Best development & growth economics books according to redditors

We found 1,224 Reddit comments discussing the best development & growth economics books. We ranked the 336 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

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Top Reddit comments about Development & Growth Economics:

u/Nazicrats · 277 pointsr/politics

Actually, trust me, they're perfectly happy with paid-for Democrats who will push through regulations that set up cartels and monopolies that will ensure more money inevitably finds its way into the Kochs' pockets.

u/HumanitiesJoke2 · 105 pointsr/worldnews

This was predicted in the 90s in the book the Sovereign Individual, it just took a a couple decades for the Information Age to have the information easily available. The printing press was the last time we had huge changes in easy access to education/knowledge. The church lost so much power ever since the printing press was invented, the internet and information age has further damaged the perceived infallibility of large organizations that acquired power long ago.

With a $20 phone people can now learn and communicate information at a rate that we never thought possible.

They predicted things like cyber money and nationalism itself crumbling while politicians increase the big brother attempts. Its playing out remarkably accurate for a book written so long ago.

https://www.amazon.com/Sovereign-Individual-Mastering-Transition-Information/dp/0684832720/

u/davidmhorton · 84 pointsr/IWantToLearn

Buy and read these books (first):

Bogle on Mutual Funds https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/111908833X/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Bogleheads Guide to Investing
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1118921283/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The Four Pillars of Investing
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071747052/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

After reading those, download Robinhood and put $100 in (no more) and play around for like 6 months before even thinking about trying to play with larger amounts.

-- OR - skip Robinhood and download "Betterment" and just slowly put money in there and build some wealth.

Happy Learning.

u/Bernard_Woolley · 46 pointsr/india

> Disastrous job creation is one of the most central/pressing problems in India today. If not the most one.
>

I agree with you. But it takes a special kind of genuis to declare that there is an easy policy fix to it. The fundamental problem is with treating "job creation" as an end in itself. It isn't. It is an outcome contingent on multiple economic factors -- increasing demand, growing productivity, a burgeoning economy, and so on and so forth. Where is this demand, pray tell? We keep reading of a global demand slump, and of inflated debt further reducing people's ability to spend. Productivity? This nice, well-acclaimed book makes a very convincing case that the world's productivity is no longer growing. Productivity growth fell steadily over the last two decades and came to a complete standstill around 2014. The author posits that nothing short of a miracle is going to reverse this trend.

Export-oriented growth has been the chief mechanism through which Asian economies achieved rapid economic growth, the build-up of industrial strength, the creation of skilled jobs, and the reduction in poverty. Best of luck trying to replicate that today. We're essentially treading new ground when it comes to these things, and may have to be the first country that does it based on domestic consumption alone.

And it's not even that the government is sitting on its hands. Infra development has picked up. Make-in-India, while not exactly a model of success in the civilian sector, has shown some real success in defence manufacturing. Much of the world still sees India as the best emerging market to investment in, and the government has pursued significant reforms in enabling that investment. But no, the 149 words I've written based on cherry-picked soundbytes are the final verdict on the matter!

>People who vote for Modi should just come clean that it's all about Hindutva and the rest of it is garbage nonsense excuses.

Yes sir. Whatever you say, sir. After all, you know me better than I know myself.

u/m1garand30064 · 41 pointsr/investing

Dude you are only 33. You have plenty of time to invest and save for retirement. You can actually start withdrawing money at 59 1/2 without penalty, not 70. You are thinking of required minimum distributions which start at 70.

The Roth TSP would be your best bet. After that I'd recommend a Roth IRA with Vanguard. If you dont want to do a lot of research or learn a lot about investing then I'd recommend just dumping the money into a later year lifecycle fund in the TSP (like the 2040) and a target retirement fund of a similar year with Vanguard. These tax advantaged accounts allow you to accrue a lot more money because there is zero tax drag on the investments. I highly recommend maxing these out before doing any after tax investing...assuming you are out of debt and have a 6-12 month emergency fund saved up.

If you dont mind doing a little reading and learning, I'd recommend reading these two books:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Four-Pillars-Investing-Portfolio/dp/0071747052

http://www.amazon.com/The-Intelligent-Asset-Allocator-Portfolio/dp/0071362363/ref=pd_sim_b_1

They will teach you about different asset classes and how to build a portfolio that matches your risk tolerance. If you follow the advice in those books you'll likely do very well...better than the majority of Wall Street money managers.

After you are able to max out your TSP and your Roth IRA you can open up a taxable account. You want to minimize tax drag, so I'd recommend putting the money in broad range index funds (like VTI) so that they wont be dragged down by the tax man. Here's a good read on this:

http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Principles_of_tax-efficient_fund_placement

I'd also recommend visiting this forum for further help: http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/index.php

There are some really smart and well respected people on there that will be glad to help you out with any questions you may have. Good luck, and you are actually starting well before most people do so give yourself a pat on the back!

u/semiqolon · 39 pointsr/gaming

Okay, I didn't want to have to come in here, but I just received my 6th dan in art-karate, and I feel like any good counter argument comes with a counter counter argument.

  1. Nothing is ever a direct copy because the "copy" uses different atoms. Even if the atomic structure of the copy is identical to the original, there is still meaning in the specific atoms chosen.
  2. If you only see 8 shading values you should consider further training in shading-value vision. I see 256 shading values, and I could see even more if I used an unsigned integer.
  3. Words? Interpretations? These are meaningless sequences of sounds to which people who speak English have arbitrarily attached meaning. You could instead say that the syringe is awful so that the artist has a specific area of the piece to work on, but can interpret for himself how to improve it.
  4. If you look at the dark area under an electron microscope, you will see that it is, in fact, an entire second piece of art. Art is like ogres, which are in turn like onions.
  5. Welcome to r/gaming. They upvote things with pictures from games they like.
  6. Assumptions != opinions

    What I feel is a bad thing for the world in general is that a lot of people just say nice things to everybody to avoid hurting anyone's feelings. However, people need constructive criticism in order to get better at what they do. You could read a nice book about economies around the world which is called The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, but it won't help you do good art or good art critiques.

    In short: stop writing flowery bullshit encouragement to every Tom, Dick, and Harry that you encounter in your life. Save the philosphy-major prose about "the will to thrive and create" for your support group.
u/TheJucheisLoose · 36 pointsr/AskHistorians

This is a pretty huge question. I believe it was Robert Lucas who said: "Once you start thinking about why some countries are rich, and others poor, it's hard to think about anything else." Or something alone those lines. I'll do my best to give a few exemplars from which you may be able to induce larger issues, but this issue is too big for a Reddit comment of any size, I think.

Before I start, when dealing with big questions of society and economics, you are naturally going to get competing theories and competing ideas about history. Howard Zinn, for example, had a very different view on why the United States has been prosperous (through vicious extermination of indigenous peoples, oppression of lower-classes and immigrants, vampire-like exploitation of natural resources, benefiting from the results of wars, etc.) than someone like Victor Davis Hanson does (commitment to republicanism, enforcement of private property rights, Protestant work-ethic/tradition, citizen-soldier ethic, etc.). The same, of course, is true of historians of Canada.

One thing we can do as historians is examine the different circumstances that countries and societies had leading up to their current state, and see where the divergences occurred.

For me, a most interesting and illustrative comparison is that between the U.S. and Argentina. Leading up to and during the 1920s and 1930s, Argentina's economy and society were, in many ways, similarly successful to that of the U.S. Even up until the 1950s, Argentina was one of the 15 richest economies in the world.

However, at some point, things changed in Argentina, and the two countries went radically different ways in terms of prosperity. This continues to this day. That's a broad issue that I don't want to gloss over, and probably suited to its own thread, but some things we can see for sure:

  • Argentina's formerly stable government went down to a coup d'etat in 1930 that ousted the elected President and set the country down a path of instability in government, heavy-handed caudillismo, and increasing reduction of the middle class. The United States, although in the midst of the depression, the Dust Bowl, and other terrible events, suffered from no such coup d'etat. Although President Roosevelt attempted a variety of theretofore unheard of government expansion schemes (including his infamous "court packing scheme"), the government maintained its influence and respect, and indeed, Roosevelt was beloved for his ability to instill confidence in government and continuity thereof in the people, despite harsh times.

  • Militarism and stratocracy slowly replaced Argentina's former electoral system, most famously beginning with the election of Juan Peron and his successors. The United States, though warned about its growing "military-industrial complex" by President Dwight Eisenhower, saw its republican form of government remain strong

  • Argentina's government shifted from a focus on economic liberalism (what we would today call free-market capitalism) toward nationalization of industries and social-welfare programs under Peron. Peron strove for and nearly achieved so-called "full employment," but this was mostly by creating government jobs, which, along with his other programs, put a massive strain on the treasury and created a huge debt. The U.S. at this time was recovering from World War II, and going into a period, in the early 1950's, of unprecedented economic prosperity, spurred on by a commitment to free-market ideals and a staunch opposition to nationalization of business in the U.S. (and in places where the U.S. had a lot of business interests, like Cuba).

  • Following Peron's exile to Spain, Argentina suffered from increasingly unstable government, a series of coups d'etat, and a huge amount of oppression of the people at the hands of the military. The U.S. maintained a largely stable government, and although civil rights unrest and the Vietnam War rocked the public consciousness, the government and its institutions maintained their basic function and character throughout this period.

  • Violence between the right-wing parties and left-wing underground in Argentina continued to worsen, making it relatively difficult to start and maintain a business, or to keep the fruits of one's labors without being extorted by one side or the other. The right-wing government became increasingly isolationist and paranoid, and increasingly looked-down upon by foreign countries, making international trade relatively harder, and concentrating power and wealth in an increasingly small group of political elites. In the U.S., it remained relatively easy to start a business and trade within and outside of the country (especially with Canada) was easy, helping expand U.S. products and services into foreign markets.

    I won't keep going, but these are a few key examples. There are many more, and each country or area has its own. It's very difficult to compare all of Latin America with the U.S./Canada in a quick way. I might recommend a couple of books:

  • The Mystery of Capital by a South American historian and economist with the unlikely name of Hernando de Soto is interesting, although by no means exhaustive.

  • Why the West Has Won by Victor Davis Hanson gives Hanson's view on why Western countries have succeeded so often in warfare, and by extension, why these economic and political policies have been so instrumental in keeping the West successful.

  • Why Nations Fail by Acemoglu and Robinson is an interesting, if somewhat monomaniacal, look at theories on why certain political institutions are critical to national success, and uses examples of the U.S. and Canada quite a bit.

  • Finally, Modern Times by Paul Johnson, is, in my view, one of the very best histories of the twentieth century, and while not necessarily addressing your question in specific, it does tackle a lot of the historical issues that led up the current situation, and it's a great read.
u/Fauler_Lentz · 36 pointsr/europe

Russians were very late to industrialization. The absolutistic government was very hostile to it, fearing that it would pave the way for a government change, so they only started extensively building railroads in the late 19th century. Public education was also very late, I think it started in the 1860s or so.

Germany on the other hand was among the first to industrialize on mainland Europe, and Prussia in particular was among the first in the world with widespread literacy, enacting general education in the early 18th century.

So the formerly German part of Poland had a more than a century headstart in education, and half a century in industrialization. Prussia, the part of Germany that is now Polish, was also considered to be German homeland, while it was always conquered territory to the Russians.

edit: If that topic interests you, there is a fantastic book about your exact question: "Why Nations Fail" by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. It goes through many historical developments in different time periods and different places on this world that show why some parts of the world are now well developed while others are not.

u/[deleted] · 31 pointsr/AskReddit

I don't think any single post can sufficiently explain what "Libertarianism" is. But somebody posted from this article titled Anti-Force Is the Common Denominator just recently in /r/libertarian, and I feel compelled to share it here, to best describe what falls under the shade of the "Libertarian" tree:

>[We] would like to see much less initiation of force in society. We live in a world where lots of misguided people are not satisfied that there’s enough of it yet. They advocate more initiation of force, as evidenced by their desires to deal with every problem under the sun by creating another tax-supported government program...A mature, responsible adult neither seeks undue power over other adults nor wishes to see others subjected to anyone’s controlling schemes and fantasies: This is the traditional meaning of liberty. It’s the rationale for limiting the force of government in our lives. In a free society the power of love, not the love of power, governs our behavior.

>Consider what we do in our political lives these days—and an unfortunate erosion of freedom becomes painfully evident. It’s a commentary on the ascendancy of the love of power over the power of love. We have granted command of over 40 percent of our incomes to federal, state, and local governments, compared to 6 or 7 percent a century ago. And more than a few Americans seem to think that 40 percent still isn’t enough.

>We claim to love our fellow citizens while we hand government ever more power over their lives, hopes, and pocketbooks. We’ve erected what Margaret Thatcher derisively termed the “nanny state,” in which we as adults are pushed around, dictated to, hemmed in, and smothered with good intentions as if we’re still children.

"Anti-force"/"anti-coercion" is the unifying theme which has been perpetually elaborated on since the Age of Enlightenment, so its not like this is anything new. Libertarians may call themselves anarchists, anarcho-capitalists, laissez-faire capitalists, minarchists, classical liberals, objectivists, thin libertarians, thick libertarians, right libertarian, left libertarian, libertarian socialists, mutualists, and many more terms I am unfamiliar with or have forgotten.

The most heavily represented "libertarians" at least within the Internet/United States are of the "right libertarian" mindset. This is a good sample of the thought this particular tree branch shades - though not all members may necessarily advocate. I would consider myself a member of this constituent, though I would prefer to use the term "classical liberal" to differentiate myself from those with an anarchist mentality (and because it sounds more elegant ;) ). As a brief exposition, I recommend reading The Law (available for free online) by Frederic Bastiat or, the book that converted me, The Road to Serfdom by FA Hayek.

In any event, the "anti-force" mentality strongly contrasts with the rhetoric and ideology found on both sides of the congressional aisle - on the one hand you have moralists who want to tell you what you can and can't do with your body, and on the other hand you have collectivists who want to tell you what you can and can't do with your property (i.e. what you own), while both agree that blowing things up makes the world a better place.

That, I think is the best I can describe the Libertarian movement (though as demonstrated, this movement has existed for several centuries).

edit: Here is a list of some youtube channels I subscribe to that can can be classified as Libertarian:

u/Doglatine · 31 pointsr/atheism

He's not wrong, he's just an asshole. Here are some other groups that have fewer Nobel prizes than Trinity College.

  • women
  • black people
  • those not following an Abrahamic religion
  • anyone living in the Southern Hemisphere

    How come? The simple answer is that rich industrialized societies with secure property rights have been the source of almost the entirety of scientific innovation since the inception of the Nobel prizes. Within those societies, it's been groups with economic cache in those societies in the relevant time period (white men, including Jewish ones after the early 19th century) that have best been able to take advantage of the opportunities to study, write, and innovate.

    Why did industrialization and the culture of innovation arise in the Christian world rather than the Islamic world? That's a complex question and there are a lot of excellent books and papers on the subject, such as this. Here's a hint: none of them take seriously the claim that religion has much to do with it. The fact that most Muslims had the misfortune to be ruled either by an autocratic feudal despotism or were colonized by Europeans during the relevant time periods might just have something more to do with it.

    Dawkins makes a divisive little innuendo that states two facts that are related but in subtle and complex ways and implicates a simple causal relation between. He should know better.
u/50_50_tR011 · 25 pointsr/todayilearned

This process is called kicking away the ladder. Most developed countries nowadays indulged in IP piracy, mercantilism, protectionism, etc.. and it was not until they were established enough that they started enforcing IP laws/free market rules on other countires. For developing countries this sucks because they don't get the same boost that the developed countries had in their infancy, which stunts -if not stops- their growth significantly.

Here is a book on the matter:

http://www.amazon.com/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Development-Perspective/dp/1843310279

u/besttrousers · 23 pointsr/badeconomics

I should note that the effects of automation on inequality are very concerning - even though I'm dismissive of the claims you made regarding jobs, specifically.

In making this next video, I strongly recommend incorporating the "Skills Biased Technological Change" literature. Goldin and Katz's The Race Between Education and Inequality, Autor's Skills Inequality and the 99% and Acemoglu's Technology and Inequality are good places to start.

I'd also recommend looking a bit into how inequality corrodes our political institutions. Acemoglu and Johnson's Why Nations Fail is the heavy hitter here.

u/haroldp · 23 pointsr/Libertarian

The "specific problems" are secondary symptoms. They all have the same root cause. It's not a case of them "bungling" socialism. It's exactly what you should expect as an outcome.

F A Hayek wrote the detailed script for this morbid play in the 1940s, and Chavez happily staged it again in Venezuela.

u/2358452 · 21 pointsr/brasil

Sim, até têm sido feitos estudos recentemente com populações de extrema pobreza na África e uma das formas mais eficazes de retirar a família da extrema pobreza duradoramente (em termos de redução de pobreza por custo) é simplesmente dar uma certa quantia de dinheiro. Claro que outras formas de assistência são úteis às vezes necessárias para complementar (especialmente onde há poblemas graves e.g. sanitários, doenças, subnutrição), mas o povo em pobreza extrema geralmente não tem dinheiro nem pra respirar -- a maior parte do tempo deles é gasto em cmo economizar quantidades triviais, sem tempo ou perspectiva de procurar melhores condições. É o que chamam de "poverty trap" -- se você está em certa faixa há uma forte tendência estatística a ficar preso lá; A idéia é dar dinheiro suficiente para sair dessa faixa por uns tempos, a partir de então o indivíduo consegue subir por conta própria.

Para os interessados: (recomendo muito!)

https://www.amazon.com.br/Poor-Economics-Radical-Rethinking-Poverty/dp/1610390938

u/Funktapus · 20 pointsr/Cyberpunk

Some people predict that cheap housing for the retired and unemployed will be built en mass in the near-future USA, particularly in areas with a low cost-of living. This could very well be the South 15 minutes into the future (with a bit of artistic liberty).

u/Randy_Newman1502 · 20 pointsr/neoliberal

>Can you offer a critique of the Scandinavian model?

Read this carefully

https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/jrobinson/files/varieties_of_capitalism_april_9_2013.pdf

Acemoglu and Robinson are some of the best in the business when it comes to this topic (authors of the widely memed Why Nations Fail)

u/anokaycanadianguy · 19 pointsr/pics

Hello,

I know what you're saying, foreign aid DOES HELP people. It does, I am not arguing that at all.

Those free houses, and free pumps and cans of food helps people and hell it probably saves many lives.

I don't argue that.

But you said that you benefited from foreign aid, have you ever stopped and wondered "how much does foreign aid cost?" "what are the side effects of foreign aid?" "in the long run, does foreign aid really help a country?"

They saved your life, foreign aid did...but at what cost?

I recently read a book Dead aid and there are many many many more books on the subject from many authors from many different walks of life. I highly suggest you give this stuff a chance.

How much is the life of one little boy worth? save one boy from hunger and the effect is 10 little boys within the next generation dying of hunger...where is the sense of that?



have you ever wondered what foreign aid is? where it goes? who receives it? accountability?

u/PG2009 · 19 pointsr/austrian_economics

How about a whole book?

https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-Conservatism-Reinterpretation-American-1900-1916/dp/0029166500

Bonus: its written by a progressive! Not that it will matter, sounds like the person already has made their decision and doesn't need to be bothered with evidence or facts.

u/a642 · 17 pointsr/technology

Negative income tax, as described in The Second Machine Age. A must read for anyone whom I consider voting for.

u/disuberence · 16 pointsr/neoliberal

I think you will be surprised to learn that what you have come to understand about neoliberalism and the positions supported by this sub are not always in alignment.

Make sure to read Why Nations Fail. Your first book report is due in two weeks.

u/Integralds · 16 pointsr/badeconomics
  1. That is the most important question in economic history, perhaps the only important question in economic history, and the answer is: we still don't have a good account of the Industrial Revolution. It's something of a Holy Grail for economic historians.

  2. Oh boy.

    Let me preface by saying that if you have the time, you should read several Big History type books, preferably when you're in your early 20s. At that stage you're old enough to appreciate them, but not so far into your economics studies that you've forgotten how to ask questions bigger than "what is the value of a coefficient in an IV regression?" I'm going to be critical of these books, but that doesn't mean they are not worthwhile.

    So as for the main books and their explanations,

  • I don't give a whole lot of weight to culture, in part because it's such a slippery concept. So Landes is out.

  • Geography just doesn't provide the right lever, in the right times, or the right places, so Diamond is out qua income per capita or the IR.

  • Up until about two years ago I would have argued that de Soto's book, which emphasizes economic and financial institutions, has the highest concentration of true and useful claims among Big History / Big Development books. However the AEJ symposium on microfinance was discouraging and threw a lot of cold water on the financial institutions hypothesis. This is high praise for those papers; the results were disappointing enough and credible enough to move my prior in a big way.

  • Political institutions don't quite do the work you need them to during the Industrial Revolution. And it's not clear whether political institutions cause growth or vice-versa; Acemoglu has two books on this, each arguing in the other direction (WNF and EODD). I also have reservations about the empirical work that underlies many of the claims in WNF. However, the stories are just so damn good, and they advocate for policies that we otherwise want to see implemented anyway, so it remains the Big History de jour.

    Mokyr and Clark have books that look specifically at the Industrial Revolution that are good, but Mokyr's is too dense for a popular audience and Clark's basic explanation for the IR is not really credible.
u/scylla · 15 pointsr/reddit.com

This kind of inefficiency is one of the reasons why capitalism seems to raise living standards in some parts of the world, and not in others

The book by Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto is one of the best explanations of the subject.

u/poli_ticks · 15 pointsr/politics

That's a false narrative propagated by that pack of liars known as the Democrats.

Here, I recommend you read this, to understand the true nature of the problem:

http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-Conservatism-Gabriel-Kolko/dp/0029166500

Basically, you have to distinguish between "good" regulations, and bad ones. Good ones are stuff that keeps corporations from polluting the environment, poisoning our water and air, etc. But there is another role that regulations play in our system - they are also used to erect barriers to entry, set up cartels and monopolies, insulate Big Corporations from competition from smaller, nimbler companies, etc.

And such regulations are why we have an economy dominated by Big Corporations. I.e. regulations (because they're enacted by legislators who are owned by corporate special interests, and they're often even written by industry lobbyists) are a key component of Corporatism.

So the problem is actually a bit subtler than just free-market/deregulatory ideology. The reason why Republicans implement Corporatist measures under the guise, cover of free-market/deregulatory rhetoric is not because they're actually free-marketeers and believers in deregulation. It's actually that 98% of Republicans are corrupt, and simply haven't figured out that there's anything wrong with doing favors for Big Business.

Likewise, Democrats also implement Corporatist measures, but in their case going "Correct free market failures! Correct Free market failures! Protect consumers!" again because 95% of are corrupt douchebags who prioritize getting corporate money for their re-election campaigns, over actually doing what's good for the country.

Anyhow. Ron Paul is in fact quite an obnoxious threat where the Banksters are concerned. His End the Fed rhetoric is actually dangerous to them. Because the Fed is a major tool in Financial Interests' arsenal. See e.g.:

http://www.unelected.org/audit-of-the-federal-reserve-reveals-16-trillion-in-secret-bailouts

And on occasion Ron Paul comes up with absolutely awesome anti-banker stuff, like this:

http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2011/07/05/debt-ceiling-could-ron-pauls-plan-save-us-from-disaster-twice/

u/throwbubba1 · 14 pointsr/investing

Read. All the famous investors started reading at a young age and read ferociously (ok maybe not all but most).

Go to the library if you can, they generally will have all the quality investing tomes, without some of the "get rich quick manuals" which only benefit the authors.

Here is a few books to start with:

u/jakewins · 14 pointsr/TrueReddit

The authors of this, Abhijit and Esther, are also the authors of the best summary-for-the-layman book I've read on international aid, Poor Economics.

If you care about data-driven conclusions and pragmatism, and if you want to get a birds-eye view of global poverty, why international aid fails, and why it succeeds, I cannot recommend this book enough.

u/dmxgrrbark · 14 pointsr/Denver

I studied poverty in grad school and have worked a lot with the homeless. May I suggest you read this book - Poor Economics

u/pras · 13 pointsr/reddit.com

These ideas are discussed in great detail in David Landes' book
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393318885/ref=cm_lm_fullview_prod_3/104-7880136-1164720?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155


There are three major reasons for Wealth/Poverty: Geography, Infrastructure, and Culture.

Economists disregard culture as a economic artefact because it can't be quantified and its politically incorrect. The reason Economists distrust culture is because it is such a 'one size fits all' argument.

Nations are developed not because they are more intelligent but they 'work' better as a society - meaning the co-operate better in the macroeconomic sense (not corrupt, socially responsible, etc). Its cultural traits and values, rather than resources are what make or break a country.

u/fresheneesz · 13 pointsr/Bitcoin

China's authoritarian directives have absolutely pushed it far ahead of the squalor its previous authoritarian regimes had perpetuated. Its really flabbergasting to me how people point to this as a positive for china-style authoritarian regimes. Even more stupid is the people that try to say China has a new form of government. They don't. Its basically a dictatorship.

Countries with authoritarian regimes can certainly have massive growth between huge valleys of economic stagnation or collapse. You should read Why Nations Fail by Acemoglu and Robinson. They have a very clear and well supported theory on the effects of government institutions that explains china, russia, the US, and all the rest: https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719227

And lastly, democracy vs non-democracy is not a binary thing. Russia, for example, has a "democracy" but very little real representation of its people. India has a similar problem to a far lesser degree. And so does the US for that matter. Democracy is new and something we still have to improve on. But the economic effects a democracy has, of causing sustained but slow growth, are far better than the massive economic swings and generally far lower economic prosperity of authoritarian countries.

u/Zenitram · 13 pointsr/NeutralPolitics

>some have even suggested that if food waste were cut by as little as a quarter, it would be enough to eliminate famine from the planet completely if the food were distributed correctly.

Well, there you have it. 99% of the problem. Getting the the unused food to countries that need it.

Outside of that, food aid to Africa for example, really hasn't done anything to help the people of Africa outside of keeping them fed. And while on its face that sounds like a good thing, it really tends to lead to more suffering as it removes incentives for the fed people to move into more habitable areas or develop functioning economies.

The book Dead Aid goes into this pretty well and covers a lot of other factors. If you are interested in the subject there is a lot of material out there that suggests sending food aid to these regions hurts these populations more than it helps them even if you ignore the corruption that occurs in some countries as a result of tribes and warlords usurping the food to use as leverage.

Is waste a problem? Maybe. However, even if by some miracle we cut all waste and sent it to people that need it, it wouldn't really help them in the long run. Rather, it would perpetuate the same cycle of subsistence level survival the same aid we have been sending them has propped up for almost half a century.

If we want to really help the developing world we need to teach them how to sustain long term agriculture growth and political stability so these countries can develop market economies and serve themselves. The first world does the third world a disservice by providing these communities with free food that will ultimately undercut the market price of food in the local economy and put local agriculture out of business. The IMF and other sources of income also contribute to the problem through punitive interest rates on loans to the same developing countries, but that is a story for another day.

u/shadowsweep · 13 pointsr/Sino

They're so full of shit even before this.

https://www.amazon.com/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Development-Perspective/dp/1843310279/

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

tldr=The west tells weak nations to adopt free trade yet it did the opposite when it was growing.

u/lampenstuhl · 12 pointsr/MapPorn

That's not true. Rural Bohemia was more advanced than rural France in the beginning of the 20th century. Read it in this book, I'll just suppose they got their sources straight.

u/josiahstevenson · 12 pointsr/badeconomics

You thinking more Poor Economics or Why Nations Fail? There's also some good stuff on urbanization's role in development in Triumph of the City which has a lot of implications for developed-world city policy too.

u/weirds3xstuff · 12 pointsr/changemyview

There are two books that I have read that have done a great deal to help me understand the dynamics that allowed Europe to rise to dominance starting in the 17th century: Guns, Germs, and Steel, and Why Nations Fail. The former talks about the geographical and ecological considerations that stifled development outside of Europe. The latter talks about the role if extractive institutions, set up by colonial powers, that remained after decolonization and prevented previously-colonized nations from developing. I can't do their arguments justice here, but if you are sincerely interested in changing your view I strongly recommend reading those books. I'll try to address your specific points:

> it seems to me that those of European heritage have made the most long-lasting and significant contributions to mankind. To name a few: space travel, internet, modern technology and medicine.

All of these marvels are founded in the scientific method, which developed during the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment has been successfully exported to multiple non-European countries, most notably Japan. So, it's not just Europeans who are able to appreciate Enlightenment values. But the Enlightenment did start in Europe. So, to believe that the Enlightenment proves that Europeans are superior you must prove that the cause of the enlightenment was the innate character of Europeans, and not any contingent factors. That is...very difficult to do. And, yes, the burden of proof is on you, here, since the null hypothesis is that the biological distinctiveness of Europeans is unrelated to the start of the Enlightenment.

> I realize Arabs of ancient times also contributed a lot in the realms of mathematics and medicine.

Yes. Different civilizations have become world leaders at different points in history, which makes the idea of some kind of innate superiority of one civilization really hard to believe. It just so happens that the Islamic Golden Age occurred at a time when it was impossible to communicate over large distances, while the European Golden Age (which we are now in) occurred at a time when communication is instantaneous and we can project military power across the entire world. In other words, the global dominance of Europeans is historically contingent, not an immutable fact of biology.

>One argument I frequently hear to counter this position is that other nations have failed to develop due to colonization and exploitation.

This is an excellent argument, and is, essentially, correct.

> if they were on the same level as Europeans intellectually and strength wise, why couldn't they have found the means to fight back and turn the tables?

Although they were at the same level as Europeans "intellectually and strength wise", they were not at the same level technologically. Europe was in a golden age, Africa, India, and China were not. Again, the key here is that the European Golden Age occurred at a time when it was possible to travel the oceans and project military power worldwide. That was not the case in the Islamic Golden Age or the Indian Golden Age, which explains why those civilizations didn't conquer the world in the way the Europeans of the 19th century did.

>Instead of Europeans doing what they've done to others, why couldn't it have been the other way around?

Guns, Germs, and Steel does the best job of explaining this. In short: Europeans were blessed with livestock that could be domesticated and a consistent climate that allowed them to produce lots of food more efficiently that other regions of the world could, which allowed them to spend more time on other things, like technology. Again, the full argument is the length of a (very good) book, so I suggest you pick it up to get more details.

u/Psyladine · 12 pointsr/worldnews

Two parts, one is Gladwell's herders vs farmers ethnic theory (the descendents of scottish herdsman in the south are an honor based culture because if you didn't stand your own, you'd lose prime grazing spots and possibly your life & livlihood, vs descendents of English & Irish farmers who, despite disagreements, could always go back to their land and self-sustain.)

Second, a lesser known history book by Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, where he includes rice vs wheat as cultural indications of temperament (wheat farmers able to leverage vast swaths of land with scaling labor meant more free time, more aggressive attitudes and more resources to contribute to war efforts, i.e. the turbulent middle ages of Europe, vs Japan & southern China's rice cultures, where labor does not scale well, and maintaining a surplus crop is a dedicated task requiring disciplined and meticulous cooperation, creating cultures that were comparatively less hostile and confrontational than their Western counterparts.)

u/John_Yossarain · 12 pointsr/JordanPeterson

I'd recommend reading many sides/perspectives so that you can formulate an independent mind and not just be a mouthpiece of some economist's ideology. For instance, I disagree with a lot of Marx, but I think his materialist critique of history and his critique of capitalism are very useful and a lot of it is correct. His solutions/recommendations are shit, but that doesn't discount his contributions. My recommendations:

Generally Considered Right-Leaning Economics:

Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson: https://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1510274539&sr=8-1

F. A. Hayek, Road to Serfdom: https://www.amazon.com/Road-Serfdom-Documents-Definitive-Collected/dp/0226320553/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1510274634&sr=8-1

F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: https://www.amazon.com/Fatal-Conceit-Errors-Socialism-Collected/dp/0226320669/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1510274634&sr=8-3

Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations: https://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Nations-Bantam-Classics/dp/0553585975/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1510275227&sr=1-3

Frederic Bastiat, The Law: https://www.amazon.com/Law-Frederic-Bastiat/dp/1612930123/ref=pd_sim_14_5?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=31TE91RXV0Q2XPPWE81K

Also read: Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman, and Ludwig Von Mises

Generally Considered Left-Leaning Economics:

J. M. Keynes, The General Theory: https://www.amazon.com/General-Theory-Employment-Interest-Money/dp/0156347113/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1510274943&sr=1-3

Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital: https://www.amazon.com/Accumulation-Capital-Rosa-Luxemburg/dp/1614277885/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1510275041&sr=1-2

Rosa Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution: https://www.amazon.com/Revolution-Writings-History-Political-Science/dp/0486447766/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1510275041&sr=1-1

Also read: Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky. Modern day Left/Keynesian economist is Paul Krugman.

Anarchism:

Emma Goldman: https://www.amazon.com/Anarchism-Other-Essays-Emma-Goldman/dp/1484116577/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1510275717&sr=8-1

u/alexhoyer · 11 pointsr/badeconomics

> There's several notable economists that I've heard are sceptical about foreign aid being useful

Yep. Deaton, Moyo, and Acemolgu to name a few. Overseas Development Aid (typically administered in the form of intergovernmental transfers) typically does vastly more harm than good. Not only does it precipitate adverse economic outcomes, it also weakens states and subverts democracies (see Mali/Azawad). To be fair though, I can only really speak to the African experience.

u/ryancarnated · 11 pointsr/blog

Yep! People who've never researched bitcoin don't realize how far-reaching the implications of this technology are. Bitcoin makes things possible that just aren't possible without it. It will change reddit, and the entire world. We are building a better economy.

Read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Sovereign-Individual-Mastering-Transition-Information/dp/0684832720/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418255980&sr=8-1&keywords=the+sovereign+individual

u/IllusiveObserver · 11 pointsr/communism

Here's a basic video you can show anyone.

Here are books:

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America

The Open Veins of Latin America. Here it is for free.

Failed States

Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism

War is a Racket This one is from the most decorated Marines in US history.

Occupy Finance. This one is (indirectly) about dependency theory on a national scale. The people of the US have become victims of capital. They go into debt for their health, transportation, education, housing, and daily activities with credit cards. They then put their pensions at the whim of the stock market, as it is plundered by Wall Street. When capitalism can no longer expand geographically, it needs to plunder the lives of people to maintain itself. In this case, the first source of capital to exploit was the lives of the people of the US. Unlike Europe, the US populace was left defenseless in the wake of the attack because of a history of active repression of the left (like COINTELPRO).

The financialization of the US populace is discussed in this essay from the Monthly Review, Monopoly Finance Capital. Here is a book on the topic.

If I remember any more resources, I'll make sure to throw them your way.

u/potato1 · 11 pointsr/undelete

If you're interested in reading more on the subject, check out Ha Joon Chang's work in Kicking Away the Ladder, for which he won the 2005 Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought.

u/emi_online · 10 pointsr/neoliberal

Read Papa Hayek's best work. It will completely change you mind.

u/1point618 · 10 pointsr/Bitcoin

> It is cumbersome to setup an interac or paypal when you want to help.

Those are your words. The words that I am replying to. Paypal is not irrelevant, which you very well know, because it is the competition to changetip.

> Says you.

No, says the entire field of economic history, not to mention lean startup methodology and user experience design.

Innovation (defined as the wide-scale adoption of new technologies) is not an easy or simple process. The "if you build it, they will come" mantra almost always works out poorly for the builders.

Invention is, by comparison, rather easy. Large businesses project manage invention all the time. We know about when and how well new inventions will be established if we just crank away at them.

Driving user adoption, on the other hand, is a very difficult process. You have to not just build an invention that solves problems for individuals and opens up new avenues of economic efficiency for society, but you also have to convince individuals en masse to change their behavior.

This takes marketing, politics, sales, and more. It takes understanding the human factors that go into technological adoption. At the end of the day, no technology succeeds without humans. These are creative fields which see some degree of process but which are ever-changing. Solutions have to fit the specific technology, consumer market, legal framework, etc..

A good example of innovation vs. invention is Edison vs. Tesla. We all know the popular geek narrative, that Tesla was a lone genius whose work was suppressed by the evil, profit-hungry Edison. But really, the difference was one of innovation. Both men were greatly inventive, but only one of them cared to focus on marketing, user adoption, working with governments, and building a business. It's telling that the one major "success" that Tesla did have was the one where he engaged with Edison on his own turf, taking the AC/DC battle to local governments and the courts.

But at the end of the day, Tesla the inventors legacy is a yet-to-be-built museum crowdfunded by a webcomic author, while Edison's legacy is one of the oldest, largest, and most inventive consumer companies in the US.

If you'd like to learn more, I'd highly recommend The Lever of Riches by Joel Mokyr. He uses historical examples from Europe, the Americas, and China to develop a historical narrative and theory of technological and economic progress (aka, innovation) that helps explain why certain technologies see adoption, as well as why certain societies see more technological innovation than others. And if you're interested in the latter question, Why Nations Fail by Acemoglu and Robinson is a very enjoyable read.

u/Reg_Monkey · 10 pointsr/badeconomics
u/myownfreesociety · 9 pointsr/Libertarian

This is arguably the best book on libertarianism: http://mises.org/books/thelaw.pdf

"No legal plunder: This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony, and logic."

"But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime."

This is probably the other classic I'd recommend.
http://www.amazon.com/Road-Serfdom-Fiftieth-Anniversary/dp/0226320618

u/Anthony_Aguirre · 9 pointsr/science

Highly effective narrow AI should be a huge long-term boon, but will be a big problem in the short term. Many, many people spend most of their days doing work they do not enjoy only because they must do so to support themselves (and family etc.) Moreover a lot of the least pleasant jobs pay the worst, which has always seemed backward to me. A world in which there are only a small number of unpleasant jobs remaining, and higher compensation to do them, would be awesome.

But it will be tricky for us to make it into that awesome world. Although in the past increased automation has also led to the creation of new jobs to replace the old ones, there is no law of physics — or for that matter economics so far as I know — guaranteeing this. Brynjolfsson and McAfe make a pretty compelling case that we are already seeing heightening inequality resulting from recent automation, and this is very like to continue on overdrive.

I see nothing to suggest that our economic, let alone political, systems are ready for this. Such a society would require enormous wealth redistribution from the company owners to lots of people who are doing essentially nothing for that wealth in traditional economic terms. Its hard to conceive of the idea of something like that happening in the US until/unless there is huge upheaval. It seems almost guaranteed that we will go through a phase of hyper-inequality.

Moreover, AI is unlikely to just stay at the goldilocks state of doing all of our unpleasant jobs for us, without replacing us in the jobs we humans do want to do, and thus essentially replacing humanity altogether.

u/dmkerr · 9 pointsr/Futurology

The Second Machine Age by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, is a popular approach to the topic but they are both academics and their research is quite sound.

u/LegitimateProfession · 8 pointsr/politics

You don't understand economics. If it's too expensive to use Chinese labor to make cheap goods, that means China is already too wealthy and developed to need to rely on low-value manufacturing in its own labor force.

