/lit/ - Literature

English isn't my native tongue. Sorry if you can't stand reading chopped up English.

>>11955329
>English isn't my native tongue.
If you live in a non-english speaking country but had no British butler/house teacher to teach you English before you've learned your mother language, you're probably lower class and your views don't matter.

>>11955344
what about french or german
i cant tell if you're retarded or just memeing

Pick up a Micro or Macro textbook. Preferably, find one for both.

Mankiw is good, but he worked for George Bush so some people REEEEEE about that. It's fun looking through his books because he fully admits to having worked for Bush as an economic advisor, but it's always in some chapter in the middle.

If Mankiw having worked for Bush makes you mad, Krugman's textbooks are a popular alternative. He's a braindead liberal and is remarkably good at being completely wrongwhenever he predicts anything what so ever (He still gets shit on for predicting the internet would have less impact on economic and cultural life than the fax machine), but his textbooks are good.

At the level you're looking for anyone who gets too opinionated in the basic statement of facts can be safely written off as not knowing a single thing about economics. This writes off the entirety of Marxism of course, but then nobody actually cares what Marx so it doesn't matter all that much.

>>11955329
Trying to learn economics on the internet is a bad idea if you are really interested. All you are going to get is entry level high school shit and political pop economics.
If you want a career in econ go to university. But I assume you just want to learn about econ for fun and be more politically aware I recommend neoliberal stuff like Why Nations Fail. Textbook are going to be really boring and tiresome if you dont have some academic basis in econ and most of it is not politically relevant.

>>11955329
Economics is dangerous to learn from the internet. The field is plagued with ideology. Modern textbooks are your best bet, and read some individual thinkers as they come up

>>11955344
interesting view
>>11955359
i'd pick german
>>11955399
>>11955466
well yeah that's what i was trying to avoid because in modern society every ideology wants to push it's righteous model of economics

The best kind of economics is scientific and relies heavily on mathematics usually. I would stick to thinkers like Menger, Walras, Pareto, Fisher, Morgenstern, etc

>>11955499
hmmm so basically what you're trying to say is that the pure mathematical economis is the purest form? What books would you recommend from these guys?
In all honesty i kinda like to study the societal impact that economics have , but this can also do.

>>11955329
Read Mises, Hazlitt, Buechner, Reisman, and then Rand for the philosophical foundation of it all.

>>11955570
Will do.

>>11955570
kys kike

>>11955369
I made a thread about Mankiw's textbook last week. His textbook is not particularly good. I wouldn't imagine that Krugman's textbook is any better. None of these intro textbooks are as good as intro-level textbooks for mathematics, like Spivak's Calculus, in terms of encouraging problem-solving in economics and developing an appreciation for the beauty of the field.

>>11955329
Basic Economics - Sowell

>>11955329
only legit economy is corporatism

>>11955570
Yeah no. Philosophy has no place in making fiscal decisions. A bunch of fancy graphs is more accurate than a bunch of dead people.

>>11955329
economics is about as reputable as witchcraft

notice how nothing ever gets predicted correctly, but astoundingly every theory can magically predict every success and disaster in the past with 100% accuracy with outlandish levels of detail

>>11955680
It occurred to me that I should tell you the most relevant books of each so you don't have to go hunting and maybe try and read a less good book of one of them. Here:
Human Action - Ludwig von Mises
Economics in one Lesson - Henry Hazlitt
Objective Economics - M. Northrup Buechner
Capitalism: A Tretise on Economics - George Reisman
[Philosophy]
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal - Ayn Rand

>>11955814
*Treatise

>>11955814
much appreciated , good sir.

>>11955766
>Yeah no. Philosophy has no place in making fiscal decisions. A bunch of fancy graphs is more accurate than a bunch of dead people.

nigga only thing you need to know about economics is buy bitcoin and stfu

>>11955518
>what you're trying to say is that the pure mathematical economis is the purest form
Exactly. And if you’re wondering why, we’ll its because there are concepts that can literally not be explained without the use of mathematics. You’re going to have to learn it eventually anyway, might as well start now.

The Lausanne school and Game Theory are two areas of economics which are heavily mathematical and beneficial.

The other areas of economics, I.e. the areas studying the societal effects, are interesting as well, typically that falls more under Social philosophy, but you know, just read books, you’ll get the idea eventually

I have a couple problems with your OP however
I) there are five books in he Wealth of Nations, not three
Ii) it’s not even complicated, seriously if that stuff is tripping you up Economics might not be for you

Dont read textbooks, don’t read Sowell.

