http://mises.org/events/86 June 5-9, 2006 LUDWIG VON MISES INSTITUTE - CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION 3.0 MP3 files of this lecture series 1-5: http://www.mediafire.com/?lol1q61emb1ac98 6-10: http://www.mediafire.com/?bmrem3dswc...
Length | 1:06:14
****
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The Law - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1936594315/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=thmariwi-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1936594315
Economics in one lesson - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0517548232/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=thmariwi-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0517548232
That which is seen and is not seen - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1453857508/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=thmariwi-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1453857508
Our enemy, the state - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001E28SUM/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=thmariwi-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B001E28SUM
How capitalism save america - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400083311/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=thmariwi-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1400083311
New Deal or Raw Deal - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1416592377/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=thmariwi-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1416592377
Lessons for the Young Economist - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933550880/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=thmariwi-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1933550880
For a New Liberty - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1610162641/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=thmariwi-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1610162641
What Has Government Done to Our Money? - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/146997178X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=thmariwi-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=146997178X
America's Great Depression - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/146793481X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=thmariwi-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=146793481X
Defending the Undefendable - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933550171/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=thmariwi-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1933550171
Metldown - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1596985879/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=thmariwi-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1596985879
The Real Lincoln - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0761526463/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=thmariwi-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0761526463
The Road to Serfdom - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226320553/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=thmariwi-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0226320553
Capitalism and Freedom - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226264211/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=thmariwi-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0226264211
Radicals for Capitalism - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1586485725/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=thmariwi-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1586485725
Production Versus Plunder - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0979987717/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=thmariwi-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0979987717
Atlas Shrugged - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452011876/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=thmariwi-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0452011876
The Myth of the Rational Voter - http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0691138737/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=thmariwi-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0691138737
Foutainhead - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452273331/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0452273331&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thmariwi-20
Anthem - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452281253/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0452281253&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thmariwi-20
There are of course more books, but this should last you a few years!
Check out the book "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds", Amazon US link, UK link, wikipedia link
It was written in the 1800s! Even back then they knew about group delusions.
These are good too if you want to understand how the US swung to the far right.
http://www.amazon.com/Death-Liberal-Class-Chris-Hedges/dp/1568586795
http://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Hands-Businessmens-Crusade-Against/dp/0393337669/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1410918334&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=invisible+hands+the+businessmen%27s+crusade+against+the+new+deal
>I don’t support or trust the liberals or NDP…and I can no longer support the conservatives…
So green?
Take a break from politics, you're not going to change a sizable chunk of the populations views. Do some more reading, your vote is a drop in the bucket. You're starting to realize that politics is largely a sham because big business owns the place.
I'd advise you to pickup some books:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Opinion_(book)
--
http://www.amazon.com/Death-Liberal-Class-Chris-Hedges/dp/1568586795
Now these books aren't perfect but they are a good jumping off point
http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Illusion-Literacy-Triumph-Spectacle/dp/1568586132/
>Daily Caller
Shitty site. Wanna prove each fact incorrect though
Noted liberal writer Chris Hedges has written a book about the very topic
http://www.amazon.com/Death-Liberal-Class-Chris-Hedges/dp/1568586795
>And how a majority of Democrats continue to support civil liberties issues in Congress as evidenced earlier. Nobody is making the argument that ALL Democrats are civil liberties champions.
That's what you seem to be insinuating. I believe that the progressives like Alan Grayson and Jared Polis have done admirable work, but shits like the President deserve equal blame as the Republicans who have blocked civil liberties.
>Substantial - NOT MAJORITY. That's the BIG difference between the parties which you keep ignoring.
Some Republicans have opposed the measures too. The numbers are not too different.
Again, a better example of the difference would be health care, where nearly every Democrat voted for it, and every Republican against.
>And I countered it, nice spin but doesn't change the fact that Greenwald supported the invasion.
Again not even true. Greenwald was not even writing professionally at the time of the invasion.
>When did I say this at all? Can you even read?
Notice how you ignored the Ron Paul question that I posed?
Ron Paul was wrong to vote for the authorization. So was every other representative. Ok? I disagree with about 80% of what the guy says. I'm no fan of his.
And the Patriot Act? In the initial passage, both parties enthusiastically supported it. They introduced a totalitarian measure to capitalize on the fears of Americans. That's wrong.
But if you think Obama is anti-war you are stupid.
>Right, the issues that ACLU lists as civil liberties and defends them as such are not civil liberties but trivialities because the reactionaries who only read op-ed pieces from hacks don't even know that there are other civil liberty issues beyond surveillance.
