
Books to Understand Economics - armitage188
https://filmlifestyle.com/best-economics-books/
======
legitster
Wow. I am really stunned by this list. I took a look expecting the usual
chorus of contrarian populist hardbacks, but this list is very conclusive and
and covers a wide range of opinions and subjects. I have read about a quarter
of them and can attest they are all excellent (although with varying degree of
readability). This is the exact sort of list if you want to see multiple
perspectives and challenge yourself.

I also want to shout out to Hidden Order, which I was really surprised to see
here, but is really quite the gem. More than any other econ book, I have
pulled off the shelf and gone through the much dog-eared pages. It does an
amazing job of taking off-the-shelf economic ideas and framing them in such
excellently written parables or examples. Disagree or whatever, but it's an
excellent and often trite way to understand classic principles.

A couple books _I_ would add to the list:

Why Nations Fail

Red Plenty

Who Gets What and Why

~~~
roymurdock
Yeah seconded, this really is an excellent list. Very pleasantly surprised to
see "The Rise and Fall of American Growth" as first on the list, it should be
required reading as a guide to what we're seeing playing out in American
politics currently (after it is rewritten into a more coherent and
concise/accessible book, in its current form it's clearly the work of multiple
undergrads/grad students stitched together by Prof. Gordon) - but the ideas in
it are really powerful.

Also really pleased to see The Road to Serfdom by Hayek on the list. Eager to
check out the book on Climate vs. Capitalism as I haven't seen this topic
given full treatment in a book yet beyond questioning the sustainability of
growth economics and efficacy of carbon taxes in broad terms.

The Mankiw textbook is used in intro undergrad classes everywhere.

I would also love to read a book by a contemporary Chinese economists on their
thoughts of the Chinese market, although something tells me a good
academic/unbiased book on this topic is impossible to find.

Only two books I would add would be:

The Age of Diminished Expectations (Krugman)

Dune (Herbert)

~~~
chumali
Please don't read Climate vs. Capitalism, the author has no formal economics
training and her analysis makes this clear. Rather than realistic and thought
out solutions towards decarbonisation - like those suggested by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - we are treated to yet another
exhausted critique of neoliberalism accompanied by the usual quixotic calls to
action.

Yes, activism has a role to play in convincing governments to act, but when it
perpetrates the myth of individuals vs. corporations it does nothing but help
individuals relinquish themselves from blame. Look at the gilet jaune movement
in France after it tried to impose a fuel tax. Some of these people are the
same individuals who if asked would declare unwavering support for climate
action. In practice however few are willing to shoulder the associated cost,
even in the rich world. They mistakenly believe that taxes on corporation wont
eventually filter down to consumers. There are also vast misconceptions about
our existing ability to substitute away from fossil fuels even if we had the
renewable capacity (for example, over 80% of UK households only have
infrastructure for gas heating). The public debate needs to make these trade-
offs clear rather being inundated by people like Naomi Klein who are more
interested in finger pointing and sensationalism.

If you really want to want to understand the issues we face and how we might
actually confront them then read the IPCC report [1], the Club of Rome Climate
Emergency Plan [2], or even this blog post by Bill Gates [3].

[1] [https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/](https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/)

[2] [https://www.clubofrome.org/project/the-club-of-rome-
climate-...](https://www.clubofrome.org/project/the-club-of-rome-climate-
emergency-plan/)

[3] [https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/My-plan-for-fighting-
clima...](https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/My-plan-for-fighting-climate-
change)

~~~
roymurdock
Thanks for the recommendations, and for saving me some time/money picking up
Klein's book.

I'll check out the reports you've linked, and Gates' blog post.

------
hirundo
I vote for this collection of Claude Frédéric Bastiat:
[https://mises.org/library/bastiat-
collection](https://mises.org/library/bastiat-collection). In particular the
leading essay, "That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen." It may be the
quintessential statement of how to think like an economist. The article
includes a popularization of it as "Economics in One Easy Lesson" but here's
the original source, free, clear and timeless.

