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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.
That is not accurate. The first colonies in North America were the Roanoke Colony (failed) and the Jamestown (successful) colonies of Virginia. These were founded by Sir Walter Raleigh and the Virginia Company of London respectively.
The colonies of Virginia engaged in absolutely fucking intense warfare with the Powhatan tribes of the region and almost completely eradicated them in order to turn their lands into tobacco plantations because the way natives practiced agriculture was not conducive to large scale tobacco production. You are wrong sir.
I recommend reading Charles C. Mann's 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created for further clarity on the subject.
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.
Picketty's <em>Capital in the Twenty-First Century</em> is an excellent read for anyone interested in wealth inequality, the data behind it, and its effects.
> "Since the 1970s technology advance has been arguably more marginal in nature". WTF!? I lost any respect I had for this post at that line. Moving to the digital age is not some marginal improvement.
I'm paraphrasing Robert Gordon; internet is marginal relative to electricity, MRIs are marginal relative to antibiotics, etc. But feel free to respect whoever you want.
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.
Almost halfway trough "The Infinite Machine". Great book ...a must read for every ETH fan.
Get this book !!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07X8HS2WC/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_x_48QdFb4WVNMKG
(not an aff.. link)
What??? Do you think FDR was communist? Do you think Bernie is communist? Do you think Norway and Sweden are communist? Learn what communism is and what it is not.
Again, the USA had its best years when we had 70-90% taxes on the rich. If we want to bring back the good years, we need to pass something like the Green New Deal that has marginal tax rates that max out at 70%. Or a 2% tax on wealth above 50 million would be great too.
Think how much we would free the serfs of the US if we could cancel college loan debt!
Try picking up this book, you may learn something.
https://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty-ebook/dp/B074DVRW88
You might try The Infinite Machine
https://www.amazon.com/Infinite-Machine-Crypto-hackers-Building-Internet-ebook/dp/B07X8HS2WC
For a grisly dive into what happened to BTC itself long ago-
https://www.removeddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/6rxw7k/informative_btc_vs_bch_articles/
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.
"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&qid=1671476409&sr=8-1
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
Fascism is more of a political system than economic system. On Reddit, most people are going to be heavily biased towards communism. Go ahead and read what they suggest but make sure to balance it with other readings.
To learn more about Fascism:
Doctrine of Fascism: This is fascism defined by Mussolini himself.
Vampire Economy: A description of business under Hitler from someone who lived through it.
You will find that Fascist economies are heavily regulated with lots of bureaucracy. The State has the final say and is involved in everything, despite it being "private" businesses. Note that in the manifesto, Mussolini rejects classical liberalism and free markets.
Ludwig von Mises has a book called "Liberalism" describing free markets. He also has a book called "Socialism" where he describes socialism and famously debunks it.
Economics In One Lesson by Hazlitt is a great starting point if you wish to understand economics at a basic level, which is going to be required if you wish to objectively evaluate various economic systems.
Human Action by Mises is a much more detailed framework for economics, its thick but fairly easy to understand.
Again, an understanding of basic economics is crucial before you can evaluate economic & political systems.
I recommend “Debt: the first 5000 years” for those interested in this topic.
Basically The idea that before money there was a barter system for everything is completely wrong, and has never been demonstrated even in primitive tribes of today.
It would, unironcially. Argentina's problem is chronic inflation, inflation that is created by the Central Bank of Argentina in order to fund its massive bloated State.
This is basically where Argentina's economy is right now.
I'd recommend this book that's actually a first hand account if anyone is truly curious. In no way did Hitler's Germany have anything resembling a free market with private property rights that any small government advocate would ever want. It is much closer to the fascist states that so called "socialist" governments literally always devolve into. Hitler and the Nazis wanted to use the state to mold the economy like the central planning Young Hegelians they were and anyone trying to tell you different like the clearly uneducated u/ aeiou_sometimesy here is either wrong or lying to you.
If you’re technical:
If you’re after the story and history:
https://www.amazon.com/Infinite-Machine-Crypto-hackers-Building-Internet-ebook/dp/B07X8HS2WC
Andersen, Kurt, 1954- https://www.amazon.com/Fantasyland-America-Haywire-500-Year-History-ebook/dp/B004J4WNJE "
This is certainly a journey since there is so many sources out there and you will have find your own path. Here are two books that helped me.
I personally can really recommend Economics in one lesson to get you primed up in how to think economically and explains how economics affect every day things.
For investing I think Intelligent investor is good to show you how to think about investing and what to expect.
If you want to get some videos on how stuff works with calculations, have a look at Khan's academy. They do have several videos explaining the concepts of taxation and inflation with calculations. Just beware their political views are mostly on the left (I think) so this might play out in some of the videos.
You forgot an option: Home prices are determined by supply and demand. The housing market is neither too high or too low; it is precisely what the market can bear.
If homes are too expensive, then they will not sell. As long as someone is willing to pay the asking price for a home, then it is not too expensive.
Are Nashville homes over-priced for you? Perhaps. That does not make them over priced.
I'd highly suggest this book (which should be taught in all public schools around the 9th grade): Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. Though published in 1946, the principles, theories, and lessons are just as valid today as they were then.
>TCH made the claim that the austerity measures didn't save the city, the bailouts did.
But how is this wrong? There is no intrinsic connection between the two.
>Agreed upon by who?
Almost every economist? As far as I'm aware the only people who argue this are right-wing economists, but there is a widespread consensus on this point. Economists have literally written books about it: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071W7JCKW/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Depends on what you mean by "ideal" I guess, but unless capitalism is highly regulated and a good portion of profits redistributed, it eventually leads to extreme inequalities of wealth and power (see Capital in the Twenty-First Century).
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
Ugh how droll. I'd recommend Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty instead. It's not 100+ years old, is loaded with empirical data, and is far more relevant for today's economy.