How to Become a Professional Private Investigator VII

Good detectives know how things work. That is what makes them effective. This applies to both the private and public sectors. The police detective has to know how the criminal justice system works. The Private Investigator has to know how the civil courts, business, and the economy works.

Functional Research

This knowledge of how things fit together and function  builds on previous knowledge and allows you discover how new things work. Researchers call this Functional Research. However, doing functional research requires broad knowledge in a wide variety of subjects to understand how things might fit together or complement each other.

Economics

An understanding of the economic forces that have shaped our world will serve you well in learning how government, courts, and businesses work. Our laws, customs, and institutions are built upon a foundation of economics.

Economics is not difficult to understand. It can be reduced to the interplay of four factors:

• Wealth
• Power
• Distributive justice (a value judgement)
• Impersonal efficiency

The following list of books should be read in order:

• Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
• Cameron & Neal’s A Concise Economic History of the World: From Paleolithic Times to the Present
• Landes’s The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor
• DeSoto’s The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else
• Ferguson’s The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World

These books cover a lot of ground. They start with why a lack of natural resources prevented economic and technological growth in some areas of the world and move onto the political factors that shaped that growth. Then in Landes’s work, why some nations fail to live up to their economic potential. DeSoto’s book is absolutely necessary for an understanding of why property rights are so essential to economic growth and why established property registration systems have created a huge divide between the rich nations that have such systems and poor nations that don’t. Finally, Ferguson will explain the origins and evolution of our finance system and financial institutions.