favorite economist?

[Bassomatic]

Smith isn't the easiest read, as I said, in my career, I read him early on and re read after I was into the field and educated, that second time where you have a back round, shows you he was a fucking master mind.

 

[Mukhrani]

I like Schumpeter. His counter to Marx in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy was really insightful, with chillingly accurate predictions of a completely different collapse of capitalism on the horizon. Heinrich Pesch is also good, though finding extant copies of his work in English is very, very difficult. His historical analyses of the rise of banking/industrialism in Europe were informative.

Schumpeter's prediction of the collapse of the family in 1942 is spot on:

To men and women in modern capitalist societies, family life and parenthood mean less than they meant before and hence are less powerful molders of behavior; the rebellious son or daughter who professes contempt for “Victorian” standards is, however incorrectly, expressing an undeniable truth. The weight of these facts is not impaired by our inability to measure them statistically. The marriage rate proves nothing because the term Marriage covers as many sociological meanings as does the term Property, and the kind of alliance that used to be formed by the marriage contract may completely die out without any change in the legal construction or in the frequency of the contract. Nor is the divorce rate more significant. It does not matter how many marriages are dissolved by judicial decree—what matters is how many lack the content essential to the old pattern. If in our statistical age readers insist on a statistical measure, the proportion of marriages that produce no children or only one child, though still inadequate to quantify the phenomenon I mean, might come as near as we can hope to come to indicating its numerical importance. The phenomenon by now extends, more or less, to all classes. But it first appeared in the bourgeois (and intellectual) stratum and its symptomatic as well as causal value for our purposes lies entirely there. It is wholly attributable to the rationalization of everything in life, which we have seen is one of the effects of capitalist evolution. In fact, it is but one of the results of the spread of that rationalization to the sphere of private life. All the other factors which are usually adduced in explanation can be readily reduced to that one.

As soon as men and women learn the utilitarian lesson and refuse to take for granted the traditional arrangements that their social environment makes for them, as soon as they acquire the habit of weighing the individual advantages and disadvantages of any prospective course of action—or, as we might also put it, as soon as they introduce into their private life a sort of inarticulate system of cost accounting—they cannot fail to become aware of the heavy personal sacrifices that family ties and especially parenthood entail under modern conditions and of the fact that at the same time, excepting the cases of farmers and peasants, children cease to be economic assets. These sacrifices do not consist only of the items that come within the reach of the measuring rod of money but comprise in addition an indefinite amount of loss of comfort, of freedom from care, and opportunity to enjoy alternatives of increasing attractiveness and variety—alternatives to be compared with joys of parenthood that are being subjected to a critical analysis of increasing severity. The implication of this is not weakened but strengthened by the fact that the balance sheet is likely to be incomplete, perhaps even fundamentally wrong. For the greatest of the assets, the contribution made by parenthood to physical and moral health—to “normality” as we might express it—particularly in the case of women, almost invariably escapes the rational searchlight of modern individuals who, in private as in public life, tend to focus attention on ascertainable details of immediate utilitarian relevance and to sneer at the idea of hidden necessities of human nature or of the social organism. The point I wish to convey is, I think, clear without further elaboration. It may be summed up in the question that is so clearly in many potential parents’ minds: “Why should we stunt our ambitions and impoverish our lives in order to be insulted and looked down upon in our old age?”

While the capitalist process, by virtue of the psychic attitudes it creates, progressively dims the values of family life and removes the conscientious inhibitions that an old moral tradition would have put in the way toward a different scheme of life, it at the same time implements the new tastes. As regards childlessness, capitalist inventiveness produces contraceptive devices of ever-increasing efficiency that overcome the resistance which the strongest impulse of man would otherwise have put up. As regards the style of life, capitalist evolution decreases the desirability of, and provides alternatives to, the bourgeois family home. I have previously adverted to the Evaporation of Industrial Property; I have now to advert to the Evaporation of Consumers’ Property.

Also a very salient take on how capitalism eventually undermines itself and public respect for property in democracies:

A very common type of social criticism which we have already met laments the “decline of competition” and equates it to the decline of capitalism because of the virtues it attributes to competition and the vices it attributes to modern industrial “monopolies.” In this schema of interpretation, monopolization plays the role of arteriosclerosis and reacts upon the fortunes of the capitalist order through increasingly unsatisfactory economic performance. We have seen the reasons for rejecting this view. Economically neither the case for competition nor the case against concentration of economic control is anything like as strong as this argument implies. And, whether weak or strong, it misses the salient point. Even if the giant concerns were all managed so perfectly as to call forth applause from the angels in heaven, the political consequences of concentration would still be what they are. The political structure of a nation is profoundly affected by the elimination of a host of small and medium-sized firms the owner-managers of which, together with their dependents, henchmen and connections, count quantitatively at the polls and have a hold on what we may term the foreman class that no management of a large unit can ever have; the very foundation of private property and free contracting wears away in a nation in which its most vital, most concrete, most meaningful types disappear from the moral horizon of the people.

