Good day to you all, my name is Einar Árni Friðgeirsson, a recent graduate Bifröst University, Iceland with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy, Poli Sci and Economics(an interdisciplinary program). I´ve been lurking around this forum for ages, but not posting too much.
Let me just begin by saying that I think this is one of the most interesting and informative forums on the internet, and mises.org has really influenced my outlook on the world and the direction of my academic studies. My final essay was an exposition on the epistemology and methodology of economics, and whether it might play a role in mainstream economics being so blind to impending downturns. Hayek, Garrison, Mises and Hoppe were of course cited often and early.
The reason for this thread is that my younger brother, Björgvin Friðgeirsson is embarking on his final project before graduating as a graphic designer from the Icelandic Academy of Arts, and after I introduced him to the stuff I was reading, showed him Lilburne's most excellent "Human Action Comics", and had some interesting debates with him, he decided to make his project a short, informal coffee-table primer on sound economics, and recruited me to help him, with the view that I would write the text and he would illustrate and do the graphic design.
After discussing exactly how to go about the project and shoving several books in his face including Butler Shaffers most excellent "Boundaries of Order" we hit upon the idea to take the project open-source rather than try to do everything ourselves, and see where the wisdom of crowds takes us!
Project description:
Goal: to create a 80-100 page mix of graphics and text that introduces the complete newcomer with no knowledge of economics to the basic concepts that underpin free-market economics, Austrian economics in particular, and creates the urge to do further research. Present "Big Ideas" in an informal, light-hearted style. Create a book that an Austrian enthusiast can keep laying around the living room and is visually attractive enough to cause visitors to pick it up spontaneously and get "hooked" so to speak.
We don't have a lot of time, and given the time the project is insanely huge....but hey, playing it safe ain't no fun! My brother will be graded on the quality of the graphic design(and forgive me for saying so, but he's a kick-ass artist) so this is NOT a project that needs to be formal in terms of citing sources etc. It's not a term paper. If the final product is any good, we might be open to perhaps publishing it, but in either case, a free Creative Commons licensed PDF will be made available to all.
So if you are a blogger/writer and feel like contributing text to this project, send me a message, or hit me up on Facebook, and I´ll discuss the project more in-depth.
My brothers art portfolio:
http://25greatcircles.com/
The just-launched homepage for this project: http://austrian.25greatcircles.com/
Hope to hear from many contributors soon!
This sounds excellent. I would love to be a part of this. I'm just making sure that this isn't only visual, correct? You need writers as well?
Furthermore if there is any area which you would like me to focus on I would be very happy to do so.
Sounds interesting. Lilburne's comics inspired me too, and I've thought about doing something similar some day. Ayn Rand, although she didn't really like libertarians, as an artist, has been a huge contributor to our cause. One problem is that it isn't clear how people should be contributing besides maybe on the comment section of your blog. Yeah, I can tell it is very fresh, so no worries. Anyhow, I will throw one idea I had at you guys:
We understand that governments exaggerate bubbles and are inefficient. As a voluntaryist, I reject electoral politics as a means of living in a free society. Any principled anarchist must be a voluntaryist at some point. One day, I wondered just how much time people waste engaging the political milieux. Perhaps as an Icelander, you want to present other data, but I wanted to create an infographic about how we could better spend our time. You could include estimates of how much time is spent watching cable news, going to the polls or rallies, etc. I was thinking more just how much time the average person wastes, not money, or not considering the hundreds of thousands of people imprisoned in America for "victimless crimes".
Also, I think it should be better explained how libertarianism is not the same as Austrian economics, as much as they are related.
Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave.—Karl Kraus.
So would you simply like feedback or would you like community additions to your work?
We most certainly would welcome community contributions in addition to feedback of the stuff we post.
If you want to write, send me a private message on this site or a Facebook message, and we can discuss which sections/topics fit your interests and background best. I will be overseeing the writing/editing end, allowing my brother to focus on the graphics and layout.