Read Keynes until you can point out all of the errors with his terms, and look into Hayek, as he is the only reasonable Austrian (he argues for modest government intervention and monopolies when necessary)

>>11955329
Take the distributism and corporatism pill. It's pretty much the only viewpoint that makes sense for any real conservative/reactionary. Capitalism and marxism are really just the flip sides of the same coin.

>>11955848
He talks a lot about banks and that's the part that i liked the least, because in my opinion it's just a complicate pyramid scheme and the best way thing to with money is to never get it from banks , but to save it.

>>11955853
Didn't Marx say that marxism will eventually rise in a automated society?

>>11955848
>>11955867
sorry man i wasn't concentrating a lot when i was writing my answer.

>>11955867
The historical growth of institutions in the financial sector is fascinating to me, if just because of the profound effect it has on all of our lives. The entire purpose of Book I was to show that the moneyed manufacturing interests can have an extremely inimical effect on the legislature, as we continue to see increasingly today

>>11955853
>>11955872
Also i think that corporatism is what stifles inovation and it just creates 2 separate economies:one for the rich man and one for the poor man. And corporatism never makes it possible for a trickle-down effect to happen to the economy because all of that money will eventually end up in someone else's pocket.GDP doesen't mean jack shit.

>>11955884
>Also i think that corporatism is what stifles innovation
Yes, because society really needs that new iphone 20 and such and such. This is just a dumb free market meme. Absolute corporatism would not create 2 economies at all. Besides, the reactionary is not totally fixated on numbers and such; protectionism and looking into the long term is much more important. I would gladly take a large drop in standard of living if it meant we would make our own things again.

>>11955726
thanks anon, now I'm going to have to kill myself... unless of course you can recommend a better textbook

>>11955853
any recommendations?

>>11955329
I noticed this thread is taking an ideologically skewed view. Authors like Sowell, Mises, and Rand are all taking a very extreme and unorthodox view of exonomics to the right. This will give you a skewed view of the debates unless you also read Keynes, Galbraith, Krugman, and probably some socialists as well, for the full range of thought. Keynes is the closest to a centrist in modern economics, but even he's pretty controversial to some. Important figure though

>>11955917
I'd love to, but I'm afraid that the discipline is intellectually bankrupt.

>>11955992
Economics as a concept really kinda belongs to the "right". "Leftist/socialist economics" is an oxymoron.

>>11955992
>but even he's pretty controversial to some
Like me

>>11955329
Study math and then read an advanced undergraduate level textbook.

>>11956180
"The Economy" itself is a leftist concept if you're willing to go far enough back.

look up Kondratiev waves
read up on inflation->deflation cycles. the most proven theory in macro is that deflation happens before hyperinflation
look up Nassim Taleb on black swan.

>>11956256
Explain

>>11955853
Not a huge tradition or Catholicfag but the concept of subsidiarity is interesting.

Interventionist fags get the FUCK out of my economics.

Everyone ITT saying not to read Sowell, why exactly? I read Basic Economics and thought it was fairly straightforward and reasonable. He defines economics as the efficient allocation of scarce resources and spends the rest of the book giving examples of this in various scenarios. What in particular is incorrect or dubious in that book?

>>11955992
Any talk on economists that /really/ know their stuff will lean aggressively away from the statist/socialist side every time. Just the way it happens anon. Sorry.

>>11956444
He's black.

>>11956444
The left's running mo is to try to get people forget the most aggregious specimens of uncle tom-itude exist as much as possible.

>>11955329
Economics is a pseudoscience, peddled by people with agenda. I hold the entire dismal science in contempt.

>>11956476
That's stupid, you're stupid.

>>11955744
This really is the only answer

>>11956943
I mean, sowell is a hack, but Basic Economics is a great entry point

>>11956525
And that's not an argument.

Schumpeter

Can’t believe he hasn’t been mentioned yet.

>>11955399
>Why Nations Fail
Man I couldn't stand this book. It's felt so idealistic, and it seems like there are so many examples throughout history and the present day that run counter to it's thesis.

>>11955825
this is objectivist trash. Reading von Mises and Hazlitt is fine, and its good to read economics views that challenge other perspectives, but there's a lot of bullshit in these that's designed to excite libertarian teenagers, which is why no economy in the world has ever taken von Mises to heart.

in terms of economics, you do not have to read different people from the past, just pick up a basic textbook and go from there.

