Who is the best economist?

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That's why they say freedom isn't free.



That's from the perspective of the less efficient country. I think my professor was talking about a line to the effect of "a country with an absolute advantage in all areas has nothing to gain by trading with the country with the absolute disadvantage." The book is very long and I don't feel like digging through to find the line.

Although actually, this might be the very line I am talking about. If one assumes an implication that if a country can only supply you with commodities more expensively than you can then you shouldn't trade with them.



If I took his opinion as absolute truth I would not have mentioned the fact that I was talking about his opinion.



Comparative advantage was what I was trying to get at. Actually I think I mentioned it the first time I tried to post this but I hit the submit button sometime after 12:15 central, when the servers are usually down and I lost what I wrote. I tried again this morning and basically described it here without using the actual term, and did it rather sloppily because I was in a hurry.



Adding the economic jargon Country A has the comparative advantage in making Ys and Country B has the comparative advantage in making Xs, and as I already said earlier



I'm sorry, but I just can't stop myself from harping on usage of double negatives. You did do a good job of clearing some things up that I didn't elaborate properly.

Not really, they usually say that in order to argue for strong militaries in order to defend national interests.

I chose not to watch all of that, however, I do already know of Ron Paul. His ideas go along with that of the Austrian school and he is a strong adherent of their ideas. He even had a book called "Mises and Austrian Economics: A Personal View" which explained his ties. Essentially Ron Paul is not so much an economist himself as he is the disciple of an economist, this economist is Ludwig von Mises, who wrote on monetary theory, and on the calculating ability of markets.

You just did that for the sake of argument, didn't you? The reason freedom isn't free is a saying is because there are many different things that make it true.

I think that the major reason it is stated is in order to support military action. It is a major slogan by right wing groups who wish to have powerful militaries and great foreign policy support in order to defeat supposed enemies. I don't think that I have ever heard a left-wing cause use that phrase ever.

i dont know why people are so facinated with economies its like uh who cares

I think there is somebody who could point that out on every field. I think that economics is interesting though because economics and its institutions are deeply tied to our lives as can be seen with how economics describes how we live and make choices, and seen in how economics describes the workings of governments and businesses to create prosperity.

i understand your point i just dont find it worth looking into, its boring thats all

Well, then it is good that there are people in the world who find it interesting!

whys that? it seems to me, that civilized sociaty only moves in one direction. forward/ so what is there needed to know about money? some people take it to the extreme and make pie graphs, and charts and s**t, like who cares. i guess if you were a caveman you would care otherwise no

economics defines worth so....i'd say it is worth looking into. boring, yes. but it's worth looking into. at least if you care about yourself and your future.


economics also defines the wars that are had.


take the iraq war and the pending iranian war. it's been argued that the war has been over oil (which is an economic reason to begin with)...but one thing that is interesting is that iraq was threatening to have their oil priced in euros instead of american dollars...which would show a lack of confidence in the american dollar and hurt our economy. iran is threatening to do the same thing and would have dire consequences thanks to the oil cost sky rocketing thanks to the war in iraq. so...we're taking the same course of action so far with iran as far as threats and false accusations that can't be proven (iran cannot prove that they are not making a nuclear weapon...it's impossible to prove a negative). and again, this goes back to pricing and using the euro or the dollar.


that's economics for you.


even moreso, the economics of ignoring the gold standard which has caused massive inflation and the inflation, in a way, represents a sort of invisible tax that everyone has to pay. so....if you're concerned about your money at all and having a decent place to stay and what wars are going on in the world.....check out on the economics.

if you really don't care about anything....quit letting us know you don't care about anything...the last thing anyone wants to hear from is a loudmouthed nihilist.


and, by the way, the caveman would have been the one to not care about economics. his society was much less complicated and exchanges were much more simple.

Not only that, but he looks like Santa! .
Being serious now ....
I don't like Marx because I'm a Communist. I like how during the time he and Engels wrote the Manifesto, his ideas were so different. It went completely against anything proposed before, and in a different direction. His theory of workers rising up against their oppressive employers was also very noble in my opinion. His ideas were so influental, that they resulted in the creation of the Soviet Union! Pretty impressive, I'd say.

Ah, no, my friend, I believe even the cavemen understood economics.

It’s been around, of course, since cavemen times. I mean, the little wily fellow with the big ideas, he chips the spear points. The courageous oaf spears the mammoth. And the artistic type does a lovely cave painting of it all.

And this leads inexorably to trade. One person makes one thing, another person makes another thing, and people being people, everybody wants everything. And that was Smith’s third insight, which was that all trades, when freely conducted, are mutually beneficial by definition. A person with this got that, which he wanted more from a person who wanted this more than that. Now, it may have been a stupid trade. Viewing a cave painting cannot possible be worth 300 pounds of mammoth ham. I mean, it may have been a lopsided trade. A starving cave artist gorges himself for months while a courageous oaf of a new art patron stands scratching his head a in a Paleolithic grotto, you know? And what about that wily spear point chipper? He doubtless took his mammoth cut, right?

But these participants in free trade, they didn’t ask us. It’s none of our business. Unless, of course, we make it our business by introducing trade regulation. And regulation can’t be effective unless there is coercion to enforce the regulation.

So, suddenly, instead of free trade, we have coercive trade. And let me define coercive trade. A coercive trade is where I get the spear points and the mammoth meat, and the cave painting, and the cave. And what you get in return is killed.

Coercion is very simply the lack of individual liberty. Coercion destroys the mutually beneficial nature of trade, which destroys the trading, which destroys the division of labor, which destroys progress.

And therein lies the problem with "economics" today. It isn't JUST about studying trade and markets. No, it has become entertwined with politics and politics is the science of how to rule. Economics exists between one person and his environment, in the choices the one person makes regarding what he eats, drinks, wears, creates, etc. Those kind of governing dynamics of trade, of human behavior (of human action, if you will) are what makes up economics. But when you mix in government and regulations and politics and all that other stuff, well, then, you've got yourself a very big mess indeed.

ii'm not sure i understood what your point was there....


are you implying that you want to go back to caveman times because economics today is corrupted by politics? if so, that is wholly untrue...the two (economics and politics) are one in the same.

No, I do not want to go back to caveman days, and no, economics and politics are not one and the same. They have been turned into the same thing, but they are two different systems. The assumption that economics is subservient to politics stems from a logical fallacy. Since the state (the machinery of politics) can and does control human behavior, and since men are always engaged in the making of a living, in which the laws of economics operate, it seems to follow that in controlling men the state can also bend these laws to its will.

Economics is not politics. One is a science, concerned with the immutable and constant laws of nature that determine the production and distribution of wealth; the other is the art of ruling. One is amoral, the other is moral. Economic laws are self-operating and carry their own sanctions, as do all natural laws, while politics deals with man-made and man-manipulated conventions. As a science, economics seeks understanding of invariable principles; politics is ephemeral, its subject matter being the day-to-day relations of associated men. Economics, like chemistry, has nothing to do with politics.

The intrusion of politics into the field of economics is simply an evidence of human ignorance or arrogance, and is as fatuous as an attempt to control the rise and fall of tides. Since the beginning of political institutions, there have been attempts to fix wages, control prices, and create capital, all resulting in failure. Such undertakings must fail because the only competence of politics is in compelling men to do what they do not want to do or to refrain from doing what they are inclined to do, and the laws of economics do not come within that scope. They are impervious to coercion. Wages and prices and capital accumulations have laws of their own, laws which are beyond the purview of the policeman.