The best Economic Conditions eBooks: Reddit reviews

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

> "appeared to show"

Appeared? What a horrible nightmare we are living through. <em>Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia</em>.

Another really great one that theorizes exactly WHY America as a country is so susceptible to snake oil salesmen, con men, and anyone who spouts patriotic/religious nonsense is *Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History.

I really enjoy macro histories, and this one is particularly compelling and enjoyable to read.

I've been reading this book called Fantasyland : How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History.

It posits that America is so messed up because Americans have been self-selecting gullible idiots since the days of Columbus.

Many many people came to this continent in the early days because of promises of easy gold and riches. After a year or two of struggling and not finding any easy riches, the smart ones packed up and went home. The dumb ones stayed and reproduced with other stupid people and bad stupid gullible children.

And this same kind thing repeats over and over for centuries until we reach the point where we are today. Not everybody is here is stupid. But the stupid tend to put down roots and reproduce and the smart people tend to see through the bullshit and go home when they have the chance.

Industry interests have bought off the politicians who preside over that prospective industry?

That couldn’t happen in Australia could it!?

For anyone interested, I strongly recommend a book called Game of mates by Cameron Murray. It’s a serious eye opener into how dodgy politics, elite interests and corporate Australia really is. I didn’t think Australia was that bad on a global scale, but it is, it’s just so well hidden and crafty enough to fly just under the radar of authorities. It will make you blood boil though.

https://www.amazon.com/Fantasyland-America-Haywire-500-Year-History-ebook/dp/B004J4WNJE

Americans have generally always been believing weird-ass shit, simply because unlike most other large-scale pre-industrial societies, there usually wasn't an institution charged with limiting the acceptable body of belief (e.g an official church, or a Confucian mandarin elite, or a priestly caste). In the 19th century you had the Great Awakening and all the bizarre religious sects that came out of that (Mormons being the most prominent), but also things like patent medicine salesmen etc.

But you could argue that rationalism and scientific thinking peaked in the US immediately postwar, during the 1950s and early 1960s. Not coincidentally, this is when the US gained a 'thought control apparatus' for the first time, in the shape of television and other mass media. The prestige of American science and technology in this era, though, was quite heavily bound up with the military-industrial complex.

So when you had the counterculture emerge in the mid-to-late '60s, a lot of it veered into anti-science and rationalism, given the deep associations between the technocratic scientific establishment and the military industrial complex responsible for the carnage in Vietnam. This book is quite good on how a lot of woo came out of California, at first with the hippie movement, but later associated with the sort of postmodern French theory that gave rise to woke idpol.

Ofc it wasn't just the 'left' that was going down this road, the American Right from the late '80s up till now began to embrace the sort of paranoid conspiracism that's really dominated their politics ever since.

This is all assuming a capitalist system as the basis though. I'm much more in favor of a planned economy, so these risks wouldn't even come about. We wouldn't build a bakery or ask for investments for it unless we know it would be utilized. For example, we wouldn't start a bakery in a town that already has one, instead we'd invest in a town that doesn't. Focus on human needs rather than profit.

And we already have planned economies that work amazingly well, they're just focused on profit. The People's Republic of Walmart is an amazing book I recommend to everyone.

I strongly urge you to read Game of mates

Probably one if the best books I've read (or only book I've read?) that details how cronyism works in this country. It even explicitly details Transurban. I though lobbying and cronyism was bad in the US and Australia was reasonably clean and transparent for the most part, at least in comparison.

NOPE. We're just as bad, if not worse in some cases, I think the powers that be in this country are just much better at hiding it, probably due to the smaller scale of our economy.

Australia has the least “overt corruption”. When you dig deep, it’s actually quite a corrupt country on many scales, it’s just extremely subtle, well hidden and stays just below surface enough to not be illegal. Technically it’s not corruption, but it’s VERY dodgy and very harmful to the wider public.

Not convinced? I urge you to read a book called Game of Mates by Cameron Murray. A serious eye opener that will make your blood boil.

Tangential, but have you guys read One Billion Americans? Lots of really good pro-natal policy proposals in there. Big recommend.

>There are swaths of land in the US bigger than the country of Ireland that has a population density of between 0 and 1 person per 10 square miles.

Not for long!

you might want to suggest your brother to read THIS book, it talks about how Americans are exposed to so much fantasy and conspiracy that they think everything is a conspiracy, something along those lines, it ll clear his head

I highly recommend https://www.amazon.com/Fantasyland-America-Haywire-500-Year-History-ebook/dp/B004J4WNJE to get perspective on American history with conspiracy theories and other unique American cultural traits.

You might find this book interesting. Only $2.99 on Kindle and definitely worth the price.

It talks about the ideas of anarcho-capitalism including privatizing police and national defense.

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LNDWWMW/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o00_?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1

"the question of why this procedure requires such legal maneuvers is a perplexing one, since ectopic pregnancies will not lead to a birth."

Literally because some politicians have said 'maybe Jesus will intervene and save the baby'. If you haven't read Fantasyland yet, do it now. We are being forced to live with Christianity and Christian Nationalism that has become increasingly 'magical' in its dogma. https://www.amazon.com/Fantasyland-America-Haywire-500-Year-History-ebook/dp/B004J4WNJE/ref=tmm\_kin\_swatch\_0?\_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1671476409&amp;sr=8-1

>I was talking about the market not being some perfect infallible thing which it isn't.

First you need to define what do you mean by "thing" and perfect at what? the market is close to perfect at allocating economical resources. But you dont state what is your idea of what a free market should do.

The free market goal is to allocate economical resources in the most efficent way, and it surely is the best method we have now. Whatever goal you think the market is failing at, you need to define it and answer if the market is actually designated to that whatever thing you are trying to fullfill

> The government is helpful.