~~~
claudiawerner
Also worth reading are Marx's critiques of Basiat and Say in his _Economic and
Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844_. Marx is even critical of him in the
_Grundrisse_ where he contrasts Bastait and Carey, in which he derides both as
bourgeois political economists. Far from seeing what is "not seen", they are
obsessed with price and external appearances:

>Bastiat, by contrast, presents fantasy history, his abstractions sometimes in
the form of arguments, another time in the form of supposed events, which
however have never and nowhere happened, just as a theologian treats sin
sometimes as the law of human existence, then at other times as the story of
the fall from grace. Hence both are equally unhistorical and anti-historical.
But the unhistoric moment in Carey is the contemporary historic principle of
North America, while the unhistoric element in Bastiat is a mere reminiscence
of the French eighteenth-century manner of generalizing.

~~~
legitster
Marx calling out someone for playing fast and loose with history and
generalizing concepts is richly ironic.

This criticism also does nothing to attack the merits of the argument or even
the existence of opportunity cost. Does he deny that such a concept exists?

~~~
claudiawerner
That's not the main criticism, it's a bit of polemic following on from the
rest of the analysis; I quoted it here only to mention that Marx does engage
with these thinkers. The criticism is too long to reproduce here but you can
check it out on sites that host Marx's collected works. I can't remember if
opportunity cost is discussed.

I'm curious what criticism of Marx's historiography you're mentioning though.
While controversial, his theory of historical materialism is not discounted in
contemporary history academic literature.

~~~
legitster
So I looked into Marx's writings on Bastiat, and the example he used is this,
(I am trying to summarize Marx's very convoluted writing style).

Marx doesn't really care or understand the argument about opportunity cost,
but he focuses on Bastiat's use of wages as an example in the argument (wages
are fixed, as opposed to the volatile nature of capital).

But Bastiat doesn't actually understand history! Wages come out of slavery and
serfdom. Wages can only come about from the destruction of resources or the
breaking up of guilds. (No citation or historical evidence provided). So
actually fixed wages over the long run _of all human history_ are not actually
fixed.

"No economist denies the fluctuations, the rise and fall of wages. Or are
wages independent of crises? Or of machines which make wage labour redundant?
Or of divisions of labour, which displace it? To assert any of this would be
heterodox, and it is not asserted."

This is clearly misunderstanding the point that Bastiat was making, wages were
an example provided of trade-offs. Marx is steering the conversation off-topic
to rant about how awful wages are. And furthermore, he is throwing out a
historical argument to combat a philosophical one. But he doesn't show his
work - he proposes his own view but provides no real evidence.

In the chapter, the whole thing is dismissed as a product of Bastiat's
"French-ness". As if to say, _Of course he would see things this way, he is
just a mouthpiece for the French Bourgeois._

While interesting in its own right, I don't really think Marx's criticism of
Bastiat is of much merit in this case. Bastiat's essay is truly a beautiful
piece of writing and philosophy, and eloquently describes a universal truth.
Marx is being nit-picky in order to prove his point about wages.

~~~
claudiawerner
>Marx is steering the conversation off-topic to rant about how awful wages
are.

The topic isn't at all a normative discussion on wages; Marx is tracing wages
as a social-historical phenomenon, one of "natural history"[0], one which
_occurred_ rather than being merely a philosophical abstract concept. Hegel,
at the very least, merged these - "what is rational is real, and what is real
is rational" \- but Bastiat, just like Proudhon, did not. Marx's point is that
it's a folly to discuss the world as it really exists when you abstract away
from the social formations that determine consciousness - including, of
course, the consciousness of such abstraction. Economics is not merely thought
experiments and philosophy, it's supposed to be real, and when you start from
an anti-historical point you will arrive at an anti-historical conclusion.
See, for example, Marx's (and other's before and after him) criticisms of the
"economic" theory of Robinson Crusoe.

I am curious how Bastiat can claim to describe a universal truth without
reference to real, historical social formations which produce these truths. By
what mechanism does Bastiat have the "view from nowhere"?

