I didn’t read anything of value in this book. I read it for a political science class I took last semester (I had to write a book review for the class; How Not to Make Globalization Work). I think there are better mainstream books in existance on globalization (even Stiglitz’ earlier Globalization and its Discontents).
For Christmas (besides all the Austrian stuff I ordered) I got Superfreakonomics from my mom and Where Keynes Went Wrong from my brother. I was actually tempted to buy Where Keynes Went Wrong one day at a bookstore, but I don’t know anything about Superfreakonomics. Has anyone read that? (I read that the first Freakonomics was better.)
Oh another thing you might want to try are some books by David Friedman:
Law’s Order is a really good discussion on the economic analysis of the law. I took a grad-level law and economics course a year or so ago and I used this book to back up my understanding of the material presented in Posner’s economics of the law textbook (i usually remember things better if I read the same thing from several different authors).
Hidden Order is supposed to be good, but I have never read it. I have skimmed it at the local library and its very similar Friedman’s Price Theory textbook (which is available for free online). But, that being said, Fiedman’s Price Theory textbook is very good. So it would probably be worth your time.
I am noting down all the books. Thank you everybody![:)]
On Keynes, I would recommend buying General Theory, Failure of the “New” Economics, and Where Keynes Went Wrong. Read the latter two with the first as a reference to read it. General Theory is an incredibly muddled and confusing book. I tried to read it and found myself lost and confused. Hazlitt and Lewis do a great job of breaking through the mess and revealing the truth behind Keynes’ ideas.
I think its a good idea to read texts outside of Austrianism or at minimum learn about these other schools. One of the things that drew me to the Austrian school was that is seemed that the average Austrian knew more about Marxism and Keynesianism then the average Marxist or Keynesian.
Here’s what I would do:
Go get a copy of The Worldly Philosophers by J.K. Galbraith. You should be able to get it very cheap, because there are a gazillion copies out there. Read it. It’s very easy and an interesting read, and it should give you a basic idea of what some of the most influential economists have had to say.
Whichever economists strike you as maybe having something particularly interesting to say, go look 'em up and have a read. Try google books first – you can usually find most of these guys for free there, since they are long dead and their copyrights expired. Also, econlib may have some of them.
I have read some Malthus (Principles of Population) and some Veblen (several books). Both were very interesting. If you like Austrian business cycle theory, check out Theory of Business Enterprise by Thorstein Veblen. Some of its content should surprise you (i.e., it will sound a bit familiar…)!
Neodoxy reccommened this book to me:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/0765604809/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books
http://www.garynorth.com/freebooks/sidefrm2.htm some economics books here
Sorry, Robert Heilbroner wrote The Worldly Philosophers, not Galbraith. And I even read the book…
Wow. Create an account to bump an almost three year old thread. That is something.
I must admit, I actually got through a good number of posts before I realized just how old this whole discussion was. Although I did find it odd Thedesolateone would come out of nowhere to respond.
That being said, I offered my take, similar to this one:
I tend to agree with Conza on this. As I said here,
I think libertarians don’t have a lot of interest in analyzing Marxist theory for the same reason few people find it useful to read science books from the 1840s. Sure it can be interesting to see what uninformed assumptions people are operating under, and it can give you a greater appreciation for your own understanding, but outside of a purely historical or anthropological interest, I see little value in it. Again I think time would be better spent testing your theory against reality, and spreading the ideas of liberty.
And here:
…as I said elsewhere, I liken the suggestion of learning the kind of modern macro taught in most classrooms to studying how to cut and splice physical celluloid film, or reading science books from the 1920s…so that you can “fully appreciate” how far we’ve come and “understand the foundations” or some other nonsense like that.
Yes, it is helpful to understand a lot of mainstream macro, if for no other reason than that’s what so much of the world’s policy is rationalized by (despite the nonsense that it is), and of course most micro is essential…but those are generally concepts that will be included in any Austrian analysis (e.g. law of supply and demand, law of unintended consequences, etc.) But to try to claim that someone should waste a considerable amount of time learning that the universe revolves around the Earth, just because that’s what a lot of other people believe…or that you should dedicate scores of hours schlepping through The General Theory and other incomprehensible tomes so that you might better learn the foundations behind the mathematization of government regulation and useless concepts like GDP and CPI, just because that’s the way economics is currently done by the mainstream, is rediculous.
