I loved the honesty of this comment on this bog:
I’m not an economist but I’m trying to learn what I can. All of you who want to make a better world have to get out there, start treading around the Skeptics in The pub meetings, community groups interested in the environment, charities, anywhere and everywhere, bringing on the young graduates in economics and politics with you as you go. I want to see a loud counter argument to what has been going on, to what has been damaging my future, I want to be educated as a voter, as a citizen. But I’m not getting it on the internet, I’m not getting it on the TV or the radio and I’m not in London. You guys need to get out, across the country and start talking.
The scientists are getting out there, communicating with the public and you all need to do the same.
Please!
I promise — that’s what I intend to do.
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The comment made was, in my opinion, gratuitously offensive to another commentator
Communication. With so much of the media in the control of the “enemy” and the difficulty of explaining to people what is going so badly wrong it is a very long haul. There is a great deal on the internet but it takes some looking for and a lot of time etc. that few people have. What is even more difficult is that many ordinary people cannot believe the scale of robbery and fraud that is endemic around them.
I’m an accountant with a rudementary understanding of economics and a healthy respect for the scientific method and clear logical thinking.
To me much of economics appears to be an appeasement of, and justification for the rich and powerful – plenty of smoke and mirrors to mask the fact that the rich are hell-bent on looting the wider public.
I would like to read a book that teaches me about economics so that I can understand it better and spot the dodgy logic being generally spoon-fed to the public.
Given that the system as it stands requires the regular indocrination and lack of real critical appraisal, I am loath just to pick up an undergrad text book – I’m just not smart enough to avoid being brainwashed on my own (realy – who is?)
Any suggestions, Richard?
@Online Accountant
Try Debunking Economics by Steve Keen
If you’re not an economist it will be heavy going
But it’s the best there is
I will get right on it
Does it answer questios like why are we obsessed with growth, and is it even possible to continually grow, given the finite nature of the world in which we live
I made the mistake of reading Freakonomics – which should really be renamed – “Isn’t it amazing the stuff I’ve applied statistics to…” er not really…
Interesting, but I learn’t nothing
@Online Accountant
Trouble is that was economics as economics
Keen shows why economists abuse stats 0- in particular because the assume very very small numbers are the same as zero – which is absurdly mathematically wrong
If you’re not looking at that sort of issue then you really need to delve elsewhere – and there is a poverty of stuff out there
The book that first ever turned me on to this (33 years ago) was E J Mishan The Costs of Economic Growth and of course Small is Beautiful by Schumacher
For lots of web data – see the New Economics Foundation web site
There’s lots of reading there. They carry the Schumacher tradition onwards
JK Galbraith is always good value.
“Does it answer questios like why are we obsessed with growth, and is it even possible to continually grow, given the finite nature of the world in which we live”
Herman Daly might be your man
Freakonomics – ghastly show boating guff from the extracts I’ve seen.