In fact, moving such factories to India, SE Asia or West Africa would mean more money going to China, as Chinese companies invest in the developing economies the same way US companies and individual investors have gotten wealthy from Chinese development, production and consumption.

Other countries will change their laws to whatever China wants. They want to compete to attract all those factory and low-level service jobs that China is seeking to offshore.

Why Nations Fail

Yi Wen's illustrative essay on how China's economy developed so rapidly

u/stackedmidgets · 8 pointsr/Anarcho_Capitalism

A lot of those people are being fed by misguided food aid programs. Populations in Africa in particular (where birth rates are the highest in the world) are pushed beyond the carrying capacity of the local economies by perpetual food socialism. It's sort of like the opposite of the Ukrainian famine: instead of too little food, it's too much food, signalling abundance when the local conditions are actually those of severe poverty.

For more on this, books like Dead Aid and the White Man's Burden are great at explaining this phenomenon.

>I've heard of people advocating an "Ideal and stable population size" but I can't see how this would be implemented without the state. So basically, What do you think will happen in the future with regards to the growth of population and the demand it will cause?

This is complicated. One one hand, the people guided by Harvardprincetonyale dogma believe that it's their secular-sacred duty to feed the poor in Africa and to provide advice on how to manage and finance their affairs through the network of international financial institutions, NGOs, and UN-affiliated groups.

On the other, because central planning has a lot of trouble providing for growing populations (it's another variable to account for), they want to control that population growth at least somewhat. The same population growth that exceeds the capacity for those societies to provide for the new people caused by the foreign subsidies creates a problem that the same inept bureaucracy to manage through the promotion of population control programs.

There's no real way to 'solve' this problem in a clean manner. Billions of people are unfortunately reliant on the Harvardprincetonyale Axis of Ultimate Goodness for their continued survival.

Market signals provide critical information to people about whether to expand their families or to not expand them. When those market signals become distorted, people may either fail to produce sufficient children to maintain the prosperity of the society, or they may produce too many for the existing social structure to support to a general level of satisfaction.

The Soviet-Harvard delusion is that by providing food and by suppressing large-scale warfare, 'development' will proceed apace. What has resulted is that populations have exploded beyond the capacity of local economies to provide for them, and the same provision of welfare-food has empowered various dictatorial entities while preventing the emergence of local markets to help genuine society to flourish. Meanwhile, religiously-motivated armies threaten to break up some of the largest states (like Nigeria).

Unfortunately in their attempts to do good, the Axis of Ultimate Goodness has created a fragile series of powderkeg-countries where long-suppressed conflicts threaten to explode into horrific global warfare (see: Egypt). Modern humans in many parts of the world (including the developed world) have been cut off from accurate market information for a very long time, leading to distorted patterns of societal development that are ill-adapted to real conditions in the world.

My speculation that's not a prophecy at all is that three factors will prevent these population projections from being achieved:

  1. The US will be incapable of maintaining its global hegemony. Other states, to the extent that the nation-state structure survives at all, will need to provide for their own security. Suppressing warfare between groups, like the US has done after WWII, is like artificially suppressing forest fires. It leads to more severe fires than nature herself could ever permit. The mass death from these wars will check the unending growth in population.
  2. Extracting fossil fuels will continue to require more intensive technological development to achieve. Nationally owned resource companies running off of expropriated reserves and expropriated technology will not be able to compete with private firms (see: Venelolololzuela).
  3. Antibiotic resistance is becoming a more significant problem, and no solution has yet been developed, nor is one obviously on the verge of occurring. Mankind's most efficient predators will eventually climb their way back up the food chain. Whatever solution will be devised for this will probably be more technologically intensive, expensive, and probably customized to particular genetic patterns, at least in the beginning.

    These projections rest on a lot of ridiculous assumptions and naive math models. They're best understood at pitches for more funding. "If we don't get another billion dollars to promote condom usage, we're gonna have a big problem!" The problems are much more significant, severe, and inherently political in nature.

    Population growth is neither a problem nor an unmitigated boon. It's just another factor for humans to calibrate with their desires and real conditions on Earth and within societies. Distorting price signals prevents humans from coordinating with one another in an effective way. The larger the society becomes, the more important that accurate market signals are to its continued functioning.
u/adelie42 · 8 pointsr/ukpolitics

Add the insights from Dead Aid and it is just painful to see how from every side of Western involvement in Africa has only lead to greater pain and suffering.

Woodrow Wilson should be regarded as one of the most evil men in history (as much as anyone deserves such a title). His "people have a right to self determination" has been justification for some of the most aggressive political and economic destabilization imaginable.

You couldn't plan a way to make people more impoverished than the way the west tries to "help".

u/intermu · 8 pointsr/indonesia

Ha Joon Chang, a Korean economist does an excellent book about this.

All those myths about how free market capitalism is the greatest is fucking bullshit.

https://www.amazon.com/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Development-Perspective/dp/1843310279

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003Z9L4NA/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i1

IMF and the World Bank have essentially become enforcers of the current capitalist regime and basically shame countries who try to adopt self-sufficient policies that can be better for them in the long-run.

1 excellent example he gave in the books is the steel & shipbuilding industry in Korea. 50 years ago the free market wouldn't have thought of investing in them as Korea was a poor country with no resources with super risky projects. The government took the matter into their own hands and it laid the groundwork for the economic miracle that they experienced.

Countries going into debt to invest in their long-term capabilities really made sense to me, just like how you pay for your college & post-graduate fees to better your human capital. If countries always spend within their means, huge infrastructure projects will never get off the ground.

Likewise, if Indonesia's government do not invest in long-term profitable projects, we will never really become developed. The main driver of the economy will be the private market that really don't give a fuck about infrastructure and the likes if it doesn't benefit them (e.g. RGE in Riau having their own ports and electric generators for their paper mills, Lippo having their malls/hospitals/housing relatively well-connected to each other).

One can make an argument that if the government incur debts and use it inefficiently they may well make the economy worse off, but as long as the money stays within the country, it's better than not doing it at all. The book mentions the example of Suharto vs Mobutu Sese Seko who remitted most of the money to Swiss.

But I agree, Indonesia should invest more in projects like this. Debts aren't always bad. Gimana beli rumah kalo ga ada KPR? Gimana mulai bisnis kalo ga ada pinjeman bank?

u/dlab · 7 pointsr/worldnews

Its all the same Mafia, the US pedo super rich need the UK taxavoiding and moneylaudering infrastructure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBPZxbO7OLM&t=1s

https://www.mintpressnews.com/shocking-origins-jeffrey-epstein-blackmail-roy-cohn/260621/

https://medium.com/@bernstein1985/trump-russia-9-11-our-president-is-a-longtime-money-launderer-who-remains-beholden-to-the-efdc38110653

https://www.mintpressnews.com/mega-group-maxwells-mossad-spy-story-jeffrey-epstein-scandal/261172/

https://theschpiel.com/world/ehud-barak-went-into-epstein-mansion-with-face-covered/

Boris Johnson, Mogg, Farage are in the same Group of soziopaths as the billionaers around Epstein and Trump. And Russian Soziopath Oligarchs wanne fuck with the old circles. Its better than any movie.

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

Hoover Institution senior fellow John B. Dunlop stated that "the impact of this intended 'Eurasianist' textbook on key Russian elites testifies to the worrisome rise of fascist ideas and sentiments during the late Yeltsin and the Putin period".[1]

Military operations play relatively little role. The textbook believes in a sophisticated program of subversion, destabilization, and disinformation spearheaded by the Russian special services. The operations should be assisted by a tough, hard-headed utilization of Russia's gas, oil, and natural resources to bully and pressure other countries.[9]

The United Kingdom should be cut off from Europe.[9]

Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics".[9] The Eurasian Project could be expanded to South and Central America.[9]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/victorlipman/2013/04/25/the-disturbing-link-between-psychopathy-and-leadership/#55e91fe24104

https://i.redd.it/rtkgeknpljl21.jpg This is from the father of the guy that leads the ERG https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/brexiteer-mps-allegedly-call-themselves-14185548 the shithole that invented Brexit. Why don't people understand that people like JRM, Farage, Murdoch (I once asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union. “That’s easy,” he replied. “When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.” https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/anthony-hilton-stay-or-go-the-lack-of-solid-facts-means-it-s-all-a-leap-of-faith-a3189151.html), and Trump are narcissists or straight psychopath. I still don't get it why people don't see their dead eyes. They are a real danger, they orgenize via internet, and behind closed doors and want to rule the world, and its sadly no joke or conspirecy. What do you think Putin is doing? Read whats above and you know what he does. Trump is a wannebe part of this network like McConnell and Tucker. Putin, the Arabfamilies, UK elites, US big Money work together.

https://www.amazon.com/Sovereign-Individual-Mastering-Transition-Information/dp/0684832720

[–]KittyGrewAMoustache It's insane to me that people don't see this, I mean, it's not even hidden. You look at the books Rees-Mogg wrote, then you look at what's happening in the world right now and it's obvious - these people aren't trying to liberate the people from some oppressive 'liberal' new world order, they're trying to liberate rich criminals and kleptocrats from national and international laws so that they can basically use their wealth to crush democracy and run countries and exploit workers for their own benefit. And it's so obvious. And yet all these people have been totally brainwashed into thinking Trump and Brexit are some kind of blow for the elites, or a fight back against neoliberalism or something, when actually they've been duped into supporting neofeudalism. "Why Silicon Valley billionaires are prepping for the apocalypse in New Zealand" by Mark O'Connell https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/15/why-silicon-valley-billionaires-are-prepping-for-the-apocalypse-in-new-zealand It is O'Connell's pithy summary of Rees-Mogg's book.

Another fashist is aaron Banks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6q6qinW95M

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/21/arron-banks-andy-wigmore-brexit-supporters-trump-guests-mar-a-lago

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/09/brexiters-put-money-offshore-tax-haven

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/us-billionaire-mercer-helped-back-brexit

Putin has a used a biker gang called the Night Wolves to quell anti-kremlin dissidents in Russian. They are associated with a Russian biker club operating out of Florida called Spetsnaz M.C. One of the founders of Spetsnaz has had some very sketchy real estate deals with Donald Trump and another is a former russian intelligence operative. So, it is possible that Russian Intelligence may have had a hand in the formation of Bikers for Trump. But the tale of Igor Zorin offers a 21st-century twist with all the weirdness modern Miami has to offer: Russian cash, a motorcycle club named after Russia’s powerful special forces and a condo tower branded by Donald Trump. Zorin is a Russian government official who has spent nearly $8 million on waterfront South Florida homes, hardly financially prudent given his bureaucrat’s salary of $75,000 per year. He runs a state-owned broadcasting company that, among other duties, operates sound systems for the annual military parade that sends columns of soldiers and tanks rumbling through Moscow’s Red Square. Zorin has other Miami connections, too: His local business associate, Svyatoslav Mangushev, a Russian intelligence officer turned Miami real-estate investor, helped found a biker club called Spetsnaz M.C. Spetsnaz is a group of motorcycle-loving South Florida expatriates who named themselves after the Russian equivalent of Delta Force or Seal Team Six. Spetsnaz members once asked for official recognition from Russia’s biggest biker gang, the Night Wolves, an infamous group that has strong ties to Russia’s security services.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article157640179.html

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a55879/russian-bikers-trump/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/29/russian-biker-gang-in-ukraine-night-wolves-putin https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/putins-angels-inside-russias-most-infamous-motorcycle-club-56360/

Fugitive Malaysian financier in multibillion-dollar scandal building army of foreign agents in the U.S.

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/03/jho-low-building-army-of-foreign-agents/#utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=r%2F_jho-low-army-of-foreign-agents-032018

Russia behind the Texas Seccession movement.

2015 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/vladimir-putin-texas-secession-119288 2017 https://www.houstoniamag.com/articles/2017/12/4/russia-texas-secession-facebook-page-heart-of-texas 2018 https://thinkprogress.org/russia-texas-california-separatism-9809aca9f61d/ 2019 https://thinkprogress.org/this-former-daily-caller-editor-is-trying-to-get-texas-to-secede-with-help-from-russia-9b8d276cb64e/

Child Sexual Abuse and Narcissism is another dimension of the Problem.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-legacy-distorted-love/201103/child-sexual-abuse-and-narcissism https://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/04/jeffrey-epstein-trump-lawsuit-sex-trafficking-237983 https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/20/trump-bob-kraft-visit-1230492
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3632847/Farage-s-UKIP-party-aide-30-predatory-dangerous-paedophile.html

u/RedcurrantJelly · 7 pointsr/unitedkingdom

Christ.

Next he's going to say "And that Sovereign Individual over there, yes, Jeremy Corbyn - that disaster capitalist! Total hypocrite! Under Corbyn, blood will be running in the streets!"

u/renegade_division · 7 pointsr/Libertarian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism

From Wikipedia. Mercantilism is:

  • High tariffs, especially on manufactured goods;
  • Monopolizing markets with staple ports;
  • Exclusive trade with colonies;
  • Forbidding trade to be carried in foreign ships;
  • Export subsidies;
  • Banning all export of gold and silver;
  • Promoting manufacturing with research or direct subsidies;
  • Limiting wages;
  • Maximizing the use of domestic resources;
  • Restricting domestic consumption with non-tariff barriers to trade.

    I really don't know what you mean by 'an economic system used by no one in the world'.

    Or just take a look at this guy:
    http://www.amazon.com/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Development-Perspective/dp/1843310279
u/mingusUFC · 7 pointsr/worldnews

You might learn want to learn a little history http://www.amazon.com/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Development-Perspective/dp/1843310279

TL;DR stealing technology and enacting trade barriers is often the best thing to do for poor countries (like America in the 1800's)
free trade when you are poor just keeps poor people poor

u/NYC-ART · 7 pointsr/Entrepreneur

That's easy:

Step 1: don't

The end.

Alibaba launched in launched in 2010, back that was innovative enough and it was the right time, today a decade later that market / business model is mature so.

Step 2: look around and see what Innovation can you bring into the market?

This book will help https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Change-Business/dp/0062060244

u/huginn · 7 pointsr/business

Happy to help :) It is a near lifetime of just being a business junky and just loving to read about this stuff. The best and easiest book I give people when they want to learn business is the Personal MBA.

http://www.amazon.com/Personal-MBA-Master-Art-Business/dp/1591845572/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375464773&sr=1-1&keywords=personal+mba+josh+kaufman

It is a solid, easy to read overview of business. You wount become an expert from it, but it is a 'explain like I am five 'introduction into business.


For innovation and new market development specific (My specialty) I'd go with Crossing the Chasm Quick read

http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Business/dp/0062060244

Lastly, take a strategic finance class. No numbers, simply the logic behind what is value. I've been told The Wall Street MBA is a good read but I can't vouch for it.
http://www.amazon.com/Wall-Street-MBA-Second/dp/007178831X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375464915&sr=1-1&keywords=wall+street+mba

Finance will ultimately change how you think. And not entirely for the better...

u/hexydes · 7 pointsr/Futurology

> The Innovator's Dilemma

Yup.

https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Change-Business/dp/0062060244

In a nutshell, successful incumbents to any industry are so focused on holding onto their present success that eventually a new, smaller entrant who is blocked out from the current market and often has very little to lose, embraces a new technology/paradigm and uses this to disrupt the incumbent, who can't move fast enough to adapt.

u/nobodyknowsimadog_ · 7 pointsr/personalfinance

Read a book you trust on the topic. Below is a book I read when I was 15. I am currently 26 and I already have much more saved for my retirement than my parents do. To this day I follow what I learned when I was younger.

I recommend this one, but any is fine as long it focuses on long term investment and not short-term stock guessing.

https://www.amazon.com/Four-Pillars-Investing-Portfolio-Investment/dp/0071747052/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=KXH0G78FMN6VG7WDAZJG

u/smb89 · 7 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

This has been a big subject of academic debate. But the most popular theory among economists (but not necessarily other social sciences) is that it had a lot to do with the kinds of governments that colonists set up; which in turn had a lot to do with native geography and, in particular, disease environments. I did some of my postgrad on this.

In short - if your initial settlers survived, you set up a colony your people could go live in, and you set up government and institutions based on yours back home. They weren't democracies as we know them know, but they had property rights and rule of law.

If your initial settlers didn't, you extracted what you could from the people and the land and stayed as remote from them as you could. The government and institutions you set up were then effectively corrupt and exploitative to begin with.

The theory goes that institutions like that don't change quickly (revolutions can change them, but not always for the better), so countries that started at a disadvantage with the colonisation ended up at a disadvantage.

The most common example is the British Empire in ie Canada or NZ versus sub Saharan Africa.

If you're interested in further reading this was the original seminal research even if it does get a bit technical in parts (https://economics.mit.edu/files/4123). There's also a related book by he same principal author which is more recent (https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719227)

u/selfoner · 6 pointsr/Libertarian

Nobody has mentioned The Road to Serfdom [Amazon] by Hayek, probably available in your local library.

(note: this is an argument against a centrally planned economy, which is irrelevant to many forms of market socialism, as CasedOutside has already pointed out)

u/BlayneFX · 6 pointsr/todayilearned

Looks like it comes from this book.

u/espressoself · 6 pointsr/badeconomics

I mean, it is this sub's favorite meme

Quoted from his EconTalk segment: (link here)

>There's a very interesting thesis that Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel sort of formulated, which is that really the geographic factors determined where early civilizations blossomed, and that, almost in a deterministic way, shaped which societies are more developed today. And we go in detail about why we sort of disagree with the thesis and why it's not really capable of explaining the patterns of what we see around us today; but they are interesting sort of variants of this. But the one that I think is more kind of popular among journalists and academics is a sort of cultural hypothesis. Max Weber was the person who developed the most famous example of this, or the Protestant ethic and constructive process; and Catholics. That's not as popular perhaps today. But if you sort of ask people why China is doing so well: Well, it is about Chinese culture. Why the Mexicans aren't doing so well or why sub-Saharan Africa is poor: It's all about national cultures or some cultural traits shared by a variety of individuals; or it would be Muslim versus non-Muslim. And again, we try to explain why such explanations are very limited. China has had the same Chinese culture but it did extremely badly under Mao... they did extremely badly 40 years ago when they had terrible incentives under Mao, and suddenly started doing well when the incentives changed. And all the while the same people in Hong Kong were doing very well. That should tell you something.

u/lawrencekhoo · 6 pointsr/AskEconomics

In general, Peterson is not reliable. He tends to cherry pick, selectively omit, or outright distort, the 'facts' he cites. For the case of the Pareto Principle, which is often stated as "20% of the population will own 80% of the wealth", this is only true for certain parameters of the Pareto distribution. In reality, human societies are diverse; some societies have a high concentration of wealth and income, while other societies have much lower concentrations. As you correctly surmised, much has to do with the institutions that exist in the society. As Acemoglu and Robinson argue, when the elite control the government, they set up institutions that enriches the elite while dispossessing the majority of the people. A strong government that strives to restrain the exploitative tendencies of the elites will enable the majority of the people to reap the economic benefits of their work and will lead to faster economic growth and a more equal society.

u/raoulbrancaccio · 6 pointsr/Gamingcirclejerk

>This has nothing to do with socialism or capitalism. Capitalist states often have the same social programs, but they have well made economic policy that can generate the wealth to sustain it without forcing everyone into poverty (see Denmark, Canada, Australia, etc)

No, it has to do with socialism and capitalism, it is not capitalism that generates that wealth, resources and labour generate wealth. If it was capitalism, then why are Somalia and Liberia so poor, their capitalist wealth generating magic should protect them, shouldn't it? They are being exploited out of their resources, so they cannot generate wealth, also, Cuba is just as poor as these countries, but it fares much better, I wonder why.

It is convenient to only talk about Europe, North America and Australia when you have to defend capitalism.

And Australia doesn't even have that big of a welfare state tbh.

>Venezuela was only doing "fine" because they were filthy rich from oil.

Yes, so?

>Compare them to singapore which didn't have said luxury of ridiculous wealth under their land.

Singapore? Have you ever heard reports of people actually working there? It's rich because their workers are controlled and alienated by the state, again, you are reinforcing my point (which is Keynes point, which is everyone with a brain's point), it is not capitalism that creates wealth, but it is labour and capital.

>Imperialism is entirely separate from capitalism (mercantilist nations relied on it the most)

I am not only referring to classical imperialism, but especially to economic imperialism, which includes the exploitation of resources and of cheap labour from other countries.

>are you really fucking implying USSR / PRC didn't kill innocents what the fuck.

When did I imply it? Just saying that capitalism kills mostly innocents, also, numbers are definitely inflated, the 60 million figure for Stalin is a meme by itself, and it is literally backed up by nothing.

>Read a book

>Exploitation tends to harm the imperialist nations, and nations become wealthiest by providing the means to success to all their citizens. It just so happens that private property and free enterprise does this the best.

I love it when people tell me to read a book, when they do it's probably the only book they've ever read, and they usually feel so triumphant when they have actual literature backing up their claims, no matter the context, also, it is always by some American economist.

Anyways, I do love me some Acemoglu (studied him pretty intensely in university, and I am rather fascinated by his theory of institutions being a fundamental driver in a nation's development, with the whole inclusive v. extractive discourse), but data is against the fact that exploitation harms imperialists, it might harm the nations that imperialist companies are located into (I would need data for this though), but it does not harm said imperialist companies, and how much cheap labour and resources are exploited in both Asia and Africa should tell you figures about it. You are confusing trading with exploiting, it's the former that gives theoretical gains to the poorest nation in some macroeconomic models.

Also, if you'd like, Read a Paper, even for a capitalist right wing economist such as Allen the centralised functions of the USSR are finely designed to bring about economic growth (and the USSR was the fastest growing nation for 50 years), so your "most efficient" meme which originates with the neoclassical school is just empirically wrong, and what I already said about Cuba (thanks to the embargo it's just as poor as some African countries, but it fares much better) further cements it, and I'm saying this without even supporting the Stalin-driven USSR (guilty of following aggregate results more than worker benefit, like capitalists do).

And, alas

>Marxism is a meme. That's why it will never be taken seriously by people outside of New School or UMass (besides internet memers and autocrats), sorry son.

I don't want to be racist, but this is the final showing that you are an American kid stuck in your own all-American Neoliberal bubble; Marxism is taken seriously (very seriously) everywhere except for the country that has a strong propaganda against communism, a right wing skewed government where the """"left"""" is composed of liberals and a government and education system which are quite literally controlled by big corporations, I wonder why.

And fun fact, in the rest of the world your economics literature (not all of it of course, some of it is good, mostly from the salt lake schools) is what is being made fun of.

And since we're talking about the US, lolefficiency, more than 5 times more vacant homes than homeless people, truly a fair and efficient allocation of resources, wouldn't you think?

u/Stik_Em · 6 pointsr/neoliberal

I am skeptical of a lot of aid (not all) and from what I have read foreign aid it is a very mixed bag at best. I have yet to read Dambisa Mayo's book Dead Aid, from what I understand her work is well regarded; what does r/neoliberal think of the book?

u/Senno_Ecto_Gammat · 6 pointsr/GoldandBlack

Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa

Long story short, foreign aid, mostly in the form of government-to-government transfers of assets, has ravaged the continent in a way that is difficult to overstate.

The solution proposed by the author is investment and trade using the vast natural resources there.

Admittedly the author is not "unbiased" but her analysis is backed by numbers and is difficult to reject.

u/bobafeett · 6 pointsr/ChapoTrapHouse

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

Interesting (although from a really neolib perspective) look at prosperity and political power and how systems evolve, that mostly avoids any sort of left viewpoint. I think that criticising and re-imagining some of their ideas with analysis from a left perspective would significantly improve the book. it's also available "online" if you don't want to shell out any money

u/HunterIV4 · 6 pointsr/FeMRADebates

Does anyone actually think Wakanda is real? I mean, no shit. It's a fake country from a superhero film. News Flash: Stark Industries and Asgard aren't real, either.

The conclusion it has to do with race is historically ignorant too. Most of Africa never took to the ideas of Western civilization, and like most places in the world that have not done so, they've suffered for it. Much of the Middle East, China, and Russia are all suffering for the same reason, and last I checked Russians were as white as anyone else.

Ideas matter. Wakanda is a fantasy because there's no reason the country would have adopted Western values, which it clearly did, simply because of a magic metal (nor does the metal explain the advanced science). Maybe those ideas were taken back from spies, I don't know.

But concluding this has something to do with the fact that the people are African is simply not backed up by evidence. The problem with Africa is that the institutions are African, and some institutions are simply better than others.

I recommend reading Why Nations Fail, as it goes into the evidence for this in significant detail.

u/ShrimShrim · 6 pointsr/pics

Nope. 100% have a B.A. in history a B.A. in education and a B.S. in health science. Currently in graduate school.

I didn't respond to your "facts" because you didn't list any. You went on some schizophrenic rant about race. You've completely failed to understand how geography influences the success and failures of societies. If I had handed in a paper with your line of reasoning my professor would have handed it back and said "start over, this is trash."


I'd suggest you read the book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond or the "Wealth and Poverty of Nations" by David Landes

You're going to have to go into reading those books with an open mind, because they might not fit your predetermined narrative that societies are only successful because of skin color.

u/sdtrader · 6 pointsr/Anarcho_Capitalism

Your thought experiment about homesteading is in essence sound. However, if you create an edge case island question, you are always going to get an edge case island answer. What else do you expect?

Let’s take your thought experiment further. What if ten thousand strangers strand on the island and Bill doesn’t want them on it? Under anarcho-capitalism, he has the full right to drive them off the island and, in essence, leave them to drown in the ocean. So in this sense, property rights are more precious than human life under anarcho-capitalism; “property rights über alles,” as they say.

But of course, communism won’t work any wonders here either, since the ten thousand people will quickly use up all of the island’s resources and die in a matter of weeks (or longer if they start eating each other).

Again, an edge case question is going to result in an edge case answer. What else do you expect?

I’m mostly interested in how the theory actually works in practice in our real world. In our real world, China is moving from tens of millions of people starving on the fields under communism to the largest middle class in human history, after people simply having received a little bit of pseudo-property rights over the land they live on and cultivate.

In his book The Mystery of Capital, the economist Hernando De Soto correctly points out that the problem in the world is not that there is too much property. The problem, on the contrary, is that there is too little property. Countless people currently live on and cultivate land that is owned by the state. These people would, almost instantaneously, become wealthier if their property rights were recognized. They would instantly become landowning capitalists who can sell their land to someone else or start selling their produce on domestic and worldwide markets.

The question is this: Which do we care more about, our real world or a hypothetical island world?

u/happybadger · 6 pointsr/Futurology

History isn't a gradual incline though. There's this book I'm reading called The Second Machine Age, really good read by the way, which has this graph in its early pages. Now I don't know how they source that information and am not claiming it to be fully accurate, but as an illustrative example it shows that total societal upheaval is a pretty rapid thing that compounds earlier periods of change. What we think of as tremendous periods critical to social development were, in this era which is the only one you can really form comparisons in as the dissemination of information is so radically different from what it was prior to the industrial age, as short in duration as the span between Pokemon Red and Pokemon Black.

Two decades is a lot when your society is literate and informed.

u/DownAndOutInMidgar · 6 pointsr/medicine

I'm not in the deep south and I assure you it's not a deep south phenomenon.

Like I said, I don't know what the solution is. I've read some books about behavior and economics (Poor Economics in particular) which has some empirical data suggesting people value things they pay for more, even if it's a small amount. I wonder if some kind of buy-in would be valuable in this setting. Singapore does not provide any service free of charge to prevent over-utilization. Maybe something like that would be beneficial.

u/pedropout · 6 pointsr/Anarcho_Capitalism

I doubt such a database exists, and I would bet there are too many challenges to make it worth creating. Even if you could get data on something so secretive and specific, there would be a lot of room for subjectivity in categorizing lobbying activity.

But, I'd recommend you look into the research by Gabriel Kolko. He wrote a book called The Triumph of Conservatism that provides a history of regulation in the Progressive era. Contrary to your high school history text book, big business wanted more regulation to keep out smaller competitors and maintain power for their organizations forever (hence the triumph of conservatism).

If you don't want to read a whole book, check out this article. It's still kind of a long read, but gives you a sense of the kind of evidence and "data" out there about big business being on the side of regulation rather than the free market.

What's especially interesting about Kolko is that he was a part of the left, which makes him fun to bring up in conversations with leftists.

Be aware, though, not everybody thinks Kolko was right in his telling of the history. Even some libertarians say we should be wary of using him as a source.

u/Anen-o-me · 6 pointsr/Bitcoin

Hah, that's apt.

It's happened over and over again, see the example of old coke steel mills vs electric steel mills in the book, "The Innovator's Dilemma, how industries get disrupted. It's been clear to me for a long time that bitcoin was a disruptive technology.

u/drsboston · 6 pointsr/personalfinance

So you have a great start!
Question why do you want to invest in options, and with the how did you loose 25% in 6 months with the brokerage account? I'm guessing you are in individual stocks?

You are young and time is on your side instead of taking a gambling approach with individual stocks and options I would suggest opening another vanguard account for your taxable investments and just put it in an index fund, let compounding start to work for you.

Here is a book I really liked on active vs passive investments.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Four-Pillars-Investing-Portfolio/dp/0071747052

Also out of curiosity how are you earning 30k while going to school?

u/Alphado · 6 pointsr/getdisciplined

I recommend the book Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (4 Volume Set) by Ludwig von Mises of the Austrian School of Economics. Austrian Economists debunk many Keynesian fallacies such as the Broken Window fallacy.

Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy by Thomas Sowell of the Chicago School.

The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents--The Definitive Edition (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, Volume 2) by F. A. Hayek (he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1974)

The Ludwig von Mises Institute has many excellent articles, free books and lectures about economics and society. Watch Mises Media on youtube.

And The Peter Schiff Show about economic matters on youtube.

u/DemNutters · 5 pointsr/politics

> You do realize we're living in the economic fallout of regulations slashed in the name of "small, ineffective government", right?

No, I don't realize that at all.

First of all, you can't talk about "regulations" like that in blanket terms. You have to ask, regulations for whom, and deregulation for whom? It's a little bit like talking about "free markets." It's not quite correct to say our problem is "free markets" run amock. It's actually more like "brutal free market competition for poor and workers, corporate welfare and socialism for corporations (especially big ones) and plutocrats."

I.e., not enough regulations holding big corporations in check? But on the other hand, tons of regulations protecting big business and corporations from competition from little guys.

So, ultimately the question is why is it that the regulations we do have are for the benefit of corporations and the rich? To set up monopolies and cartels for their benefit? Why is that the socialism and welfare we do have is for the benefit of corporations and the rich?

And that, of course, brings us to the question of who actually controls government, and why. And thence to "what exactly is the nature of this government thing, anyhow?"

Edit: also, pretty damn remarkable that liberals think we have small, ineffective government, when it soaks up, what, like 30% of GDP. And ineffective? It's highly effective at the stuff it does want to do. Imperialism, militarism, domestic police/surveillance state, imprisoning young black males, bailing out and enriching Wall Street bankers, etc etc etc.

In fact, there are plenty of data points that point to the conclusion that the government is HUGE, has enormous resources, and is remarkably efficient and effective at the things it wants to do and wants to be effective at.

So again, perhaps the problem here is that you liberals are incapable of getting over that propaganda lie of what the government is and is supposed to be doing, and just taking at face value the reality of what it does, and is. Cause that reality is... not very pleasant.

u/silkyfosure · 5 pointsr/KotakuInAction

People will tell you to read The Innovators Dilemma:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Business/dp/0062060244

But that's still a book written by/for business people so lacking true insight. This is mostly based on my experience as [redacted] in the [redacted] industry (sadly I can't expose myself to doxxing as most people in my industry are SJW).

I might put together more thoughts around this into an independent post but a rough outline of what happens:

    1. Hacker builds something cool, it starts to get traction.
    1. Early investors want to get in on the traction because they are mostly attention seeking people.
    1. After the hacker raises money, the investors push them to start focusing more on press (since they want to brag to their buddies about the new investment and this makes them look good).
    1. Press drives the interest of bigger investors/more investment.
    1. After more money is raised, VCs start placing their business buddies into the company.
    1. Money and press attract liberal arts kids into "marketing" positions.
    1. Extra layers of management and marketing bullshit cause the hackers to leave.
  • 8a. The company has an exit through someone's back room deals before it can explode.
  • 8b. The company explodes and the original hacker/founders are blamed for being "incompetent at management and marketing".

    Edit: This is a pretty typical example of the change of thinking that occurs: http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug

    Extra bonus points, research what happened with Julie Ann Horvath after she complained about the rug.
u/analogdude · 5 pointsr/Entrepreneur

Some would say I read too much, but I really enjoyed:

founders at work: Steve Wozniak (Apple), Caterina Fake (Flickr), Mitch Kapor (Lotus), Max Levchin (PayPal), and Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail) tell you in their own words about their surprising and often very funny discoveries as they learned how to build a company. (This is one of my favorite books ever!)

the art of the start:Kawasaki provides readers with GIST-Great Ideas for Starting Things-including his field-tested insider's techniques for bootstrapping, branding, networking, recruiting, pitching, rainmaking, and, most important in this fickle consumer climate, building buzz.

the innovator's dilemma: Focusing on “disruptive technology,” Christensen shows why most companies miss out on new waves of innovation. Whether in electronics or retailing, a successful company with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know when to abandon traditional business practices. Using the lessons of successes and failures from leading companies, The Innovator’s Dilemma presents a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation.



And in terms of getting your life together to the point where you are responsible enough to lead others, I would highly suggest Getting Things Done by David Allen

u/DarkestBeforeTheDon · 5 pointsr/badeconomics

I am really starting to think about switching to recommending this endlessly.

u/DS__05 · 5 pointsr/neoliberal

yea like this one

u/manifold1 · 5 pointsr/MGTOW

I am going to read a book - The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich A. Hayek

u/WhereCanILearnR · 5 pointsr/badeconomics
u/the_popcorn_pisser · 5 pointsr/Drama

I'm not going to touch this one because it's already been there for a day but as a Central American let me clear something up:

The shit that happened in North America doesn't even compare to the level of attrocities that happened in the rest of America. It is even argued that the reason why the US and Canada are wealthy and Latin America is a shithole goes to how different both regions were conquered. Up north Europeans were eventually forced to actually trade, down here they literally raped and pillaged and those power structures remain today (https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719227)

u/econlurk · 5 pointsr/badeconomics

>a book is the thing you do when you can't get a theory past the peer-review process.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307719227

u/randomfact8472 · 5 pointsr/britishcolumbia

Yes, all economists completely agree on this. There isn't ample literature from respected economists saying there is going to be massive unemployment at all...

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Work

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0393239357/ref=pd_aw_sims_2?pi=SY115&simLd=1

Many economists disagree that jobs will magically appear this time. That makes sense, because previously much of the work was created by increased demand and urbanization. There isn't enough time in the day to utilize the services of everyone who has been made unemployed by automation when computers can do almost anything a human can do, cheaper.

u/notsafeforstones · 5 pointsr/BitcoinMarkets

This book convinced me that governments will be ineffective against cryptocurrencies in the long run.

https://www.amazon.com/Sovereign-Individual-Mastering-Transition-Information/dp/0684832720

u/tach · 5 pointsr/Economics

> Remember just like Americans, Latin American's or South American's forget in only a few decades if not sooner.

Are you trolling?

Go to Argentina with a T-shirt that says 'School of the Americas'.

Good luck.

Anti americanism in Latin america has its roots since the US invasion of Mexico. It's firmly entrenched in the intellectual class at least since Rodo's Ariel, more than a hundred year old.

Also, Eduardo Galeano's Open veins of Latin America competes with the new testament as holy writ here.

Words fail me to express how mistaken is the concept that that you can just buy public opinion.

Each culture has its zeitgeist, and ignoring it and its mythos (for example, the gallant revolutionary) is, in the best of cases, just throwing money away.

u/flyingdragon8 · 5 pointsr/TrueReddit

Great article. The article mentioned Poor Economics which is an entire book on developmental economics with the same overall thesis: that big ideas are counterproductive to developmental aid and that only well thought out, small scale projects fine tuned to local conditions through rigorous experimentation can significantly improve outcomes. Highly recommended reading.

u/rambull2000 · 4 pointsr/badeconomics

At which point I know they haven't read the Wealth and Poverty of Nations. It goes into good depth about what happened when Algeria, an African country, socialized all their businesses and due to that are still in a shithole.

u/Intrinsically1 · 4 pointsr/WendoverProductions

Seeing as I'm replying to you directly I should state that I am usually a big fan of your work, so please believe me that I'm giving this feedback in good faith. And I apologise for implying you ripped off someone else's video.

Bringing this up correlational data (at around 4:18 in the video) immediately begs the question why countries like Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Austria, Switzerland are all very prosperous countries with high percentages of mountainous land and very limited arable farmland. Further, Japan (73% mountains) and South Korea (70%) are the most prosperous countries in Asia. Chile (80% mountains) is the most prosperous country in South America.

The section on temperature was also really problematic for me. The way you brought it up appears to be to create distance between Greece and the other prosperous mountainous European countries, but you then dismiss the theory of how climate effects economies is "massively complex, controversial, and not yet well understood". Why bring this up at all if you're not going to flesh out the argument and then dismiss it? There are valid arguments to be made about climate but it adds no value to the video in its present form.

If you had just limited the scope of what you were saying, ie left it at how Greece's mountainous terrain and climate creates challenges for Greece alone it wouldn't have created these problems with correlation=/=causation.

Both geography and climate effect economic development. But economies are insanely complex and you do the topic a disservice by leaving viewers with the takeaway that you can simply explain it through these correlations between geography and climate. You don't need to paint yourself into that corner if you just focus on how it effects your subject country rather than the rest of the world.

For a more complete look on this subject I would recommend he book The Wealth and Poverty of Nations by Harvard economic historian David S. Landes. It covers how geography, climate, culture, education economics and history effected the economic development of the world. It's also a treasure trove of content ideas.

u/BigTLo8006 · 4 pointsr/neoliberal

>A federal carbon tax will never be passed by the government and really the carbon tax does decrease emissions a little bit but it's more useful for generating money for the government.

Will a federal carbon tax ever be passed by the government? I think it's unlikely in the near term, but in the medium or long term? Who knows? As to the scale of emissions reduction, it would obviously depend on the scale of the tax! Admittedly we don't have much empirical data on this, but insofar as the demand curve slopes down, a carbon tax should be as effective as the rate it is set at. As for "it's more useful for generating money for the government", this is a seperate policy goal than reducing carbon emissions. The two aren't comparable as they have different metrics for success (revenue generated vs emissions reduced).

>Tesla's success has already spurred investment and research by all the other car companies without coercion or extra tax dollars.

How would you even prove this causal link? The fact that Tesla can't even fill its orders suggests that Toyota's success with the Prius could be just as important if not moreso. Either way, Tesla operates in one sector of the economy - The transportation sector is responsible for about 15% of emissions, and I'd bet that personal motor vehicle emissions are not even half that. The point is that Tesla will not spur research and development in the development of cleaner factories, for example.

