Reviews for Economics of Defence

The average rating for Economics of Defence based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-11-24 00:00:00 Shona Lingelbach One of the things that frustrates me is books (or magazines, or TV shows) that pretend to be unbiased, but are clearly anything but. If you're writing to convey the basic tenets of a technical or scientific subject, you should probably leave your politics behind and simply try to be informative and perhaps entertaining. Granted, economics is a social science, and there is room for interpretation, but William Boyes has allowed such strong political opinions to roll in to the text that there are some absolute howlers in here. Try these on for size: - "The poorest nations are poor because they have carried out the wrong strategies." - "Unfettered markets result in resources being allocated to their highest valued uses and consumers getting what they want and are willing to pay for." - "Teach what is necessary for free markets and capitalism to exist and endure and you have taught ethics." In the name of being "fair and balanced" I suppose, Boyes provides various points of view on certain economic topics. For example, he looks at both side of the response to the 2008 financial crisis, comparing the Keynesian economic response the US government took to his own, preferred, Austrian economist school of thought. But his representation of the opposing point of view comes perilously close to being a straw-man. And he does the same with his attitude toward government investment for core research thus picking "winners and losers," deriding the practice as a unnecessary manipulation of the free market. He is clearly a free-market fundamentalist, and his condescending attitude toward any other different or more nuanced point of view is clear on nearly every page. It's a shame really, because Boyes writes pretty well and his ability to interpret economic principles to the management of the firm is decent. But I couldn't get past his blatant in-your-face political sneering. If you can stomach his smug superiority, you can probably get more out of this book than I did.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-09-01 00:00:00 David Jankovsky This is a handy book for home decorating. It's organized by the type of decorating one wants to accomplish, be it window treatments or re-covering a couch. Several different methods of window treatments are inspiring.