ITT: Books that you are certain nobody on this board has ever read

you're full of shit.

This was great, Economic Fact's and Fallacy was good too, albeit a bit redundant. I'd stick with Basic Economics.

Sowell like most economists is simply too stupid to understand that the story changes when people act together in cooperative action. This failure at a basic level is why the conclusions of his book fail. They are based on a selfish viewpoint that doesn't accept that you get more when you work together than the sum of individual action.

His critiques on Marx, as well as his inability to account for the data of inequality are all flawed because his math simply doesn't include that which is greater than the sum of its parts.

He is nothing but a black apologist for the exploiters, and is a favorite of trite minds too addled by racism and misogyny to see that Capitalism stopped being a market economy shortly after the invention of money, or that it is nothing but a chain letter and a pyramid scheme designed to hide the win/lose of exploitation inside the win/win of cooperative action at the expense of the very trust and cooperation that gets us more than we can by ourselves.

tl;dr: Sowell is simply a black Laffer: just a moron who says what other want to hear to sell books and get grants from exploiters.

Is this misesian?

>more when you work together
Wrong
>capitalism came before money
Hahahahahahahahha

>His critiques on Marx
>his inability to account for the data of inequality
Like I said, it's very obvious most people on this board haven't read this book.

Anti-Oedipus/A Thousand Plateaus
Being and Time
Critique of Pure Reason

what passage are you referring to?

karl marx said that capital=labor+means of production yet he did not mention raw materials.
When somebody builds a building they need tools and labor sure, but what about the bricks and steel beams?
Also to karl marx treated labor as if it was all the same.
Like a scientist that comes up with a new material can revolutionize the industries whereas a builder is replaceable.
It all seems way too simplified.

>his critiques on Marx
>story changes when people act together
Holy shit, you have not read a single fucking page

damn, not even one argument?

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I'm not American so I've never been engaged with such authors, but the use of
>le common sense
makes me think it's some retarded neoliberal propaganda that considers humans totally rational and free actors.

See what I mean? You are Stupid. Cooperative work lets you be in two places at once, work continuously around the clock, store knowledge and experience across generations, and create a reality you couldn't even conceive of by yourself.

And how can you say a market values products if those products compared also contain the paradoxes of the labor and the company itself? that is like saying you consume the sandwich and the company that makes it. That is like saying you consume the sandwich but the sandwich also consumes itself.

And selling money for more money is simply a chain letter that is no different than printing money.

There is an economics that works, it is just that you morons are too stupid to even know you are too stupid.

In my experience marxists tend to be economically iliterate straight white males, who refuse to take responsibility for their privelege and state of the world through pragmatic and rational means and instead retreat to meaningless dialectical mumbo jumbo and adolescent fantasies of apocalyptic violence. I work in the development sector with a diverse set of people from all cultures and countries, institutions like the imf and the world bank are light years ahead of marxists, incorporating gender into all aspects of their work and using the latest developments in big data internet of things and cognitive science in order to fight poverty promote democracy and social justice and measurably increase the quality of life for millions of people. What do marxists ever do beyond deny economics and run cover for authoritarian regimes?

Just because Sowell and others disagree with Marx doesn't mean they are right about neoliberalism.

He specifically differentiated the verifiability of bridge building/engineering with economic theory, in the former is a literal science. His point was that there is enough evidence and history in repeated economic shifts and decisions to forecast predictable outcomes. He never stated this plainly, but I would believe he more specifically rejects economics as defined by or limited to simple matter of opinion, or ideals, not that he claimed it was a literal science. Much of his points with regards to tendency for policy makers to emphasize intent over cause and effect I believe supports this. He never claimed it was a literal science.

Give us one first and I did

His discussion of Marx makes up about 0.001% of the book, and it's barely even a refutation. Marx is basically only talked about in passing in his chapter on the history of economics, at the very end of the book.

Economics is a pseudoscience. It cannot be based under any circumstance.

I wish more people could be big brained Keynesians rather than marxfags and free market fundamentalists.

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Based and /thread.

What 'story changes' when people cooperate? I don't really understand what you're saying because it's not refuting anything in his book. Are you talking about aggregate supply and demand? As for 'selfish viewpoint', I'm not sure there's anything of the sort in there.

Also I suspect you havn't read Marx either. As you seem to be posting psuedo-neo marxist talking points. Marx wrote about, things Sowell writes about and how they saved Europe from Feudalism.

>lets you be in 2 places at once
So you have to tell them what you want them to do, give them what they need to do it, they have to want to do it, and you have to split the gains. More agents in a system equals less efficiency, hence why 500 people working in a pizza place would be a nightmare.

How?

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...

Marxfags forever btfo

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I'm not a Marxist. I am a mathematician who studies how people come up with the stories of math.

Every story of math and rationality has at its base a story of conservation. Economics is the study of conservations Plural.
And it is in the equivocation of what is conserved that redefines the parts that add up to the whole. Different stories rewrite the reused parts, and equivocation of a part developed for one whole with a part rewritten by a new whole is the most frequent mistake in the applications of mathematics.
Economics is rife with equivocation. I didn't read this book, but have read lots of Sowell, as well as lots of other neoliberal economists, and I am telling you Capitalism is not a market economy.

You could make a market system that worked and created a value system in a Market of Choice, but not if you allow individual to hold the intermediary of money. You can even do it in a decentralized way that is much more effective than the private banking system (that is not private at all). It is not a market economy if you add the labor and the company itself: that is a paradox that equivocates consumer and product.
But you will do none of this if you limit your choices to either socialism or capitalism and continue to defend one in terms of the other.

Both are wrong.

post the US version

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Source?

here's a link
epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
but I'm sure that's not the original source, it's a well known graph.

It's not hard to get wages go match productivity. There were 3 things that did it in the 30's and 40's:
(1) The New Deal encouraging unions
(2) The end of mass immigration in the 20's
(3) Technological change
EPI is the correct source.

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No. You have to agree to work together and in doing so create what no one person could ever conceive of doing alone. No one has to tell anyone what to do.

Humans are both an individual and a collective. Our collective actions allow us to do things that alone we could never do. That means there is more than the sum of our individual abilities.
It is not just that everyone can clear a field of rocks weighing 100 lbs. It is that we can work together and lift the 400lb rocks too! It means that we alone cannot kill the buffalo, but together we can harass and avoid him until he dies of heat exhaustion.

It mean we can discover stories and communicate them across generations and make a cell phone that no one person in 1000 lifetimes could make themselves.

When economics doesn't account for the Public Production of the network effect of our actions, exploiters can fool us with comparative advantage, and, thorough wage lowered in the same marketplace, steal the rewards cooperative action that the market valued.

Capitalism steals three ways: the Public Production, the cooperative reward, and makes the public pay for their consumption that affect the public.

All of that could be eliminated if the banks were public and decentralized by community.

with the added benefit of no taxes. And no socialism, Just a market that finally works.

>I can post a time stamp with my copy if you need proof although that wouldn't show I read it through.
Do it.

based book

>He specifically differentiated the verifiability of bridge building/engineering with economic theory, in the former is a literal science
Ok, I don't remember this particular section but it has been a good four maybe five years since I read the book.
Now I'm not sure what you mean by a "literal" science, and how his conception of economics doesn't fit that.
According to this book there are static laws of economics that hold true regardless of circumstance, he says this in the first couple paragraphs of the introduction I just checked.

How is this any different from the pronouncements of physicists or other actual scientists?
Oh right, they have to follow the scientific method and every conclusion has to be tested for repeatably in controlled environments and under various circumstances.
All this book does is list off a bunch of drawn out anecdotes about the predecessor to walmart, rent prices in new york, and the GDP of different third world countries.
You could easily find enough anecdotes to counter every one of his if you looked hard enough

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Can someone enlighten me here? Is this supposed to be bait or a Yea Forums meme? I ask because I don't use Yea Forums much but nearly every time I come here there's a Thomas Sowell thread. Even IRL I know people who seldom read at all but who have read Thomas Sowell (and, yes, as seems to be the case with all Sowell readers, they're not very sharp).

I doubt you people know what puedoscience is. Moreover, the same people who trash "psuedoscience" make fun of science for being söy and cringe and whatever.

>All of that could be eliminated if the banks were public and decentralized by community.
hahano

Libertarians unironically praise blackface Friedman. Although, I wouldn't doubt that some of the threads made about Sowell are ironic.

