(Part 3) Top products from r/PoliticalDiscussion

Well, the whole merits of IP and how we treat IP today is a slightly different conversation.

The real conversation in regards to the original topic is the fact that the way we regard IP is very different than how we did, 50-100 years ago. Let alone the way it was handled by enlightenment thinkers and the creators of the world's first democracies and republics.

Quite frankly, the incentive that would have been in their minds (and people like Smith), would have been that people would be able to extract a certain amount of money out of their creations (purely by being the first people to do it) and that eventually the knowledge would be released in some way to an intellectual "commons".

The history of these ideas and how they've changed is really interesting, but maybe a bit much to relay here. Some really good books on the subject:

The Anarchist in the Library

Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity

Essentially, for most of society there has been a concept of "the commons". Public spaces that everyone was entitled to use. The (earliest? not sure) most popular manifestation of this was common ground for grazing livestock. It was public land that anyone could bring their animals to, and was regarded as a public service that was in the best interest of the society. It eased pressure on land disputes, let poorer farmers stay above water, etc. Simply, just a good thing for everyone involved. Of course, since it was essentially free animal food, there were instances where the commons were worn down and rendered useless. This is where the phrase "tragedy of the commons" comes from. Regulations were put in place to make the commons effective for the common good, but also sustainable.

These types of initiatives/societal mechanisms were thought by enlightenment thinkers as necessary for our advancement. And those types of things were included in the way they thought about IP, as well. Simply put, it looks much different now than it did then. Things like "The Mickey Mouse Preservation act", for better or worse, made those changes.

So, what someone like Smith would say, is that there is "common good" that comes from free IP. The idea that no one has the patent on the concept of a car is a good thing because it frees up capital for different car companies to compete and make the best car. The individual loss of intellectual "ownership", and whatever that might mean on a broader societal scale, is outweighed by the benefits of "the commons".

But Smith had no concept of "ripping a movie". None of these enlightenment thinkers had any idea of what technology would become, and how that would fundamentally alter the way their theories actually played out in the real world. And since they didn't "cover that", we are left to be the philosophers and thinkers of our time instead of relying on the big ideas of the 1700s. In light of digital technology, the capability to replicate things, the transmit them almost instantaneously all over the world, putting the means of media production into the hands of every man woman and child in an effectively affordable manner... how do we need to build our society? How can we maintain incentive? What is the role of the commons? What are the real ramifications of our decisions? What do we want to achieve, and why?

It's all very interesting to me.

Sorry for the late response, I've been pretty busy all day.

Anyway,

> The problem, I think, is trying to make an issue that's not so black-and-white look black-and-white. In the poll you linked, read the write-in responses below. Most of the comments for the 'agrees' say things like "gains and losses are not spread evenly" or "economists understate short-term employment costs"

True. Trade is not black-and-white, there are winners and losers. There is consensus on that as well -- the losers are those who lose their jobs, and the winners are literally everyone else (not just the uber-rich). If you're interested in reading about trade and how it does and does not affect the economy, I'd suggest this Paul Krugman essay.

However, the consensus is still there. Although some particular trade deals might not be considered favorable to the US (Krugman described himself as a "lukewarm opponent" to the TPP) trade overall is seen as a massively positive benefit to the economy due to comparative advantage. The extremely quick drop in world poverty and rise in living standards can mostly be attributed to trade.

Also, I see you've noticed Acemoglu's comment. You left out

> probably less than benefits

Which makes a huge difference. I highly recommend his book, Why Nations Fail though if you are more interested in his thought process.

> It's worth noting that Sanders is only 'anti-free-trade' in the black and white world, and in reality his stance is that these agreements can be good if there are stipulations like retraining programs, comparative working condition requirements, etc.

Sander's view is about as black-and-white as you can get. He has opposed literally every single trade deal he could, whether or not they had any of those stipulations.

And, I know I've linked Krugman a lot -- I don't think he's infallible but he's one of the very best resources on trade -- here he explains in plain English why "comparative working conditions" may not lead to quite as good an outcome as you'd expect. I agree with you and Bernie that retraining programs are necessary, as would many economists (there's not quite a consensus because that is more a matter of opinion on what is "right") but the fact is that there is and has been a solid consensus in economics on the benefits of free trade, comparable almost to that of global warming for climate scientists.

To be fair, he's hardly the only one.

