Ahh, the times of bimetallism. Bimetallism was the Bitcoin of the times, railroads were the "tech" of the times. Robert Shiller has a very entertaining comparative research between Bitcoin and bimetallism in his book Narrative Economics: https://youtu.be/QV0JrMV5nnc

Just a heads up, Robert Shiller's new course in "Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral And Drive Major Economic Events" goes live on Coursera early 2020 ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLsG4R8FFOc

If you have quantitative skills, I think an alternative to delving into classical econ theory would be to take a data science approach. A lot of non-parametric stats texts use econ/fin examples. And there is an abundance of datasets available via FRED

https://www.federalreserve.gov/conferences/nontraditional-da...

Best of luck ;)

I ploughed through Francis Fukuyama's Political Order series this year. I wouldn't say it's my favourite, but it was in some sense uplifting. He writes as though rule of law is a evolutionary certainty. As much as that's largely BS in my view, it's still nice to read.

After 4 years I also finally finished Capital in the 21st Century. My opinion: worth reading by jumping around, not worth reading in linear fashion.

Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu is worth a read too. It's well researched, but the author does occasionally blur the line between opinion and facts. I attribute it to writing styles. Similar in nature to another book I quite liked in the past - Wisdom Sits in Places, but less focused.

Narrative Economics by Robert Shiller would be unfocused to people who are in the tech industry. Nonetheless, the book serves to give context to people who are textmining. Hopefully some changes to economics arise from this. His understanding of genetic algorithms and selection could do with some work.

I would think the issue is we have to start with what are we solving for exactly?

Max GDP for the country in question?

Max GDP contribution to global GDP for the country in question?

Max global GDP?

Maximize some individual distribution for the country population in question?

Maximize some individual distribution for the global population?

I don't think we can even answer that so it is doomed from the start if we are trying to be objective.

If we start over we should just explicitly admit this field is a type of theater. Like Shiller's Narrative Economics is a good start but that is still pretending to be too scientific.