What are /r/Rational_Liberty's favorite Products & Services?

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> Truly understanding political issue A would take me a lifetime of schooling and professional experience to truly understand.

This sounds to me like an excuse to throw up one's hands and conclude nothing. Just because you're not omniscient doesn't mean you can't arrive at good decisions.

> I think a great counter-position is the view that political disagreements are mostly about values, which do not take a lifetime to understand...

Indeed.

Chesterton also disagrees with this person's very broad position on open-mindedness.

> An open mind is really a mark of foolishness, like an open mouth. Mouths and minds were made to shut; they were made to open only in order to shut. (Illustrated London News. October 10, 1908)

> The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid. (Autobiography)

I suspect one of the biggest roadblocks to political agreement is not insufficient information or clashing values, but what Hazlitt points out in Economics in One Lesson: Because of the nature of politics, its arguments are a jungle of special pleading. Those people the OP refers to with so much more learning on a subject are just as vulnerable if not more so.

a/c. If I could somehow spread this book and be guaranteed that the receivers of the book would read it, it would hands down be the first half of The Problem of Political Authority by Michael Huemer. I agree that Bastiat and Hazlitt are great options, but the one book only gives you a basic understanding of economics, something that can quickly be rationalized away, and even if the reader completely agrees with everything, you're still only a minarchist. It's been a while since I read The Law, and while I've read it twice, I don't think it will have a great impact on someone who just doesn't agree with natural rights, or someone who's going to play no true socialist.

Huemers book on the other hand demolishes the idea of political authority using common sense, and the ethical intuition people already have to demonstrate the philosophical insanity of government. It takes the philosophical views of the average person on their own terms. That's really powerful.

b. I'm going to have to say Economics in One Lesson. It was the first book on economics I read. It blew me away with the obviousness of the logic. It was like hearing 2+2=4 for the first time. Politics is so filled with obfuscation, and the clarity is what initially drew me to libertarianism.

I'm reading Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow right now. (It's only $2.99 on Kindle.) It's an enjoyable read on a significant topic.

A thought while reading the book:

The marginal impact of a typical person in my community reading The Problem of Political Authority is probably much smaller than the marginal impact of that person reading Doing Good Better.

> (Still looking for that knock down argument to include other animals in that.)

Same. MacAskill (author of Doing Good Better) is a vegetarian (and discusses animal welfare from an EA perspective in the book), as are many other EAs and people I know, but I'm not convinced they're right that animal suffering is such a big deal to make it so I shouldn't eat meat.

Here's an article from yesterday by an effective altruist: Eating chicken is morally worse than killing Cecil the lion.

Interesting answers. Bastiat's The Law and That Which Is Seen, And That Which Is Unseen (which Economics in One Lesson is inspired by structure-wise) are both good, and were among the very first libertarian works I read.

Do you have any thoughts on the questions a/b/c/d applied to movies rather than books?

Its very worth looking into. The concept is actually very key in the sort of decentralized society we might want to move towards, ESPECIALLY if we want to set up a society that can withstand internal and external shocks.

I would personally suggest reading "Fooled by Randomness" first since its a fairly easy read and provides the foundations for the ideas he discusses in 'antifragile.'