In 1969 someone wrote a book called The Emerging Republican Majority that correctly predicted coming Republican dominance due to demographic changes. And the book was quite right when you look at presidential contests. From 1968 to 1988 Republicans won 5 out of 6 presidential elections. And the 1 they lost (Carter, 1976) they only narrowly lost.

In 2004 someone wrote a book called The Emerging Democratic Majority, making much the same prediction based on demographic changes. Sure Bush later won reelection that year, but the exit poll numbers only reinforced the author's point about how the GOP was losing in growing demographic groups, and hence likely to struggle more at winning elections.

These kinds of demographic changes DO NOT mean it's impossible for one party to win the white house however. Only that until demographics or voting behavior starts changing significantly that one party will struggle more at winning national elections.

To say that demographics mean Democrats will control the government for the next 4 or however many decades goes too far.

On the subject about which you posted, I'd recommend the following:

• Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, by H.W. Brands, Professor of History, University of Texas, Austin
  
  
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt, by Alan Brinkley, Allan Nevins Professor of History at Columbia University
  
  
• The Crisis of the Old Order: 1919-1933, The Age of Roosevelt, Volume I, by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., one of the most prolific historians of the 20th century
  
  
• The Coming of the New Deal, 1933-1935 The Age of Roosevelt, Volume II, by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
  
  
• The Politics of Upheaval: 1935-1936, The Age of Roosevelt, Volume III, by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
  
  
• Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956, by Jason Scott Smith, who was a fellow and assistant professor of history at Harvard and Cornell and is now at the University of New Mexico.
  
  
• "Lessons from the Great Depression for Economic Recovery in 2009," Christina D. Romer, Council of Economic Advisers
  
  
• Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, by Liaquat Ahamed, who worked at the World Bank and for several investment management groups. The book won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in History.
  
  
• Stayin' Alive: The 1970's and the Last Days of the Working Class, by Jefferson Cowie, assistant professor of labor history at the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
  
  
• Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939, by Lizabeth Cohen, Howard Mumford Jones Professor American Studies at Harvard
  
  
• Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy, by Joseph E. Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics and a professor at Columbia
  
  
• Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer--and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson (Director of the Institution for Social and Public Policy Studies at Yale and the Avice Saint Chair of Public Policy at UC Berkley, respectively)
  
  
• Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, by Esther Duflo (Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT)
  
  
• The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, by Paul Krugman, winner of the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics and a professor of economics at Princeton
  
  
• Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System---and Themselves, by Andrew Ross Sorkin, a Gerald Loeb Award-winning journalist and financial columnist for The New York Times
  
  If you have any other areas you'd like recommendations on, especially history, I'll be happy to give you some suggestions.
  

I wouldn't call it "oppression", that sort of hyperbolic language is not my cup of tea. But there are issues, there is discrimination, and it is a problem that psychology as a field has begun recently to self-examine. Jon Haidt is probably the most famous name in that space, as he has delivered a number of talks and papers about the biases that lead to a lack of political diversity in the fields, and also more or less runs the Heterodox Academy your own link mentions. In fact, your own link also describes a very good book on this topic:

>Data assembled in the book “Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in the Progressive University”, published by Oxford University Press in 2016, offer plenty of anecdotal evidence of conservatives in the academy who have been stigmatized by their colleagues and suffered professionally as a result. But the authors of the study, political science professors Jon Shields and Joshua Dunn, also warn that conservatives looking at the university from the outside “should be careful not to overstate the intolerance inside its walls.”

But in fact, there is evidence of bias being extended to the professional level, so I think these authors shouldn't pull their punches too hard. Inbar and Lammers (2012) find that in their poll of social psychologists:

• 19% of Social Psychologists openly would discriminate against conservatives during peer review for a paper.
  
• 24% would discriminate against conservatives during grant review.
  
• 38% would favor a liberal candidate over a conservative one during a faculty hiring process.
  
  That's discrimination to me, and the authors, who call it just that as well. That 19% may look low, but consider that peer review will usually try to have 3 reviewers ideally, so that means a conservative or conservative-friendly finding has about a 50-50 chance of being torpedoed on every single paper submission. In an academic system that says "publish or perish", that kind of penalty is going to push a lot of conservatives towards perish and out of academia, and convince a lot more not to take that chance in the first place. The authors also write in their conclusion:
  
  >But perhaps even more telling is what we found in our qualitative data. At the end of our surveys, we gave room for comments. [...] One participant described how a colleague was denied tenure because of his political beliefs. Another wrote that if the department “could figure out who was a conservative they would be sure not to hire them.” Various participants described how colleagues silenced them during political discussions because they had voted Republican. One participant wrote that “it causes me great stress to not be able to have an environment where open dialogue is acceptable.
  