There is something to be said with being at least somewhat familiar with the opposing side’s view…but I’m not about to dedicate any time reading The Flat Earth Society handbook.
Gene Callahan linked to this thread on his blog. I thought I had a good answer for him so I went to the trouble to go through the rigamarole to post it. Didn’t realize the thread was three years old. Oh well.
BTW – economics isn’t science. Also BTW, I am a scientist, and I have read at least one 100+ year old ‘science book’ and found it interesting. I learned a lot from it. It isn’t always about learning the newest fashion in the field or whatever is ‘state of the art.’ It can just be about personal growth or even just idle curiosity. Sometimes the old ways of seeing things can help in understanding the new – and sometimes, even, the old arguments were never properly refuted or even addressed, they just became unfashionable.
I should think a frequenter of Mises.org would understand something like that.
Do tell us what economics actually is, oh wise scientist.
Good for you?
Luckily for you, in this case you’d be right.
Science is a word pregnant with meanings.
What is “science?” It seems like a stupid and mudane question but it is really necessary to define it.
Eventually it becomes pointless. As soon as we realize economics is the search for truth in how human beings economize scarce resources, the rest is bunk. It doesn’t matter whether it’s science or not - it’s the search for truth.
I would still argue that it’s science 
Well I can see problems with that definition because it is so ambiguous. I mean is anyone out there specifically looking for non-truth?
This is pure gibberish but I guess it would be something that seeks non-truth. I do not know though. It seems so flippant that it is not meant to be taken seriously in which case, why should it be used as a serious example.
Here is my current reading list. My goal is to do about four books from each school (titles already read in bold):
Austrian
- Hazlitt: Economics in One Lesson
- Mises: Human Action
- Bohm-Bawerk: Karl Marx and the Close of His System
- Hayek: Prices and Production (or maybe something by Lachmann instead)
Classical
- Smith: The Wealth of Nations
- Ricardo: Principles of Political Economy
- ? (Malthus? Say?)
Keynesian
- Keynes: The General Theory
- Keen: Debunking Economics
- Kalecki: Essays in the Theory of Economic Fluctuations
- Robinson: The Accumulation of Capital
Marxian
- Marx: Capital (currently reading Vol. 3)
- Marx: Grundrisse
- Bukharin: Economic Theory of the Leisure Class
- Mattick: Marx and Keynes
Neoclassical
- Walras: Elements of Pure Economics
- Marshall: Principles of Economics
- Samuelson: Foundations of Economic Analysis
- Friedman: A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960
Other
- Schumpeter: ?
- Veblen: Theory of the Leisure Class
- Sraffa: Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities
- Proudhon: The Philosophy of Poverty
- George: Progress and Poverty
- Something from behavioral economics?
Bukharin was not a Marxian.
Yes, economics is surely ‘a science.’ So is sociology, history, and many other subjects which people do not usually refer to as science simply using the word in its common usage. Generally, when people refer to ‘science,’ they mean the physical sciences.
The neat thing about subjects like economics, philosophy, math and other such ‘sciences’ is that pretty much all the tools needed to investigate them in a thorough manner have always been around – which is not true for the physical sciences like physics, chemistry, and biology. There is simply nothing in the investigation of economics to compare to nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy or the Hubble space telescope.
So, the ideas of these other sciences are quite mature and have been relatively well developed, in some cases for a very long time. You can read a two-hundred year old book on economics or a two thousand year old book on philosophy, and the ideas you will find there are still relevant. It is therefore really kind of stupid to compare them with a silly analogy saying ‘ergo, old economics books are irrelevant.’ Even older writings in the physical sciences are useful to modern scientists, though not nearly to the same degree. There is no cause or reason to be disdainful of old thoughts, just because they are old. There is still much to learn from them, and only very modern people have decided that nobody before their own generation knew anything worth investigating. This is a very childish attitude.
If you ever decide to read some ‘old books,’ you will find that different ages show different ‘attitudes.’ Austrian economics is very much a 19th century ‘science’ in that aspect – and rightly so, in my opinion. There was more sense about such things in those times.