Guest Post by Tom Woods
Here’s my short list of books I would recommend to someone who is interested in the ideas on this site and wants to learn more. If you read and absorb these books you will never look at the world the same way again.
If you’re like me, you are annoyed by books that teach you three new things. My time is limited. I like books that are full of things I didn’t know, or ideas I’d never thought of.
The books I recommend below belong in that category. They teach you something new and unexpected on every page. And they are a perfect antidote to the propaganda fed to us in the ideological prison camps where most of us spent our formative years. I list them in no particular order.
Economics in One Lesson, by Henry Hazlitt. Important for beginners. Also useful for beginners is Peter Schiff’s book How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes.
The Revolution: A Manifesto, by Ron Paul. This is another good one for beginners. It has a good track record as a proselytizing device.
The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey, by Michael Huemer. An extremely convincing defense of libertarianism that features powerful common-sense analogies as well as arguments drawn from basic moral intuitions shared by everyone.
Modern Times: The World From the Twenties to the Nineties, by Paul Johnson. I strongly prefer the earlier edition that went only through the 1980s, because Johnson starts sounding like a neocon by the time he gets to the Persian Gulf War of 1991. Ignore all that. The rest of the book is astonishingly good, and a devastating indictment of the collectivism of the 20th century.
Democracy: The God that Failed, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Just read it. Trust me on this.
The Left, the Right, and the State, by Lew Rockwell. Lew (who of course runs the indispensable LewRockwell.com) did the world an incalculable service with the founding of the Mises Institute, but he is grossly underrated as a thinker in his own right. He has extended Rothbardian thought in numerous ways, and has influenced my own thinking more than almost anyone in the world.
The Quest for Community, by Robert Nisbet. Here is a graduate course in political philosophy. Except in this one, the state is not the glorious summit of civilization and the indispensable source of human flourishing. As the new edition explains, “Nisbet argued that the rise of the powerful modern state had eroded the sources of community—the family, the neighborhood, the church, the guild. Alienation and loneliness inevitably resulted. But as the traditional ties that bind fell away, the human impulse toward community led people to turn even more to the government itself, allowing statism — even totalitarianism — to flourish.”
The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle and Other Essays. Features essays by Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Gottfried Haberler, and Murray N. Rothbard. An effective introduction to the Austrian theory of the business cycle. You can read or listen to it online.
What Has Government Done to Our Money? by Murray N. Rothbard. An excellent little overview of the origin of money and its fate at the hands of government. You can listen to this book (along with The Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar) for free.
Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays, by Murray N. Rothbard. The quality of the essays in this book is astounding. You will not think the same way ever again after reading “Anatomy of the State” and “War, Peace, and the State,” to name just two. You can read it online.
After you read these, I recommend the following:
A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Hoppe’s books put everything together for me. You can read this one online.
The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. This book blew me away when I first read it. Its title makes it sound dull. It is one of the most intellectually exciting books I have ever read.
Man, Economy, and State: A Treatise on Economic Principles, by Murray N. Rothbard. This one, and the two that follow, are for the especially ambitious. This is a systematic exposition of Austrian economics. The sheer elegance of the Austrian system is on impressive display here. The entire text is available online. A study guide is available for purchase and online.
Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, by Ludwig von Mises. Available online, and as a free audiobook. See also the study guide, which can be purchased or read online. (Some disagree with me, but I favor beginning with Rothbard before moving on to Human Action.)
Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles, by Jesús Huerta de Soto. Here is the Austrian theory on money, banking, and business cycles, presented in systematic fashion, and compared with the Chicago and Keynesian alternatives. I have a friend who was so impressed by this book that he learned Spanish so he could pursue his Ph.D. under the author in Spain. It is also available online.
I could name other books, naturally, but to my mind these are the absolutely indispensable ones.
One of the goals of my own books, for that matter, has been to get people up to speed on various topics as quickly and with as little exertion on their part as possible.Hence The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, 33 Questions About American History, Meltdown [on the 2008 financial crisis], and Nullification.
I hope you find these helpful!