  But even if I can't convince you that the discrimination itself is a problem by citing articles that show clear evidence of it, I hope I can give you a reason why you should care about that perception either way. A public that does not trust academia still votes. Climate change really needs to be addressed like yesterday, or rather, 30 years ago, and every single day that passes right now sees the problem grow exponentially. Many more species will go extinct and many more people will die the longer it takes for meaningful action.
  
  If putting away that pride and fixing even the perception of bias in academia can accelerate the acceptance of climate change and lead to a more unified and rapid action, that is so worth it. I blame academia for losing that trust in the first place, but even if you disagree and blame conservatives, the solution is still that academia should make every effort to rebuild the trust if it can, because the consequences of our current path could literally cost us the world.

In college, Cleveland's History of the Modern Middle East was my favorite history book about the Middle East. A little clinical and textbook-y but I thought it was very objective with a good level of detail.

Edit - I also thought From Beirut to Jerusalem was excellent. This was before Friedman became his current hacky self, and is very different from his work the last 10+ years. This book was very enjoyable and easy to read, and therefore would be very accessible for somebody just treating it as pleasure reading. The big downsides are that it may be a bit outdated and it isn't comprehensive or complete - it largely focuses on covering the highlights of the Israel-Palestine conflict and Lebanese civil war; it also isn't as academic.

Books:

• Introduction to International Relations: Theories and Approaches - Robert Jackson, Georg Sørensen
  
• Theory of International Politics - Kenneth N. Waltz
  
• Social Theory of International Politics - Alexander Wendt
  
• Power & Independence - Joseph Nye, Robert Keohane
  
• The Tragedy of Great Power Politics - John Mearsheimer
  
• Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis - Kenneth N. Waltz
  
• Contemporary Security Studies - Alan Collins et al.
  
• Security: A New Framework for Analysis - Barry Buzan et al.
  
• A History of Warfare - John Keegan
  
  News, Blogs:
  
  
• Foreign Policy
  
• Foreign Affairs
  
• The Economist
  
• CNN Security Clearance
  
• IHS Jane's
  
• International Crisis Group
  
• Stratfor
  
• Small Wars Journal
  
• Duck of Minerva
  
• The Monkey Cage
  
• Abu Muqawama
  
• Intelligence Online
  
• Zero Intelligence Agents
  
• Introduction to International Relations
  
  
  
  Think Tanks:
  
  
• RAND Corporation
  
• Center for Strategic & International Studies
  
• Chatham House
  
• Royal United Services Institute
  
• European Council on Foreign Relations
  
• International Institute for Strategic Studies
  
• Center for a New American Security
  
  Hope you'll find something interesting among these. I have put the focus on security and strategic studies because you said in another post that you have a particular interest there. Also, that's what I know best.
  
  Where are you going to study in the UK, if you want to disclose?
  
  Edit: If any of the links lead to somewhere else than the name suggests, I apologize, I have written this post at 0438 in the night. If you google, you should easily find any of the sources though.

Yep, I totally get that. It's partially why I said that the history of the Roman and Orthodox church is complicated - they hold to different versions of history (and you know what they say about victors and history books).

If you're interested in reading more on it, back in grad school I enjoyed reading The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia--and How It Died by Philip Jenkins. Jenkins definitely has his own agenda with some of the topics, but the material on the history of Christianity outside of Europe was fascinating, and doesn't get talked about much these days.

It would need to be a multi-step approach:

• First, increasing the availability of and lowering the cost of methadone clinics and treatments centers in small towns and rural areas will go a long way. The majority of these opioid deaths are the result of black market heroin and fentanyl analogues. They are inherently more dangerous because of a lack of quality control and regulation. Providing a regulated, known dose, even if it's in the form of legal opioids like methadone, suboxone or oxycodone, will go a long way to reducing overdose deaths. That should be the first priority, along with increasing the availability of Narcan autoinjectors and nasal sprays.
  
  
• The next step would be providing treatment services to help people get clean and stay clean. More treatment centers and halfway houses would be necessary, as would cost subsidies from the government to allow low-income people to attend.
  
  
• The third step would be an increase in education about the differences between types of opioids (oxy vs. street heroin/fentanyl) and risk reduction methods for both. Preferably at the middle and high school level. And preferably not in the vein of disastrous programs like D.A.R.E. It should be done in a non-judgmental way by academics and healthcare professionals, not police.
  
