Reddit mentions: The best business ethics books

Reading through your replies here, OP, I get the feeling that you're not really open to having your views on the subject changed at all. You're hammering a lot on the point that, sure, journalists might disproportionately vote for and donate to the Democrats, but that doesn't necessarily mean that their beliefs are detectable in their work. I get the uncomfortable feeling that you would not dismiss this behavior so lightly if journalists disproportionately voted for or donated to the Republicans.

But that's not really an argument. If you're looking for statistical studies proving bias, those are going to be very difficult to find, for the simple reason that "bias" isn't something that anyone can really quantify. That's one of the reasons that people tend to use data that's more easily measurable, i.e. the voting and donation records referenced above. For example, Federal Election Commission records from the 2008 election cycle show that, of the 255 journalists who donated to political campaigns, 91% of them did so for the Democrats. That's a little tough to ignore in any discussion of potential bias.

"But so what?" you might reasonably ask. "Just because someone's giving money to the Democrats doesn't mean they won't give the Republicans a fair hearing. Most people are honest and trying to do a good job."

Right. Most people are honest and trying to do a good job, which is one of the reasons why (as Tom Rosenstiel once wrote -- see below for why this guy is important) it's very difficult to get them to acknowledge they might be part of the problem. I would argue that nobody consciously sets out to provide biased coverage to the public, but when we talk about "bias," we're usually talking about things a lot more insidious and subtle than telling all of your readers to go vote for the guy you like.

I'll be blunt. I don't really think I'm going to change your mind here, but here are two things that I think are worth considering:

Here's something that I think will make a lot of sense to Redditors given the site's commentary over the 2012 election cycle. Michele Bachmann is a name I assume you know. If you don't, she's a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Minnesota. Most of Reddit, which appears to get the majority of its news off /r/politics and /r/worldnews, believes (not entirely without reason) that she is batshit crazy and a menace to society. Most of Reddit is also entirely unfamiliar with Bachmann's tenure in the House and could not recognize nuance if it had two hands, a telescope, and a guide dog:

• Yes, Bachmann is pro-life and voted against the DREAM Act and doesn't believe in global warming and thinks schools should have the right to teach creationism alongside evolution. Boo.
  
• At the same time, she also voted against raising Pell grant limits for students because she thought the federal student loan system in the States is irreparably broken and should be run as a nonprofit venture (and she has a point), and voted against the Wall Street bailout because she saw it as handing billions of dollars to an incredibly irresponsible industry (and she has a point there too).
  
  Yay for nuance. So Bachmann has, at various points, been on or off Reddit's "side" with respect to issues, like just about every single member of Congress, but /r/politics generally only knows about the times when she isn't.
  
  (Trust me, this will become important in a moment.)
  
  Anyway, Bachmann ran a brief campaign for president during the 2012 election cycle and, like other Republicans, campaigned for votes in Iowa during the Republican primaries. Let's go back to August 2011 and examine the Ames Straw Poll. This isn't the actual primary, but the straw poll's still a useful glimpse at what voters think about the candidates. In the run-up to the straw poll, Bachmann got an absolutely insane amount of coverage in comparison to the other candidates, one of whom was Reddit's perennial favorite, Ron Paul.
  
  The interesting thing about this is that Bachmann and Paul are as different from each other as you can get while still technically being within the Republican party. While there are a few issues on which they share beliefs, they would take the country in very different directions were they ever elected. Ron Paul fans on Reddit were upset because Bachmann was getting all the coverage out of Iowa, and they felt like Paul was being overlooked. They were actually kinda right about that. Again, this is very difficult to quantify, but if you go back through summer 2011 news coverage concerning the Republican candidates, it will be instantly obvious that Bachmann dominated coverage before the Iowa primaries. She got the lion's share of national media attention, interviews, and editorials, with people alternately supporting her or wringing their hands over her status as a Republican figurehead because she's cray-cray.
  
  But then the Iowa Republicans conducted their first straw poll, and these were the results:
  
  
• Michele Bachmann: 4,823 votes, or 28.6%
  
• Ron Paul: 4,671 votes, or 27.7%
  
• Tim Pawlenty: 2,293 votes, or 13.6%
  
• Rick Santorum: 1,657 votes, or 9.8%
  
  And so on and so forth -- I don't think it's necessary to list them all.
  
  The most important part is that there wasn't really a statistically significant difference between Paul and Bachmann; Paul trailed her by a mere 152 votes, but Bachmann continued to dominate media coverage. In other words, Bachmann and Paul had equal levels of support from Republican voters in Iowa, but you would never know it from U.S. media coverage.
  
  So what gives? If Republican politicians with such hugely different views could be within ~150 votes of each other on the first significant poll of the election cycle, why was one of them getting so much more publicity than the other? For that matter, why was Bachmann being paraded as a Republican figurehead by the media when she had won only a slim plurality of the votes and not a majority?
  
  Was Bachmann really representative of American Republicans? Or was the media narrative of her as a Republican figurehead simply wrong? Does a Democrat-dominated media -- or at the very least, a media that is friendlier to the Democrats than the Republicans -- see Bachmann's views as the more easily sensationalized and exploited than Paul's?
  
  And here's our next example, in which I'm gonna point to someone else's words because he's someone we should really be listening to on the subject of media bias. Bill Dedman at MSNBC wrote an excellent article, "Journalists dole out cash to politicians (quietly)" examining this very subject. In that article, he quotes a writer and editor named Tom Rosenstiel. You may not recognize Rosenstiel's name right off the bat, but the guy literally wrote the book on modern journalistic ethics and the relationship between democracies and the "fourth estate." He is probably the single most read and quoted person in the world on the subject of journalistic ethics and the media's role in democracy and culture.
  
  Rather than quote everything he said in that article, here's a snippet: But giving money to a candidate or party, he said, goes a big step beyond voting. "If you give money to a candidate, you are then rooting for that candidate. You've made an investment in that candidate. It can make it more difficult for someone to tell the news without fear or favor.
  

A few books on personal relations don't hurt either. My younger self needed to stand up for herself more, and in better ways.

Edit: Several people are asking for recommendations. These are some I have found extremely helpful:

I have a few I really recommend:

Thanks for the Feedback is one of the best I have read that incorporates info I have heard from other books all in one place with practical examples. If I could give a copy of this book to every person on earth I would. (The same people wrote a book called Difficult Conversations, but I have yet to read that.)

Edit to add Consious Business. This is the one I meant to add as the second recommendation; it is mostly about working with others in business but really applies to working with anyone in all relationships.

Emotional Intelligence is another I recommend, giving guidance on how to understand emotions. (Read this, then go re-watch Inside Out.)

10% Happier is an exploration into meditation as a non-spiritual thing. See Dan's video.

59 Seconds is about little things we can do to make our lives better (all science study based).

And Stumbling on Happiness is about understanding our own motivations better (also research study based).

Some of these books are clearly about "self help" but understanding ourselves is a key to understanding our interactions with others. And I try to only recommend books that are based in science and research.

I also like Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, Incognito by David Eagleman, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, How Children Succeed by Paul Tough, The Hidden Brain by Shankar Vedantam, Nudge by Richard Thaler, and Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahnerman. Oh, and anything by Malcom Gladwell; I may not always agree with him, but he is thought provoking and well researched. (I have an Audible account and have found that a good way to get through books while doing other things like exercise, long car trips, or cleaning the house.)