On the other hand, the capitalist process also attacks its own institutional framework—let us continue to visualize “property” and “free contracting” as partes pro toto—within the precincts of the big units. Excepting the cases that are still of considerable importance in which a corporation is practically owned by a single individual or family, the figure of the proprietor and with it the specifically proprietary interest have vanished from the picture. There are the salaried executives and all the salaried managers and sub-managers. There are the big stockholders. And then there are the small stockholders. The first group tends to acquire the employee attitude and rarely if ever identifies itself with the stockholding interest even in the most favorable cases, i.e., in the cases in which it identifies itself with the interest of the concern as such. The second group, even if it considers its connection with the concern as permanent and even if it actually behaves as financial theory would have stockholders behave, is at one remove from both the functions and the attitudes of an owner. As to the third group, small stockholders often do not care much about what for most of them is but a minor source of income and, whether they care or not, they hardly ever bother, unless they or some representatives of theirs are out to exploit their nuisance value; being often very ill used and still more often thinking themselves ill used, they almost regularly drift into an attitude hostile to “their” corporations, to big business in general and, particularly when things look bad, to the capitalist order as such. No element of any of those three groups into which I schematized the typical situation unconditionally takes the attitude characteristic of that curious phenomenon, so full of meaning and so rapidly passing, that is covered by the term Property.

Freedom of contracting is in the same boat. In its full vitality it meant individual contracting regulated by individual choice between an indefinite number of possibilities. The stereotyped, unindividual, impersonal and bureaucratized contract of today—this applies much more generally, but a potiori we may fasten upon the labor contract—which presents but restricted freedom of choice and mostly turns on a c’est à prendre ou à laisser, has none of the old features the most important of which become impossible with giant concerns dealing with other giant concerns or impersonal masses of workmen or consumers. The void is being filled by a tropical growth of new legal structures—and a little reflection shows that this could hardly be otherwise.

Thus the capitalist process pushes into the background all those institutions, the institutions of property and free contracting in particular, that expressed the needs and ways of the truly “private” economic activity. Where it does not abolish them, as it already has abolished free contracting in the labor market, it attains the same end by shifting the relative importance of existing legal forms—the legal forms pertaining to corporate business for instance as against those pertaining to the partnership or individual firm— or by changing their contents or meanings. The capitalist process, by substituting a mere parcel of shares for the walls of and the machines in a factory, takes the life out of the idea of property. It loosens the grip that once was so strong—the grip in the sense of the legal right and the actual ability to do as one pleases with one’s own; the grip also in the sense that the holder of the title loses the will to fight, economically, physically, politically, for “his” factory and his control over it, to die if necessary on its steps. And this evaporation of what we may term the material substance of property—its visible and touchable reality—affects not only the attitude of holders but also that of the workmen and of the public in general. Dematerialized, defunctionalized and absentee ownership does not impress and call forth moral allegiance as the vital form of property did. Eventually there will be nobody left who really cares to stand for it—nobody within and nobody without the precincts of the big concerns.

 

[Akashic Retard]

No but seriously is Sowell a good read? I have never read his books or anything i always tought he was a token black man.

Sowell is a good read if you don't know much about economics. Basic Economics is very digestible and fairly comprehensive. Haven't read any of the other more niche books.

 

[Buttigieg2020]

Also Paul Krugman is a faggot and literally wrong on everything always, I hope suffering upon him everlasting.

That’s what makes Krugman great, he’s so obviously full of shit and yet he constantly falls upwards.
I was reading our state mandated textbook written by him (god help us) where he claimed the banking structure and free trade agreements of the US would lead to tremendous prosperity, right after the 2008 housing crisis. I hate to use the term, but what a redpill. To see everyone’s lives collapse around me because of these policies, while the state claimed it was “progress.” It was obvious the “experts” were full of shit after that.

 

[Mukhrani]

That’s what makes Krugman great, he’s so obviously full of shit and yet he constantly falls upwards.
I was reading our state mandated textbook written by him (god help us) where he claimed the banking structure and free trade agreements of the US would lead to tremendous prosperity, right after the 2008 housing crisis. I hate to use the term, but what a redpill. To see everyone’s lives collapse around me because of these policies, while the state claimed it was “progress.” It was obvious the “experts” were full of shit after that.

