The affluent society

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1. paulustheNov 2022
   This is only tangentially related, but this article reminds me of Galbraith's "The Affluent Society" which should frankly be required reading for undergrad social sciences. In it, he argues that, at the time of writing (late 50s), the industrialized West has largely solved what had previously been the main preoccupation of economics - improved standard of living. As evidence, Galbraith points to advertising.

   The argument is simple: when important productivity improvements take place, say the invention of a new way of baking bread, they don't need advertising to gain mass use. Their benefits are so obvious that they don't need to be sold. Demand doesn't have to be created, because demand comes from human existence.

   The existence of advertising, in contrast, shows that the thing being advertised probably isn't that important. Indeed, the item is so trivial as to require advertising to create demand for it. This then leads us to wonder what benefit is being served by both creating this product and the demand for it; Galbraith argues that we've essentially fetishized economic growth at all costs (a holdover, in his view, from the early days of econ which was concerned with our metaphorical bread making instead of our metaphorical advertised widget making). He then attacks planned obsolescence as the dumbest outcrop of this process, because now we're purposefully wasting materials on things which we hope to replace in the near future for no reason other than to keep making the things, things which we don't need anyway - as evidenced by the fact that they're advertised.

   Anyway I think this fits in perfectly with the whole influencer economy phenomenon, because that's literally all they do. Their raison d'etre is to generate demand for items nobody needs or even previously knew about.

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2. avgcorrectionNov 2022
   > This is only tangentially related, but this article reminds me of Galbraith's "The Affluent Society" which should frankly be required reading for undergrad social sciences.

   Oh? What ideological indoctrination does it provide?

   > In it, he argues that, at the time of writing (late 50s), the industrialized West has largely solved what had previously been the main preoccupation of economics - improved standard of living. As evidence, Galbraith points to advertising.

   Oh right, taking the stated goals of an established field which has been central in the shaping of modern nation states at face value—its advertising.

   It’s not social science but I find the narrative of The Century of the Self to be convincing. It makes a lot more sense to sell things by way of manipulation than it does by just stating facts.

   But then you ask, why manipulate instead of just selling things that people more or less organically want? Because the economy has to grow. Into infinity. Is this a controversial point to make? And further, what is the current iteration of capitalism called? Consumer capitalism. It is not merely a culture of consumption since the system itself is built on consumption.

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3. Ericson2314Sep 2022
   Money isn't zero-sum, even during inflation. But the broader point that we need a big active public sector that isn't cowering and underfunded to be a modern society is true.

   Galbraith's get it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Affluent_Society

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4. cfraenkelFeb 2022
   If you're honestly looking for a citation, start with Galbraith's The Affluent Society. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Affluent_Society). This was old hat in the 50s. They just didn't realize it was going to burn the planet (and us with it)
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5. dredmorbiusMar 2018
   Apologies for the late response, though I've been thinking this over.

   I'll stand by my earlier comment: read the classic economists themselves, directly, if at all possible. Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, Marx, Mill (both John Stuart and David), Carlisle, Toynbee, Marshall.

   You don't need to read all of them or the works in full, but each of these addresses at least in some depth and detail the question of goods and their pricing behaviours, in ways that are not generally addressed today.

   There are overviews and histories of economic thought and its development which should be useful. I've read Heilbroner (The Worldly Philosophers) and Backhouse (The Ordinary Business of Life), both of which provide a broad overview. Ha-Joon Chang has Economics: The User's Guide, which is a pretty good overview of various schools of thought.

   I'm particularly impressed currently by Steve Keen, whose most recent book is Debunking Economics. He's been developing his ideas at a rapid pace and to an extent has overrun what's in the book. He's good to watch though.

   John Kenneth Galbraith tends generally to discuss economics more-or-less in the terms I've been mentioning here, with The Affluent Society and Age of Uncertainty probably being good starting points.

   I'm not much impressed by and generally strongly discount most Libertarian thinking, though if you'd like a sense of what I consider to be bad/poor economic theory, Howard Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson and Murray Rothbard's Libertarian Manifesto might be considerations.

   Hope that helps.

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6. AndrewKemendoSep 2016
   The following list will introduce you to Western Economic Philosophy as it relates to modern history specifically. This list is weighted heavily toward neo-classical economics and does not get into computational model based economics - specifically microeconomics, which comprises the bulk of economics education today:

   Schumpeter - History of economic analysis

   Adam Smith - Theory of Moral Sentiments

   Kaynes - The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

   Marx - Capital

   Benjamin Graham - The Intelligent Investor

   Galbraith - The Affluent Society

   Galbraith - The Great Crash

   Milton Friedman - Capitalism and Freedom

   Nassim Taleb - Black Swan

   Ron Suskind - Confidence Men

   Scott Patterson - Dark Pools

   If you want to delve into heterodox economics afterward, start with the following:

   Hayek - Individualism and Economic Order

   Mises - Human Action

   Rothbard - Man, Economy, State

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