>>11956444
>He defines economics as the efficient allocation of scarce resources
I'd define economics as a rigorous study of human behavior under constraints of scarce resources. Way too much of economics deals more explicitly with behavior (game theory, lots of foundational microeconomics, behavioral economics, etc) to only use a definition that concerns resources.

Ha-Joon Chang: Economics the user's guide
Erik Reinert: How Rich Countries Got Rich ... and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor

>>11957111
No, it is pretty good as a theory. It holds up stronger than the
>geography is destiny
meme
if you can counter it than let me see it

>>11957276
I feel like it's trying to derive a grand theory of history, in the same way the "geography is destiny" people do.
It doesn't have a good answer to explain the success of countries like China, in fact it predicts Chinese downfall.

I don't have strong feelings about it and there is probably a lot of truth in their theory. But I don't think that it is as all encompassing as it was presented.

>>11955329
Khan academy is free and has great beginner courses in Economics and Finances.
You should really check them out and build a foundation of Economic terminology and concepts

Then move into more complex books like Wealth of Nations, Das Kapital (Which is Bullshit by the way), Malthus books and David Ricardo's

Then you can move into the 20th Century with Hayek, Friedman, Keynes

>studied most of an economics degree as electives
>HDs in every unit
>still don't know what people go on about in these threads

>>11957312
As I recall, the book puts up its own theory of China, by comparing it to the Soviet Union. China before Deng Xiao Ping was an agrarian society; that mode of production is very inefficient. As China shifted its economy from agriculture to industrial, it experienced enormous growth due to the gain in efficiency. However, this growth is predicted to be unsustainable due to the fact that once China has fulled shifted its economy, it will run out of room for growth and stagnate.

There is another interpretation I have been contemplating, though. South Korea was a dictatorship under Park but experienced growth due to liberal (inclusive) economic institutions (under the guidance of the U.S.) Perhaps China experienced its massive growth due to economic liberalization, and must continue to liberalize or face stagnation. And as the middle class grows and begins to become more politically conscious, China will undergo a prolonged period of political liberalization, or else face civil strife. We shall yet see I guess.

For certain economic views, there are trillions of dollars to be made by pushing a certain agenda, like tax decreases for example. It's not even a secret anymore that a huge portion of "economics" are more or less compensated to propagate certain views. The rule is, neo-liberals are always wrong, it's the only ideology ever that doesn't have any credibility or claim to any truth or good at all.

>>11955766
>fancy graphs
So just abdicate your thinking to the graphics department? I guess I'd feel this way too if I was innumerate.

>>11957339
>However, this growth is predicted to be unsustainable due to the fact that once China has fulled shifted its economy, it will run out of room for growth and stagnate.

This is the part of their China theory that I find more questionable. Perhaps it will happen, who knows, but at this point in time it has yet to be proven one way or the other.

>>11957004
He’s right though. If you don’t understand why Economics requires more intelligence than political science or sociology then you’re a retard

>>11957127
This is the stupidest post I’ve ever read

>>11957324
It’s an extremely, unbelievably smart discipline. Surprisingly so, considering how dumb finance and banking can be.

But economics is an extremely mathematical branch of sociological human behavior, the whole discipline is actually above most people’s heads: so much so, that they would rather read some Austrian/Chicago school economist or Sowell than actually read real economics.

It’s only for a select few, it’s not supposed to be understood by most of the people’s. Just read Progress and Poverty by Henry George. Léon Walras vindicated the message in that book mathematically, just take my word for it.

>>11955848
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/08/philip-pilkington-divine-mathematics-neoclassical-economics-as-spiritual-meditation.html

If you think abstraction and formalism is the only criterion of scientific methodology you really should reconsider.


>>11955867
You want to ignore the real key institution underlying all modern economies? Understanding a concept like "saving" isn't as simple as you want to believe and I wouldn't advocate becoming a miser.

>>11956444
It's reassuring and seems reasonable because it doesn't actually attempt to critically explain any of the central categories and just takes them as given and presents a closed totally "logical" series of equilibrating exchanges. Framing economics as being about distribution, instead of looking at the actual technicalities of production, means concepts like "efficiency", and even "scarcity", take on a highly reified form. Distribution is always a consequence of productive relationships.
The marginalist revolution was very much an attempt to reorient economics away from questions of production to exchange because certain issues couldn't be solved, or the answer would be very problematic and ideologically uncomfortable. This all occurred during the exact moment market exchange relations were diminishing in favour of collective planning during the rise of the corporate form of enterprise, cartels, trusts, syndicates, etc in the late 19th century. Thorstein Veblen was the only American economist to really "get" any of this, he wrote a very funny work in 1904 called The Theory of Business Enterprise which you should read and see why people like Milton Friedman are charlatans.

http://www.businessbuildersbanquet.com/software/veblen2.pdf

>>11957541
>Understanding a concept like "saving" isn't as simple as you want to believe and I wouldn't advocate becoming a miser
But that’s not the point of the Wealth of Nations... what the fuck most of this stuff is dumb, do you even read mathematical economics?