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How so? Marxists think capitalism must precede communism because of its pure productive power. Marx had a lot of respect for capitalism. But when you live on a planet with finite resources it doesn't seem particularly wise to maintain an economic model that relies upon infinite exploitation and growth. At some point you need to strive for sustainability instead.

great argument... you'll go far....

I've already got far enough to negate a baseless claim.

i think it's more complicated than that.
During the 20th century the us had little competition, like 1/2 the planet was communist and Europe had been destroyed.
Now investors have more choices other than the us that are more profitable so there's more capital flight.

>All of that could be eliminated if the banks were public and decentralized by community.
theyd probably charge a higher interest rate if that was the case.

You have negated nothing... Go back to your boomer retirement community and watch your fox news.

De-territorialization definitely doesn't favour the working class, but wouldn't capital flight affect GDP as well?

>All of that could be eliminated if the banks were public and decentralized by community.

What are credit unions?

>During the 20th century the us had little competition, like 1/2 the planet was communist and Europe had been destroyed
The rapid wage growth was experienced from 1936-1940, though.
>Now investors have more choices other than the us that are more profitable so there's more capital flight.
No doubt globalization has played a role too.

I've pointed finger at your baseless claim and laughed. In this community it's considered encouragement to expand and defend your case else the claim is vain.

Why would you say that? They still have to compete with other public banks. It is just that the interest from selling money for more money goes to pay for what your taxes go for now. Public production of agreeing to the monetary system goes to pay for the public consumption of government.

You keep everything you earn but cannot make money off investing. Ask yourself: do you make more in your lifetime off interest and the value increase of your house, or do you pay more in taxes? Unless you are in the 1% you pay more in taxes. Interest rates are determined by the market but the market now works because the only ones who earn without producing is everyone.

fucking based how did this not get attention

like for example if I had $1000 and you wanted to borrow a dollar I'd charge you 5% interest because my marginal cost would be low
whereas if I had $2 and you wanted to borrow I would charge 50%
I fudged the numbers, but you get the idea

The federal reserve determines interest rates, not the market. This is part of the problem.

>public banks
>All of that could be eliminated if the banks were public and decentralized by community.
Read the book that this thread is about. Sowell goes into detail about the public banks in India. The tellers would treat people like shit and service at the banks was poor. The reason for this is because they were always propped up by taxpayers and never had to fear going off the market because of their shit service.

What do I read to become keynesian

Credit union make money for their depositors. In a Decentralized Public Banking system, most profit goes to the community with some going to state and federal projects.

The advantage is that the fed can simply print any money it needs as long as the infrastructure build with that money increase the economy.
This eliminates all risk. All risk becomes public risk and since it doesn't affect the economy the whole concept of risk disappears.

The only taxes are corporate to pay for their impact on the public. Right now the market does not collect for what corporations make us pay for such as pollution clean up or special infrastructure for just one industry.

Just think of it: no more subsidies, no more tax loopholes, no more ability to exploit. Everyone earns what the market pays at that time, and no one can use their money to control anything.

A real public banking system that was decentralized by community would solve most of our economic problems overnight.

>he reason for this is because they were always propped up by taxpayers and never had to fear going off the market because of their shit service.
no, the reason is because they were staffed by low IQ street shitting poo skinned pajeets

Here's a long ass bibliography
socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2017/12/bibliography-on-post-keynesian.html?m=1

I have actually read this book, but I had forgotten until you reminded me, OP. I expected more technical stuff from it, not just "capitalism good" but it was an ok read.

I'm glad you think so...

one hundred percent agree with you, but I am not talking about Government Banks. I am talking about Decentralized Public Banks.

They were popular in the first part of the 20th century in the Dakotas, but were put out of business by corrupt politicians that outlawed them nationwide.

A decentralized public banking system is no different that the banking system we have now except that the profits go to fund the government instead of Wall Street, and you trade interest for not having to pay for taxes. It's a bit more complex than that, and requires that no one be allowed to sell money for more money. This means all investment has to go through a bank and no one can make money off of money.

It also abolishes stocks. Stocks are just a chain letter. The company is not the product. No one can own a company because no one can sell a company.
Intellectual property laws change and Rentier activity is stopped, but all of this returns the market to a Market of Choice and finally values products accordingly.

But it all starts with the localization of the banking system in the community...

>follow the scientific method and every conclusion has to be tested for repeatably in controlled environments and under various circumstances.
I don't see how this specific method of identifying a relationship between cause and effect wouldn't apply to economics. It is reasonable, for example, to assume that the crash that set off the Great Depression was caused by a number fo related factors, and that those specific combination of causes ought to be avoided in order to assure it would not happen again in a comparable environment. What better method would economists have to determine the validity of their ideas than this?
It is undoubtedly true, that certain policies work and do not work to their intended effects. The best method of assuring success of a decision would be to observe successful ones made before, and to attempt to recreate the factors that made them successful. The same could be said for avoiding failures. This is a very simple method of cause and effect analysis, this isn't as much a literal science, in that it is entirely dependent on the function of humans to behave in repetivie and predictable ways, entirely dissimilar to observing an apple falling from a tree. The latter is a law of science, an apple will always fall. Sowell makes no claims of comparison in this way to economic theory. The most Sowell might allude to a "law" of economics would only be taken from an actual scientific law, such as his definition of economics: the allocation of scarce resources which have alternative uses. The fact that all resources are inherently scarce is a scientific fact, not economic theory. Sowell's fundamental argument on the matter, from what I gathered, is that the use of empiricism and data analysis is historically the most efficient method of decision making in economic systems. His biggest refutation in opposition to that is the notion that economics is an entirely nebulous concept, one that can be shaped uniquely to the peculiarities of any individual. Such a disregard for the merit of empiricism and cause effect accountability has lead to many counterproductive systems that could have been avoided had those in power better understood the history behind such systems they were attempting to implement.
>All this book does is list off a bunch of drawn out anecdotes about the predecessor to walmart, rent prices in new york, and the GDP of different third world countries.
I hope my previous points give context to why Sowell might view these as important, or why an analysis of history in general might be important to making decisions in the present.
>You could easily find enough anecdotes to counter every one of his if you looked hard enough
You know, I've been trying to find something amounting to this. If what you said here were literally 100% true, it would refute Sowell and literally everything he stands for. I've yet to find anything like this, and I doubt you have either. I challenge you to test this assumption.

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>I expected more technical stuff
>self titled citizen's guide to economics
>states in the introduction that it will not be technical
>lying on the internet

I think Proudhon wrote about that

If you'd actually read Marx you would know that the means include the literal means, the raw materials and degradation of the literal means

“Autism is pure (((doctor)) propaganda used to silence the truth about high-IQ brain damage”

God ur levels of retardation are incalculable

> It is reasonable, for example, to assume that the crash that set off the Great Depression was caused by a number fo related factors, and that those specific combination of causes ought to be avoided in order to assure it would not happen again in a comparable environment.
There are innumerable potential factors that lead to the great depression, this is shown by there being entire seperate "schools" of economics that suggest entirely different collections of factors as the cause, for both the great depression and various other things that happen relating to the/ an economy.
Again there are no controlled studies, there are no repeats, there is only biased speculation.
>It is undoubtedly true, that certain policies work and do not work to their intended effects.
Is it? Why do we even have political debate, or elections. Why not just hand over power to a supercomputer that can min/max the most efficient and productive system?
>last part
I'm going to be honest, if you want me to go through the book a second time and try to find an anecdote that stands in opposition to his point, the thread will probably be dead by the time I'm done. But surely I don't need to help you find examples of people criticising or arguing against thomas sowell, he has loads of opponents

*in opposition to his points
as in all of them, if it wasn't clear

can anyone counter this btw?
I've also seen p2p lending and they amount of interest that is charged is obscene.

>Again there are no controlled studies, there are no repeats, there is only biased speculation.
I still don't see why the principle method of cause and effect analysis would be irrelevant. I am not saying all economists are all equally correct, only that the validity of their theories can be estimated by their literal implementation. Sowell does a decent job at framing the Chicago school of economics with other theories and how they relate and evolve from one another in one of the last chapters. He never once claimed that his own was the correct and final school of economics, that economics could somehow be solved like bridge engineering can.
>Is it? Why do we even have political debate, or elections. Why not just hand over power to a supercomputer that can min/max the most efficient and productive system?
This is a very silly argument. If my rent control policy intends to decrease homelessness for lower income citizens, and it turns out to work to the opposite effect, it is a failed policy, regardless of whether I was intentionally lying about my own estimations. I see no real reason why we wouldn't actually want a super AI to optimize our systems, other than the obvious risk of giving any entity that level of power. This is point is almost entirely irrelevant.
>But surely I don't need to help you find examples of people criticising or arguing against thomas sowell, he has loads of opponents
I've been trying to find an comparabke antithesis to this book, one that actually addresses what you are suggesting. If you know of one, I would like to read it. Obviously it might not address Sowell directly, but a similar book in the opposite view would be nice to read. Something that would either equal Sowell's use of real world examples or fundamentally refute most of them.

i've tried starting it a few times but the simplicity of sentences is off-putting

They haven't read them. Hence the thread.

