Hacker News Reader

Comment by jimmytidey | Hacker News Reader

This is a real text book.

It is written by a wide range of eminent economists from world leading institutions, with the aim of instructing students.

A book created by experts in their field with a view to teaching students about the issues that concern them most is not anti intellectual.

I can only assume wrongly believe yourself to be in possession of an objective understanding of economics which disagrees with this text book (which you've read, right?).

Sorry to go so mad on this one, but it really is just a different view on economics. It ought to be welcomed.

View on HN

This book is definitely created with an agenda and trying to force a point of view to lead readers to be left wing economists. It seems more like an indoctrination attempt especially when you read the leading questions asked in the text.

>a point of view to lead readers to be left wing economists.

Oh come on, that's ridiculous. If you think Keynesianism is "left wing economics", you've got another thing coming: Marxian economics has been excluded from the discourse such that almost every university will describe its department as neoclassical or Keynesian. And this book isn't even a Marxist one. It contains no seething critiques of the capitalist mode of production. The beginning to left wing economics is Marx, even if you don't accept his theory of value. This text is not such a beginning.

If you want an opinionated guide to capitalism, read Capital Vol. I by Karl Marx (1867)[0].

[0] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/

Yeah well if you got your economics from Hazlitt I could see how that would be the case. Perhaps the point is that a lot of the current economics 101 books are created with an agenda and force a false view of the world which indoctrinate their readers and this book is finally breaking out of that mold. That something makes you uncomfortable does not make it wrong.

What about all the other economics text books that are absurdly naive about markets' ability to efficiently allocate resources?

Aren't they an attempt indoctrinate students to become right wing economists?

You say that like other textbooks aren't.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com