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Comment by PeterStuer | Hacker News Reader

Skills are gained through practice. To get good at non-trivial skills requires more than an hour.

Knowledge is gained through insights. While a full understanding and implications of an insight can take a lifetime, an insight can be triggered in under an hour.

Now which insights are most valuable? That is always going to be personal and relative. But one of the insights that touches all people and is almost universally lacking or deeply misunderstood is the insight into money. What is it exactly, where does it come from, who controls it? ...

So that would be my choice. Spend an hour learning about money. Here is a decent and easy starter in under an hour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE8i-4HpKlM&list=PLyl80QTKi0...

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> Here is a decent and easy starter in under an hour. > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE8i-4HpKlM

It should be mentioned that the video presents a fringe theory (MMT) that is highly controversial among economists. I would recommend the Khan Academy series on banking and money as an alternative, even though it is longer than an hour: https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/core-fi...

While the short video series is indeed also criticizing the traditional econo 101 money account (I'll leave it to the discretion of the viewer whether that critique is deserved or not), it does also address and explain the traditional views in a concise and accesible way in under an hour.

I agree they explain basic concepts in an easy and accessible way, but there are a lot of missing pieces intentionally omitted.

I don't know how many times refers 'creation of money by banks', but it was the essential point for sure, and totally wrong one. Rest of the video all depends on this.

Nobody disputes banks create the majority of the money. The dispute is on whether that amount is bounded (by some multiplier on Central Bank created money) or de-facto unbounded by a multiplier cooperatively controlled by the collective bankers, and probably even more specifically whether the latter has been impacted at all by the Basel accords.

Actually it is disputed, even 5th part of the video tries to address that. (Do banks create money or just credit?)

Which tries to prove that banks create money (not credit) cause money you put on bank is guaranteed by government.

But in reality, (even mentioned shortly on video), it is that your deposit is insured by banks via government.

"If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.", whether you call the duck "credit" or "money".

And beyond the capped consumer risk the financial crisis was prove that the fragility of the interconnected banking system will be fully underwritten 'above and beyond' by the governments if push comes to shove.

Great suggestion. Also, might I recommend The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous. Half the book is about money in general, not just Bitcoin. Very well written.

https://saifedean.com/the-book/

I couldn’t think of a worse suggestion for a typical person looking for money management skills.

Sure, half the book isn’t about bitcoin, but half of it is, and that’s a problem for the 99% of people that will and should never interact with Bitcoin.

It's also a highly opinionated book, which is another problem for many readers.

Yeah, found that out from Goodreads as well. Most people think the middle 1/3 of the book is nonsense.

Most people should read more of a “home economics 101” type of book or cheat sheet. Most people don’t need to know how the global economy works.

I think Khan Academy recommended somewhere else in this thread may be a great choice for many people. Sal was a hedge fund analyst before starting his project, and he's a great teacher. I'd note, however, he has a classical liberalism bias, but for the most part he manages to stay reasonably objective.

I wouldn't say it's much about money management skills. It is an explanation about the money phenomenon and its properties. But okay, it's probably not something you can read in an hour.

I would argue that an even more insightful view of money is to go one level up to “wealth”. Paul Graham covers it nicely: http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html

Skip down to the “Money is not wealth” section.

PG's arguments seem cogent enough, until you realize you need to still go up one level, to understand that wealth is power. No, not that wealth gives power, but wealth _is_ power in and of itself.

And power may not be a zero-sum game exactly, but it is close to it

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