I’m relatively new to researching economics, so I guess you could say I’m a beginner in my understanding of economics. I’ve been a libertarian for a couple of years, but I’m only in high school, so my knowledge is somewhat limited. So far I’ve read The Revolution by Ron Paul, Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlit, Meltdown by Thomas Woods, and I’m almost done with The Law by Frederic Bastiat.
I have recently purchased Man Economy and State with Power and Market, Human Action, The Denationalization of Money, The Road to Serfdom, The Case Against the Fed, Liberty Defined, End the Fed, America’s Great Depression, and the Theory of Money and Credit.
I was wondering, for a beginner, which of the above books would you reccomend reading first in order to gain a more general understanding of Austrian economics and/or libertarian political theory? All imput is greatly apreciated.
Welcome to the forum! Great to have you. You’re off to a great start.
First, I highly recommend checking out The Ultimate Beginner meta-thread. That’s the one-stop place to start. (Be sure to check out the welcome.) You’ll probably want to bookmark it, as it’s a major collection of links for things you might want to look into in the future and refer back to.
As for the books, you’re definitely on the right path. You’ve covered a good number of the most common first recommendations. So now it really depends on what you’re most interested in and what you’d like to investigate next. More basic economics? Do you feel like you need a bit more to get a good grasp on the overall concepts and fundamentals? Or are you ready to venture into deeper subjects like money and credit? Or are you interested in venturing more into political theory for a while?
Think about where you might like to explore next and I’m sure you’ll get some good recommendations based on your current taste.
Thanks! With regards to the books, I most likely need more help on the fundamentals before I am ready to explore more specific topics. Thanks for your assistance.
I would definitely go down through that top list until you feel like you’re ready to jump to another area for a while. (You might decide you find it easier to absorb one book by making your next one be about a different topic).
If you ever want a nice short read ~100 pages or so, see the list here.
I also recommend Peter Boettk’s recent book, Living Economics. It may not be exactly in the structure you’re looking for, but it’s an easy-to-read discussion on what different economists have posited over the years, including both Austrian and public-choice theorists.
Also, I think Rothbard’s MES would be a good idea to read, as well (I haven’t, but I substitute it with Human Action for the time being). You might not understand it all, but when you continue reading after it you’ll, over time, see connections, and when you re-visit MES you’ll be rewarded. I read Huerta de Soto’s Money, Bank Cred**it, and Economic Cycles as one of my first non-textbook books in economics. I didn’t get a lot of it as much as I thought I did, but it served as a crash-course that made subsequent reading much easier. Besides, these types of books have to be read and re-read, so you might as well start now!
I understand where Jonathan’s coming from, and it’s true that you’ll get a lot more out of something like MES and HA the second and third time you read it, but I’m also not so sure you want to go diving into 1000-page tomes as a beginner in high school. It may prove too frustrating and discourage you from going on.
If you’re a really avid reader and are used to that sort of thing, then perhaps…but for most people, they need to work up to those things. I definitely recommend that top list first. You’ll get a lot more out of everything else you read from that point on if you get through those.
Economics for Real People is awesome, other than the chapter on the ABCT, which is a bit confusing. However, unfortunately the LvMI is no longer selling it. I don’t know if this is a temporary thing because of lack of stock or permanent because it wasn’t selling well or perhaps because of Callahan’s ugly defection.
That would be really interesting if they stopped carrying it just so they wouldn’t end up generating revenue for, and having to pay, Callahan. I guess it works out okay anyway, since they can still offer it free of charge in electronic form
Austrian economics? I suggest “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money”, it’s quite a thorough exposition of AE and the theories of Ludwig Von Mises.
By the way, if you want to read The Theory Of Money & Credit, buy the study guide by Bob Murphy. It makes the entire thing so much more readable. Mises assumes a lot of prior knowledge and uses terminology that you won’t find today, so it’s quite useful to have the main points briefly spelled out in plain English, a glossary at the end of each chapter, etc.
ChuckDuck, along with the other books recommended, I recommend What Has Government Done to Our Money? It was the first book I ever read about Austrian-school economics, and it convinced me.
Actually, I have been uploading notes to the book for the past two months or so. I had to stop for a little while because of higher priorities, but I’m hoping to finish the book by the end of the next week. Here’s chapter three, for example.
To help the beginner decide about the usefullness of Esuric’s books to him, I’ll quote a line or two from each.
From 3, a book by Hayek:
Once we assume that, even at a single point, thepricing process fails to equilibrate supply and demand,so that over a more or less long period demand maybe satisfied at prices at which the available supplyis inadequate to meet total demand, then the marchof economic events loses its determinateness and arange of indeterminateness appears, within which movements can originate leading away from equilibrium.
From 2, a book by Hayek:
To over-emphasize the distinction between fixed and circulating capital,which is, at best, merely one of degree,and not by any means of fundamental importance, is a common trait of English economic theory and has probably contributed more than any other cause to the unsatisfactory state of the English theory of capital at the present time.
From 1, by Mises:
The English “Currency School” has already tried to explain the boom by the extension of credit resulting from the issue of bank notes without metallic backing. Nevertheless, this school did not see that bank accounts which could be drawn upon at any time by means of checks, that is to say, current accounts, play exactly the same role in the extension of credit as bank notes. Consequently the expansion of credit can result not only from the excessive issue of bank notes but also from the opening of excessive current accounts. It is because it misunderstood this truth that the Currency School believed that it would suffice, in order to prevent the recurrence of economic crises, to enact legislation restricting the issue of bank notes without metallic backing, while leaving the expansion of credit by means of current accounts unregulated. Peel’s Bank Act of 1844, and similar laws in other countries, did not accomplish their intended effect. From this it was wrongly concluded that the English School’s attempt to explain the trade cycle in monetary terms had been refuted by the facts.
