Economics?

From wikipedia: >Economics (/ɛkəˈnɒmɪks, iːkə-/) is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. I'm looking to learn about this but I've no idea where to set a solid footing. I'm aware of the various "camps" of economics such as the Austrian school, or Keynesian but I've no idea what they represent, what their ideas and opinions are on. And I'm not sure who take seriously first. So, I ask what books are worth reading for someone who has 0 (zero) clue about economics but is willing to put in the time to read the relevant literature? Is pic-attached a good starting point?

>>10814 Honestly, just like you said there are different "camps" when it comes to economics. So there is never a "golden holy book" for it. My advice would be to literally do as much research as possible and read them books. As for this fella you just posted, yeah, i believe that would be a good starting point.

Khan is still the best online teacher. https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain

Pic related is an excellent starting point for someone without any prior knowledge. It's a very enjoyable read, Sowell writes as if he's in front of students teaching a course; engaging language, lots of repetition to drill in principles, and examples at every turn. He also spends a lot of time going through elements of the economy that aren't intuitive to lay people, credit, interest, public debt, and explaining why they're not only natural extensions of buying and selling, but desirable as well. I found that particularly valuable. As for camps, Thomas Sowell is firmly Austrian School, and you'll come to realise what this means very quickly. The whole book is a free market love affair.

Start with the classics: Wealth of Nations: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3300 On The Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation by David Ricardo: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33310 Capital (you can skip Smith and Ricardo and read them later if you're not too narrow-minded for this, as it contains an in-depth summary of their work): https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ Modern stuff to read: Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises - Anwar Shaikh (very scientific, lots of formulas and charts) -attached Classical Econophysics - Cockshott, etc. -attached Supplementary lectures (you can watch these on their own or alongside): Anwar M. Shaikh - Capitalism: Competition, Conflict and Crises, Parts 1 & 2 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB1uqxcCESK6B1juh_wnKoxftZCcqA1go Anwar Shaikh: Historical Foundations of Political Economy https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTMFx0t8kDzc72vtNWeTP05x6WYiDgEx7 IF YOU READ even half of this stuff, you will be light-years ahead of the Keynesians, Austrians, Neoclassicalists, etc. What you have to understand about this material is that even though the classical economic theories are scientifically proven, they are DANGEROUS because they prove capitalism is based on exploitation, and that it has intrinsic flaws that CAN'T BE SOLVED without overthrowing it entirely. Just think for a moment: how is it that the vulgar economic schools have had an entire century to try and fix the market cycle, get rid of crises, get rid of unemployment, get rid of hunger, etc. and have accomplished nothing while claiming that if people just listened to them perfectly, everything would be ok?

>>10847 Oh and here's an interesting book that takes a stochastic approach to classical economics. It's used in the Classical Econophysics book in the first post.

>>10814 The book in OP pic related is a pretty good start to be honest.

I'm currently reading this book, and it follows the austrian school "way". If you read the book in your pic related and like it, you might as well. The Dao of Capital teaches you how to invest your money by the most indirect strategy. It's good to learn economics, and it's applicable. You can later make better use of your money using what you learned by reading it.

>>10852 >you might as well like this one. Sorry, wrote too fast.

Thoughts on these two books?

>>10852 >Austrian school literature literally invoking ancient superstitions checks out

marx had the only good takes on economics

bump

>>10847 You might wanna read Value, Price and Profit and Wage Labour and Capital before going cold turkey with Capital. But ya OP you really should atleast check out Marx's writings his theories are very much based on Smith and Riccardo's stuff so if your intersted in Classical economics then you should read Marx.

>>10856 This reminds me of my favorite sperg reaction against Marx on another chan. >He just looks at the world and says "yup, it's all economics", he's just describing the world. Yes,that's the point, that's why he's the best.

>>11258 This is not a terrible suggestion, but I found that you really need to know the background and arguments for the theory to be convinced and understand what it's about. For that, you have to tackle one of the big books. The pamphlets can actually be harder to understand because they don't have an in-depth explanation >>11260 There is certainly more to Marxism than economics. The reason he was such a great economic writer is that he approached the topics with a scientific worldview-- his core philosophy, dialectical and historical materialism. Reading on this topic: -Theses on Feuerbach -On the Jewish Question -The German Ideology -Dialectics of Nature -Origin of the Family, etc -Materialism and Empirio-criticism -On Contradiction

>>10847 Should I bother with the rest of Riccardo's stuff?

