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Title: Economics in One Lesson by HENRY HAZLITT ISBN: 0-517-54823-2 Publisher: Three Rivers Press Pub. Date: 14 December, 1988 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.35 (66 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Hazlitt shines light on the dismal science of economics
Comment: This is perhaps the best book to introduce the layman to the field of economics... This book was a Godsend for me... I stumbled on it in my early college days when I was taking two semesters of Economics and neck-deep in a Keynesian textbook of Fabian socialist fallacies and liberal lies. Hazlitt's book opened my eyes to an insightful intellectual library that supports free-markets and individual liberty. Economics in One Lesson enlightened me, while it helped develop my economic reasoning. It helped me confirm what common sense told me all along - that a laissez-faire free market is the way to go!
While I already had a libertarian bent, this book basically introduced me to the Austrian School of Thought on Economics. The "Austrians" vindicate the market economy's spontaneous order as the surest way to have optimal prosperity, opportunity, and individual liberty for the masses. The verbal logic and reasoning of the Austrian school is generally easy to understand and makes sense to the reader. Needless, to say my interest in the laissez-faire perspective grew - and I read and amassed a library of hundreds of interrelated books on various disciplines from economics to history to political theory. I also recommend any books by other "Austrian" luminaries such as Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, and Murray Rothbard. Hidden Order by David Friedman and Capitalism by Ayn Rand are also worth mentioning.
Rating: 5
Summary: Put This Book In Your Children's Hands
Comment: And make them read it. Less a primer in economics than a concise debunking of crank positions on economic issues, this book can clear the air (and the mind) quickly after some interested sophist plumps for a discredited idea. Hazlitt's parable of the broken window, meant to show how what dosen't happen as a result of human action is at least as important as what does, is the best introduction to economic theory for the average reader since Adam Smith. The visible results that people see as a result of government intervention in the market must be weighed against what did not come to pass because of the reallocation of resources (i.e., your hard-earned money) that such action necesitates. This book is timeless, in that it is not tied to concrete examples drawn from the headlines of 1946, and is also remarkably free of venom , passion, or spite, which too often mar polemical works on economics - and serve to camouflage bad reasoning. This book can be a basic education in itself, or the beginning of deeper study, in the works of Von Mises, Von Hayek, Schumpeter, or of Hazlett himself. Unlike his opposition (Keynes, et al), Hazlitt is actually readable. -Lloyd A. Conway
Rating: 1
Summary: There you go again.....
Comment: Mr. Byers "refutation" of my earlier critique is as flawed as Hazlitt's original argument. Hazlitt was discussing "society" in this case as a single nation-state. To use a hypothetical example, let's say Country A has a privately owned factory. Country B attacks Country A with an act of war, and the factory is destroyed.
The owner of the factory rebuilds a newer one, which turns out to be more profitable than the old one. (Further assume that had he borne the costs of tearing down the original factory himself, those costs would have eroded the increase in profits, and he would not have built the new plant.)
Since the costs of destroying the plant were borne in this case by Country B, then both the factory owner AND country A are more productive as a result of the destruction. Hazlitt's claim is that this could not be true.
I will give the benefit of the doubt that Mr. Byers may believe that Hazlitt was referring to the entire world economy in using the term "society," but this is untenable. The rest of Hazlitt's book analyzes economic decisions in terms of the effects on one country - and argues that economic decisions should be left to private parties, not the government. It is unrealistic to believe that in this one case he instead turns his attention to the entire global economy in making his argument.
Hopefully this is just "sloppy thinking, not legerdemain" on Mr. Byers part.
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Title: Basic Economics: A Citizens Guide to the Economy, Revised and Expanded by Thomas Sowell ISBN: 0465081452 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 23 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Economics for Real People: An Introduction to the Austrian School by Gene Callahan ISBN: 0945466358 Publisher: Ludwig Von Mises Inst Pub. Date: June, 2002 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science by Charles Wheelan ISBN: 0393324869 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek ISBN: 0226320618 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: September, 1994 List Price(USD): $9.48 |
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Title: Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman, Rose D. Friedman ISBN: 0226264211 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: November, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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