HN user
Savings and index fund investing. I have an automatic bank transfer to my broker account every month and then I'm using Interactive Brokers API in a script that buys global equities index ETF.
I can't give just one, but here are a few that had a strong influence on me: "12 Rules for Life" by Jordan Peterson, "Why Switzerland?" Jonathan Steinberg, "Little Book of Common Sense Investing" by John C. Bogle, "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" by Butron Malkiel, "Liberalismus" by Ludwig von Mises, "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius, "A Treatise of Human Nature" by David Hume, "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, "The Law" by Frédéric Bastiat, "Autobiography" by Benjamin Franklin, "Common Sense" by Thomas Paine, "Gespräche mit Goethe" by Johann Peter Eckermann, "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau, "The Old Regime and the Revolution" Alexis de Tocqueville, "On Liberty" by John Stuart Mill, "A Treatise on Political Economy" by Jean-Baptiste Say, "The Man Versus the State" by Herbert Spencer, "The Revolt of the Masses" by José Ortega y Gasset, "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy" by Joseph Alois Schumpeter, "The Logic of Scientific Discovery" by Karl Popper, "The Machinery of Freedom" by David Friedman, "On Power" Bertrand de Jouvenel, "1984" by George Orwell, "The State" by Anthony de Jasay, "Sketched With the Quill" by Andrzej Bobkowski, "My Correct Views on Everything" by Leszek Kolakowski, "The Captive Mind" Czesław Miłosz, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, "The House of the Dead" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, "Conversations with an Executioner" by Kazimierz Moczarski, "Diary 1954" by Leopold Tyrmand, "The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov, "A World Apart: A Memoir of the Gulag" by Gustaw Herling-Grudziński
One of the best blogs on learning and life wisdom.
Here's a good read on that subject: http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/spain.htm
Open a cheap investment account (e.g. Interactive Brokers) and invest in cheap ETFs (e.g. Vanguard Total World Stock and/or Vanguard Total Bond Market - in proportions 70%/30%) until you have 25*your yearly expenses (that usually means 10-12 years of investing, when you save 50% of your salary). After that point, you're FI, you can withdraw (max) 4% a year and live off from returns from your investments ad infinitum.
Central banks have similar bug with government money.
Except for Switzerland, Western (not to speak about Eastern) Europe's universal healthcare means universal high taxes, universal low quality of treatment and universal access to waiting queues.
Most Palestinians and anti-government Jews in Israel wouldn't agree. Maybe Kurdistan will be the first country in which political elites (backed by populist voting majority) treat all their citizens as subjects and not as objects to achieve their own objectives. I hope so, I don't know much about Kurdistan.
But non of them is financed voluntary and non of them was created in voluntary association.
Maybe in your country. In mine liberal still means liberal.
What's so ironic in that? This was the agenda of the liberals since the Scottish Enlightenment.
Elasticsearch+Flunetd+Kibana for logs and KairosDB+Fluentd+Grafana for metrics.
"I'm wondering which other books have you read that have had the most impact on you professionally or even personally?"
Professionally: Peter F. Drucker's books.
Personally: "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius, "A Treatise of Human Nature" by David Hume, "The Law" by Frédéric Bastiat, "Autobiography" by Benjamin Franklin, "Common Sense" by Thomas Paine, "Gespräche mit Goethe" by Johann Peter Eckermann, "The Old Regime and the Revolution" Alexis de Tocqueville, "On Liberty" by John Stuart Mill, "The Man Versus the State" by Herbert Spencer, "The Revolt of the Masses" by José Ortega y Gasset, "The Logic of Scientific Discovery" by Karl Popper, "On Power" Bertrand de Jouvenel, "1984" by George Orwell, "The State" by Anthony de Jasay, "Sketched With the Quill" by Andrzej Bobkowski, "Metaphysical Horror" by Leszek Kolakowski, "Rationality in Economics" by Vernon L. Smith, "The Machinery of Freedom" by David Friedman.
Classic paper of a brilliant economist.
There was a Polish composer, writer and politician Stefan Kisielewski who used to say: "Socialism is a system which bravely fights problems that are not known in any other system". That describes situation of Spain perfectly.
Well, they were elected by a majority who doesn't believe in science. That's why it's strange that most of the people who believe in majority rule are surprised when democratic elections result in such outcomes.
Ask NSA...
Most libertarians/classical liberals believe in that concept. It used to be like that in the middle ages, especially in Germany and Italy.
Look for instance these two articles: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023039195045775226... https://mises.org/library/politics-johann-wolfgang-goethe
It's not a "natural law", but pretty close to it. It's a social convention (behavioral equilibrium) that guarantees peace and cooperation. The greatest philosopher of property rights was David Hume and the best continuator of Hume is Anthony de Jasay: http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2455/231884
"support for the disastrous privatization of the economies of the Post-Soviet states that's lead to massive human suffering"
Lack of privatization in Post-Soviet states lead to massive human suffering. In Poland the government constantly subsidies all companies that weren't privitzed in 90s. What's worse quality of products and services in these industries is terrible. That's why for instance electricity in Poland is one of the most expensive in Europe. And it is impossible to change anything because all these companies are highly unionized and have huge political influences during elections.
Little state ownership may work fine in countries that has different culture in rest of the economy has been capitalistic for last 200 years. In Post-Soviet world it is disastrous. Look at Russia for intance - Gazprom and other state companies were overtaken by the Putin's mafia.
Thank you globalization.
Nonsense, the entire era of Industrial Revolution happened during authoritarian governments. Not to mention the economic success of Hong Kong or Chile.
PS. Yes, there was huge shortage of toilet paper in Poland during 80's. Huge! My family was standing in the queues for 2-3h to get it.
No, they're prefect robots, always rational, and always taking care about the humanity and never themselves.
No, Piketty showed that inequality is getting worse in the West. Inequality is getting smaller in global and it is an empirical fact. Anyhow, his theory has serious flaws: http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2014/Jasaypython.htm...
"I grew up in the economy-controlled '80s"
Me too! I'm from Poland. And that's why I'm so sick of all those inteligentsia do-gooders who want to impose their own preferences on everybody else because they know better and this legitimizes them to orchestrate the society.
On the silly "inequality is getting worse" claim:
"Contrary to the author's claim that the rich are getting richer, not due to underlying economic trends, but by using their power and influence to enrich themselves, I have in this column more than once suggested that the real reason is the enormous expansion of the world supply of unskilled and semi-skilled labour brought about by falling transport costs and trade barriers. With globalization, a billion or more rural people in Asia could be recruited into the urban industrial sector and produce the tradeable goods that undersell the goods hitherto produced in the United States and Europe. Until this new Asian labour is wholly absorbed and its wages rise to Western levels, U.S. and European unskilled wages will remain depressed and the share of profits in value added will rise. Ironically, while this sharpens inequality in the West, it promotes equality on a world scale as Asian and eventually also African peoples are lifted out of misery." http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2012/Jasayinequality...
+ Even if there exits market failures, we don't want to replace them with government failures, which are usually even worse.
Zimbra might help.