I was thinking about Game Theory last night and had some amazing realizations about the nature of intelligence, quantified strategies, etc.

I came to the conclusion that having a quantified intelligence determinant like IQ relatively makes no sense, and I came to this conclusion using Game Theory and mathematics.

It’s time you start understanding: you can use mathematics to explore philosophical and economical ideas, that’s the entire point. You don’t just categorize all mathematics into a separate category and say it’s all ‘stupid’.

>>11957541
One thing I will say though: you have read Thorstein Veblen, and his Theory of the Leisure Class is an absolutely based read.

Props

>>11955329
And yet Marx is still right. Were getting fucked hard by capitalism.

Yes anon break free from boomer economic theories. Capitalism leads to degeneracy. Socialism works only for racially homogenous people. North Korea and East Germany don't count because they had materialistic socialism. What we need is a hierarchy-based system of collectivized competition underpinned by adherence to an ethnically-conscious spirituality devoted to tradition and obedience to the perennial figure of the father king.

>>11955898
>Society really needs
Don't try this, it has never worked.

>>11955329
Menger, Böhm-Bawerk, and Schumpeter all day erryday.
>>11955992
Skip Galbraith and Krugman, they're economic texts are far too rhetorical. Read Sraffa and Minsky instead if you want a feel for the other side of neoclassical economics. Also, avoid Marxists like the plague unless you want to learn how to dunk on them. The obscurantism of Marxism is comsumptive of your ability to learn and understand the last century of economic thought.

>>11957541
>reified

>>11957972
*their
I need to double-check my posts when I make mid-sentence edits.

>>11957563
I never said it was the point, and in fact obviously it wasn't, I was responding to the posters advocacy of savings without concretizing whatever the fuck he meant by that.

I'm not against quantitative analysis per se... there's no doubt that mathematics has been massively "successful" historically in conceptualizing the physical and "natural" sciences but it's equally obvious that mathematization has failed in the social and economic domains big time. The equally obvious diminishing returns throughout scientific research since the second half of the 20th century may indicate that even this first historic "success" of the science of the bourgeoisie is in crises because it can't take the paradoxes at the hearth of set theory seriously. George Boole quasi-intuitively understood all this, even before any of it was explicated, but he stopped at an underdeveloped formal logic and never really grasped the dialectical essence of the calculus he was attempting to develop, that is a calculus of processes of formalized reasoning, not merely counting/measuring quantities. At this point science must self-negate itself to transcend itself and develop an actual unified methodological standard applied to all cognitive and natural phenomena which is in its totality "dialectical", that is in the sense any process which can only be fully understood in the form of a reflexive sentence i.e. a nonlinear process. Obviously the historical development of the English language itself "coincidentally" emerging with modern capitalism as the homogenized universal bureaucratic language of the global functionaries of capital is one of the reasons "reflexive sentences" sound so awkward in it. Any defence of a psychopathic representative of imperialism such as John Nash and his tenure at the RAND corporation must actually account for the disastrous consequences of his theorizations not disconnected from reality see thesis #1 Theses On Feuerbach.

>>11958441
I stopped reading when you said a Economics hasn’t made mathematical progress. Almost every other novel prize is for an economist. Just because their findings aren’t applicable to the world doesn’t mean they aren’t headed somewhere with their findings fundamentally useful to humanity

>>11955329
read hume, keynes, smith, then read a modern macro and micro text as well as a text on corporate finance, financial economics, and a book on the economics of health, finally you have to study a subject known as "econometrics" to understand any higher level economics as much is based on linear regression and multi variable regression analysis

After doing all of this you will not even have an undergraduate's understanding of economics. Even if you did have that level of understanding it would not equate to understanding much of what is actually going on in the wider world, in your government, or at major financial firms in you country. That all requires deeper study. People that talk about economics on tv or on the internet are fucking retarded. The most relevant economists globally don't even agree on the state of various economies or on general concepts within economics.

