6 Comments

  1. Ryan
    March 28, 2016

    Hey, let’s see how far we can take this thing… “But that was crony communism”, “but that was crony feudalism,” “but that was crony slavery”… There is no social system that actually exists, just a series of counterfeits commandeered by cronies.

    1. gregorystackpole
      March 28, 2016

      When do societies reach the scale where things are actually taken over by cronies (should such a point even exist), and what is the take-home of the cronyist vision?

      1. 123
        March 29, 2016

        Fukuyama has a view on this in his discussion of rent-seeking in “The Origins of Political Order” (2011).

  2. gregorystackpole
    March 28, 2016

    I need a good introductory book on Economics. Suggestions?

    Now, on to the annoying stuff. 😀

    Should read, “[…] the content of that law has, and the theories which guide it have, concrete economic effects.”

    Also, “I have to wonder if Gregg’s pro-market vision […]” should be “I have to wonder whether Gregg’s pro-market vision […]”, for your act of wondering is not contingent upon whether Gregg’s pro-market vision in fact does have a place for antitrust rules. (This is me being really picky: in practice, no one follows this distinction between the simple conditional of “whether” and the conditional-with-consequence of “if” –always part of an “if-then” statement, even though the “then” is so often implied– and it might be too much energy for some people to fight against the flattening of all subjunctive distinctions. Still, sloppy thinking starts with sloppy speaking.)

    Burn this note after you read it. 😀

    1. Gabriel Sanchez
      March 28, 2016

      Thanks for the corrections. Want a job as my editor? It pays in IOUs.

      There’s no “neutral” book on economics to be found out there. When I first started getting my hands dirty in the field nearly a decade ago, I started with Richard Posner’s seminal treatise, Economic Analysis of Law, which is essentially applied microeconomics to legal phenomena. The bad news is that the latest edition is rather pricey. The good news is that older editions are pretty cheap, and having gone through three editions, I can say that not much changes from edition to edition. The biggest changes I noticed were between the seventh and eighth editions (the ninth is now out) where Posner did some mea culpas at the start concerning the limits of law and economics.

      For something more accessible, I’d say start with Israel Kirzner’s Market Theory and the Price System, which was recently reprinted by the Liberty Fund for a mere 12 bucks. Kirzner is a moderate Austrian, and the book does a very good job surveying microeconomic price theory without getting too weighted down in ideological disagreements.

      Another book that does a good job surveying the economic terrain is Wilhelm Ropke’s Economics of the Free Society. Ropke was trained as an Austrian, but is better known as one of the intellectual architects of ordoliberalism.

    2. Thomas Storck
      March 28, 2016

      May I recommend Heinrich Pesch? Either his complete Lehrbuch (Edwin Mellon Press) or the selections published by University Press of America.

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