  
• Finally, steps should be taken to minimize opioid prescriptions for chronic, non-terminal pain and the diversion of drugs when they are prescribed. The advent of opioids is one of the most significant advances in modern medicine. It has allowed people with acute and chronic pain to live better lives. However, opioids should almost never be prescribed long term for anything but incurable, terminal diseases. The trade off of risk vs. reward is simply too great. When long term opioid therapy is chosen, it should be handled by pain management physicians, and treatment compliance contracts should be clearly laid out and agreed upon by both the physician and the patient before therapy is initiated.
  
  There is no easy answer to this problem. Any one of these steps will likely help the problem, but it will take a comprehensive, multi-prong approach to really address the problem. It doesn't help when we have politicians arguing that opiate addicts are subhuman and should be allowed to die off. That won't help anyone. That's a good way for some areas to lose half a generation of young people.
  
  EDIT: For anyone who wants to learn more about the issue, I highly recommend Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones. This should be required reading for anyone interested in the many facets of the opioid epidemic.
  
  Amazon Link
  
  LibGen link

There is no such thing as a system of wealth distribution. The only definition of distribution that applies to wealth is a statistical measurement. There is no single owner of wealth that has any kind of system for distributing (verb) it anywhere.

I see your book and raise you two better books on the subject.

1. http://www.amazon.com/Free-Market-Revolution-Rands-Government/dp/0230341691/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371834968&sr=1-1&keywords=Free+market+revolution
   
   
2. http://www.amazon.com/Financial-Crisis-Free-Market-Cure/dp/0071806776/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y

A History of the Modern Middle East

> This comprehensive work provides a penetrating analysis of modern Middle Eastern history, from the Ottoman and Egyptian reforms, through the challenge of Western imperialism, to the impact of US foreign policies. After introducing the reader to the region’s history from the origins of Islam in the seventh century, A History of the Modern Middle East focuses on the past two centuries of profound and often dramatic change. Although built around a framework of political history, the book also carefully integrates social, cultural, and economic developments into a single, expertly crafted account. In updating this fifth edition of the late William Cleveland’s popular introductory text, Martin Bunton provides a thorough account of the major transformative developments over the past four years, including a new chapter on the tumultuous Arab uprisings and the participation of Islamist parties in a new political order in the Middle East.

Most colleges use a dye sublination badge printer or laminated card that are not horribly expensive that any group could use to imitate most colleges ID cards. The blanks are $15 for 100 on Amazon. And they generally don't use holograms and other security features that drivers licenses must now use.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0230341691/

http://www.amazon.com/Econoclasts-Supply-Side-Revolution-Prosperity-Enterprise/dp/1610170245


those are the two best books on the subject

The free market revolution being less trickledown economics then it is a book that defends capitalism from the modern assault of "socialism is better".

A couple months ago, I listened to a radio interview with a psychologist - Dan P. McAdams, who wrote this book about George W. Bush - who explained "the Big Five" personality traits:

1. Openness to experiences
   
   
2. Conscientiousness
   
   
3. Extraversion
   
   
4. Agreeableness
   
   
5. Neuroticism
   
   Neuroticism is the tendency to experience negative emotions, like anger and sadness. Someone with high neuroticism might be seen as emotionally unstable, whereas someone with low neuroticism might be seen as stoic or "like a rock".
   
   McAdams said that President Obama is almost inhumanly low on the neuroticism scale. He was unphased by practically everything. You would think that someone so low on the neuroticism scale would seem like a robot - like Hillary Clinton, come to think of it - but somehow Obama balanced out that extreme stoicism with genuine charm and grace.

The economists generally agree with you.

The book that originated the theory.

This should be mandatory reading for any aspiring political analyst. Too many people read the book and concluded that since demographics would allow democrats to win no matter what, they could abandon the center and push whatever the base wanted without consequence. Trump unfortunately is the consequence of not reading the book more closely.

If anyone wants to read more in depth on this, there's a great book called The Right Nation that came out about 10 years ago written by two British writers from The Economist (hardly a liberal rag) that tracks the GOP since Goldwater, and the answer is, well, yes. I haven't read it since it came out, but I think it would be even more telling now than it was then.

I figured that was what you were thinking but didn't expect you to admit it openly.

> Spoiler: it's black people.
>
> I don't know if there's a single perfect book, because it's a difficult problem and nobody knows all the answers. Here's a decent book that tackles the politically correct part of the problem. For the politically incorrect part, you can read between the lines of books like this or you can delve into the horrible dark corners of the Internet like this. As to the validity of the politically correct and politically incorrect theories, who knows. Maybe it's a combination?