Haven't read this book, but I have read Vision of the Anointed. Sowell is fit only for the toilet. There's a reason no one's read this book, just like there's a reason no one's read the wall of text posts ITT. Has multiple indicators of not worth reading.

t. conservative

I've only read The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money and was surprised to find out that many of the criticisms leveled against him simply don't apply to his work. That is, people don't know what Keynes actually wrote. If there's one thing FDR's presidency taught us it's that Keynesian economics leads to greater collective prosperity than any other system ever devised (unironically).

>I still don't see why the principle method of cause and effect analysis would be irrelevant.
That is not what Sowell is doing (and more generally, economics as a discipline), rather it's taking an effect with multiple possible causes and giving some importance while downplaying others
>He never once claimed that his own was the correct and final school of economics, that economics could somehow be solved like bridge engineering can.
Is he not, cos I get the feeling that's exactly what he's doing. Again I'll refer back to the very introduction where he talks about the laws of economics that hold true across time and space

I'm not the person to ask for for opposing arguments to thomas sowell, because I'm pretty sure that any other economic school is just as dubious. Although my posts should have made that obvious to you. I'm not a socialist, or anti market, but I'm clearly not a laissez faire advocate either.
I'm actually relatively impartial and not ideological when it comes to economic issues.

Delphine destroyed marx's value theory of value when she started selling bathwater for $30

>economics is a meme

If youre saying the field of economics isn't important, you're a fucking brainlet who don't know shit.

It's so obvious that 90percent of the people who posts about economics here have not studied it, cause you get the most basic shit wrong

it would be important if it existed, literally /x/ tier
are you gonna tell me about cryptids next?

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He's saying It's not a science.
Because he's wrong.

It doesn't matter if it's a science. It's what we have, and without it we would be worse off. I don't think you are aware of how much economic theory is used. Im struggling to explain this in English

Haven't read marx but I think you misunderstand. Capital and labor are two factors of production. Labor can for example be work hours. Capital can be a computer, a hammer, a farm,...

Haven't read it, but an economics book without graphs or math is retarded

The feds determine interest rates to stabilize the economy, inflation, employment. That's not a problem, it is necessary. For example, f there is a recession, the feds will lower the market rate to speed up the economy.

It is very nice of you to allow retard here to post with you, Yea Forums.

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I have read it and he doesn't even understand trade-offs and it's actually amazing.

>The political temptation is to have the government come to the aid of particular industries, regions or segments of the population that are being adversely affected by economic changes. But this can only be done by taking resources from those parts of the economy that are advancing and redirecting those resources to those whose products or methods are less productive—in other words, by impeding or thwarting the economy’s allocation of scarce resources to their most valued uses, on which the standard of living of the whole society depends. Moreover, since economic changes are never-ending, this same policy of preventing resources from going to the uses most valued by millions of people must be on-going as well, if the government succumbs to the political temptation to intervene on behalf of particular industries, regions or segments of the population, sacrificing the standard of living of the population as a whole.

No you fucking monetarist moron there's no real cost in employing unused resources when you have fucking excess capacity.

There's what you mentioned about marginal utility, look up prospect theory. And also, banks manage risk by creating portfolios of loans. They don't lend out everything to one person, they diversify. Also they do something called durasion hedging.

This was on the segment where he spoke about India's car thing, right? How does your quote not fit that circumstance? Asking unironically, would appreciate an actual answer.

>The most Sowell might allude to a "law" of economics would only be taken from an actual scientific law, such as his definition of economics: the allocation of scarce resources which have alternative uses. The fact that all resources are inherently scarce is a scientific fact, not economic theory. Sowell's fundamental argument on the matter, from what I gathered, is that the use of empiricism and data analysis is historically the most efficient method of decision making in economic systems.

Economics is just about RATIOS... not "scarce resources" but how a monetary economy actually functions and that's what he doesn't understand. Scarcity is a physical reality surely but an economy is far removed from such issues. Notting has been empirically proven more false than monetarism, look at what has occurred over the past 10 years, just try to explain some place like Japan in monetarist logic today.

I just grabbed one quote to emphasis one of his fundamental fallacy which he resorts to over and over:
>this can only be done by taking resources from those parts of the economy that are advancing and redirecting those resources to those whose products or methods are less productive
What's the key assumption here? Full factor utilization i.e. something totally removed from the grand majority of all real world conditions 90% of the time.

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Can keynesian economics explain Japan though?

"Keynesianism" is dead man, the modern paradigm has advanced to post-keynesianism... but yes, the Japanese economy is a great case study although policy makers there have no idea what they're doing i.e. Abe wants to raise sales taxes again this year since he doesn't "get it"

bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=36631

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what if the explanation is that japan is going through late stage capitalism?

This has been helpful. Thanks for the thoughful response.

I've read it. It's good, although obviously trying to sell a certain viewpoint.

libertarians are pea-brains

im gonna need that timestamp. It doesn't sound like you read it.

Sowell does almost none of the common economic complaints:
- no mathematical models
- no graphs
- no micro economic analysis
- no reductionist descriptions of human behavior

> neoliberal

how so?

next time read the book.

>fight poverty
shift poverty
>promote democracy
implying we're living under a democracy
>social justice
hilarious

you guys suck.
youre ruining third world countries by giving women rights.

the great heresies by hiliare belloc

Has there ever been a book-length rebuttal to pic related? It is a line-by-line critique of the General Theory.

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rothbard was a hack.

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I want to read this, but it's pretty damn boring

>Market-fundamentalist propaganda is worth reading because the author called it "basic economics".

I prefer pic related

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I'm pretty sure no one read this one. I have read it twice. But most people's go to when it comes to Elizabeth II is some quaint author who also wrote about Diana or something. Not this masterpiece by the late Ben Pimlott.

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based

They lucked out by him being black so they can just discredit them with the 2 words 'Uncle Tom'.

You could've just said house nigger. Also, I think it would've been easier for them to discredit him had he been white. I understand your point though.

i did skim through it.
he doesnt talk about socialism at all.
he also argued that jobs wouldnt go overseas and that there wouldnt be a trade deficit with China.
So he was wrong.
Have you read the book op?

>he also argued that jobs wouldnt go overseas and that there wouldnt be a trade deficit with China.
I don't know which edition you have read but Sowell makes virtually zero statements or predictions as to any future economic outcomes. At best one could say he does this by bringing uo historic examples.
>he doesnt talk about socialism at all.
He talks about socialist institutions, and the general notion of it, he doesn't really ever attempt to define it or challenge it directly, nor does he really ever defend capitalism directly. He could have easily compared the two, and said capitalism is simply the system by which human beings ought to most efficiently function, he leaves the reader to conclude that however they choose to do so. I wouldn't exactly say Sowell is even implying that specific statement, but I can understand why somebody might infer that from this book should they choose to.
>he also argued that jobs wouldnt go overseas and that there wouldnt be a trade deficit with China.
>So he was wrong.
Sowell makes virtually zero future estimations or predictions towards any economic outcome or shift whatsoever. The book is clearly intended to be readable far into the future by that measure. I don't know what edition of the book you read, but I read nothing of that sort in the one I read, being the most recent. I believe it was either 2013 or 2015. Again, I have no idea where the fuck you came to this specific conclusion about his assertions to trade with China. You should read the book. The book would sooner explain why it is that labor gets shifted overseas or the actual effects of "trade deficits," which Sowell asserts are, fundamentally speaking, never literally negative scenarios. Are we talking about the same book? Are you just trying to ironically prove my point and I've fallen for an elaborate bait?