Will post more details tomorrow. Stay tuned!
EinarFridgeirs:If you want to write, send me a private message on this site or a Facebook message, and we can discuss which sections/topics fit your interests and background best. I will be overseeing the writing/editing end, allowing my brother to focus on the graphics and layout.
I would be happy to do so. I sent you a friend request. Please accept it so we can begin discussing the matter.
EinarFridgeirs:I introduced him to the stuff I was reading, showed him Lilburne's most excellent "Human Action Comics", and had some interesting debates with him, he decided to make his project a short, informal coffee-table primer on sound economics, and recruited me to help him, with the view that I would write the text and he would illustrate and do the graphic design.
Welcome to the community.
Freedom Images thread, might help spark some ideas or particular concepts (broken window, minimum wage, private vs public sector etc.) which are illustrated in there.
Also, How An Economy Grows and Why it Doesn't
This is brilliant! Here are some suggestions of what I would love to see:
A visual interpretation of Bastiat's candlemakers petition.
The broken-window fallacy.
That which is seen and that which is unseen.
An illustration showing the benefits of the division of labor.
An illustration showing how the law of association works out.
A visual representation of the image Hazlitt conjures up when criticizing those who fear machinery would eliminate jobs. Here is the quote:
"If it were indeed true that the introduction of labor-saving machinery is a cause of constantly mounting unemployment and misery, the logical conclusions to be drawn would be revolutionary, not only in the technical field but for our whole concept of civilization. Not only should we have to regard all further technical progress as a calamity; we should have to regard all past technical progress with equal horror. Every day each of us in his own activity is engaged in trying to reduce the effort it requires to accomplish a given result. Each of us is trying to save his own labor, to economize the means required to achieve his ends. Every employer, small as well as large, seeks constantly to gain his results more economically and efficiently— that is, by saving labor. Every intelligent workman tries to cut down the effort necessary to accomplish his assigned job. The most ambitious of us try tirelessly to increase the results we can achieve in a given number of hours. The technophobes, if they were logical and consistent, would have to dismiss all this progress and ingenuity as not only useless but vicious. Why should freight be carried from Chicago to New York by railroad when we could employ enormously more men, for example, to carry it all on their backs?"
This is just a fleeting thought, but perhaps to save yourselves the trouble of having to get writers to write out everything, you could simply mine the existing literature for some of the choicest quotes (like the one I posted above) and base the graphics and artwork around those.
Anyway, this is really exciting! I would love to help, but at the moment I'm busy working on a creative project of my own (an austro-libertarian novel). Best of luck to both of you!
Fan-frickin'-tastic!!
I second the broken window fallacy / seen and unseen, as well as the division of labor (see I, Pencil). Someone did a graphic of the ABCT a while back, which was pretty good as I recall, but sorely needed a multi-page treatment.
And quotes - there are plenty of great ones by Mises, etc. Anyone know where there's an archive of one-liners? (The source for the Quotable Mises corner that appears on the LvMI main page, perhaps)
Why anarchy fails
AJ: And quotes - there are plenty of great ones by Mises, etc. Anyone know where there's an archive of one-liners? (The source for the Quotable Mises corner that appears on the LvMI main page, perhaps)
Here's the searchable database.
I´ve posted my preliminary chapter breakdown, along with what should go into which chapter at our blog.
http://austrian.25greatcircles.com/?p=18
If you feel the urge to write on any of these topics(or can point to an informative graphical illustration on a relevant principle) please leave a comment or send me a private message on this site.
I´m spending most of my initial efforts on the chapters on Crusoe Economics and Complexity.
EinarFridgeirs: I´ve posted my preliminary chapter breakdown, along with what should go into which chapter at our blog. http://austrian.25greatcircles.com/?p=18
This was brilliant, and I'm going to use it:
I often draw parallels between the economy and the ecosystem when talking about these things with my socialist-minded friends, many of whom are ardent environmentalists, against genetically modified food etc…but also very much in favor of social engineering and government interventions. Pointing out the paradox of believing that intervention into the biosphere will produce unintended consequences, but intervention into the “econosphere” will not has often worked well in making people reassess their worldview.