>Tesla has accelerated the pathway to sustainable transportation by 8-10 years.

Again, don't know how you would prove this claim.

If you're looking for people to reject government spending based on "coercion", I don't think you're going to find many friends here. Neoliberals have an axiomatic belief that government is necessary. If you're interested in some historical policy successes of the US government (which frankly is one of the less effective governments in the developed world), I'd suggest you read this book. It does a good job outlining the technological innovation of the private sector as well as policy areas where it fell short and where government intervention was required.

u/spergery · 4 pointsr/BlackPeopleTwitter

Interesting. I got that definition from this book. If I'm wrong, I'm happy to retract it.

u/valtomas · 4 pointsr/argentina

While not entirely Argentinan, i highly recommend The open vein of Latin America by Galeano

u/two_beats_off · 4 pointsr/neoliberal

Has anyone read [Poor Economics] (https://www.amazon.com/Poor-Economics-Radical-Rethinking-Poverty/dp/1610390938/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1518638120&sr=8-1&keywords=Poor+Economics) before? We are currently reading it in my global public policy class and its really interesting how quickly they move past low hanging fruit (mosquito nets, food distribution) and talk about effective solutions to alleviating poverty.

u/Hynjia · 4 pointsr/sociology

General sociology? Or...something specific...

Because I've read several sociology books that were rather interesting about specific issues (usually feminism)

Let's see here:

Hobos, Hustlers,and Backsliders: Homeless in San Francisco

Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street

Real Knockouts: The Physical Feminism of Women's Self-Defense

Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty: not technically sociology, but explains how proposed economic solutions to problems are tripped up and prevented in some way by sociological issues.

Personally, all of these books were hella interesting. I think Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders was the most sociological book I read. I had no idea wtf symbolic interactionism was when I read it...but I got the gist of it because the author writes lucidly.

One I haven't read is Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. It's received nominations for awards and was very popular at one point.

u/satanic_hamster · 4 pointsr/CapitalismVSocialism

Socialism/Communism

A People's History of the World

Main Currents of Marxism

The Socialist System

The Age of... (1, 2, 3, 4)

Marx for our Times

Essential Works of Socialism

Soviet Century

Self-Governing Socialism (Vols 1-2)

The Meaning of Marxism

The "S" Word (not that good in my opinion)

Of the People, by the People

Why Not Socialism

Socialism Betrayed

Democracy at Work

Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA (again didn't like it very much)

The Socialist Party of America (absolute must read)

The American Socialist Movement

Socialism: Past and Future (very good book)

It Didn't Happen Here

Eugene V. Debs

The Enigma of Capital

Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism

A Companion to Marx's Capital (great book)

After Capitalism: Economic Democracy in Action

Capitalism

The Conservative Nanny State

The United States Since 1980

The End of Loser Liberalism

Capitalism and it's Economics (must read)

Economics: A New Introduction (must read)

U.S. Capitalist Development Since 1776 (must read)

Kicking Away the Ladder

23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

Traders, Guns and Money

Corporation Nation

Debunking Economics

How Rich Countries Got Rich

Super Imperialism

The Bubble and Beyond

Finance Capitalism and it's Discontents

Trade, Development and Foreign Debt

America's Protectionist Takeoff

How the Economy was Lost

Labor and Monopoly Capital

We Are Better Than This

Ancap/Libertarian

Spontaneous Order (disagree with it but found it interesting)

Man, State and Economy

The Machinery of Freedom

Currently Reading

This is the Zodiac Speaking (highly recommend)

u/bluerobot27 · 4 pointsr/HistoryWhatIf

Take note that your arguments are dubious because you are applying Jared Diamond's theory of geography and natural resources in the economic development of today's nations.

Jared Diamond has been criticized by a lot of scholars and academics that his arguments are irrelevant and do really nothing to explain the economy of nations.

Daren Acemoglu and James Robinson have butchered Diamond's theories in their book Why Nations Fail? They argue that geography and natural resources have little to do with today's development and that it is more the result of political and economic institutions influencing the economy. - https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity-ebook/dp/B0058Z4NR8. They even spend some time refuting Diamond's theories in a chapter in their book.

The croplands map you provided actually debunks your own theory. For example, Korea and Japan are one of the most prosperous countries yet contains very little cropland and fertile land. India, for example contains lots of fertile land but still remains a poor country mired in poverty and wealth inequality.

u/mantra · 4 pointsr/apple

> It’s a horrible state of affairs for the tablet industry, unless you’re Apple or Amazon. And it’s almost entirely the fault of the iPad.

Strange view of it. I guess in a "negative space" sort of way: it's Apple's fault because of what Apple didn't do exactly like the non-iPad tablet vendors, which they did because that's how they've always done things. Apple didn't drink the commodification Kool-aide these other vendors did so it's their fault they didn't fail like those who did drink and did fail. A bit twisted.

The fate of non-iPad tablets is entirely the fault of non-iPad manufacturers. They are the ones who outsourced to the point they could no longer innovate themselves (especially true of HP - I worked for HP for 10 years and know the internal politics and strategies that led them to this point). These vendors are the ones who picked a separated HW/SW product architecture that assures a low cost yet well-matched appliance solution is almost impossible. These vendors are the ones who triggered the price-based race to the bottom (rather than value-based sustainable margins - which used to be HP's forte) that resulted in selling at prices below cost-of-goods. It's 100% self-inflicted stupidity on their parts. They had a choice. They picked all the wrong choices. This largely because they had (and still have) a static view of their worlds and markets - to them a tablet is just a particular type of PC.

Apple had nothing to do with any of that - Apple sells on value and innovation as a sales strategy which is created by unified SW/HW enabling a well-tuned appliance product of value. That's what was necessary to disrupt the market - the ability to 1) be aware of product "impedance mismatches" that were forming and 2) be better adaptable to creating a correct "impedance match". That latter requires "getting out of the box" of what you are and what your product is. When you are as strongly disconnected from your own product manufacturing as HP is, shit like this is simply inevitable. This is why I long ago sold off all my HP stock earned during my tenure at HP.

I lived through the Mini-Micro transition. Frankly it's "deja vu all over again". All these "hater" industries (per the article) are the 2010s versions of the "minicomputer" industries of the early 1970s who were displaced by microcomputers. They couldn't compete because they made lots of strategic decisions and held world-views that assured they couldn't adapt with the "next big thing" - all simply classic Innovator's Dilemma fare that assured that some day they'd be caught flat-footed. That day has come, that's all.

Waving the flag for HP or RIM or any of these is tantamount to waving the flag for Wang or Data General in the 1970s.

It would be nice if some other vendors could actually innovate to compete but historical evidence of how "Innovator's Dilemma" situations usually play out suggests it can not be any of the prior generation players who can or will ever do that. It requires new faces who aren't loaded down by preconceived expectations of the old technology generation. Either you change yourself before the revolution comes (and by doing so create the revolution) or you are consumed by the revolution. This is how technology works.

u/WorldNewsModsrDBags · 4 pointsr/videos

It's called Disruptive Technology and Disruptive Business Models.

A Harvard professor by the name of Clayton Christensen wrote a few books on this topic.

Edit: and also, usually the laggards disappear: blockbuster, Kodak, Nokia, blackberry, et al

The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062060244/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_uPnlxb7Y0NYF1

u/s1e · 4 pointsr/userexperience

I'm sorry if the reply turned out a bit too general, but the individual steps depend a lot on the specifics :)

As I said before, it's crucial that you understand the problem domain as good, or better than your customers. I like to think of it as the Fog of War in strategy game maps. I can only effectively perform once I have explored enough territory to see the big picture. Here's roughly how I would try to wrap my head around such a challenge, if the company hired me to help:

Customer

Who are the customers? It's actually possible to think of the customers just in terms of their needs and desires. But it's useful to know their demographic attributes, so you can choose whether your solution is going to be a lateral or a niche one. For instance.. Trello is a lateral solution, because the kan-ban methodology can be applied to many different types of problems. On the other hand, It could be argued that 500px is a niche solution, because it caters to photographers more than meme authors. It's very easy for 500px to figure out where photographers hang out online and in the real world, should they choose to reach out to them in any way.

The job (Problems / Desires)

The customers usually have some sort of job to be done. That job is driven by their desire for a benefit, or a lingering problem that needs solving. Those benefits can range from monetary to peace of mind or social status. And problems can range in severity. Furthermore, different customer segments can rate some problems and benefits as more important than others. This is the combinatorial explosion of stakeholders and their points of view, that informs a strategy of a good product designer, and causes an uninformed designer to arrive at an optimal solution only through brute force or sheer luck.

Solution

Sometimes the solution has to be drawn up from scratch, optimized or entirely re-imagined. So what is the existing solution? What would an utopian solution look like? A complex problem might require a solution in the form of a toolkit of multiple core activities (Like Google, HubSpot or Moz). A focused solution though, can be embodied in a single product (Caffeine.app keeps your mac from going to sleep). If a solution is complex behind the curtains, but you make it simple and gratifying from the user's point of view, it may seem like magic to them.

Business

The things that you do behind the curtains are some core activities, that might require some key resources. That's how the business makes sure it spends less than it earns on a customer (unit economics). It's easy to paint a picture where the world is split between sociopathic capitalists with a greedy agenda & empathic designers, who champion the user's priorities. But a similar solution with a sound business foundation will always be better for the customer, because it stands a better chance of outperforming the economically inferiour solution in the long run. It's the job of a designer to balance between the two aspects. So much so, that the Elements of User Experience places big emphasis on both Business Objectives & User Needs.

Communication

Once you love your people, and you have a way to show it to them, you'll have to start and maintain some sort of relationship. You can identify Touch Points or Channels. If, for instance, your customers are tourists looking for a place to grab a meal before boarding the next train, you can administer your solution right then and there, at the train station. But most of the time you'll be reaching out to your potential users somewhere between you and them, probably through a third party (online publication, app or ad network). It may take multiple exposures in different contexts, before somebody decides to give your solution a try. So a customer might bump into your message at certain touch points, open a communication channel like a newsletter or notification subscription, and only then decide to commit. There's often talk about a multiple stage funnel, through which we try to shove as much of our target market. But you can also look at customer lifetime stages as vertebrae in the cohort spine. For instance.. Slicing out customer segments by lifetime lets SoundCloud identify differences between a newcoming podcaster & a long-time podcaster, and communicate with each of them appropriately, even though most of the people that care about SoundCloud are producers and record labels. Staying on top of communication also helps you avoid conversion attribution mistakes, so you can communicate more effectively.

Here are some resources related to those subjects:

  • Value Proposition Design, Alexander Osterwalder: How to map the Customer, their Problems and Desires to a Solution.
  • The Innovator's Dillema, Clayton Christensen: Describes how disruptive innovators solve existing problems in novel ways.
  • Minto Pyramid Principle, Barbara Minto: How to communicate the value propositions to a rationally minded customer.

    A bit more business related:

  • Four Steps To The Epiphany, Steve Blank: A user-focused methodology for efficiently finding a viable business model, called Customer Development.
  • Business Model Generation, Alexander Osterwalder: His first book takes a broader look, dealing with booth the business and customer side of things.
  • Lean Startup, Eric Ries: What Steve Blank said.

    Once I have a good understanding, I would focus on Information Architecture, Experience Design, Production & Iteration. I can't spare the time to write about those now, but here are some related resources:

  • Elements of User Experience, Jesse James Garret: What a typical experience design process is made up of.
  • About Face, Alan Cooper: Another take on the whole process, dives a bit deeper into every stage than Garret's book.
  • Don't Make Me Think, Steve Krug: One of the first books to gave the issues of IA and UX design a human, customer point of view.

    I might write more about the specific subjects of IA and UX later, when I find the time. In the meanwhile, check any of the three books with italicized titles, if you haven't already.

    Peace o/
u/SteelSharpensSteel · 4 pointsr/marriedredpill

On What to Read


Here are some suggestions on books and websites:


The Millionaire Next Door by Stanley and Danko - https://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising-Americas/dp/1589795474


If You Can by William Bernstein - http://efficientfrontier.com/ef/0adhoc/2books.htm


Free version is here - https://www.dropbox.com/s/5tj8480ji58j00f/If%20You%20Can.pdf?dl=0


The Investor's Manifesto. Preparing for Prosperity, Armageddon, and Everything in Between by William Bernstein - https://www.amazon.com/Investors-Manifesto-Prosperity-Armageddon-Everything/dp/1118073762


The Bogleheads Guide to Investing - https://www.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide-Investing-Taylor-Larimore/dp/1118921283


The Coffeehouse Investor - https://www.amazon.com/Coffeehouse-Investor-Wealth-Ignore-Street/dp/0976585707


The Bogleheads' Guide to Retirement Planning - https://www.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide-Retirement-Planning/dp/0470455578


The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio by William Bernstein - https://www.amazon.com/Four-Pillars-Investing-Building-Portfolio/dp/0071747052/


Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey - https://www.amazon.com/Total-Money-Makeover-Classic-Financial/dp/1595555277


Personal Finance for Dummies by Eric Tyson - https://www.amazon.com/Personal-Finance-Dummies-Eric-Tyson/dp/1118117859


Investing for Dummies by Eric Tyson - https://www.amazon.com/Investing-Dummies-Eric-Tyson/dp/1119320690/


The Millionaire Real Estate Investor per red-sfplus’s post (can confirm this is excellent) - https://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Real-Estate-Investor/dp/0071446370/


For all the M.Ds on here and HNW individuals, you might want to check out https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/ and his blog – found it to be very useful.


https://www.irs.gov/ or your government’s tax page. If you’ve been reading, you know that millionaires know more than your average bear about the tax code.


https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/7vohb3/money/


https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/3hzcvn/financial_advice_from_a_financier/


https://www.artofmanliness.com/2017/09/22/4-money-tips-4-personal-finance-legends/


Personal Finance Flowchart from their wiki - https://i.imgur.com/lSoUQr2.png


Additional Lists of Books:


https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Books:_recommendations_and_reviews


https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/books-4/


Subreddits


https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/


https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/ - I would highly encourage you to spend a half hour browsing their wiki - https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/index and investing advice - https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/investing


https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/


https://www.reddit.com/r/SecurityAnalysis/


https://www.reddit.com/r/finance/


https://www.reddit.com/r/portfolios/


https://www.reddit.com/r/Bogleheads/


MRP References


https://www.reddit.com/r/marriedredpill/comments/40whjy/finally_talked_to_my_wife_about_our_finances_it/


https://www.reddit.com/r/marriedredpill/comments/67nxdu/finances_with_a_sahm/


https://www.reddit.com/r/marriedredpill/comments/488pa0/60_dod_week_6_finances/ (original)


https://www.reddit.com/r/marriedredpill/comments/6a6712/60_dod_week_6_finances/ (year 2)


https://www.reddit.com/r/marriedredpill/comments/3xw015/how_to_prepare_for_a_talk_about_finances/


https://www.reddit.com/r/marriedredpill/comments/30z704/taking_back_the_finances/


https://www.reddit.com/r/marriedredpill/comments/2uzukg/married_redpill_finances_and_money/


https://www.reddit.com/r/marriedredpill/comments/3637q5/some_thoughts_on_mrp_and_finances/


https://www.reddit.com/r/askMRP/comments/8dwaqt/best_practices_for_finances_within_marriage/


https://www.reddit.com/r/marriedredpill/comments/588e5o/gain_control_of_the_treasury/


Final Thoughts


There are already a lot of high net worth individuals on these subs (if you don’t believe me, look at the OYS for the past few months). This should be a review for most folks. The key points stay the same – have a plan, get out of the hole you are in, have a budget, do the right moves for wealth accumulation. Lead your family in your finances. Own it.


What are YOU doing to own your finances? Give some examples below.


u/Schutzwall · 4 pointsr/neoliberal

It's wholesome to spend Valentines Day with my crush

u/Cragsicles · 4 pointsr/AskSocialScience

I'm glad you've become interested in such a fascinating topic. However, it's pretty expansive, so here are some links to books and topics in terms of broad, global, and more specific studies related to the issue of income equality:

Broad Topic/Global:

u/speaktodragons · 4 pointsr/AskReddit

Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa

Mastering the Machine Revisited: Poverty, Aid and Technology

Dead Aid Wikipedia

The true size of Africa

I think we really need to get away from helping Africa in regards to helping the countries of Africa. As per link to the size of Africa one can see its *ucking huge. However I would rather that we the US would spend more time cultivating our relationships within our own region instead which is more close to home than the middle east.

Example: Syria should be a problem handled by the Europeans and not by us and we should be doing more in regards to Mexico. Getting involved in Mexico not by military intervention but reaching a conclusion in regarding the legalization of marijuana. I am pretty sure if marijuana was legal in Mexico, Mexicans would have less of a reason to work in the US.

Edit: I didn't explain my links. I read "Mastering the Machine" I thought it was a good read in regards too is the aid to Africa actually working or is it making it worse. Dead aid was published just a couple of years ago and makes the same point. Historically I don't think any country on this planet was improved by charity. Look at Haiti it was a wreck before the earthquake how many millions were sent?

u/Wallwillis · 4 pointsr/PoliticalHumor

You're right, it has been happening since the Industrial Revolution. However, it's never grown at a rate like this before. You should check out the book The Second Machine Age.

u/Snowpocalypse149 · 4 pointsr/intj

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

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


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

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

u/wainstead · 4 pointsr/water

Probably a lot of readers of /r/water have read Cadillac Desert.

I own a copy of, and have made two false starts reading, The King Of California as recommend by the anonymous author of the blog On The Public Record.

I highly recommend A Great Aridness, a worthy heir to Cadillac Desert.

Also on my to-read list is Rising Tide. I would like to find a book that does for the Great Lakes what Marc Reisner did for water in the American West with his book Cadillac Desert.

A few things I've read this year that have little to do with water:

u/QueerTransAlpaca · 3 pointsr/JordanPeterson

I mean I believe you that you want to know more about him. I'm just not sure your post here is genuine. Its the conversation itself I find suspect.

First of all you are not simply left leaning. Its clear from your post history that you are aware of and buy into Marxist ideology surrounding power structures.

Secondly, if you want to learn about Peterson why are you posting here first? There are hundreds if not thousands of hours of video on youtube where he outlines his ideas. You can literally google "Jordan Peterson on X" and get a dozen 5 min videos of him talking about that subject. If you just wanted to understand him or his views you would start there then bring your questions about his statements here.

Now maybe I'm wrong, not like it doesn't happen regularly. In that case I wouldn't start with Petersons arguments against communism. Peterson identifies himself as a classical liberal. So his arguments against communism should generally align with classically liberal or libertarian viewpoints surrounding collectivism. With that in mind read "Free to Choose" by Milton Freedman and/or "The Road to Serfdom" by F.A. Hayek. (these are my two top choices) Then, understanding the basic arguments against socialism/communism, look into JBPs views with a new perspective. I'm not trying to say reading those books will change your mind, but they will give you the actual arguments and not the typical strawman you get on the internet.

https://www.amazon.com/Road-Serfdom-Fiftieth-Anniversary/dp/0226320618/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1523154978&sr=8-2&keywords=road+to+serfdom

https://www.amazon.com/Free-Choose-Statement-Milton-Friedman-ebook/dp/B004MYFLBS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523155001&sr=8-1&keywords=free+to+choose

u/OliverSparrow · 3 pointsr/Economics

IQ and the Wealth of Nations was published in 2002 by Lynn and Vanhanen. It was followed by IQ and Global Inequality in 2006. Here is a map taken from that book.They contend that nations differ in IQ and that this is predictive of their economic success. Their data support them in this. Here is a more recent figure that uses distinct data, with cognitive ability estimated from independent performance measures, PISA, TIMSS, and PIRLS international exams.

The Left do not like genetic determinism and reacted angrily to the book: these things should not be said, it's all racist, IQ is meaningless, it's all down to differences in nurture. The usual squid's ink, in fact.

The reality is far more complex, and this post catches another angle of it. Primate brain size correlates strongly with the average number of animals in a troop, as do estimates of their intelligence. That is, social behaviour - intensionality, having a model of the mind of others - is one of the most intense cognitive tasks that we face. Managing a stable society in which long run collaboration, property rights comes late in development, and appears to be the key step in achieving it. Differences in assessed institutional strength explains around two thirds of the differences in social and economic development between 1950 and today.

Is this related to "national IQ", and collaboration consequent on that? Certainly, but in a non-linear way. Average IQ in the industrial world has risen by 30 points since the 1920s: the Flynn effect. The mean today would have been seen as "gifted" in 1920. That is down to nutrition, education and the far better understanding that the average person has of the world that surrounds them. A soap opera is a marvellous education in how other people "work".

All of this is rather good news. The Left should not be in denial about this: given appropriate stimuli, the world's population can improve its collaboration and prosperity much more rapidly than naive factor supply analysis would suggest. It may be that poor countries generate conditions that lead to populations with low IQs , and not that some countries have innately lower average intelligence than others.

u/brukental · 3 pointsr/Romania

As mai da doua referinte la un nivel mai macro-economic pentru cat de mult conteaza un ecosistem prietenes pentru afaceri, mai ales IMM-uri... Care Iohannis chiar a stimulat in sibiu.

Prima - Why nations fail - Modelul de guvernare PSD:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307719219/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=whynatfai-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0307719219

A doua:
http://www.amazon.com/Start-up-Nation-Israels-Economic-Miracle/dp/0446541478

Cum o tara fara resurse (okay cu ajutor american) si cu multe IMM-uri a ajuns putere economica.

u/NogaiPolitics · 3 pointsr/geopolitics

I would first off recommend checking out the /r/geopolitics Wiki for its page on books. From there, I recommend introductory books that really help explain the geopolitical situation of the world in a cursory fashion. Consider:

u/SnapshillBot · 3 pointsr/badeconomics



Snapshots:

  1. This Post - 1, 2, 3

  2. paid my tribute - 1, 2, 3

  3. Dead Aid - 1, 2, 3

  4. surely be missed - 1, 2, 3

  5. World Bank (WB) tables - 1, 2, 3

  6. the NBER tells us - 1, 2, 3

  7. poverty leads to instability, which... - 1, 2, 3

  8. there is evidence it can reform pol... - 1, 2, [Error](http://megalodon.jp/ "error auto-archiving; click to submit it!")

  9. Acemoglu - 1, 2, 3

  10. labour standards on the continent a... - 1, 2, [Error](http://megalodon.jp/ "error auto-archiving; click to submit it!")

  11. the 2015 discussion documents from ... - 1, 2, 3

  12. Mandela’s human-rights oriented for... - 1, 2, 3

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u/SwissMod · 3 pointsr/neoliberal

>Is social democracy neoliberal

No


>liberal government institutions

  • democracy
  • pluralism
  • rule of law

    etc.

    this book goes into more detail what exactly thoes institutions are and why they're a good thing. If you read it you're probably gonna be more informed than 75% of this sub so I highly recommend you to read it.
u/NikoUY · 3 pointsr/uruguay

Gracias, pensaba leer la parte histórica primero que es lo que más me llamo la atención de la wiki y si me interesaba algo en particular de ahí entonces leer algo más concreto.

Capaz también algo que explique varios modelos sin ser muy denso, algo que este en el tono de la explicación que pusiste acá pero más profundizado, el de Adam Smith parece interesante pero es medio viejo (1776) y capaz es medio denso, hay alguna cosa más moderna?

Este sería el último que recomendaste, ese autor?

u/si_sports · 3 pointsr/politics

Should it be 'available' sure! Should the America tax dollars pay for it? No. The America tax dollars should be spend on Americans.

This global village bs doesn't work. We have been giving them money for the last 60 years and much of the world is still a shithole.

You should read "Why nations fail" https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719227

u/Soundofawesome · 3 pointsr/Documentaries

Uh... why so aggressive? All most all of these countries, were colonies of western countries for literally hundreds of years.

Most of them, after gaining their independence, under went decades of civil wars. Or were grounds for proxy wars of more developed nations fighting over their natural resources (diamonds, uranium, etc.) and differing political ideological (capitalism vs communism).

Since they were colonies, they typically had restrictions placed in their ability to form legal systems, or they formed some distorted version of a western legal system. These weren't British citizens, with established legal frameworks, rebelling from Britain (like the American Revolution).

The lack of a legal system made it more difficult to form stable governments, or even organize functional economic systems. Typically their citizen lacked basic legal protections, that more developed nations take for granted.

Literally, nothing like a drug addiction, but yea good on them for try.

Maybe read this book. :/

u/rebelrob0t · 3 pointsr/REDDITORSINRECOVERY

I went to one AA meeting when I first got clean and never went back. I understand people have found support and success in it but to me, personally, I felt it only increased the stigma of drug addicts as these broken hopeless people barely hanging on by a thread. It's an outdated system that relies on little science or attempting to progress the participants and relies more on holding people in place and focusing on the past. Instead I just worked towards becoming a normal person. Here are some of the resources I used:

r/Fitness - Getting Started: Exercise is probably the #1 thing that will aid you in recovering. It can help your brain learn to produce normal quantities of dopamine again as well as improve your heath, mood, well being and confidence.

Meetup: You can use this site to find people in your area with similar interests. I found a hiking group and a D&D group on here which I still regularly join.

Craigslist: Same as above - look for groups, activities, volunteer work, whatever.

Diet

This will be the other major player in your recovery. Understanding your diet will allow you to improve your health,mood, energy, and help recover whatever damage the drugs may have done to your body.

How Not To Die Cookbook

Life Changing Foods

The Plant Paradox

Power Foods For The Brain

Mental Health

Understand whats going on inside your head and how to deal with it is also an important step to not only recovery but enjoying life as a whole.

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy

The Emotional Life Of Your Brain

Furiously Happy

The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works

Educational

If you are like me you probably felt like a dumbass when you first got clean. I think retraining your brain on learning, relearning things you may have forgot after long term drug use, and just learning new things in general will all help you in recovery. Knowledge is power and the more you learn the more confident in yourself and future learning tasks you become.

Illegal Drugs: A Complete Guide to their History, Chemistry, Use, and Abuse

Why Nations Fails

Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century

Thinking, Fast and Slow

The Financial Peace Planner: A Step-by-Step Guide to Restoring Your Family's Financial Health

Continued Education / Skills Development

EdX: Take tons of free college courses.

Udemy: Tons of onine courses ranging from writing to marketing to design, all kinds of stuff.

Cybrary: Teach yourself everything from IT to Network Security skills

Khan Academy: Refresh on pretty much anything from highschool/early college.

There are many more resources available these are just ones I myself have used over the past couple years of fixing my life. Remember you don't have to let your past be a monkey on your back throughout the future. There are plenty of resources available now-a-days to take matters into your own hands.

*Disclaimer: I am not here to argue about anyone's personal feelings on AA**







u/FivePoppedCollarCool · 3 pointsr/AskReddit

More money isn't going to do anything.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,363663,00.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123758895999200083.html

http://dartmouthfreepress.com/2010/04/16/cah-hurts-africa/

http://www.globalenvision.org/2009/04/20/foreign-aid-helping-or-hurting-africa

http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Aid-Working-Better-Africa/dp/0374139563

Aid is actually hurting Africa because it makes Africans reliant on Aid. People no longer want to work to enrich their own lives. The cultural roles in many African countries have switched and work is even seen as a girly activity. So people literally just sit all day and do nothing because that's what "men" do.

tl;dr: More money is not going to fix Africa's problems and pull people out of poverty.

u/MoHammadMoProblems · 3 pointsr/eugenics

It's a person's right to not be deprived food, water or relative freedom.

It's a woman's right to be childfree and unencumbered by objectification (being used as an incubator/replicator).

It's a man's right not to be used as a sperm donor.

It's a child's right not to be born in to a life of suffering.

So giving free vasectomies respects human rights more than the constant famine and drought people suffer because of "humanitarian aid".

Minority rights, oppression reduction, poverty alleviation, harm reduction, feminism, and human empowerment are some justifications.

u/tolurkistolearn · 3 pointsr/suggestmeabook

Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo examines the effect of foreign aid on Africa.

u/Vicemore · 3 pointsr/news

You get more of what you subsidize, never less. Sounds horrible until you think about all the poverty, hunger, death, and pain that we have multiplied. We have literally taught these people to wait for aid or death and do nothing about it. Humans only evolve when we literally have to, unfortunately.

It took a black woman writing about the topic before it wasn't called racist: https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Aid-Working-Better-Africa/dp/0374532125

u/noname888 · 3 pointsr/AsianMasculinity

> I just finished listening to it. One of the most cerebral podcasts and there is a lot to process. I've definitely been educated. I'm very much looking forward to a lot more from /u/noname888
Thanks, there will definitely be more soon!

> That was clarity. Thanks for that awesome explanation of the recent drama on /r/AM. I'm no longer wondering wtf really happened.

You're welcome. Sometimes it's a lot easier to explain things verbally than write a long explanation.

> When he was attending Seoul University, he had quite a few Chinese classmates. When he asked them why they chose to study in Seoul University, they said that they didn't choose Seoul University because they think it's better than the Universities in China. They chose to attend Seoul University because it is more westernized. They said that they wanted to absorb the western way of thinking, take that knowledge back to China, and then help China become more competitive against the west.

I feel like this maybe has to do with the stage of industrial development in China? Today, Korea is a first-world country, so the urgency may not be there for collective growth, freeing people to think more about their own personal situation. Totally anecdotal story: I once had a long talk with a Korean college professor in the sciences. He told me that when he was a kid in the 1950s, he and his classmates would wake up every morning to build a strong Korea. If I'm remembering right, Ha Joon Chang talks about this in his book Kicking Away the Ladder. I think that during the 1950s, S. Korea as an economy was poorer than Kenya -- but today it is one of the world's most developed industrial economies. Chang attributes this to smart industrial policy that protected Korean native industries until they were strong enough to compete internationally. Basically, the enclave strategy =)

> He then moved onto the topic of Chinese acquisitions of US companies. I googled and found this graph. I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on all this -- will the U.S. try to stop this? Have they already? Etc.

Chinese companies face the "problem" of holding a lot of US dollars, because for the most part they have been an export-led economy. So they want a place to put that money and get a return greater than they can get on Treasury bills (which are basically a savings account at the Federal Reserve). That pushes them to invest in the United States in things like real estate and American technology. For example, Chinese firms bought Motorola and IBM's Thinkpad division. The US government has already halted some Chinese acquisitions. About 10 years about CNOOC (Chinese oil company) tried to buy Unocal and the US government stopped them. I expect that the US government will continue to bar Chinese firms from buying assets in the US with strategic value. For example, if a Chinese firm tried to buy Cisco, I doubt the US government will let it happen. I mention Cisco because it came to light about 7 or 8 years ago that Chinese companies had built exact duplicates of Cisco routers and were selling them into the US IT market. Maybe you've heard about this? I think the FBI found out that these fake routers were backdoored. Yeah.

> Finally, he was telling me his experience while raising money for the company. He told me that in about 30% of the venture firms he's dealt with, they had at least 1 Chinese partner on the team. He also mentioned the difference between Chinese investors and US investors. U.S. investors were more concerned about how much % they would get back on their investment, whereas the Chinese investors' questions were also about the global effect the product would have (on top of the % return on their investment of course).

That's a really interesting story, and it helps me make more sense of what I'm seeing in Chinese consumer products. It seems like in the last few years, especially in mobile phones, new Chinese companies are bringing out products with international appeal.

> All of this is highly anecdotal, but he's very well educated, very well traveled, very successful so I just STFU and listened as he talked for 3 hours. I'm interested in hearing your take on all this. Maybe in another Podcast? :)

I really appreciate your comments here, I don't actually follow the China business situation that closely anymore, so it's always good to hear information from someone who is close to the action. No worries about the haste...we're all busy people!

u/kixiron · 3 pointsr/history

Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson is seen as a sequel of sorts to Diamond's book. Why do some nations thrive while other fails? What breeds success?

The Great Divergence by Kenneth Pomeranz tries to answer the question Diamond wasn't able to fully answer in GGS: why Europe and not China?

u/JDF8 · 3 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

There's a fascinating book on the subject called Why Nations Fail

u/HerbertMcSherbert · 3 pointsr/WTF

David Landes provides a good comparison of the effect of different European colonial masters in his book The Wealth and Poverty of Nations.

Critics decry some of his comments re cultures, and point to Guns, Germs and Steel, but IMO this book picks up where Jared Diamond finishes, and also provides interesting commentary on the Japanese and Chinese situations too. The two make good reading together.

However, the main point here is the analysis of effects of the different European empires on their colonies' later economic development.

u/mr_coinee · 3 pointsr/CryptoCurrency
u/ttumblrbots · 3 pointsr/SubredditDrama
  • This post - SnapShots: 1, 2 ^[?]
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u/Zedress · 3 pointsr/politics

> So you support corporate subsidies?

Yes insofar that I support the government assisting and propping up businesses that provide goods and benefits for the betterment of America. It is (and has been) a very beneficial practice for American industry, workers, and finance since the 1940's. A good book I'm reading about on the subject (among other things) but have not finished yet.

> Just in areas you agree with?

I prefer in areas I agree with but I understand the need for compromise and concession in the areas I don't.

u/Alfred_Marshall · 3 pointsr/CapitalismVSocialism

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.

u/SmokingPuffin · 3 pointsr/Economics

> Productivity growth is on the decline, forgot the word growth at the end, but you obviously knew what I meant.

I did not know what you meant. I find it dangerous to assume, especially on the Internet, so I asked.

Sources of slower productivity growth are a matter of some controversy. Here is some survey coverage. I wouldn't say anyone has a convincing explanation yet, but I wouldn't say that the data really support the conclusion that rising inequality is to blame. It's probably a factor, but a relatively small one.

The theory I am most partial to is Gordon's, from The Rise and Fall of American Growth. Summary: productivity growth above the 1% level we're experiencing now only occurs when you have a major technological shock that creates and destroys industries. The last one of those we had was the Internet, and we've captured the low-hanging productivity fruits from that already.

The good news on this front is that we have a pretty good idea what the next big thing is. The bad news is that it's AI, and the disruptions to labor from this technological shock are going to be huge.

> I dont include finance because finance is not the economy.

Disdain for finance is trendy these days, but I find it quite dubious to proclaim one kind of service work is productive and another is not. Is law the economy? Politics? Rather a lot of GDP is in those fields, and I don't know how you can draw the line in an unbiased way. Probably you'll find that some types of finance you like, and other types of finance you don't.

Ultimately, I think it's right and proper for the market to decide.

u/microcrash · 3 pointsr/pics
u/cybrbeast · 3 pointsr/thenetherlands

Misschien leest hij zelfs relevante boeken! http://www.amazon.com/The-Second-Machine-Age-Technologies/dp/1480577472

Het komt steeds meer in de aandacht van de media tegenwoordig. Zie bijvoorbeeld de Tegenlicht aflevering van vorige week over het basisinkomen: http://tegenlicht.vpro.nl/afleveringen/2014-2015/gratis-geld.html

u/rumblestiltsken · 3 pointsr/Futurology

The Second Machine Age, by McAfee and Brynjolfsson.

The Zero Marginal Cost Society by Rifkin.

Ending Aging by De Grey.

Although I would personally argue that you get a good understanding of their material from the numerous talks they give, and learning the background science is probably more important for assessing their claims than simply reading their books.

u/danleene · 3 pointsr/Philippines

>sometimes people will buy stuff they have no need for even if they barely have anything left "ubos biyaya" kumbaga

I'm not rationalising but for the sake of trying to understand why it is so, here are some reasons why people spend more money than they should.

Ito pa:

The answer, according to economists who have studied this question (Banerjee & Dufflo, Poor Economics, 2011),  is that things that taste good, or things that make life less boring are a priority for the poor.

u/junovac · 3 pointsr/india

It's called kicking away the ladder. There is a book on it apparently

https://www.amazon.in/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Development-Perspective/dp/1843310279

u/vestasun · 3 pointsr/The_Donald

BUT MUH REGULATIONS!11

Same thing happened in banking due to Dodd-Frank, etc. Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase said the regulations extend his firm's competitive advantage because small- and mid-size banks can't cope with them.

Regulations are brilliant like that: they sound good, but only hamper competition and let the big players get bigger.

If you want to drop a redpill nuke on any leftist who supports extensive regulations, refer them to this book by a dyed-in-the-wool socialist who argues the Progressive regulations of the early 1900s were a scam to benefit big business. One of my favorite books on the subject.

u/brendan_wh · 3 pointsr/Economics

> Yet, there’s a reason that during World War II, the government built aircraft factories and allocated scarce materials like steel and rubber through the War Production Board.

Why didn’t they just say “Request For Proposal: Fighter Jets”. Aren’t we contracting that out now?

> …there’s a reason that large businesses have professional managers to plan their operations, and don’t rely on internal markets.

Large corporations start to have the same problems of central planning that communist countries have. Management becomes a bottleneck. It can be very hard to create the right ecosystem for innovation (read The Innovator’s Dilemma). In the interest of avoiding redundancy, balkanization, cannabalizing revenue, big companies often create a situation where they can’t innovate. Many of the biggest corporations in the US 30 years ago are no longer on top.

> In a world of low interest rates, which seem to be here for the foreseeable future, there is no danger of a runaway debt spiral.

The damage caused to a country by this kind of debt crisis and runaway inflation is so catastrophic that we should be very risk averse. What makes these spending plans different from when Zimbabwe/Argentina/Greece/Venezuela got into trouble?

Also, carbon tax is not the only proposal. I wish cap and trade had more legs, but seems like that ship has sailed. I also wish we would allow the price of energy to vary with supply and demand. There’a problem with renewable energy that the wind isn’t always blowing and the sun isn’t always shining. Let prices drop when there’s excess supply. There are lots of automated, energy-intensive tasks that can be programmed to be done only when prices drop. Data centers doing heavy computing. Laundry. Some kinds of manufacturing and chemical processing.

And nuclear energy should be on the table.

u/mattymillhouse · 3 pointsr/suggestmeabook

Good list.

I might add:

Rousseau -- Social Contract
You can also add in Rousseau's Discourses

Machiavelli -- The Prince

Aristotle -- Politics

Locke -- Two Treatises of Government

Hayek -- The Road to Serfdom

u/PatrickKelly2012 · 3 pointsr/Libertarian

Meltdown and Nullification by Tom Woods.

Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek

u/DrunkHacker · 3 pointsr/Libertarian

Three books I'd suggest, in the order I'd read them:

Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman

The Road to Serfdom by FA Hayek

Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick

Outside the libertarian canon, Rousseau's On the Social Contract and Rawls' A Theory of Justice should be on everyone's reading list. Rawls and Nozick are probably the two most influential political philosophers of the late 20th century and understanding their arguments about the justification of property rights and the original position are the ABCs of modern political debate.

u/freemancw · 2 pointsr/politics

Before placing myself in the position of defending child labor practices in the Industrial Revolution, let me take a second to refine my objection.

