It's an impressive book with an intended audience of no one. If you've read Thomas Sowell's work, you are familiar with the content. It's too advanced for an introduction into economics, so you can't give it to beginners. However, as a complete work of Sowell's entire economic thought, it's worthy of appreciation. Still, I doubt I can recommend this to anyone.
"Dry empirical questions are seldom as exciting as political crusades or ringing moral pronouncements, but empirical questions are questions that must be asked if we are truly interested in the well-being of others rather than in exciting our sense of moral superiority for ourselves. Perhaps the most important distinction is between what sounds good and what works. The former may be sufficient for purposes of politics of moral preening but not for the economic advancement of people in general or the poor in particular."
Thomas Sowell is obviously conservative (in at least many ways that we use that word in the US today) and he obviously believes that economic thinking is incredibly important for those interested in the betterment of humans as individuals and humanity as a whole.
As much as I enjoy Freakonomics-like pop economics books, I think this gave me much more to think about.
If you're not …
"Dry empirical questions are seldom as exciting as political crusades or ringing moral pronouncements, but empirical questions are questions that must be asked if we are truly interested in the well-being of others rather than in exciting our sense of moral superiority for ourselves. Perhaps the most important distinction is between what sounds good and what works. The former may be sufficient for purposes of politics of moral preening but not for the economic advancement of people in general or the poor in particular."
Thomas Sowell is obviously conservative (in at least many ways that we use that word in the US today) and he obviously believes that economic thinking is incredibly important for those interested in the betterment of humans as individuals and humanity as a whole.
As much as I enjoy Freakonomics-like pop economics books, I think this gave me much more to think about.
If you're not accustomed to delving into economic conservatism, I highly recommend reading this book and I also highly recommend pacing yourself. Sowell doesn't hide his personal feelings and if you disagree with some of his judgements, try to make sure you don't entirely throw out his line of reasoning along with his conclusions.
If you're a US-style conservative, I highly recommend reading this book as well. This book contains arguments for free trade, open immigration, and creating cultural melting pots. It also includes arguments against NIMBYism.
If you have a big interest in doing right by society as a whole (rather than by your family/nation/tribe/etc) but a very limited background in economics, I think you'll find many of the thought experiments in this book eye-opening.
This had been on my to-read list for years and I'm glad I finally read it.
Useful read. I no longer believe those who talk about things selling "below their real value" or about
how terrible it is for the United States to be "a debtor nation". I'm skeptic about government programs to make this or that "affordable". Same skepticism goes for statements and statistics about "the rich" and "the poor". Same with notion of "greed" of capitalists. It's not mysterious why so many places with rent control laws also have housing shortages.
Writing is mediocre, ideas are good. First chapters are especially terrible, I had a feeling that there was no editing. Most of the examples are repetitive, it was pretty annoying. I wish it was more straight (maybe even cynical). But it's written in a simple language, that's a plus.
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