Reddit reviews Knowledge And Decisions

I also loved Basic Economics by Sowell, and I thought it was better than Economics in one lesson.

If you give Basic Economics to a beginner and they like it, then I would highly recommend you give them Knowledge and Decisions next. It is written in a similar way to B.E., and it is excellent at explaining the cost of knowledge. Sowell also analyzes the incentives and constraints that exists within various systems and how they cause people to act in different ways.

I have been reading Thomas Sowell's book Knowledge and Decisions where he notes that political decision making has been moving away from being done by elected and accountable politicians towards quasi non-governmental agencies (the IPCC and the EPA come to mind) which are neither transparent nor accountable to the public. We are living more and more in a quangocracy at whose top predator is the quangaroo, a strange creature which sucks in tax monies with the appetite of a baleen whale and pollutes the environment by excreting a foul stream of onerous petty regulations which they enforce with unrestrained and bestial fury.

I started to make one a while back but didn't get too far. There are just too many great books to choose from.

Classics 1950-1970

What is Conservatism?

The Conservative Mind

The Road to Serfdom

The Constitution of Liberty

Ideas Have Consequences

The Quest for Community

Economics in One Lesson

Capitalism and Freedom

In Defense of Freedom


Age of Reagan 1970-1990

The Conservative Intellectual Movement Since 1945

Modern Times

Knowledge and Decisions

A Conflict of Visions

Anarchy, State, and Utopia

Roots Of American Order


Modern Must Reads 1990-Today

The Clash of Civilizations

A History of the American People

The Vision of the Annointed

Intellectuals and Society

Illiberal Reformers

Restoring the Lost Constitution

How To Be A Conservative

> I don't have as much depth in Austrian Econ as some here but it seems that there is/was a split between the Hayek wing and the Mises/Rothbard wing of the school.

That is one deep rabbit hole. As it happens the 'split' is mostly one sided. People like Boettke, Horwitz and Kirzner see themselves as as followers of both Mises and Hayek. Kirzner views his work in entrepreneurship as a synthesis of them both. They emphasize Austrian unity.

Rothbardian Ultras on the other hand tend to take a purist line on libertarian theory and strongly emphasize the elements in Mises and Rothbard that separate Austrian school from the more mainstream theory, actively doing history of economic thought research to delineate their Misesian and Rothabarian orthodoxy from the impurities of everyone else. Their main point about Mises Hayek de-homogenisation is probably correct, I would not take it as far a they do however, and certainly would not agree with attacks on Hayek like Hoppe's.

 

>Who, if anyone, would be seen as furthering Hayeks work from a more scientific perspective?


If by that you man people who carried on Hayek's research program.

In economics

Thomas Sowell Knowledge and Decisions (Hayek's review of this book fizzes with happiness that someone actually followed in his footsteps)

and on the same topic Esteban Thomsen's Prices and Knowledge: A Market-Process Perspective

Don Lavoie (who was in essentially the founder of a sub branch of the Austrian school) followed Hayek with regards to economic calculation and the knowledge problem with his numerous books and articles such as The Market As A Procedure for discovery and Conveyance of Inarticulate Knowledge, National Economic Planning what's left? and Rivalry and Central Planning

Kirzner explicitly developed his ideas in Competition and Entrepreneurship from Hayek's book Individualism and Economic Order and Mises Human Action. As it happens Hayek would later be influenced by Kirzer himself. When writing on Government policy and the Market in Law Legislation and Liberty the books Hayek would draw on amongst others were Rothbards Power and Market and "especially"(Hayek's own word) Kirzner's Competition and Entrepreneurship.

While Simon was probably not directly influenced by Hayek. Hayek definitely thought that the ideas in The Ultimate Resource complemented and added his own work. Which makes sense given that one of the main point of Simon's book is the subjective and substitutable nature of market traded goods.

Also Sowell again following on from Hayek's political writing, The Intellectuals and Society and The Vision of the Anointed.

There are quite a few others but these are the one's I can think of of the top of my head.

wat...?

EDIT: Source for my rather bold statements.