More Adds; Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz, Nurture Shock by Po Bronson, My Age of Anxiety by Scott Stossel, Far From The Tree by Andrew Solomon, The Charisma Myth by Olivia Cabane, How We Learn by Benedict Carey, and I generally like anything by the Freakanomics guys.

Edit: And thank you kind stranger for the gold!

If anyone would like to make recommendations to me based on the above list, please do so! I always have a growing reading queue :-)

Yes... but it's complicated; to answer this would require a few pages. I recommend Steven Brill's "America's Bitter Pill". Or you can read over the Time article that lead to the book here. He does an excellent job laying out how hospitals are getting obscenely rich and how we got here. I strongly recommend the book.


Marcia Angell, former editor for New England Journal of Medicine, covers the pharma end well in "The Truth About Drug Companies".

She outlines the peverse incentives out there for pharma companies. Say you have a drug that is about to lose it's patent protection (meaning generics cannot be sold), why not get a 6 month extension granted for it by testing the drug on children? Maybe kids need Viagra right? How about a 6-month extension for pediatric oxycontin?
Maybe you've used up the pediatric patent exclusivity extensions. Why not simply take an existing drug and create a market? Sarafem is great for PMS, nevermind it cost 10x more than generic fluoxetine (Prozac) and that the only ingredient in it is fluoxetine.
I mean why spend hundreds of millions of $ on actual new drug research when you can simply make a time release version of an ancient drug? Focalin (methylphenidate ER) saved people from the horrors of having to take Ritalin (methylphenidate) twice a day and Daytrana (methylphenidate transdermal patch) saved people from the horrors of having to swallow a pill once a day. Oxycontin was marketed as a less addictive alternative to Oxycodone IR/Percocet. All Purdue Pharma did was take an old existing drug, oxycodone, and give it a time release. That way instead of patients having to take 15mg every 6 hours, they could take 30mg of Oxycontin every 12. Truly a miracle right?

Anyway I've already said more than I intended and am not writing in a appropriate tone for this sub, so I'll stop myself now. I strongly recommend the books linked above.

I would recommend one of three books to persuade your friend (you can read more about them to choose what you think may be the best). Hope you find a decent gift among the list:

• Democracy, The God that Failed, by Hoppe is an excellent read that shows how the state always slides into failure. Primarily a western critique, it can apply to Marxism easily as a whole. More historical, rather than an ethical critique, however.
  
  
• The Ethics of Liberty, again by Hoppe demonstrates how free associate is the most ethical way to organize society, even if Marxism could work.
  
  
• Mixing it up a little, For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, this time by Rothbard explains an Anarcho-Capitalist's perspective on ethics. While it does not explicitly show the downfalls of collectivism, it would be good for her to help understand our view of society.

I wouldn't recommend MES(man, economy, and state) for starter reading material. MES is an economic treatise, not a libertarian political theory book. Rothbard was a crazy good economist. Think of MES as just economics. In fact, I would recommend for pure ancap theory,

For a New Liberty by Murray Rothbard. Here is the Mises Institute link https://store.mises.org/Pocketbook--P301.aspx
This book describes everything about libertarianism(anarchocapitalism), how it is more efficient, more ethical/moral and the strategy for liberty.

Ethics of Liberty by Murray Rothbard. Here is the amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Liberty-Murray-N-Rothbard/dp/0814775594
this book uses aprioris to deductively examine a libertarian legal code. I would recommend this to Friedman's machinery of freedom(which is more utilitarian than based on natural rights)



Also, Hans-Hermann Hoppe has an Anarchocapitalist bibliography, it is on Lewrockwell.com, a paleo-libertarian website(also ancap).
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2001/12/hans-hermann-hoppe/anarcho-capitalism-2/

In that bibliography Hans gives a bunch of libertarian journal articles too, if you want to print them.

I wouldn't recommend reading David Friedman or Caplan, you should read Rothbard, Hoppe, and Walter Block has great books, one is Defending the Undefendable, Hoppe has a wonderful book, Democracy the God that Failed.

Hopefully that helps :)

Missing:

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds:
http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Popular-Delusions-Madness-Crowds/dp/051788433X

"Amazon.com
Why do otherwise intelligent individuals form seething masses of idiocy when they engage in collective action? Why do financially sensible people jump lemming-like into hare-brained speculative frenzies--only to jump broker-like out of windows when their fantasies dissolve? We may think that the Great Crash of 1929, junk bonds of the '80s, and over-valued high-tech stocks of the '90s are peculiarly 20th century aberrations, but Mackay's classic--first published in 1841--shows that the madness and confusion of crowds knows no limits, and has no temporal bounds. These are extraordinarily illuminating,and, unfortunately, entertaining tales of chicanery, greed and naivete. Essential reading for any student of human nature or the transmission of ideas.

In fact, cases such as Tulipomania in 1624--when Tulip bulbs traded at a higher price than gold--suggest the existence of what I would dub "Mackay's Law of Mass Action:" when it comes to the effect of social behavior on the intelligence of individuals, 1+1 is often less than 2, and sometimes considerably less than 0. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. "

Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else
http://www.amazon.com/Perfectly-Legal-Campaign-Benefit-Everybody/dp/1591840198

Amazon.com
Most Americans would agree that they are duty bound as beneficiaries of our democracy to pay taxes, and the majority of us do pay—-exorbitantly. But what about those who do not pay their fair share? David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, here reveals how fairness and equity have eroded from the American tax system. Johnston describes in shocking detail the loopholes our government provides the "super rich"--from private individuals to profitable corporations—-to hide their wealth, to defer or evade tax payments, and to pass the bill to law-abiding middle-class Americans. The loss in revenue "imposes a severe cost on honest taxpayers" through reduced services, increased federal debt, and a weight on the middle class that threatens to impede its ability to achieve upward social mobility.

Admitting the extreme complexity of our economy and by extension our tax code, Johnston points out that the very wealthy do, of course, pay taxes. However, because of shelters that allow them to understate most of their income, they pay little more on average than most Americans on the dollar. This is regressive, and unquestionably favors the superrich. Johnston includes examples of outrageous corporate malfeasance (such as companies that establish off-shore tax addresses) and exposes the tax benefits of the particularly loathsome practice made famous by Jack Welch, in which thousands of wage earners are laid off while a handful of executives are granted hundreds of millions of dollars through deferred compensation, company stock options, and lucrative retirement packages, all at stock holders' xpense. In addition to these offenses, he describes the tax evasion methods of those who simply defy the law and are emboldened by a beleaguered IRS that is too underfunded to serve as an effective deterrent to tax cheats. Johnston calls for a complete overhaul of the system. But because those who most benefit from these laws comprise the "donor class" that supports the government power structure, our prospects for reform remain very bleak. --Silvana Tropea

Last year Ackman publicly announced that he had unwound his short position in favor of taking on equal short exposure through put options (constructed and priced OTC of course) exactly to avoid getting squeezed out. Not sure if he is closing out part of the position early, or what the expiry structure of the contracts was/is.

