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A review by mady2518
Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics by Henry Hazlitt
1.0
I think it’s time we all grew up and stopped believing in the tooth fairy, Santa Claus and laissez-faire economics.
Hazlitt’s fallacies were oversimplified to the point of stupidity. They went something like this: if you see someone getting stabbed, don’t call the police. Because not only are you wasting resources on someone who is likely to die, but on the way, the police could run over two people, making the hypothetical benefit/risk ratio not worth the phone call in the first place. Furthermore, you are diverting resources away from someone who could potentially need them, for say, a broken toe.
A big yikes from me. I almost got second-hand embarrassment reading this book in a 21st century context, knowing every piece of shitty textbook economics Hazlitt spouted would come back to bite him in the ass in an age of neoliberalism and late-stage capitalism. Hazlitt would immediately shit his pants in fear if he saw how out-of-touch his theories are in light of the GFC or Royal Commission into Banking in Australia. Which makes this book an out of date introduction to conservative economics that relies solely on catastrophised hypotheticals, that are just annoyingly American.
Hazlitt’s fallacies were oversimplified to the point of stupidity. They went something like this: if you see someone getting stabbed, don’t call the police. Because not only are you wasting resources on someone who is likely to die, but on the way, the police could run over two people, making the hypothetical benefit/risk ratio not worth the phone call in the first place. Furthermore, you are diverting resources away from someone who could potentially need them, for say, a broken toe.
A big yikes from me. I almost got second-hand embarrassment reading this book in a 21st century context, knowing every piece of shitty textbook economics Hazlitt spouted would come back to bite him in the ass in an age of neoliberalism and late-stage capitalism. Hazlitt would immediately shit his pants in fear if he saw how out-of-touch his theories are in light of the GFC or Royal Commission into Banking in Australia. Which makes this book an out of date introduction to conservative economics that relies solely on catastrophised hypotheticals, that are just annoyingly American.