(Part 3) Top products from r/CapitalismVSocialism

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

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

> Even if you conflate terminal and instrumental values, you can act irrationally from an objective viewpoint.

I agree.

> To your second point: If I know that I should be studying, but I also know that at this moment, I would rather relax and watch a movie, which option is the rational one?

There's actually a book on this point I'd love to recommend to you. There's nothing that says first-order desires and second-order desires can't be in conflict. As to which one objectively is going to be better for you in the long-term I'd say we both know which one is obvious. We may have a highly unhealthy habit of smoking while at the same time, desiring the wish that we had the ability to stop, as it's bad for our health.

> Or

> If I sacrifice my social life, my hobbies, my girlfriend etc. so I can spend more time on my education, I will achieve better results long term. Is it rational for me to sacrifice all of those things?

Depends on all the factors we can think of that carry weight. We as human beings make complex decisions like that all the time. As a hypothetical of course, I can't give you a definitive answer, since reasoning about counterfactuals can be very much at odds with how we process a complex decision when actually confronted with one. The most I could say about the hypothetical is that the rational choice could go either way (depending on what information I had, but again, perfect symmetry of information is seldom available, in any choice).

> What is the rational balance of discounting value according to time?

Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean here. If you'd clarify I'd appreciate it.

> Elaborate?

Military can seize crops and medical equipment for any armed members "as long as they need". So if the siphoning is done by the military, it can avoid any sort of "value" (surplus or no) judgements entirely. Born, Bred, and Fed.

>Printing money causes inflation,

Not alone. Inflation is the standard, and indeed, predates currencies such as the dollar

>Say, director A of a public utility district does not have the power to levy higher taxes but they do have the power to perpetuate certain rules regarding public utilities

Yes, director A will likely use existing favoritism and "industrial standards" to guide those certain rules.

> balance of powers within a country and how they don’t work, at all

Would you argue that the "Checks and Balances" in the US Constitution "work" / don't work? Keep in mind, "work/don't work" isn't contingent upon profitability nor cost-cutting. Rather, the "goal" of USA is "Domestic Tranquility and to Secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and progeny, and a More Perfect Union"

A conservative/reactionary reading list:

Jean Bodin - Six Books of the Commonwealth (1576)

Robert Filmer - Patriarcha, or The Natural Power of Kings (1680)

Edmund Burke - Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Joseph de Maistre - Considerations on France (1797) and Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions and other Human Institutions (1809)

Thomas Carlyle - The French Revolution: A History (1837) and On Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in History (1841)

Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil (1886) and Genealogy of Morals (1887)

Oswald Spengler - Decline of the West (1918)

Ernst Jünger - Storm of Steel (1920)

Jose Ortega y Gassett - Revolt of the Masses (1929)

Julius Evola - Revolt Against the Modern World (1934) and Men Among the Ruins (1953)

Bertrand de Jouvenal - On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth (1949)

Leo Strauss - Natural Right and History (1953)

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn - The Menace of the Herd (1943) and Liberty or Equality (1952)

OK, that’s fair. Certainly the preparations for industrialization were being made in the 1820s/30s/40s . Here’s an excerpt from Heilbroner’s The Economic Transformation of America 1600 to Present (I couldn’t find any way to read it online though /r/scholar could probably help with that. I got a used copy for like 5 bucks though on Amazon):

>An observer in 1815 would have been pardoned if he had failed to understand the country’s new ambitions for manufacture. The nation was still overwhelmingly rural in aspect and agricultural in occupation. Even in its most densely populated areas of the Northeast, barely 10 percent of the population lived in “urban” concentrations of 2,500 or more, while in the South the ratio was only half that. Moreover, even in the cities, “industry” was an unusual calling. The great bulk of the city workers were employed in mercantile business, in seafaring, or in the handicraft and service trades that catered to city life. The number found in mills or manufactories was negligible—throughout the entire nation probably only 15,000 persons, perhaps 1 percent of the gainfully employed, were engaged in iron or textiles, the two most promising candidates for industrial grown, and less than 4 percent in manufacturing of all kinds.

