If you want the meaning of families and life and religion and philosophy rolled into one package, all you need to read is ‘The Brothers Karamazov.’
I took the obligatory economics classes in school, but I’ve long been a fan of the Milton Friedman philosophy and its libertarian bent: One must be free to do what one wants to do, as long as you don’t harm another. This is the seminal treatise on free-market economics.