>33When workers in a prosperous country receive twice the wage rate as workers in a poorercountry and produce three times the output per man-hour, then it is the high-wagecountry that has the lower labor costs. It is cheaper to get a given amount of work donein the more prosperous country simply because it takes less labor, even though individualworkers are paid more. The higher-paid workers may be more efficiently organized andmanaged, or have far more or better machinery to work with.A prosperous country usually has a greater abundance of capital and, because of supplyand demand, capital tends to be cheaper than in poorer countries where capital is scarcerand earns a correspondingly higher rate of return.

yet jobs have gone overseas

>34If Americans buy more Chinese goods than the Chinese buy American goods, thenChina gets American dollars to cover the difference. Since China is not just going tocollect these dollars as souvenirs, it usually turns around and invests them in theAmerican economy. In most cases, the money never leaves the United States. TheChinese simply buy investment goods—Rockefeller Center, for example—ratherthan consumer goods. American dollars are worthless to the Chinese if they do notspend them on something. In growth terms, international trade has to balance, inorder to make any economic sense. But it so happens that the conventions ofinternational accounting count imports and exports in the “balance of trade,” butnot things which don’t move at all, like Rockefeller Center.

yet China just buys American bonds

>yet jobs have gone overseas
Yes the quote you were referencing literally says "when workers in a prosperous country receive twice the wage rate as workers in a poorer country and produce three time the output per man-hour, then it is the high-wage country that has the lower labor costs." How the fuck can you read this and interpret it as "labor is cheaper in wealthier countries." He specifically said the conditions under which labor is cheaper, in that it is dependent entirely on the cost per unit of output, you fucking massive brainlet. If jobs were to move to poorer countries, it would be because the cost per unit of output there was cheaper, you absolute fucking mongoloid monkey retard faghot bitch. The reality is that there are plenty of circumstances that can allow for similarly skilled people in wealthier countries to generate higher units of output than in poorer countries. Literally none of this implies "labor is cheaper in wealthy countries" or that labor will not move to cheaper countries. The reality is that jobs will move to wherever the cost per unit of output is cheapest, regardless of the reason behind it. You're fucking retarded. How the fuck can you actually be this goddamn stupid. This is like basic reading comprehension.
>yet China just buys American bonds
His point was that the difference gets invested, bonds are technically investments, if just less tangible than a multi million dollar building. The crux of his point with trade and notion of such deficits, was that in exchanges of free trade, both parties must benefit, otherwise the exchange would never take place in the first place. The matter of China buying bonds vs investing in real estate has literally nothing to do with this point.

no, but i listened to the podcast, unironically pretty good

Marxists BTFOd by globohomo lmao could never be me

If Americans buy more Chinese goods than the Chinese buy American goods, thenChina gets American dollars to cover the difference. Since China is not just going tocollect these dollars as souvenirs, it usually turns around and invests them in theAmerican economy. In most cases, the money never leaves the United States. TheChinese simply buy investment goods—Rockefeller Center, for example—ratherthan consumer goods. American dollars are worthless to the Chinese if they do notspend them on something. In growth terms, international trade has to balance, inorder to make any economic sense. But it so happens that the conventions ofinternational accounting count imports and exports in the “balance of trade,” butnot things which don’t move at all, like Rockefeller Center.

jesus, that's all I need to know not to waste a second on this trash boook

I was halfway through this but decided to put it on hold and after switching from book to book i forgot to finish it.

Why exactly do you believe wages should be tied to production? I've seen Marxists post this same exact picture so many times and I never get an answer to this. It's like they refuse to recognize that technology can increase production while not necessarily increasing the labor or time and skill required for that increased production. There's no reason to suppose that wages should increase along with production.

Every non fiction book has a viewpoint they're trying to sell. Pointing out that a book has a bias is the most pea brain shit there is.

Keynes theories reflect the fact that he was a high time preference degenerate homosexual pedophile. Anyone who takes him seriously should be jailed.

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>Why exactly do you believe wages should be tied to production?
So that people could buy the stuff they produce. From POV of classical political economy this shit isn´t desirable either, since it will lead to the crisis of demand

>can increase production while not necessarily increasing the labor or time and skill required for that increased production
Shit take. Why does society acquire technology if not for increasing the ratio between production and labour? If the merchant class would denies the working class right to get more capital for less labour, why should the working class tolerate the merchants?

>Marxists
This is the shit that makes Marxists wet, because it is empirical evidence of the inneficiency of capitalism and it´s clash with interests of the working class

>economics is not a science.
Correct. This is why the Austrian School is superior.

Higher production will increase supply and lower cost of good, so your own reasoning contradicts you. Wages don't need to increase for workers to buy what they produce. I know I'm talking to a brainlet because you quote and respond to individual sentences by try to think this stuff through.

“You’re all a bunch of socialists.” - Ludwig Von Mises

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Hmmmm all this butthurt get me interested in this book.

Based but bluepilled

>Higher production will increase supply and lower cost of good, so your own reasoning contradicts you
Guess what. The amount of stuff distributed across society increases and so does the stuff you need to live socially acceptable life. In other words, workers get smaller and smaller slice of the pie.

>Wages don't need to increase for workers to buy what they produce.
They do need to, when their productivity increases. That´s like basic fucking logic.

I know I´m talking to the brainlet, because you get triggered by analytical approach and ignore the crux of the issue.

>analytical approach
I legitimately laughed out loud

>en.wiktionary.org/wiki/analysis
>Decomposition into components in order to study (a complex thing, concept, theory etc.).
If you find this funny, seek a doctor. There might be something wrong with you.

>Sowell like most economists is simply too stupid to understand that the story changes when people act together in cooperative action.
By this sentence alone I could predict everything that you would post afterwards and I got it 100% correct.

Your pretensions are hilarious because quoting and responding to individual sentences is not how intellectual discourse takes place. It's what stupid people think intellectual discussion is. People aren't taught to do that in any academy.

You either do it because you're lazy or because you're too stupid to take in the entire argument at once. You can respond to each individual point without relying on that crutch which makes everything a mess to read and respond to. I normally don't read anyone who writes like that because the author doesn't respect me as a reader.

Either way, even if I was laughing at something that wasn't funny, why would I have to see a doctor? It would only mean my sense of humor is bad.

Guess what, we ain´t at the academy. We are on Bulgarian dog spinning forum. The shit we post doesn´t benefit our social standing and it´s erased in matter of days at best. Hence we developed this culture, where we strip arguments of needless fluff and target the core points without flowery language.

If you don´t like it, try Reddit dot com where they tie posts to people, reward posts with social status, don´t erase discussions and hence developed more holistic approach.

You're the one attempting to take an "analytic approach" and acting as if it's academic so you don't get say this is just a basket weaving forum when I point out how retarded you are.

>acting as if it's academic
Substantiate this claim or fuck off.

You defined your "analytic approach" as a "decomposition into components in order to study". What is it to study if it's unrelated to the academy?

Why would I want to read a bad economics textbook? It doesn't have any new ideas, it doesn't do a good job of teaching the application of those ideas, and it often oversimplifies for the sake of keeping things "common sense"

I will stick with Ricardo.

>The concept of "study" is inherently academic and can´t exists outside of academic context
Congratulations, you´ve derailed the argument to blatantly out yourself as a total crayonmuncher.

This is a lot of words for saying that a government exists

It’s not a textbook. It’s meant for your average pleb to learn basic economics. That’s the joke.

I didn't say "to study" was impossible outside of the academy, I said it wasn't unrelated to the academy. I don't know what you think I've derailed from because I wasn't having an argument with you in the first place. I don't put effort into people who write the way you do. I normally don't even read the posts of people who quote and respond to individual sentences. I told you as much and you had no problem talking about whether quoting and responding to individual sentences constituted an "analytical approach" until now, which I think is now becoming a problem for you because you're starting you realize retarded you've been. You no longer want to talk about it so suddenly I'm "derailing" the conversation you've willingly participated in.

Oh wow, that went right over my head. The weird thing to me is when people use economics to make moral claims like "Its not economically efficent for there to be billionaires" instead of saying "I dont think people should be billionaires"

>I didn't say "to study" was impossible outside of the academy,
>What is it to study if it's unrelated to the academy?
Way to weasel out. You´ve said "I´m acting as if academic" and I asked you to substantiate your claim. You failed.

>I don't put effort into people who write the way you do
Is a lot of words saying nothing.

>You no longer want to talk about it
I want to, it´s just you being a faggot dancing around it and getting caught in your own shit (which is quite funny to watch, tbeh).

>The weird thing to me is when people use economics to make moral claims like "Its not economically efficent for there to be billionaires" instead of saying "I dont think people should be billionaires"
Much of OP's book is about the political use of such verbal virtuosity in place of literal economic terms. You might enjoy the book, and the people that you are speaking of would benefit from it. The only person I think this book would not be worth reading is somebody immensely adept and well read on economic affairs.

