Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics
by Henry Hazlitt
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Book Summary Information
Author: Henry HazlittBrand: Random House
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1988-12-14
ISBN: 0517548232
Number of pages: 218
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780517548233
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics
Book Review: The only lesson the average person will ever need
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the easiest book that the average person can use to grasp economics, and in particular, the economics of all groups of people over an extended time period - ie: government policies.
The book is a single, simple, practical example, followed by a series of examples of how governments break with the lesson and the outcome of doing so. It is a simple lesson, followed by simple examples, for people who have no experience with economics, or those who find the mathematical approach in college either overwhelming or irrelevant.
For the average person, there may not need to be much else one needs to consider when weighing matters of import as a voter.
Some of the reviews that are negative seem to express a dissatisfaction with the structure of the argument as being polemic. But, this is either nonsensical or a misunderstanding. When one wishes to illustrate the impact of a single idea, and the consequences of abusing it, and to do so on a vast scale, against those things which we assume daily to be successful, then one can choose to be Adam Smith, and drag the reader through tortuous detail with which he is unfamiliar, or one can paint broad debates, with which one is quite familiar, and which can be applied to one's daily experiences.
This is simply the strategy one uses to communicate such ideas to a population that requests such an approach. It is not that such ideas cannot be conveyed through more detailed means, or that such a thing has not been done by other authors elsewhere, such as Hayek, Mises and Schumpater.
For those on the left, who are in a long term campaign to destroy individual property rights, and those who deny that there is a necessary ignorance in individuals, groups or institutions, in a complex division of knoweldge, production and labor, this entire line of thinking appears either faulty or disingenuous. But it is not only honest, but true.
For those that think government policy over the past 100 years has been successful, it has been successful in the same way that an inheritance given to a college student, allows the student to spend down the work of his predecessors. Money is not the only capital that must be earned and produced, so is knowledge and especially that knowledge which one cannot gain of one's own accord, but only through the experience of those who came before him. In particular, his family and culture.
It took thousands of years to develop the capital-store of knowledge in European civilization, of which we are a part, and this knowledge resides in very simple ideas that we are surrounded by every day. This knowledge is a set of principles by which we can exist and prosper in an ever-expanding division of knowledge and labor, producing more and more complex goods and services in a larger and larger population, most of whom do not know each other, and who may not even know the end consumer, or what use their goods are put to or why. In a world of this complexity, we are necessarily ignorant, we must face an uncertain and ever changing future.
It is expressly NOT a community of similar people all of whom know each other and share equally in production and it's results - which is the philosophy of a village or tribe. It is a simple primitive economic strategy for use by those who know little, and have few options.
This evolution is the process of making peasants into princes. It is the process of transforming primitive social capitalism, which involves economic units of villages and families -- who do the same thing repeatedly and are certain of it, into modern western capitalism which involves economic units of families and individuals -- who do different things all the time, and are uncertain of everything. It makes all men into entrepreneurs. And in doing so, makes all men service all others, even if he does not know them.
No man who has risen from poverty by building a business through discipline and hard work in the productive economy (versus the political, religious or academic economy - which are consumptive) and who would have his childen do the same, does so without learning this lesson.
When a government prints money or redistributes money, it interferes with the process by which the generations in the population learn those habits traditions, ethics and behaviors that allowed them to raise from one economic strata in the division of knowledge and labor, into another. A loan to start a business is one thing, for it is the same as financing an education. A gift to make your life easier is something else altogether. It is giving a man a fish, not teaching him how to.
This process works from the opposite direction as well. Even charity, which was the material obligation of those who were wealthy before government interference in the economy, and the traditional obligations and social pressure for the wealthy has been eroded.
In the act of redistribution, the goverment indirectly manufactures economic ignorance in it's populace. Hazlitt does not say this directly, but he still says it.
Our economy fell apart in the 1960's and 1970's, with what in the future will be called a great depression of the 1970's. It has been wealthy enough to tolerate this behavior since the 1980's, largely because of technological innovation and the prosperity that came from the competitive need to adopt it. But our position in the world is changing. European redistribution of wealth and social programs is failing now, and will of demographic necessity fail in the next two decades. It will fail here as well. Why such ponzi scheme's are comprehensible to the investment community, and not to the body politic will be a question to answer for sociologists for years to come.
The peasants need to develop trust in one another, need to earn that trust in one another. They need to become comfortable with an uncertain future where they cannot understand all that happens in the vast universe of human cooperation, and to think longer term than their traditions tell them. And they must save. Because the future is uncertain in either case, and the repetitive certainty of the peasant philosophy was always an illusion. The had little to learn and learned little. There was little change and they changed little. They knew those close to them and knew others little. People starved. They died in ignorance and poverty. In a division of knowledge and labor, everything is so cheap, and increasingly so, that they instead, prosper and populations increase accordingly. And the price we all pay for this luxury is constant change, constant learning, and psychological uncertainty.
There are means by which such inter-generational economic knoweldge can be imparted to a population, and by which the people can be compelled to adopt it despite the fact that they do not understand it. One can use religion and social ostricization as did the calvinist protestants and european jews, one can use ideological government by way of force and violence, as did the communists, socialists and facists. These methods remove choice from the individual and prescribe how we should act. But one can also achieve this end by using property rights alone, and a judiciary who does not prescribe anything at all, but only resolves differences in conflict over property, and nothing else is necessary. No politicians, prophets, intellectuals, sages. The population learns to serve on another without direction and prescription. This is the lesson.
This is a conflict between princes and peasants. It is between property rights, individual responsibility for himself, savings, entrepreneurship and courage in the face of uncertainty, versus communal property, perpetual dependence, poverty and the comfort in the certainty of that future.
We can all be princes of countries of one, or peasants in a country of billions. Hazlitt tells us the one lesson we need to know if we would all be princes.
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Summary of Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics
A million copy seller, Henry Hazlitt?s Economics in One Lesson is a classic economic primer. But it is also much more, having become a fundamental influence on modern ?libertarian? economics of the type espoused by Ron Paul and others.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.
Many current 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.
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