>>11265 Can't hurt, but Principles is his big work, the rest are just essays AFAIK. So it's the right place to start with him IMO.

I think you should start with the wealth of nations by adam smith, then the communist manifesto by marx and engels and then the general theory by keynes and just try to figure out which one you consider to be the closest to reality, read about history, how did these different economic systems work? were they even applied at all based on the theory you read? if not, why? is it even possible? once you figure that out then read more about that philosophy or theory if you find smith's theory to be the one to your liking like I did then I'd recommend reading karl menger's bibliography, then von bawerk and then maybe read more modern stuff like rothbard or friedman

>>11371 The Communist Manifesto isnt an economic text, dolt. Start with Wage Labour and Capital and then move on to other texts for Marxist Economics.

>>11372 it's an introduction to the marxist economic theory

>>11375 It's possible he's implying that nobody in history has applied Marxist ideas to an economy without destroying it and accidentally killing tons of people in the process.

>>11375 The Manifesto, while not irrelevant like some people claim, has little to no content about Marx's economic theories. This anon >>11372 is right about WL&C being an intro to Marx on economics. However, if you actually do read Wealth of Nations, you're clearly prepared to get into long books like Capital, and you should really just dive into Capital. I'll also point out that while Capital Volume 1 is the best-written volume (since it was completed before Marx died), many of Marx's more original theoretical innovations are in Volume 2 and 3. For instance, Volume 2 has his representation and analysis of the economy as an input output table. He actually was the person who invented this kind of input output table! Volume 2 is also where he actually explains how a socialist economy would be organized, and he does so almost entirely just by describing the capitalist economy and then removing certain parts of the capital circuit. >>11371 >just try to figure out which one you consider to be the closest to reality, read about history, how did these different economic systems work? were they even applied at all based on the theory you read? if not, why? is it even possible? >if you find smith's theory to be the one to your liking like I did then I'd recommend reading karl menger's bibliography, then von bawerk and then maybe read more modern stuff like rothbard or friedman The thing is, economics is not just a bunch of opinions and personal feelings. It is, or should be, a science! Therefore, when you are reading these texts, you should seek out the empirical data on the topics they discuss. If a theory has empirical backing, clearly, it is a much stronger theory. This is why I encourage you to check out Anwar Shaikh's book >>10847 as it contains an in-depth comparison of the different economic schools, and it tests their theories against the real data. Overwhelmingly, classical/Marxist economics is the empirically correct body of theory. However, there are some good theories in Keynes and mainstream econ. >>11377 That would be a baseless implication, then.

>>11388 >The thing is, economics is not just a bunch of opinions and personal feelings. It is, or should be, a science! Therefore, when you are reading these texts, you should seek out the empirical data on the topics they discuss. Well, don't get me wrong, I'm no relativist but I think we, humans, tend to interpret reality in different ways and also usually not see the full picture, otherwise we wouldn't even discuss anything at all, ever. My personal observation is that empirical data is mostly on the side of liberal schools but i could always be wrong by someone with more knowledge or better understanding and even then I'd have to understand it first. I'm just trying to be "neutral" here and tell op to find out for himself which theories are best. That aside >Overwhelmingly, classical/Marxist economics is the empirically correct body of theory. I think you're wrong since marxism from the get go is based on a wrong analysis. Marx, like David Ricardo, believed value came from labour and this is just wrong. I could work my ass off to produce something and whatever comes out from that may not have any value at all. Value is subjective.

>>11389 >I could work my ass off to produce something and whatever comes out from that may not have any value at all. Value is subjective. Sure, but if you did literally nothing, whatever you did would definitely be worthless because it doesn't exist. Land only has value because it could hypothetically be put to use, via labor. Every thing you own was built by someone, and you are only willing to pay for it because they built it and it's not just blobs of raw materials. Importantly: LTV doesn't say that things have value proportional to the hours of labor put into them, whatever that is, it says that things only have value because they allow the buyer to not do some labor, because the seller does that labor for them. The actual dollar value you put on something is really about how much money you think is worth not having to make/do that thing yourself. But the labor is really the thing you're paying for, it's the reason money changes hands. Like many economists, Marx tried to understand equilibria, and tried to find a way of explaining equilibria that made sense. When something is over- or under-valued, it would eventually be pushed into the proper value(which would be the value associated to the thing by the average buyer, which would be more or less representative of the actual unmeasurable "labor" put into it) by market forces. On this Marx agrees with practically every economist.

