Knowledge and Decisions by Thomas Sowell
This new year, please take the time to read this book, one of the most important books for my thinking in my lifetime.
It speaks to my observation on war being a collision of complex adaptive systems informed by “institutional mechanics”, the systems they have in place before collision.
And humans are built on incentives.
Here’s a great review.
Besides resting on a backbone of the Hayekian understanding of the use and role of knowledge in economies and societies more generally and Alchian’s evolutionary framing of economic issues and phenomena; the biggest comparative advantage of this book compared to other great books by other great economists is Sowell’s insistence throughout the text to refer to political systems, social phenomena, and economic issues exclusively by characteristics as dynamic processes, or has he often puts it, their institutional mechanics rather than their hoped for goals.
And for the record, Hayek reviewed this book in 1983 (3 years after it was published) for Reason magazine and called it the best book on general economics published in many years and really sung its praises to a surprising degree for Hayek.
I gave this book a five out of five Marlen-Starrs because five is the maximum amount I was allowed to rate it, if I could have given it six out of five stars, I would have! This is tied for my favorite book of all time with Antifragile by Nassim Taleb.
Email me at cgpodcast@pm.me