Democrats are good on social issues (call them civil liberties if you like) like gay marriage and abortion. Shitty on surveillance issues like the Patriot Act and FISA
Here's another good read that explains what it was like...
https://www.amazon.com/When-Money-Dies-Devaluation-Hyperinflation/dp/1586489941
I recommend "When Money Dies: The Nightmare of Deficit Spending, Devaluation, and Hyperinflation in Weimar Germany"
Read [When Money Dies] (http://www.amazon.com/When-Money-Dies-Devaluation-Hyperinflation/dp/1586489941) about Weimar Germany for an dea about this. Hyperinflation went on for month after bloody month with a few temporary respites and a couple of new currencies throughout. Get it wrong when you sell your stack and the fiat you get from it could be worthless within a week.
The book also describes a group of young aristocrats who come across a US dollar and are unable to spend the whole thing in one night despite eating out, going to nightclubs, getting taxis etc. because the US money was worth so much compared to their own. Might be a good idea to keep a small amount of foreign fiat in the event of US hyperinflation.
All the Devils Are Here
To add to your list check out "All the Devils are Here" http://www.amazon.com/All-Devils-Are-Here-Financial/dp/1591843634
A great book is http://www.amazon.com/All-Devils-Are-Here-Financial/dp/1591843634 . Imo it is the best book on the topic. Also, you do not need any prior economic understanding to be able to read it. And it is pretty unbiased.
Edit: Formating
You may be interested in the works of Joseph Campbell, particularly his idea of the monomyth.
Also, that article doesn't mention Odin who also has a similar sacrifice story, perhaps because his story may be newer than the story of Jesus.
>This is a ridiculous claim, because over time social issues become more liberal
No. Once upon a time less then 100 years ago, the progressive opinion was in favor of eugenics and the conseratives were against it. I doubt you can go very far in the modern democrat party demanding that blacks be sterilized.
Conservatives socially are those who disliked change; progressives want change. Some changes happen and people like it. Other changes happen and everyone jumps to roll it back. Conservatives often blocked things that made us very grateful that they blocked it. Like, say, eugenics.
>70 years ago society was quite different, (heck 20 years ago it was radically different) so it's impossible to make a comparison on social issues.
I quite disagree - Ike would fit just fine socially with today's Republicans. And more importantly, within his day, he was not one those that tried to push social norms to different things.
>They want to overhaul/privatize social security, which is pretty much the same thing. Additionally conservatives are against unions and the minimum wage, both specifically referenced by Ike.
There are certainly people in the party who wanted to remove the minimum wage and unions; but those people are in the fringes. They existed in Ike's party as well. Same for social security - the Republicans are less against it today then they had been.
First of all, that's not a dictionary nor does it deal with question of authority or hierarchy (the OP is not asking about "economics"), and secondly it's a terrible book with very uninformed takes on anarchism. At least two of the contributors (Albert-Hahnel) are not anarchist at all (they're anti-communist, in the anarchist sense of communism) and have very bad take on economics as they ground their theory on assumptions from neoclassical economics. Their model of postcapitalism is based on a Walrasian model of capitalism.
If you want to talk about anarchist economics I would rather direct you to:
Debt:The First 5000 Years by David Graeber.
Massimo de Angelis' The Beginning of History: Value Struggles and Global Capital
Massimo de Angelis' Omnia Sunt Communia: On the Commons and the Transformation to Postcapitalism.
Crack Capitalism by John Holloway.
Thomas Widlok's Anthropology and the Economy of Sharing.
David Bollier: http://www.bollier.org/commons-resources/commons-bibliography
Edit:
On anarchist theory, there's very good books like:
Anarchism: A Documentary History Of Libertarian Ideas (Volumes 1, 2 & 3) edited by Robert Graham:
https://libcom.org/library/anarchism-documentary-history-libertarian-ideas-volume-1-2
Anarchy Alive!: Anti-authoritarian politics from practice to theory - Uri Gordon:
https://libcom.org/library/anarchy-alive-anti-authoritarian-politics-practice-theory-uri-gordon-0
Anarchy Works - Peter Gelderloos:
https://libcom.org/library/peter-gelderloos-anarchy-works
https://www.amazon.com/How-Capitalism-Saved-America-Pilgrims/dp/1400083311
Differs in that it has a commitment to the truth and isn't agenda-driven.
I understood your point perfectly. My philosophy is that competition and a profit motive always yields better results for customers.
Public services can appear to be efficient when they are getting involuntary subsidies by taxpayers (Medicare, Amtrack), when in reality they are run on a deficit. They likely could not exist without the government coercing us into supporting them. Who under the age of 40 would pay into Medicare voluntarily these days, with the expectation of receiving medical care from it in 25 years?