When I read your post, you were obviously exaggerating for effect (I don't think people are clamoring for deregulation of child labor), but I do think that the situation in the Industrial Revolution wasn't as simple as just having some regulations would have put an end to child labor and simultaneously maintained or raised overall living standards for the working class. It is my view that the claim that all corporations were monopolies who were dominant enough in the market that they had full control over wages and wouldn't have raised them without unions and regulation is overstated.

Secondly I do happen to study history when I find the time, so I can avoid putting my foot in my mouth and so that I can support my views about things. Specifically - most of what I know about Progressive regulation comes from the work of Gabriel Kolko (a self-described leftist and anticapitalist with a PhD from Harvard, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Kolko), who wrote the book The Triumph of Conservatism. Its central thesis is that regulations of the era were lobbied for by the corporations themselves (to stifle competition). It's not available online anywhere, but here are some reviews (http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-Conservatism-Gabriel-Kolko/dp/0029166500).

Until you provide substantive evidence of your own views you can't run around claiming that I'm some ignorant buffoon who doesn't know basic history. Maybe if you show some good material I'll change my mind.

u/democrat_econ_dude · 2 pointsr/politics

Look into some Gabriel Kolko books. He shows that the progressive era was basically just large firms using government to limit their competition, all under the guise of consumer protection. (And no, Kolko isn't a libertarian. He's a neo-Marxist.)

http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-Conservatism-Gabriel-Kolko/dp/0029166500
http://www.amazon.com/Railroads-Regulation-1877-1916-Gabriel-Kolko/dp/0393005313/

u/Bukujutsu · 2 pointsr/Anarcho_Capitalism

Why would you do this to yourself?

I'd highly recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Triumph-Conservatism-Reinterpretation-1900-1916/dp/0029166500

But you should skim through a lot of it because it has a lot of dry information that you don't really need to know unless you're planning to write an academic paper or something similar. You'll see what I mean if you read it.

u/Chris_Pacia · 2 pointsr/Economics

> Once powerful enough, from a profit perspective it absolutely makes sense to stifle competition with that power, to merge and consolidate workforce and to establish oneself as the only provider in town

I've quoted this book before in this sub... this is written by a left wing historian with many original sources. I point out that he is left wing so people don't dismiss it as some kind of libertarian revisionist history.

https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-Conservatism-Reinterpretation-American-1900-1916/dp/0029166500/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+triumph+of+conservatism&qid=1574826960&sr=8-1

The back cover describes it best:

> The Triumph of Conservatism is one of the most influential and important works in moderan American history. This bold reinterpretation of the Progressive Era develops a startling thesis: that the dominant tendancy in business after the turn of the century was toward competition and economic decentralization, not toward concentration and monopoly; and that, unable to halt this trend by their own means, the leaders of big business―and not the political reformers―became the chief initiators of the era's "progressive" regulatory laws. Thus, "progressivism" was a profoundly conservative effort to maintain existing political and social relations in a new economic context.

u/MrXfromPlanetX · 2 pointsr/ronpaul

I did, but after studying the World Bank and IMF I changed my mind again.

http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/wbimf/imfwbReport2001.html

http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/wbimf/imfwbReport2001.html

http://mrxfromplanetx.com/tag/imf/

Raw Story once quoted Ron Paul as saying the structural adjustments are Keynesian economics, but they are not. They are Milton Freedman economics.

I am still all for ending the Fed, but when you look at what the IMF and World Bank do is privatize everything.

Mind you in the real world, you and I do not have a chance at purchasing anything getting privatized. It all goes to the rich elites that control the World Bank and IMF.

Tragedy and Hope is widely touted as disclosing banker conspiracies, but it also shows something else -- the free market has never existed because rich and powerful business interests always strive to control the market to control their prophets. Read chapter 5 http://ia341238.us.archive.org/0/items/TragedyAndHope/TH.pdf

As Kolko says, there is no system that works https://www.amazon.com/dp/0029166500?tag=alt13-20&camp=213381&creative=390973&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=0029166500&adid=1XQCCH30FXW7141AWP75&

Walter Lippmann called the collusion "Patronage" and claimed it was the glue that holds the country together. I think Lippmann was on the wrong side, but he was a brilliant man http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Democracy/Lipp_PubOpin_Patronage.html

u/danforhan · 2 pointsr/AskEngineers

It's a classic example of the Innovator's Dilemma. These are companies with decades of investments and expertise in oil, which is their core competency. That being said, most oil companies are heavily invested in alternative energy and (as mentioned) it's hard to justify investment in loss-leading technology when you can simply observe the landscape for years and then buy the winners.

u/TheOneWhoWokeUp · 2 pointsr/Economics

For anyone wanting a good read on disruption The Innovator's Dilemma will certainly clear a lot of things up about emerging markets replacing existing ones. It uses great examples even if they are a little dated.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Business/dp/0062060244

u/organizedfellow · 2 pointsr/Entrepreneur

Here are all the books with amazon links, Alphabetical order :)

---

u/jewey122 · 2 pointsr/StockMarket

I'd suggest reading the Four Pillars of Investing

u/dogedick_coffeetable · 2 pointsr/personalfinance

Try to spend as much time continuously working as possible. This may take a number of sacrifices to do. Depending on what part of the film industry you may be waiting for jobs, or you may have one of the jobs where you just fly to the next project elsewhere in the world.

If you are in one of the more mobile jobs do that. The more time you continuously work the better off you'll be.

Now if you have reasonably consistent income you need to keep your expenses down and not accumulate debts. The reason being you need to save as much money as you possibly can.

Any retirement fund benefits need to be taken. The remainder needs to be invested. Those investments will be what generates your income.

My recommended reading to learn how to be a good passive investor is The Four Pillars of Investing.
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Pillars-Investing-Building-Portfolio/dp/0071747052/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1450552472&sr=1-1&keywords=the+four+pillars+of+investing

You may want to consider shares that consistently pay dividends and bonds. This is not always the best long term strategy but knowing the film industry this may be a safer option for you.

u/meats_the_parent · 2 pointsr/financialindependence

Asset Class|Target %|Ticker
:---|:--:|:--:
US Total Stock Market| 19.2%|VTI
US Small Value|12.8%|VBR
US REITs|8%|VNQ
Int. Pacific|8%|VPL
Int. Europe|8%|VGK
Int. Value|16%|VSS
Int. Emerging Mkts.|8%|VWO
Fixed Income|20%|VARIOUS

*****

My glide-path is to add 1% in fixed-income every year until it reaches 40%-50%, at which time the allocation will remain constant.

Rebalancing is done with new money (when possible). 5/25 banding is in use; i.e., if an asset class is meant to comprise < 20% of the portfolio, then the tolerance is +-25% (relative percentage) of the desired %. If the asset class is meant to comprise >= 20% of the portfolio, then the tolerance is +-5% (absolute percentage) of the desired %. (Credit for technique goes to Larry Swedroe).

Influences on my portfolio:

u/tacticalpanda · 2 pointsr/investing

I'm in the same boat, I bought into FBIOX with $10k, partially because of past performance, partially because I'm an inexperienced investor, and partially because I work at a big data research organization and believe that the pace of technology advancement and the attention this field receives should lead to some big discoveries in the next 10 years. The investment is currently down about 15% from where I bought in.

I've learned two huge lessons in the last half month:

  • My appetite for risk is not as big as I thought it was.
  • Chasing past performance is a losing effort.

    My underlying belief in the field is still there, however it has been tempered by the feeling that I bought in on the losing side of a bubble. I've been reading a book, The Four Pillars of Investing, and can definitely see the wisdom in Bernstein's approach of detaching yourself from asset selection and instead focusing on asset allocation (spread across foreign and domestic stocks, short term bonds, and REITs). Hind sight is 20/20, but if I were to buy in again, I would have done this rather than buying into any specific sector. In this respect, I just consider my losses the cost of education.

    I realize that none of this helps you with the decision of what to do in the future. The fact is, the market is efficient enough that all your concerns have already been priced into the value of the stock. You are essentially flipping a coin when you decide to hold or sell. How much money do you have invested, and are you willing to flip the coin again for another +/- 10%?

    One other thing I would consider is the one year time frame for short term capital losses vs long term capital losses. Depending on your portfolio, and your take home income, taking the loss as a short term capital loss may make the most sense to negate some of your regular income that is taxed at a higher rate.
u/pupupeepee · 2 pointsr/chicago

The app works fine in Firefox v11.0 on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS so my email address is probably not the issue, though I'm kind of surprised that this book which is on my wishlist isn't available at any CPL branch. You know what, I've got Opera 9.80 (read the wrong version number), which may not support the HTML5 EventSource object (v10 definitely does). Looks like this is the error that's getting thrown when I click "submit" in Opera.

u/KissYourButtGoodbye · 2 pointsr/Libertarian

>I support government health care for all
I dislike excessive government intrusion

Does not compute. How, exactly, are you defining "excessive"? Because, at least to me, government controlling the massive healthcare sector of the economy is pretty "excessive".

But in general, the books these guys have recommended are great starting points. I don't know if Hayek's Road to Serfdom has been mentioned. It's not quite a definitive libertarian work (at least from what I've been told), but it did get me started towards my understanding of libertarianism, so it might be worth reading.

u/conn2005 · 2 pointsr/PoliticalDiscussion

You should read the Road to Serfdom, central planning has been tried and done.

Readers Digest Version Here

Full copy for purchase at Amazon

u/jub-jub-bird · 2 pointsr/askaconservative

A few books

Reflections on the Revolution in France by Burke

The Law by Frédéric Bastiat

The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirke

The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek

The Righteous Mind by Haidt, not a conservative and not really a conservative book but interesting research by a social psychologist researching morality and it's impact on political opinions.

For websites, magazines, blogs

National Review not quite as good nor as influential as it once was in decades past but still worthwhile.

Instapundit blog by libertarian law professor Glenn Reynolds. Usually links to articles posted elsewhere with a bit of commentary.

I like the The American Interest. Walter Russell Mead is a self declared liberal editing a self declared centrist publication. But much of his writing consists of a critique of what he calls the "blue social model". At this point I think he's well on his way down the road to becoming a (moderate) conservative but just can't bring himself to call himself one.

u/cuentafalsa1234 · 2 pointsr/argentina

> Podés creer lo que quieras. Yo no dije "falso". En lo que a mi concierne, Cristina puede haber hecho exactamente todas las cosas que Nisman denunciaba y aún así no hay delito constituído. Si leyeras la denuncia, se desprende una sola conclusión posible. Queda muy claro que ni la miraste.

Pero el pacto se firmó. No es que lo pensaron nada más y no hicieron nada al respecto. Es un poco más complejo que tu ejemplo sobre matarme. Obviamente que planear algo y no actuar no es delito, si fuera por cada pensamiento oscuro yo estaría preso hace años. El tema es que acá se actuó.

Y la verdad es que no soy abogado ni se tanto de derehco, y la denuncia como decís es floja, y muchos lo dicen. pero eso no quiere decir que, como decía, no sea verosimil. Escucharlo a D'elia (un tipo que se trajo 1 millon de dolares en cash de Cuba para armar la contracumbre contra Bush en Mardel, y lo reconoció!!!) conspirando con Rabbani, me parece que es algo que al menos da para sospechar, más allá del trabajo de Nisman.

> Claro, y es totalmente imposible que alguien de una facción cualquiera opuesta al gobierno haga esto para generar exactamente esa impresión.

Sería la primera vez en la historia del mundo que se hace algo así para desestabilizae a un gobierno que se termina en seis meses y que ya está muy débil por los miles de quilombos que creó por todos lados. No es que estamos hablando de Néstor en el 2006.

> Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnope. Lee la denuncia. No tiene nada de "Verosimil". Los hechos que Nisman dice que indicaban culpabilidad no sucedieron. Eso es la definición de inverosimilitud.

Andá más allá del documento de la denuncia, y decime si no tiene aunque sea una pizca de verosimilitud.

Además yo no estoy habalndo con el diario del día después. Si el gobierno si hizo ese pacto, incluso si no lo llevó a cabo (a pesar de haber hecho su parte y aprobarlo en el Congreso), ellos no podían saber que la denuncia era una garcha juridicamente. Por lo que tiene sentido que hayan querido prevenir que hablara o que la presentara. O por lo menos tener una excusa para salir a embarrar la cancha.

Ahora, si no hicieron el pacto no tiene sentido nada de eso, obviamente. Pero que lo hayan aprobado en el congreso me da una cierta pauta de que no era una mentira de nisman. Insisto, a pesar de lo choto que pueda ser su escrito.

> Lol yo le doy muy poco crédito, vos estás diciendo que se auto-generó una crisis política a propósito.

Es lo que viene haciendo desde hace 8 años. Te doy solo dos ejemplos.

  1. La crisis del campo. Ella la podría haber desarticulado cualquier día, pero presionó, insistió, jodió, hizo marchas, provocó a los ruralistas, creó la guerra con Clarin. Por qué? Porque políticamente se benefició con eso, le permitió crear y darle forma al relato.
  2. La crisis con los holdouts. Podría haber pagado cualquier día. La cláusula Ruffo no era tan seria. Pero incluso si te la querías tomar en serio, van 3 meses del 2015 y podía pagar el 1 de enero. Por qué no lo hizo? Porque los Buitres son el enemigo perfecto, y la crisis política alrededor de eso le reditua, porque puede culpar a los yankis - un enemigo muy querido en argentina - y crecer políticamente.

    Y así hay mil más.

    > A ver ¿Qué bibliografía me recomendás?

    Te recomiendo varios de mi biblioteca personal:

  • El autoritarismo competitivo, de Steven Levitsky. Analiza muy bien las nuevas "democracias" autoritarias, sobre todo en las exrepúblicas soviéticas, y en algunas zonas de América Latina.
  • Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea. Este libro es excelente. Una corresponsal yanki en Korea del Sur cuenta la historia de 6 o 7 desertores norcoreanos – muchos igual muy nostálgicos de su vida en aquel país –que cuentan el régimen desde adentro. Te pone la piel de gallina, y también te hace ver otro lado del regimen.
  • Finding the Dragon Lady Este cuenta la historia de Madame Nhu, la primera dama de Vietnam del Sur antes de la guerra. Una hija de puta impulsiva y caprichosa que generó tantos conflictos que casi casi que aceleró la guerra. No es un libro muy profundo, pero es muy divertido y si te gustan las historias de dictadores o democracias altamente imperfectas está bueno.
  • The Dictators Handbook Este está escrito en tono muy gracioso por dos politólogos de NYU, pero básicamente hace un trazado y exhibe elementos comunes en varias dictaduras alrededor del mundo. No es un libro académico ni mucho menos, es para leer en el baño casi, pero la verdad que está bueno y tiene su valor.
  • Why Nations Fail Este creo que es un libro fundamental. Habla sobre el origen de las naciones, sobre la maldición de los recursos naturales, y sobre como el mismo sistema político lleva a que muchos países no se desarrollen. Es un libro super conocido, y vale la pena.

    Tengo algunos más, pero tengo el Kindle sin batería y no me acuerdo del nombre de todos. Pero los dictadores son uno de mis temas favoritos.

    No con eso quiero decir que Cristina sea Kim Jong Un, ni Madame Nhu, o Saddam Hussein. Nomás digo que toma elementos de ese tipo de regímenes y que su aplicación de algunas estrategias parece de manual. Nada más.

    > Es meramente estar medianamente informado. Lee la denuncia. Es descabellada, mal escrita, vergonzosa.

    Como dije antes, vos te remitís nomás al documento.

    Edit: corregí lo que dije sobre los buitres, había puesto cualquiera.
u/mattkerle · 2 pointsr/economy

no surprises here, China is currently playing catch-up. They will stabilise at a much lower level of GDP-per-capita than the US (in the next 10-20years, with growth trend slowing throughout the period). The only way they will get close to US productivity is by radical overhaul to their political and economic system, eg mass privatisation of state industries, freely floating currency, greater transparency of governance etc. These are all reforms that would erode power from the elites that currently enjoy it, so these changes are unlikely.

http://www.amazon.com/Bird-Cage-Legal-Reform-China/dp/0804743789
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Prosperity-ebook/dp/B0058Z4NR8

u/PopularWarfare · 2 pointsr/AskSocialScience

hmm... this is tough are you more interested in theory or application? Political Economy can get very abstract/philosophical which I personally like but it turns some people off.


why nations fail: great overview of Institutional/development economics by two phenomenal economists, Acemoglu and Robinson.

violence and social orders Another great book, it was written as introduction to North's theories for non-economists. Very interesting work.

capital in the 21st century: I don't think this book needs an introduction. But just in case, Picketty examines the interplay between economic prosperity and income inequality. The book was written with non-economists in mind. The math will greatly help your understanding but it's not necessary to understand his general arguments

Capitalism a general introduction to socioeconomics that is concise and a variety of topics on capitalism that have puzzled (and sometimes outraged) sociologists since the 19th century.

Development as Freedom: Sen argues that open dialogue, civil freedoms and political liberties are prerequisites for sustainable development.

The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times And Ideas Of The Great Economic Thinkers: A history of economic thought/theory that really elucidates the intersection of politics,economics and philosophy.

u/hipsterparalegal · 2 pointsr/books

Why Nations Fail addresses your issue (i.e. North v. South American colonialism): http://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Prosperity-ebook/dp/B0058Z4NR8

u/smayonak · 2 pointsr/Economics

Look, there's no need to bash my background in economics, which is irrelevant. You should be addressing the faulty logic in the government encouraging short term economic growth as well as greater integration between financial markets and real estate.

Besides, I don't think a single credible economist would argue that a sensible long-term economic growth policy is to invest in real estate over fundamentals. We're not talking basic macro, we're talking about having read historical analyses of the endogenous growth model. Even the neoclassical model of economic growth would warn against a focus on real estate. Tell me, what have you read that suggest real estate is a good bet?

You don't need lots of houses to subsidize education or R&D. There's a thing called "debt" which the government has so far been using to pay for its various overseas wars which can be used to subsidize the fundamentals of growth.

u/meatball402 · 2 pointsr/politics

I first heard it from Ha Joon Chang in his book called 'Kicking Away the Ladder'. He uses it in a context of countries, but I feel that it can apply to people also.

u/salmontarre · 2 pointsr/canada

First, you didn't answer my question. Do you think private reinvestment of a portion of their profits is more beneficial to the communities in which they operate than simple using that money for increased wages, pensions and benefits?

>>If efficiency comes at the cost of less wages, later retirements, shorter and closer-to-home vacations, and so on - what is the point? How does it benefit us?

>Is this a result of efficiency or a result of globalization? If globalization is reducing poverty in the developing world at the cost of making people in the rich world poorer, is that OK?

It's clearly a result of this quest for faux-efficiency. We've whittled down unions, stagnated in mandating vacation time and minimum wage increases, privatized a fair amount of the public sector and refused to nationalize some other ones. Globalization and free trade can be blamed for many things, but they are simply manifestations of the expansion of private businesses ability to undermine comprehensive labour and trade laws.

I also don't think that globalization helps poorer nations. I suggest these books, or if you aren't so inclined, at least this talk.

u/krtong · 2 pointsr/badhistory

In the beginning, there was no American economy, only the British imperial economy. The plantations, or colonies, in North America were intended to help the British Empire in its rivalry with the other major powers of Europe. In the centuries before it unilaterally began to adopt free trade in 1846, Britain, like other European states, practiced mercantilism, a policy that treated the economy as an instrument of state power. Mercantilist policies included subsidies and preferential tax treatment for favored industries and their raw material inputs, efforts to obtain surpluses in precious metals like gold and silver and in high-value-added exports, and the conquest or founding of colonies whose inhabitants would provide markets and raw materials for the mother country. In his 1684 treatise England’s Treasure by Foreign Trade, the mercantilist theorist Thomas Mun wrote: “The ordinary means therefore to increase our wealth and treasure is by Foreign Trade, wherein we must ever observe this rule: to sell more to strangers yearly than we consume of theirs in value.” The king in 1721 told Parliament that “it is evident that nothing so much contributes to promote the public well-being as the exportation of manufactured goods and the importation of foreign raw material.”


No philosopher influenced the American Revolution more than the seventeenth-century English political thinker John Locke. Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence is practically a paraphrase of Locke’s writings on natural rights and liberty. In economics, Locke was a mercantilist, not a libertarian. In his Letter Concerning Toleration, Locke says that “the pravity of Mankind . . . Obliges Men to enter into Society with one another, that by mutual Assistance, and joint Force, they may secure unto each other their Properties in the things that contribute to the Comfort and Happiness of this Life . . . But forasmuch as Men thus entering into Societies, . . . may nevertheless be deprived of them, either by the Rapine and Fraud of their Fellow-Citizens, or by the Hostile Violence of Foreigners; the remedy of this Evil consists in Arms, Riches, and Multitude of Citizens; the Remedy of the other in Laws.” For Locke, as for other early-modern mercantilists, military power, economic growth, and population growth were mutually reinforcing, and all three enhanced the ability of the state to defend its people in an anarchic world. In a journal entry in 1674, Locke wrote: “The chief end of trade is riches and power, which beget each other. Riches consists in plenty of moveables, that will yield a price to foreigners, and are not likely to be consumed at home, but especially in plenty of gold and silver. Power consists in numbers of men, and ability to maintain them. Trade conduces to both these by increasing your stock and your people, and they each other.”


The policy of mercantilism that Britain shared with other European empires included a division of labor in which British manufacturers sold finished products to a captive market of consumers in the American colonies, Ireland, and India, which in return exported raw materials and food to the British Isles. In 1721, the British Board of Trade told the king: “Having no manufactories of their own, their . . . situation will make them always dependent on Great Britain.” The British parliamentarian Edmund Burke, who sympathized with the American colonists, summarized the policy: “These colonies were evidently founded in subservience to the commerce of Great Britain . . . On the same idea it was contrived that they should send all their products to us raw, and in their first state; and that they should take every thing from us in the last stage of manufacture.” Adam Smith made a similar observation in The Wealth of Nations, which was published in 1776, the same year in which the American colonies that would form the United States declared their independence: “The liberality of England, however, towards the trade of her colonies has been confined chiefly to what concerns the market for their produce, either in its rude state, or in what may be called the very first stage of manufacture. The more advanced or more refined manufactures even of the colony produce, the merchants and manufactures of Great Britain choose to reserve to themselves, and have prevailed upon the legislature to prevent their establishment in the colonies, sometimes by high duties, and sometimes by absolute prohibitions.”

Beginning in the seventeenth century, England (which became Great Britain with the 1707 Act of Union with Scotland) sought to prevent the development of colonial manufacturing that might compete with British manufacturing by a variety of methods. The Navigation Acts, passed in 1651, 1660, and 1663, required all English trade to be carried in English ships with majority-English crews. All items in “enumerated” categories going to or from the American colonies had to be unloaded in Britain, taxed, and then reexported. The colonists were permitted to buy only British goods or goods that had been reexported from Britain.

The imperial government outlawed American exports that competed with British manufactured goods. For example, the 1699 Woolens Act forbade the sale of woolen cloth outside of the place where it was woven. This destroyed the Irish woolen industry and prevented the emergence of one in the American colonies. In 1732, Britain similarly destroyed an emerging beaver-hat industry in the colonies by outlawing the export of hats to other colonies or foreign countries. When Parliament lifted a ban on exports of pig iron and bar iron from the colonies in 1750, it outlawed further development of the industry. But the colonists ignored the prohibition and by 1775 the annual production of iron in the colonies, most of it for domestic consumption, was roughly the same as in Britain, despite the smaller colonial population.

Even as it banned manufactured exports from the American colonies to Britain or other parts of the empire, the imperial government encouraged the export of raw materials from the colonies to Britain. Import duties on wood and hemp from the American colonies to Britain were abolished. The colonists also received bounties, or subsidies, for exporting raw materials. Timber from the abundant forests of North America was particularly important. The purpose of regulation was to create a buyer’s market in raw materials and a seller’s market in manufactured goods for British industry.

Hindering the transfer of technology from Britain to America was another British mercantilist technique. In 1719, Britain banned the emigration of skilled workers in industries including steel, iron, brass, watchmaking, and wool. The law punished suborning, or recruitment, of skilled workers for employment abroad with fines or imprisonment. Skilled immigrants who did not return to Britain within six months of being warned by a British official faced the confiscation of their goods and property and the withdrawal of their citizenship.13 Britain followed its ban on the emigration of skilled workers with a ban on the export of wool and silk technology in 1750. In 1781 and 1785, the act was enlarged into a comprehensive ban on machinery of all kinds. The ban on skilled emigrants was repealed only in 1825, while the ban on technology exports lasted until 1842.

Evaluated in terms of its goal of fostering domestic manufacturing at the expense of other countries, Britain’s mercantilist system was a great success. Between the reign of the Tudors and the nineteenth century, Britain’s state-sponsored program of economic development turned the island nation first into a commercial and financial powerhouse and then into the first superpower of the machine age. But Britain’s imperial trade laws thwarted American manufacturers and frustrated American merchants, who frequently smuggled goods from other colonies and countries. The government also antagonized the colonists after the Seven Years’ War (French and Indian War) of 1756 to 1763, when it attempted to ban white settlement of large areas of the trans-Appalachian West, in order to avert conflict with the Indians. This enraged land-hungry Anglo-American frontiersmen as well as rich American colonials like George Washington who owned vast tracts of western land. These economic conflicts, along with struggles over power and status, helped to ignite the American War of Independence from 1775 to 1783.

u/scarthearmada · 2 pointsr/Anarcho_Capitalism

>One of my friends who is a "limited government" libertarian told me the problem with anarchy is that it will lead to more government. I of course responded, well that seems to be the problem with limited government too.

So, anarchy leads to government (probably always to an extent, but there are examples of anarcho societies that have existed longer than the United States has been a nation). Limited government leads to more government. And more government leads to more government. Therefore we're all fucked?

>There seems to be noway in preventing this band of criminals from taking over society. It seems that man is just doomed to live in tyranny.

Eh, not really. History is cyclical -- it has no (universal) end. Fukuyama was wrong about that, and an asshole. Mises, Hayek and Flynn were right: government leads to more government, and liberty is abandoned at home. Such societies reach a stage of cultural and economic stagnation.

Heinlein probably nailed it best in -- or at least perhaps most famously -- in speculative fiction. Various works of his explore political systems as changing depending upon how far away from home you are. People join together to form tribes, and they live in villages. Villages grow into towns, towns into cities, cities into kingdoms / nations. Nations into empires. Empires collapse, and political life becomes more local again.

And, as people become politically frustrated, economically or religiously oppressed, or more adventurous (as a result of accumulated wealth), they begin to explore the frontier, and so the process starts all over again in another place. That's the cycle of history.

For western civilization, the exploration took Europeans around the world, and founded colonies in the Americas. Wealth accumulated. Government grew, as economies were able to support it. And much of the developing world was lifted up with us. So now we're starting to explore the next frontier: space.

Liberty will again reign, just not here. The beauty of it this time, however, is that space is practically infinite. Space will be free.

u/repoman · 2 pointsr/philosophy

I'd probably bundle this with this; the former so each survivor can take care of himself and the latter so they'll understand how to treat each other to prevent another apocalypse.

u/rufus_driftwood · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

>Is there any actual evidence backing this claim?

http://www.amazon.com/Road-Serfdom-Fiftieth-Anniversary/dp/0226320618

http://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Freedom-Anniversary-Milton-Friedman/dp/0226264211

http://mises.org/books/socialism/contents.aspx


> i know that extremely high taxes would be detrimental but im thinking about taxes like 30-40%.

30-40% taxes are extremely high. Michael Caine and many others have vowed to leave England if the top tax rate exceeds 50%.

u/hga_another · 2 pointsr/KotakuInAction

It hardly matters what they want:

"If only Stalin knew".

Also see, for example, Hayek's fairly short although dense "The Road to Serfdom", or perhaps the Reader's Digest condensed version, which he found to be marvelous, see the "Why the worst get on top" section.

Although based on a quick skim just now of the latter, it looks like avoids a serious treatment of the information theoretic explanation for why planned economies are impossible (there's to much information, as represented by prices, for a few planners at the top to grok, and constantly adjust for). I suppose that's fairly well know by now, but it was the single most enlightening thing I took from it when I read it in the early 1980s, back when our betters were sure the Soviet Union would win the Cold War, and that that was for the best.

u/do_u_like_fishsticks · 2 pointsr/Economics

A noob who wants to read a textbook, or a noob who just wants to read something interesting in the economics area?

Textbook noob - The Economic Way of Thinking

Novel noob - The Price of Everything

Libertarian noob - The Road to Serfdom

Like anything, the textbook will be the least bias, and everything else you will want to understand the bias of the author to get an accurate picture of the profession.

u/INTPClara · 2 pointsr/INTP

I read a lot. I was in elementary school in the 1970s and it was all the rage back then to train kids in gifted programs in speed-reading, which my school did. I was the fastest reader, in fact I got a talking-to for speeding up the machine because it was going too slowly for me. :| I still read very quickly.

Most of the books I read have to do with religion and spirituality, like The Weapon, Resistance, The Four Last Things. Right now I'm deep into St. Faustina's diary. It's extraordinary.

In fiction I love classic literature, novels and short stories. Jane Austen, J.D. Salinger, Nathaniel Hawthorne. I have a particular taste for 19th century French writers: Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, Victor Hugo. They motivate me to improve my French.

In non-fiction, I read about dog training and health, business, human nutrition and health, history and politics. Anyone struggling with weight loss might want to check out Dr. Jason Fung's The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended - good info there.

Currently on my to-buy list:

u/This_Post_Is_Factual · 2 pointsr/videos
u/Johnny_Cash · 2 pointsr/politics

Schieffer, and probably the blogger, are not White men. If you read Prof. Kevin MacDonald's "Culture of Critique" you will see that Jews have worked concertedly for generations using every available means, including their boasted control of media, to genocide White people.

And what's the matter if White people do hang together? Every other ethnic group does. Diversity is a Jewish strategy for disenfranchising and displacing White people. Jews should chill out and leave White folks alone on their journey to the stars, lest we send them to practice "multiculturalism" with their "equals" in mud huts. See also "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" by Richard Lynn

u/jieling · 2 pointsr/AskHistorians

I also recommend the book "Why Nations Fail" by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson: http://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719219

It's a great book written from an economic history perspective and goes into the implications and historical support for the theory of institutionalism.

u/morebeansplease · 2 pointsr/DebateReligion

LOL, no, its a good book but there are many better recommendations.

For example, if you wanted to understand the tools of state/religious oppression and its consequences in modern context I may recommend; Why Nations fail

Or if you desired to have greater understanding of the consequences of inventing money; Debt, the first 5000 years

Or if you felt that religion was cool but the idea of God was wrong you could read; Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao

Or if you wanted to read about the decline of world wide violence; The Better Angels of our Nature

u/Panserborne · 2 pointsr/AskSocialScience

Poor Economics for a great discussion on the many small, incremental steps that add up and could help alleviate poverty.

The Bottom Billion for a nice discussion on the various poverty traps a country can get stuck in. This book focuses more on the bigger macro picture, and less on the incentives and lives of individuals.

Why Nations Fail - I'll admit I haven't read this yet, but a lot of people seem to rate it highly. It looks at the broad picture of what determines the wealth of nations, and especially the nature of extractive vs. inclusive institutions.

I haven't heard of anyone advocating that a central bank play a key role in ending poverty. Central banks are there to help smooth output fluctuations, by keeping unemployment near its "natural" level and inflation low and stable. There's nothing in their tool-set that could bring a country out of poverty. Though they're certainly very important as bad monetary policy can destroy a country.

To describe it another way: poverty alleviation is about creating a long-term upward trend in output per person. But there are unpredictable variations the economy experiences around this long-term trend (recessions). The central bank's job is to prevent or minimize these deviations from trend, by preventing recessions. But it does not determine the long-term trend itself.

u/darkaceAUS · 2 pointsr/EnoughTrumpSpam

Everyone? People stealing shit? Everyone? All legally allowable property? What sort of questions are these? Well-defined, regulated and all-encompassing property rights are the single most important feature for inclusive broad-based growth.

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719227

The left needs to stop seeing everything as a continuation of the class war. It doesn't exist. The rich aren't out to eat you. And the Republicans can (rightfully) hit you with the 'class envy' smear.

Socialism is a fucking joke. It has no practicality. It will never get the left elected. If you believe in it, take econ classes until you understand the myriad of criticisms anyone who understands scarcity will level at you.

Although I think I'm going to unsub from here. Idiots have overrun another sub. Sad that places I can actually stand to be are always shrinking because socialists are just failures that whine online and think that downvotes and moronic arguments get them anywhere in the real world.

u/jaredislove · 2 pointsr/AskEconomics

I would recommend Acemoglu and Robinson's book Why Nations Fail on this topic. Expands on the other answers already given.

u/classicalecon · 2 pointsr/AskEconomics

If you want something different than recessions, you could look at growth theory and / or development economics. Acemoglu and Robinson have a good pop book on the institutional view.

u/kwanijml · 2 pointsr/Anarcho_Capitalism

I mostly agree with you, of course. But I'm not always sure how to parse through the issue based on historical data.

>In the last 30 years freedom has increased in the developing world and gains are economic gains increasing in the last 30 years in the west freedom has decreased and gains are slowing.

That's likely more to do with what economists call "convergence" (diminishing returns to capital). Also, what we've seen increase in these developing countries over the last 30 years has not been just freedom (not in the voluntaryist/ancap sense of the word); it's been more a shift of better property rights and more inclusive institutions, which is dominated not by lack of government, but more democratic forms of governance and all the public goods via the state that comes with this; a la Acemoglu and Bueno de Mesquita.

So, in other words, what is the relative magnitude of "freedom" as a factor in producing growth and prosperity, as opposed to the natural march and progression of technology and our evolution from bacteria into 4-dimensional beings of light?

u/ptwarhol · 2 pointsr/NoStupidQuestions

Here's your answer in one book. (I just finished the audiobook- it was brilliant.) https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719227

u/News_Bot · 2 pointsr/CapitalismVSocialism

Pareto distribution is a descriptive law, not prescriptive. It does not say that things ought to be one particular way, only that -- all other things being equal -- it will tend to be that way. Pareto had merely observed the well-known phenomenon of income inequality, and later speculated that in a truly free-market society, the most biologically superior citizens—namely the most intelligent—would migrate to the top end of the distribution. Mussolini claimed that as a younger man, he attended Pareto’s lectures at the University of Lausanne. He was struck by Pareto’s ideas, which he later thought may offer a "respectable" academic basis for fascist economics.

As Pareto’s biographer Franz Borkenau stated, “In the first years of his rule Mussolini literally executed the policy prescribed by Pareto” in matters of economic reform, “largely replacing state management by private enterprise, diminishing taxes on property, [and] favoring industrial development.” Pareto’s estimation of early fascist accomplishments entered the historical record: as he wrote in a letter to a junior colleague, “The victory of Italian fascism confirms splendidly the predictions of my sociology and articles.” When Mussolini took power in October 1922, Pareto was less than a year from death, but accepted an appointment to the Geneva Disarmament Conference that Mussolini had offered him.

If a society had a historical % rate of malaria, we would not use this as an excuse not to cure or treat malaria. If a society had a historical % probability for women to experience rape, we would not use this an excuse not to criminalize rape. You can try to apply it, but that doesn't mean it actually applies. You still need evidence.

In other words, almost every effort of human civilization is there to remedy some "natural state of affairs" that would occur if we didn't do anything at all, but in no other case do we take that as a recommendation that this is what we ought to strive for. Yet this is how some naive "classical" liberals interpret it. They paint Pareto distribution as some sort of justification for unlimited wealth concentration by elites, when in fact it shows that wealth concentration, while normal in prosperous societies, beyond certain levels; is characteristic of highly corrupt societies and late stage imperialism.

Whether the Pareto distribution correctly describes a set of phenomena is unimportant. Climate observations predict that Phoenix, AZ is not a particularly pleasant place in the summer. Yet, there is air conditioning and swimming pools. Observation of the anatomy of humans proves without a shadow of a doubt that we are incapable of flight. Yet, there are airplanes. Evidence suggests that in the past, small disagreements often escalated to conflicts in which one of the disagreeing parties was left dead or seriously injured. Today there are laws that not only lay out what is and is not allowed, but the range of punishments when people fail to abide by the laws.

Some classical liberals, and lost boys who've adopted Jordan Peterson as their new daddy, will have us believe that because Pareto distribution has been observed to apply to a variety of phenomena, that means it's inevitable and we should stop trying to decrease inequality, which is just as ridiculous as me suggesting we should just stop fighting gravity and confine ourselves to ground transportation. Social inequality exists in most societies, but the degree to which it exists varies wildly from society to society, and it is not at all a foregone conclusion that massive inequality need be the default social condition. In reality, human societies are diverse; some societies have a high concentration of wealth and income, while other societies have much lower concentrations.

The Pareto principle, often stated as "20% of the population will own 80% of the wealth", is only true for certain parameters of the Pareto distribution. Much has to do with the institutions that exist in the society. As Acemoglu and Robinson argue, when the elite control the government, they set up institutions that enrich the elite while dispossessing the majority of people. Rutherford Hayes and Einstein observed this also.

Thomas Piketty's discussion of Pareto from his book Capital in the 21st Century is good. It's a very unsettling book, but it's unsettling because it uses a wealth of data to challenge optimistic assumptions about the trajectory of inequality:

>It is worth pausing a moment to discuss some methodological and historical issues concerning the statistical measurement of inequality. In Chapter 7, I discussed the Italian statistician Corrado Gini and his famous coefficient. Although the Gini coefficient was intended to sum up inequality in a single number, it actually gives a simplistic, overly optimistic, and difficult-to-interpret picture of what is really going on. A more interesting case is that of Gini’s compatriot Vilfredo Pareto, whose major works, including a discussion of the famous “Pareto law,” were published between 1890 and 1910. In the interwar years, the Italian Fascists adopted Pareto as one of their own and promoted his theory of elites. Although they were no doubt seeking to capitalize on his prestige, it is nevertheless true that Pareto, shortly before his death in 1923, hailed Mussolini’s accession to power. Of course the Fascists would naturally have been attracted to Pareto’s theory of stable inequality and the pointlessness of trying to change it.
>
>What is more striking when one reads Pareto’s work with the benefit of hindsight is that he clearly had no evidence to support his theory of stability. Pareto was writing in 1900 or thereabouts. He used available tax tables from 1880–1890, based on data from Prussia and Saxony as well as several Swiss and Italian cities. The information was scanty and covered a decade at most. What is more, it showed a slight trend toward higher inequality, which Pareto intentionally sought to hide. In any case, it is clear that such data provide no basis whatsoever for any conclusion about the long-term behavior of inequality around the world.
>
>Pareto’s judgment was clearly influenced by his political prejudices: he was above all wary of socialists and what he took to be their redistributive illusions. In this respect he was hardly different from any number of contemporary colleagues, such as the French economist Pierre Leroy-Beaulieu, whom he admired. Pareto’s case is interesting because it illustrates the powerful illusion of eternal stability, to which the uncritical use of mathematics in the social sciences sometimes leads. Seeking to find out how rapidly the number of taxpayers decreases as one climbs higher in the income hierarchy, Pareto discovered that the rate of decrease could be approximated by a mathematical law that subsequently became known as “Pareto’s law” or, alternatively, as an instance of a general class of functions known as “power laws." Indeed, this family of functions is still used today to study distributions of wealth and income. Note, however, that the power law applies only to the upper tail of these distributions and that the relation is only approximate and locally valid. It can nevertheless be used to model processes due to multiplicative shocks, like those described earlier.
>
>Note, moreover, that we are speaking not of a single function or curve but of a family of functions: everything depends on the coefficients and parameters that define each individual curve. The data collected in the WTID as well as the data on wealth presented here show that these Pareto coefficients have varied enormously over time. When we say that a distribution of wealth is a Pareto distribution, we have not really said anything at all. It may be a distribution in which the upper decile receives only slightly more than 20 percent of total income (as in Scandinavia in 1970–1980) or one in which the upper decile receives 50 percent (as in the United States in 2000–2010) or one in which the upper decile owns more than 90 percent of total wealth (as in France and Britain in 1900–1910). In each case we are dealing with a Pareto distribution, but the coefficients are quite different. The corresponding social, economic, and political realities are clearly poles apart. Even today, some people imagine, as Pareto did, that the distribution of wealth is rock stable, as if it were somehow a law of nature. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. When we study inequality in historical perspective, the important thing to explain is not the stability of the distribution but the significant changes that occur from time to time. In the case of the wealth distribution, I have identified a way to explain the very large historical variations that occur (whether described in terms of Pareto coefficients or as shares of the top decile and centile) in terms of the difference r−g between the rate of return on capital and the growth rate of the economy.

u/someguytwo · 2 pointsr/Romania

Iar referendumuri inutile. Iar discutii despre orice altceva decat ce conteaza cu adevarat, Justitia.

