This is my first post here, so go easy on me. I have been reading material and books from this great resource for a few years now, but am really a newbie. I would welcome some feedback from some of the other readers here on a book review.
The book was written by my cousin and represents everything opposed to Austrian economics and Libertarian thought. The book is very typical of the kind of remarks and thoughts that are common in the community or workplace, so I took it as a challenge to write a rebuttal as a way to organize some of the new concepts I’ve learned. Feedback welcome.
You can download the PDF of the full book review from here:
I didn’t read the whole thing. I skipped around and picked out some big issues
Spencer → This is funny. Its not directly related to capitalism but you discredit the author right off the bat since this information is even on wikipedia
But you talk a lot about history, ideas, and people. Are you defending them, or capitalist theory? The latter I would think. You can dedicate the bulk of your review to correcting the author’s misconceptions, but you ought to have a paragraph right up front discussing how the book fails its BOP. Something like this:
"The author doesn’t directly address self ownership, outline or attack the homesteading principle, or defend the intervention of an aggressive monopoly arbiter… So he basically hasn’t touched free market theory at all. Instead, he argues with a few cherry picked examples in a vain attempt to prove that capitalism is not edenic or utopian. Well, no one claims that. Most libertarians simply claim it is the best option among many.
Armed with only this power of trivial-fact-finding, the author not only fails to clash with capitalism, but would also fail if he tried to discredit genocidal totalitarianism. We can ignore this book as simply a cry that the world is imperfect. If not for its inflammatory and overseriousness, I would probably not be reviewing this book at all.