Book Review

Book Review
Author: John F. Tomer
Publisher:
Total Pages: 10
Release: 2018
Genre:
ISBN:

Gerald Cory's book entitled Delusions of Economics and the Way Forward not only summarizes a lifetime of his research but adds significantly to that body. Cory's research focuses on the human brain, in particular its physiology, evolution, and implications for human behavior. His research also focuses on dual motive theory and economics' flawed conception of human motivation. Cory draws heavily on the pioneering research of Paul MacLean, in particular MacLean's understanding of the three phases of the long evolution of the human brain. Cory also draws on MacLean's recognition that humans' brains have a tri-level structure involving reptilian, mammalian, and neomammalian modules.As Cory emphasizes, MacLean's findings on brain physiology strongly indicate that humans have two core motivations: empathy deriving from our mammalian brain and self-interest deriving from our reptilian brain. This is the heart of Cory's version of dual motive theory, which contrasts sharply with the one core motive, self-interest, in neoclassical economic theory. Moreover, this is a view that is understandably hard for economists, especially mainstream economists, to accept.In this book, Cory makes it very clear that we need an economics that is integrated with biology instead of an economics based on and emulating mechanical Newtonian physics. Cory's hope is that the kind of dual motive economics he has outlined can lead us down a new path toward a better society with a better functioning economy.

Economics in One Lesson

Economics in One Lesson
Author: Henry Hazlitt
Publisher: Crown Currency
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2010-08-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0307760626

With over a million copies sold, Economics in One Lesson is an essential guide to the basics of economic theory. A fundamental influence on modern libertarianism, Hazlitt defends capitalism and the free market from economic myths that persist to this day. Considered among the leading economic thinkers of the “Austrian School,” which includes Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich (F.A.) Hayek, and others, Henry Hazlitt (1894-1993), was a libertarian philosopher, an economist, and a journalist. He was the founding vice-president of the Foundation for Economic Education and an early editor of The Freeman magazine, an influential libertarian publication. Hazlitt wrote Economics in One Lesson, his seminal work, in 1946. Concise and instructive, it is also deceptively prescient and far-reaching in its efforts to dissemble economic fallacies that are so prevalent they have almost become a new orthodoxy. Economic commentators across the political spectrum have credited Hazlitt with foreseeing the collapse of the global economy which occurred more than 50 years after the initial publication of Economics in One Lesson. Hazlitt’s focus on non-governmental solutions, strong — and strongly reasoned — anti-deficit position, and general emphasis on free markets, economic liberty of individuals, and the dangers of government intervention make Economics in One Lesson every bit as relevant and valuable today as it has been since publication.

Delusions of Power

Delusions of Power
Author: Robert Higgs
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781598130454

In Delusions of Power, economic historian Robert Higgs calls into question our ingrained notions concerning the nature of the state and democracy. Higgs uproots the foundation stone upon which the state's powers have rested and grown unchecked by the public. Beginning with the Founding Fathers and moving forward, Higgs reassesses the world wars, the Great Depression and the New Deal, and the financial debacle that began in 2008 with the view of demonstrating Americans' loss of liberties. He brings together the crisis in policymaking; key political actors and events; and the impact of war on the economy and civil liberties. For Higgs, war, and the cost of it, has had a major impact of war on the economy and civil liberties. For Higgs, war, and the cost of it, has had a major impact on American life and freedom. Through reading Higg's work, one will gain a new understanding of the state's power, democracy, and the issues threatening the pursuit of liberty. Book jacket.

The Growth Delusion

The Growth Delusion
Author: David Pilling
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2019-01-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0525572511

A provocative critique of the pieties and fallacies of our obsession with economic growth We live in a society in which a priesthood of economists, wielding impenetrable mathematical formulas, set the framework for public debate. Ultimately, it is the perceived health of the economy which determines how much we can spend on our schools, highways, and defense; economists decide how much unemployment is acceptable and whether it is right to print money or bail out profligate banks. The backlash we are currently witnessing suggests that people are turning against the experts and their faulty understanding of our lives. Despite decades of steady economic growth, many citizens feel more pessimistic than ever, and are voting for candidates who voice undisguised contempt for the technocratic elite. For too long, economics has relied on a language which fails to resonate with people's actual experience, and we are now living with the consequences. In this powerful, incisive book, David Pilling reveals the hidden biases of economic orthodoxy and explores the alternatives to GDP, from measures of wealth, equality, and sustainability to measures of subjective wellbeing. Authoritative, provocative, and eye-opening, The Growth Delusion offers witty and unexpected insights into how our society can respond to the needs of real people instead of pursuing growth at any cost.