Implying there is such a thing as "basic economics" is a disgusting rethorical tool and Sowell uses it without shame

Sowell's entire body of work is basically a distillation of the boomer myths that got us into the mess we're in. I don't know why people here take him seriously.

You should actually read the book and judge for yourself. It's quite fucking basic.

>intellectuals and society
rise up

It's unfortunate that the people who need it most are the least likely to read it. He doesn't just focus on arguing for and against particular policies like the minimum wage or rent control but he teaches people how to think about economics, to look at things in terms of incentives and tradeoffs rather than the "problems and solution" approach that lead people to initially support and continue to support such radically counterproductive policies like the minimum wage or rent control. It's very useful even if you don't consider yourself any sort of liberal.

Yeah it was the first book I read before I started formally studying to become an economist, and it taught me how to think like an economist and think in terms of incentives. His explanation of the price mechanism is superb

Your salary is a meme

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Arguments against rent control make sense but I've yet to hear a good argument against minimum wage. I wish conservatives still compared wage labor to slavery.

Well they may not be totally rational and free, but you have to assume they are to come up with a system that can predict how people will behave accurately (which microeconomics does EXTREMELY well). You cant make a system where people are half-rational, and you certainly cant make one where people are irrational, because that would imply you can never predict in the slightest how anyone will act. The whole of microeconomics can be derived from first principles from the assumption that people act rationally in their self interest by maximising their utility.

Says more about you than the left desu

The argument against minimum wage is easy, you cant sell your labour for more than it is worth, because no one will buy it, hence there will be unemployment. it makes perfect sense in a perfectly competitive labour market where employers do not have monopsony power, but in imperfectly competitive labour markets, say where a few firms dominate, they can suppress wages using their monopsony power since there is less competition for hiring. It ultimately depends on which market structure you are talking about as to whether minimum wages has a positive or negative impact

The reason the minimum wage is bad is because it doesn't help the people it's intended to. It raises the cost of doing business, so if the poor and least skilled aren't losing their jobs or being locked out of employment completely, they're seeing reduced hours and consequently a reduced income. Additionally there's an increased cost of production, the price of goods will rise as well. The people who are least able to buy goods are now less able with the institution or raising of a minimum wage.

>Easiest, most useless degrees get the most money, just because they re-affirm the established ideology
We live in a society, I guess.

>Additionally there's an increased cost of production, the price of goods will rise as well.
I meant to say that because there's an increased cost of production, the price of goods will rise.

>medicine
>engineering and technology
>law
>physical sciences
>economics
>easy degrees
Are you out of your mind?

Maybe you should leave the basement. In the real world, in the free market you cant make money unless you can actually make accurate predictions about the future. And if economics were such an easy degree, more people would study it because they would be incentivised to by the high wages and so there would be more economists competing for the same number of jobs, and hence wages would fall. Maybe if you studied economics, you would understand this

thats a perfect fucking book man,
a great companion to Fyodor's "Notes"

MUH AD HOMINEM

Which theories in particular? Are you even aware of any of his theories?

I am certain everyone on this board has not read any of the books they attempt to discuss. They probably just buy them and then read the wikipedia page.

I've seen people here write out entire passages on what they think even the most entry-level books mean; they are always a surface level interpretation and they get the actual plot details wrong or mixed up.

Most people here probably just read The Stranger for high school or some shit and then consider themselves an intellectual, the same way r/books does except with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or 1984.

Learn2read, I'm speaking about economical degrees, obviously physics is the hardest degree there is.

>And if economics were such an easy degree, more people would study
It's already the largest faculty at my uni. Just because something is profitable doesn't mean it's hard or desirable.

>doesn't mean it's hard or desirable.
It means exactly that it is hard AND desirable. Do you really think greedy capitalists would fork out excessive amounts of money for someone with a skillset that was neither hard nor desirable? Economics degrees are difficult because they involve both high level quantitative skills as well as the ability to write well like most humanities degrees.

Yes, that's what Sowell teaches you, but the fact is that the cost of doing business is only increased because the higher-ups are making inordinate sums of money. If the money was distributed a bit more fairly (and I'm not making an egalitarian argument, just that the pay gap should be more reasonable) they could pay their employees considerably more without raising the cost of production. Of course this isn't always the case with startups and small businesses, and I'd be fine making exceptions for them, but large businesses, which keep merging and growing, could easily handle a $15 minimum wage.

Yeah it depends on the market structure as I said here:

Yes, we don't have perfectly competitive labor markets so a minimum wage makes sense.

Nigger, it's the most lowbrow shit there is after sociology. Compare it to the actually important and hard stuff like science and medicine and it's pretty damn clear.

>Do you really think greedy capitalists would fork out excessive amounts of money for someone with a skillset that was neither hard nor desirable?
Why not? They spend excessive amount of money on advertisement and marketting, don't they?

>They spend excessive amount of money on advertisement and marketting, don't they?
Yes, because advertising and marketing are a barrier to entry which make it more difficult for other firms to enter the market and compete with them. They make more money in the long run that way. You should read an economics textbook.

And economics is certainly not lowbrow at all. I bet you don't even know what the difference between economics and finance is

But we do have some markets that are close to perfectly competitive, for instance the market for cashiers. In this case, a minimum wage that is too high could reduce the number of cashiers hired and increase the rate at which they are replaced by capital (e.g. self check out).

IN practice, even without a legal minimum wage, there is a de facto minimum wage set by the unemployment benefit rate since no rational individual would work for less than they could receive on welfare.

200 pages to go. To be fair Knight, Friedman, and Popper were kinda socialists.

I think your opinions on the minimum wage more reflect your prejudice against business owners and large firms than it does empirical realty. Large firms aren't immune to the laws of economics so if the minimum wage raises the cost of production for small business, it will also raise it for the large and the consequences remain the same. If the competitive wage rate for a large firm is less than 15 dollars an hour and you arbitrarily dictate it to be 15, people will lose their jobs and the price of goods will rise no matter how large or small the firm it's applied to. You imagine you're sticking it to the rich and hitting them in their wallets but you're only hurting the poorest and least skilled.

>Yes, because advertising and marketing are a barrier to entry which make it more difficult for other firms to enter the market and compete with them.
Way to miss the point buddy. You've been brainwashed to the point you can't think outside of the ideological box of "economics". Advertisement is detrimental to society, because it damages rational through of people in favour of increasing consumption for consumption's sake.

>And economics is certainly not lowbrow at all
It certainly is. Doctor is driven by desire to help people, scientist is driven by desire to study nature, philosopher is driven by desire to understand, people who study economics are driven by desire to acquire currency.

It depends on whether those large firms are paying their workers less than they would if the market was more competitive. In some markets, where there are only a few buyers of labour and lots of workers trying to supply their labour, the buyers of labour don't have to compete to the same extent for labourers on price than if there were more competitors, so wages are lower than in a competitive market. Sowell doesn't go into this in the book because it is "basic" economics, so he only gives the fundamentals. A minimum wage in this case wouldn't necessarily cause unemployment because firms can afford to pay their employees more, they just don't because there is not competition

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>people who study economics are driven by desire to acquire currency.
That isn't even what economics is about you doofus, that is finance. Economics is about solving problems of resource allocation in a world where resources are scarce and have alternative uses.

>Advertisement is detrimental to society, because it damages rational through of people in favour of increasing consumption for consumption's sake.
That is your opinion. That doesn't make what I said wrong though does it? Firms spend excessive amount of money on advertising so that competitors cant enter the market and compete with them without incurring huge costs. I think you have missed the point, I am just describing reality and giving you an explanation for why advertisers do that and thus why the fact that economists are paid more suggests it is a difficult degree

Absent a government controlled monopoly, the firm is competitive. Even then nobody is forced to work for any particular company or field. Like if there was a single coal mining company operating in the US and they paid less than 15 dollars an hour, nobody is forcing people to work in the coal mining business instead of working in warehouses or construction. The coal mining company is still competing for labor even though it's the only coal mining company in the US.

Somewhat true, but not completely true in all cases of imperfectly competitive labour markets. Yes firms from different industries compete against each other for labour when there is little cost incurred by suppliers of labour switching industries. But there are many cases where skills acquired are highly specialised to a specific field but there are only a few big firms hiring employees. A local coal mining company in a remote town is a good example actually because the skills required in mining aren't transferable to other jobs, but there may be only one mine in the local area, and workers may not want to incur the cost of moving to another part of the country.

