Economics Discussion Thread

[Pope Joan]

I was a member of the Institute for Cultural Affairs in the 70s.
They identify three primary sectors of social power, which are the economic, the political, and the cultural.
When I was there, the main concern in urban neighborhoods had to do with political power. I sat next to a Black Panther in a church in Woodlawn (Chicago) and was scared to death, but he was there not to threaten but to encourage the congregation.
ICA says that society works best when all three spheres are in relative balance, creative tension. Examples of imbalance would be Iran, for dominance by the cultural (religious in their case) sphere, Stalinist Russia for political imbalance (too much power in the political realm degrades the cultural and economic), and for economic imbalance we have the USA, where increasing concentrations of wealth rob the citizens of power and the ability to make free decisions.

https://books.google.com/books?id=zkzpl ... ce&f=false

[Dejanic]

Keynesian with Socialist and Marxian influences.

[Taihei Tengoku]

The merits of offshore banking

[Power ranger]

Haven't seen one of these done before, and I figure it's a reasonably interesting enough subject to garner discussion, so I've decided to give this a shot.

So... *clears throat Friedmanistically*, without further adieu, I'd like to humbly accept the honour of being OP for:


*insert drumroll*



THE ECONOMICS DISCUSSION THREAD

(Image)
"Man is an animal that makes bargains. No other animal does this. No dog exchanges bones with another."
-Adam Smith, British economist & philosopher



Economics is a very diverse subject with multiple conflicting schools, theories and systems. For the poll options, I've created a list of several different schools of economics. Naturally, due to poll limits, not all options are available, and some similar-albeit-different schools have been merged together for convenience's sake. I figure it would be interesting if we could discuss our thoughts on the subject. Personally, I consider myself a Monetarist with some dirigiste influences. I'm quite in favour of a relatively unrestricted market economy, and I'm not particularly fond of most welfare programs, but I do nonetheless consider myself quite nationalist, and as such favour state-ownership of some sectors of the economy (notably transport, energy/natural resources and banking), so as to stabilize the economy and provide a supplementary government income that allows for taxes to be kept relatively low.

But that's just me. What your your thoughts? Please, discuss.

I consider myself a Marxist - Corporation (China). I think that all the liberal systems - and most of all, the caseinism as such - failed with bangs and crashes. More and more in the world are emerging social mishaps that lead to revolutions and many kinds of "Arab Spring"

[Taihei Tengoku]

Bullionism is now investmentism

[Kennlind]

Keynesian with Socialist and Marxian influences.

This pretty much sums me up.

[Free Missouri]

Then the turnover is quite high. However Walmart workers are fairly low-skill (stacking boxes, working registers) and therefore have low training requirements compared to aircraft maintainers.

True, but it's still a factor, especially when you consider that one trained employee is essentially kept from doing their actual job by having to retrain someone else constantly. You also have to consider employees shit-talking the company and word-of-mouth advertisement.

All in all, i'm confident co-ops and syndicates can out compete traditional capitalist firms, given the chance and a lack of regulatory capture by corporations, and state favoritism.

Doubt it. If not run correctly, the emphasis on worker's interests could undermine the interest of the consumers the same as in some failing corporations the capitalist's interests undermine the interest of the consumers.

as a distributist, I'm more interested in consumer cooperatives, in which the profit collected is almost entirely reinvested into the improvement of infrastructure and assets of the cooperative. In these situations, and especially in the form of utilities cooperatives, the capitalists and consumers are all the same, and in many cases the workers are both as well. Thus, the interests of all three are balanced. The Consumers want better service/investment, and the workers want better pay, as capitalists they want to keep it afloat, but they have to balance that against the increase in rates again as consumers.

Either way, as distributism is mostly voluntarist in dealing with economics, this must be done voluntarily, not by state mandates.

[Taihei Tengoku]

True, but it's still a factor, especially when you consider that one trained employee is essentially kept from doing their actual job by having to retrain someone else constantly. You also have to consider employees shit-talking the company and word-of-mouth advertisement.

All in all, i'm confident co-ops and syndicates can out compete traditional capitalist firms, given the chance and a lack of regulatory capture by corporations, and state favoritism.

Doubt it. If not run correctly, the emphasis on worker's interests could undermine the interest of the consumers the same as in some failing corporations the capitalist's interests undermine the interest of the consumers.

as a distributist, I'm more interested in consumer cooperatives, in which the profit collected is almost entirely reinvested into the improvement of infrastructure and assets of the cooperative. In these situations, and especially in the form of utilities cooperatives, the capitalists and consumers are all the same, and in many cases the workers are both as well. Thus, the interests of all three are balanced. The Consumers want better service/investment, and the workers want better pay, as capitalists they want to keep it afloat, but they have to balance that against the increase in rates again as consumers.