.

>My view is that this puts the trade and industrial policy of emerging industrial nations such as China into a lot of perspective.

There’s actually a book you might find interesting. A collection of essays edited by Ha Joon Chang I read way back called Institutional Change and Economic Development. I remember the essay on China being especially interesting but, damn, can’t remember any of the specifics now. I read it when I was pretty new to economics so I don’t think I absorbed much. Probably should revisit it now.

Anecdotal evidence: here

Small explanation: here

Press overview: here

if you want to learn from a more academic book: here, here

And otherwise just taking classes in economics, building a company and looking at real life example.

The best examples of coo-ops nowadays are start-ups before their first round of investment (A, B, C, etc.) and other outsider capital increases.

We mean go to your nearest school library and borrow literally any book on economics and you'll start to understand at least a bit though to really understand I'd recommend this for economic theory and either this or this for economic history.

The economic history ones are actually really interesting books.

Get some context first from an introductory text like Marx: A Very Short Introduction

The three paradigms that he drew to make is work: Classical economics, French socialist political philosophy, and Hegelianism are all antiquated in the sense that in general we don't think in those terms any more. Reading Marx and understanding everything you read is not always the same thing.

Your point isn't even based in reality

Men's Hanes 7 pack of regular undies, $30

Women's Hanes 10 pack of regular undies, $26

Even if they were priced differently, the two kinds of underwear are totally different materials, sizes, shapes, and are sold to two completely different markets.. So why wouldn't they be priced differently?

https://www.amazon.com/Gulag-Archipelago-Experiment-Literary-Investigation/dp/0061253715/ref=asc_df_0061253715/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=241916856624&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=18415687716287272169&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9031536&hvtargid=aud-800703102928:pla-489316922087&psc=1

The Fourth Revolution, by John Micklethwait and Adrian Woolridge.

In Defense of Global Capitalism, by Johan Norberg.

The Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert Gordon.

The Road to Serfdom by F A Hayek.

Asquith, by Roy Jenkins.

This is a weird one, but Woodrow Wilson by John Milton Cooper Jr. This influenced me a lot, but it obviously won't have the same effect on everyone.

My source states that intra-species murder among animals happens much less often then we think watching Animal Planet. Animals competeting for food use violence against each other, but the fight stops as soon as one party steps back.

Konrad Lorenz On Aggression

In that case, I found a lot of inspiration in the book American Progressivism: A Reader. It's a sampling of formative essays and speeches during the Progressive Era talking about reforming government, reducing corruption, and building a reliable administration. Reading it helps understand how the modern US government got to be where it is, because most of their proposals were eventually adopted.

I also read Leninism by Neil Harding, which went into the detail of the initial Communist revolution in Russia and how Lenin's political theories evolved as circumstances on the ground changed. I think it was helpful both in gaining more understanding of the history of the time and in learning about what Communism came to mean in a Russian context.

I liked Predictably Irrational and Freakonomics for really highlighting 1) economics is about incentives, and 2) our incentives sometimes lead us and markets astray, sometimes even in predictably bad ways.

The Myth of the Rational Market traces a history of financial economics going back to the early 1900s and how we conceptualized the idea of the Efficient Market Hypothesis. It also ends up introducing a lot of basic financial information I had in my finance classes.

The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and the World on Fire goes into specific detail about the financial crisis and how central banks across the world responded to it. Useful if you aren't familiar with the specifics of the crisis.

The Working Poor: Invisible in America helps explore the hopelessness and despair of the working poor, and how a poverty mindset can develop. It also shows how systems of late fees, overdraft fees, payday loans, lack of benefits for part-time workers, the cost of healthcare, etc all combine to really rig the world against the poor succeeding.

That's all I can think of for now.

Feminism is about gender equality. The idea it is about exclusively advocating for women rights is just wrong because intersectionality is all about taking into account all forms of inequality. Anarchism by definition includes intersectional feminism.

> and that girls commit just as much rape as guys.

Male rape is a feminist issue.