Shelter has also become extremely affordable due to profit motive - look at motor homes and cheap apartments. Same thing with clothing. 100 years ago a decent suit cost $1000 in today's money, but today you can get one for $200-300. People can pay more for increased durability. Companies and entrepreneurs seek out and create solutions for every niche in a free market. In terms of food, a lot is unhealthy, but you can also buy organic or local or make healthier mainstream choices. No one forces people to eat garbage, and the fact that they choose to is one of the costs of a free society. We have to let people make bad decisions, or else suffer the consequences of letting busybodies in DC run our lives. At the very least, we can stop the government from interfering and distorting the market with subsidies, like they give to the corn producers.
In summary: everything that we enjoy today, from your phone to the skyscraper to the car to your shampoo - all were created by the profit motive. I doubt you will ever deign to do so, but you should check out this book - http://www.amazon.com/How-Capitalism-Saved-America-Pilgrims/dp/1400083311/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1256311261&amp;sr=8-2 it counters the mainstream propaganda we are subjected to about how the government should be providing this service or that service.
All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis
This is well worth a watch Reddit. The book is also worth reading too.
http://www.amazon.com/Ascent-Money-Financial-History-World/dp/1594201927
What's the effect of holding period on returns, I wonder?
nope there are plenty of systems that specifically take into account that people can sometimes fuck up, random things happen, people are irrational beings with animal spirits
https://www.amazon.com/Misbehaving-Behavioral-Economics-Richard-Thaler/dp/039335279X
https://www.amazon.com/Animal-Spirits-Psychology-Economy-Capitalism/dp/069114592X
Behavioral genetics, as a mainstream, scientific field, is showing that nearly all behavioral and personality traits are significantly influenced by genes See: Quillette – Heritability and why Parents (but not Parenting) Matter, written by Brian Boutwell and Razib Khan. This part just simply isn’t disputable. But given that it is true, it does entail that basically every policy is going to have either “eugenic” or “dysgenic” impacts, because for basically any policy, you can say that it’s either helping to improve the frequency of beneficial (or harmful) traits, or else doing the opposite.
So to my mind, “Eugenics” is pretty much a useless term. People use it to encompass everything from Nazi pseudoscience that had nothing to do strictly with improving human genetics per se–much less out of any humanitarian spirit–to liberal eugenics policies (See: Liberal Eugenics: In Defence of Human Enhancement, by Nicholas Agar) that never involve any sort of coercive force.
Speaking of “liberal eugenics,” that is a modern term and in that phrase’s usage “liberal” essentially means “non–coercive” rather than “on the left–wing side of the political spectrum”, but the sort of “fascist,” coercive policies you probably have in mind were actually pioneered by the leftists of the 20th century. See: Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era, by Thomas C. Leonard. Those policies were not in any way, shape, or form unique to Nazi Germany; liberal countries like Sweden actually had more “eugenics” policies than Germany—see: Eugenics and the Third Reich, By Stephen B. Saetz, Marian Van Court, and Mark W. Henshaw. And worldwide, it was the political Left—who believed in the ultimate perfectibility of mankind, and the capacity of wise legislators to advance it through the coercive power of the State, just as innocently as they do in things like education and healthcare and welfare and gun control and so forth today—who pushed and advanced those policies.
In any case, I do support what in the modern terminology is called “liberal eugenics”: to the extent that I believe the depression I’ve experienced is in large part caused by genes, and to the extent that I feel I have a responsibility to make sure my children don’t experience it, and that I believe that could be achieved as if not more effectively through gene therapy as through social policy, I’m a believer in something that could be loosely labeled “eugenics”, sure.
As far as “white supremacy”, I’m 1/4th Lebanese Christian, and the last significant relationship I had before my wife was with a journalist from Pakistan who personally knew family members who had been blown up by U.S. drones. Razib Khan, co–author of the post I opened this comment with, is another Pakistani scientist whose discussions led me to the perspectives I hold today (I’m also friends with him on his personal Facebook account). Another of my favorite examples is JayMan [link], who happens to be of Jamaican origin, who discusses policies like maternity leave in the context of “eugenics” – namely, he makes the point that making it so that conscientious high–IQ women don’t have to decide between having children and pursuing a career means we’d get the long–term benefit of having more conscientious, smart children populating the next generation.
If supporting policies like maternity leave because I want smart women to be encouraged to have more smart children makes me a “eugenicist”, so be it. If wanting to prevent my children from inheriting my worst traits, and being open to gene therapy as the best means towards that end makes me a “eugenicist”, so be it. If agreeing with a Pakistani and a Jamaican whose writings I consider even more interesting and influential than my own makes me a “white supremacist”, so be it. But absolutely none of this has anything to do with thinking white people are ‘better’ (by what metric? Jews have even higher IQs, East Asians are even less prone to violence, ...) or wanting to cause any sort of harm to non–white people.