>Economics is about solving problems of resource allocation in a world where resources are scarce and have alternative uses.
Preferably by allocating them to the allocater's pockets. Am I right?

>That is your opinion. That doesn't make what I said wrong though does it?
All normative statements are "opinions". It doesn't make your statement wrong, it shows that you've been brainwashed to a person who thinks primarily through the "bourgeiose" POV.

>economists are paid more suggests it is a difficult degree
It can suggest so if you think through a certain ideological framework. But in reality, theoretical physics are levels above it, yet theoretical physicists are paid like shit because their skills aren't marketable unless they opt for a job below their level.

If we're about industries which require highly specific skills, they're not going being paid the minimum wage so it's relevant. If there is such a mythical coal miner with skills that can only be used in coal mining, it's lucky for him there's more than one coal mine in the world. "Hard cases make bad law" is a common saying among lawyers and it applies to economics. Exceptional cases make bad policy. You're reaching into a bag for abstract theoretical cases to justify a policy that affects everyone in some way.

You don't know what you are talking about. Economics is not ideological, it is a model of the world which makes perfect sense if you accept certain (reasonable) assumptions. The main assumptions of economics are that resources are scarce and they have different uses, so we have to decide how, what, and for whom to produce (one solution to use is to use markets and prices, or government provision), and another assumption of economics is that people are rational and will seek to maximise their self interest.

WITHIN economics, there are indeed ideological schools of though (Keynesians vs Austrians, for example), but this is really only in MACROECONOMICS, which is the more imprecise version of economics which gets all the hate. Microeconomics, on the other hand, is very much precise and more scientific. Did you know Karl Marx was an economist? It isn't just about helping the rich, it is studying how best to allocate resources. You make an economic decision whenever you make a choice to do one thing instead of another thing, it doesn't have to involve money, because time is a scarce resource as well.

Ok but an imperfectly competitive labour market is one where there are lots of workers and a few big firms. It isn't a theoretical case, I gave you a good example. Thomas Sowell's magic world in "Basic Economics" where everything works is only half true because he only gives you half the story. I enjoyed the book and it taught me a lot, but you quickly learn how much he DIDNT tell you. For instance, monopolies exist in the free market *gasp* due to geographical isolation, and usually mines are geographically isolated and it is economically impractical for mine workers to pick up and move to another mine on the other side of the country.

A theoretical isolated mine with workers who don't have the means to move, and is paying less than the competitive wage would be an exceptional case and is no basis for a general law applying to any state. That's the opposite of a good example because it's exactly what I accused you of doing.

>Economics is not ideological
It is ideological/political throughout the whole thing. Descriptive models most often function as pre-requisite for prescriptive politics, same as in philosophy or sociology. And when it comes to prescriptive politics you must employ ideology to decide if you prefer national sovereignity, equality, stability, city, country, industry, services etc. What to produce, how to produce and for whom to produce are questions that can't be answered without some apriori ideological convictions.

Microeconomics is slave to macroeconomics. If you studied "microeconomics" back then under bolshevik you would get very different curriculum then you would get now. It's just about finding optimal behaviour in a game, where the rules are set by the macro.

True, which is why I agree with you that we shouldn't have a minimum wage. I am just showing you that there are situations in which a minimum wage doesn't reduce employment, which Sowell doesn't mention in his book. Any situation in a rural town where there is one big employer. Historically in my country (England), many towns in the north were entirely reliant on one industrial employer, so we needed trade unions or minimum wage legislation to ensure that they were not being paid less than the competitive rate.

Hazlitt fundamentally doesn't understand basic economic concepts empirically so it's just a waste of time. The man thinks "savings" create investment, you can't argue with someone like that you just point out how institutions really don't function as he claims.

That's the standard fucking pre-Keyensian Pigou vision of things. You can't raise employment by lowering wages [especially in a fucking service economy] since that effects revenue. Unemployment exists because it's profitable to not employ everyone. Capitalism is about profit, liberals like to invoke utopian visions of private charity solving the other issues.

Increases in minimum wages do tend to increase the real income of minimum wage earners, the little inflation that follows always eats into the higher wages of others in the short term but minimum wage and welfare measures as they exist are inefficient compared to policies aiming at full employment.

No, economics is not ideological in the same way physics is not ideological. Economics only seeks to describe "what is", not "what ought to be". A lot of economists then make claims about what policies they think are good, but that is not economics, just their opinion informed by economics. It's just like how scientists tell governments they should spend money to solve climate change.

>hat to produce, how to produce and for whom to produce are questions that can't be answered without some apriori ideological convictions.
True, it is a philosophical question. What economists do is study the different options available e.g. free market provision vs central planning.

>

>Microeconomics is slave to macroeconomics
Actually it's the other way around. Most macroeconomic concepts have microeconomic foundations and were derived from microeconomics.

What you are upset about is normative vs positive economics. If you accept that the assumptions of economics are true (scarce resources, rational people) then you HAVE to accept the positive economic theory and its implications

>Economics is not ideological, it is a model of the world which makes perfect sense if you accept certain (reasonable) assumptions. The main assumptions of economics are that resources are scarce and they have different uses, so we have to decide how, what, and for whom to produce (one solution to use is to use markets and prices, or government provision), and another assumption of economics is that people are rational and will seek to maximise their self interest.
Models function as ideologies FYI, they're not "real". In reality what's occurring isn't about "scarcity" but the process of accumulation of intangible titles to future claims on wealth. The thing is investment is irrational and outcomes are unknown, there's to many unknown unknowns to say anything rational about what you want to have faith in.

>Microeconomics, on the other hand, is very much precise and more scientific
Microeconomics is unfalsifiable and says notting about how institutions really function. There's little empirical evidence to even suggest that businesses really maximize profit.

You mentioned unions, wouldn't they be sufficient in handling any cases where uncompetitive wages were being imposed on an immobile population? If so I don't see a need for a minimum wage law even in the exceptional cases.

>Actually it's the other way around. Most macroeconomic concepts have microeconomic foundations and were derived from microeconomics.
>What you are upset about is normative vs positive economics. If you accept that the assumptions of economics are true (scarce resources, rational people) then you HAVE to accept the positive economic theory and its implications
I'm not who you're responding to but aggregate demand is more real than micro concepts of rational agents maximizing their utility or anything like that. You don't need microeconomic foundations, that was a dumb trend.

Of course the assumptions are simplifications of reality, but you have to do that in order to get a model. A model by its very nature is a simplification of the real thing. As long as the model gives us insights into how people will behave and makes reasonably accurate predictions, it is working. It doesn't matter whether people actually maximise utility or firms maximise profit, obviously they don't because in reality people aren't completely rational, but assuming it helps us simplify the model. And it is not an unreasonable assumption to make, because people tend to act in a way that is close to maximising their utility (of course, over what time frame?) and firms behave enough like profit max that the models are pretty accurate

Yeah unions can work too, but they aren't as effective as a legal minimum wage because everyone doesn't have to join a union

Since this threads about Sowell have you actually read Friedman's work on methodology which he's in the tradition of? The thing is the assumptions are not even "reasonable" and that's not how he defends his method of analysis at all.
evonomics.com/economists-stop-defending-milton-friedmans-pseudo-science/

Secondly any model that operationally flies in the face of how institutions actually empirically work or are simply structurally incorrect about relations isn't going to give you "pretty accurate" exceptions of how things are going to function.

Sowell is a meme, irrelevant in actual professional economics.
This book is just ideological propaganda for the author’s overt political views trying to masquerade as an introductory book to economics. Disingenuous, unprofessional and with virtually no intellectual value.

I have no such prejudice against business owners. I come from a family of business owners so I understand salary structures quite well, and how higher-ups do all they can to steal from their employees, assuming the laborers responsible for increased productivity deserve to be compensated for their contributions.

What's a good book for introduction to economics?

Minimum wage does not increase the value of any job or type of labor. What it does is prevent low value jobs from being offered or taken. The end result is less opportunities for work and higher average wages because of thay. The value of work does not change, the conditions of any particular worker do not change, other than that they may lose their job or find it harder to find one. It is hard to picture what a modern western place without some minimum wage would look like, but consider the barrier to entry in finding work, currently. It can take weeks to find even a low paying job, and you will be expected to stay with that job for a set amount of time. There is virtually no opportunity for shorter, less valued work because of minimum wage.

