/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15804018]

Can anybody summarize and explain to me what this book says?

[Anonymous No.15804063]

>Basic fundamentals of economics like s/d
>Policies can have unpredictable consequences
>Trade is a good thing

[Anonymous No.15804076]

>>15804018
>capitalism good
>markets good
>liberalism good
>marxism bad
Same boomer nonsense you've heard a million times.

[Anonymous No.15804202]

>>15804076
>>15804063
Thx

[Anonymous No.15804235]

>>15804076
Oh c'mon anon, he explains exactly *why* capitalism good.
You cannot even be a proper marxist if you don't know your opposition's talking points.
The book is a must read for everybody, if you're still not convinced then feel free to look for other explanations.

[Anonymous No.15804247]

>>15804076
but marxism is bad anon

[Anonymous No.15804262]

>>15804235
There's nothing new or interesting in the book. It's the same idiotic talking points you hear everywhere from neolibs.

[Anonymous No.15804268]

>>15804247
You don't even know what it is, kid.

[Anonymous No.15804286]

>>15804262
And where do you think they got their talking points faggot?

[Anonymous No.15804289]

>>15804262
"Neolibs" are effectively just social-democrats (for all the talk they did NOT reduce overall government spending to begin with) and they received their fair share of critique in the book as well.

[Anonymous No.15804293]

>>15804262
>Basic economics
>It's nothing new
Wowsers

[Anonymous No.15804311]

>>15804286
Hayek, von Mises, Rand, et al.

[Anonymous No.15804316]

>>15804289
Nah, neolibs want to deregulate, privatize, liberalize global trade, reduce taxes, etc.

[Anonymous No.15804325]

>>15804018
Money can be exchanged for goods and services.

[Anonymous No.15804419]

>>15804018
Economics is about the allocation of scarce resources which have alternative uses.

[Anonymous No.15804439]

>>15804018
Verification of cracker establishment's narrative from a house negro.

[Anonymous No.15804466]

>>15804439
lmao epic

[Anonymous No.15804490]

It's just a meme because of the name.

An economy is a tool that can be applied towards an end. The only rule is scarcity. The goal of Chicago style monaterist economics has always been the concentration of wealth

[Anonymous No.15804580]

>>15804289
reading neolibs as socdems is a grave error. they didn't cut government spending, but they did refocus it. as was written of the arch-neolib blair govt (which even increased spending on social services!):
>Rejecting the fundamental social democratic idea that governments can and should regulate institutional economic activity in order to safeguard a sphere of non economic social life Blairism ultimately failed to bring to public-sector reform anything other than the language of economic efficiency and choice. Setting himself against public-sector workers Blair hedged them in with requirements and targets that renewed and extended state centralisation... The Blairite justification of policies to reduce inequality always tended to be technocratic and pragmatic rather than ethical or solidaristic. Equality was proposed as good because it limits the ‘social exclusion’ which leads to problems of crime and anti-social behaviour, and is economically wasteful. This has meant that social policy measures, for all the benefits they brought to some of the poor, failed to contribute to the sustenance of the sense of common interest on which social democratic values can build...

>...The forging of New Labour involved the denigration of core principles of social democracy. As times have become harder new Labour ideologues have not been able to return to them and have found themselves drifting. They have hoped that more targets and more public disciplining of benefits claimants will constitute ‘reform’ of the public services; and in addressing economic turmoil they have emphasised the stimulation of individual consumer spending. Eschewing the opening of a wider debate about the regulation of finance and the redistribution of wealth Brown’s Labour has emphasised the temporary nature of regulatory and interventionist measures and continued to focus policy on attempts to modify the behaviour of individuals. The failure to sustain understanding of (and sympathy for) social democratic approaches to government has meant that Brown’s adoption of a thus far superficial Keynesian approach has been all too easily represented by opponents as either panic or simply ‘tax and spend’.

[Anonymous No.15804851]

>>15804580
>Modify people's behaviour
Good to see that they are in fact, retarded

[Anonymous No.15804863]

>>15804851
blairism is basically midwit: the ideology

[Anonymous No.15805182]

>>15804018
It's more of a polemical defense of free trade and such. It's not really much of a book about what economic analysis really is because it's written for the type of people who watch Fox News and are probably afraid of algebra not to mention calculus. It's "common sense" stuff that's all wrong.

This is a good summary >>15804419 ... start from the assumption of a barter economy in which all resources are being utilized and understand that there has to be some trade-off when you trade your scarce fishing rod for some scarce intellectual property or whatever. Just remember things (land, labour or capital) are never sitting ideal in a free market (unemployment isn't possible) so there can't be a "free lunch".

>>15804316
A big part of the neoliberal project was to SHIFT taxation away from income or capital gains towards consumption. Peoples consumption throughout the advanced economies are more heavily taxed today than 40 years ago in most places.

