Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface: Doctor Bob's Third Law
- Introduction: Economic Ignorance
- Chapter 1 Fakeconomics and Economics
- Chapter 2 Market Worship
- Chapter 3 Finance and Criminality
- Chapter 4 Selling Market Myths
- Chapter 5 Riches, “Sovereignty” and “Free Trade”
- Chapter 6 Lies about Government
- Chapter 7 Deficit Disorders and Debt Delirium
- Chapter 8 Governments Cause Inflation?
- Chapter 9 Institutionalized Misery: Austerity in Practice
- Chapter 10 Economics of the 99%
- Notes
- Index
Chapter 1 - Fakeconomics and Economics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface: Doctor Bob's Third Law
- Introduction: Economic Ignorance
- Chapter 1 Fakeconomics and Economics
- Chapter 2 Market Worship
- Chapter 3 Finance and Criminality
- Chapter 4 Selling Market Myths
- Chapter 5 Riches, “Sovereignty” and “Free Trade”
- Chapter 6 Lies about Government
- Chapter 7 Deficit Disorders and Debt Delirium
- Chapter 8 Governments Cause Inflation?
- Chapter 9 Institutionalized Misery: Austerity in Practice
- Chapter 10 Economics of the 99%
- Notes
- Index
Summary
This paper, then, is a serious analysis of a ridiculous subject, which is of course the opposite of what is usual in economics.
(Paul Krugman)Do not be alarmed by simplification, complexity is often a device for claiming sophistication, or for evading simple truths.
(John Kenneth Galbraith)Idolatry of Competition
From tiny acorns great oaks grow. In a case of dogma imitating nature, from low and banal theory mainstream economists ascend to extreme ideological heights. With superficial and simplistic propositions the economics mainstream constructs a great and complex ideological edifice from which it issues oracle-like judgments over the affairs of humankind (see Box: The Construction of Nonsense). The employment, inflation and antigovernment parables of the current mainstream derive from a shortlist of putatively incontestable propositions which can be found in almost all introductory, and many advanced, textbooks:
Desires and preferences are unique to each person;
on the basis of these desires and preferences people enter into exchanges of their free will, seeking to satisfy themselves through market exchanges with other people;
these market activities, including the exchange of a person's capacity to work, are to obtain the income to buy the goods and services dictated by the person's desires and preferences;
many people seeking simultaneously to buy and sell generates competition; and this competition ensures that people buy and sell at prices that are socially beneficial;
action by any collective or individual authority, private or public, that restricts the potential for people to buy and sell reduces the social benefits generated by markets;[…]
- Type
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- Economics of the 1%How Mainstream Economics Serves the Rich, Obscures Reality and Distorts Policy, pp. 1 - 18Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2014