>Economics only seeks to describe "what is", not "what ought to be".
M8, that's totally not the message I've got from reading Hajek. Economists create models about reality and those models will imply some optimal policy for improvement. Unlike the below mentioned climate scientists, those models can be questioned by their apriori assumptions and omissions (most often about the mythical "human nature").

>It's just like how scientists tell governments they should spend money to solve climate change.
As scientists they tell you that carbon in the form of methane and dioxide will trap heat and that create enviroment that will damage living beings. There's no politics yet, because atmosphere or fotons are not conscious subjects. Once they start telling politicians what to do, they enter the field of economy and their ideological conviction tells them that the damage to enviroment is more important than the benefits of fossil fuels.

>reading Hayek
Get a textbook

Mankiw’s Principles of Economics

Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell.

Bait

alright, I'll probably read both.

>No, economics is not ideological in the same way physics is not ideological.

As someone who respects and studies economics, I wouldn’t dare to put it on the same page as natural sciences.

If you want something edgy try "An Introduction To Modern Economics" by Joan Robinson, it was written as an alternative to Samuelsons textbook back in the 70s but was a total failure commercially and is totally unknown today. Very "out there" lol

gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=E34633FF83E9FB411A3D4D505C25B2D2

You're not even distinguishing nominal or real value but there's definitely a distributional change in spending power with any change on a wage floor. You claim that eliminates possible jobs as if there's a fixed amount of work being rationed but all it can do is change what's profitable otherwise labour competition with technology would be very problematic since machines can replace labour so fast.

Was required reading back in highschool. Planning on getting some more serious shit this year.

its on my shelf

>The man thinks "savings" create investment
What funds do you invest that you have not previously saved?

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Loans create investment, "savings" are essiently just an operational cost today.

sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521914001070

>In the real world, in the free market you cant make money unless you can actually make accurate predictions about the future.
There's one born every minute. This is not to say that people whose business is to evaluate companies and make predictions don't have aggregate utility, since that would be a close analogy to denying the value of the press, as an institution. It does not follow that clever charlatans and well-connected insiders whose fortunes bloat upon the unwary, and with epic impunity, are not also a thing.

Not in the long run

>Thomas Sowell
Cringe go back to 2015 dude

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In the long run we are all dead.

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i know that book from front to back guy.
If jesus didnt want to be crucified he should not have claimed to be the living God.
He knew the rules, blasphemy was punishable by death.

hoping I'm wrong, though

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There are six replies on the original topic

I read it. I also got like 60 dollars of library fees because of it that I never payed off. It's a long slog and very dry to read but there's a lot of interesting information in there.

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>All these people willing to read and immerse themselves in Classical European, Catholic, East Asian, Buddhist/Hindu, and Persian literature and theology

>Nobody ever talks about Mesoamerican history, theology, or philsophy despite there being like hundreds of colional era manuscripts on the Aztec even if other civilizations are more lacking in sources

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listened to the audio book pretty basic bitch defense of capitalism not sure why leftists get so worked up over it

I bet you haven't even read the Chilam Balam

Not yet no, my primary interest inside Mesoamerica for right now (though i'm interested in the whole region generally) is in Central Mexico, though I wanna branch out into reading more about Oaxacan, West Mexican, Gulf Coast, and Maya stuff more too.

It's just harder to find sources for the other areas, especially for primary sources. As it is only so many primary sources on Central Mexico are in english, AFAIK the lack of translations is even worse for areas outside of that.

If you have recommendations on suggested english translations or books generally I'm all ears.

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get a load of this selfmasterbationary post sowell was himself a Marxist at least google the man before speaking about him

Good book! I prefer 'The Vision of the Anointed' though. Most of his books are worth a read.

>The man thinks "savings" create investment, you can't argue with someone like that you just point out how institutions really don't function as he claims.
What the fuck, how fucking stupid are you? Do you think the money you save up are somehow stored in a box with your name on it, waiting for you to withdraw the money? Moron.

>America
Became manufacturing powerhouse via protectionism
>South Korea
Became a manufacturing powerhouse via protectionism
>Japan
Became a manufacturing powerhouse via protectionism
>China
Became a manufacturing powerhouse via protectionism
>Neoliberals
"Protectionism must be bad!"

What's the tl;dr of this book?

Does

>Incentives and tradeoffs over problems and solutions
>Efficient allocation of scarce resources with alternative uses
>Communism is untenable

about cover it?

I can't take you retards seriously. I'm sorry, are you underaged? You can discard the book merely at a cursory glance at its background and intent. The essence of most things in this world can be discerned by facing the reality of what they're meant to influence or enact, or psychically enslave and neuter if you like. Why waste time reading infantile propaganda when you can literally come up with your own ideas and formulations that easily outstrips these lower-level gimps, drawing from your own mind and wide study. These people are just mouthpieces for a status quo's curriculum. Actually braindead. A perceptive man would even know this just from the wording of the title.

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>Do you think the money you save up are somehow stored in a box with your name on it, waiting for you to withdraw the money? Moron.
Obviously not, saving just involves increasing a number in a database today and eliminating a little of someone's potential income.
Investment has to do with banks extending loans, they will borrow to cover any reserve requirements, not people "saving" more. Saving doesn't create new investment opportunities.

Yes it's scarcity exists and markets allocate everything to their best use and everything will be utilized (unemployment never exists or excess capacity) so doing anything has to involve a trade-off... he doesn't even introduce any real economic concepts like marginal utility or anything

>Why waste time reading infantile propaganda
I want to learn how things work.
>you can literally come up with your own ideas and formulations that easily outstrips these lower-level gimps, drawing from your own mind and wide study.
I am not as knowledgeable as Sowell. I do not have as large an understanding of history or systems of the world. That is partly why I would read a book called Basic Economics, not write one. I wouldn't intend to make economics a philosophy.
>These people are just mouthpieces for a status quo's curriculum. Actually braindead.
I do not think you've read the book. Sowell places heavy emphasis on critical thinking and the function of navigating propagandist type rhetoric. Even if you believed he were somehow propagandist, I would think he was doing himself a disservice in how he approaches it in this way. Attempting to understand the actual, literal meaning of something beyond the surface emotional appeal is highly anti propagandist.

warn you, I'm much, much more into the folkloric/mythical aspects of native (pan)american culture than its history

I presume you're at least aware of the Popol Vuh, and the Chilam has already been mentioned. Pre-conquest texts are scarce and I'm not sure if anyone's bothered to edit them in some modern edition, so most of the stuff you'll find is post-conquest annals and chronicles written by mayans in latin. The main attractions are the Codex Chimalpopoca and Codex Aubin, which deal with Aztec creation myths and assorted legends. Then there's Aztec and Mayan poetry, exemplified by (respectively) Cantares Mexicanos and Songs of Dzitbalche. That's as far as I've gone.

When it comes to history, the Annals of the Cakchiquel and of Tlatelolco, Cronica Mexicayotl and the Codex Telleriano-Remensis are the main ones to look into. Not sure about translations, though. I've read them in spanish, translated by random academics from Mexico and Guatemala. All this stuff is from the XVI/XVIIth centuries, even if the source material is obviously much older.

Reading this now, appeal to authority is a growing problem.

That is called hubris, and it has killed many of its believers, as well as teachers.

What are you talking about?

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the appeal to a group of intellectuals to explain social problems, and provide solutions, without having direct applicable knowledge of what is to be regulated, or the consequences, all without accountability.

Do you think that's Sowell is in support of?

The assumption that Chomsky is an authority on anything other than linguistics. Most of the book is about the effects of people in the intellectual world going beyond their area of expertise.

Is Sowell appealing to Chomsky as an authority while making an argument? What the fuck is this?

tl;dr pls

Read the chainlink white paper user.
Take the LINK pill

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Sowell specifically mentions Chomsky in the introduction among a list of a bunch of other intellectuals. His point in this segment was to clarify that his criticisms of intellectuals were specifically on their input in topics outside of their area of expertise. He never brings Chomsky up specifically again, but I would assume Sowell probably could easily contrast Chomsky's excellent linguistics knowledge with his criticisms of the Vietnam war. Why would an individual such as Chomsky assert expertise over an affair such as the Vietnam war? What are the societal causes, effects, and consequences of this behavior amongst intellectuals?

>guysss. You can’t be too smart! Stay in one field of expertise! Geez!

How is this an appeal to authority? Jesus man, Google the phrase and learn to speak English.

>this cunt still apoligizing for the pol pot apologist

What Sowell, like all con men, is doing is a preemptive strike: by envoking authority in any way he is both fooling you into thinking you can't criticize him unless you yourself are considered an expert, and fooling you into thinking he himself accepts experts with whom he disagrees.

