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Comment by dcgudeman | Hacker News Reader

Positioning this "course" like an objective treatment of economics is the kind of subtle academic dishonesty that breeds anti-intellectualism. Most people recognize the difference between this and a real textbook even if they can't articulate it. They just end up distrusting academics in general which hurts us all.

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This is a real text book.

It is written by a wide range of eminent economists from world leading institutions, with the aim of instructing students.

A book created by experts in their field with a view to teaching students about the issues that concern them most is not anti intellectual.

I can only assume wrongly believe yourself to be in possession of an objective understanding of economics which disagrees with this text book (which you've read, right?).

Sorry to go so mad on this one, but it really is just a different view on economics. It ought to be welcomed.

This book is definitely created with an agenda and trying to force a point of view to lead readers to be left wing economists. It seems more like an indoctrination attempt especially when you read the leading questions asked in the text.

What about all the other economics text books that are absurdly naive about markets' ability to efficiently allocate resources?

Aren't they an attempt indoctrinate students to become right wing economists?

Yeah well if you got your economics from Hazlitt I could see how that would be the case. Perhaps the point is that a lot of the current economics 101 books are created with an agenda and force a false view of the world which indoctrinate their readers and this book is finally breaking out of that mold. That something makes you uncomfortable does not make it wrong.

You say that like other textbooks aren't.

>a point of view to lead readers to be left wing economists.

Oh come on, that's ridiculous. If you think Keynesianism is "left wing economics", you've got another thing coming: Marxian economics has been excluded from the discourse such that almost every university will describe its department as neoclassical or Keynesian. And this book isn't even a Marxist one. It contains no seething critiques of the capitalist mode of production. The beginning to left wing economics is Marx, even if you don't accept his theory of value. This text is not such a beginning.

If you want an opinionated guide to capitalism, read Capital Vol. I by Karl Marx (1867)[0].

[0] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/

Positioning this "comment" as an objective review of the text is the kind of subtle dishonesty that breeds anti-HN sentiment. Most people recognize the difference between this comment and a real criticism even if they can't articulate it. They just end up distrusting commentary on HN which hurts us all...

I agree. "Dishonest" might be too strong, but economics is too complex to present without bringing in political assumptions. The following two links may provide a useful alternative perspective:

https://keithweinereconomics.com/2013/12/28/the-theory-of-in...

http://www.economicprinciples.org/wp-content/uploads/ray_dal...

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