Not that he doesn't want to turn a profit on this trade and be proven right for all the world to heap praise on him for making money and vanquishing a terrible fraud of a company that preys on gullible dreamers in the lower class, but he has said publicly that the profits on his HLF will go to charity (I assume that by this he means profits that would be attributable to him as a shareholder in his own funds, and that independent shareholders have no concrete agreement to charitable giving from any of the profits they earn with Pershing).

Lastly, I highly recommend David Einhorn's "Fooling Some of the People All of the Time" as it is a) very entertaining and interesting, and b) should expose some similarities to Ackman's current fight against HLF.

Deeply sorry for your loss. I received some advice as a young man about windfalls that I’ll share with you.

Forget about the money for a year. Open a separate bank account that you won’t see and live like it isn’t there. The lost income from investments for one year will be insignificant compared to the cost of a hurried misstep.

In a year with a clear head and a strong heart educate yourself about different investment philosophies and see which ones resonate with you. Investing is very personal and there isn’t one right answer.

There isn’t a right answer, but be wary of the salesmen. All the money / wealth managers are well compensated for their advice and there are many ways they hide their fees and take advantage of their clients (even fiduciaries). If you’re considering enlisting a professional, a robotic trader like https://www.wealthfront.com/ or https://intelligent.schwab.com/ will serve you just as well with lower fees. If you do decide to enlist an advisor to help formulate a financial plan for you, find a fee-based advisor who you can pay once every few years to update the plan.

Here are a few books that were helpful to me in developing my investment philosophy that allowed me to retire in my early thirties.

Bogleheads / Vanguard Index Funds
https://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Common-Sense-Investing/dp/1119404509

The Richest Man in Babylon (investing philosophy)
https://www.amazon.com/Richest-Man-Babylon-George-Clason/dp/1505339111

Dave Ramsey / Personal Finance
https://www.amazon.com/Total-Money-Makeover-Financial-Fitness/dp/159555078X

Tax-Free Wealth - Tom Wheelwright / How investments affect your taxes
https://www.amazon.com/Tax-Free-Wealth-Permanently-Lowering-Advisors/dp/1937832058

Where are the Customer’s Yachts
https://www.amazon.com/Where-Are-Customers-Yachts-Street/dp/0471770892

I started Skin in the Game the other day after reading a couple blog posts about it and, wow, I think Taleb is probably the most cutting intellectual alive today.

He seems to have no interest in being liked and it further seems like 30% of the time he's actively trying to make the reader dislike him. Which helps make me love him.

It feels like the world is completely awash in pandering assholes lately and it's refreshing to not feel like I'm being told what to think or how to feel in a world of article titles that end in "here's why it matters" like I need to be told what to think matters and why.

Some interesting stuff from the book:

>An honest person will never commit criminal acts, but a criminal will readily engage in legal acts.

.

>If you want to show that a person has more than, say $ 10 million, all you need is to show the $ 50 million in his brokerage account, not, in addition, list every piece of furniture in his house, including the $ 500 painting in his study and the silver spoons in the pantry. So I’ve discovered, with experience, that when you buy a thick book with tons of graphs and tables used to prove a point, you should be suspicious. It means something didn’t distill right! But for the general public and those untrained in statistics, such tables appear convincing— another way to substitute the true with the complicated.

.

>The market is like a large movie theater with a small door. And the best way to detect a sucker is to see if his focus is on the size of the theater rather than that of the door.

.

>my heuristic is that the more pagan, the more brilliant one’s mind, and the higher one’s ability to handle nuances and ambiguity. Purely monotheistic religions such as Protestant Christianity, Salafi Islam, or fundamentalist atheism accommodate literalist and mediocre minds that cannot handle ambiguity.

I listen to his shows all the time and overall I like him. He is pushing a very important conversation in a very public way.

His positions are similar or parallel with [Anarcho_Capitalism] (http://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/) or [volunteerism] (http://www.reddit.com/r/voluntarism/).

These lines of thought are the blistering center of libertarian thought. If you want to take a serious study of libertarianism this area must be explored.

These books are great and will change the way you look at the world forever. I consider these to be the Red pill. I know it sounds corny but I am serious.

• For a New Liberty
  
  • [Free PDF] (http://mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp)
    
    
  • [Physical Book] (http://www.amazon.com/For-New-Liberty-Murray-Rothbard/dp/1610162641/ref=sr_1_3? s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331654993&sr=1-3)
    
    
• The Ethics of Liberty
  
  • [Free PDF] (http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp)
    
    
  • [Physicall Book] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Ethics-Liberty-Murray-Rothbard/dp/0814775594/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331654832&sr=8-1-spell)
    
    Read Rothbard it took me down a deep rabbit hole. There is so much to read and learn and most of it is out there either free or affordable.
    
    It seems that Ron Paul has drawn a lot of his ideology from this line of thought. So If you are a RP fan it will give you better context.
    

If you're willing to devote some serious time, Man, Economy and State is the most complete explanation that exists of the economics behind ancap ideas. It's also like 1100 pages or something so it might be more of a commitment than you're willing to make just for opposition research.

If you want to get into the philosophy behind the ideas, The Ethics of Liberty is probably the best thing you'll find. It attempts to give a step-by-step logical "proof" of libertarian philosophy.

The Problem of Political Authority is also an excellent book that takes nearly universally accepted moral premises and uses them to come to ancap conclusions in a thoroughly logical manner. I'd say if you're actually at all open to having your mind changed, it's the one most likely to do it.

If you just want a brief taste, The Law is extremely short (you can read it in an hour or two) and contains many of the important fundamental ideas. It was written like 200 years ago so doesn't really qualify as ancap, but it has the advantage of being easily digestible and also being (and I can't stress this enough) beautifully written. It's an absolute joy to read. You can also easily find it online with a simple Google search.

I know you asked for one book and I gave you four, but the four serve different purposes so pick one according to what it is you're specifically looking for.

> Community property is OK in certain circumstances. Sometimes it can provide good services and a favorable return to the economy.

How does one measure this "return"?

> I'm saying if a market can handle it, it should.

What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets

You might change your views a bit after reading this book. Even George Will gave it a good review

Review:
"Michael J. Sandel, political philosopher and public intellectual, is a liberal, but not the annoying sort. His aim is not to boss people around but to bring them around to the pleasures of thinking clearly about large questions of social policy. Reading this lucid book is like taking his famous undergraduate course Justice without the tiresome parts, such as term papers and exams." George F. Will

If you move (relocate) more than 50 miles in the year: $5,000 tax credit.

You can in fact set up trusts, also the above mentioned dependent care and health savings plan accounts. Also if you have children 529 plans (which can be used for "anything in the benefit of the child")

From my own tax reductions: Do you know you can register as being a farm operator without actually owning a farm or any animals? Legally? And get a huge tax deduction with farm related tax subsidies? My wife trains horses and we managed to avoid around $30k in taxes because of things like this.

Honestly if you want a good into into how to avoid paying taxes (most of what is available to billionaires are also available to others, we just don't know about them), check out Perfectly Legal It's based on the author's original Pulitzer Prize winning articles on the U.S. Tax Code.