Something like this surely needs to be done.
Your introduction must make sure you differentiate ethics from economics. Yet also be sure to mention that most of the left's ethical complaints against free markets are based upon economic arguments, and are in this respect, self-defeating (unless they are only interested in specific, temporary welfare rather than general, perpetual prosperity). But just mention that ethical considerations may differ from economic ones, and that one may prefer wealth equality, etc. above prosperity. And for those who have some higher ethical goal, insist that they should at least understand the operational principles behind a free market economy, so they can understand what economic trade-offs they will need to accept.
For chapter 2, you should make a list of questions the current "experts" are incapable of answering. Like, "Why hasn't Japan recovered?"
I think you should also do a chapter, or a section of chapter 3 (or 6 perhaps), given the current outline, that explains the methodology of current economists - using outdated, inaccurate, macro-level statistics to discover principles that conflict with microeconomics.
Also, for chapter 6, you can just go right down the line of Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson. You may want to harp on actual conditions during WWII to illustrate the GDP mirage with actual welfare.
...
As for getting this going...maybe you should post a wiki on your site. As the ideas take shape, we'll be able to figure out good illustrations, which I think is what makes this work - it makes it accessible. Most of the writing will be rehashing other stuff, hopefully creating interest in such.
Check my blog, if you're a loser
Thanks for the advice all, keep it coming!
All right, we have now finished the first "beta version" of this project. Unfortunately, time constrains meant that we didn't really have time to involve more people than the two of us in time for my brother's graduation, but we managed to turn out something that I think will, in time and with some more work, become something truly worthwhile.
Check out the PDF at http://economics.25greatcircles.com/
A lot of stuff I wanted to include unfortunately didn't make it in - a thorough explanation of the ABCT for instance, but my intentions for this book's final form is that it will be at least twice as long, with three times as many illustrations, and hopefully lots of input from all you malcontents! :D
I am very interested in this project. Where's the PDF? Am I missing something? I see the outline of what it is you intend do, is that it for now?
"The market is a process." - Ludwig von Mises, as related by Israel Kirzner. "Capital formation is a beautiful thing" - Chloe732.
The link posted in the post directly above yours worked for me. It is about 90 pages long. I can't read it now but I read a few pages and skimmed through a bunch more and I am quite impressed. Will definitely read through it when I have the time.
Curtis Z: I still can't find the PDF, all I see is the outline. I don't understand why I can't see the PDF. Suggestions? When you follow the link, does
it take you directly to the 90 page book? Do you see the outline that I'm seeing? Once I'm at the outline, do I need to click on another link?
http://economics.25greatcircles.com/ Well when I go there to the left of the screen there is: Click here to download the free PDF version of the book
That's where I got it so I don't know why that wouldn't be working for you. Good luck!
Oh, apparently you can just click on what I copy/pasted and it will download for you. That makes it easy.
Thanks for making it easy Mr. Zwick, I thought the link was pretty self-explanatory, but apparently it isn't(and chloe isn't the only person that has failed to spot the download link :) )
Feel free to link this onward to anyone you know people, I am trying to just toss this version of the book out there hoping some constructive feedback comes back.
The style and format look amazing! Is there a template of this that i could experiment on? I hope to read it by the end of this week.
Read until you have something to write...Write until you have nothing to write...when you have nothing to write, read...read until you have something to write...Jeremiah
Hey Jeremiah! Thanks for the compliment. We're looking for input on where to go from here and ideas to bring the project forward. Personally, I'd like to redo the graphics. I want to improve my illustration style and personalise it, and then really augment the text with pictures and link them better together.
But I have all the layout and graphic files and I wouldn't mind sharing them if anyone is interested in them.