Memes

You're welcome!

I'm not an expert by any means, but did Politics and Economics as my undergrad and did decently well in it; am happy to share my knoweldge. Also wanted to apologise if parts of my previous post seemed a bit condescending, wasn't my intention.

Would be happy to debate/discuss more at any point if you're interested.

Figure I might as well drop some more reading recommendations:

Specific to the topics of the discussion:

Chapter 14, from 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang This basically expands on the meme, and explains the connection between liberal economics and 'pro-rich' economics, in only 9 pages. Not very in-depth, but quite good and readable - although note that this book is very much a pop-economics polemic, and Chang is an Institutionalist economist and very skeptical of 'free market' economics. He's fairly controversial among economists, but not super radical or anything. Link to pdf of this chapter only. The whole book is free to borrow on Archive.org.

Chapter VIII 'Monopoly and the Social Responsibility of Business and Labor', from Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman. For a free-market take on monopolies, although a bit of an outdated take (the data has changed a lot, but the general arguments are still relevant). Free on Archive.org

Are markets efficient or do they tend towards monopoly? The verdict is in, by Joseph Stiglitz Pretty short article that expands on our discussion about monopolies in the modern world. Link to article

Chapter 2, Section 3 of 'The Poverty of Philosophy' by Karl Marx This is basically Marx arguing against Proudhon, so a lot of it is weird out of context, but does sum up Marx's views on monopolies. As with most Marx, not super easy to read, but very interesting. Link to text from Marxists.org

Chapter 2, 'Liberalism and Liberal Thinkers', from 101 Great Liberal Thinkers by Eamonn Butler A summary of liberal ideas, written by a self-described (neo)Liberal and founder of the Adam Smith Institute. Freely available from the American Economic Association

More Generally Relevant / In-Depth Stuff:

The Wordly Philosophers by Robert Heilbroner Is a nice and readable intro to the history of economic thought, would recommend for an enjoyable read and broad overview. Available to borrow on Archive.org

Economics: The Users Guide by Ha-Joon Chang This is somewhat of a 'pop-economics' text so is quite readable, but also has solid knowlege. Chapter 4 has a nice summary of some of the major schools of thought, and there's a lot of interesting economic history in here as well. Available to borrow on Archive.org

Market Reasoning as Moral Reasoning: Why Economists Should Re-engage with Political Philosophy by Michael Sandel Short article with interesting arguments about the limits of economics as a field, especially in considering the moral implications of allocating resources using markets. Freely available from the American Economic Association

Chapter 3, 'The Nature of Heterodox Economics' from 'Essays on the Nature and State of Modern Economics' by Tony Lawson Although this one is very academic, chapter 3 is only about 20 pages long and has a fairly good summary of some of the assumptions and criticisms of 'modern mainstream economics' vs 'heterodox economics'. The rest of the book is excellent as well, it's focused on a critique of modern economics and its attempts to be a 'hard science' by using lots of maths and models, with questionable results. Link to a pdf here.

Chapter 'The Place of Liberty' from An Introduction to Political Philosophy by Jonathan Wolff Especially recommend the section on problems with liberalism Available to borrow on Archive.org

The Economy by Core Economics This is just a textbook, not exactly light reading but it's free and written by some pretty high-profile (mainstream) economists. It's what I was mainly taught from so if you're interested in what they teach at mainstream econ courses but want to skip the whole 'paying massive tuition fees' part, here it is. Link to the textbook on their website.

Also, Marginal Revolution has good stuff on econ on their YT channel and website; they are very pro-free market.

Hope this is interesting and/or useful, have a nice day!