[0] "To prevent possible misunderstanding, a word. I paint the capitalist and
the landlord in no sense couleur de rose [i.e., seen through rose-tinted
glasses]. But here individuals are dealt with only in so far as they are the
personifications of economic categories, embodiments of particular class-
relations and class-interests. _My standpoint, from which the evolution of the
economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can
less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose
creature he socially remains_ , however much he may subjectively raise himself
above them." (Preface to the German edition of _Capital_ , 1867)

~~~
legitster
Assuming I understand you correctly, we must throw out the conclusion because
they do not understand the full historical context of the conclusion? I don't
understand how that works in real life. Understanding the full history of
software isn't required to understand the difference between good or bad
software.

I understand that Marx has a grand unified theory of history and economics.
But it is folly to point to anyone else that does not have a grand unified
theory and blame them for not fitting into _his_. I wish he would spend more
time defending his view and showing the merit of it, rather than attacking
people for essentially not seeing the whole picture like _he_ does.

~~~
claudiawerner
>Understanding the full history of software isn't required to understand the
difference between good or bad software.

No. We cannot talk about software in the same way we talk about other
phenomena - it is obvious that various sciences have their different objects
(e.g physics is the study of the physical world, biology the study of life
etc.) - the point Marx was making is that economics (or rather, political
economy) is a science which has an object strikingly similar to the science of
history or the science of biology - it is a study in which one must engage the
emergence and passing away of various forms of society, and of course to make
any predictions or analyze trends. When detached from this view, the science
that's left has no explanatory power. _Why_ are wages the value that they are?
_Why_ does value appear as the objectification of labour? _Why_ is it that the
majority of large-scale productive capacity is owned by few? What can change
given these parameters already determined? What can't change?

Marx was a great admirer of Darwin and they corresponded on at least one
occasion. Like Darwin, Marx viewed man as a necessarily historical being: "The
anatomy of man is a key to the anatomy of the ape. On the other hand,
indications of higher forms in the lower species of animals can only be
understood when the higher forms themselves are already known.", and
similarly, "While focusing on political economy, Marx took the opportunity to
criticize Hegel’s phenomenology. Specifically, he attacks its idealist
premises that take the real starting point as the product of the thinking mind
rather than as having an existence «outside the mind and independent of
it»"[1] Marx is not only attacking Bastiat for his method, he's attacking it
for the fact it is completely unscientific, unlike (he claims) his own[2].

But even granting your point, I'm highly skeptical one would find a software
engineer who outright denies the value of history for software development,
for instance to know what's been tried before and to know where things can go.

Marx's argument would say that the necessary and experienced development of
things the way they are today is due to the premises already set in motion. If
Bastiat claims that he has discovered universal human truths, this is to some
extent a historical, social and empirical claim. You can't abstract away from
that and still maintain the relevance of your theory to real world phenomena.
To take this further, Marx's fuller critique was that economists were obsessed
with appearance and in being ignorant of economic activity resulting from
people acting in their interest (again, these interests transmitted from the
past[0]) they miss the "whole picture" as you say.

[0] "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they
do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances
existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all
dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just
as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things,
creating something that did not exist before,[...]" (Marx, The Eighteenth
Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852)

[1] [http://www.consecutio.org/2018/11/every-beginning-is-
difficu...](http://www.consecutio.org/2018/11/every-beginning-is-difficult-
holds-in-all-sciences-marx-on-the-economic-cell-form-of-the-capitalist-mode-
of-production/)

[2] "Nevertheless, the human mind has for more than 2,000 years sought in vain
to get to the bottom of it all, whilst on the other hand, to the successful
analysis of much more composite and complex forms, there has been at least an
approximation. Why? Because the body, as an organic whole, is more easy of
study than are the cells of that body. In the analysis of economic forms,
moreover, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of
abstraction must replace both."

------
willyg123
Economic Facts and Fallacies by Thomas Sowell is a book that changed my views
a decade ago. I have skimmed through it a few times in the years since,
through a full market cycle, and he continues to be spot on.

~~~
fc_barnes
Thomas Sowell, like so many conservative thinkers, is a stupid person's idea
of what a smart person sounds like. If that's too harsh for you, sorry, but
that's what happens when angry Austrians go through the thread systematically
downvoting anyone who doesn't agree with them.

~~~
willyg123
I could debate Austrian vs Keynesian economics all day and wipe the floor with
you but the fact you had to resort to an ad hominem attack lets me know I
already won the debate.