You may be interested in Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski's book, Markets Without Limits, short summary here. They argue that anything you may permissibly do for free, you may permissibly do for money. They also map the landscape of common objections:

>1. Exploitation: Buying and selling certain goods—such as sex—might take pernicious advantage of others’ misfortune.
>
>2. Misallocation: Buying and selling certain goods—such as “free” tickets to “Shakespeare in the Park”—might cause the goods to be distributed unfairly.
>
>3. Corruption: Buying and selling certain goods—such as violent video games or pornography—might cause us to have bad attitudes, beliefs, or character.
>
>4. Harm: Buying and selling certain goods—such as naming rights for children—might harm people.
>
>5. Semiotic: Buying and selling certain goods—such as kidneys—might express wrongful attitudes, or violate the meaning of the good in question, or might be incompatible with the intrinsic dignity of some activity, thing, or person.

Michael Sandel takes up some of these objections in What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets

Some thoughts about your particular situation:

You say "I hold the ticket and earn the right to do with it as I please because I paid for it." Of course, you have the legal right to do whatever you want with the ticket. But the question you're interested in is whether it's morally right to resell the ticket for profit, not whether you're legally entitled. A principle like by paying for something, I gain the moral right to use it however I please seems too strong--if I buy a knife, this doesn't give me a moral right to go around stabbing people. Perhaps by paying for things, we gain the moral right to use them however we please so long as we do not violate other constraints/rights. But then we're just back to asking whether there is some moral constraint that prohibits you from reselling the ticket for profit. So I don't think the fact that you paid for the ticket, by itself, can settle the issue.

On the other hand, why would we think that reselling the ticket for profit would violate a moral constraint? Your friend says that buying with the intent to resell is wrong. Maybe there's something to this (perhaps it treats the seller as a mere means?), but I'd like to see an argument better spelled out.

One final point: you might view your actions as providing a valuable service to the person who buys the ticket from you. They disvalue waiting in line more than you, but they value the ticket more than you. So it's hard to see how you're acting wrongly towards the buyer.

It is difficult to accept because I didn't see your reasoning - it is not as obvious as you think. Basically, you are claiming that a better tax regime structure will make the poor not poor and thus the exemptions would end. This would, of course, mean that the tax rate becomes more regressive again, because without exemptions those at the lower levels pay more of their income in taxes than the rich. And of course, this will help to further stratify society and keep the money where it's at. Now that I understand your reasoning it is even harder to accept.

Percentage of income taxed is THE measure. That's why we have progressive tax rates today. Taxing the wealthy at the same rate as the poor is simply unfair in addition to creating greater inequality in society. There has been general agreement since the 19th century that fair taxation is progressive taxation, which is why we have progressive tax rates around the world and no one has done anything as silly as a flat tax.

And the US has forced redistribution all the time: note how income has shifted upwards over the last 35 years while the tax burden shifts away from businesses and the rich and onto the middle class. This has been largely due to deliberate tax policy favoring the wealthy. Your proposal would be the greatest giveaway every to the super rich. For data, see the book "Perfectly Legal."

Would YOU like to explain how you think the rich are giving more than they are getting from the system? Really?

There's a great list of scams in this book: Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Enrich Themselves at Government Expense.

As for me, I've never really profited from selling municipal bonds to build a stadium for my sports team. I've never drawn CEO-level salaries from a company that gets handed free loans from the Fed. I've never used the legal system to put my competition out of business, nor have I ever destroyed the credit rating of corporations that don't keep their side of a contract. I don't really profit from the energy industry, so our national geopolitics and military intervention don't affect me. My neighborhood is not high on the local police priority list, because the police have to keep busy protecting rich people's property. I don't have the ear of our local zoning board, so property values decline in my neighborhood when "unseemly" (to some) groups get permits or housing.

And on, and on. I think you're just blowing smoke.

I do philosophy of science policy, and the best book I've found on that is Heather Douglas' Science Policy and the Value Free Ideal. I've heard some fairly hard core policy wonks say it's the only philosophy book they enjoyed reading. It goes over the history of the role of the science advisor in US, and talks about the role values play in science and science policy. It's a fantastic read!

Momentan citesc Growing Gourmet Medicinal Mushrooms. :)

Inainte de ea am terminat 12 Rules for Life.

Urmatoarea probabil o sa fie Skin in the game.


> Bonus: Cartea preferata.

Nu prea mai am o carte preferata. Sunt mai multe aflate la nivelul maxim din varii motive si nu prea pot alege intre ele.

"The Gift" a lui Hafiz si "Felicity" a lui Mary Oliver sunt doua carti de poezie care mi-au placut enorm si pe care le pot recomanda fara ezitare. :)

Excellent!! Thanks for that link. If you're interested in ethical journalism and the who, what, where, why and when of it, this is a really good book to own.

It's actually tame by the standards of this sub probably, but the book What Money Can't Buy by philosopher Michael Sandel really gave definition to my ideas about the commodification of every part of our life under capitalism, and how corporations and the derived values encroach upon what makes life worth living. Probably perfect for someone getting introduced to generally left thought and it's an easy read.

Some good resources are the Associated Press Stylebook, the Elements of Style, and The Elements of Journalism. The Elements of Journalism gives some good tips for journalists like objectivity and truth. Good luck in your studies.

Depends on what you want. But your probably mean for retirement.

In that case you probably want an IRA account. These accounts are specifically for retirement. You probably want to chose a Roth over a Traditional. The main difference is that you get taxed on a Roth immediately vs a Traditional when you get taxed on it when you take it out of the account (pretty sure, still a student).

Khan academy has Excellent videos on personal finance.

But if you just want to increase your financial skills in general. I think the best book for just everyday use for the everyday man would be The Richest Man in Babylon. Honestly, this book covers every man topic. You can get other books for more specifics, but this will help you on your way to financial literacy. Also, if you don't mind pdf books, then here is a free copy.

Just a few points:

1. they are "patentable", every innovative pharmaceutical or biotech product is.
   
2. oncology business is already pretty big, they don't want to destroy or shake too much this booming market. That's why development is pursued to treat and not to cure.
   
3. the majority of people expect to have magic pills for everything when actually everyone should be more or less capable to be their own doctor, meaning to have common sens when it comes to being healthy.
   
   You should read "the truth about drug companies"

Two of my perennial favorites, which I'll add to some of the terrific suggestions below:

• 'The Elements of Journalism' by Kovach and Rosenstiel. Great grounding in the essential principles of the practice. There's also a decade-old online supplement.
  
  
• 'The Influencing Machine,' a graphic non-novel by Brooke Gladstone, offering an easy-to-read overview of a lot of thinking about journalism and media, including a discussion of journalism's real biases.
  
  But besides those, much of the writing, especially on technology, gets old very quickly, so as other people have pointed out, books aren't always your best route. Get yourself into the social media conversation about journalism, where you'll find people like @romenesko and @jayrosen_nyu and many many other astute and intelligent commentators taking on the issues that are going to shape your career. But those two books are a solid foundation of the ideas underlying journalism.

Thank you for sharing your opinion and beliefs. Real freethinkers read EVERYTHING, including research papers and books. Some might call it challenging, I suppose, because I agree that there are no shortcuts. Have a nice day.

"It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine"

Dr. Marcia Angell, “Drug companies & doctors: a story of corruption," NY Review of Books, 56 #1, 15 Jan

https://www.amazon.com/The-Truth-About-Drug-Companies/dp/0375760946/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400820070&sr=8-1&keywords=drug+companies+corruption

Because the laws written both for and by those who have the most to gain.

Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and Cheat Everybody Else https://www.amazon.com/dp/1591840694/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_cDAzCb9F94ACF

Jason Brennan's Markets without Limits was an important moral theory about commodification and I think filled a huge gap.

Horwitz's Hayek's Modern Family is another one -although I couldn't find time to read it yet-

Private Governance by Edward Stringham is another contribution to the ancap institutional theory.

This year Jason Brennan will publish another book, Against Democracy, and it will probably be excellent, Jason Brennan is easly my top 5 libertarians alive.

Okay, I'll just ignore all other points for the sake of expediting this and focus on corporate money in politics.

Right now our government is owned by corporations. They pay for the elections and they pay for their own laws.

People that are suggesting redistributing wealth on a massive scale are idiots. Those who want money bad enough to work the system through sheer intellect deserve to be rich, it's what they wanted.

However, it is not deserved when they sacrifice their worker's benefits to put money in their own pockets. Quickly check out Ellen Shultz's book "Retirement Heist".

This is the world we live in, CEO's and corporations own our freedoms. They bend the laws to their will and are creating an income gap (income inequality) the likes of which the world has never seen. The earnings ratio of 14.5 to 1 in 2010 was an increase from the 13.6 to 1 ratio in 2008 and a significant rise from the historic low of 7.69 to 1 in 1968.

This gap has grown due to increasingly outright (yet unpunished) fraud in our countries banking system. Yes, it was legislation that weakened the requirements to purchase a home loan. But it was legislation that the banks bought.

Making sense yet?

A democracy is supposed to be for the people, by the people.

The Elements of Journalism is a good place to start. The best way to learn how to write it is to learn how to read it. Find sources you trust, you know to be quality, and figure out how they put a story together.

Two books that would be pretty good starting points (and a 3rd book for extra measure):

The first book you wanna pay special attention to Chapter 8 and Chapter 20, but read it ALL:

https://www.amazon.com/intelligent-investor-book-practical-counsel/dp/0060115912/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1557126552&sr=1-7

This one is more detialed

https://www.amazon.com/Security-Analysis-Foreword-Buffett-Editions/dp/0071592539/ref=pd_rhf_eeolp_s_pd_crcd__4/143-0942938-6072313?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0071592539&pd_rd_r=98601957-062a-4d2b-b4e5-10c14a0c824b&pd_rd_w=EmVty&pd_rd_wg=tAgWo&pf_rd_p=36c62ed8-9692-4b91-aa9a-c4b3b85cc759&pf_rd_r=XJ4NTWQMJ5KPRKTHCEZT&psc=1&refRID=XJ4NTWQMJ5KPRKTHCEZT

This third book isn't "reuired reading" but wouldn't be a bad idea to read---it teaches a healthy degree of cynicism about the things you read in financial reports and the things CEOs will tell you on TV---like CNBC etc

https://www.amazon.com/Fooling-People-Complete-Updated-Epilogue/dp/0470481544/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=david+einhorn&qid=1557126776&s=books&sr=1-2

GOOD LUCK!!!!!

Most current information you are going to want to read online. There is no substitute for that. The books I'm currently reading through are:

The Web Application Hacker's Handbook 2nd Ed

The Tangled Web

Metasploit: The Penetration Tester's Guide

Webbots, Spiders and Screen Scrapers

NoStarchPress fanboy all the way :)

Keep in mind, though, that the technical requirements are only half of being employable. You also need to be a good employee, who can work with the client and keep them satisfied. For those, I recommend:

True Professionalism

Trusted Advisor

I read a book called the truth about drug companies and I highly recommend it. Medicine for profit creates a world of designer maintenance drugs. Why cure something when it's more profitable to create life long dependence! Plus, we can repackage the same drugs over and over as "New" and hike up the price. We've "improved" the formula by changing it just enough to legally call it new without actually improving anything.

More money is made by keeping people sick as opposed to actually helping them. It's counter intuitive to what we think medicine should be.

Get ready to pounce and downvote me but yes, this is how I feel, especially after reading this book. The fact is, many (not all) of the drug companies, especially the big ones, spend more on their legal teams and their marketing/sales than they do on R and D.

Legislation passed since the 80's has made it a priority for big pharma to spend more time and money maintaining patents than actually developing new drugs. Also, I have many friends who work in big pharma, a number of whom have told me to my face that they would NEVER use the drugs sold by their own companies.

I wish there were more of a collaborative open/source type environment with drug manufacturing. But there isn't and there's way too much money involved. Big pharma and Washington are bedmates and fuck the rest of us.

For the record, the above book was written by a doctor not Jenny McCarthy.

[Fooling Some of the People All the Time] (http://www.amazon.com/Fooling-People-Complete-Updated-Epilogue/dp/0470481544) is a really good book on short selling.


[Quantitative Value] (http://www.amazon.com/Quantitative-Value-Web-Site-Practitioners/dp/1118328078) is a really good book as well.


If you can afford it, [Margin of Safety] (http://www.amazon.com/Margin-Safety-Risk-Averse-Strategies-Thoughtful/dp/0887305105/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415645406&sr=1-1&keywords=margin+of+safety) is the holy grail of value investors.

"Now"... ? "New data"?

Got some news for you from 2005:

Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and Cheat Everybody Else

https://www.amazon.com/Perfectly-Legal-Campaign-Rich-verybody/dp/1591840694

Check out couple of books, once called "Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis, the Expropriation of Health" and another that takes broadens it to other professions and services called "Careless Society: Community And Its Counterfeits".

And realize that in our modern "service" economy, the ever-increasing number of "professionals" in the various "helping professions" have an inherent NEED for an ever-increasing number of clients (i.e. expanded markets) and an ever-increasing number of "conditions" (i.e. products/services) which then have to be "consumed" by someone... all to the goal of increasing the GDP (and their own personal "slice" of it).

Ergo, whenever their is an increased supply of money to PAY for such things (and professionals are always pushing the envelope to make certain the "new" thing is covered by insurance/disability etc) -- end result is that there becomes and increased demand (even if they have to fill the pages of Reader's Digest and the airwaves of TV with commercials to create the demand -- you know, all of the "awareness" campaigns).

What is pretty slick is that advertising money is 100% tax deductible expense.

And what is even slicker is when you can create a grassroots "interest group" as a non-profit organization (initially funded by industry, but then later by the clients themselves and/or by government under pressure from the client interest group) that does your advertising and promotion and advocacy for you!

> He's what you get what you forget that tv isn't real life.

Damn this is astute. Isn't it funny that it's practically a requirement to be a celebrity to run for President now? Now we're going to have an Oprah Presidency? I want off Mr. Bones Wild Ride.

> You don't just throw away your shoes because they got holes in them if you can't afford new ones.

This is exactly the feeling I had as I watched the party throw itself under the Trump bus.

> It's the ' trickle down' mentality all over again

Wow. This is an outstanding analysis. Seriously Trump just copied the Reagan thing. Liberals are suckers for bleeding heart types promising handouts that never come and Republicans are suckers for strong guy business masterminds that never actually bring the jobs. The american public has GOT to stop falling for the media propaganda and clearly manufactured 'tropes' (I think with the alt media though we are on are way; traditional media is collapsing.) I have a feeling though this is a LOT bigger then Trump; I think the corporate interest hand and hand with wealthy foreign players have almost the entire GOP by the BALLS.

