“We are Forerunners. Guardians of all that exists. The roots of the Galaxy have grown deep under our careful tending. Where there is life, the wisdom of our countless generations has saturated the soil. Our strength is a luminous sun, towards which all intelligence blossoms… And the impervious shelter, beneath which it has prospered.”
HaHa, nice. I am going to get around to reading this book at some sage. Would you recommend that I push it to the top of the list or read another economics book?
I would actually strongly recommend that you not even bother with The General Theory. Instead, read Henry Hazlitt's take on the book, The Failure of the New Economics. You will be spared no small amount of time and tedium in reading Keynes's "masterpiece", with all of its density and obfuscation and bad logic. Hazlitt did the job for you by reading it and dissecting it almost literally paragraph by paragraph. And Hazlitt's work is vastly more readable.
If you must read any work by Keynes, I recommend starting instead with The Economic Consequences of the Peace. If Keynes had written only this book, and left it at that, he would have been remembered without controversy as a great economist. Unfortunately, he wrote his General Theory as well, and forever destroyed economics as a respectable profession.
Thanks for clearing that up. Hazlitt is good, however I find his stance (which is the stance of the average Libertarian) on free trade to be rather counterproductive. I am currently reading Free Trade Doesn't Work by Ian Fletcher, which I am finding rather agreeable.
True. Hazlitt does not break with libertarian orthodoxy at all on the subject of free trade, and this is the one place where even great thinkers like him and Hans-Hermann Hoppe consistently fall flat. Ian Fletcher's book is in fact part of the basis for Vox Day's antipathy towards the entire edifice of free trade, and if you're interested in seeing an argument against free trade made from solid first principles, then I highly recommend reading through what Vox has written on the subject. Like me, he started out as a free-trader; and it's thanks to him that I've largely changed my mind on the subject.
It was through VoxDay, where I first heard about Ian Fletcher and his book. I have now finished the book and I seriously don’t know why people cannot put two and two together, and come to the conclusion that free trade is a load of rubbish. Maybe, it’s just our INTJ personality to cut through the bullshit and see the bigger picture.
5 Comments
HaHa, nice. I am going to get around to reading this book at some sage. Would you recommend that I push it to the top of the list or read another economics book?
I would actually strongly recommend that you not even bother with The General Theory. Instead, read Henry Hazlitt's take on the book, The Failure of the New Economics. You will be spared no small amount of time and tedium in reading Keynes's "masterpiece", with all of its density and obfuscation and bad logic. Hazlitt did the job for you by reading it and dissecting it almost literally paragraph by paragraph. And Hazlitt's work is vastly more readable.
If you must read any work by Keynes, I recommend starting instead with The Economic Consequences of the Peace. If Keynes had written only this book, and left it at that, he would have been remembered without controversy as a great economist. Unfortunately, he wrote his General Theory as well, and forever destroyed economics as a respectable profession.
Thanks for clearing that up. Hazlitt is good, however I find his stance (which is the stance of the average Libertarian) on free trade to be rather counterproductive. I am currently reading Free Trade Doesn't Work by Ian Fletcher, which I am finding rather agreeable.
True. Hazlitt does not break with libertarian orthodoxy at all on the subject of free trade, and this is the one place where even great thinkers like him and Hans-Hermann Hoppe consistently fall flat. Ian Fletcher's book is in fact part of the basis for Vox Day's antipathy towards the entire edifice of free trade, and if you're interested in seeing an argument against free trade made from solid first principles, then I highly recommend reading through what Vox has written on the subject. Like me, he started out as a free-trader; and it's thanks to him that I've largely changed my mind on the subject.
It was through VoxDay, where I first heard about Ian Fletcher and his book. I have now finished the book and I seriously don’t know why people cannot put two and two together, and come to the conclusion that free trade is a load of rubbish. Maybe, it’s just our INTJ personality to cut through the bullshit and see the bigger picture.