FWIW I've never downvoted anyone on HN so it appears as though your
assumptions, just like your emotions, are out of control :)

------
jeremyboom8
This book changed my life: The Future of Money

From Goodreads

"Today’s financial system is seen by the most as having a fixed size. Bernard
A. Litaer challenges this perspective by showing that there were different
economic systems in history and that our present system has arisen from a
tacit and problematic collective acceptance. He sees the future in the
development of complementary currencies. He explains which money is necessary
for which needs and how we can commonly create it. Money only exists because
of trust — where trust has been destroyed, money is loosing its value; chaos
and poverty are sad consequences. Lietaer has written an exciting and
informative book for anyone who is aware of economic problems, from interested
laymen to bankers."

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/984314.The_Future_of_Mon...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/984314.The_Future_of_Money)

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Thanks for the recommendation. In which way it changed your life specifically?

~~~
jeremyboom8
Understanding that money is a human creation, and that we can evolve it.

Bernard Lietaer: “My conclusion is that greed and the competitive drive are
not inherent human qualities. They are continuously stimulated by the kind of
money we use. There is more than enough food and work for everyone. There is
merely a scarcity of money.”

------
ChicagoBoy11
Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in Society" contains the most important and
fundamental insight about markets. It's an essay worth a read every couple
years.

~~~
Matticus_Rex
If you're reading this and seeing "Hayek" and thinking "nah, that's
conservative/libertarian propaganda," reconsider for your own sake. This essay
isn't political, and some of the insights have been largely accepted by
virtually all economists. The essay also inspired Wikipedia and is constantly
cited by innovators as having been massively influential on their thinking.

------
sixhobbits
I really enjoyed Tim Harford's books "The Undercover Economist" and "The
Undercover Economist Strikes Back".

Maybe they are too far in the "popular economics" category to be included in a
list like this (although there are some on the list that look similar) but he
explains things clearly and argues well and I feel like I understand economics
far better after reading them.

------
voldacar
A lot of people online swear by the Hazlitt book - has anyone here read it and
would like to share their thoughts?

~~~
Matticus_Rex
It's a bit dated in 2019, and he's obviously coming to come conclusions with
political implications, but the basic framework of thought the book presents
is not only educational, but fantastically _useful_. I read it at the end of
undergrad and had my mind completely blown.

------
timtas
Missing is the most comprehensive treatise on economics in the 20th century,
perhaps ever: “Man, Economy & State” by Murray N. Rothbard.

[https://mises.org/library/man-economy-and-state-power-and-
ma...](https://mises.org/library/man-economy-and-state-power-and-market)

Another is Rothbard’s little book, “What Has Government Done to Our Money?”
which provides a wonderfully accessible introduction to the theory and history
of money.

[https://mises.org/library/what-has-government-done-our-
money](https://mises.org/library/what-has-government-done-our-money)

------
FiatLuxDave
This seems like a good thread to ask: Does anyone know any good economics book
focusing on regional differences in inflation, and the effects of that on
economic growth in each region? I'm specifically interested in cases where the
regions all share a common currency.

I remember reading a book about this many years ago (Bastiat maybe?) which I'm
pretty sure was French, since it focused on differences between the metropole
and the colonies, but I'm hoping to find something a little more modern. I
would be interested in a book from any time period, however, so please respond
if you know of one.

------
maxime-levesque
Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy - Warren Mosler

Available here in PDF: [https://moslereconomics.com/wp-
content/powerpoints/7DIF.pdf](https://moslereconomics.com/wp-
content/powerpoints/7DIF.pdf)

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has a convincing answer to the question: "What
gives fiat currencies their purchasing power"

Mainstream economists simply say that purchasing power of money commes from
"confidence", but they don't explain where the confidence comes from. It is a
circular logic: one has confidence in a currency if one beleives that others
have confidence in it, ... whoever whas the first the "have confidence" must
have been duped, ... or more likely the theory is flawed...

MMTs explanation of purchasing power is simply that in an economy there are
mandatory transactions: taxes, and taxes have to be paid in the currency
mandated by the state. Money is not a commodity, it does not arise out of
barter, it is (and always has) been imposed by states that required taxes be
payed with their currency.

This has many consequences:

1\. Taxes serve to generate and maintain demand for the currency (reduce
inflation, or produce deflation).

2\. Currency has to be spent before it can be taxed (how else can currency
enter the economy?)

3\. The debt of a currency issuing state is equal to the net financial assets
(sum of all monetary assets, minus sum of all monetary debt)

4\. Markets are monetary in essence, they are a side effect on the enforcing
of money on a population. In a market, participants all purchase money with
goods and services.

MMT is primarily a descriptive theory, the mainstream academic orthodoxy
doesn't like it so much because it debunks many of its claims, but MMTs
predictive capacity on the macro economy makes it a valuable tool on Wall
Street: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/business/economy/mmt-
wall...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/business/economy/mmt-wall-
street.html)

------
thecleaner
Why is something like this being hosted on a site named filmlifestyle.com ?