Daca nu ma credeti ca legile care ne guverneaza si cum sunt ele aplicate sunt mai importante decat orice homosexual, ungur sau preot va recomand sa cititi: Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

u/Shekellarios · 2 pointsr/de

> An dieser Stelle will ich mal gesagt haben, dass ich nicht glaube das die Menschen der Fehler sind. Das System ist krankhaft.

Ich denke, das ist eine sehr oberflächliche Betrachtung. Denn System und Menschen sind zu eng verflochten, als dass man sie irgendwie trennen könnte; das beste System wird nicht funktionieren, wenn die Menschen, die es bedienen, nicht mitmachen. Es gibt genügend Systeme auf diesem Planeten, die zwar schick aussehen, aber in der Realität einfach nicht funktionieren - durch Korruption und Vetternwirtschaft zum Beispiel. Sieh dir zum Beispiel mal die Demokratie in Südkorea an: unter dem Deckmantel der Demokratie regiert dort eine Oligarchie mit Propagandapresse, die fröhlich den Vater der Präsidentin glorifiziert - auch bekannt als Diktator Park Chung-Hee.

Ein System allein kann die Gesellschaft nicht verbessern. Dazu kann ich wärmstens das Buch Why Nations Fail empfehlen, dass anhand vieler historischer Beispiele die Mechanismen des Erfolgs und Misserfolgs von Gesellschaften analysiert. Sehr lesenswert, allein schon wegen der vielen interessanten Phasen der Geschichte abseits der breitgetretenen Pfade, die durchgegangen werden.

u/TriStag · 2 pointsr/news

Alright,



Educate yourself

Educate yourself

Educate yourself

Educate yourself

lmao, this is literally how you argued.

u/Pirates_Smile · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

Well having spent some time over in the areas (North and South Africa), Africa is honestly one of the most maleficent places I have ever had the displeasure to be in. So much unwarranted hatred and misaligned belief. Gotta love a civilization of today that accepts the likes of Mugabe and Blahyi with open, loving arms. AIDS is running rampant throughout the country with Billions of AID dollars lining the pockets of the Warlords who own the biggest guns at the moment. Africa is a never-ending funnel of despair. Good read for those who really want to get caught up

And here

And your odds are even worse if you're a child - Here

So my answer to the question is about the humanity thing, not the skin color thing.

Plus This is a great documentary to watch NSFL Especially Fergal Keane's interview.

And another great documentary [here]
(http://youtu.be/-nqDTxQVSlk)


So yeah, by my personal experiences from that part of the world I stick by my original answer. Don't agree with me, go there, live there and formulate your own insights and paradigm on the matter?

Lastly this was a family: a small boy, small girl, a mother or some grand parents (NSFL)

and it STILL continues today.

u/recon455 · 2 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

Read Dead Aid. Bono is not helping Africa.

u/doug · 2 pointsr/worldnews

There's a pretty good read on this called Dead Aid.

u/duns_utahan · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

Because it doesn't work. That is to say, foreign aid has not helped developing nations develop, and foreign aid tends to make the problems worse.

Read this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Aid-Working-Better-Africa/dp/0374139563

and visit the author's website:

http://www.dambisamoyo.com/books/?book=dead-aid

u/WaltMink · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

(1) Africa is fucked up mainly because of 30+ years of war among Marxist/Socialist governments. http://www.amazon.com/The-Shadow-Sun-Ryszard-Kapuscinski/dp/0679779078

http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Americanism-Jean-Francois-Revel/dp/159403060X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343531715&sr=1-1&keywords=revel+anti-americanism



(2) in general, aid is a waste of money because it does little or nothing to fix underlying structural/social problems that prevent Africans from caring for themselves.

http://www.dambisamoyo.com/books-and-publications/book/dead-aid/

http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Aid-Working-Better-Africa/dp/0374139563

(3) IMHO, aid is often subtly racist and paternalistic, with an underlying message of those-darkies-can't-do-it-without-us. many Americans would prefer poor black people living off handouts than wealthy black capitalists creating their own wealth.

u/whosawiddlepuppy · 2 pointsr/AskSocialScience

For starters, it may seem counterintuitive but all of the money, aid and especially food developed countries send to Africa actually makes the problem worse because it depresses their domestic economies. (Unlike how things are often projected in those tear-jerking commercials from aid organizations, African countries do have economies -- Nigeria, for example, has the one of the largest movie industries in the world.)

Economist Dambisa Moyo explains this problem better than I ever could in Dead Aid, highly recommended read

u/calthopian · 2 pointsr/TumblrInAction

What gets me is that this person doesn't understand that in many cases, the African governments don't put much money toward building infrastructure, schools, or even institutional capacity. So donors and NGOs fill this void because they're the only ones willing/able to build the schools and other things.

He has a point when he says it'd be better if they could build institutional capacity, however in many cases African governments would rather devote their few resources to maintaining personal power than developing economically or institutionally. There are certainly things wrong with aid, and it can be seen as enabling African governments in their corruption.

But at the root of the problem, its the shit leaders in Africa, none of whom are white, that holds back development. They're the ones that are closest to the people and culture, and could use their societal contexts to begin a development process that best benefits their people, but they don't. Does it then surprise you that when western donors come in, knowing the western way, they try to implement those methods, even though the Africans may not be willing or able to "go western", and then despite minor successes, improve little? The governments of Africa are just as much, if not moreso, to blame for the current state of Africa than anything the west is doing today. In fact, institutional capacity in Africa has been shown to have declined since independence, before Africa's ruling class had a chance to create the kleptocratic, patrimonial, and all around corrupt, personal-rule states. That's why many Africans who get advanced degrees in the West, stay there; of those who return to work within the government, they either leave for the private or NGO sector or assimilate into the corrupt system, there is no room for change from within because the system itself is only perpetuated by further corruption.

It's foolish to look at the problems in Africa and assume that it's all the fault of colonialism and continued western aid, sure colonialism did a lot to fuck things up, but in the end the continued economic stagnation of the African continent is largely the fault of its leadership, its PoC leadership that prioritises power maintenance over economic development. As misguided as the West can be when it tries to help, at least they're actually doing something for the people of Africa. If he wants actual information about development in Africa, I'd suggest Dead Aid by Dembisa Moyo or African Economies by Nicolas Van de Walle.

u/Laborismoney · 2 pointsr/videos

The Bottom Billion

Dead Aid

Neither deal directly with sweatshops but the subject is related.

And you can google some other information, written by people who study this stuff professionally, in defense of them if you want a better understanding of why they exist, their benefits and their faults, etc.

u/jonpul · 2 pointsr/Documentaries

"Dead Aid" by Dambisa Moyo is a fantastic book on this subject and specifically its impacts in Africa. https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Aid-Working-Better-Africa/dp/0374532125

u/tothelimit2019 · 2 pointsr/Documentaries
u/PutinButtplug · 2 pointsr/Futurology

funny that you mention the MIT.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Second-Machine-Age-Technologies/dp/0393239357

Both guys are from the MIT and all my arguments are from this Book.
You should read it.

u/key_lime_pie · 2 pointsr/nfl

You probably don't want to read books like The Second Machine Age or Rise of the Robots then. Self-driving cars are the least of our problems. Consider what we're going to be faced with when automation replaces roughly half of all jobs in the United States over the next 30 years. Truck driving is already headed that way.

Anyway, I work in automation, and unless there's a major (like life-altering) change in government policy, we are all going to be proper fucked in a short amount of time. But at least we'll get there faster in our self-driven cars.

u/bradfish123 · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

everything he says makes sense to me. I like his explanations better than the alternative, which are culture based (which is a typical conservative argument).

here's another book with different ideas, more cultural arguments:

http://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Poverty-Nations-Some-Rich/dp/0393318885

u/Dayzed88 · 2 pointsr/AskSocialScience

Oh boy, this is a biggie. It's kind of a combo of a lot of factors.

David Landes wrote a good book on the subject, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations

Some of it can be due to government leadership, some due to actual availability of natural resources. It's really a case by case basis, and some countries that are poor may actually be successful with some minor changes, or if certain things happened years earlier.

If you have a case you are interested in, ask away.

u/omaca · 2 pointsr/books

The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is a very good look at macro-economics. At least, as a non-economist, I thought so.

As already mentioned, The Map that Change the World is an excellent introduction to the early stages of geological science. Simon Winchester is a very successful and well regarded popular historian.

u/GRANITO · 2 pointsr/AskSocialScience

As a follow-up to Why Nations Fail I'd recommend The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto. He argues capitalism hasn't actually reached the poor in developing countries. They haven't had access to capital markets, titles, deeds, etc and it disincentivizes capital or labor improvements. If they could easily prove ownership over their assets they could leverage them to invest in improving their productivity (A poor family using their house as collateral to send their kids to school for example). Right now many families don't even have deeds over the houses they live in.

u/Ntang · 2 pointsr/IAmA

Interesting AMA thus far. I'm a former Peace Corps volunteer in Central Africa, and I worked pretty extensively in aid elsewhere on the continent afterwards. Never been to Malawi, but I'm familiar with a lot of the issues there, as they're typical of many countries in that region.

First off, good for you - getting off your duff and going into the world to throw yourself at a problem you see. I'm glad you're doing this. That said, I'd like to offer some advice, both from someone who cares about global poverty a lot, and as one who's worked in the field and wants to save you some headaches. There's a lot of issues with "orphanages" in developing countries. I suggest you read all the articles here - the gist being that in a cultural context you don't understand, meddling with children and families is fraught with peril.

Before you get yourself into something you don't understand yet, please listen to these concerns:
You've moved into a completely alien society with a culture you don't really understand and language you don't speak. You're on a tourist visa, for god's sake! That's not okay! It sounds like you've inserted yourself into a number of situations - economic transactions, the "briefcase orphanage" scam - that you just do not fully grasp yet, and by doing so you could be putting yourself in danger. You may think you understand a lot more about these things than you do. The longer you live there - give it a year or two at least - the more you will see how little you actually understood when you first got there (that is, now), and how little you actually understand then. Societies are complex that way.

Think of the opposite - an African from some tiny village somewhere who came to live in, say, downtown Manhattan, and how long it would take him or her to actually grasp the finer points of our culture and society. And that's assuming they already speak English. Until you can converse intelligently in Chichewa, you're really just guessing about what's going on around you based on what the very few who can speak English are willing/know how to say to you.

The broad generalizations you're making here - China is ruining Africa; Africa depends on food aid, otherwise everyone would starve; the tobacco trade is bad and destructive - are tell-tale signs of a shocked, fairly naive white person who has just arrived, and who has not yet taken the time to learn deeply about development, global poverty, and African history and economics. Read about the history of Malawi and what the Banda regime was like (reference for redditors interested here. Read Jeff Sachs, and then for the love of god read Bill Easterly, since he's got his head screwed on a little tighter. Read de Soto, and Ayittey and Collier. There is a whole constellation of development and aid blogs out there, all of which you will find instructive. The bottom line being - there are best practices and lessons to be learned out there, because lots of people have done what you're doing and are doing it now. This business you're up to in Malawi should not be about you. It's about them. And when you begin working in aid, it's very important you remember that, because frankly, a lot of folks forget it.

So, finally, my question: what's your endgame? That is, what goal are you trying to accomplish?

I ask because you're presumably not going to live in Malawi for the rest of your life, so you must eventually (1) get this new orphanage sustainably funded and (2) find competent/honest people to run it. That's very, very difficult. Are you applying for grants? Hoping you'll find a church somewhere in America that wants to take on permanent responsibility for funding this? The Malawian government?

u/iconoclashism · 2 pointsr/Economics

The Mystery of Capitalism does a good job explaining how the shadow economy in Latin America has hindered growth. The gist is that the lack of property rights in the shadow economy limits the ability of people to enter into entrepreneurial activities because they can't pledge their homes as collateral for a loan, essentially making their real property dead capital. The author's wiki page explains in some more depth if you are interested.

Note though that bitcoins don't share the same property right concern as above except with respect to limiting government taxation.

u/Ace_of_Sporks · 2 pointsr/history

The Mystery of Capital by Hernando De Soto

He argues that it's the west's recordkeeping that helps make it wealthy.

u/Athator · 2 pointsr/slatestarcodex

I've found 'The Sovereign Individual' to be more prescient even though it was written in 1997.

Predicting the rise of wealth inequality, tax avoidance by the wealthy and increased immigration as the fuel for a nationalist resurgence in most countries with calls for increasing wealth redistribution and stronger national borders.

It will be interesting though to see if the predictions continue with reduced government power as more SEZs and potentially 'free cities' develop and whether we will see a rise in secessionist movements.

https://www.amazon.com/Sovereign-Individual-Mastering-Transition-Information/dp/0684832720

u/knowbodynows · 2 pointsr/btc

The first chapter of this book is free and it's a great read (up until the Y2Kbug part)!

u/Stender001 · 2 pointsr/Damnthatsinteresting

The authors of “The Sovereign Individual” wrote it in 1999 and many of the things they wrote about are happening right now.

https://www.amazon.com/Sovereign-Individual-Mastering-Transition-Information/dp/0684832720

u/Universe_Man · 2 pointsr/DarkNetMarkets

Wow! Thanks. I'd love to be a leader, but I'm too lazy. I think I'm just channeling a little DPR/Ross Ulbricht. He's a real visionary. A book that I think covers this sort of thing that I'm looking forward to reading is The Sovereign Individual. It was recommended by Peter Thiel.

Another thing I'm super interested in is Ethereum (/r/ethereum). It's a platform for building distributed, blockchain-based software. It has the potential to eliminate the middleman in everything. I think it will disempower corporations to the same extent that cryptography can disempower governments.

Thanks again for your kind words. I'm open to discussing anything with anyone.

u/uniballUM151 · 2 pointsr/washingtondc

> Strangely, it seems like that rate of progress has slowed down considerably in the 21st.

People who study these things are taking note. I haven't read this (yet), but it's on my list: https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-American-Growth-Princeton/dp/0691147728

u/TheRealAntacular · 2 pointsr/investing

> tl:dr; i suspect we will see greater than historical market returns. due to the increase in productivity!

https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-American-Growth-Princeton/dp/0691147728/

u/yasth · 2 pointsr/RetroFuturism

Not just the US, almost all nations had heavily regulated monopolies at the time. All nations also deregulated at roughly the same time as well (for internal traffic at least).

That said there have been some intriguing numbers that while deregulation had some initial gains, the later changes (aka cutting of food, free baggage allowance, decreases in comfort, etc) were not actually reflected in a real dollar cost decreases. You can read The Rise and The Fall of American Growth for the actual argument (that is all cited and done better than my memory can allow).

u/cstuart1649 · 2 pointsr/IAmA

I had a conversation with one of them about this book.

He was a little older than the youngest guys though, maybe early 30s, past his main gangbanging days. From what I understand, the Kings view street crime as the first stage in a person's life and as a person gets older they become more of a mentor who understands the bigger picture. The kids definitely wouldn't be reading. I was talking to him about coke one day, asking if there was any good stuff around, and he said that he hadn't been in to that since the early 90s. After he got out of prison he realized that it was better to stay relatively small time; have enough money to buy nice things but not enough to draw attention.

u/anagrammatron · 2 pointsr/AskHistorians

One book that's on my reading list and waiting its turn on my desk is Open Veins of Latin America (original: Las venas abiertas de América Latina). It seems to polarize readers so much that Amazon ratings are predominantly either 5 or 1 stars. Can't yet give personal opinion on it but thought to mention it since it's a book that tends to come up here and there.

u/andrewcooke · 2 pointsr/suggestmeabook

what, all of it? maybe something by galeano? memories of fire or open veins.

for chile, specifically, muñoz's dictator's shadow is very good. also, i really liked this anthropological text - very good view into current (well, more or less) chilean culture and surprisingly easy to read.

u/amillionnames · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

Anthropological Economics, and we were made to read this book.

History was never the same.

u/JackStargazer · 2 pointsr/canada

Argumentum ad sittingnexttoanaccountantum, that's a new one.

Unless knowledge translates through osmosis, that doesn't actually help, you do realize that? I don't become an expert on human digestion by making a comment while sitting next to a doctor.

>this "topping off everyones salary" money still has to come from somewhere

This indicates you have misunderstood the concept at its root. Basic Income is not about 'topping off everyone's salary'. It's about replacing the vastly inefficient current welfare system with something more streamlined, while at the same time providing for people who in the very near future are going to need to be provided for in a way the system as it is is not designed to handle.

Yes, this likely requires more capital. No, it is not as much as you think it is. Part of the gains are in a reduction in future liabilities (ounce of prevention v. pound of cure.)

Yes, this likely means taxes go up. It also means tax loopholes close.

>Before you go trying to insult someone trying to defend your right to paint pictures all day and get paid to do it

Cute. That would be what we call a 'strawman argument', you see, where you ascribe traits to me that have not come out in my actual statements based on a preexisting stereotype or prejudice.

I'm actually a law student studying for an internship position at a major corporate law firm. I'm one of the people who would absolutely not want to live on basic income. I'd go nuts. I do however recognize that it would stop others from starving in the streets - and that 'painting pictures', or more likely 'futzing around with those damn computers in the garage' actually has value, and was something people like Bill Gates, Steve(s) Jobs/Wozniak, and Sergei Brin did. Then they founded Microsoft, Apple, and Google respectively.

Imagine someone else who might do the same, butfor they spend 40 hours a week asking people if they would like fries with that, since the alternative is their family starving to death.

I'm not exactly the first person to think about this:

>We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian- Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.

-Buckminster Fuller


Ironically, people can actually make reasoned arguments for points that might not directly benefit them. I'd likely pay more taxes under a basic income system, especially as someone who actually can read the tax code (which, dear god is painful. Props to your sitting-next-to-you-Accountant for sticking with that.)

If you want a better explanation of how a basic income or negative income tax can work (put in a much more succinct and well sourced manner than I can likely put it) I'd suggest taking a look at "The Second Machine Age", written by Erik Brynjolfsson, a Professor of Management at MIT Andrew McAfee, associate director of the Center for Digital Business at MIT.

It's a good read in general.

u/Egalitaristen · 2 pointsr/Futurology
u/veddy_interesting · 2 pointsr/digital_marketing

Be glad you're not learning at a university. One reason digital marketing has not worked as well as it should is that education and training ends up being all about silos ("social media" or "mobile") rather than having a foundation in strategy. By being self-taught, you can avoid that trap.

It will be hard to get a job in digital marketing without experience or a degree, especially if you just respond to job listings. Instead, pick an emerging area of interest (VR, AR, Blockchain, whatever) and write things that are genuinely helpful and illuminating -- don't cheerlead or parrot the existing POV. Find an angle that's interesting enough to get the attention of industry leaders.

Where to Start

  1. "The Art Of War" by Sun Tzu Free and very worthwhile.


    Why read a book about war from a guy who died in 496 BC? Because he's the most famous strategy thinker in business. He is still admired because his thinking is very smart and very clear.

  2. "The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organization" by Peter Drucker

    http://www.amazon.com/Five-Important-Questions-About-Organization/dp/0470227567/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=0J3SSMAE3DF0P381FFYK

  3. "The Essential Drucker"
    http://www.amazon.com/The-Essential-Drucker-Management-Essentials/dp/0061345016

    Peter Drucker is probably the second most famous strategy thinker in business, One of my favorite quotes from him: "There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all.”

    Note: After you read Sun Tzu and Drucker, it will make so much sense to you that you will assume business naturally works strategically and that things are pretty logical. Distressingly, the opposite is true, because businesses are run by humans and all humans are a little crazy.

    Continuing Education

    Technology

    Videos:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPaf9YGz6Es
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWvfOhWYwi8
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdgQpa1pUUE
    https://www.l2inc.com/video/scott-galloway-at-dld-2017

    The Lights In The Tunnel (Grab the PDF eBook and pay whatever you like for it.)
    http://www.thelightsinthetunnel.com/

    The Second Machine Age
    http://www.amazon.com/The-Second-Machine-Age-Technologies/dp/1480577472

    Automate This: How Algorithms Came To Rule Our World
    http://www.amazon.com/Automate-This-Algorithms-Came-World/dp/B00D9T9IQG

    On Reddit, read Futurology and Singularity

    http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing_and_strategy
    http://www.prophet.com/thinking/publications
    http://blogs.hbr.org (sign up for a free account)

    Ad tech = Ad Exchanger
    AdWeek, AdAge, Cynopsis, eConsultancy, DIGIDAY
    Mobile = MobileMarketer, MMA Smartbrief
    Search = MarketingLand, SearchEngine Watch
    Research = eMarketer, BizReport, Marketing Charts
    Social = SmartBrief on Social Media, Social Media Today
    Agency = Mediapost MAD, ClickZ experts
    http://www.mediaredefined.com/

    Hope this helps. Don't freak out about how long the list is -- the foundational stuff is really in the four books under "Where To Start". And the ad tech stuff is well covered by Ad Exchanger.
u/hesperidia · 2 pointsr/lostgeneration

On the emotional components of the poverty trap:

>Loss of hope and the sense that there is no easy way out can make it that much harder to have the self-control needed to try to climb back up the hill. [...] In Udaipur we met a man who said in response to a standard survey question that he had been so 'worried, tense, or anxious' that it interfered with normal activities like sleeping, working, and eating for more than a month. We asked him why. He said that his camel had died, and he had been crying and tense ever since. Somewhat naively perhaps, we then went on to ask whether he had done something about his depression (like talk to a friend, a health-care practitioner, or a traditional healer). He seemed irked: 'I have lost the camel. Of course I should be sad. There is nothing to be done.'
>
>...Symptoms of depression are much more prevalent among the poor. Being stressed makes it harder to focus, which in turn may make us less productive. In particular, there is a strong association between poverty and the level of cortisol produced by the body, an indicator of stress. And conversely, the cortisol levels go down when households receive some help.

-- Poor Economics by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo

u/wwdqd · 2 pointsr/PoliticalScience

Took a Development Econ course a few years back. After trudging through the more standard William Easterly v. Jeffery Sachs (both of whom you should also check out) debate about the efficacy of development aid, we read Poor Economics. Refreshingly frank and empirical treatment of the subject of development, especially the ways in which best policy practice can oftentimes run against the grain of traditional economic intuition.

u/systematik- · 2 pointsr/futuristparty

I don't think simply having open source info out there would be enough, I agree with you there.

I'm thinking more along the lines of utilizing a new tool or method of organizing ourselves to be able to meet the challenges that our species faces.

Imagine that you created a tool, something which maps out the Earth and within it you can toggle different overlays, such as all of our infrastructure, the sources of carbon emission, ecology data, etc. With this you can contextualize what you are doing as a great game, and the game is to, for example, transition all of our energy infrastructure to cleaner sources within the next few decades all over the planet.

You can use the tool to model infrastructure changes, etc. And then put these new models up to different sources of funding, (crowd funding, government assistance, philanthropic contribution, etc. could all contribute).

Here you'd have a system to help coordinate action, and get people thinking more about the complexities and challenges of transitioning our infrastructure.

A B. Fuller quote again:

>If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don't bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.

The game would help bring about a global bottom-up effort to transition human societies infrastructure in the next decades.

This is one application of this thinking. Let's look more at what you mentioned though, poverty.

There's different levels of poverty, of course, and everywhere is different. In the 3rd world it can be access to basic resources which is the problem. Maybe here some assistance with things like water collection, etc. could help the situation there. There are also books, f.e., about combating dire poverty in the world, it's a complex situation and you need the best approaches. But imagine a world game for attempting to meet that issue. There are different types of poverty in the first world, and there are different approaches to meeting it, and that can be worked at too.

It's not just making info available on some corner of the internet, to me it's about creating a context for action outside of the existing structures of our society, and unlocking what the best solutions are, and attempting to work on them and share what the best solutions are within a larger shared context.

I'm also a fan of the list Steele shares about the top 10 threats to humanity 1, and especially the order that they are in (first is poverty, then infectious disease, then environmental degradation, etc.) To me this is a good list with a good order of priorities. I really think he's got an excellent point about meeting "national security" threats in a preventative way by attempting to help empower the world's poor, while also working to curtail environmental destruction as an aspect of the same priorities.

Ultimately, when it comes down to it, you find the US government spends some $ 598 billion per year on the military. And look what kind of outcomes that gets towards our top 10 greatest threats. It would take massive political will, but the ideal in my mind is that eventually a huge end goal to work towards would be to divert a significant chunk of that away from the military and into something that attempts to meet these challenges in a preventative way that makes people around the world more secure/resilient/well off.

We have a 20th century Cold War operating system for our national defense, when we need an update to a 21st century operating system that is geared towards the main challenges that we are facing, and geared towards them effectively. A part of that may include military defense, but more of it includes trying to prop people around the world up and make them resilient in their own way. And that is a lot of what Steele is talking towards with his work.

Ultimately, my own opinion is that humanity legitimately does need a new form of intelligence if we are to survive and persist on this planet into the future. How can we do this? It would have to be something which could bring together data from environmental systems, as well as human systems, and something through which we could meaningfully organize ourselves to make key changes.

u/maxthegeek1 · 2 pointsr/neoliberal

This podcast episode is centered on an interview of a J-Pal representative. J-pal is MIT's poverty research department. I'm reading one of its products right now, a book called Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty and it's great so far.

u/nongermanejackson · 2 pointsr/bestof

Banerjee and Duflo's book "Poor Economics" is a great read and it expands the type of example that Wigan Pier used to good effect.

It does so in a way that makes understanding the daily choices of poor people appreciable by those who cannot otherwise learn from lived experience.

u/gartstell · 2 pointsr/mexico

Excelente lectura.

Una visión más extensa que viene a cuestionar también fuertemente la ideología cuasi-religiosa según la cuál "la mejor política industrial es no tener política industrial" y reivindica el papel que ha tenido el Estado en conducir todos los procesos de industrialización exitosos de la historia (con unas cuatas excepciones) es Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective.

El autor se dedica a estudiar no cómo dicen que se debe alcanzar la modernidad, sino qué han hecho los países que efectivamente la alcanzaron, y ve la enrome discrepancia entre lo que ahora los países industrializados señalan que hay que hacer en forma de receta y lo que esos mismos países hicieron para llegar hasta ahí. En otras palabras: "Has lo que te digo, no lo que yo hago"

u/WorkReddit8420 · 2 pointsr/IRstudies

https://www.amazon.com/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Development-Perspective/dp/1843310279

​

You are correct, sir! By the way, this author is awesome. Very informative about such things.

u/MinTamor · 2 pointsr/ukpolitics

I'd suggest this one from Rodrik as essential - it's very easy to read:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Globalization-Paradox-Dani-Rodrik/dp/019965252X

Stiglitz, Globalisation and Its Discontents, although it's not quite as current. The one below is a bit boring to read but makes some crucial points:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Development-Institutions/dp/1843310279/ref=pd_sim_14_31?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=3QQA6QGWH0P1DNY5WQQP




u/RationalOutsider · 2 pointsr/worldnews

Climate change is just another excuse, in the long list of excuses, to kick away the ladder.

u/majinspy · 1 pointr/pics

It really couldn't have. It was far away and had no ability to figure all that stuff out. It was hard enough for the other countries and they were right there and actively trying to get in on the action. France and other countries spied heavily and the Brits did whatever they could to deal in their knowledge advantage. I'm reading a book on it now: https://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Poverty-Nations-Some-Rich/dp/0393318885

Indian colonization was horrible. To the extent anyone thinks it wasn't, its because the Brits could have been worse colonizers. They weren't Belgian foot choppers for example.

Still, the idea that railroads or, even more laughable, "civilized society" were contributions that made it all a wash, is some sacred cow level bullshit ;)

u/Esteban_Childplease · 1 pointr/history
u/Fifi6313 · 1 pointr/books

The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, attempts to answer the same questions as Guns Germs ans Steel, different conclusions, interesting to look at together and compare (took an entire course that did just this).

u/amatijaca · 1 pointr/AskReddit

For me, one of the most eye opening books was The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor - it really thought me to look at the less fortunate people in this world with the understanding of the root causes of their misery. It also explained the rise of America, failure of Argentina etc... A scholarly work...

u/pixis-4950 · 1 pointr/doublespeakprivilege

stillandonly32 wrote:

Islam is the reason the middle east didn't develop like the West did. Profit is seen as a bad thing in Islam. Their contract-enforcing (which was important when markets were emerging) wasn't as strong as it should've been. We learned all about this in Economic Development Before 1900 (I took it last semester).



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Edit from 2013-07-07T01:03:41+00:00

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Islam is the reason the middle east didn't develop like the West did. Profit is seen as a bad thing in Islam. Their contract-enforcing (which was important when markets were emerging) wasn't as strong as it should've been. We learned all about this in Economic Development Before 1900 (I took it last semester).

Here's an article I found about the matter: http://business.time.com/2011/10/18/is-islamic-law-to-blame-for-the-middle-easts-economic-failures/



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Edit from 2013-07-07T01:15:41+00:00

-------
Islam is the reason the middle east didn't develop like the West did. Profit is seen as a bad thing in Islam. Their contract-enforcing (which was important when markets were emerging) wasn't as strong as it should've been. We learned all about this in Economic Development Before 1900 (I took it last semester).

Here's an article I found about the matter: http://business.time.com/2011/10/18/is-islamic-law-to-blame-for-the-middle-easts-economic-failures/

Also read this.



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Deleted

u/GreatestInstruments · 1 pointr/Rad_Decentralization

I appreciate the well-thought-out response - and I happen to not disagree with a lot of what you're saying here.

Self-interest is a force, like any other. Like electricity, it can be put to both constructive and destructive uses...

It's also a given; Life would not exist without it. Your appetite is your body, applying self-interest to keep you alive.

Self-interest can co-exist with morals, just as group-interest can co-exist with a lack of morality. Neither guarantees the other.

Capitalism, used today, is somewhat of a blanket term which does nothing to distinguish between constructive uses of this force, and destructive ones.

The Founders undoubtedly acted in their self-interest, as did everyone who went to work today - is there no difference between someone who helped others for a paycheck, and someone who swindled others for one?

Carroll Quigley's Evolution Of Civilizations makes a rather compelling case that societies don't last very long when they cease to differentiate between the two. Hence the terms instruments and institutions.

Brief summary (not mine):

>Among his conclusions, Quigley wrote about the importance of social instruments, which he defined as organizations that are effectively serving the end for which they were established. When an instrument stops serving that goal it has become an institution, requiring a response — reform or circumvention, or reaction — which leads to either a new or reformed instrument, or decay.

To respond to your point...

>The people driving this change are wealthy capitalists, and the people doing most of the world are third-world labourers, why praise the wealth capitalists and ignore everyone else?

I won't tell you the third world hasn't been exploited by institutions; It has. Instruments have provided them with cell phones and other technology that they otherwise wouldn't have. Eventually, it may provide them with much more.

The developing world stands to be one of the largest benefactors of cryptocurrency. It is estimated that the poor in these countries "informally" own $9.3 Trillion in property that cannot be "legally" theirs; Their governments don't permit them to own it. If decentralized finance enables them to circumvent this, their quality of life would improve immensely.

u/Panoplos · 1 pointr/Bitcoin

Currency supply inflation via fungible assets as collateral is what fuels growth. This has been proven by economists. If you want an introduction to this concept, read this book.

u/incognito2024 · 1 pointr/history

In large part it is due to the Public Land Records System in the US. In the US we can buy and sell land with confidence and use it to gain wealth through appreciation of land values, taking out equity loans to invest in other things and it also supports our local governments through taxes that provide services. If you want to read more, check out The Mystery of Capital https://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Capital-Capitalism-Triumphs-Everywhere/dp/0465016154

u/trashacount12345 · 1 pointr/Libertarian

Ownership of property benefits everyone. Without it private trade doesn't work, ambitious people can't build capital, and everyone loses. I haven't read it yet but I'm told The Mystery of Capital (link below) gives a very good description of how important property rights are to helping the poor.

https://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Capital-Capitalism-Triumphs-Everywhere/dp/0465016154

u/HiddenYid · 1 pointr/Judaism

Look up the book The Mysteries of Capital. There are whole chapters talking about land ownership, deeds, land rushes, etc.. Fascinating book -- not Jewish, but great to understand how we take for granted the clear title to land in the US

u/Yokisan · 1 pointr/Economics

Exactly. However I think they may be complementary, in which case i'd add
Why nations fail and The mystery of Capital - Enough there to give you a more informed understanding of why things are as they are.

u/tkwelge · 1 pointr/Libertarian

Another good resource on informal economies and the importance of spreading property rights, check out: "The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else."

http://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Capital-Capitalism-Triumphs-Everywhere/dp/0465016154

This is a great read on the subject.

u/Matticus_Rex · 1 pointr/Economics

This is really somewhat hilarious. You're dismissing the plurality view of the academic field because I "haven't posted evidence of it" (even though the research we're discussing actually supports that conclusion, if you read the paper), and it hurts your feelings.

Fine, here are some citations. Since you don't even know what "literature" means, I'll leave out things behind paywalls:

Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson

Can Foreign Aid Buy Growth? by William Easterly

The Elusive Quest for Growth by William Easterly

Institutions as the Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson

Coffee and Power by Jeffrey M. Paige

The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto

The Anti-Politics Machine by James Ferguson

Social Cohesion, Institutions, and Growth by William Easterly, Jozef Ritzen, and Michael Woolcock

African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis by Nicolas Van de Walle

Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen

Doing Bad by Doing Good by Christopher Coyne

From Subsistence to Exchange by Peter Bauer

u/lockex · 1 pointr/Philippines

Have you read Hernando de Soto? It has a few chapters on the history of squatting in the United States, and if you believe him, it was totally illegal and also totally tolerated because of political considerations.

u/blueskyonmars · 1 pointr/Economics

America is sinking, and solutions are going to be new ideas and whatever works. The Democrats throw money at the problems and hope it sticks, and the Republicans want the return of share cropping.

some brief excerpts

>U.S. households without bank accounts grew by 821,000 from 2009 to 2011, pushing the so-called unbanked population to 8.2 percent of the nation’s total, according to the FDIC’s National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households.
>
>The result is that about 17 million adults manage their finances without checking or savings accounts at insured institutions, many of them relying instead on non-banks such as payday lenders and check-cashing stores.

further on in the article

>Unbanked households vary significantly by ethnicity, according to the 2011 report. Black households were 21.4 percent unbanked, and Hispanics registered a 20.1 percent rate, while American Indians were at 14.5 percent. White and Asian households were at 4 percent and 2.7 percent, respectively.

One issue is how poor communities often have bad relations with law enforcement, yet the crime rates are highest in those communities (example North Minneapolis). My suspicion is that the economies are tied to lack the benefits of the rule of law. Also social programs are probably at fault, allowing the problems to be veiled as well as creating dependency rather than incentive.

some books on related subjects

The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else

Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc.

u/insubstantial · 1 pointr/politics

Still, it's not that simple.
It's interesting how we measure wealth, and how much those 36% actually own that does not appear in such measures, because of how ownership works (or doesn't) in most of the world.

In particular, you could say that the line dividing worlds (first & third) can be drawn where property rights (and supporting legal system) exist and where they don't.

Read Hernando de Soto to see what I mean!

It can be demonstrated that there are trillions of dollars of 'wealth' just from land ownership alone that does not appear in any wealth measures, because the corresponding countries do not have formal, legal ways to define and transfer ownership! This inability to tap into that wealth is a major barrier to investment, business expansion etc.

u/austinsible · 1 pointr/Socialpreneur

A lot of good ones have already been said but here are a few less famous ones...

A Farewell to Alms

The Mystery of Capital

The White Tiger: A Novel

u/casualfactors · 1 pointr/AskSocialScience

Actually, the development of private property rights is strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly associated with improvement of quality of life for the poor. I have yet to see any data suggesting there is any credible alternative to the market if your interest is a healthy and wealthy society.

On inequality I think Piketty and Piketty and Saez are probably about right, but there isn't that much variation across societies where "ownership of assets" varies. I'm prepared to argue that North Korea might stand as the world's most unequal society however (perhaps asymptotically so?), even though we lack for real data on the subject.

If your interest is in reducing inequality, you should probably be thinking more about taxing the stuff that the rich earn rather than eliminating the social construct of the rich owning stuff.

u/xu85 · 1 pointr/Futurology

I bought a book called The Sovereign Individual which is a kind of manual for how to adapt from the industrial age we live in to the upcoming information age we are entering, and how the free flow of information will render central governments useless in the future.

Is there a similar book that talks about future automation that makes predictions on how it will change society?

u/BitcoinAllBot · 1 pointr/BitcoinAll

Here is the post for archival purposes:

Author: Mangizz

Content:

>Hello guys, I've decided to express myself after reading this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7csoxe/confessions_of_a_core_supporter
before "leaving" bitcoin community for a little while and take care a bit more of my family :D

>I've almost the same story of this guy beside I've invested in Bitcoin sub 80$ before Mtgox crash, then I've experimented the bear market, and bought more around 250-500$ not rich enough at the time to be VERY rich right now, but more money this year that I would never expect to have in my life: Life changing money ;-)

>Like this guys, I remember how this community fascinated me, it was the first time in my life I was confronted to libertarian ideas, I'm French and it's not something you can really find on TV or in a random FR discussion at the time.