>>11958457
I never said "Economics hasn’t made mathematical progress" (its been a blatant empirical failure but that's beyond the point here)... any attempt to reduce the social totality to some formal isomorphic structure fundamentally isn't possible on the basis of contemporary methods. Social fields, such as artistic, economic, political, religious, etc, reproduce themselves as a totality and determine themselves. All these "facts" are only produced as part of a system and cannot stand outside of it. By "novel prize" I presume you mean Nobel and this is notting but an ideological front of the highest order e.g. Nobel Peace Prize recipient Kissinger being a most obvious case in point. We can specifically take this years Nobel winners (William Nordhaus and Paul Romer) in "economics" as notting but an obvious political statement against Martin Weitzman. The most important point is "their" findings are worse than useless when you understand what their functional purpose is in the construction of where we're heading.

>>11956525
>>11957516
t. poor economist

>>11958554
this is bretty accurate.

>>11955329
Yo this one's good too

>>11959039
kys kike

>>11958557
So what you’re saying is you have to be an economist to realize economics is a pseudoscience?

Other way around, bucko, the only people who say that are people who haven’t read a real economics text

>>11959050
>>>/pol/

>>11955466
The merit or demerit of ideology is contextual brainlet.

The economy is pure fiction

>>11955570
>read mises
>read rand
yikes

>>11955853
are you stupid or something

>>11955499
No it isnt, Economy as a science today dont have the knowledge about human behaviour to rely on an exact method

>>11960475
Is statistics not a valid field to study because it produces statistically predictive answers rather than exact ones?

>>11957516
Not what was said.

>discussing welfare states and the current state of competitive market economies in seminar yesterday
>One kid in class who repeatedly interrupts class with irrelevant tangents, declares that capitalism is the greatest system ever made and demands that the TA explain to him what he defines as modern competitive economic markets, aghast at any perceived criticism of capitalism
>you can practically hear /pol/ coming from his voice
>TA tells him that they were the core themes of that weeks readings
>spaghetti everywhere

economics is fun guis

>>11961139
/pol/ isn't hypercapitalist. T_D is.

>>11961228
>implying there's any distinction between them

just read a fucking textbook

>>11955490
>every ideology wants to push it's righteous model of economics

Of course. There's no 'value neutral' economics.

just read a fucking textbook

>>11955570
>Rand for the philosophical foundation of it all.

>>11957532
But how much of the shit you're talking about has much predictive power?

>>11961422
No bulli Hyde senpai

There really is no hope for me to get a solid understanding of economics without going to college right?

>>11962333
ХAХA иcтo бpaтyyyy

>>11962333
It's possible but unlikely. Most outside sources stop at a 101 level of understanding

>>11957541
>>11958441
>>11958554
Here again we see a classic example of the petitio principii created by Marx and popularized by Bukharin, where any study of economics that eschews a 19th century historicist methodology is a "vulgar aberration of the capitalist mode of production" rather than a legitimate study of economics. It is intensely ironic that this anon feels he can criticize the entirety of neoclassical the neoclassical tradition as totalizing, when as a point of fact, it has rarely if ever striven to undertake a program of explaining all economic behavior through a unified mathematical theory, where Marxian economics has necessarily done the opposite through a program of economic determinism via dialectical materialism. As Marx once hypocritically stated, "there is no royal road to science," and as such, the neoclassical tradition has long constrained its analysis to solve individual problems through mathematical models, rather than an overarching unified theory. This analysis has allowed for the most refinement in understanding economic behavior, as incremental and often competing studies of economic models have allowed for a mosaic picture of the economy as a whole. Even the most radical employment of a priori logic in the lineage of neoclassical economics, such as that seen in Mises's wing of Austrian economics or Schumpeter's soft historicism, can be extricated from its parent theory in order to vie for an accurate description of a discrete economic phenomenon. Contrast this with any 19th century model from the historical school, wherein every component from a historical analysis must exist as a total structure (and therefore can be invalidated based upon the rejection of any single false premise or unfounded conclusion, as can be done with Marx), and you will see that the rare accurate prediction made by one of these theories was by coincidence rather than by design.

>>11962738
*of the neoclassical tradition

>>11962738
>Contrast this with any 19th century model from the historical school, wherein every component from a historical analysis must exist as a total structure (and therefore can be invalidated based upon the rejection of any single false premise or unfounded conclusion, as can be done with Marx)
But if you disagree with any premise or conclusion of Marx, you just didn't understand him.

>>11962939
I sincerely cannot tell if this is parody at this point.

>>11955329
The Foundation for Exploration's economics section and the entire book.

>>11963088
Fuck off Sean.

>>11962939
Updated

>>11962345
мaкeдoнeц?