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 Post subject: Re: N&D Book Club
PostPosted: Thu Apr 14, 2011 5:14 pm 
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4/5 wrote:
So what's that a video of? Can't see anything at work.

Milton Friedman responding to Phil Donahue's criticism of capitalism as a less virtuous way to organize society because "it runs on and promotes greed." Friedman disputes the notion that economic self-interest is somehow less noble than political self-interest.

I don't always agree with Friedman, but it's a classic clip. So spot on.

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 Post subject: Re: N&D Book Club
PostPosted: Thu Apr 14, 2011 5:22 pm 
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thodoks wrote:
4/5 wrote:
So what's that a video of? Can't see anything at work.

Milton Friedman responding to Phil Donahue's criticism of capitalism as a less virtuous way to organize society because "it runs on and promotes greed." Friedman disputes the notion that economic self-interest is somehow less noble than political self-interest.

I don't always agree with Friedman, but it's a classic clip. So spot on.

Right. This is what has me intrigued when you talk about the real issue being the individual vs. the....establishment for lack of a better word. That's not the word you use though.

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 Post subject: Re: N&D Book Club
PostPosted: Thu Apr 14, 2011 5:23 pm 
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4/5 wrote:
thodoks wrote:
4/5 wrote:
So what's that a video of? Can't see anything at work.

Milton Friedman responding to Phil Donahue's criticism of capitalism as a less virtuous way to organize society because "it runs on and promotes greed." Friedman disputes the notion that economic self-interest is somehow less noble than political self-interest.

I don't always agree with Friedman, but it's a classic clip. So spot on.

Right. This is what has me intrigued when you talk about the real issue being the individual vs. the....establishment for lack of a better word. That's not the word you use though.

Individual vs. institution.

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 Post subject: Re: N&D Book Club
PostPosted: Thu Apr 14, 2011 5:25 pm 
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There it is. Anti-establishmentarianism just didn't sound very thodoksian.

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 Post subject: Re: N&D Book Club
PostPosted: Thu Apr 14, 2011 9:13 pm 
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4/5 wrote:
That thread was pretty interesting.

I just brought it up because my friend (who is reading the Hazlitt book) maintains his anti-capitalism stance because it promotes greed. So we've spent a lot of times semi-drunkenly debating the difference between self-interest and greed, whether capitalism is the cause of that greed or human nature is to blame, etc.

The funny thing is, a lot of times avid "free-marketeers" are at fault for spreading the idea that free markets are about money and the like exclusively. Actively ignoring negative externalities, or protesting policies that seek to curtail them without proposing alternate solutions, is the example coming to me at this time.

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 Post subject: Re: N&D Book Club
PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 8:23 am 
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thodoks wrote:
1. Economics in One Lesson, by Henry Hazlitt.

I've ordered this.

I've got a bunch of uni reading right now and an assignment due later this week, so I haven't made it that far into "Road to Serfdom".

To be honest, I think I might just set it down to finish at some later date and jump straight into Hazlitt.


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 Post subject: Re: N&D Book Club
PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 4:18 am 
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Just ordered:

Image

and

Image

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 Post subject: Re: N&D Book Club
PostPosted: Thu Mar 08, 2012 1:13 am 
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hm, since this has been bumped, here's a cross post

i've been on and off on

Image

for a minute here


also, this just came in to the lib and i've read a chapter plus intro so far online, so, soon to get further in

Image

intro, ch1, and ch4 available here http://bookstore.piie.com/book-store/6260.html

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 Post subject: Re: N&D Book Club
PostPosted: Thu Mar 08, 2012 5:06 pm 
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cutuphalfdead wrote:
Just ordered:

Image

That broad playing Palin in the HBO version looks like a dead ringer. Ed Harris looks like a very convincing John McCain, as well.

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 Post subject: Re: N&D Book Club
PostPosted: Thu Mar 08, 2012 5:50 pm 
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4/5 wrote:
cutuphalfdead wrote:
Just ordered:

Image

That broad playing Palin in the HBO version looks like a dead ringer. Ed Harris looks like a very convincing John McCain, as well.

Yeah, I ordered this after seeing her on The Daily Show.

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 Post subject: Re: N&D Book Club
PostPosted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 2:50 am 
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Image


Only two chapters in, but this book is incredible. It's up there with Tainter's book on complexity as far as intellectually foundational books go.

From a review:

Quote:
...Neo-classical theory has evolved into an incredibly elaborate, increasingly rigorous, ever-expanding construction. Yet the whole edifice rests on shaky foundations. As Nelson and Winter put it, ‘orthodoxy builds a rococo logical palace on loose empirical sand.’ Their basic objection is simple: orthodoxy neglects or misconceives the role of information in economic life. This refers not only to the fact that information-gathering is costly, and that there is a trade-off between collecting information and using it. It refers more fundamentally to the fact that we do not know what that trade-off is. Leif Johansen, whose recent death was a great loss to the economic profession, once offered the following illustration: ‘It is like going into a big forest to pick mushrooms. One may explore the possibilities in one limited region, but at some point one must stop the exploration and start picking because further exploration as to the possibilities of finding more and better mushrooms would defeat the purpose of the outing. One must decide to stop on an intuitive basis, i.e. without actually investigating whether further exploration would have yielded better results.’ In other words, there is a process of search that stops when one has found something that is good enough, or ‘satisfactory’, without it being assumed that what has been found is in any way ‘optimal’.

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 Post subject: Re: N&D Book Club
PostPosted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 5:15 am 
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Hayek would be proud.

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 Post subject: Re: N&D Book Club
PostPosted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 9:18 pm 
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Wealth of Nations - Adam Smith

http://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Nations-Gr ... 0879757051


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 Post subject: Re: N&D Book Club
PostPosted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 10:14 pm 
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from thodoks' excerpt a couple posts up

Quote:
It refers more fundamentally to the fact that we do not know what that trade-off is.

This reminds me of Donald Rumsfeld and Frank Knight. It's also a lot of what makes life good. A world of perfect competition and perfect information would be a boring hell.

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