>But those ideas really expressed something I've always felt, I've always has been a rebel, always hated how gov, school treated me, and how banks and fiat system is keeping poor people, poor. Also always felt how the world working right now is simply outdated by internet and even more by Bitcoin.

>I've been fascinated by Satoshi nakamoto, long night thinking about who is him or what organization. By Amir Taaki, By Andreas, by Roger Ver also and by many people that were posting on /r/bitcoin at the time, fresh and revolutionnary ideas.

>I've so fascinated that I've decided to dig even more and started to read libertarien books, this one changed my life and convinced me crypto is the future: https://www.amazon.com/Sovereign-Individual-Mastering-Transition-Information/dp/0684832720

>Of course I've invested in Bitcoin to make money if there was 0 money to be made my story could have be different, and that's why I taught that it was impossible for BTC to fail. When you create something right, and you give incentive to make it works, it can't fail.

>But I've invested in Bitcoin by ideology more than something else. It took me a while to switch from French ideology communist to libertarian. I'm making this intro to show you where I'm standing and if you think like me back in the day we have probably more points in commun than anything else. Bitcoin has been my life for years now. Almost doing only this.

>I will probably leave crypto for 2018, Ive cashed out some Bitcoin, and I will just keep some with other things and hodl for my entiere life. But I will try to not read forum, reddit, or twitter anymore: I'm tired.

>I miss the pre and post Mtgox crash when we were a family Crypto against the world. After Ethereum the situation became more complex it was Bitcoin against Ethereum. Why not... But I don't accept the Bitcoin vs Bitcoin war and I don't want to be part of it anymore.

>Bitcoin / Bitcoin cash, 1, 2, 4mo blocks I DON'T CARE.

>The situtation we've created is insane, the manipulation is insane you put bitcoin at risk as a whole.

>Our ennemies are watching us and they could be right: Bitcoin is not good, only Blockchain technology is interesting, this is the risk we are taking right now.

>I don't care about 2mo blocks, and I regret that Bitcoin didn't respect NY agreement (it should have been signed by many more people, and by both communities: I was OK with the compromise, and a lot of you too I bet).

>I don't think Bitcoin cash replacing Bitcoin can be a good thing. Maybe for your portfolio guys, OK. But if Bitcoin cash replace Bitcoin how will you explain that Bitcoin is a store of value, a commodity, a fucking encrypted swiss bank accounts to evade their fiat ponzi scam.

>How will you explain the "misinformed" guys that invested in Bitcoin post fork will lose everything.

>I follow Roger ver on many things especially what he said about the network effect: Let's make Bitcoin cheap and useful for anyone, when everybody will use it, it will be too late to be stopped.

>I totally agree with that, but we totally had another option: Let's bank play with it and growth the value of Bitcoin, let's everyone hodl a bit of Bitcoin becoming a new asset class, and it would produce the exact same effect.

>If Bitcoin cash replace Bitcoin this will never happen, if Bitcoin cash replace bitcoin is not 2, 4 or 8mo block that will change ANYTHING if you want the world to own bitcoin and transacts on it, you need layers. Andreas explain it very well here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AecPrwqjbGw&t=1s

>I know the situation is way more complex than that. But I don't want to go too deep into technical details, this post is just to tell you that regrets Bitcoin family back in the day, mistakes have been made on both side. I don't know how it will ends, I don't see a world where Bitcoin cash replace Bitcoin is a good thing not after a few year bear market where we lose confidence of a lot of persons.

>I also don't see how it's possible to resolve this conflict. I think it's just part of human nature when money start to becomes too important. Like a family small business becoming an international firm. Pretty sure the family will split and hate will replace everything at the end. Sad.

>I don't know how you will receive this message i never post on /r/btc I'm just sharing how disapointed I'm, by bitcoin in general.

u/kareems · 1 pointr/liberalgunowners

The Sovereign Individual explores this concept quite interestingly.

u/olasaustralia · 1 pointr/india

Reading the Sovereign Individual after it came up on Peter Thiel's list of favourite books.

Very interesting book. Each paragraph will give you a new insight or has the wow factor. And I say this after reading plenty of non-fiction books

u/robertbowerman · 1 pointr/ukpolitics

And then they each personally make a lot of money. See the Rees-Mogg book The Sovereign Individual.

u/Enchilada_McMustang · 1 pointr/ColorizedHistory

https://www.amazon.com/Sovereign-Individual-Mastering-Transition-Information/dp/0684832720

It's a long book but it's so prophetic it gives goosebumps.

u/bearCatBird · 1 pointr/Bitcoin

Add Sovereign Individual to that list.

u/pizzaface18 · 1 pointr/Bitcoin

Here's another great read that mentions crypto-currency.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Sovereign-Individual-Transition-Information/dp/0684832720

u/kulmthestatusquo · 1 pointr/singularity

Actually William Rees Mogg predicted the rise of sovereign individuals more than 20 years ago

https://www.amazon.com/Sovereign-Individual-Mastering-Transition-Information/dp/0684832720

Musk and people like him will become sovereign individuals, answerable to nobody. Yes, these elite class will become godlike, and will really become gods thru transhumanistic methods.

u/Sashavidre · 1 pointr/singularity

> https://www.amazon.com/Sovereign-Individual-Mastering-Transition-Information/dp/0684832720


Thank you. I will add that book to my reading list.


So would you prefer sovereign individuals or an AI God?

u/neoliberalQuestions · 1 pointr/AskEconomics

One text on this topic that I've seen receive good reviews and have placed on my reading list is The Race Between Education and Technology, written by the economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz. Here's Daron Acemoglu and David Autor's review of it.

edit: another well received text would be Robert Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth. Here's William Nordhaus's review of it.

u/36yearsofporn · 1 pointr/Economics

I didn't read either of those two, but I did read Zero Sum Society and Zero Sum Solution when they were released. I know he gets a lot of flack for some of his ideas, but the issues he was popularizing at the time are still valid, IMO.

In fact, a recent Freakonomics episode featured Robert Gordon, author of The Rise and Fall of American Growth, which echoes some of the central themes of Thurow's.

Namely, that in a society with a low growth pattern, for one group in a society to prosper it inherently means another group must have their fortunes decline. Thurow predicted the growth in wealth inequality in the US, as the wealthiest would have their net worth increase at the expense of other stratifications of society.

Thurow is a very easy to read economist, which can be seen as both a strength and a weakness. I do hope you give some of his writings a chance. I have a great fondness for Thurow as a writer, even if I disagreed with some of his views.

u/Jaco99 · 1 pointr/PoliticalDiscussion

>The 1982 recession was worse than the 1991 or 2001 ones, so it took more growth to recover from.

Yes, and the 2008 recession was even worse, yet the economic bounceback was anemic. If the economy's ability to recover from recessions had remained statically dynamic for the past 30 years then there should have been a huge uptick in growth between 2009-2012ish. But there wasn't, and the rebound from the Great Recession was even worse when you remember that recoveries ought to be commensurate with the severity of the preceding recession. The pattern for the past 30 years is that the economy takes longer to recover from each successive recession even when accounting for the severity of that recession.

>Well yeah, because the postwar boom ended. That was never going to last forever.

Yes, but our expectations for individual opportunity and future quality of life increases are still based on those post-war norms of 3.6% GDP growth, 2.2%ish Real GDP/Capita growth, 2.2% productivity growth, high levels of job creation......etc. But it's very possible that those norms will never return.. And if people are forced to live in a world of drastically diminished economic growth in which normal working class people have fewer opportunities and there is less opportunity for upward mobility due to decreased economic churn then it would not be unrealistic to expect them to react by voting for angry populists who promise simple solutions for complex problems.

In fact, I'd say that has already begun.

u/Feurbach_sock · 1 pointr/PoliticalDiscussion
u/inquisitive872 · 1 pointr/badeconomics

The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World) http://www.amazon.com/The-Rise-Fall-American-Growth/dp/0691147728

u/BecomingTesla · 1 pointr/Rad_Decentralization

> So the Standing Rock protest is really about the entire expansion west...k, sure.

Yes, the present-day colonization of indigenous land happening at Standing Rock is directly related to the history of colonialism that founded the US. Your unwillingness to recognize such a blatantly obvious connection is likely because you're white settler colonist, and a racist.

> Western culture carries around the seeds of capitalism, but it also suffers from the same dumb greedy control freak nonsense as all others.

This is literally just nonsense. You haven't said anything.

> Slavery was a huge part of human history long before the US existed, it wasn't slavery that made the US into any sort of notable society.

Chattel slavery, particularly in regards to the cash crop of cotton, was the defining institution that fueled the development and wealth of early US capitalism; in 1860 the economic value invested in slaves was more than that invested in railroads, land, manufacturing combined. Without slavery - an institution that hasn't ended, by the way - there is no United States.

> All failed socialist and communist states are actually capitalist...got it.

Communism is literally defined as a society without a state, there are no communist states, and as I said, no state in history has argued that it is communist. They have argued that they're socialist, and yes, they were in fact state capitalism, a term defined by James Connolly in 1899 in "State Monopoly vs. Socialism," written two decades before the Russian Revolution. Your understanding of history is fucking terrible...

> If I build a machine that produces useful widgets and I buy materials to make said widgets with money that I earned and I hire someone to use my machine to rearrange my materials - how does the product magically become his?

If you build a simple machine with your own hands, it's yours. If you buy the materials for the widgets, those materials are yours. Now remind me, exactly how many hospitals, apartment buildings, houses, factories, railroads, mines, or regular land, was built by one person? Answer: none of them. They were all built by workers, with materials that were harvested and manufactured by workers, that were transported by other workers. Because workers do the fucking work. Owners do not do anything but own - that's why they're the owners. Workers did the labor to build those productive resources, and they should be owned in common by said workers, because no, oligarchs don't "build" anything - they use the State to seize land, and force the now-homeless workers into wage-labor for profit. Which is literally just history.

> If you hire someone to come in and wash and fold your clothes do they get to keep the clothes? Do they get to keep your washer?

I don't make a habit of renting other human beings like farm tools to do my labor for me. That's you, the capitalist. I wash and fold my own clothing like a big boy.

> Scarcity exists, exclusive control of things prevents the tragedy of the commons and actually makes it possible for more people to have more access to things than they otherwise would.

Tell that to the indigenous communities that lived through commons-based communities for hundreds of years before colonialism came here. The "tragedy of the commons" is not a thing, as noted by the '09 Nobel Prize winner in economics, Elinor Ostrom. You may want to read her work, if you're not a racist and a sexist.

> The point is that exclusive rights to things need to be obtained voluntarily, otherwise the guy with the biggest stick always owns everything

Not only is your "voluntary exclusive rights" not a historical aspect of capitalism, as proven by every strike in the history of the global labor movement, it's not even possible. You're welcome to explain to me how people voluntarily surrender their right to grow their own food on commonly-held land so that a single community member has access to it, and uses that right to force others into exploitative labor. I'll wait...

> Cooperatives and democracy don't scale well, there still has to be a respect for property, and a means for those organizations to interact and trade in order for those things to exist at all

Property rights are theft, cooperatives scale perfectly fine, and they don't need to scale to massive sizes to begin with. The focus of socialism is building self-sustained communities, not fictional political organizations like "nations", which are so large they are forced to be centralized to operate as a part of their structure.

> There has to be a language for communicating productive efficiency vs need and scarcity and all sorts of variables - money is that language and prices communicate far more about certain economic realities than any central planner or group of central planners could possibly account for.

LMFAO! Yeah, capitalism just reeks of efficiency, never mind it's ability to take ecological and social variables into consideration! /s

> No, like the power a politician or bureaucrat has to tell others how to live their lives. Arbitrary third party authority over other people's dealings.

Yeah, so like landlords, or factory owners.

> If I grow oranges and you make knives and I want to trade 20 of my oranges for one of your knives and that sounds good to you, then no third party should be able to come in and demand some amount of knives or oranges before they will allow said trade to happen - and nothing changes if you sell your knives to others for money which you then exchange for my oranges. We don't owe anything to any uninvolved third party.

Where in this entire nonsense about trade have you addresses the relationship between the worker and the owner? I was exactly right, wasn't I? You've spent your entire life saying that people like Obama and things like nationalized healthcare are socialism, haven't you? Because you clearly have no idea what socialists are actually interested in. If you grow apples and someone makes knives, and you two want to trade that shit amongst each other, do it all you want. Know what you can't do? Seize all of the land through violence, force me into a condition of homelessness and starvation, force ME to grow the apples for YOU, take the apples, pay me a wage that is less than the value of the apples, and then trade them for knives. There is no "voluntary agreement" between workers and employers. I have to work for someone, or I don't pay rent and I don't have bread. That's not voluntary. I don't choose to work. I have to or I starve. That is the literal process that formed the industrial workforce in Britain during the emergence of industrial capitalism, and it was replicated throughout the entire colonized world. Trade whatever the fuck you want, so long as the product you're selling is actually the product of your work, not someone else who was forced to work for you to feed themselves.

> If I build a second house to rent or add an apartment to my garage, I am not obligated to give you access to my house or apartment for free. Selling access to shelter is no different than selling oranges or knives. A lot of work and money was required to create said shelter.

(a) you didn't build the house, the workers in your community who you hired did (b) you built a second house solely to deny access to it from those who need it, unless they can pay you - you're a social parasite (c) people could build their own shelter, with their own hands, if the resources to do that were held in common, which they aren't (d) the utility of the house, and the upkeep to maintain the house, are used/done entirely by the occupant; the owner does nothing, and provides nothing.

> Yes, there have been millions, even billions, of ignorant people who wanted something for nothing - that doesn't mean any of them were correct.

TIL that demanding the full value of the product you produce through your own labor, or demanding a democratically-owned and managed workplace, is "wanting something for nothing." Again, you think socialism == higher taxes, because you don't know what socialism is. Are you a worker, or a business owner?

u/dopplerdog · 1 pointr/todayilearned

A great book on this topic is The Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano. It doesn't exclusively deal with Britain, though - it also deals with Spain and the US, and explains how European colonial powers and the US arranged matters to ensure their own profit and the impoverishment of Latin America.

It's a polarising book, written from the left of the political spectrum. If you are conservative, you may not like it, but at least it'll give you the history - even if you don't agree with the conclusions.

u/somedudegeekman · 1 pointr/tech

> Yes, there is a lot of progress to be made, but technological advancement is very much part of it, and the problems aren't with the fact that technology renders human labor obsolete, the problem is with how we handle the new situation.

I agree with this very much. We are already seeing employment suffer as a result of a lack of imagination. It's going to get worse as robotic technology gets better. I've read several books on this sort of thing, but the one I think gave the best high level picture was this: http://www.amazon.com/The-Second-Machine-Age-Technologies/dp/1480577472 (Don't worry, it's not too pessimistic. :))

RE: Repairing democracy. I truly hope you are right...I have kids.

u/hephaestusness · 1 pointr/changemyview

I am a robotics engineer as well, and troubled by this very problem I have spent the last few years researching this, culminating with a 2 hour, 1 on 1 discussion with Paul Volcker.

The basic thesis that i discussed with him was from The second Machine Age by economist from MIT. It says that automation combined with adaptive software (IE the cool stuff in automation) is advancing on a non linear curve, faster than humans could possibly re-train to get new skills. The nature of the machines being so capable means that they are replacing literally everything people could productively do. Even engineering is on the chopping block, in less time than it would take you to retire, btw...

This means the jobs eliminated by automation are not being replaced, and probably could never be.

That means you, but more generally all citizens, bear the responsibility for dealing with this imbalance problem. I run a makerspace Technocopia that tries to develop open source automation towards a goal of everyone having access to thier own mini factory capible of producing most nessissities.

One could also advocate for Basic Income and use the existing industrial automation framework, although that would be less efficient for most products vs local production but good for complex high volume things like processors.

You could also advocate for a "market solution" where the "excessive commodities are written off to clear the market", also known as a starvation genocide/ actual genocide.

Since the default path of society is "market solution", knowing inaction in a democracy carried a direct burden of responsibility. This means the choices you make do matter, and if you are unhappy with the responsibility, do not live in a democracy.

u/NemesisPrimev2 · 1 pointr/Futurology
u/minhthemaster · 1 pointr/Economics

Any good info on the longterm consequences of this? Poor Economics would seem to recommend NOT doing this.

u/phdre · 1 pointr/changemyview

I recommend a book called Poor Economics which deals directly with the idea that being poor is 'the poor's own fault.'

There are poverty traps and institutional frameworks which may conspire in a way to make life very difficult. It may not take a lot for an individual to be able to improve their economic situation - even a one time no strings attached payment can strongly improve a poor individual's economic situation. Source

Page 19 and onwards of this document provide answers to each one of your issues.

u/johnmannn · 1 pointr/todayilearned

This is discussed in Poor Economics. When the poor are asked why they don't invest in things like bed nets, more nutritious food, and fertilizer, they say it's because they have no money. But when they do have money, they spend it on relative luxuries like TV and eating out. Even subsidizing investments don't work as well as one would expect. What does work is making it easy or even forcing investment/savings. There's the story of one woman who takes out loans at 20+% interest and deposits them in a savings account at 4% interest which seems stupid but it's her ingenious way of disciplining herself. She knows she wouldn't voluntarily save on her own but she needs to make the monthly payments on the loan. She's paying someone to force her to save.

u/djk29a_ · 1 pointr/Showerthoughts

Kicking away the ladder is something that privileged groups have been doing for a long time even on a geopolitical basis

While there is some truth to the original thought, it may be misguided because the prior generations may not be the correct generations to point your fingers at. All these programs for seniors are really peculiar when they're not the most vulnerable financially of demographics in the US by any measure

u/beginnerdraw · 1 pointr/explainlikeimfive

Chairman Mao died in 1976. This came after 10 years of the ‘cultural revolution’, an economically disastrous movement that sought to further entrench communism in the country. In 1978 Deng Xiaoping took over and it is from this point that China started on its course of development/capitalism.
Foreign money, often from Chinese Disapora (known as the bamboo network) flooded into China.
China did not go for outright free market liberalisation. No. Infant industries were protected from foreign competition behind high import tariffs (average of 55% in the 1980s) and firms were given state support through low interest loans in order to develop certain industries. Industries like manufacturing. China became the world’s manufacturer (particularly of low-tech goods but they may soon move up the value chain and produce more high tech goods). Furthermore they put in place capital controls to stop money from leaving China.
Importantly, if China had been a member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which it only became in 2001, it would not have been able to hide behind high tariff barriers to protect infant industries.
This book by Ha-Joon Change talks about how the US and UK developed by nurturing industries behind high tariff barriers, but now promote the idea of trade liberalisation, which is at odds with how they developed (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Institutions-Globalization/dp/1843310279/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1285252397&sr=1-1)
China would also stipulate that foreign firms had to do a certain amount of technology transfer (another thing that you can’t do so easily when you are in the WTO).
China’s growth was quick. “China has set a new record – per capita GDP in China doubled within only 9 years between 1978 and 1987, and doubled again in another 9 years between 1987 and 1996” (Cai Fang and Wang Meiyan, ‘How Fast and How Far Can China’s GDP Grow?’, China : An Economics Research Study Series, vol. 3, 2004, p. 2.)
China used its huge trade surplus to prop up the US spending boom. So Americans buy Chinese stuff, with money borrowed from China, that China got from Americans buying their stuff.
TLDR: In 1978 China decided to follow a capitalist route. Foreign money, often from Chinese overseas flooded into the country. Infant industries were protected from competition from other countries behind high tariff barriers. China was able to do this because it wasn’t in the WTO. China integrated itself into the global economy without free trade liberalization.

u/offensivebuttrue_ · 1 pointr/worldnews

I'd say look up quantitative easing on wikipedia then youtube. Maybe just youtube. If you read something and it doesn't seem to make sense just follow up on it.

Hmm and probably learn about how Western nations stifle the development of developing countries. http://www.amazon.com/dp/1843310279
That book and others by Ha-Joon Chang are pretty good.

Are you American? Matt Talibi is good, all the stuff I read isn't for people without trading knowledge.

www.nakedcapitalism.com is good but the author is there to cover news for the knowledgeable so it probably won't make sense to you

u/itacirgabral · 1 pointr/Iota

>If I expend energy carrying a rock down a mountain does my labor give it value?

I would like individual losses to be socialized to encourage a culture of innovation. Money should always pay your material cost but the maslow's head decides what have value, scredules objectives and propose improvements.

​

>forces of supply and demand inform the market of what goods and services are desired by the economy and how much profit there is to be made in goods and services

Free marketing gold rule I guess. "Please dont bail out banks". Aka Privatizing Profits And Socializing Losses of big ones.

"Development Strategy in Historical Perspective" say:

>(...) His conclusions are compelling and disturbing: that developed countries are attempting to 'kick away the ladder' with which they have climbed to the top, thereby preventing developing countries from adopting policies and institutions that they themselves have used.

u/lMYMl · 1 pointr/HighQualityGifs

Relevant and highly recommended: "Kicking Away the Ladder"

u/bkzen · 1 pointr/lostgeneration
u/socontroversial · 1 pointr/worldnews

Yo, you need to read about tariffs and why developed countries have all had tariffs in the past. https://www.amazon.com/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Development-Perspective/dp/1843310279

You're just being greatly mislead by politicians.

u/Moronicmongol · 1 pointr/ukpolitics

> Lmao, imagine writing that wall of text an then breezing over significant point in the 20th century with "got smashed up" like the investment and reforms it brought about isn't directly responsible for Japan's thriving economy.

And the significant difference between Astante Kingdom and Japan? Japan wasn't colonised.

> Korea emerged from Japanese rule as an agrarian society.

And what happened in the 60s? They returned to the growth rates as before because of the policies I outlined. State intervention, death penalty for capital flight. As did every developed country including this one and the United States.

The United States was the most protectionist country in history, when it was at the peak of its powers it started touting free-trade.

If anyone wants to read the history:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Development-Institutions/dp/1843310279

u/khangharoth · 1 pointr/india

This comment becomes significant for you if you have read http://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity-ebook/dp/B0058Z4NR8

u/Hayekian_Order · 1 pointr/changemyview

Since you seem quite interested in the topic, I will not be able to write out all the compelling arguments and data on this forum. If, however, you are still curious, the book The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830 by T.S. Ashton outlines quite well the conditions of the Industrial Revolution.

As for the correlation between the GDP per capita and the standard of living, I do not mean this as an ad hominem attack, but if anyone truly believed that, then they are free to give away their income to pre-Industrial Revolution levels. More income means greater ability to buy better food, medicine, and education.

This statement is also curious:
> Also in the creation of industrial capitalism people had their access to land removed as exited in the medieval ages and so weren't able to produce their own food.

The medieval ages had feudalism and serfdom.

I do not understand why colonialism was brought up, as I did not bring it up and do not defend it, but in fact, abhor it; nor was it mentioned in the original post. There has been great work done by economists Acemoglu and Robinson detailing the deleterious effects of colonialism to the colonizers and the colonies and the ensuing effects it has on current institutions (see Why Nations Fail). In addition to being morally wrong, slavery did not make America rich (see Gallman and Easterlin). You brought up American cotton and textiles, which presumably alludes to the belief that cotton produced through slavery was the foundation of the American economic, especially for the South. Again, the myth of King Cotton was proven by Olmstead and Rhode.

Now, it is true that technology has good and bad aspects, my previous statements do not deny that. It is, however, difficult to deny the benefits of the modern fertilizer, the MRI machine, vaccines and antibiotics, and the artificial heart--just to name a few.

u/Indigoes · 1 pointr/financialindependence

Well, arguing that you “should” have a moral compunction to do anything is a virtually impossible task, because morals are internal motivation. I can try to appeal to those morals through guilt (which you don’t like), though calculating marginal utility and appealing to your sense of community (the EA approach, which you don’t like), or by demonstrating that you did benefit from other people (which I will continue to try). But if you truly believe that you are entitled to everything you have and not only owe nothing to people to whom you profited from (because that’s the way the world works) and do not wish to address disparities even though the cost to you is much less than the benefit to someone else (because it’s yours and you worked for it), then you are free of moral compunction and I can’t change your mind. That’s why this is usually the provenance of religion, which promises a punishment from a higher being to encourage what many societies have defined as “the right thing to do.”

First, I would like to agree with you about capitalism as a force for good. The expansion of globalized trade and capitalist economies has made the people on this planet healthier and wealthier than at any other time in human history. Those gains have been distributed, but they have not been equally distributed, and as a result, there is massive global inequality both between and within nations. And actually, the OECD suggests economic strategies by which lessened inequality promotes more growth, growing the pie for everyone (so the pursuit of maximizing only profits at the expense of other developments is not necessarily the greatest global good).

That being said, I will address your three points.

The most important is #2. The idea of “business-friendly values” is a very popular one, but values alone cannot make an economy thrive (or a government or a society) without institutions that protect and promote those values. It is not at all clear that implementing “western values” create prosperity in any kind of automatic way, and certainly not without protective institutions. In addition, it is rare for people in positions of power to voluntarily give up that power, and so disenfranchised people tend to remain disenfranchised. I would say that in your example of immigrants that come to the “Western world” and prosper can do so not because of their values, but because of the institutions that allow that to happen. I suggest Acemoglu and Robinson's Why Nations Fail and Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion as further reading.

It’s also part of the reason that innovation tends to come from a subset of economies. Countries that innovate, have good institutions, and invest in education tend to have more innovators, find a balance between protection of profit and distribution, and make more innovators. There is also an incentive to oppress innovation on discoveries outside of the original innovation centers, which is why we have overzealous patent protection and unequal business agreements that use proprietary tech (Point #1).

Which brings me to the idea that international business can perpetuate disenfranchisement. Many companies use economic power to subvert the power of the people in order to protect their profits, whether through appropriating the use of force or through lobbying elected officials. BP lobbied the US and the UK to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Iran to prevent oil fields from being nationalized (and resource profits sent overseas) in 1953. The United Fruit Company convinced the Eisenhower administration to overthrow the government of Guatemala in 1954 to avoid agrarian reform policies. In 2007, Chiquita banana admitted to funding a terrorist organization in Colombia to protect their interests. Domino Sugar today refuses to comply with labor protections in the CAFTA agreements, using disenfranchised Haitian-Dominicans to harvest sugarcane (part 1) (part 2). Conflict minerals in the DRC and Zimbabwe are still used in a large proportion of electronics. Nestle still uses child labor to harvest cacao in the Ivory Coast.

Rich countries are not immune. Fossil fuel lobbying in the US is a real and problematic thing that is bad for the earth and bad for the green energy industry.

So though it’s true that you did not personally oppress any Tanzanians or Iranians or Koreans (or Guatemalans or Colombians or Haitian-Americans or Congolese or Zimbabweans or Cote-d’Ivorians) (Point #1), if you made money as a shareholder of those companies (or consumed their products), then you profited from the unethical behavior of those companies. As a direct result of those business decisions, people in other countries received less money and you received more. Period. I don’t think that this necessarily makes you a perpetrator, but I think that it does make you complicit.

If you consider this kind of capitalistic profiteering ethical (or “the way the world works”), I can agree that you do not have a moral compunction to support disenfranchised people and reject these company behaviors. However, if you think that any of these actions are morally wrong, then you should feel guilty from profiting off of them. (And I am speaking explicitly about investment income here).

Even if you do not profit from stocks in those companies, you may profit as a consumer – when you buy cheap gas or bananas. Taxes that the companies paid may have supported your elementary school. Benefits from medical protections may have been reinvested in new therapies that cured your grandmother’s cancer. The global economy is complex. But generally, the people who are already rich are those who reap a larger share of the benefits.

If you believe that this is morally acceptable (or “the way the world works”), then you do not have a moral compunction to donate to charity.

However, if you do have a problem with these behaviors and you feel morally uncomfortable with the results, you have two routes to address the issues, and both routes should be followed at the same time: to ameliorate the effects through global giving AND to pursue system reform to make it stop happening.

u/nickik · 1 pointr/DebateaCommunist

There are many things but there is one that is most importend. It does not explain why it happend around 1990 or many other things but it is the reason behind all of it.

Innovation

The USSR had some growth in between 1930 and 1960 but after that it didn't grow any more. There is tones of economic theory to explain this, I will link some resources.

First I hope that it is clear that the USSR was a extractive regim, a lot of people worked few profited. Economic theory predicts that if you have a extractiv regim you will not grow in most cases.

The USSR did grow for a time but then growth stoped and no attemped to change that by any of the leaders changed this. The USSR had growth because of forced industrialisation, this process is however not substanable.

Substanable growth only happens threw innovation and the USSR just did not have the insentiv structure to do that.

Without growth the massiv amount of resource extraction for the few and the millitary could no longer be substaned and eventully the system collapst. The process how happend is just a symptem of the underlying problem not the cause.

It could have happend 10 years earlyer or 50 latter but without changing the social and economic structure the USSR could not be substained.


This book provides a good overview why nations fail or succed, http://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Prosperity-ebook/dp/B0058Z4NR8

The theory is rather 'thin' in that it does not say you need to do X or Y. It is a more general observation of how extractiv or inclusive a regim is. The support there theory with tons of historical examples, including USSR.

Edit: To be a little clearer in how USSR was extractive, the USSR worked diffrent then most people think. I think some of the essays in the book linked below would help to make the point clear. I would suggest, chapter 8 to 11 specially 8.

Calculation and Coordination (http://library.mises.org/books/Peter%20J%20Boettke/Calculation%20and%20Coordination%20Essays%20on%20Socialism%20and%20Transitional%20Political%20Economy.pdf)



Edit 2:

To go a bit into the points you mentiond.


1. Lenin in 1918 to 1921 failed too. Its not like its all stalin. Most of the growth (look at the data) was acctually in the time of stalin. It is true that implmented a bad structure but the reason he did that is to make his planes work. You can not have forced industrialization where everybody can do what he wants. The reason the USSR grew was forced industrialization and this does not work without controll. So what I conclude is that if stalin did do what he did he would never have been able to stay in power or put threw his planes.

2. All the leaders after statlin had the same problems. They all tried to do revisions because if the worked it would secure there power. If the USSR economy would have worked leaders would not have to do all these chances and could have just said that they are the reason everything worked. This infighting was harmful to the USSR and let do the collaps, but the intressting question is why this happend in the first place. Here is where rent seeking in a extractiv regim comes in. Do you guys really belive that if not for Khrushchev, the USSR would have been happly ever after?

3. This arugment fail in many ways. Many people pointed out that you can not have a plan economy (specially not the war communism time economy) and have it work in a democratic way. If you look at chapter 8 of the book above you will see that it has infact a lot in common with state capitalism or mercantilism, to make money people did not help others, they went to the state and asked for favers (rent seeking and lobbying).

Many socialist still think it is possible to have a state controlled economy with a peaceful democracy. I would argue that this is not possible, look at public choice economics or read Road to Serfdom by Hayek (specially the chapter on democracy and planning).

4. Here I would just say that a system that does only work if you allready have a well working system is avoid the problem and it is idiotic. If I have a system that brings growth I would just stay with that system. If socialism really works and is a good alternativ to capitalism I want to see a poor society to become rich with socialim.

I know what marx said but I think its idiotic. Sure if the US became socialist tomorrow you would have a relativly rich socialist society but that does not really say much about the ability of socialism to creat or substain wealth.

If you can creat weath with socialism (special central planning) has been douted in many fundamental ways and many of the crtics still wait for a solution.

5. This is vage. I would just say that if you want a world where no more scarcity exists I would agree that central planning socialism will never ever lead you there. I think you can have a society like the on in the USSR where people live under a form of socialism for hunderts of year but I think it will never become a rich society.



u/pierredude · 1 pointr/Economics
u/ConcejalAlbondiga · 1 pointr/argentina

Noruega es la excepción que confirma la regla casualmente. Muchos autores lo atribuyen a que Noruega ya había desarrollado instituciones democráticas sólidas mucho antes de encontrar petróleo. Nosotros no tenemos esa solidez institucional (como bien lo demostró la última década).

Pero si mirás el resto de los países con estados que alimentan sus arcas de la extracción más que del cobro de impuestos, vas a ver que en general se trata de dictaduras, o por lo menos de autoritarismos. Ejemplo: Gran parte de los países de medio oriente, Venezuela, Rusia... Recomeindo el libro "Why Nations Fail" (que habla bastante del caso noruego - y de Argentina) y que en mi opinión presenta la teoría mejor lograda sobre la relación entre democratización y libertad, y recursos naturales.

u/rambo77 · 1 pointr/hungariannews

Magyarul- soha? Nem hiszem, hogy valaha is megkozelitjuk oket. Nemcsak a sajat inkompetenciank es korrupcionk miatt- nekik nagyon nincs erdekeben a dolog. (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Development-Institutions/dp/1843310279 elegge informativ volt az ugyben.)

u/neilmcc · 1 pointr/politics

>Can you explain to me what you mean by much more free market back then?

It would take a while to look at all sectors of the economy, but just look at the health sector.

>Would you argue any and all regulation is bad ?

I would argue that. This book written by a socialist exposes just this fact that regulations are anti-competitive and corrupt.

u/ISeeDemSheeple · 1 pointr/politics

> "industries can be trusted to regulate themselves"

Lol. Kudos to you for keeping at it with someone who is so obviously and blatantly a shithead troll.

I feel like you deserve better than I've been giving you. For being so patient and all.

So: firstly, libertarians are not a unified block as all that. Any more than communists are a unified block who all think alike (there are Marxists, non-Marxists, Leninists, Maoists, Trotskyites, etc etc).

http://c4ss.org/content/12938

Secondly, on the issue of regulations, the question is not so much what corporations would do if left unregulated - the question is actually much more immediate. It's who controls the government NOW, and what are they using government's regulatory power for. Now and in the past.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Triumph-Conservatism-Reinterpretation-1900-1916/dp/0029166500

You should bear in mind, the real difference between liberals like you, and radicals like communists and libertarians isn't one over preferred policies. Radicals don't believe our current system (capitalist + statist) to be workable, at all. I.e. rather than this being some sort of democracy, it's actually a plutocratic kleptocracy/oligarchy, with control maintained with heavy doses of propaganda and emotional manipulation of sheeple. Including disinformation about radical factions like communists, and yes, libertarians.

I shan't defend libertarians further. I'm actually not one myself, or an ideologue of any stripe. I believe that efforts to formulate a "perfect" or even just "right" ideology are futile and doomed to failure. I just think that because libertarians are a small and despised minority, they're powerless and not really the problem. That's more likely you liberals. After all, what has the result of your liberalism been? You guys voted for this, not libertarians.

u/perchesonopazzo · 1 pointr/worldnews

Well we have hundreds of books that you haven't read, and you continue to repeat the assertions of the same self described economist who I am very familiar with and I have reread very recently.

Marx's definition of capitalism is private ownership of the means of production. When the largest government in the history of the world steals tax money and gives it to the wealthiest firms in society, there is nothing capitalist about it. It is simply mercantilism and welfare for the the rich. You have absolutely no idea what the tradition I'm coming from is based on, which is the voluntary acceptance of the concept that property rights are the most just manner of resolving claims to scarce resources in a given area. The recognition that the state is not the spirit of the people, but a criminal organization that will inevitably hand favors out to the wealthiest people in society.

The economic school I am convinced by bases its explanation for economic collapse and the business cycle on exactly the type of behavior you describe: the creation of fraudulent fiduciary media leading to artificial expansion of credit and the malinvestment we have experienced since the crash which will certainly lead to a larger crisis.

This is not capitalist behavior to save capitalism, this is fascist behavior to sustain the growth of the state. When American Progressivism rose to popularity along with Nazism and Fascism in the early 1900's, it too did so on the back of Right-Hegelianism and propaganda claiming the death of laissez-faire and the need for a central body to manage the inequity of markets.

A lot of the historical work I value covering this period comes from the New Left, actually, like Gabriel Kolko's https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-Conservatism-Reinterpretation-American-1900-1916/dp/0029166500

This is the prevailing system in the US, where the income tax didn't exist and the government was a shadow of its current self prior to Wilson and FDR.

I'm not going to play dumb and misrepresent Marxism, I disagree with the LTV and the historical process exactly how it is written. If you want to make dismissive blanket assertions about a tradition that has all of its literature available for free all over the internet, much like Marxism, you should at least learn enough about it to know what it is. Or just ignore it... But you don't have any clue about the ideas you're criticizing.

u/prances_w_sheeple · 1 pointr/politics

> It's a big government that has been purchased and is currently being run by big corporations.

The corporate form is relatively recent (4, 5 centuries?) so let's generalize it to "the rich."

The problem is, if you study history, governments have pretty much always been associated with the rich. It is an institution that is either created by, or controlled by the rich, or in cases where the government is imposed by those who control military force, the guys who control it in very short order become "the rich" and use their control of government to make that state of affairs permanent.

As far as corporations are concerned - don't forget how corporations are created. By a State Charter. I.e. corporations are entities created when the government bends the rules and exempts some rich people from liability laws for some of their investment/business activities.

So there is a case to be made that government supporters are ultimately responsible for the problem of corporations.

> Big corporations that Ron Paul wants to further remove regulations from.

How did those corporations get so big? Who controlled the government when it enacted those regulations? So what purpose do those regulations really serve?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Triumph-Conservatism-Reinterpretation-1900-1916/dp/0029166500

http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Rule-Investment-Competition-Money-Driven/dp/0226243176

> Just as thinking the problem is only democrat or only republican caused

I don't think that. The vast majority of you liberals or Democrats think that. That is a big part of the reason why I yell at you.

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1i6ac5/wounded_soldier_writes_letter_about_being_forced/cb1mwdd?context=3

> thinking Ron Paul the deregulatory is the solution shows that you just aren't paying attention.

Of course he's not "the solution." But his campaign in 2008 and 2012 were probably the best efforts to back, to make things better.

Because corporate/Wall Street scam #1 is imperialism.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/

And a guy who is speaking out against that, in front of Republican audiences, is pure fucking gold.

> Why do you think Ron Paul is the only "crazy" the media allows to have even a small voice?

The media has to maintain the illusion we're a free country with a free media. So they can't simply ignore a movement of a couple million people. It's the same sort of stuff they do with #OWS or anti-war rallies. They can't completely bury it, so they either play down the numbers (i.e. anti-war rallies with hundreds of thousands of people made to look like it was "only" 50 thousand) or portray them like crazy kooks (Ron Paul, #OWS).

http://www.businessinsider.com/jon-stewart-ron-paul-media-video-2011-8

u/ReasonThusLiberty · 1 pointr/Anarcho_Capitalism

Ouch, tough, man. It's always a delicate balance between living in your own bubble (http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/03/my_beautiful_bu.html) and making compromises to expand your circle of friends.

As to how to argue more easily, see

http://voluntaryistreader.wordpress.com/2012/12/22/success-socratic-style/

This will allow you to exploit the weaknesses in your opponent's arguments more easily.