We are in this weird political age were the only reason people are getting into politics is for all the side profit (dirty money, crony capitalism, book deals, bribes, sweet retirement jobs lobbying or broadcasting etc.)

> the only thing you're going to feel trickling down is billionaires pissing on you as they have been for decades.

This is why I've become a strict libertarian. I think poor government laws and welfare fuck up economics but I also think crony capitalism and regulatory capture fucks up enterprise capitalism. You can't fucking run a hotdog stand in this country without 2 layers a year of permit application and a 100k of startup and knowing one of the legislators.

I think David Cay Johnston has also been writing about this economic stuff as well.

https://www.amazon.com/Free-Lunch-Wealthiest-Themselves-Government/dp/1591842484/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Fred Kofman also has a great book
https://www.amazon.com/Conscious-Business-Build-through-Values/dp/1622032020

and has some great videos denouncing the 'victim' mindset https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXdN5kMioRQ

This is a common myth, often used to support their refusal to disclose their actual spending ratios and extortionate profits. Most medicines are researched through publicly funded universities (via NIH grants and other taxpayer supported institutions), and then licensed to Pharma companies.

A large amount of industry spending on drug "development" these days is actually me-too drugs and off-label usage for existing drugs.

Dr. Marica Angell's book is older now, but still a very good resource for understanding a lot of the stuff Pharma does.

For convenience, here is the book list from Professor Casey, with links:

The Ethics of Liberty by Murray Rothbard (full text)

The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman (full text)

Anarchy and the Law by Edward Stringham (full text: http://anarcho-capitalist.org/wp-content/pdfs/Stringham%20(Edward%20P.)%20-%20Anarchy%20and%20the%20Law.pdf)

Radicals for Capitalism by Brian Doherty

Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy

The Message in the Bottle by Walker Percy

1. Buy this and this
   
   
2. If you want to be a particular kind of journalist, read up on that area of knowledge (politics, technology, health, sports, etc)
   
   
3. Remember that the news is just information of stuff you didn't know yesterday, but want to know about today. It is out of the ordinary and expected (dog bites man vs. man bites dog).
   
   
4. Always try to be as fair as possible, represent all points of view, not just those of people in power or influence. Give a voice to the voiceless. Avoid using language that assumes things, like "President Obama thinks that blah blah blah." You can't really read his mind, so you should only report what he says like, "President Obama says that he believes blah blah blah..." Also, use "The event is open to the public" not "The public is invited to the event" because you don't know if the people holding the event really want everyone to come or not.
   
   
5. Unlike other writing that you do in school, where you have a beginning, middle, and end with a summary, in journalism you really want to get your most important information in at first and work your way to less important details.
   
   
6. Due to media convergence, there is less of a separation between "print" journalists and "broadcast" journalist. More and more the people who go to write the stories are expected to be able to photograph the occasion, shoot some short video, and post the results on the web.
   
   
7. Journalism is a dying profession.

Aggression for self-defense is acceptable whenever someone fears their life or safety is in danger. Someone pulling a gun on you certainly fits that bill. If a man draws down on you you can only assume that he intends to harm you physically and you are perfectly within your rights to respond appropriately. Verbal threats are much of an excuse for attacking someone. Now, verbal threats such as "I'm going to kill you" and menacing movements towards you are entirely different. It just depends on the context of the situation.

As for homesteading you'll see different opinions on this, but my take on it is whenever you've put the land to some use. I don't think clearing a bunch of rocks is enough to justify ownership of it, but it does show intent to occupy. Now, say you were to build a house and till up a section of land for planting crops I could safely say that what you have appropriated is justly yours (provided no one else holds a legitimate claim to said property).

If you want to get more information on these topics I'd suggest reading [The Ethics of Liberty] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Ethics-Liberty-Murray-Rothbard/dp/0814775594/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369188520&sr=8-1&keywords=the+ethics+of+liberty) and [For a New Liberty] (http://www.amazon.com/For-New-Liberty-Murray-Rothbard/dp/1610162641/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1369188520&sr=8-2&keywords=the+ethics+of+liberty) by Murray Rothbard. Those are great starting points and should keep you busy for a little while. You can also find these two books for free on Mises.org [here] (http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp) and [here.] (http://mises.org/document/1010/For-a-New-Liberty-The-Libertarian-Manifesto)

Oliver Williamson has done a lot of work on factors to predict firm size, ownership type, and firm structure. I've read two of his books, Economic Institutions and Mechanisms of Governance, but none of his articles. I'd definitely recommend the Institutions book, the Mechanisms not as much. If you don't want to buy a book, he has a lot on google scholar. Henry Hansmann wrote another classic on the topic, and wikipedia has a summary.

Yep, pensions were used to bring in and pay for the C-level people who quit after a year anyhow and take a huge chunk from that pool as their severance bonus which is why for the most part that they don't exist anymore.

Retirement Heist

You reap what you sow.

private arbitration and private courts would most likely adopt a libertarian legal code. Rothbard wrote a book on it call "Ethics of Liberty". Here is the amazon link. https://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Liberty-Murray-N-Rothbard/dp/0814775594

It is essentially Non aggression enforcement and retributive justice.

Start here: https://www.amazon.com/Industrial-Organization-Applications-Oz-Shy/dp/0262691795

Then read: https://www.amazon.com/Theory-Industrial-Organization-MIT-Press/dp/0262200716

Then fill it with these: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/08/fall-2017-ph-d-industrial-organization-reading-list.html.

And if you're feeling frisky: https://www.amazon.com/Economic-Institutions-Capitalism-Oliver-Williamson/dp/068486374X.

Williamson might be the best intermediate step if you want something between Chase and Shy. Let me know if you want something more. My research is IO heavy.

You both should read these awesome books:

Anatomy of the state

The Law

What government has done with our money

and finally:

The ethics of liberty

Two pieces that I was reminded of just today might be tangentially useful to you. Heather Douglas is a relatively big name in philosophy of science, part of whose general attitude to the practice of good science is that it cannot reduce to a naive concept of "objectivity". She also argues that at least sometimes good science is not just informed by notions that are naively taken to be the core of "rationality" (as you put it, that's not my words or hers so your mileage may vary), such as e.g. well-designed experiment, plausible inferences, the repudiation of cognitive bias etc.

Failing to consider values which are generally held to be outside the scope of science, and failing to critically examine whether concepts putatively at the core of scientific practice are well-explained or even coherent, could lead you to an overdose of rationality.

http://individual.utoronto.ca/michael_miller/courses/sv_f17/documents/douglas_2000.pdf

https://www.jstor.org/stable/20118400

She also has a book on roughly this idea, as it applies to govt. policy

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Science-Policy-Value-Free-Heather-Douglas/dp/0822960265

edit:

You might also be interested in:

William James, "The Will to Believe"

Re-reading Hume on this subject more fully in the 1st Enquiry

Hugh MacDiarmid, who touches on this in "The Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle" (poetry)

Thomas Carlyle, who satirises an overdose of rationality in "Sartor Resartus" (novel)

And most close to my heart, Laurence Sterne in "Tristram Shandy" (sort of a novel, contains extended ridicule of the rationalistic worldview)

Oh, and also Flann O'Brien, especially in "The Dalkey Archive" (also a novel)

I think you need to specify whether or not you want academic oriented work or something that is more entertainment oriented. For the latter, any Michael Lewis Books (The Big Short, etc.) or David Einhorn's Book (Fooling Some of the People All of the Time) would be good.