Either way, as distributism is mostly voluntarist in dealing with economics, this must be done voluntarily, not by state mandates.

I am suspicious on any claims to "voluntarism" with an explicit ideological telos.

[Free Missouri]

Doubt it. If not run correctly, the emphasis on worker's interests could undermine the interest of the consumers the same as in some failing corporations the capitalist's interests undermine the interest of the consumers.

as a distributist, I'm more interested in consumer cooperatives, in which the profit collected is almost entirely reinvested into the improvement of infrastructure and assets of the cooperative. In these situations, and especially in the form of utilities cooperatives, the capitalists and consumers are all the same, and in many cases the workers are both as well. Thus, the interests of all three are balanced. The Consumers want better service/investment, and the workers want better pay, as capitalists they want to keep it afloat, but they have to balance that against the increase in rates again as consumers.

Either way, as distributism is mostly voluntarist in dealing with economics, this must be done voluntarily, not by state mandates.

I am suspicious on any claims to "voluntarism" with an explicit ideological telos.

Simply put: Distributism believes that economically, the state's main issues should be to protect against monopolies, duopolies and other trusts.

Perhaps it is a major failing because it is nigh impossible to adopt it without using state power, but Distributism is heavily against using the apparati of the state to force the economy to take a certain shape beyond aforementioned antitrusts.

[Taihei Tengoku]

Yet simply "enforcing antitrust regulation" gets you something similar to today's firm structure, not the primacy of cooperatives. Voluntarism is a process rather than a result.

[Taihei Tengoku]

Scott Sumner is woke

[Taihei Tengoku]

Bumping this thread with a good pdf

[Vyzhva]

I usually consider myself a distributist in terms of economic ideology, even though I am not a catholic, nor christian.

[Trumptonium]

The merits of offshore banking

So .. no reasons for anyone from the West utilising those services?

[Orostan]

Bumping this thread with a good pdf

I took a look at this and it seems to confirm the earlier comrade's claim that the USSR was middle of the road in terms of growth.

[Kennlind]

Bumping this thread with a good pdf

6/10 didn't read all of it but the song was better

[Taihei Tengoku]

Bumping this thread with a good pdf

I took a look at this and it seems to confirm the earlier comrade's claim that the USSR was middle of the road in terms of growth.

And no better than the tsars ::::---DDDD

The merits of offshore banking

So .. no reasons for anyone from the West utilising those services?

They're hedges against confiscation and capricious governments--to the extent that a Western government signals confiscation and caprice Westerners have reasons to use them.

[Verlzonia]

I think I'm socialist Idk. I'm a newb to economics,
To capitalists: Is the Wealth of Nations a good starting read?

[Taihei Tengoku]

I think I'm socialist Idk. I'm a newb to economics,
To capitalists: Is the Wealth of Nations a good starting read?

Get a condensed version; the original is slightly shy of a thousand pages of thick Enlightenmentese. A lot of Marxian theory is cribbed from Smith--in my opinion the only "correct parts" of Marxist theory are its classical foundations.

[The Ides of March]

I like an economic system in which a direct-democratic confederation of labour unions holds direct control over the workplace, in this system there is enough room for smalltime private enterprise too if you don't like working with other people AND it avoids all the exploitation brought by Capitalism & Co. Of course such a system to work it needs a bit of help from technology, so a little bit of technocratic governance is acceptable.
Being also a realist though, I'd say that such a system can't be fully implemented in the current stage of the world, but I nevertheless will support it and help it gain strong roots.

[Taihei Tengoku]

That is a political system, not an economic one.

[Chestaan]

I think I'm socialist Idk. I'm a newb to economics,
To capitalists: Is the Wealth of Nations a good starting read?

If you're just starting out with economics a textbook is probably the best place to start.

[Janszoonia]

I think I'm socialist Idk. I'm a newb to economics,
To capitalists: Is the Wealth of Nations a good starting read?

If you're just starting out with economics a textbook is probably the best place to start.

I would recommend Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, For a New Liberty by Murray Rothbard, and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

[Taihei Tengoku]

None of those are textbooks. My recommendation is the intro texts by Mankiw or Cowen. Cowen's textbook is also backed up by Marginal Revolution University's series of videos.

[Chestaan]

Mankiw and Taylor is the one that the first years I teach use and it seems pretty good. A lot of free information can be found online as well, especially on the basics. Point is, starting off by reading something like Wealth of Nations, or The General Theory or even Das Kapital is probably not the best idea, it's so important to understand the basics before jumping into something as daunting as the more famous books. Some books are great for beginners though, like Freakonomics or The Economic Naturalist. Both offer a beginner friendly insight into what economics truly is, and the power of the methodology.

And definitely don't start out by reading Rothbard or Mises. What they wrote barely counts as economics anyway.