As to the actual topics mentioned, here's what I have:

  1. You need to press him on which ones they are. This book is a good overview of why essentially all government regulations suck:

    http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2006/9/monetarypolicy%20winston/20061003

  2. Check out the article I linked above. I apply the Socratic Method to the claim that deregulation caused the Great Recession

  3. To fix this misconception, you need to understand the competitive process:

    http://thelibertyhq.org/learn/index.php?articleID=257&parentID=32

    Working conditions are just another condition of employment besides wages, and is set by supply and demand. Furthermore, about OSHA - see the book linked in #1. It shows that OSHA has had no statistically significant impact on safety. You could also try http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-handbook-policymakers/1999/9/hb106-34.pdf

    On occupational licensing and other licensing, see

    http://econjwatch.org/articles/occupational-licensing-scant-treatment-in-labor-texts

    http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/06/your_sort_is_pr.html

    http://t.co/WQKpPYM8Kw

    As well as the book in #1. Summary of all of the above: licensing is useless at best.

  4. This might be a good starting point: http://www.cato-unbound.org/2008/11/10/roderick-t-long/corporations-versus-market-or-whip-conflation-now

    After that, try http://www.amazon.com/The-Triumph-Conservatism-Reinterpretation-1900-1916/dp/0029166500

    The above book is written by a socialist historian who actually argues that competition was alive and kicking during the Guilded Age, and that it was the big corporations which asked government for more regulations to control competition.

  5. He got that big because he was simply good. He lowered prices and increased quality. Claims of predatory pricing are baseless, upon an economic analysis. See my writeup about Standard Oil on the Mises Wiki: http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Standard_Oil

  6. Start with http://mises.org/daily/2317#1

    Also, point out that the actually bad robber barons got big through help from the government.

  7. See #2. Also, read Meldown, by Tom Woods: http://www.amazon.com/Meltdown-Free-Market-Collapsed-Government-Bailouts/dp/1596985879

    See http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/deregulation-caused-the-financial-crisis/

    and http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/did-deregulation-cause-the-financial-crisis/

  8. Well, it wouldn't be just ostracism. The police would still get the money back...

  9. Reasons are mixed, I suppose. I don't know enough about Civil War history. You might want to read DiLorenzo on the issue, though I have also heard from some libertarians that he is sometimes dishonest in how he presents the facts.

  10. The facts speak - real per-student funding has more than doubled in the last 30 years with no impact on scores. If full socialism works in education (as is essentially currently the case, and as your friend suggests would be nice), why not have the entire economy be socialistically planned?

    More about education: http://thelibertyhq.org/learn/index.php?listID=9

    If you want to see the Socratic Method in action, check out this convo of mine:

    http://libertyhq.freeforums.org/socratic-method-in-action-t477.html

    But once again, I highly recommend reading my article linked in #1. It's a super helpful debate tactic.

    Edit: Screw automatic fixing of numbering.
u/Seamus_OReilly · 1 pointr/AskHistorians

I forget if it deals with unionism, and it's written by a committed socialist, but you may want to check out The Triumph of Conservatism. It covers with the reforms of the Progressive Era in a very critical manner.

Cue some actual historian to tell me how discredited it is...

u/SpiritofJames · 1 pointr/Anarcho_Capitalism

You want to be armed with Gabriel Kolko's work:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Triumph-Conservatism-Reinterpretation-1900-1916/dp/0029166500

He's a respected Marxist historian who argues that the progressive era was anything but, and happens to agree with the libertarian account of the "history of capitalism" that government/big-business collusion created the heavily regulated and largely cartelized economic structures of the twentieth century in the US.

u/libfascists · 1 pointr/politics

A couple of books that buttress these findings:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0029166500

("Progressive" regulations are a myth. Most such regulations were actually implemented at the behest of big business interests, to reduce destructive (to their profits) competition and to set up de facto cartels)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0226243176

(The policy outcomes the political system produces are a result of special interest and business groups investing in the political system)

Why such outcomes:

Most libs focus almost exclusively on campaign financing, donations, and super-PACs. The problem is possibly even worse than that. We have an extremely sophisticated system of bribery, where political favors are rewarded later:

http://www.republicreport.org/2012/make-it-rain-revolving-door/

(This focuses exclusively on lobbyists, but there is nothing stopping something similar being done by hiring ex-politicians as consultants, corporate officers, giving them seats on corporate boards. Similar things can be done with advisers and staff members to politicians - see how Robert Rubin and Larry Summers were rewarded by Wall Street after the Clinton admin. And you can hire them first, then have them go back to politics, and back and forth - see Dick Cheney and Halliburton)

As far as campaign donations, super-PACs, etc, are concerned, my own $0.02. Note a billionaire who gives $1m to a party, or a partisan political organization, etc, is going to be rewarded with access, attention, and influence. On the other hand, if you and 30,000 "little people" friends of yours each chip in $100 to give to a campaign or a party, do you know what you will get? Spam.

The whole system is rife, shot through with asymmetries like this. Consider that just by being wealthy and successful, rich people (or their agents, like Summers, Rubin, Greenspan, etc) are rewarded with the presumption that they're experts and specially knowledgeable about their fields. Few stop to consider the way their incentive system is set up, and the systemic consequences of political action to "help" their industry thrive.

So. The study is undoubtedly right. The conclusions are supported not just by empirical observations and data, but also by careful consideration of the nitty-gritty details of how the political system works.

Implications: the real problem people are NOT the voters and the bases of the two parties. They are the rich, and the politicians themselves, who are to a man corrupt. I.e. it is not the Tea Partiers. It is people like Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, etc, whose incentive structures, after all, are wired EXACTLY like people like George Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain, Mitch McConnell, and John Boehner's.

Despite the obvious logic of this, the two parties' bases continue to focus on each other. See e.g. the constant non-stop hate directed at Tea Partiers and conservatives by liberals. This is a product of manipulation by the two parties' propaganda systems - I repeat, if you hate Tea Partiers, and think they're the problem, not that Obama and the Democrats are venal and self-serving just like Republican politicians, and that you got stupidly scammed by Obama and the Democrats, then you're a victim of brainwashing and propaganda.

How this propaganda system works is actually excellently illustrated by r/politics. The constant stream of anti-GOP, anti-conservative, anti-Tea Party posts and articles works like "Two Minute Hate" from 1984. Remember, the best, sophisticated propaganda works not at the knowledge/information level, but at the emotional level - you can see this in how, e.g.corporate advertising has advanced from mainly information based in the late 19th/early 20th century, to more lifestyle/identity/emotional appeal and manipulation today. I repeat, the real problem with the propaganda system is not the torrent of false information being fed to Tea Party rubes (although to be sure, that is harmful and dangerous as well), it is in how your emotions, how you relate to leaders and institutions and organizations like Barack Obama, the Democratic or Republican party, liberal democracy, capitalism, the US government, the United States, the UN, etc, are shaped and manipulated.

Finally, the obvious impossibility of making a politico-economic system like ours work acceptably, democratically, in a way that produces rational responses to changing conditions (rather than corrupt rent-extraction policies to benefit whichever special interest group's turn it is at the trough) suggests that liberalism is not a legitimate, real ideology. Rather just like mainstream conservatism, an artifact of the propaganda system, a series of lies and conditioning designed to constrain people's political behavior within acceptable norms, and to shape, channel their reaction and anger at constantly deteriorating conditions and injustices in a direction that is safe and acceptable to the system, the establishment, and the ruling class.

u/BrynJones · 1 pointr/startups

There has never been more information available to aspiring entrepreneurs, which is great, but make sure you research the source before following any advice.

Learn from successful entrepreneurs; read blogs and watch their fireside interviews, but be weary of advice that comes from people who claim they contribute to the ecosystem.

Recommendations:

Mark Suster's Blog

Ben Horowitz's Blog

PandoDaily's YouTube Channel - Sarah Lacy does great for fireside interviews.

Clayton Christensen's book The Innovator's Dilemma is also a great resource.

u/Innovative_Wombat · 1 pointr/OkCupid
u/PM_ME_BOOBPIX · 1 pointr/stocks

> I can’t figure out why a high valued company with a negative free cash flow is thriving a lot better than the others.

It has to do with Disruption and Innovation. This book will give you 1/2 of the answer, the business half; the other half is how the finance world and Wall Street valued these companies.

u/bkdotcom · 1 pointr/atheism

Leave this book on a few desks:

u/himynameis_ · 1 pointr/business

Try to learn from other success stories like Amazon for instance. Also, I've heard this is a good book, The Innovator's Dilemma

u/sacundim · 1 pointr/programming

http://www.amazon.com/The-Four-Pillars-Investing-Portfolio/dp/0071747052

EDIT: This is an excellent short summary/review of the book. Not a substitute for it, but should help you decide whether to take my recommendation or not.

u/SapientChaos · 1 pointr/portfolios
u/can0peners · 1 pointr/personalfinance
  • Read this book: Four Pillars of Investing it will give you a very good overview and help you develop an investing plan.
  • keep about 6 months worth of expenses in the bank
  • With the left over, fill out your 2011 and 2012 Roth IRA quickly before it is too late (recomend Vangaurd - low expenses) according to your plan that you develop after reading the book.
u/10khours · 1 pointr/investing

Start by reading the recommended books in the sidebar. My personal favorite investment book is:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Four-Pillars-Investing-Portfolio/dp/0071747052

Becoming a good investor is something that is learned by reading books. You may also want to read some more general books on saving and budgeting. While you are reading these books, focus on saving money and putting it into the highest interest savings account you can find.

I would also advise that you focus on investing in yourself if possible. An education which leads to a higher paying job will be an investment that gives you far higher returns than the stock market.

u/empleadoEstatalBot · 1 pointr/vzla

> For the next two years, I delved into the literature on Venezuela with renewed interest. Javier Corrales and Michael Penfold’s book, A Dragon in the Tropics, it turned out, was particularly well-researched and compelling. Since I could no longer get my writing published in any of the outlets for which I’d previously written, I redirected my energies into making a new film entitled In the Shadow of the Revolution with the help of a Venezuelan filmmaker and friend, Arturo Albarrán, and I wrote my political memoir for an adventurous anarchist publisher. But what preoccupied me more and more were the larger questions of socialism versus capitalism, and the meaning of liberalism.
>
> I’d visited Cuba twice—in 1994 and again in 2010—and now, with my experience of Venezuela, I felt I’d seen the best socialism could offer. Not only was that offering pathetically meagre, but it had been disastrously destructive. It became increasingly clear to me that nothing that went under that rubric functioned nearly as well on any level as the system under which I had been fortunate enough to live in the US. Why then, did so many decent people, whose ethics and intelligence and good intentions I greatly respected, continue to insist that the capitalist system needed to be eliminated and replaced with what had historically proven to be the inferior system of socialism?
>
> The strongest argument against state control of the means of production and distribution is that it simply didn’t—and doesn’t—work. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding—and in this case, there was no pudding at all. In my own lifetime, I’ve seen socialism fail in China, fail in the Soviet Union, fail in Eastern Europe, fail on the island of Cuba, and fail in Nicaragua under the Sandinistas. And now the world is watching it fail in Venezuela, where it burned through billions of petro-dollars of financing, only to leave the nation worse off than it was before. And still people like me had insisted on this supposed alternative to capitalism, stubbornly refusing to recognize that it is based on a faulty premise and a false epistemology.
>
> As long ago as the early 1940s, F.A. Hayek had identified the impossibility of centralized social planning and its catastrophic consequences in his classic The Road to Serfdom. Hayek’s writings convinced the Hungarian economist, János Kornai, to dedicate an entire volume entitled The Socialist System to demonstrating the validity of his claims. The “synoptic delusion”—the belief that any small group of people could hold and manage all the information spread out over millions of actors in a market economy—Kornai argued, leads the nomenklatura to make disastrous decisions that disrupt production and distribution. Attempts to “correct” these errors only exacerbate the problems for the same reasons, leading to a whole series of disasters that result, at last, in a completely dysfunctional economy, and then gulags, torture chambers, and mass executions as the nomenklatura hunt for “saboteurs” and scapegoats.
>
> The synoptic delusion—compounded by immense waste, runaway corruption, and populist authoritarianism—is what led to the mayhem engulfing Venezuela today, just as it explains why socialism is no longer a viable ideology to anyone but the kind of true believer I used to be. For such people, utopian ideologies might bring happiness into their own lives, and even into the lives of those around them who also delight in their dreams and fantasies. But when they gain control over nations and peoples, their harmless dreams become the nightmares of multitudes.
>
> Capitalism, meanwhile, has dramatically raised the standard of living wherever it has been allowed to arise over the past two centuries. It is not, however, anything like a perfect or flawless system. Globalization has left many behind, even if their lives are far better than those of their ancestors just two hundred years ago, and vast wealth creation has produced vast inequalities which have, in turn, bred resentment. Here in California, the city of Los Angeles, “with a population of four million, has 53,000 homeless.” Foreign policy misadventures and the economic crash of 2008 opened the door to demagogues of the Left and the Right eager to exploit people’s hopes and fears so that they could offer themselves as the solution their troubled nations sought to the dystopian woe into which liberal societies had fallen. In his fascinating recent jeremiad Why Liberalism Failed, Patrick Deneen itemizes liberal democracy’s many shortcomings and, whether or not one accepts his stark prognosis, his criticisms merit careful thought and attention.
>
> Nevertheless, markets do work for the majority, and so does liberal democracy, as dysfunctional as it often is. That is because capitalism provides the space for ingenuity and innovation, while liberal democracy provides room for free inquiry and self-correction. Progress and reform can seem maddeningly sluggish under such circumstances, particularly when attempting to redress grave injustice or to meet slow-moving existential threats like climate change. But I have learned to be wary of those who insist that the perfect must be the enemy of the good, and who appeal to our impatience with extravagant promises of utopia. If, as Deneen contends, liberalism has become a victim of its own success, it should be noted that socialism has no successes to which it can fall victim. Liberalism’s foundations may be capable of being shored up, but socialism is built on sand, and from sand. Failures, most sensible people realize, should be abandoned.
>
> That is probably why Karl Popper advocated cautious, piecemeal reform of markets and societies because, like any other experiment, one can only accurately isolate problems and make corrections by changing one variable at a time. As Popper observed in his essay “Utopia and Violence”:
>
> > The appeal of Utopianism arises from the failure to realize that we cannot make heaven on earth. What I believe we can do instead is to make life a little less terrible and a little less unjust in each generation. A good deal can be achieved in this way. Much has been achieved in the last hundred years. More could be achieved by our own generation. There are many pressing problems which we might solve, at least partially, such as helping the weak and the sick, and those who suffer under oppression and injustice; stamping out unemployment; equalizing opportunities; and preventing international crime, such as blackmail and war instigated by men like gods, by omnipotent and omniscient leaders. All this we might achieve if only we could give up dreaming about distant ideals and fighting over our Utopian blueprints for a new world and a new man.
>
> Losing faith in a belief system that once gave my life meaning was extremely painful. But the experience also reawakened my dormant intellectual curiosity and allowed me to think about the world anew, unencumbered by the circumscriptions of doctrine. I have met new people, read new writers and thinkers, and explored new ideas I had previously taken care to avoid. After reading an interview I had given to one of my publishers a year ago, I was forwarded an email by the poet David Chorlton. What I’d said in that interview, he wrote, “goes beyond our current disease of taking sides and inflexible non-thinking. I’m reading Havel speeches again, all in the light of the collective failure to live up to the post-communist opportunities. We’re suffering from a lack of objectivity—is that because everyone wants an identity more than a solution to problems?”
>
> Clifton Ross writes occasionally for Caracas Chronicles, sporadically blogs at his website, [www.cliftonross.com](http://www.cliftonross.com/) and sometimes even tweets @Clifross
>
> Note:
>
> 1 Considerable confusion surrounds the definitions of “socialism” and “capitalism.” Here, I am using “socialism” to mean a system in which the state destroys the market and takes control of all capital, as well as the production and distribution of goods and services. I am using “capitalism” here to refer to a market economy in which the state, as a disinterested party, or a “referee,” sets guidelines for markets but allows private actors to own and use capital to produce and distribute goods and services.




          • -


            > (continues in next comment)
u/water4free · 1 pointr/IAmA

Not at all. There's an epidemic of economic ignorance which is clearly apparent when watching Maher or Oliver while witnessing a resurgence of socialism as a plausible solution. "If socialists understood economics, they wouldn't be socialists." -F.A. Hayek

Here's an excellent place to start learning, if anyone is interested in a very readable, logical and engaging lesson in basic economics..

Happy to consider another source on economics if you have any to offer.

u/Unwanted_Commentary · 1 pointr/news

> A completely free market would turn into a kind of serfdom

Okay, time for required reading:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Road-Serfdom-Documents-The-Definitive/dp/0226320553

Socialism is the cause of serfdom. Serfs have no economic freedom. They trade the option of having personal property for the protection offered by the lord. "Give up all your freedom so that you can have security." Sound familiar?

Trade unions didn't "create the middle class." The industrial revolution, a product of capitalism, created the middle class. Read history.

Find me one example of a republican talking down to someone because they have a "lesser" job. The republican party has focused on ensuring that college graduates have jobs waiting for them.

The fact that your parents are conservative and you are liberal is not evidence that conservatives are "retards" but that your parents are for failing to raise you.

u/DammitDan · 1 pointr/worldnews

I'm not the one criticizing other people's viewpoints. If you won't take the time to back up your claims, why should I waste my time reading this crap?

That would be the equivalent of me saying, "Read this book to understand why you're wrong." I'm trying to understand what your issue is with libertarianism, and you simply refuse to explain one little minute detail of libertarinism that you have a problem with. You can't even bother to copy and paste someone else's opinion of it.

u/nixfu · 1 pointr/Libertarian

If your a 'recovering republican' I recommend this book:
What it means to be a Libertarian It really explains the core of what libertarianism is from the perspective of a former mainstream republican.

Then start reading some classical Libertarian works like:
The Road To Surfdom by FA Hayek, where you will be amazed to learn that Big Corporations are the best friend the far left socialists ever had and know that they are full of crap whenever they say bad things about big business. I really like Hayek's writings quite a bit. Hayek is my favourite libertarian economist. The things he predicted right after world war 2 have happened amazingly like his predictions. This book is so popular its even been made into a comic book version.


/And don't forget all the links on the right hand side of this reddit. Lots of good stuff in those links.

u/Frexican · 1 pointr/pics

Don't waste your time, sombody's already came up with a rebutal about how socialism leads to serfdom.

u/Scrybblyr · 1 pointr/trump

Thoughts:

In Jordan Sekulow's new book, "The Next Red Wave," he provides some practical answers to that question. Mostly in the final two chapters of the book. Voting is our sacred duty, and we simply must make sure Trump gets elected again, and also take control of the House of Representatives next year. But Jordan says voting is just the beginning. We need to be engaged with what is happening in our government. We need to BE what is happening in our government. We need to not just be whining about what has been done by whatever school board, city council, or county board, we need to be IN those groups, deciding what is done. We need a grassroots surge of Americans who refuse to let socialists erode our freedoms, and who will get into positions to stop them. Sometimes awful policy passes simply because no one was there to challenge it.

Because if the radicals running against Trump get elected, the loss of our 401k's will be the least of our worries.

u/EauRougeFlatOut · 1 pointr/energy

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0226320553/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_ZEjSCbADPDBJ5

Intentions are nice but Bernie’s policies are dangerous

u/Mourningblade · 1 pointr/AskReddit

I'm seeing a lot of criticism of communism based on the "it's never worked" or "you're forgetting the human factor" but I'm not seeing any Hayekian criticsm. So let me kick in.

First off, what I'll be saying comes from The Road to Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek. The book is intended to be a short, highly condensed version of a much larger argument. It succeeds at that, but is still over 200 pages. You can get an inkling of how little I'll be getting into here.

Second, none of these problems are a silver bullet in the heart of communism. They are core problems with the communist system of government, but rational people absolutely can look at these problems and say "sure, but it's worth it."

So having said that.

One basic problem with any system of government where you are determining outcomes is that we do not all agree on what that outcome should be. Even if we all agreed on the big stuff (abortion, murder, proper liability of controlling stock owners, etc), we would and do disagree on the small stuff - like where a park should be, or what size the swingset should be.

When you solve these issues by voting, you succeed in making the plurality mostly happy, but you fail to make others happy. Okay, so some people will be disappointed no matter what system you use - that's okay. The trouble is that when your decisions are made by a subset of the population (ie you're using representatives) then what decision your representative will make becomes far more important than whether or not they will do the right thing.

This is true for any representative system, but with systems where outcomes are determined by the state, much more will be governed by this problem. This problem is the essence of politics.

Systems that are not centrally organized have other problems, but they do not have this problem. As the US has moved toward centrally organizing more and more things, we have more and more of this problem.

Next problem: when you guarantee income levels, you start having a very bad set of problems.

If you guarantee the income levels for all workers, you cannot let workers choose what job they will take. Consider a very skilled man who could be a lawyer, doctor, or historian. Under a price system, he would consider which he liked doing and factor in how much he could expect to make in the jobs he would like doing. He would then make his choice. If there were too many lawyers, the expected salary would go down and he could take that into account as well.

If his employment were guaranteed, there would be no way to deal with a glut of attorneys. If everyone was paid the same, you would simply have to say "you cannot be an attorney. We have too many attorneys." Even if he loved being a lawyer and fighting for the little guy - and was willing to work for little pay - because you guarantee income he could not do that.

If you guarantee the income level only for some workers, then those positions become valuable out of proportion to their income. In fact, you create a superclass of people who's employment is guaranteed and compensation is guaranteed - we have seen this in every system that guarantees employment.

If you do not guarantee employment or compensation, then you either have a free market system, or you have to force people to work.

The interesting thing about using money instead of needs to compensate people is this: with money, people choose which of their needs are most important to them. When you give a man $100, you pay for the greatest of his needs. When you take $100 away from him, you take from the least of his needs.

There's more, but I don't feel the need to flood. I'm also a bit tired - my apologies for any bad writing.

u/tgjj123 · 1 pointr/Libertarian

The Law - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1936594315/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1936594315

Economics in one lesson - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0517548232/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0517548232

That which is seen and is not seen - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1453857508/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1453857508

Our enemy, the state - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001E28SUM/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B001E28SUM

How capitalism save america - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400083311/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1400083311

New Deal or Raw Deal - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1416592377/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1416592377

Lessons for the Young Economist - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933550880/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1933550880

For a New Liberty - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1610162641/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1610162641

What Has Government Done to Our Money? - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/146997178X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=146997178X

America's Great Depression - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/146793481X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=146793481X

Defending the Undefendable - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933550171/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1933550171

Metldown - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1596985879/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1596985879

The Real Lincoln - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0761526463/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0761526463

The Road to Serfdom - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226320553/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0226320553

Capitalism and Freedom - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226264211/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0226264211

Radicals for Capitalism - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1586485725/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1586485725

Production Versus Plunder - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0979987717/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0979987717

Atlas Shrugged - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452011876/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0452011876

The Myth of the Rational Voter - http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0691138737/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0691138737

Foutainhead - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452273331/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0452273331&linkCode=as2&tag=thmariwi-20

Anthem - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452281253/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0452281253&linkCode=as2&tag=thmariwi-20

There are of course more books, but this should last you a few years!

u/paxprimetemp · 1 pointr/changemyview

Yes "The Road to Serfdom" is a truly prolific work, and absolutely worth the read. It's very approachable, and only talks about the economics of socialism in the first few chapters - most of the rest of the book is dedicated to the morality of collectivism VS. freedom.
https://www.amazon.com/Road-Serfdom-Fiftieth-Anniversary/dp/0226320618

I would also try to read "Ideas have consequences" by Richard Weaver. It's a bit more condensed - but extremely valuable insight for our current political trends

u/Lash_ · 1 pointr/freefolk

Of course I'll read some books. Perhaps you should do some reading as well. May I make a few suggestions?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0226320618/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1400034094/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/140009593X/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0195051807/

u/hobbified · 1 pointr/technology
u/event__horiz0n · 1 pointr/changemyview

Table 1 "Intelligence by Age in Dutch cross sectional twin data" show heritability at age 26 at .88.

Richard Lynn's work in his book demonstrates the racial disparity in intelligence: https://smile.amazon.com/IQ-Wealth-Nations-Richard-Lynn/dp/027597510X?sa-no-redirect=1

u/HyperboreanNRx · 1 pointr/DarkEnlightenment

>No, it's that modern people score ~120 on older tests. We can test living people with older tests, we can't test dead people with new tests.

No, the implication is also that older people score lower on modern tests. In the Dumfries and Des Moines tests this was shown to be the case when comparing similar population groups across generations when testing on the new full-form tests like the WAIS-IV but the Raven's Progressive Matrices tests showed very little or negative gains in crystallized IQ and slight gains in both in fluid intelligence.

Re-norming of tests is designed with this in mind because they are re-normed on a culturally-adapted basis.

>How would that work? The flynn effect has been observed in people taking THE OLDER TESTS.

You're misunderstanding how tests are normed. When I started administering IQ tests in 2006 we had fewer sections and a greater focus on actual IQ, which is to say arithmetic and verbal ability.

You have obviously not read enough data regarding the Flynn Effect if you don't understand how it work. The Flynn Effect heavily uses g as a basis for comparison in the absence of actual testing.


>Flynn found that the highest gains are not on subtests that measure vocab and arithmetic, but rather on culturally-loaded subtests with questions like “How are dogs and rabbits similar?” that can illicit different answers depending on one’s everyday life experience.

>Flynn says our modern lives are more cognitively demanding and so we’ve acquired something he calls, “scientific spectacles.” Today, we are more likely to answer using abstract categories, like, dogs and rabbits are mammals, rather than the more concrete, like, dogs and rabbits are pets.

Culturally adapted tests provide these new and differing results thanks to their innate cultural bias.

Strict IQ tests do not favor the new generation or show a great increase except in theory and with test comparisons and not in result comparisons.

>Good to know you are an old person. Because one thing hunting another something does make them similar.

The point is to note they are both animals used in a sport or that they're pets of some sort and not that they are both the abstract, "animal," as such.

>That study you gave at the bottom is full of it. IQ cannot be determined by reaction time only. I have a fairly low reaction time, but above average IQ.

Did you read it? People had worse scores on digit spanning tests. Digit spanning is a direct test still used today to test memory. The abstract only seems to note the basic psychometric measure they use to derive g differences and not where they get the actual IQ differences but the average differences in abstracts in their place.

g is an abstract form of crystallized IQ measure that is best suited in giving averages and curves and is not necessarily indicative of your exact IQ.

I recommend reading the whole thing and the rest of The Flynn Effect Re-Evaluated in it's entirety.



You've entirely missed the point in how these tests are created, what they are based upon, or how they are developed and how that development has changed in recent years.
-----------------------------
I didn't want to wholly offend you with how I stated it but that is how I saw it so I've decided to link some excellent books on the matter.

Here are...

The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability by Arthur Jensen

What is Intelligence?: Beyond the Flynn Effect by James Flynn

A Negative Flynn Effect in Finland by Edward Dutton and edited by Richard Lynn

A Beautiful Theory, Killed by a Nasty, Ugly
Little Fact
by Alan Kaufman, Thomas Dillon, and Jeffrey Kirsch

IQ and Global Inequality by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen

Ethnic Conflicts: Their Biological Roots in Ethnic Nepotism by Tatu Vanhanen

IQ and the Wealth of Nations by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen and Ron Unz' critiques, Lynn's responses.

u/FiveofSwords · 1 pointr/DebateAltRight

> "Oh there just stupid, because they have low IQ." * they're

" The test has been debunked as a myth by scientist " sorry, just false.

"and even the Guinness Book of World Records, " lol

"Secondly, you also ignored the fact that Watson found that the variation between individuals of the same race is substantially larger than the difference between the averages for each race. "

...why would I ignore that? it contradicts nothing ive said.

"When to these factors a county's development sky-rockets."

False.

"just because you have a high IQ, it doesn't automatically translate towards success or usefulness."

who said otherwise?

"I've met numerous black people I KNOW are smart. Definitely smarter in some areas than both me and you."

speak for yourself please.

"W.E.B Du Bois? George Washington Carver? Dr. Daniel Hale Williams? Albert Turner Bharucha-Reid? Langston Hughes? Ralph Ellison? Fredrick Douglas? Sylvester James Gates? Shall I go on for 15 hours?"

john washington carver is what...like issac newton?

"I guess all those black scientist, artist, and philosophers I just listed are all outliers in the bell curve, right? But, wait can't the same be said for Newton, Einstein, Locke, Shakespeare, and Galileo? "

You would need to be stupid to think issac newton was not an outlier. what is your point? China, the middle east, india, and africa all had enough information available to them to produce calculus, the theory of gravity, newtonian mechanics, and optics. but they didnt. the person who did happen to produce those things was white. And that is not unusual in history. I know it hurts your soul but the crushing horrible truth is simply that white people over and over again were responsible for the major breakthroughs in human knowledge...and only an insane sort of revisionist history could claim otherwise.

"What genes makes a person more genetically predisposed to kicking a fucking ball around or slapping a ping-pong ball. You can't be serious here dude."

I can be very serious. I suggest you take a glance at the theory of genetics.

" Do you know any actual classical musicians? "

I am a classical pianist.

"How? Prove this."

https://www.amazon.com/IQ-Wealth-Nations-Richard-Lynn/dp/027597510X

"Explain how America is so successful when its racial make-up is so diverse when compared to other success countries?" It used to be less diverse.

u/Villentrenmerth · 1 pointr/Polska

Przecież w materiale źródłowym nie ma nic o wynikach testów IQ a tylko oszacowania z 2003 odnośnie populacji na świecie!

CZY WY LUDZIE W OGÓLE CZYTACIE CO LINKUJECIE?

Oszacowania brały pod uwagę SZACUNKOWY WZROST POPULACJI na świecie w krajach słabo rozwiniętych! JAK TO SIĘ MA DO UŻYTKOWANIA SMARTFONÓW?!

Nawet w zalinkowanym przez ciebie artykule jest kwestia spekulacji:

> IQ scores are normalised for a mean of 100 and standard deviation of 15 in the populations for which they were originally developed. Is the standard deviation the same in populations with higher or lower mean IQ?


> I don't know. This is a fascinating question about which I have found no research whatsoever. Absent any information to the contrary, in computing the global IQ histogram in the charts at the top of this document, I assume a standard deviation of 15 points regardless of the mean. Note that this assumption only affects the shape of the histogram; the global mean is independent of the variance of individual country populations.

TO NIE SĄ ŻADNE BADANIA A TYLKO SZACUNKI dwóch kolesi: Richard Lynn, Tatu Vanhanen


Macie nawet na Amazonie ich książkę do kupienia za ponad 100 dolarów: https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/027597510X/fourmilabwwwfour

Pierwszy autor (Lynn) został pozbawiony statusu profesora:

u/rogueman999 · 1 pointr/Romania


Mah, surprinzator de putine lucruri se rezolva cu cooperare oficiala si "hai sa facem!" spirit. Exemplul meu ideal sunt ecologistii si becurile economice. N-am trecut la becuri care consuma de 5 ori mai putin si dureaza 8 ani din spirit civic sau dragoste de natura, ci pentru ca sunt o alternativa mai buna decat becurile cu incandescenta.

Asa se face si o natiune. Ai clasa de mijloc, care-i facuta mostly din corporatisti care lucreaza 9 ore la cate-o internationala, plus 1-2 ore drum de acasa la job. Primesc salarii care incet incet trec de 1000 euro, cumpara o casa, o masina, apoi a doua masina (ca noh, un second hand e mult mai ieftin decat s-o duci pe nevasta la servici in fiecare zi), platesc impozite mai mari, duc copii la facultate etc.

Nu-i viata de basm, nu-i miscare populara - e exact ce s-a intamplat in toate tarile in care acum e un pic de prosperitate.

Daca te intereseaza subiectul si iti plac discutiile interesante, pune mana pe carti. Strange bani de-un kindle si citeste, de exemplu: http://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719219 sau orice de Nassim Taleb.


PS: nu ma pot abtine. Drogurile nu-s rele, heroina e :D

u/scithion · 1 pointr/worldpowers

For one, Parente and Prescott reckon developing countries can triple outputs with no increase in input by regulatory change, and that is without taking into consideration a better investment climate (for inputs) if the judiciary is reliable.

More explicit proponents of governance focus include Daron Acemoglu, though you should know that his book Why Nations Fail is the only one Bill Gates has gone out of his way to criticise; and Francis Fukuyama, who perhaps focuses more on 'culturism'. Explicit haters include Ha-Joon Chang and most anti-neoclassical-ists. The truth is somewhere in between them.

It's also the doctrine behind IMF and World Bank lending conditions, broadly referred to as the Washington Consensus.

u/sub_surfer · 1 pointr/worldnews

I can see your heart is in the right place, but the reason that Russia is falling farther and farther behind is because of its authoritarian government. Please, if you intend to vote in another election I beg that you read up on the relationship between democracy, liberty, and economic progress. Just read a few chapters of Why Nations Fail and I know you'll be convinced that Russia is on the wrong path.

u/neoliberal_vegan · 1 pointr/COMPLETEANARCHY

Those are two very important points and the main reason, why neoliberals think that inclusive institutions are so important. Inclusive institutions are rules in a society that make shure that everyone can participate in societal developments both economically and politically.

> So you just hope that your government can do that without getting corrupt like literally every government in the history of the world?

Freedom of corruption (and democracy of course) is really important to keep politics inclusive and to achieve that political power is spread among the population, so I think it is a good idea to take countries with very low corruption like Denmark as a role model in that regard.

> Also how is that government's job different than democratic socialism?

The right that everybody can own property, is another important inclusive institution: You want to make shure that every person, no matter what her background is, has an incentive to contribute her abilities to society. In a socialist society you are not allowed to own things like patents, so that is how it would be different from democratic socialism.

You might want to read Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoğlu if you want to learn more about inclusive institutions.

u/geezerman · 1 pointr/Economics

>But the point of redistribution is not to grow the pie, it is to ensure everyone gets a big enough piece - KNOWING that this reduces the size of the pie.

You are assuming a model of benevolent, disinterested redistributors sitting at the top, pondering how to best distribute desert according to just deserts, even if this reduced the total amount of desert served. (Plato's Guardians become Plato's Redistributors).

But a far more accurate model is: everyone throughout the system, at all points up and down, left and right, using it to grab as much of the pie as they can for themselves, and NOT CARING if this reduces what everybody else gets or the size of the total pie.

The reason why capitalism/democracy has created such a huge increase in wealth in the last 200 years is that it breaks up the monopolies that groups always used in the past to extract wealth for themselves at the cost of everyone else, throughout all pre-modern-capitalist-democratic history.

See, for instance, Nobelist Douglas North's Violence and Social Orders or Acemoglu & Robinson's Why Nations Fail.

The model used in this analysis is very important. Apply the false one, you get failure-to-disaster.

>Why does the government do this? From a utilitarian point of view: declining marginal utility of income (whereby each additional dollar leads to a smaller increase in happiness - giving a millionaire a dollar does not create as much happiness as giving a beggar a dollar).

Bah! I guarantee you, no politician ever thought in those terms. They all think in terms of "(1) What's best for me. (2) What's best for the allies I need", when pondering how much to take from who to give to whom (i.e. "redistribute").

>From a political realist point of view: your redistributed tax dollars purchase social stability (so that rioters don't send you to the guillotine).

Ah, but just remember that the voters who threaten to send politicians to the guillotine are those with political power, not those with "high marginal utility of income" need. The correlation between the two is near zilch.

The members are AARP as a group on average have far more wealth and disposable income than all the people below age 40 -- that's all you Redditors reading this -- whom they will force to pay much higher taxes to pay off the deca-trillions of dollars of unfunded entitlement benefits they expect come to them, which they didn't pay for themselves.

But if those AARPers get the idea that those benefits will be cut -- even by mere means-testing to assure the benefits only actually do go to those among them with "high marginal utility of income" -- well, we've already seen what happens. It's "Attack! Off with the heads" of those damn politicians! very much threatening social stability to keep their gettings...

"Dan Rostenkowski's being attacked by his own constituents after telling them that they would have to pay for their own catastrophic health care coverage isn't just a long-forgotten event from a bygone era.

"To this day, it's something that members of Congress cite chapter and verse when discussing the budget. Like a story passed down from generation to generation, this includes current representatives and senators, the vast majority of who weren't in office when the event occurred.

"I can't tell you the number of times the Rostenkowski incident has been mentioned by members of Congress at meetings I've attended. Usually it's mentioned as a throw away line ("I don't want my constituents chasing me down the street")...

"It seems to be a story that elected officials feel most personally. Staff invariably do not raise it first.

"Historically, my guess is that it will assume a place right up there with the Whiskey Rebellion that occurred in Pennsylvania in the late 1770s. The picture below shows the incident where a federal tax collector was tarred and feathered, the Revolutionary War equivalent of attacking the limo of the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. "

So do not make the naive mistake of thinking redistribution schemes are designed by well-meaning, disinterested leaders for the benefit of the "high marginal utility of income" needy, ever.

They are in fact always designed and enacted by entirely self-interested politicians in response to political power -- the marginal utility of the income of the recipients be damned.

u/Jindor · 1 pointr/edefreiheit

z.b. hier hab ich mich aus der Diskussion gezogen, weil du so unehrlich warst.

Aus einen Blogpost von den Autoren der Bücher:

>"From the point of view of Why Nations Fail, the types of social norms that Ferguson talks about are institutions — they are rules that people face that centrally govern their incentives and opportunities. Of course they are not laws or written in the Lesotho constitution, rather they are what Douglass North called “informal institutions”. But they are institutions, none the less."

http://whynationsfail.com/blog/2013/10/23/cows-capitalism-and-social-embeddedness.html

>So what sorts of institutions did we emphasize? Not the written aspects of the constitution such as whether or not there is a parliamentary democracy, another thing that Henry and Miller focus on. Those things can be important, but the types of institutions that influence the political and economic incentives in society can be very different. For example, in the first chapter of Why Nations Fail, we emphasized that the distinctive economic performance of the United States was created by the US Constitution with its checks and balances and separation of powers. But we also argued that this document was an outcome of a set of political institutions that had already been established during the colonial period. A further illustration from the same period that other types of institutions matter is the two-term limit for presidents in the United States. This was not part of the Constitution. Rather, it was established as a social norm by George Washington when he decided not to run for a third term. The social norms worked form 150 years until Franklyn Roosevelt violated it. The role of the Supreme Court in assessing the constitutionality of legislation was not in the Constitution either, but likewise emerged as a social norm after the landmark Marbury versus Madison case in 1803.

>In our post last week about Cows and Capitalism, we pointed out that social norms, like the one in Lesotho that cash could be converted into cows but not vice versa, counted as institutions according to the definition we used. In this case the social norm that Washington set, for example, clearly created incentives and constraints for future US presidents that influenced their behavior. That’s what institutions do.

http://whynationsfail.com/blog/2013/10/29/what-are-institutions.html

Jetzt nochmal Wikipedia Definition.

"Institutions are "stable, valued, recurring patterns of behavior". As structures or mechanisms of social order, they govern the behaviour of a set of individuals within a given community. Institutions are identified with a social purpose, transcending individuals and intentions by mediating the rules that govern living behavior. The term "institution" commonly applies to both informal institutions such as customs, or behavior patterns important to a society, and to particular formal institutions created by entities such as the government and public services. Primary or meta-institutions are institutions such as the family that are broad enough to encompass other institutions."

