While I am generally of a more interventionist bend than most on this board, here is one that is squarely in the “hands off” department.
Its Milton Friedman’s book on how central banks have a tendency of fucking things up. He has some interesting things to say regarding gold. Maybe not what you would expect.
As far as another book regarding innovation and world affairs, I would recommend (yes its trite) The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. While I do not agree with everything he says, it is a good summing up of the cheapening of information and communication and the effect of those shifts upon global socioeconomic as well as geopolitical commerce.
I recommend reading Rheinhard Bendix’s book “Nation Building and Citizenship” for a really compelling discussion of the relationship between capitalism and democracy (or any economy and any political order). Truly a good read.
On a cultural front, I would check out Benedict Anderson’s “Imagined Communities” as an interesting discussion about creating a sense of nationality based on homogeneity of language and writing. Ironic such a good book about communication has such totally shitty prose.