There are drawbacks to everything but it isn't a problem. I addressed the "our population is too wealthy and we don't produce enough" bit in my comment

perfectly legal isn't part of his name mate

Great book for anyone interested in this or how other corporations benefit from our tax dollars

this might help: "How to Pick a Career (That Actually Fits You)" https://waitbutwhy.com/2018/04/picking-career.html

also, many years ago i read True Professionalism written by a harvard prof: https://www.amazon.com/True-Professionalism-Courage-People-Clients/dp/0684840049

it was useful to me when thinking about the type of career i wanted

Profit incentive is not a panacea and it's introduction into all aspects of life can be corrosive to society. If you get the time, What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets is an insightful read.

Sounds like you need to learn about Rockefeller Medicine...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6J_7PvWoMw

Then read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Drug-Companies-Deceive/dp/0375760946

Thanks.

tl;dr Drugs are so expensive because everyone along the way gouges the process as much as possible. If anyone is more interested about this process they should read the truth about drug companies by Dr. Marcia Angell

There is a great book I read a while ago that hits on this a little. What I always recall from this book was that there are just some things we need to approach with ethics, and morality (as generalized as possible) rather than political philosophies.

https://www.amazon.com/What-Money-Cant-Buy-Markets/dp/0374533652

>Saying “sponsored science” and big pharma are skewing all the facts is a conspiracy theory like the originating tweet.

Nah. More like the sober reality of an informed person.

>“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.”

https://ethicalnag.org/2009/11/09/nejm-editor/

Care to address the downfall of medical science?

Is evidence based medicine icon Peter Gotzsche making it all up?

>The "evidence tells us that it is likely that the DTP vaccine increases total mortality in low-income countries."

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dtp-vaccine-associated-with-increased-rate-of-total-mortality-in-low-income-countries-says-peter-gotzsche-in-new-expert-report-300902971.html

https://www.amazon.com/Deadly-Medicines-Organised-Crime-Healthcare/dp/1846198844

https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Drug-Companies-Deceive/dp/0375760946

but the science is settled, right?

Well, I read Perfectly Legal by David Cay Johnson, and he gives some pretty good examples of the 1% not paying the correct amount of taxes. That book made me angrier than anything I'd ever read.

Good read here Amazon sells it! https://www.amazon.com/Free-Lunch-Wealthiest-Themselves-Government/dp/1591842484

That knowledge would chalk up to being an enrolled agent, not an intrepid reader. Other than Perfectly Legal, I would hope I don't look up tax laws in my leisure time.

There is really no justification to provide a mortgage deduction on a second home, though. It would be an interesting exercise to track vacation home ownership of the middle class over the years, though. I would bet it's decreased substantially. I could be wrong, but it would be interesting to see..

The Richest Man in Babylon - George Clason

The richest man in Babylon by George Clason

I often think about this passage from Ivan Illich's Medical Nemesis:

>Most of man's ailments consist of illnesses that are acute and benign— either self- limiting or subject to control through a few dozen routine interventions. For a wide range of conditions, those who are treated least probably make the best progress.

>"For the sick," Hippocrates said, "the least is best." More often than not, the best a learned and conscientious physician can do is convince his patient that he can live with his impairment, reassure him of an eventual recovery or of the availability of morphine at the time when he will need it, do for him what grandmother could have done, and otherwise defer to nature.

>The new tricks that have frequent application are so simple that the last generation of grandmothers would have learned them long ago had they not been browbeaten into incompetency by medical mystification.[...]For acute sickness, treatment so complex that it requires a specialist is often ineffective and much more often inaccessible or simply too late.

Bring back medical metis!

I cannot express enough my gratitude to you for typing out this reply. This has been eating away at me, and my search will continue.. a book was reccomended to me,

http://www.amazon.com/Perfectly-Legal-Campaign-Benefit-Everybody/dp/1591840198

Although I am currently unable to purchase it.

I follow them for the lolz. hahahaha

Hmm reading material ya? biasanya bible-nya day trader kalo ga ini ya ini. Tapi pendekatan investasi gue agak beda, karena gue domisili di Eropa. Gue invest di ETF karena gue taro buat dana pensiun. Nah kalo tertarik sama index investing monggo ngikut cult-nya John Bogle disini dan websitenya disini. Karena gue pake ETF di Eropa, pelajaran pertama gue dapat dari sini. Entah seberapa relevan sih buat kasus indonesia.

> Do you have a source for your first claim?

Yes: Me. Other than me, this book covers a lot of it: http://www.amazon.com/The-Truth-About-Drug-Companies/dp/0375760946/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368808202&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Truth+About+the+Drug+Companies

I'm not saying pharma companies don't do any research, I'm saying that the majority of the research done leading to basically all pharma developments is done by people other than pharma companies.

This book would be of interest to you, I think.

doctors with years of training

>
>
>No wonder 3 former editors-in-chiefs of the New England Journal of Medicine (widely considered the premier medical journal) from the 90's and 2000's eventually left the journal and came out with books such as these.
>
>" It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine." - Marcia Angell, former editior in chief of NEJM
>
>📷
>
>Picture of the 3 books http://1boringoldman.com/images/angell.gif
>
>The Truth about Drug Companies: How they deceive us and what to do about it by Dr Marcia Angell
>
>On the Take: How medicine's complicity with Big Business can Endanger your Health by Dr. Jerome Kassirer,
>
>A Second Opinion: REscuing America’s Healthcare by Dr. Arnold Relman

I would recommend reading Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers.

Here are some additional links about the book. Forbes, NPR, and The Daily Show.

The basic idea is corporations have taken and trimmed the workers' pension funds. They do this with clever accounting, loopholes, etc. Watch the Daily Show interview. Ellen Schultz explains corporations are allowed to sell pension plans when they sell business units, they are allowed to pull funds from the pension plans to pay for golden parachutes, they take out life insurance policies on their workers, and all kinds of activities that are ethically questionable. Pensions are essentially empty nowadays, but a decade ago they had a surplus. I'm surprised this isn't more widely known.

I'm reading a good book called Perfectly Legal about this. It talks in detail about how perks like corporate jets are highly under-taxed, and how executives can defer taxes on their pay seemingly indefinitely.

I highly recommend this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Perfectly-Legal-Campaign-Benefit-Everybody/dp/1591840198

The first thing we need to do is parse through different categories of rights. There are negative rights, which means non-interference or an inability to impede action, and there are positive rights, where the state can compel action and is provided for you by someone else. So, for instance, Freedom of speech is a negative right, the right to an attorney and a trial are positive rights. Healthcare couldn't be considered a negative right, but it could be considered a positive one if you so wish.