Always a sign that a work is a piece of shit when it is presented not as a defense of the work, but as a sophistry.

>Do you think that's Sowell is in support of?
I am not sure I understand your question, I will assume you intended to ask if Sowell supports appeal to authority as he describes in this book, to which I will answer no, he does not. The book describes the faith placed in over reaching, group think intellectuals, who are insulated form the consequences of their ideas.

I wasn't the one who originally made that post. I wouldn't call it that specifically but it's very obvious what he was referring to. It's not terribly incorrect, it is very close to the original meaning. I can't actually think of a term that would more closely encompass the concept actually.

>this poltard still beating that old thing that’s been explained away a million times.
He’s not even a tankie, dork.
I bet you call Tulsi Gabbard a “Putin puppet” unironically

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>What Sowell, like all con men
stopped reading here, you have not read Sowell, and I doubt you have read Chomsky, at least outside of a cliffnotes in your humanities starter kit.

Much "expertise" in social sciences like historiography and economics can be quite counter productive. It's called trained incapacity.

>contrast Chomsky's excellent linguistics knowledge with his criticisms of the Vietnam war. Why would an individual such as Chomsky assert expertise over an affair such as the Vietnam war?
You can't even quantify something like that and compare. Chomsky could be totally wrong about linguistics but right on foreign policy nonetheless what the experts in the State Department or geniuses at the Hoover Institute insist.

You should actually read the book instead of just taking my shitty interpretations of it. You are the point of this thread, you fucking mongoloid.

>appeal to authority
Stop using this phrase because it doesn't mean what you think it does. I can't talk to you.

I call tulsi gabbard a hot mommy gf and I hope she's into cbt. You always bring such excellent, on topic discussions to the threads you post in, butterfly.

Started reading this one two days ago and it's surprisingly great. The first chapter absolutely blew me away.

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Sowell is a paid sponsor of neo-clasical theory, and like all of his ilk, never defends or even acknowledges the valid criticisms and measurable contradictions that show that theory failed. Instead he just keep repeating the party line while denigrating his critics with fallacies including appeal to authority.

This is not a book about economics. It is a sales brochure for the Chicago School of Economics and Koch Industries... The same as every other economics book written in the last century.

what a lame response

I guess nobody can really be an expert on anything, then. Let's all weigh our uninformed (of course we cannot measure informity, so this is obviously irrelevant, right) opinions in on these affairs and decide collectively which one we think feels the most appealing and plausible.

See? So stupid he falls for the con, and instead of addressing the criticism that Sowell provides neither facts nor an answer to his critics, goes ahead and uses the same fallacy of appeal to authority that Sowell uses.

Go to bed precious...Don't forget your glass of milk...

Feels weird being on Yea Forums as someone who doesn't read so much and have read this.

An appeal to authority is when you use expert to support an argument you're making. It's a fallacy when the expert being appealed to is unrelated to the field the argument pertains. Like if I were to argue that 2+2=4 and as I evidence I referred you to a mathematician, that would be me appealing to an authority. If I were to argue that 2+2=4 and as evidence I referred you to a fishermen, I would be committing a fallacious appeal to authority since catching fish is irrelevant to mathematics.

You're not getting any responses to your criticism of Sowell because you're not speaking the same version of the English language as everybody else. Consequently, you're literally talking nonsense. You say Sowell keeps appealing to authority but when asked to explain you talk about him referencing Chomsky in the introduction. That doesn't explain anything and it certainly doesn't show him committing a fallacious appeal to authority.

This

I sense a constructionist

>You say Sowell keeps appealing to authority but when asked to explain you talk about him referencing Chomsky in the introduction.
I think these are two different people. I was the one who mentioned Sowell's reference to Chomsky in the introduction. This had nothing to do with criticizing Sowell, I was trying to explain what I thought another user meant by the general issue of "appeals to authority." Such as regarding Chomsky assuming Chomsky as an authority figure on topics unrelated to linguistics because of his expertise in linguistics.

Literally nothing about these graphs is inconsistent with Marx being 100 percent right, both because Marx vigorously argued that capitalism massively increases productivity, which may buoy real wages, but even ignoring that these trends are corrupted as an awful lot of the increase in real wages will be down to militant labour organizing, not capitalistic forces.

Thanks user

I'm familatr with the Popol Vuh, as you mentioned, along with most of the Central Mexican codices/manuscripts you mentioned (again, finding english translations and annotations noting recent research on them and the like is the real issue), but the Songs of Dzitbalche and Annals of the Cakchiquel are new to me.

If you want, you can check out the mega I and another user run with mesoamerican resources + other collections of shit I have here, you might find some of it useful. in fact, hell, if you want, email me at [email protected], and I can send you some stuff that's not uploaded yet or get you involved, potentially. just link this post in the email and keep in mind it could be a while (weeks if not longer) before I get around to it due to being really busy with IRL stuff, so if you use a throwaway to email that, be sure to check it every few weeks/months/use one that won't expire

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>dipshit reads lame intro to neoclassical theory from yet another hack loser from friedman's orbit

"Hey guys I know economics"

Nobody gives a shit about your experiences browsing reddit. Youre as economically illiterate and as much of smug ideological poser as they are

>pseudo science claiming to be a philosophy

There was a thread not long ago asking for this sort of thing.

>Such as regarding Chomsky assuming Chomsky as an authority figure on topics unrelated to linguistics because of his expertise in linguistics.

I don't though. I assume him as an authority because I have never seen anyone refute him on anything that matters, and everyone I've seen that claims to have done so has typically laughable arguments.

Chomsky denied the existence of the Cambodian genocide.

Economy and Population should follow a sine wave when left to its own devices. The population and economy will expand to a point where it just becomes too expensive to maintain the standards of living and both will begin to contract. The population will decline and the economy will as well since there is less people in the labor pool. At the bottom of this trough families will start having 3-5 kids again since the costs of housing and goods are so cheap and the growth cycle will begin again. Japan is letting this happen organically as nature intends. Their cities will contract in size alongside the price of housing going to rock bottom. Corporations will have to start initiating bonuses and better conditions to prevent skilled labor from walking off to other corporations. The problem in the West is the governments think they can counteract these trends via mass migration. So they're going to suffer the double threat of a vanishing pool of wealth and a population that is entirely disjointed from the founding myths and legends of the countries they live in.

Pic related is a good starting point in understanding these trends, the Black Death came through and changed EVERYTHING about society. Obviously we're not dealing with a major pandemic like the subjects in A Distant Mirror but there is an equally devastating effect on population at work: Birth Control Pills. The collapse of the Roman state in the late 300s and early 400s is also a good period of time to investigate as well as the Western half falls apart because of a long standing crisis of legitimacy with the Imperial government and demographic/migratory changes foisted upon it.

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Have you actually read The Political Economy of Human Rights? That's the work everyone got worked up over but he doesn't deny any "genocide" therein, he was just rightfully sceptical of refugee accounts of what was going on in Democratic Kampuchea. Also there never was any Cambodian "genocide", the Khmer Rouge didn't master mind any mass ethnic cleansings, any deaths were more the result of opportunistic cadres. Michael Vickery work is good on this

michaelvickery.org/

>still apologizing for the pol pot apologist

*ahem*

-Principles of Economics by Carl Menger
-Economics In One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
-On The Accuracy Of Economic Observations by Oskar Morgenstern
-The National System of Political Economy by Friedrich List (Tutorial 101)
-The Austrian School: Market Order and Entrepreneurial Creativity by Jesús Huerta de Soto

>If you want something edgy try "An Introduction To Modern Economics" by Joan Robinson

user, i usually don´t trust keynesian economics, should i read this?

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tell me what´s wrong with it?

> Adam smith

>Harriet Martineau's books are a nice introduction.

> get your hands on a university econ101 book for both macro and mirco economics classes

these should give you a firm foundation before you move on to works of partisan economics.

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>Science is pure atheist propaganda used to silence the truth about young earth creationism
at this point a theory like this is more appealing than letting someone who looks like krauss or sagan have the joy of being right

Read the first section any ways for a taste, it's very short for a textbook and the practical methods of analysis comes in the later parts but she's dated in some ways e.g. the public finance stuff doesn't jive with more modern theories like MMT

The Austrian "school" is a pseudoscientific cult, it has no academic value and is only followed by a fringe group.
No one who matters follows the Austrian school.

i expected there to be a lot more obscure book recommendations itt

Post them, then.