Read the original article at TomWoods.com. http://tomwoods.com/goodbooks/?omhide=true
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I think the author has left out one very important book: The money mandarins by Howard Wachtel. He very thoroughly presented the manipulation of money by various organisation (that was before the Soro influence).
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2403422.The_Money_Mandarins?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=Y4Ts3m9FoZ&rank=1
Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek is a 2016 book by French economist Manu Saadia.
Jean Luc Picard was Building Back Better long long before it was cool.
Here is a message even JESUS would approve. Dead serious.
But what happens when you are so filthy rich already that you could never spend what you have, so now you spend your wealth (no longer worried about acquiring more of it), on the destruction of humanity, the control of humanity, etc. all to supposedly “better” the rest of humanity?? (Think Soros, Gates, Schwab, etc.)
And I’m sorry, but the ability to create anything from nothing may have done away with “scarcity” in the time of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but the eternal BS remains intact. How nice a quarters you have, how much freedom you have, how much free time you get to spend on the holodeck, etc. are still dictated by gatekeepers who decide if you have been obedient enough to their commands that you got through Starfleet Academy, got the right promotions, etc. The “class” structure is now even more about obedience and ass kissing than it was in the past, where talent, skills, and hard work actually were measured in sales, profits, customer satisfaction, and all the things that were more in YOUR control than in the control of others. Oh, and let’s not even talk about the one-planet government, or the “Federation” of planets that dictates to the lives of hundreds of billions who they can trade with, where they can travel, etc.
Sorry, I just couldn’t help but play devil’s advocate in this one.
devils advocate? no, more like just telling it like it is. i gave ya a vote up at least 🙂
Great post.
Don’t forget The Federation used gold to buy goods from the Species With Bad Teeth (no, not people from Kentucky … the Ferengi). So, there’s that.
Star Trek is massively replete with inconsistencies. Not only between the various iterations, but even within one series. The Original Star Trek was one of most egregiously inconsistent of them all. (The only consistency therein was that Captain Kirk would fuck any and every alien with a vagina that crossed his path.)
That role moved to Ryker in TNG. That guy didn’t even care if he brought back and shared technology designed to destroy/enslave the Federation…..and just like now, none of the leadership EVER suffered real consequences for their actions, while Wesley and Data kept saving the universe and never even received a commendation. By the time he got out of Star Fleet Academy, Wesley should have been a ship’s captain at the minimum and Data should have been an Admiral (for all they had done while the others failed time and time again). Enough “nerd” talk for the day.
The communist manifesto already covers the economics of Star Trek.
The key difference being that the Communists never addressed the REALITY of scarcity, while at least the replicator did do that. But in the end, some animals were still superior to other animals.
start at the top:
the laws of thermodynamics, along with the Maximum Power Principle. From this it becomes obvious why on the one hand the asshole move is usually the one that wins this round of the game, why pretty soon it’s nothing but assholes making asshole moves, and why the game of escalating asshole moves is always doomed to crash with great wailing and gnashing of teeth etc etc.
the rest of economics can be found in simple physics.
Why is this a problem now and wasnt a problem for all the rest of human history? simple answer: industrial technology enabled the game of escalating asshole moves to scale way out of all proportion with the mechanics, dynamics, mechanisms, etc, of biological life forms.
now that sure sounds like a bummer, doesnt it? it’s a shit show, it’s always doomed to end up a shit show, and the only way it doesnt turn into a shit show is if there arent enough resources available to fuel a technologically advanced civilization? well, yeah, thats about it.
but we also have some answers from a different angle, which really ought to have been for us a warning that the whole industrial age was a disastrous detour from the path of wisdom, and indeed actually more than just a disaster, but a rejection of our relationship with our own souls, the rest of the universe, and if you like, a rebellion against god. and for some guidance to avoid that trap, we had many many people shouting warnings for many long ages. some of them even had religions develop around their teachings, im sure you can even add a book or two related to this to the reading list here.
“The Most Dangerous Superstition” by Larken Rose
A book that EVERYONE should read.