The History of Development

The History of Development
Author: Gilbert Rist
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2014-07-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1783600241

In this classic text, now in its fourth edition, Gilbert Rist provides a complete and powerful overview of what the idea of development has meant throughout history. He traces it from its origins in the Western view of history, through the early stages of the world system, the rise of US hegemony, and the supposed triumph of third-worldism, through to new concerns about the environment and globalization. In a new chapter on post-development models and ecological dimensions, written against a background of world crisis and ideological disarray, Rist considers possible ways forward and brings the book completely up to date. Throughout, he argues persuasively that development has been no more than a collective delusion, which in reality has resulted only in widening market relations, whatever the intentions of its advocates.

The Delusions of Economics

The Delusions of Economics
Author: Gilbert Rist
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2011-11-24
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 184813925X

In The Delusions of Economics, Gilbert Rist presents a radical critique of neoclassical economics from a social and historical perspective. Rather than enter into existing debates between different orthodoxies, Rist instead explores the circumstances that prevailed when economics was 'invented', and the resultant biases that helped forge the construction of economics as a 'science'. In doing so, Rist demonstrates how these various presuppositions are either obsolete or just plain wrong, and that traditional economics is largely based on irrational convictions that are difficult to debunk due to their 'religious' nature. As a result, we are prevented from properly understanding the world around us and dealing with the financial, environmental, and climatic crises that lie ahead. Provocative and original, this essential book provides incontrovertible proof that the construction of a new economic paradigm - pluralistic, ecologically compatible, grounded in reality - has now become a necessity.

False Dawn

False Dawn
Author: John Gray
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
Total Pages: 466
Release: 2010-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1459603214

powerful and prophetic challenge to globalization from a former partisan of the New Right. Hailed by Kirkus Reviews as both ''a convincing analysis of an international economy '' and a ''powerful challenge to economic orthodoxy, '' False Dawn shows that the attempt to impose the Anglo-American-style free market on the world will create a disaster, possibly on the scale of Soviet communism. Even America, the supposed flagship of the new civilization, risks moral and social disintegration as it loses ground to other cultures that have never forgotten that the market works best when it is embedded in society. John Gray, well known in the 1980s as an important conservative political thinker, whose writings were relied upon by Margaret Thatcher and the New Right in Britain, has concluded that the conservative agenda is no longer viable. In his examination of the ripple effects of the economic turmoil in Russia and Asia on our collective future, Gray provides one of the most passionate polemics against the utopia of the free market since Carlyle and Marx.

Debunking Economics

Debunking Economics
Author: Steve Keen
Publisher: Zed Books
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2001-07-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781856499927

What is the score card for economics at the start of the new millennium? While there are many different schools of economic thought, it is the neo-classical school, with its alleged understanding and simplistic advocacy of the market, that has become equated in the public mind with economics. This book shows that virtually every aspect of conventional neo-classical economics' thinking is intellectually unsound. Steve Keen draws on an impressive array of advanced critical thinking. He constitutes a profound critique of the principle concepts, theories, and methodologies of the mainstream discipline. Keen raises grave doubts about economics' pretensions to established scientific status and its reliability as a guide to understanding the real world of economic life and its policy-making.

The Economic Weapon

The Economic Weapon
Author: Nicholas Mulder
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2022
Genre: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS
ISBN: 0300259360

Tracing the history of economic sanctions from the blockades of World War I to the policing of colonial empires and the interwar confrontation with fascism, Nicholas Mulder combines political, economic, legal, and military history to reveal how a coercive wartime tool was adopted as an instrument of peacekeeping by the League of Nations.This timely study casts an overdue light on why sanctions are widely considered a form of war, and why their unintended consequences are so tremendous.