>>15804490
>The goal of Chicago style monaterist economics has always been the concentration of wealth
No the goal was to get governments to remove political discretion and move towards a strict rule based system. Friedman supported negative income taxation/vouchers instead of welfare and fixed monetary growth rates and such not because he thought it would lead to more wealth concentration. I don't think he was originally disingenuous... of course there's a lot theoretically wrong there but that's more obvious in retrospect.

[Anonymous No.15805187]

>>15804076
He was a Marxist when he was young, learned how corrupt and shallow the ideology was when it comes to the real world and became vehemently against it once he conducted research that proved antithetical to what his Academic buddies were spouting.

[Anonymous No.15805226]

>>15805187
He claims that but there's no real proof. If you read his first book on Say's law it makes me even more skeptical that he was coming out of some Marxist milieu or it would of thematically been very different. He ended up making a lot of money writing propaganda for think tanks so his career actually just proves Marx right (material interests and all) ;)

[Anonymous No.15806448]

>>15805182
neoliberals are always disingenuous on how they go about these things.
they'll say to you "hey, if we increase taxes on consumption and give people a negative income tax to offset the regressive nature of consumption taxes (because the poor consume more of their income), everyone will be better off"
boom, consumption taxes get put in because muh efficiency, and then the negative income tax dies a death because who cares about poor people they're not politically important lmao.

and of course neoliberals will go "oh, but they just haven't done the policy right" - but then they're off arguing about zoning. it's clear that their burning anger was always at the high income taxes, with the "oh, Negative income tax" bit just being a way to bluff-off the argument that consumption taxes were more regressive. Their heart bleeds for the guy paying 50% on his income above $500,000, they relate to him, they see themselves in his problem. they feel nothing as regards the poor people having their spending power gutted by consumption taxes. they're as easy to put out of your mind as any starving african.

[Anonymous No.15806778]

>>15804018
The book explains in a very easily understood way what economics is, how it affects everyone in a society and why capitalism is far superior to any other alternative.

10/10 book absolutely worth a read.

[Anonymous No.15806794]

>>15804076
>>15804262
>>15804268
Kill yourself imbecile.

>>15804490
>I don't understand economics or the chicago school but here's my retarded take anyways
Kill yourself.

[Anonymous No.15806821]

>>15806794
Great argument, seether.

[Anonymous No.15806847]

>>15806778
>The book explains in a very easily understood way what economics is, how it affects everyone in a society and why capitalism is far superior to any other alternative.

Cite the page number where he explains marginalism or comparative economics lol

[Anonymous No.15806891]

>>15806821
Why do you expect arguments coming your way when you are completely fucking clueless to begin with? Retard imbecile.

>>15806847
The whole fucking book is about comparative economics, he writes about capitalism, socialism, feudalism and more. Marginalism you can find in almost any chapter.

[Anonymous No.15806922]

>>15806891
he writes about "socialism"

[Anonymous No.15806940]

>>15806891
>The whole fucking book is about comparative economics, he writes about capitalism, socialism, feudalism and more. Marginalism you can find in almost any chapter.
You must have read a different book? I mean if your definition of socialism is rent control and protectionism than you might be seeing things differently but that's not socialism. From what I remember he doesn't even touch on any aspect of marginalism until towards the end very briefly. He talks in terms of abstract trade-offs. Cite the page numbers.

[Anonymous No.15806950]

>>15804076
He's not wrong though.

[Anonymous No.15807094]

>>15806922
He writes about textbook socialism and how it plays out in reality.

>>15806940
In the chapter about incentives, in the chapter about prices, the pages about the marginalist revolution. What else do you need?

[Anonymous No.15807114]

>>15807094
>textbook socialism

[Anonymous No.15807129]

>>15806891
I don't, not from a coping seethecel like yourself.

[Anonymous No.15807249]

>>15807094
>In the chapter about incentives, in the chapter about prices, the pages about the marginalist revolution. What else do you need?
See you're not citing any page numbers. I don't remember him talking about any of that in very marginalistic terms. He doesn't try to use diminishing returns to justify high executive compensation because they value dollars so much more than the plebs or anything like that. Like I said he talks about the marginalist revolution very briefly towards the end without explaining much... you wouldn't even know most of the marginalists were socialists

[Anonymous No.15807835]

>>15805187
Bullshit. Even his origin story is unoriginal.

[Anonymous No.15807848]

>>15806794
Neolib cocksuckers like you never have an argument.

[Anonymous No.15807873]

>>15807848
No argument was presented, commie trannies made baseless assertions and he responded with insults. Seems fair

[Anonymous No.15807943]

>>15807873
The assertions weren't baseless. The book is warmed-over red-scare horseshit.

[Anonymous No.15808369]

>>15807249
>See you're not citing any page numbers.
No I am not, I don't feel like going to grab my book and skim through the pages just so you can have a page number. If you are so interested go read it yourself.

It's there in the book, if you want a book on marginalism buy a book on marginalism.

[Anonymous No.15808941]

>>15808369
I did and I'm saying he doesn't even attempt to seriously explain basic theoretical economic concepts because they can be used to problematize most of his assertions.