Hi Isaac. Yes, I first read Popper more than 40 years ago. He and Hayek were influential on me back then (for example The Constitution of Liberty). Since then I’ve been fortunate to have read Mancur Olsen’s work, which helps explain why centrally planned economies must always fail. S.E. Finer’s History of Government is a good analysis of every form of government for which we have records. But my major influences (aside from Keen, whose critique of modern economics is invaluable) have come from the pioneers of evolutionary psychology. Today it’s a subject trapped in musty corners of academia, self-consciously avoiding all the important topics lest they come to Politically Incorrect conclusions, which is rather sad. But its potential is enormous. Supplemented with the last 30 years of decent studies on the limitations of cognition and reasoning, plus anthropological insights into how closely our primate cousins resemble us behaviorally, EP offers a way to view ourselves that we’ve hitherto lacked and which, I think, can be used to structure systems that can to some degree compensate for our deficiencies (much as, in an automobile, the rear-view mirror or camera compensates for the fact we don’t have eyes in the back of our heads).