~~~
armitage188
Site covers quite a few topics.

------
rramadass
Not sure on how to phrase this, but i would like some suggestions please;

1) What is a basic beginner book on Finance i.e. how do Normal Banks,
Investment Banks and Money work? Explanation of the concepts, terminology and
jargon involved.

2) What is a basic beginner book on Economics i.e. the big picture concepts of
how trade, currencies (inflation) etc. work?

Basically the concepts behind what really makes our "modern world" tick.

~~~
chumali
1) For a concise and non technical introduction to issues of monetary
economics I would suggest Alan S. Blinder - Central Banking in Theory and
Practice.

2) For an introduction to macroeconomic principles you can try Cores free
online textbook. [1]

[1] [https://core-econ.org/the-economy/book/](https://core-econ.org/the-
economy/book/)

~~~
rramadass
Thank you. Will look into those.

Another thing i was looking for is a layman's book on how everything
(economics+trade+debt+banks+money+etc.) comes together explaining both the
concepts and jargon involved. Something which a high-school student can pickup
to have an overview of "the market and the system".

------
burfog
It's more a list of famous books written more-or-less about economics. They
are famous, not necessarily good. You will understand economics less if you
take "Das Kapital" seriously.

You'd do much better with "ECONOMICS: PRIVATE AND PUBLIC CHOICE" by James
Gwartney, Richard Stroup, Russell Sobel, David Macpherson.

Another good choice is "Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell.

------
fc_barnes
It's a good list. Generally pretty reasonable but they threw in some Austrians
at the end for "balance" or something. People usually get more then enough
Austrian economics from radio and online ranting, and they get a fair amount
of behavioral from pop media.

Honestly, what most people need to get basically educated in econ is 1. Some
basic national-accounting type Keynesian macro, 2. Basic forex and bond
pricing, 3. Enough education in marginalism to understand comparative
advantage and enough education in game theory to genuinely understand the
concept of a Nash equilibrium, and 4. A smattering of folks like Adam Smith
and Douglass North to understand the human or sociological side of things.

------
TDL
Haven't Jared Diamond's theories been thoroughly debunked?

~~~
madhadron
Yes. He cherry picked some ideas about history to support his theory, and
ignored the couple centuries of development of geographic determinism in
history that went over all his ideas in detail and showed they didn't work
before he was born.

I have never examined his ornithology, but I'm willing to extend him
professional courtesy that it's solid, but his popular books should be
categorized with Gavin Menzies.

~~~
woodandsteel
Could you list a few books and main criticisms? Like do the critics claim
Diamond is mistaken about the need for plants and animals that can be
profitably domesticated, and how few there are? Or that infections diseases
played a key role in the success of Western imperialism?

~~~
Steko
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jared+diamond+site%3Areddit.com%2F...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jared+diamond+site%3Areddit.com%2Fr%2Faskhistorians&kp=1&ia=web)

for example:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8nr7xd/thoug...](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8nr7xd/thoughts_on_guns_germs_and_steel_by_jared_diamond/)

[https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6meq1k/a_det...](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6meq1k/a_detailed_rebuttalalternative_to_the_one_that/dk6htc0/)

[https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2mkcc3/how_d...](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2mkcc3/how_do_modern_historians_and_history/)

~~~
woodandsteel
Well I skimmed over the links, and like all the other critiques of GGS I have
seen, they don't really address his argument.

For one thing, he was not arguing why Europeans conquered the world, but
rather why a Eurasian civilization did so. Also he was not a determinist who
was arguing that it was inevitable that this happen, rather that it was
possible that it could, and that a civilization from another continent
couldn't, or at least it was much less likely.

