Nation Reconciliation and
Reconstruction
Resources for the Concerned Activist
Section 3
Economics
Overview
Some of the subjects that may need to be discussed:
• Pre-capitalist societies and insights they provide into what many
people living today regard as the rational way to run the economics of
a society
• The relationship between groups that take advantage of others and
social unrest. Corruption, etc.
• Money as a way of storing and accumulating the fruits of work.
• The use of money as capital permitting the establishment of firms.
• The functions of firms:
° To harvest the efforts of paid laborers
° To benefit the owners
° To provide for further investments
° To benefit laborers
•
Employers and laborers are in a relationship analogous to relations
among organism in long-term relationships studied in biology
° Some relationships are neutral and not significant
(Rat snakes and garter snakes might live in the same abandoned woodchuck burrows, for instance)
° In some relationships both parties benefit.
(Symbiotic relationship)
° In some relationships one party benefits and the
other is suffers attrition.
(Parasitic relationship)
•
Costs imposed on the general public by firms that pollute, etc.
°
Tragedy of the commons
• The value creating (wealth creating) function of trade.
The whole situation is more complicated when trade is conducted between
economies with higher living costs and higher salaries that import
manufactured goods from economies that have lower living costs and
lower salaries – particularly if the lower salaries are on the slave
wages side.
Resources:
The Everything Economics Book,
by David A. Mayer, Adams Media, Avon, Massachusetts, 2010 [ External Reviews ]
This book is the best introduction I can imagine for beginning students
of economics. It proceeds from concrete situations that readers will
recognize from their own lives, and gives a balanced and objective
explanation of how these basic interactions influence all the people
involved.
ISBN-13: 004-5079506022
ISBN-10: 1440506027
There are many sources on Amazon. The least expensive are used copies
for around $2.00.
A book with deeper issues as its focus, less of a primer is:
Development as Freedom,
Amartya Sen [External Reviews]]
Written from a historical point of view, this book gets high marks from
reviewers:
The Making of Modern Economics: The
Lives and Ideas of the Great Thinkers, by Mark Skousen [External Reviews]
Other books that are sometimes listed by reviewers are discussed [here]
"Hunter-gatherers and the mythology of the market" by John Gowdy [here].
"Neuroscience Can Help Us Understand Social Transitions," by John
Gowdy (RPI) [here].
"Industrial Revolution and the Standard of Living," by Clark
Nardinelli (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) [here].
See additionally, commentaries 3, 4,
5,
6, 7.
8,
9, 10, 11, 12,
and 13.
See a spreadsheet that examines the profit margin and what can and
cannot be done with it:
For Macintosh Numbers
For Microsoft Excel
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This page was most recently revised on 15 August 2016