RD (@[email protected])

Appendix: EcOnOmIcS!!1!! "Mainstream economists are not interested in describing reality, they are interested, ultimately, in telling people how to behave. They actually are moralists more than scientists, but they pretend to be scientists, and they use moralistic language - "rational behavior" - to describe actions that any other sort of moralist would consider the essence of immoral behavior." - David Graeber If you have ever been told to "go learn some economics!", this post is for you. Here are links to a surplus of valuable thoughts on the subject, starting with the @[email protected] piece that was excerpted in the fifth post of this thread, in case you didn't read the whole thing then: Can the World Get Along Without Natural Resources? https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2020/06/18/can-the-world-get-along-without-natural-resources/ A mathematician on the "free market" economic model, excellent thread from @[email protected] https://mastodon.social/@magitweeter/111653879323307502 Revealing paper from Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan on how both liberal/neoclassical and Marxist economists fail at describing anything actually real when it comes to capital: Capital accumulation: fiction and reality "What we need now are not better tools, more accurate modelling and improved data, but a different way of thinking altogether, a totally new cosmology for the post-capitalist age." http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue72/BichlerNitzan72.pdf David Graeber: Against Economics https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-against-economics Interesting piece about what supply and demand misses, with important insights about value and market power, poverty and inequality: Bargaining Power and Prices: A Response to Sanyazi and Carson https://c4ss.org/content/58918 Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ Free Market Genocides: The Real History of Trade https://evonomics.com/free-market-genocide-the-real-history-of-trade/ GDP and the Idolatry of Growth from @dsdamato https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/05/25/gdp-and-the-idolatry-of-growth/ The Lie At The Heart Of Consumer Society https://indica.medium.com/the-lie-at-the-heart-of-consumer-society-1a6fe24d832f The Problem With Economic Models from @[email protected] https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/03/all-models-are-wrong/#some-are-useful David Graeber: What is the meaning of money? https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-note-worthy-what-is-the-meaning-of-money Here's another article from @[email protected] that really belongs here: The Ritual of Capitalization https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2021/06/02/the-ritual-of-capitalization/ For an extensive deep dive into capitalist economics, here is a very thorough examination from An Anarchist FAQ, very much worth your time: What are the myths of capitalist economics? https://anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionC.html "State Capitalism: The Wages System Under New Management" by Adam Buick and John Crump https://files.libcom.org/files/State%20Capitalism.pdf The focus of this short book is to argue (very successfully IMO) that individual private ownership is not a defining feature of capitalism and that countries such as China, The Soviet Union (this was published in 1986), Cuba, Vietnam, etc, though they may identify as "socialist" and are called "communist" by many are in fact simply another form of capitalism called "state capitalism". In the process of making this argument, this book also became an excellent general reference for understanding what capitalism really is, how capitalist economics work, what socialism really is and isn't, and plenty of fascinating and clarifying historic context. I would be remiss not to mention: "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" by David Graeber, an absolute must-read to better understand the history of debt and money. https://we.riseup.net/assets/393727/David+Graeber+Debt+The+First+5+000+Years.pdf #economics #capitalism