My favorite Krugman tard moment was his internet prediction:

"The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in 'Metcalfe's law'–which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants–becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's."

 

[Archie_Kimkicker]

The Rules of Aquisition are what I live by. The rest is astrology.

 

[Mr. Zed da Robot Poon Fed]

No but seriously is Sowell a good read? I have never read his books or anything i always tought he was a token black man.

A very good read. I actually read Black Rednecks and White Liberals and Basic Economics, and am about to read Discrimination and Disparities.

One thing that kinda frustrates me is that he's criticized for taking use of the GI Bill during the Korean War and not being well-receiving of handouts, particularly on places like TheColi. The GI Bill didn't even help black people that much, hence it being called "affirmative action for white people". Sowell also had this pretty good argument against them:

(Link)
(Archive)

Finally, the argument that anyone who has benefitted from affirmative action should never oppose it is as illogical as it is ignorant of the facts. I certainly benefitted from the Korean War, which led to my being in the military and therefore getting the G.I. Bill that enabled me to go to college.

Does that mean that I should never be against any war? Was it wrong of me to be against the Vietnam War after I had personally benefitted from the Korean War? Are the duties of a citizen, not to mention the duty to be honest and truthful, to be over-ridden by what happened to benefit me personally?

Some of the things I advocate would ruin me personally if my recommendations were followed. For example, I am totally opposed to the environmentalist extremism that has made it an ordeal to try to build any kind of housing — much less "affordable housing" — on the San Francisco peninsula. But if such restrictive policies were repealed, the inflated value of my home would be cut at least in half.

Is myopic selfishness supposed to be a moral obligation?

Thomas Sowell

Silly letters​

Most of the letters and e-mails I receive are a pleasure to read and my only regret is that I cannot answer even one-tenth of them. However, there are certain e-mails and letters that repeat the same fallacies again and again. Let me try to answer one of those fallacies now, once and for all.

One of the silly things that gets said repeatedly is that I should not be against affirmative action because I have myself benefitted from it.

Think about it: I am 73 years old. There was no affirmative action when I went to college — or to graduate school, for that matter. There wasn't even a Civil Rights Act of 1964 when I began my academic career in 1962.

Moreover, there is nothing that I have accomplished in my education or my career that wasn't accomplished by other blacks before me -- and long before affirmative action. Getting a degree from Harvard? The first black man graduated from Harvard in 1870.

Becoming a black economist? There was a black professor of economics at the University of Chicago when I first arrived there as a graduate student.

Writing a newspaper column? George Schuyler wrote newspaper columns, magazine articles, and books before I was born.

A recent silly e-mail declared that I wouldn't even be able to vote in this year's California election if there hadn't been a Voting Rights Act of 1965. I have been voting ever since I was 21 years old — in 1951.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were necessary for some people in some places. But making these things the cause of the rise of most blacks only betrays an ignorance of history.

The most dramatic rise of blacks out of poverty occurred before the civil rights movement of the 1960s. That's right — before. But politicians, activists and the intelligentsia have spread so much propaganda that many Americans, black and white, are unaware of the facts.

There is a lot of political mileage to be gotten by convincing blacks that they owe everything to the government and could not make it in this world otherwise. Dependency plus paranoia equals votes. But blacks made it in this world before the government paid them any attention.

Nor has the economic rise of blacks been speeded up by civil rights legislation. More blacks rose into professional ranks in the five years preceding passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than in the five years after its passage.

What moved blacks up was a rapid increase in education. There was certainly discrimination but, in many fields that demanded higher levels of education, there were not that many blacks to discriminate against in the first place.

Moreover, even if certain laws and policies may once have served a purpose, that does not mean that these laws and policies should last forever, in total disregard of their counterproductive effects today. For a California election in 2003 to be held up by the federal government because of what happened in Mississippi decades ago is ludicrous.

Finally, the argument that anyone who has benefitted from affirmative action should never oppose it is as illogical as it is ignorant of the facts. I certainly benefitted from the Korean War, which led to my being in the military and therefore getting the G.I. Bill that enabled me to go to college.

Does that mean that I should never be against any war? Was it wrong of me to be against the Vietnam War after I had personally benefitted from the Korean War? Are the duties of a citizen, not to mention the duty to be honest and truthful, to be over-ridden by what happened to benefit me personally?

Some of the things I advocate would ruin me personally if my recommendations were followed. For example, I am totally opposed to the environmentalist extremism that has made it an ordeal to try to build any kind of housing — much less "affordable housing" — on the San Francisco peninsula. But if such restrictive policies were repealed, the inflated value of my home would be cut at least in half.

Is myopic selfishness supposed to be a moral obligation?

 

[DerKryptid]

Dugin