And indeed, when you look at the civilizations on other continents, they had
much less developed military technologies, and much lower agricultural
production per capita than the advanced Eurasian ones. None of the critiques I
have seen address Diamond's argument that Eurasia prevailed because it had the
plants and animals needed to develop more powerful civilizations than did the
other continents. I mean, do you think the Mayans could have conquered Europe,
China, India and the Middle East, even though they lacked grains and beasts of
burden? And what about a civilization whose territory lacked the coal and iron
ore needed to produce iron and steel, could it have won militarily against
those that did and were making use of them?

~~~
Steko
> like all the other critiques of GGS I have seen

If you've already familiar with a lot of Diamond critiques but have decided
he's right all along then why say "Could you list a few books and main
criticisms?". You come off as not engaging in good faith.

~~~
woodandsteel
I asked because it has been a number of years since I looked into criticisms
of Diamond, and I thought there might be some new ones worth looking at.

And as far as my point goes that Diamond's critics don't really address his
main points, you are continuing the pattern.

------
AtlasBarfed
49 goddamn books and not a single one that integrates environmental
destruction and survival of the human race as the foundation of its theme.

The list basically incorporates everything that frustrates me about the field
of economics.

It pretends it is key to everything in the world (and there are many
applications under certain circumstances), but it has pretended like
capitalism and various policies enacted under economic (especially laissez-
faire) recommendations have led to a fundamentally unsustainable world order
and economic system.

I remember the first time I read about externalities. It was the perfect term.
A tack-on to economics. A minor side concern to the primary task of making
money for the rich while the world steams toward oblivion.

~~~
AtlasBarfed
My third sentence is very poorly constructed. I'm basically annoyed that
economics acts like it understands everything that occurs in the world via
game theory, efficiency of energy, as if their study is as fundamental as
physics, but at the same time pretends the consequences of its implementation
in the political and practical spheres don't exist because their study can't
quantify them.

How does economics quantify the extinction of a species? In the nihilistic
sense if humanity goes extinct, what is the economic impact of that? What is
the value of a human life lost in mass displacements of global warming? What
is the value of humanity?

It doesn't answer these questions. It can't. The real answer is that economics
is a means for the powerful to rationalize their positions, and ignore their
devastation.

------
niceperson
Read Steve Keen

------
chumali
This is just a broad list of econ type books with no discernible curation. I
certainly wouldn't call it a list of the 'best' econ books even though there
are some great reads in there.

It ranges from very specific works on central banking, finance and behavioural
economics to an undergrad textbook covering most of Econ 101.

Some of these entries are only tangentially related to economic theory
(Thinking Strategically, Capitalism vs. the Climate). There are also some
glaring omissions (e.g. Radical Markets by Posner and Weyl).

~~~
davidw
Yes. A good list might start with some general, fairly neutral books. A lot of
the books here are fairly biased or are trying to drive home some point or
agenda.

Tim Harford's books are pretty good, in general in that he promotes "thinking
like an economist" without going overboard in any direction.

------
rodneyzeng
cannot open the link.

------
Avisha
Freakonomics

------
sansnomme
They need to add Varoufakis' Foundation of Economics.

------
carapace
Economics is basically numerology. A true _science_ of economics could be
described as "ecology + psychology", and would be based in physics.

The closest thing I've ever seen to a proper economics is the "Silent Weapons
for Quiet Wars" document. (It's chapter one of Bill Cooper's infamous book
"Behold a Pale Horse". I want to make it clear, FWIW, that I never read the
rest of the book. I have less-than-zero to say about the content of the rest
of the book.)

Oh look, it's online and with diagrams now:
[https://lawfulpath.com/ref/sw4qw/index.shtml](https://lawfulpath.com/ref/sw4qw/index.shtml)
Bitchin'.

It's pretty creepy: it's a combination of an exposition on a simple electrical
model of economics with a nightmarish _gloss_ of crypto-fascism (or something,
I'm not sure what you'd call it.)

Anyhow, the "electro-economics" is what I want to call HN readers' attentions
to: something like that is what I would expect economics to look like.
(Without the creep Dr. Evil vibe.)

~~~
oarabbus_
Why Stock Markets Crash by Didier Sornette is the book which most rigorously
applies physics to economics that I have ever read.