I found this book really good. It goes very far back but I think that actually that's necessary to understand whats happening today. It's also really readable.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Arabs-History-Eugene-Rogan/dp/0141024690

Spoiler: it's black people.

I don't know if there's a single perfect book, because it's a difficult problem and nobody knows all the answers. Here's a decent book that tackles the politically correct part of the problem. For the politically incorrect part, you can read between the lines of books like this or you can delve into the horrible dark corners of the Internet like this. As to the validity of the politically correct and politically incorrect theories, who knows. Maybe it's a combination?

There is a great book by Matt Ridley which argues that on pretty much every measurable scale life is better today than in any period in history.

For example higher life expectancy, access to education, likelihood of dying a violent death.

I also recommend It's Even Worse Than It Looks.

You are being willfully ignorant at this point so this is the last thing that ai will post. Here is what two seconds of googling turned up.

https://thechicagolibrary.wordpress.com/2013/02/28/calling-black-people-articulate-and-well-spoken-is-not-a-compliment/

https://mic.com/articles/92657/this-brief-talk-brilliantly-explains-what-black-people-hear-when-white-people-call-them-articulate#.yxy9MlFkK

https://www.amazon.com/Articulate-While-Black-Barack-Language/dp/0199812985

http://www.upworthy.com/someone-told-her-she-was-articulate-see-why-shes-rejecting-that-as-a-compliment

It's even worse than it looks By Tomas Mann and Norman Ornstien is all about Republican obstructionism and how polarized our political system has become. There's plenty of evidence and specific examples in there, especially the first chapter.

I wanna give a shout out to one of my favorite books and the last book I read as a polisci undergrad before a graduated a few years back. It's Even Worse Than It Looks by Mann and Ornstein. It's a breakdown of congressional politics and asymmetric polarization, and how we've come to such a hellish political gridlock today.

It was the last polisci book I read in college and it really brought together a lot of ideas and trends I noticed and studied, and prepared me to identify the causes at the root of Trump's rise.

No, there isn't. The stated strategy of the house Republicans from the day Obama was elected was to not compromise and try to thwart the new administration.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/robert-draper-anti-obama-campaign_n_1452899.html

No amount of wineing and dining was going to get the House Republicans to deal.

Look at the book "Its even worse than it looks" by Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann. Goes thru in detail how every negotiation was blown up by the younger house leaders for political gain, not for the good of the country.
https://www.amazon.com/Even-Worse-Than-Looks-Constitutional/dp/0465031331

Oscar Martinez documents this in brutal detail in his book The Beast. Martinez personally rode the migrant trail from Central America to the US eight times in the course of writing his book. It's also been documented extensively by human rights groups. The "people who shouldn't be here" line ignores the fact that most of these migrants are fleeing problems that the US itself is largely responsible for creating (due to the war on drugs and attacks on left-wing movements in the region).

Oxycontin was released a few years before the start of your graph (1996). Doctors believed it wasn't addictive and started prescribing it for basically anyone who was suffering from any kind of pain. Turns out it's extremely addictive and essentially the same thing as heroin, which is much cheaper. That's the extremely tl:dr version anyway, if you want the full story read this book.

You may be interested in this book: http://www.amazon.com/Beast-Riding-Dodging-Narcos-Migrant/dp/1781682976

A journalist actually rode the rails and followed immigrants from central America (where most are coming from at the moment) up to the border. He found that yeah most of the women are being preyed upon and are sexually assaulted, but it isn't other illegal immigrants that are doing it, it's the men who have made a business over terrorizing border crosses. The men who stay in Mexico and Central America. Shocker right, Trump said they were all crossing so it must be true. Also I don't mean to upset your idea that America is wonderful or great, but a lot of the terror and violence exists because America has a high demand for illegal drugs. The American demand creates drug cartels. I specifically talked about xenophobia over racism because that's what Donald Trump has proven to be a xenophobe. He is describing undocumented immigrants as a massive horde who are destroying America (Make America Great Again? Please.) The system that America runs off of is built with inequality. You do not have to explicitly say let's make America white, to believe that America should be all white. And yeah maybe painting someone who is legally by the definition of the constitution of the United States America a citizen as being a foreign national is probably a little bit mixed in with racism. That's what Trump does, he appeals to the lowest common denominator.