Die Definition passt hier so viel mehr, als deine Anspielung auf die katholische Kirche oder das römische Reich.


aber wikipedia nimmt hier die falsche Definition... und du erwartest von mir das ich hier noch weiter diskutiere? Wenn du mir mit voller Absicht ins Gesicht lügst? Wenn du genau weißt das ich das Buch gelesen habe und mich da eigentlich auf dein Wort schon verlassen musste um überhaupt eine weitere Diskussion möglich zu machen?

Naja ich klatsch in die Hände, das weißt du dir auch gleich wieder easy weg dass es eh so gemeint war und hurr durr. Das mehrere Nobel Laureate genau diese Institutionen Argumentation preisen, ist dir ja egal, weil du ja so viel bessere Internetkommentare verfasst als diese dummen Nobelpreisträger.

https://www.amazon.de/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719219

>“This important and insightful book, packed with historical examples, makes the case that inclusive political institutions in support of inclusive economic institutions is key to sustained prosperity. The book reviews how some good regimes got launched and then had a virtuous spiral, while bad regimes remain in a vicious spiral. This is important analysis not to be missed.” —Peter Diamond, Nobel Laureate in Economics

>“Acemoglu and Robinson have made an important contribution to the debate as to why similar-looking nations differ so greatly in their economic and political development. Through a broad multiplicity of historical examples, they show how institutional developments, sometimes based on very accidental circumstances, have had enormous consequences. The openness of a society, its willingness to permit creative destruction, and the rule of appear to be decisive for economic development.” —Kenneth Arrow, Professor Emeritus, Stanford University, Nobel Laureate in Economics, 1972

>“This fascinating and readable book centers on the complex joint evolution of political and economic institutions, in good directions and bad. It strikes a delicate balance between the logic of political and economic behavior and the shifts in direction created by contingent historical events, large and small at ‘critical junctures.' Acemoglu and Robinson provide an enormous range of historical examples to show how such shifts can tilt toward favorable institutions, progressive innovation and economic success or toward repressive institutions and eventual decay or stagnation. Somehow they can generate both excitement and reflection.” —Robert Solow, Nobel Laureate in Economics, 1987

Wie arrogant muss man eigentlich sein um zu meinen man weiß mehr über ein Thema als 3 Top Wissenschaftler dieses Gebietes? Sowas von Lächerlich. Wegen solche Sachen verwehrst du dir jeglicher zukünftiger Diskussionen mit mir.

u/ethyn_bunt · 1 pointr/PoliticalDiscussion

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.

u/chotchss · 1 pointr/history

Yes, definitely! But at least at the beginning, it seems like the release of these disease was unintentional (versus the plague blankets that came later). From what I read, the initial plague vectors were fishermen off the coast of New England (possibly Brits or Portuguese) and from early Spanish explorers. Further, the original British plan for colonization was similar to that of the Spanish in the south- conquer, put the natives to work, extract resources back to the UK. But that fell apart due to the plunge in native populations and their decentralized governments (compared to South America).

Anyway, I'm not an expert on this subject, this is just what I remember reading in Why Nations Fail (https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719227).

This guy sums it up: https://www.quora.com/If-the-British-had-colonized-Central-South-America-and-the-Spanish-colonized-North-America-would-the-social-and-economic-development-situation-be-the-opposite-of-what-it-is-today

u/tschuff_tschuff · 1 pointr/explainlikeimfive

If you are interested in such topics, you ought to read Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

u/t3nk3n · 1 pointr/Libertarian

>Property is the coercive exclusion of others from entering certain areas or touching certain objects. That's what it is.

Aside from alll those times when it isn't.

Not enough words to make all the citations: more and more and more and more and more

u/standard_deviation · 1 pointr/worldnews

Not OP but the 6 million victims number is correct. You can check it here or here.

Also most of the Soviet killing took place in times of peace while Hitler killed in wars. So comparing WWII stats is misleading.

Also not well known is the fact that Stalin killed another 1,5 million people in Ukraine right after WWII in 1945/46 through another forced starvation.




u/thedaveoflife · 1 pointr/Economics

Xi is everything Trump wishes he could be: an autocrat who answers to no one. This is why the US cannot win a trade war with China... Xi pays no political price for tariffs or anything else, where as a 2020 loss looms large for Trump and handcuffs him at the negotiating table. Soy Bean tariffs from China would be a critical political blow to the american heartland that holds (somewhat undemocratic) outsized political power. Xi will effectively be the leader of China for as long as he wants regardless of what happens.

Ironically this short term disadvantage is really a long term advantage for the US. There is a reason that China has to steal American IP and not the other way around. Ultimately our politicians are answerable to us.... the economic prospects of the Average American and the Country as a whole are intricately linked due to our institutions (hat tip Daron Acemoglu)

u/Pilopheces · 1 pointr/AskALiberal
u/nomnombacon · 1 pointr/worldnews

You are actually very spot on when it comes to the ultra-wealthy staying on top. My whole point is that there have been multiple recessions and financial crises in the US - and many more outside of it. History keeps repeating itself and the only thing "they" learn is how to hide the fraud better.


I would recommend learning about the S&L crisis in the 1980s-1990s ("Savings & Loans"). About a third of the S&L associations in the US failed, partially caused by bad mortgages. Pretty similar to 2008 - and there are other examples of greed taking over common sense.


Waste Management. Worldcom. Enron. Tyco. Freddie Mac. AIG. Lehman. Wells Fargo (most recent - and after 2008). It just keeps happening... almost as if being exposed to that kind of money has a tendency to corrupt some people. Or does the money attract the already corrupted?


"They" will always change and be replaced with fresh blood craving a higher ROI (Return on Investment). That's why the status quo will never change, especially not with continued deregulation.


If you would like to learn more, I will give you my top 3:

  1. The Big Short (book not movie. If you like his style, follow up with Liar's Poker).

  2. [Financial Shenanigans](Financial Shenanigans: How to Detect Accounting Gimmicks & Fraud in Financial Reports, Second Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0071386262/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_tCZ5ybQXRZ2F1) is a huge favorite of mine. It gives real life examples of various creative accounting practices - while teaching you about financial statement analysis in the process.

  3. [Why Nations Fail](Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307719227/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_I1Z5ybXWW13KG) is another great illustration of continued failure to learn from mistakes.


    Bonus: if you want to really understand what happened in 2008, read this undergrad thesis of this one Harvard student. It's been praised to be one of the most succinct and comprehensive explanations for the 2008 crisis. And if you read it, keep in mind that the same instruments are being created again (CDOs - Collateralized Debt Obligations).
u/LoseMoneyAllWeek · 1 pointr/neoliberal

>make them SEZ

Zero federal taxes and zero federal regulations? Cause I’d be okay with this. Mmmhmmm that capital inflow would be so hot.

>redistribute those votes to new immigrants

Lol wow here you need this

>limit the civil rights

Like what exactly?

u/Nobusuma · 1 pointr/explainlikeimfive

As stated Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. The region played a factor. Focusing on Europe, Europe had easy access of travel due to the Mediterranean sea. In broader view they had the silk road. There is a book called Why Nations Fail. A very interesting read. Out of dozens of examples the book shares, I will point out two that help shape Europe; the first being the story of Hercules and second the Black Death. The story of Hercule enabled a change in thought over the centuries as greek men went to the Olympics trying two win fame and glory for themseleves. The individual. The Black death on the other hand destroyed the working class and enabled a change in the current western system.

u/quantifical · 1 pointr/changemyview

> Haha, we're gonna get in the semantic mire here. My use of the word charity (I thought) kinda implies that 'is giving people direct charitable help the best form of charity'? Is the form of charity that 'charities' enforce the best use for £100 million? And who's to say the charities I pick would be the best. I can't really squeeze that all into a pithy headline. So no! Not yet haha.

Sorry, this just sounds so dishonest. Again, how does this prove that the government are the best? Again, if you don't know what's best, why are you saying they are?

I already gave you a solution if you don't know best that doesn't require the government. Quoting myself, "If you don't know which charities to donate to, why not an index fund of charities of sorts which excludes inefficient charities? For example, charities where, for every $1 donated, less than 80 cents actually goes towards helping people. We can let people vote for causes with their money and back those causes accordingly." Vote with your money or back the market of other people's votes.

> My evidence is that nothing else has done it better to raise living standards. https://humanprogress.org/

What evidence do you have that governments raise living standards?

Governments don't raise living standards. Businesses raise living standards. Governments getting out of the way of business helps businesses raise living standards.

Ensuring fair rule of law (no corporatism, no cronyism, etc.) and property rights (the promise that what you earn or have is yours to keep) for all is the only thing government can do to get out of the way of businesses.

Please read this book when you've got time.

> Do many third world countries have efficient democracies and government? To be fair, this is the best critique, because I think the utility of my point is directly relative to the amount of corruption, and rent seeking in the society. So yeah, it does depend.

No, you misunderstand how governments work and form. They (edit: third world country governments) fail to ensure fair rule of law and property rights.

> Except these fish have tried plenty of other gold fish bowls and they're rubbish.

What does this even mean?

u/psychart · 1 pointr/brasil

Eu tou lendo esse livro: https://www.amazon.com.br/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719227 e gostando bastante. Ele dá uma visão do porque alguns países prosperaram mais que outros.

u/Saltysacksagain · 1 pointr/southafrica

The Zuma Government is showing exactly the same hallmarks every other African Liberation movement that came into power showed. Unless there is a substantial change in the extractive government institutions and a return to plural democracy, its unlikely the outcome can be averted. One of the only African exceptions is Botswana, an example of good governance and an inclusive economy.

To understand the modus operandi of Zuma type governments, you should read https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719227 . A real eye opener and explains more or less why the current SA government has little interest in uplifting the South African people...they are not there for the people, they are there for themselves. Its a simple case of ignoring what the say and paying attention to what they do.

u/NicCageKillerBees · 1 pointr/neoliberal
u/Yasea · 1 pointr/Automate

I base my opinion on Capital in the 21th century, Why nations fail and this IMF note and few others that I didn't save the links for.

u/SpiceAndEvNice · 1 pointr/Drama

En serio te gustaría ver otra Venezuela en Latinoamérica? Vivo en Costa Rica. No es un "leftist paradise" pero tenemos políticas muy cercanas, especialmente con el exceso de gobierno y esa extraña fijación en reducir las emisiones (un país pequeño como este ni siquiera es un generador tan grande de emisiones).

Todas las noticias que reddit pone saying "COSTA RICA HAS BEEN RUNNING ON RENEWABLE FOR X MONTHS" misses the point that we have one of the most expensive energy expenses of the region. It misses the point the our national monopolies are incompetent and end up pushing down on the lower classes because of how expensive it is.

Aquí no hay voluntad política para arreglar problemas fundamentales como la corrupción del CONAVI o la inoperancia de RECOPE. Y todos los gobiernos de esta región son un cancer de corrupción con la misma historia. La diferencia es que en gringolandia el pobre vive considerablemente mejor que el pobre de acá.

Leftist policies have failed time and time again here. If you want to blame American intervention go ahead, but you very well now that isn't the reason why shit fails here. It's a systemic problem that goes back to the Conquest. I suggest you take a look at https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719227

No leftism here is going to save anyone until those structural and cultural issues are fixed. Until then, it will cause more chaos and poverty.

Sorry for the rant.

u/stuffirianz · 1 pointr/portugal

> os EUA?

> Não tinham recursos nem nativos suficientes para explorar?

Não, não tinham. Não existiam grandes civilizações com governos centralizados facilmente reaproveitados no norte. Nao existem minas de ouro na virginia.

Enquanto no sul, os espanhois basicamente reaproveitaram os sistemas existentes para explorar os nativos, no norte, os ingleses tentaram explorar os nativos e nao conseguiran; depois tentaram explorar os colonos e tambem nao conseguiram. No norte, so conseguiram ter sucesso na colonizacao com programas de colonizacao baseados em incentivos que deram aos colonos um nível de autonomia completamente diferente do que os mesmos ingleses deram a toda e qualquer colonia que tenham conseguido explorar.

source

> E a Austrália e NZ foram colonizadas centenas de anos depois do Brasil e américa do norte, o que também influenciou muito.

200 anos. Assim como tantas outras colónias fundadas depois de 1800. Mas curiosamente, so a NZ e a Australia são países 100% ocidentalizados. Porque será?

u/veringer · 1 pointr/politics

I get where you're coming from, but there are fine examples of the best the West hast to offer too: Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, et al. There are multiple high points in the cultural landscape. Japan may lay claim to one peak, but there are other (perhaps taller) ones out there.

Within America too, there are regions and groups that stack up more favorably on a hypothetical "culture-index". For instance, Minnesota seems to be working better than Mississippi for reasons beyond location and history. If I were to speculate as to why, it'd rely heavily on the theses found within Why Nations Fail. Namely, how inclusive the local economic/political/social strucures are. That's heavily dependent on culture. Thus, my earlier comment was suggesting that the fraction of America that vehemently supports Trump is more than likely identifying with an entirely different culture than the other 60%. And (in my opinion) there's no contest as to which of the two cultures tends to produce better results. Alas, that is a bias as to what factors we value and include in our "culture-index". Those differing priorities are at the heart of our nation's lamentable cultural divide.

I don't think we need to adopt a Japanese culture to improve overall. We're a young and ignorant country... baby steps. Just a nudge toward Minnesota and away from Mississippi would yield significant long term results.

u/kiwifuel · 1 pointr/JordanPeterson

Historically speaking, that is not true. All throughout the Middle Ages all material goods belonged to God and/or the king.

This is well-documented by historians and economists. The combination of formalizing and democratizing property rights is one of the things that economists have linked to the increase in wealth and ingenuity that began during the industrial revolution.

One source: Why Nations Fail by the well-respected economist Acemoglu

u/Jdf121 · 1 pointr/todayilearned

But it would be the best choice for timeframe to stop people from dying in the short term, while working to fix the structural barriers.

Read the book Dead Aid. Great info on this topic.

u/Rebar4Life · 1 pointr/AskReddit

There are more modern financial reasons as well. See Dead Aid.

u/YouthInRevolt · 1 pointr/worldnews

"Dambisa Moyo - Dead Aid" was great if you haven't read it yet

u/berwood · 1 pointr/AskReddit

As far as the continent of Africa is concerned, there are some books on thge subject: http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Aid-Working-Better-Africa/dp/0374139563/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1346529409&sr=1-1&keywords=african+aid

Foreign aid (from the U.S.) won't cease as long as other countries have stuff we want. I forget who said it and what the exact context was, but there's a saying: "A nation has no friends, only interests."

u/kenlubin · 1 pointr/todayilearned

I think the basis of Hubbell's argument is the experience in Food Aid to Africa.

Aid organizations bought food in the Western world (mostly from the United States), and gave it away to starving people in Africa during droughts and times of political turmoil.

The result was that African farmers could no longer compete with free food: local farms collapsed, local economies collapsed, and the food shortages actually became worse.

Additionally, since aid was often distributed through local governments, their dictatorships and corruption became more entrenched.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374139563

u/OnIowa · 1 pointr/IAmA

Do you know anything about this book?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0374139563

u/som_233 · 1 pointr/Somalia

No conspiracy stories here. I don't have a tin foil hat.

Yes, certain assistance in times of famine/catastrophe/etc. is great, as well as certain programs to empower people or stop gender-based violence. But the long-range plan is to keep an aid recipient caught in either a debt trap or work to ensure they don't develop their economy.
There is evidence-based research that shows what occurs and rational people who have studied this. Here's a book you should check out.

https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Aid-Working-Better-Africa/dp/0374532125

u/newaccount721 · 1 pointr/gaming

This book argues pretty strongly against aide . https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Aid-Working-Better-Africa/dp/0374532125#productDescription_secondary_view_div_1481963244911

FWIW I disagree. Also Bill Gates funds my job and I believe it has the potential to bring about good things so I'm pretty bias.

u/manageditmyself · 1 pointr/Anarcho_Capitalism

>I rarely ever say this, but this is a crazy enough assertion that I'm asking you to prove it.

I'm not even sure it's something I need to 'prove', because history has done that for me over and over again.

u/WoodenJellyFountain · 1 pointr/videos
u/darthrevan · 1 pointr/ABCDesis

Thanks...he (and that same co-author) recently came out with a newer book, too. FYI

u/pragma · 1 pointr/ted

The Second Machine Age, by Erik Brynjollfsson and Andrew McKee.

Explains everything about this jobless recovery, the real nature of the coming time of plenty, and what we might want to do to avoid revolution. Goes deep into impacts of AI and automation.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Second-Machine-Age-Technologies/dp/0393239357

u/jeremyhoward · 1 pointr/Futurology

I agree macroeconomic prediction has a poor track record. I believe this is because it generally tries to extrapolate from past trends, rather than looking at the first principles causality - e.g. macroeconomics through extrapolation could not have predicted the impact of the internet, but looking at the underlying capability of the technology could (and did).

I think we're already seeing service sector jobs being obsoleted. See http://www.amazon.com/The-Second-Machine-Age-Technologies/dp/0393239357 for examples and data backing this up.

Job sectors relying primarily on perception will be the first and hardest hit, since perception is what computers are most rapidly improving at thanks to deep learning.

u/v3rma · 0 pointsr/AskReddit

> A little racist there...or maybe I'm the only one feeling that.

I don’t really get this over the top political correctness that rules public discourse these days.

> maybe I'm the only one feeling that. I know that a lot of Africans are in utter poverty and there are areas in America (Harlem) where African Americans are in a similar situation comparatively but I'm not going to jump the gun and say black people are more violent and less developed.

Africans are the world over less developed. The question is what the cause of this is. Some say that violence is because of the socio-economic circumstances. I personally think that violence and culture causes their socio-economic circumstances and not vice a versa.

There is quite a lot of evidence that support this proposition if you are willing to look past narrow minded political correctness.
And yeah, not all of us live in the USA.

> I know at least 20 or so that are all going to medical school, are damn brilliant, and some of the nicest, kind-hearted people I know.

A few statistical outliers/anecdotal evidence do not prove a proposition. Educated black people are in the fast minority. A black person in the USA is more inclined to go to jail than to university.


u/steavoh · 0 pointsr/worldnews

The experts on the subject of economic development say otherwise.

http://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719219

The real problem with colonialism is that the entire function of the government bureaucracy is capturing rents from primary-sector activities and that they use this revenue to buy popularity. There is not enough economic freedom or development to encourage domestic growth.

Big bad dictator owns the state oil company which used to be a French firm. Uses oil money to build schools in a handful of villages inhabited by his own people to get the UN off his back.

The colonial governments left a legacy that the post colonial governments continued. New boss same as the old boss. This is the real reason why imperalism was bad, not some kind of marxist concept of removing wealth or whatever.

u/JeffersonClippership · 0 pointsr/Whatcouldgowrong

If you're asking that kind of question you're too stupid to understand the answer but if you wanna try to understand, read these books

u/RochelleH · 0 pointsr/TrueReddit

Why Nations Fail is a great, apolitical book that encompasses some of these theories. I'd say Samuel Huntington's 'Clash of Civilisations' is as well, but Reddit doesn't like him and usually end up likening him to Ayn Rand.

u/PACManly · 0 pointsr/prephysicianassistant

You aren't wrong. Many medical mission trips are a detriment to the community unless they adhere to the guidelines. This is true of anyone who intends to provide healthcare to communities for a brief period and then leave, does nothing to help create a stable system of care. It creates dependency and takes away from the distressed community and their ability to build local healthcare infrastructure. This is a good read by an Oxford/Harvard trained economist who argues against any form of aid to impoverished nations.

https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Aid-Working-Better-Africa/dp/0374532125#

If you volunteer, as a preclinical student, you would be placed in a logistical or education program. These roles are encouraged by the WHO, because you are directed by the host nation. When I worked in Malawi, I did so at the pleasure of the Minister of Health under the direction of Dr. Mwanswambo and went where told. Dont discount all missions. There are ethical ways you can contribute.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5803894/

u/CothSin · 0 pointsr/CanadaPolitics

Once thought the same, evolved from it after reading The Second Machine Age: Work Progress And Prosperity In A Time Of Brilliant Technologies
The only people you do need in times of an aging population would be medical professionals and caretakers, the first is not happening at all, the second to a small degree. Canadians though are not becoming doctors in sufficient numbers and definitely not become caretakers. All the rest could be automatized, the inefficiency that you can see in Canadian companies is beyond explanation.

u/apeman2500 · 0 pointsr/AskSocialScience

I will try to make this short and sweet. (I failed)

What you're talking about is tongue-in-cheek referred to as "The Rise of the Robots" in the economic and technological discourse. To be clear, it's not so much that robots will "take people's jobs" so much as having robots do those jobs will be more cost-effective than having humans do them at a politically acceptable wage.

The thing to understand about technological progress and automation is that all of the previous waves of industrialization (the so-called "first" and "second" industrial revolutions) all involved technology that was complementary to unskilled labor. Whereas before a man would have likely done hard labor out on the farm, because of industrialization one man with farming equipment could do the work of dozens or hundreds before. This freed up labor to go work in efficient assembly lines. So previous waves of industrialization were consistent with high demand for low-skilled labor and thus, rising wages at the low-end. When your grandpa talks about how back in his day you could graduate high school and then go work at the factory or mill or whatever, that's what he's talking about.

Why was this? Well, to summarize this Brad DeLong post, previous industrial technologies were able to substitute for brute force, but they still required a human brain to serve as a sort of "cybernetic control loop," which is to say, you still needed crane operators, tractor drivers, assembly line workers, truck drivers, retail and fast food employees, etc.

So for a long time people such as the Luddites have protested that labor-saving devices were "taking their jobs." Economists have long regarded those fears as unfounded. On the contrary, labor-saving machines freed up labor to be put to other uses. The transition period could be painful as businesses rise and fall and people find themselves in and out of work, but the greater prosperity gained thereby was more than worth it.

But now, we seem to be entering a "Third Industrial Revolution." McAfee and Brynjolfsson call it The Second Machine Age in their book. What separates the current round of automation from previous ones is that they are substitutes for low-skilled labor rather than complements to it. Each passing year we seem to be getting closer and closer to the point where smart computers can drive cars and trucks, run warehouses, stores, farms, and factories, run fast food restaurants, either by themselves or almost entirely by themselves. In fact there is a running joke in certain circles that "a modern manufacturing plant only has two employees: a man and a dog. The man to feed the dog, and the dog to stop the man from touching the machines." In addition, technologies such as the internet are creating a "superstar economy," in which a handful of successful people (think Taylor Swift or the guy who invented TurboTax) get ALL the moneyz because their "product" can be scaled up almost without limit.

What are the broader societal implications of this? Probably the best source to check out is Tyler Cowen's Average is Over. He argues that we will increasingly see a divergence between the roughly 20% of people who are either superstars or able to interact well with machines (data scientists, computer programmers and engineers, etc.) and the 80% or so who won't. The depressing implication is that many people are today what horses were 100 years ago: on the brink of obsolescence.

My own personal opinion is that we do have a non-trivial problem on our hands as we plow ahead into the 21st century. If managed correctly we can ensure that robots are by-and-large beneficial to most people instead of detrimental. This is a topic where it's very hard to tell who is a crank and who is being reasonable if you're just reading about it for the first time, so I'm trying hard to give you a balanced approach.

Erik Brynjolfsson and Tyler Cowen have both done podcasts on their books if you are interested in listening to them. Brad DeLong also discusses this occasionally on his blog, which in my opinion is one of the best econ blogs out there.

Hope this helps. If I wasn't clear about something I'd be happy to clarify.

u/wherethefuckswallace · 0 pointsr/occupywallstreet

I've got to be honest, though I agree entirely with the theory presented in my previous post, I wasn't actually stating my own speculative opinion, I was (accurately) parroting the empirically based works of Chang. I think that if you read his book [Kicking Away The Ladder] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Institutions-Globalization/dp/1843310279), or for a more accessible work [Bad Samaritans] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Samaritans-Secrets-Nations-Prosperity/dp/1905211376) you would be hard pressed to disagree with his account of economic history.

Indeed, almost all predominant advocates of free trade begrudgingly accept Chang's view, but counter that such policies are no longer possible nowadays, given how globalized and intertwined the various national economies are. For an example of this kind of argument see Martin Wolf's [Why Globalization Works] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Globalization-Works-Yale-Nota-Bene/dp/0300107773).

I didn't really want to challenge your various retorts of my previous comment, because as I stated it's not my argument. But I would like to say that I think it is fair to describe your depiction of South Korea as inaccurate. Whilst true that Korea produce goods that are exported to other developed countries, this is no bad thing - all developed countries trade between each other, as it has been shown to be the most efficient way to produce things. Also, you imply that Korea has a particularly unequal society, but a cursory look at the national [gini-coefficient rankings] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality), which ranks countries by income equality, shows that Korea has a more equal society than Canada, France, Belgium, the UK, Ireland, Spain, Italy, New Zealand, and a significantly greater level of equality than the United States.

u/sousuke · 0 pointsr/todayilearned

Would highly recommend reading Why Nations Fail for more on this. According to the economists who wrote this book, the Black Death could arguably be the single most important reason why western Europe is the birthplace of democracy.

u/stillandonly32 · 0 pointsr/worldnews

Actually Islam is the main problem. Read about it here and here.

u/pennyfx · 0 pointsr/Bitcoin

I'm a web developer, so of course I know what an API is.

Bitcoin isn't going anywhere. Bitcoin handlers are already integrated into browsers. In fact it's part of the HTML5 spec.

Are you familar with email:[email protected] ?

You can also do

bitcoin:someaddress

This will automatically open your wallet and prefill a few fields.

http://blog.coinbase.com/post/78127728420/support-for-bitcoin-payment-urls

Coinbase just implemented it for their wallet. Any wallet can do the same, because this is how open source protocols work. Your bitcoin wallet is gonna be just like your email app today. You can run a bitcoin client on your desktop, phone, or in the cloud if you trust those people with your money. The choice is yours. The risk is on you.

The browser that you're using right now already supports bitcoin. So it's already part of the internet whether you like it or not. There are going to be websites that require you to have bitcoin. Games and paywalls are gonna use crypto currencies because it's easier than Paypal or any other 3rd party system. This is because the developer/website gets their money instantly regardless of the country they live. A 12 year old can create an app anywhere in the world and get paid directly. This is unprecedented.

Why don't we have paypal: or visa:? Because those systems are closed source, proprietary, have non standard APIs, are restrictive depending on the country, and are a central authority.

Bitcoin is an open source protocol that anyone can investigate and learn the inner workings of. It will continue to get better as technical issues arise, because there are thousands of smart developers out there who love this shit. Bitcoin is the future of money on the internet and I can say that with absolute confidence because I know developers and we are personally making it happen. We are innovating faster than ever before and now that global payments are essentially solved, we're gonna see another leap in what the internet can provide.

If you want some insight into where we're headed, read this book.

http://www.amazon.com/Sovereign-Individual-Mastering-Transition-Information/dp/0684832720/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1393650820&sr=1-1&keywords=sovereign+individual

It talks about crypto-currency to the T and it was written in 1997.


More disruption! AKA innovation.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1z8n4n/i_dont_get_angry_when_i_see_a_layman_ridicule_and/

u/cometparty · 0 pointsr/politics

Actually, the answer is yes, because the left isn't pro-corporation and it's not pro-monopoly. I recommend you read this book.

u/tclipse · 0 pointsr/politics

Chile's transition failed due to militarist takeover- capitalism wasn't implemented correctly. Iraq can't really be included either as there was tampering from outside governments (ours). Try this one: The Road To Serfdom, F.A. Hayek

This is also a great read: Calculation and Coordination, Peter Boettke

u/youreprobablyignoran · 0 pointsr/politics

>This is what conservatives mean when they talk about "government nanny state overreach".

This is called a straw-man.

Nanny State

>Basically, they wish to hand over the power that used to reside in the hands of the people through their elected representatives to the private sector where they have NO voice.

This shows a fundamental lack of understanding in political philosophy and economics.

Milton Friedman

F. A. Hayek

>It's downright undemocratic.

This is downright wrong. Democracy

u/teetow · -1 pointsr/audioengineering

ProTools is poorly designed, sitting on a heap of legacy, and is built by feature request. The result is shit software. Any developer could explain this phenomenon, it's well known and very little can be done to fix it without pissing off a legion of entrenched users who have learned it the hard way. Cubase suffers from the same problem, which is why it is also not "the best bet for learning audio production."

Read a few chapters of The Innovator's Dilemma and you'll recognize very much what I'm talking about.

u/km0010 · -1 pointsr/RobinHood

Currency position that's not hedging anything.

1 year is short for stock investing. The returns over this period are mostly unpredictable. Momentum works at this frequency, but that's a trading technique strictly relying on the return signal with nothing to do with the company's financials or business.

This portfolio doesn't make sense from a modern portfolio theory point of view. So, maybe the owner is making concentrated high-conviction purchases? But, then they're asking if they should 'sell it all'. Must be speculation. (Plus, seems like most everything here is speculation.)

(Only joined a year ago. We don't know how long the positions have been held. I assume not too long.)

I didn't give a tip. Here: https://www.amazon.com/Four-Pillars-Investing-Building-Portfolio/dp/0071747052/

u/stressssss · -1 pointsr/AskReddit

I don't have time to explain everything that makes me feel ill about your statement.

I'd suggest reading that book along with this: http://www.amazon.com/Road-Serfdom-Documents-Definitive-Collected/dp/0226320553

Even if you disagree and truly are statist at heart it's good to understand the opposite perspective.

u/DuncanIdahos7thClone · -1 pointsr/Documentaries

You clowns are not normal. You should read this: https://www.amazon.com/Road-Serfdom-Fiftieth-Anniversary/dp/0226320618

u/rangerkozak · -1 pointsr/business

The fantasy is the success of centrally-planned economies. There is tremendous evidence suggesting that liberty works best:

  • West German vs East Germany
  • South Korea vs North Korea
  • Hong Kong in the 80s vs China in the 80s
  • Estonia vs Latvia or Lithuania
  • Botswana vs the rest of Africa
  • Chile vs the rest of S. America

    This debate was settled (again) when the Berlin wall fell, at yet socialist ideas continue to rise from the grave. I'll never understand the public's lust for tyranny.

    Recommend Hayek's Road to Serfdom
u/2ndandtwenty · -1 pointsr/samharris

>: more 'low IQ' people are present in the population, more 'high IQ' people are present in the population. There's nothing disastrous about this scenario.

False. You clearly are unfamiliar with the basics of statistics....Furthermore, it is clear what low IQ can do to a country or people

https://www.amazon.com/IQ-Wealth-Nations-Richard-Lynn/dp/027597510X#customerReviews

u/natashkap · -1 pointsr/worldnews

There is a lot of literature about it. Do your own research.

Koffi Annan said that "And yet research is also clear that when girls reach their full potential, through improved status, better health care, and education, it is the most effective development tool for society as a whole. As a country's primary enrolment rate for girls increases, so too does its gross domestic product per capita." It also has to do with being able to control population growth, etc etc.

Of course "better income distribution" is a way of fighting poverty (srsly?). The point is that microfinance, and more specifically microfinance programmes that target women, have shown to be the most effective method of reducing poverty in communities where it is endemic.

u/petrus4 · -1 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

Given that I'm someone who thinks 9/11 was a conspiracy, I'll answer this one.

Basically I believe that the American government (and Western governments in general) are ruled by a particular group of psychopaths. When 9/11 happened, we were getting closer to a point where people started realising that they don't actually need government, for most aspects of their lives. This is predicted and explained in detail, in a book called The Sovereign Individual which came out at roughly the same time.

So this coalition of psychopaths, ordered 9/11, in order to start a period which would be dominated by the "War on Terror," which would cause people to become fearful and dependent, and to believe that they needed government again. This in turn gave governments the pretext to start bringing in a lot of repressive, and extremely controlling laws; which politicians want, because they are almost always evil people, who are primarily motivated by a desire for complete control of the majority, purely for said control's own sake.

In terms of how 9/11 was actually carried out, I believe it was done via controlled demolition with nano-thermite. This video offers an experimental reproduction of thermite cutting steel beams, and it also demonstrates that the characteristics of thermite explosions, (the noises and visual signature, etc) also match the eyewitness testimony which was given by people at the site, when it happened.

u/modshavegonorrhea · -1 pointsr/politics

They wont. By the time these technologies become mainstream (read affordable) it will be close to a generation. Like almost everything - it will be phased in.

Must read book - The Rise and Fall of American Growth

Must listen podcast - #772 Small Change

u/Kirkaine · -1 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

That's a monster of a question. Hell, development economics is an entire academic field, you might as well ask 'ELI5: Physics'. Anyone who seriously thinks they can give you an answer here is lying to you, and probably to themselves as well.

That being said, for my money there are three books that are really required reading on the topic of how countries end up poor, plus two books that are required reading on why it's so hard to fix. I'd call them the bare minimum to call yourself literate on the subject.

  1. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond. Essential reading on the big (i.e. several millennia) question of how the world ended up broadly split between rich and poor. I think they made it into a documentary, that's probably worth checking out.

  2. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. If you only read one of these, make it this one. Perfect blend of big picture history and modern policy analysis.

  3. Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo. Much more micro-focused, this one is about poor people more than it's about poor countries. I mainly include it because Esther is a beast, and this is one of my favourite books of all time. Definitely worth the read.

    Two that you should read on why it's so hard to fix global poverty (Poor Economics sits at the intersection).

  4. The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for our Time, Jeffrey Sachs. Jeff Sachs is one of those names that everyone in the world should know. Read this book, end of story.

  5. The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, William Easterly. Easterly is another name everyone should know. To be honest, I don't agree with him on a whole lot of things. But pretending the other side of the debate doesn't exist is utterly moronic, and you can always learn a lot from people you disagree with.
u/Olduvai_Joe · -1 pointsr/worldpolitics

Jews were integrated into whiteness during the 1950s and 1960s, especially after the 1967 Six Day War. Great book: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu/product/How-Jews-Became-White-Folks-and-What-That-Says-Abo,3228.aspx

The Japanese were incredibly fortunate in that China and North Korea arose as Communist powers in the post-war period. Suddenly, Americans were willing to spend billions of dollars aiding them. Japan in particular had a strong pre-war history of using the same economic techniques that America had to become strong (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_School_%28economics%29) while most countries are advised to open their markets to western powers instead. See: https://www.amazon.ca/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Development-Perspective/dp/1843310279

u/englishgentabouttown · -1 pointsr/AskSocialScience

Boy do I have a book for you!

Kicking Away the Ladder by Ha Joon Chang.

He's a 'heterodox' economist, in other words he doesn't agree with the 95% of economists who are writing at the moment.

He basically argues that economies have grown because they developed using protectionist policies. Then, when they were strong, forced countries to open up to their advantage, effectively 'kicking away the ladder'. The book is thoroughly well researched and well written.


Now, technological advancement. For a fun idea of this I like Brenner who writes lots about economics and how the crash happened. He also wrote a LOT about how capitalism originally developed from Feudalism: Here's a link to a copy http://www.scribd.com/doc/74325361/BrennerPropertyandProgress

Basically he's arguing that it's nothing to do with technological developments but developments in relations of production that decide social relations, what he calls 'social property relations'. It's a bit of a dull read because he's REALLY methodical but interesting because it shows how capitalism developed - it's about control from the top.


Now! To more recent times. How did America get ahead? I reccomend two articles: The American Road to Capitalism by Charles Post which talks about slave economies and how it held America back as well as how the petty agronomy was central to the development of industry (if you've read the Brenner this will sound familiar in an odd way).

The other piece I really like is by Kozul-Wright called the myth of Anglo-Saxon Capitalism, it's in a book called he Role of the State in Economic Change. He argues that America did well because it ignored Britain's 'laissez-faire' mentality and instead created a strong domestic economy backed up by a strong state which helped to develop an 'agro-industrial complex' that was the back bone. A strong state had money to spend plus it had the ability to change property laws to help the common good (think about eminent domain in developing rail accross the US which was so imperative to it's growth). Once it got big internally the state began to fade away.


Now! We come to the modern day! Technological advancement, why is it some countries roar ahead? For this I reccomend Block and Keller's excellent (recent) article "Where do Innovations Come from?". Turns out if you look at the most promising innovations of recent times they've all come from government funded labs or from universities - the private sector has little to do with R&D and technological development. They argue that the State, even if not a direct and single funder (because there are so many state and federal bodies in the US) acts as a 'networked state' that provides information and backs certain people to give others confidence in their innovations and this is central to keeping ahead.


Hope that helps! (p.s this is not economics so much as a leftward leaning political economy which seeks to explain a lot of things economics tries to gloss over).

u/SuaveCrouton · -2 pointsr/DebateFascism

This is an excellent book for understand the shift in the American economy and the profound social and political changes it has brought

Here's a short and easy to read e-book that gives a good understanding of the economy and its multiple parts

And I wouldn't bother with anarcho communists, they're basically required to be profoundly economically illiterate to ascribe to their ideology, I've had several of them tell me that Stalin was pro-capitalist because state property is exclusionary and therefore private property, obviously ignoring the massive contradiction with calling state property private property.

Understanding economics is the beginning of sound political thought, most terrible ideologies are conceived from dismal understanding of the economy supplemented by baseless rhetoric.

u/solarpoweredbiscuit · -2 pointsr/Futurology

Welcome to futurology. No offense intended, but I think it would be in the best interests of you and our community if you would lurk more before posting to this sub, as subreddits exist for a reason and are each separate communities that are best served by people who have an understanding of it.

Now the reason I asked you about technological unemployment is because universal basic income, as it is discussed on this subreddit, is intrinsically tied to the rise in jobs lost due to automation. People here view basic income at least as a stopgap measure to prevent societal upheaval during a time when wealth is becoming increasing concentrated at the top due to automation technology.

If you want to get a better understanding of this issue, I recommend this talk by Brynjolfsson and McAfee (authors of The Second Machine Age, probably the best book on this issue).

u/45underthesea · -2 pointsr/technology

Do not forget for a second that when the US was a growing economy that they did cheat, steal, use child labour, use slave labour, pollute, etc. But now that the US has climbed to the top they are Kicking Away the Ladder.

u/butth0lez · -4 pointsr/WTF

hand them this book. "The Triumph of Conservativism"

Calls progressives the true conservatives, and theyre the ones who put corporate special interest in power.

u/rammingparu3 · -5 pointsr/DebateFascism
u/libfascists_2 · -19 pointsr/politics
u/MKEndress · -25 pointsr/AskSocialScience

Yes. Your answer can be found in the pop book "Why Nations Fail" (https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719227) or the academic work of its authors. Short answer is that incentives matter, and markets provide great incentives.

NB: Neoliberal has no meaning in economics and is essentially a pejorative for anyone who does not align perfectly with the far left. We would refer to these policies as market liberalization, where liberal is used in the classical sense.