In 90% of cases it does more harm than good.

> I know you need a lot of wealth to become a social democracy. The market by itself still doesn't cut it.

It does, rich countries became rich investing hard on industrializing and trading a lot. They didnt become rich by using any social democracy policy.

>I didn't say anything about the regulations in those countries. How about when FDR implemented the new deal in the USA after the great depression?

You need to learn about economy history, but theres no point of discusing this if you dont even know the most basics aspects of economics.

If you are really interested read Basic economics by Thomas Sowell, extremely easy book to read and learn the most basic things of economy. Then you can truly understand economic history of any country you decide to read about.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L4FSSTA?ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_RKXE2AP83F54QHXQDGXT

Glad you liked it! I'm pursuing my Ph.D. right now and teach undergraduate courses so I enjoy pointing people toward information they find interesting.

For further reading on the topic, you can search for that paper on scholar.google.com and look at what publications have cited to the 2009 article. This will direct you to lots of other papers on the topic.

Additionally, if you're interested at all in the historical and comparative contexts of economics and how economic and social policies can effect national trajectories, I strongly recommend the book Why Nations Fail which is outside of my area of expertise but provides some really interesting perspectives!

P.S. - I promise I'm not the author of this book trying to make $$ lmao

Andersen, Kurt, 1954- https://www.amazon.com/Fantasyland-America-Haywire-500-Year-History-ebook/dp/B004J4WNJE "

I found the book "The Game of Mates" https://www.amazon.com/Game-Mates-favours-bleed-nation-ebook/dp/B06Y1WF2BC/ref=sr_1_1?crid=H05PA4OH7NW0 very helpful in understanding how politics works, in particular crony capitalism.

It is about Australia but I think applies just about everywhere.

Note in Australia the word "mate" roughly means the same as "buddy" in the US.

The chapter "Why the worst always get on top" from "The Road to Serfdom" by Hayek also explains much about how politics selects the worst scumbags on both sides of the fence.

For a good solid understanding of modern politics I highly recommend the Yale lecture series "Power and Politics in the modern world" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&amp;list=PLh9mgdi4rNeyViG2ar68jkgEi4y6doNZy&amp;ab_channel=YaleCourses

For one thing it explained to me a lot of the dynamics about why politics has become so polarized of late".

Joseph Tainter "The collapse of complex societies" is also relevant to what is going on at the moment. Also Peter Turchin "Secular Cycles" is very good.

A lot of the tribal structure of politics is just neurotypicality writ large. This is part of what makes it so puzzling to ASDers.

As a heuristic, I ignore what politicians say and look at what they do, their track record. This seems to work pretty well. You get disappointed less often.

There was a book that I bought on the recommendation of a Redditor Game of Mates that touches on exactly that point. Havent read it yet, but I think it'll be an interesting read.

Those super tight zoning laws and access to drugs still ultimately stem from capital. You’re not even arguing that material circumstances are different, you’re just arguing that the causal policies are different, which yeah no shit. That is obviously not what Matty Yglesias is saying (considering his latest foray into policy literature is this brain dead bullshit) or the original topic that Americans leftists are somehow “out of touch” for being critical of capitalism.

Because America was settled by True Believers from the beginning.

You're forgetting to mention that the left in America is similarly crazier than in Europe; the French establishment have famously called out the excesses of American wokesterism. Meanwhile, European social democracies like Sweden abolished wealth taxes years ago, support free trade and are not campaigning on Cuba-level resentments and understanding of economics.

Here's a book that has an incredible history of this:

Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History

https://www.amazon.com/Fantasyland-America-Haywire-500-Year-History-ebook/dp/B004J4WNJE

As far as you can!

We can reevaluate after we hit one billion Americans.

Yeah for sure, welcome everyone. For starters, the world population isn't going to immigrate to the US in its entirety, even if they were allowed to.

That said, there's actually a book called One Billion Americans which breaks down both how America would support a billion citizens, and why we'd want to do that.

You can't pinpoint my location, because you're a clown rofl. You have NOTHING

Amazon couldn't survive without Federal government subsidies lol, almost like "free market capitalism" is always just a cheap & fantastical ideological justification for corporate imperialism & state largesse

Walmart is socialism, it just needs to be expropriated first lol

https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-Republic-Walmart-Corporations-Foundation-ebook/dp/B075HY7DWZ

Romania's decline since the early 1990s has been documented, we went over it last night how the capitalist reforms in Romania caused a dip in life expectancy because so many babies died

Romania shows everyone how shitty capitalism is lol

> If the US had 1 billion White Americans Oh, but here comes the unique American advantage!

(You've got to stretch the definition of "white" quite a bit, though, but in the end it's not so critical.)

I just bought Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell on recommendation from a friend that does a lot of speculation. I recommend Succubus Evocation by Faustus Crow it helped me get though 2020 year with my independent thought in tact.

Pro-natalist policies can be somewhat effective, but especially alongside increased immigration. The US already has 1-1.5 M immigrants a year, and there's currently enough demand to spike that up by at least a factor of 4.

An interesting book on this topic is One Billion Americans by Matthew Yglesias. (One billion might seem like a lot, but if you want to compete with China you need to consider extreme options)

you have ceded control of your country to a bunch of people that ONLY CARE ABOUT ABORTION. Their sky fairy told them that this was the most important thing in the world.

They reject science, rationalism, progress - any of those things.

What you are liviing thru now is the end result of what happens when you cede control to these lunatics.

Read the book fantasyland for a better explanation.

>there are too many people on the plane

And yet there are plenty of people with incredibly dumb ideas like this: https://www.amazon.com/One-Billion-Americans-Thinking-Bigger-ebook/dp/B082ZR6827