However, healthcare doesn't even have to be framed in terms of rights, and I think the need and reliance for every political issue and policy to be framed in that way tends to make every argument a theoretical one and not one of actual governance. As /u/buffalo_pete mentions, it's a service and we can easily consider it as being one that a civil, developed country that can afford it without any real negative impact ought to provide for its citizens as part of the 'contract' (and I use that term sparingly and metaphorically) in its primary role of protecting its citizens. Welfare isn't a right, it's a communal decision that society has made which says that it's not okay for a society to let their citizens starve to death and die. Law enforcement isn't a right, but it's a service provided by the government which is vital and necessary to a functioning society. Healthcare could be more adequately argued in those terms rather than trying to convince people that it's an inalienable right.

Basically, any kind of universal healthcare ought to be seen as merely a piece of legislation and governance and argued on those terms instead of entering the theoretical quagmire of arguing over if it's a right or not. Is it effective in what it sets out to do? Does it raise the level of care for the populace? Is it cost effective? Are there possible alternatives that would be better? Etc. That's what the legislative branch of the government is there for, to argue over the merits of particular policies, not to decide for themselves what are rights and what aren't, and whether the legislation infringes on them. Those are questions for the courts to decide after legislation has been passed.

>It just seems like to me anyways that we as a nation have decided capitalism is a lifestyle choose rather than a economic model.

You might be interested in reading political philosopher Michael Sandel's book What Money Can't Buy: the Moral Limits of Markets where he argues that we're turning into a market society as opposed to a market economy.

For those interested in this kind of thing, I think David Einhorn's book is excellent.

It tells a story of when Einhorn realized a company was more-or-less fraudulent, and his fight against the SEC and the company to release the truth. He had the incentive for this fight because of his short position. Einhorn was ultimately proven correct, and the company collapsed. The book is equally interesting, informative and infuriating.

https://www.amazon.com/Fooling-People-Complete-Updated-Epilogue/dp/0470481544

Major drug companies don't even produce drugs. They get what colleges discover which isn't very often. Or they tweak something that the patent has run out on and call it new to keep the profits rolling in. So I suspect they don't want to actually have to compete in a market that they haven't got complete control over. That market is too competitive by nature.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0375760946?cache=d10a4131915aa7f899b2e3e4059cb3c2&pi=SY200_QL40&qid=1413214004&sr=8-1#ref=mp_s_a_1_1

Corporate Socialism is just a similar term for Corporate welfare. Read David Cay Johnston's Free Lunch if you haven't already. I got nothing against corporations by the way. I want to start one!

I'm all for the flat tax, but to be fair, the problem is not really with the IRS. Congress sets aside special money - and creates a congressional mandate - to audit people who receive the Earned Income Tax Credit - even though the potential fallout of fraud here is much less than the fraud that small business and partnerships almost certainly perpetrate. Auditors have very little discretion to call off an audit - they just follow the rules.

>That's why she's living with her parents. To try to make a life in our shimmering city without relying on welfare, food stamps or other public assistance.

If she's living with her parents, she may very well not be entitled to claim the children as dependents. And that has nothing do with the IRS - it's how Congress writes the tax laws and the US Tax Court interprets them.

If you're curious, read Perfectly Legal. The tax-auditing process is somewhat rigged against the poor but it has nothing to do with IRS and everything to do with Congress.

If you want a real education about tax policy, read David Cay Johnston's [book]
(http://www.amazon.com/Perfectly-Legal-Campaign-Rich---Everybody/dp/1591840694/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1291752481&sr=8-1)

What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael Sandel

If they don't even get the purpose of journalism, have them read this:

http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Journalism-Newspeople-Completely-Updated/dp/0307346706

> (Barring Enron scale fuckuppery)

Sometimes management can even mess up nearly that bad and get away with it.

This book was required reading, and it's quite good.

Aqui explica um dos motivos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEPMGhBaioo

Editado: e para uma explicação bem detalhada tem: https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Drug-Companies-Deceive/dp/0375760946/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501599172&sr=8-1&keywords=marcia+angell https://www.amazon.com/Overdosed-America-Promise-American-Medicine/dp/0061344761/ref=pd_sim_14_3?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0061344761&pd_rd_r=CVFSQNC32QB2VFKGGBAC&pd_rd_w=Qm3wb&pd_rd_wg=gtytp&psc=1&refRID=CVFSQNC32QB2VFKGGBAC https://www.amazon.com/800-Million-Pill-Truth-behind/dp/0520246705/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501599308&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=the+100+million+dollar+pill https://www.amazon.com/Take-Medicines-Complicity-Business-Endanger/dp/0195300041/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501599376&sr=1-1&keywords=on+the+take

https://www.amazon.com/Richest-Man-Babylon-George-Clason/dp/1505339111

You dont know who Dr Peter Gotzsche is, do you? His book is extensively cited.

Here is another book on the subject, by a former editor of the NEJM.

The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It https://www.amazon.com/dp/0375760946/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_uZvYBb52HA0KE

Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski's Markets without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests is a rebuttal to Sandel.

https://www.amazon.com/Markets-without-Limits-Commercial-Interests/dp/0415737354

If companies had not decided to move from pensions to 401k plans then government intervention would not be needed but as things stand now it is clear that 401ks have failed. See: http://www.amazon.com/Retirement-Heist-Companies-Plunder-American/dp/1591843332/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343067702&sr=8-1&keywords=retirement+heist

A friend of mine highly recommends this book I don't, because I read it, and it made me baby-punching angry.


Note: Brujahrage uses the phrase "Baby-punching angry" as a hyperbolic device. Brujahrage, reddit, and most sane people do not actually advocate punching babies.

Well anyway, you're right with your broader criticism. (Not sure about USA being worse than Europe. I don't know much about how things are in Europe.)

For more: https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Drug-Companies-Deceive/dp/0375760946

A big problem with repeal of the AMT is that it opens up a host of new loopholes allowing those who owe a lot of tax to avoid paying. This New York Times reporter follows the issue and his book on how the tax system deck is stacked is eyeopening.

Further Reading

Michael Huermer - 'The Problem of Political Authority':

[Hard Copy]

Henry Hazlitt - 'Economics in One Lesson':

[Audiobook]:[PDF]:[Hard Copy]

David Friedman - 'The Machinery of Freedom'"

[Illustrated Summary]:[Audiobook]:[PDF]:[Hard Copy]

Ludwig von Mises - 'Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth':

[Audiobook]:[PDF]:[ePub]


MisesWiki - Economic Calculation Problem:

[HTML]

Murray N. Rothbard - 'For a New Liberty':

[Audiobook]:[HTML]:[PDF]:[Hard Copy]

Murray N. Rothbard - 'The Ethics of Liberty':

[Audiobook]:[HTML]:[PDF]:[Hard Copy]

Frédéric Bastiat - 'The Law':

[Audiobook]:[HTML]:[PDF]:[Hard Copy]

Ludwig von Mises - 'Human Action':

[Audiobook]:[HTML]:[PDF:[ePub]:[Hard Copy]

Murray N. Rothbard - 'Man Economy and State, with Power, and Markets':

[Audiobook][HTML]:[PDF]:[ePub]:[Hard Copy]

Maybe you should look at the pharmaceutical industry.

To say science is worthless is nonsensical. Money has corrupted the scientific endeavor. That's a fact jack? Don't believe it? Read this book:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Truth-About-Drug-Companies/dp/0375760946

And where do you think these "climate scientists" are working?

I believe the farmers. The guys who get shit done. Not the fear mongers' employees.

http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2014/Q4/study-farmers-and-scientists-divided-over-climate-change.html