Reviews for Review of Austrian Economics, Vol. 3 - Murray Newton N. Rothbard - Hardcover

The average rating for Review of Austrian Economics, Vol. 3 - Murray Newton N. Rothbard - Hardcover based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-03-21 00:00:00 Todd Burrow I remember reading several articles/essays/excerpts from Thomas Sowell in undergrad. He has the great ability of making economics accessible though his clear writing style and simple presentation of ideas. However, in this particular book, it was just that - the simplicity - that bothered me. The whole premise of the book is that we should "think beyond stage one" and consider long-term effects of policies and practices. Sowell describes the (usually unintended) negative effects of certain policies such as insurance, government-run health care, and anti-discrimination laws. Unarguably, there have been downsides to all of these. People abuse health care and use it differently when they are not the ones directly paying for it. As mentioned by a friend last week, instead of expanding female sports some colleges eliminated certain male sports as a result of Title IX. So, while Sowell was able to shed light on these issues, he writes from an extreme laissez-faire perspective and the one-sidedness of the arguments often seem to simple. Rarely (in this book) does he expand discussions of cost and benefits beyond monetary to include health, social capital, fulfillment, etc. Nor does he always elaborate on the full issue. For instance, on the discussion of the effects of land use on housing prices, he mentions a very limited application of land use regulation that is often touted in the realm of planning as ineffective. I agree with Sowell in that exclusionary land use policies or residential zoning that requires half acre lots is counterproductive. However, he doesn't mention land use policies that attempt to integrate transportation with land use, create mixed-use communities, and provide certainty to developers. His aversion to open space regulations does not take into account the costs and benefits of the results either. While housing is limited in NYC, could you imagine NYC without Central Park? Privately owned public spaces have been produced in a variety of ways, through mandates and incentives. Rather than blasting all of these initiatives, why not compare? Sowell has written numerous books and articles, so perhaps he has in other writings. I will definitely continue to read Sowell, but I think it would be unwise to only read from this perspective.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-07-05 00:00:00 Mercedes Perez Thomas Sowell's "Applied Economics" ought to be required reading in every high school and college economics, politics, and English courses. While Mr. Sowell is Ph.D economist and fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford, his ideas are useful even to the non-economist. As a society, we tend to be taken in too easily by people who make irrational arguments that sound good at first glance but produce miserable results since no one thought about the next step. Often times, too many words are politically popular but are actually quite harmful. Such words include: "living wage," "consumer protection," "rent control," etcetera. When these ideas are actually applied in practice, the results rarely meet the rhetoric over the long-run. Politicians only tend to care about what will get them re-elected, and as a result, few of them have an incentive to think about what will happen 10 years from now. As a result, many often escape the blame since the poor results will be far removed from their disasterous policies. This, of course, could easily be construed as a problem with democracy, but instead, my feeling is that it is a problem with our educational system. If our educational system actually educated citizens to think deeply about what would be the consequences of certain policies, perhaps the heated irrational logic emanating from certain politicians would cease. Perhaps such rhetoric would continue to work in irrational hotspots such as Berkeley, but rare for it to work elsewhere. One could only hope. This book is a must read for everyone -- regardless of who you are.