Request for advice- Reading on politics

For a pretty different perspective, you could try reading up on the Discourses on Salt and Iron, which seems surprisingly modern despite being more than two thousand years old - from Wikipedia:

The previous ruler, Emperor Wu of Han, had undertaken a drastic change in policy compared to his predecessors. Reversing their laissez-faire policy at home and policy of appeasement of the Xiongnu abroad, he nationalized the coinage, salt, and iron in order to pay for his massive campaigns against the northern Xiongnu tribes which posed a threat to the empire. Although Wu was successful in his campaigns, his policies bankrupted many merchants and industrialists and led to widespread dissatisfaction and even revolts; after his death, the regent, Huo Guang, called a court conference to discuss whether to continue Wu's policies.

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The reformists' criticism of the monopolies largely centered on the idea that the state "should not compete with the people for profit", as it would tend to oppress the citizenry while doing so; mercantile activity were not "proper activities for the state". They pointed out that the monopolies had placed an immense burden on the citizenry. In addition, the reformists complained that the state monopolies oppressed the people by producing low-quality and impractical iron tools that were useless and made only to meet quotas, but which the peasants had to pay for regardless of their quality.

I also heard good things about the Book of Lord Shang.

(I think it was gwern who pointed me towards those two)

Are you looking for textbooks or easier reads? If you're willing to read textbooks, Mueller's Public Choice III has all kinds info and theory about policy, systems, and meta-systems from an economic perspective.

If you don't want textbooks, then read Bryan Caplan's book, Brennan and Lomasky's Democracy and Decision, and Carpini and Keeter's What Americans Know About Politics and Why It Matters, which will collectively bring you to the cutting edge of how we get policy failure on the "system" level. Read Donald Wittman's The Myth of Democratic Failure for the opposite perspective (Caplan is mostly responding to Wittman).

For "meta-system" stuff, definitely read Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations and The Logic of Collective Action (if you only read one, read the former as it is much more "meta-system" while the latter is a bit more "system". There are excellent insights in both.)

There is a huge debate in economic history about how much political institutions matter for outcomes, mostly focusing on why Britain specifically had an industrial revolution at the time it did while other countries (especially China) did not. You can read Greg Clark's A Farewell To Alms for the anti-institutional story, many Doug North works for the standard institutional story, and a sort of sideways pull from Deirdre McCloskey's recent Bourgeois Dignity or Mokyr's The Enlightened Economy.

That's all I've got as an economist. Not much on environmentalism, but plenty on how we got what we've got, whether what we've got is good, and whether what we've got can be improved.

You might also want to look at something taking a non-libertarian viewpoint.

I found "Popular Government" by Henry Sumner Maine pretty interesting - It's a late 19th century perspective on the recent (for him) history of democracy-related ideas. It may not be as good as the books on your list though, but it's probably a pretty different perspective.

Why do you think LW is a good forum for this topic? Book recommendations on politics can quickly become expressions of ideology, which can spark mind-killing discussions.

Please pay more attention to formatting. Three fonts in one article and mixing serifs with sans-serif are visually disturbing.

Be aware, Hazlitt's book is written from an explicitly Austrian viewpoint; without attempting to evaluate Austrian Economics on its own merits, you should know that trying to present anything you read in that book to a "mainstream" audience is not going to go over well.

It's old, but I found Bureaucracy by James Wilson very interesting on the theory of practical implementation of policy. Amazon points me to Essence of Decision by Zelikow and Allison which was interesting, but less essential to my current thinking.

Also, your link to "Americans elect" is broken.

I'd recommend going back to the fundamentals, not just to avoid the mind-killing aspects of politically-charged issues, but because autodidacts tend to be in danger of having gaps in their knowledge of which they are not aware.

Politics kills minds by precluding analysis and depth of understanding: my team says X, so I say X, no research or thought required. Further, you can also go wrong by trying to research a politicized topic like a debater, scouring a debate for talking points.

For instance, as I understand it, seasteading purports to be a practical application -- a hack -- of the principles of international law. In order to really understand seasteading, you need to have some background knowledge of general international law, law of the sea, and admiralty law. I'm not saying you should start by reading Grotius in the original Latin, but you should read the Wikipedia entry about him. What would Grotius have said about a purported new nation perched on top of a previously uninhabited island? What would international law say if that island had been attacked by the Kingdom of England (not yet in union with Scotland)? Would it matter if the founders of that purported island nation were all pirates or slave traders?

An environmentalist book that I recommend is Deep Economy, by Bill McKibben. It's not a "view from nowhere" book at all, and it's partially at odds with the singularity-predicting viewpoint, but it was good.

For example, in a democracy, a special interest group can easily coordinate to influence legislation which benefits them, but costs everyone a little bit. If every consumer loses a dollar a year from a policy, it just isn’t worth anyone’s time to fight it.

The existence of numerous groups trying to reduce the influence of money in politics means we've run into a drastic oversimplification. So I'd be a bit careful around this book.

It's old, but I found Bureaucracy by James Wilson and Essence of Decision by Zelikow and Allison very interesting on the theory of practical implementation of policy.

Also, your link to "Americans elect" is broken.

If you can control how you spend your time, you should spend it on topics as far from politics as possible.