>>11390 also importantly: Marx mostly analyzed interactions between businesses, because that's where most economic transactions take place. While "consumer" dynamics can be a little different, they're not different enough that Marx's analysis is worthless.

>>11388 >That would be a baseless implication, then. All you have to do is cite an example of a country that applied Marxist economics without "destroying their economy and killing tons of people". Is it really that hard?

>>11389 >My personal observation is that empirical data is mostly on the side of liberal schools but i could always be wrong by someone with more knowledge or better understanding and even then I'd have to understand it first. Vulgar economics supplanted classical economics through political means, not by any valid evidence. >I think you're wrong since marxism from the get go is based on a wrong analysis. Marx, like David Ricardo, believed value came from labour and this is just wrong. I could work my ass off to produce something and whatever comes out from that may not have any value at all. Value is subjective. If you read Ricardo or Marx you would know that this is a misrepresentation of the LTV. The labor value of a commodity is the abstract, socially necessary labor time to produce that thing. IE, the average amount of time it takes all producers in society to make it in earnest. This is separate from subjective use value. If the LTV is true, then the total value output of industries would correlate to the amount of man-hours they command. This turns out to be exactly the case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emnYMfjYh1Q There is a body of evidence and evidence of consequences of the LTV that support it. You can also read Shaikh's book and see for yourself. >>11392 Take this troll stuff somewhere else.

>>11395 >Take this troll stuff somewhere else. How is this a troll exactly?

>>11397 It's a non-sequitur, and the poster is simultaneously feigning and betraying their ignorance. They clearly want to get into an argument about wildly inflated death stats "caused by socialism" and similar nonsense. If anyone wants to discuss in earnest how either the traditional Soviet planning method works, or how a modern update to it would work, that would be cool. I recommend Cockshott's videos on those topics. The tl;dr is that key industries in the traditional socialist economies were planned with ''pencil and paper,'' and still did very well for several decades. It's also worth noting that any capitalist country in the place of Cuba or the DPRK would have collapsed a long time ago from sanctions. But a modern communist economy can use interior point methods and computers to plan literally every industry. And it's a very simple task to estimate labor values instead of prices-- any CS undergrad could figure out how, given the data set.

yup seeing a lot of people recommending marx. his most cerebral description and critiques of capitalism are found in his three volume series, "capital". there are digital copies everywhere. i'd also recommend peter kropotkin's works, "the conquest of bread", "fields, factories and workshops" (especially this one), and "mutual aid: a factor in evolution". they are all relatively short, but since they are all interlinked works, they share and combine intricate perspectives and ideas in kropotkin's socioeconomic and behavioral theories on the implementation of anarchistic and communistic socioeconomic principles found in nature and civilization, and how they can grow within and in spite of capitalist and statist systems, and overcome them, hoping achieve full communism through personal anarchistic action. all of kropotkin's works are freely available for download on the anarchist library

There's a lot of conjecture and pseudoscience being passed off as practical science in the field of economics. Very popular frameworks often don't predict better than a coin toss. If you can't test it against reality and make meaningful predictions at least 51% of the time, what good is it? Not to say it's all nonsense--there are presumably good economists out there who hold up to actual rigor and aren't just ruminating in a lecture hall somewhere all day.

>>11835 here are those books by kropotkin, by the way. personally, i fall asleep a lot while reading "fields, factories and workshops". but for kropotkin's distilled economic theories, it is essential. we can see how such theories are applied in civilization in "the conquest of bread", and applied in nature in "mutual aid: a factor in evolution". through the ideas of bakunin and kropotkin, the anarcho-communist is confident that communism hardly has any need or use for enforcement by the state as it is already present in animal nature and social values. capitalism and statism suppress our natural and learned communistic tendencies, but anarcho-communists believe that with expanded independent education and fearless agitation, that suppression can be undone

Here's a classical /cyb/ econ recommendation: On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures by Charles Babbage https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4238 >>11836 Hence why you need to check out Anwar Shaikh's book and lectures: >>10847 He tests every single economic theory he discusses against the actual data.

>>10830 Thomas Sowell is not an Austrian, he is part of the Chicago school >>10814 OP if you want to get into economics, Basic Economics is a great starting point. I'd also recommend Henry Hazlitt's Economics in one lesson. But if you want to pursue economics as a career, you're better off avoiding heterodox schools like the Austrian and Marxist schools, and you should stick to mainstream schools like the Keynesian (neo-keynesian), monetarist, and Chicago schools.