Capitalism, the unknown ideal

What Hacker News says

1. jtlienwisMay 2020
   Sholzenitzen's Gulag.

   Twains Pudd'head Wilson and "The Corruption of Hadleyburg"

   Ayn Rand et al "Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal"

   Peter Kropotkin "Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution"

   Tannehill, Morse "The Market for Liberty"

   Albert J. Nock "Our Enemy the State"

   Stephan Wolfram "A New Kind of Science"

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2. icuApr 2020
   1. How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes (2010) by Peter Schiff and Andrew Schiff

   2. A Template For Understanding Big Debt Crises (2018) by Ray Dalio

   3. Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand

   4. Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy by Thomas Sowell

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3. javertSep 2019
   1. I'm not really sure what you are asking. If this helps, what I want (and what I call a free market) is a situation where people are free to make their own decisions because the use of non-preventative force is barred. The government uses preventative force to prevent other people from using force. This is a "domestic" issue. It doesn't really have anything to do with international relations.

   2 and 3. If you go back to my example, customers don't want Shitcoin in the first place, so realistically, they would never seek to obtain it. So it isn't really the case that customers are trying to get merchants to take their Shitcoin. There just isn't any point in using it at all. The reason "bad money drives out the good" in Gresham's law is because the government puts the bad money into the economy. Absent something like that, bad money just isn't wanted and nobody keeps it. If they get it they immediately convert it to a good currency, so if it pops into existence somehow, it immediately goes out of existence. Visa and Paypal and whatnot are not different currencies. They are different payment mechanisms. I agree with you that customers and merchants would likely want to use multiple of these, and that merchants would be driven to accept all the common payment mechanisms.

   This has been a worthwhile discussion and I'm sure we could keep going, but I really have to take a break from hacker news for a while. So let's call it a day. If you want to read about free markets, check out the book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand if you haven't already.

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4. mimixcoJan 2019
   Her book, "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" is a series of essays written in the early 60's. Reading it today, I would say she hasn't had enough influence over the world.

   I think Rand would be horrified at the current popularity of socialism. She rightly points out that, historically, it's created nothing but poverty and misery.

   I would highly recommend her essay, A Textbook of Americanism, available free online here: http://laissez-fairerepublic.com/textbook.htm

   Perhaps if more people read Rand (especially her nonfiction), we might not be in this predicament.

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5. mindcrimeJan 2019
   Her book, "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" is a series of essays written in the early 60's. Reading it today, I would say she hasn't had enough influence over the world.

   I can't agree strongly enough. Everybody should read Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. And go into it with an open mind, instead of planning to reject it based on preconceived biases. A lot of people might be surprised at how they feel about things at the end.

   All of that said, I think Rand hurt herself in one crucial way w.r.t her writing. And that is her somewhat nonstandard use of certain words, especially "selfish" and "selfishness". For better or worse, her use of those words is a bit different from the common, colloquial usage, and most people - in my experience - don't bother to try and really dig in and parse out what she meant.

   I'm not even sure a word exists that, by itself, captures exactly what she meant by "selfish" or "selfishness". Something like "self interest" or "inner desire" or maybe "self reward" comes close, but those all feel kinda clumsy if inserted into her works in place of "selfish" and its other forms.

   Perhaps if more people read Rand (especially her nonfiction), we might not be in this predicament.

   Agreed. Sadly, even among people who have read Rand, too many just read Atlas Shrugged and formed their opinions there. And while I enjoyed AS and think it has a lot of virtue, it's not a great novel in many ways, and as a non-native English speaker, her writing in AS can feel a bit wooden and stilted at times. I think The Fountainhead is a bit better in this regard, in addition to being shorter, and generally recommend it as a better intro to Rand's fiction, for people who want to go down that path.

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6. mindcrimeDec 2018
   Favorites read in 2018:

   Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg. This book is, so far, the closest I've come to finding a "spiritual successor" to The Soul of a New Machine by Kidder. If you liked The Soul of a New Machine, or if you like watching Halt and Catch Fire, you may well like Dreaming in Code.

   Inspired by Marty Cagan. Really solid overview of the essentials of product management.

   The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect by Judea Pearl. Judea Pearl is, of course, a giant in the worlds of statistics and AI, and this book distills his work on "causal inference" and lays it all out in a pretty accessible manner. Not a textbook per-se, but not completely non-technical either. Read this if you're interested in how statistical analysis can be used to truly establish cause/effect relationships.

   Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand. Do you think you hate Capitalism? Do you not understand why so many people love Capitalism? Have you based your opinion of Ayn Rand on second-hand commentary instead of actually reading her works? Then read this book.

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