Also, “Progressivism: A Primer on the Idea Destroying America” by James Ostrowski
https://www.mensenrechten.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/the-most-dangerous-superstition-larken-rose-20111.pdf
I don’t see any books there on Masonry, Judaism, or usury. He didn’t even list the Protocols. What a joke. No mention of the Bible or the Babylonian Talmud. Nothing on the demonspawn Keynes. This person does not want you to understand the world. This person wants you cringing at shadows.
I completly agree ken.
Yes, the only way a person can live during this time with any kind of peace is to have read their Bible and studied HIS story.
Here are three books that provide the documented truth behind the economic weapons being used against us, and exactly who has been pulling the triggers, who they are, how they did it, and what is their motivations.
Written in 1992:
Written in 2015:
Written in 2020
In Killing the Planet: How A Financial Cartel Doomed Mankind, best-selling authors Rodney Howard-Browne and Paul L. Williams investigate the true motives and consequences of the Pilgrim Society. Early members of the Society included J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Paul Warburg, Mortimer I. Schiff, Otto Kahn, and John D. Rockefeller. Although the Pilgrim Society and the powerful men involved are often praised for their philanthropic actions, Howard-Browne and Williams show that the Society was self-serving and subjected the American people to a brutal system of economic tyranny, one which is still in place today. As a sequel to The Killing of Uncle Sam, Killing the Planet is a thoroughly documented and impeccably researched book, with over 1,500 footnotes. It shows how mankind has become enslaved within the Luciferian world system that is managed and controlled by the world’s wealthiest families. The book is not full of conspiracy theories but instead, unfortunately for all of humanity, full of gut-wrenching facts.
MOUR…..at: https://aim4truth.org/
Anonymous Patriots
September 26, 20218:27 am
JUSTIFYING THEW ANTI-CHRISTIAN RAPE OF HISTORY BY BRITIAH PILGRIMS
Anonymous Patriots
September 10, 20216:59 pm
JUNE 5, 1909: THE DAY BRITISH & AMERICAN PILGRIMS SOCIETY SLAVERY-DEMONS FORMALLY BEGAN THE TAKEOVER OF ALL PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIFE GLOBALLY
?w=675&ssl=1
Fig. 1—June 5, 1909: First Imperial Press Conference, 1909; Crystal City, Shepherd’s Bush, London, UK; Organized by the British Pilgrims Society; Now the actual site of BBC TV Centre. Reuters, Associated Press propagandists. Foreground: propagandists of “social gospel” communism and mentors of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Marconi Wireless Telegraphy, Wellcome Trust – slavery, 5G & vaccine warfare.
Isn’t that Jack Nicholson in the third row? 🙂 Some will get the reference.
Yea…I saw him too…
No offense…and I really mean that. Nobody’s going to read all that shit.
The most important book for understanding the world is Carroll Quigley’s “Tragedy & Hope”. Unfortunately it is very long, so one may instead go for one of the shorter versions such as J. Plummer’s “Tragedy and Hope 101”.
Not to understand the world, but a possible path to deal with it as it is.
John Ross – Unintended Consequences
Everyone forgets that money is a fiction of the mind.
Government is the owner of money (Dollar).
Everything bought with the Governments money belongs to the Government.
We are using government property to buy EVERYTHING and ANYTHING.
We are merely agents of Government.
Find and read “The Law of Agency”.
Belief and believe have their roots in the word love (lief and lieve).
The Scripture states that the love of money is the root of all kind of evil.
The above also means that the BELIEF in money is the root of all kinds of evil.
Mammon more correctly translates to valuation rather than the money itself.
With Government EVERYTHING and EVERYONE has a valuation in money.
With the Creator, the creation is priceless.
With Man everything has a price.
Our way of thinking must change or we are all truly doomed.
The book of Romans in a KJB is the most important read of all. From it does reality flow.
forgot 1 …
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40961427-1984
It is not a book, but movies are for those of us too lazy to read.
“Now we see the violence INHERENT in the system……”
You’d learn how the world really works if you read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Mein Kampf, instead.