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<!-- you can have any number of categories here --> [[Category:r4ndpaulsbrilloballs (pseudonym)]] [[Category:Economics in One Lesson]] <!-- 1 URL must be followed by >= 0 Other URL and Old URL and 1 End URL.--> {{URL | url = https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughLibertarianSpam/comments/5wztsg/those_libertarians_sure_are_great_at_debating/deexn7r/}} <!-- {{Other URL | url = }} --> <!-- {{Old URL | url = }} --> {{End URL}} {{DES | des = "Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson," has almost nothing to do with economics, the study of how to efficiently allocate scarce resources. It's basically a kid's book for indoctrination into libertaryanism." | show=}} <!-- insert wiki page text here --> <!-- DPL has problems with categories that have a single quote in them. Use these explicit workarounds. --> <!-- otherwise, we would use {{Links}} and {{Quotes}} --> {{List|title=Capsule summary of Economics in One Lesson|links=true}} {{Quotations|title=Capsule summary of Economics in One Lesson|quotes=true}} {{Text | Besides which, Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson," has almost nothing to do with economics, the study of how to efficiently allocate scarce resources. It's basically a kid's book for indoctrination into libertaryanism. It begins by sucking off Von Mises and Bastiat. Then it proceeds to lump together and make fun of everyone from Marx to Keynes without providing any evidence by asserting that in the long-run, sinners will be punished. And it does this simply by using aw-shucks, hee-haw, down-home, southern fried wisdom. I mean, he literally does this: Doesn't everybody know, in his personal life, that there are all sorts of indulgences delightful at the moment but disastrous in the end? Doesn't every little boy know that if he eats enough candy he will get sick? Doesn't the fellow who gets drunk know that he will wake up next morning with a ghastly stomach and a horrible head? Doesn't the dipsomaniac know that he is ruining his liver and shortening his life? Doesn't the Don Juan know that he is letting himself in for every sort of risk, from blackmail to disease? Finally, to bring it to the economic though still personal realm, do not the idler and the spendthrift know, even in the midst of their glorious fling, that they are heading for a future of debt and poverty? And, by merely asserting that sinning is bad, and that spending money rather than saving is sinning, Hazlitt comes to the BRILLIANT conclusion that austerity is always good in the long run, if you wait long enough. Spending might help in the short run, he agrees. But just you wait. Sooner or later God will cut you down... Then the stupid excuse for a novel (there are no facts or figures or numbers in it), moves forward. You know what Chapter 3 introduces? Chapter 3 introduces Broken Windows theory, or, why it's a good idea to punish black people for petty bullshit. Awesome, huh? Chapter 4, asserts that Say's Law holds true. But he doesn't call it that. He just insists that supply creates demand and that's all that matters. It doesn't. But whatever. Chapter 5 bashes government, government spending, and public works spending especially. Fuck your infrastructure. Who needs that? You notice how far away we are from talking about economics at this point? I did. Chapter 6 is about how government borrowing is bad, government lending is bad, government-backed loans are bad, but the same thing in the private sector is fine, because it doesn't have the word "government" on it or something. Chapter 7 insists machines and technology cannot create unemployment--funnily enough, not many libertaryans these days seem to be so hot on that idea. I think now they get little aryan boners when they think of unemployment lines, so they like the idea. Anyways... Chapter 8 shits on unions and explains why they are the worst things in the world. It also shits on overtime and the minimum wage. Everything is better when workers work more for less with less power. Chapter 9 explains that if you fire all the military and government workers, they'll automatically find jobs in the private sector anyways. Chapter 10 explains how even if Chapter 9 is wrong, full employment is bad and unemployment is good and healthy. Chapter 11 shits on tariffs. Chapter 12 shits on export-oriented growth, (even though it obviously empirically has been the best move over the past century, look at China or Japan or South Korea or Taiwan, etc). Chapter 13 bitches about agricultural price supports and how they'd pay to get farmers to leave plots fallow so they wouldn't deplete the soil, etc. Chapter 14 is about how you should let big companies and big industries go bust and provide no help, even temporary, or adjustment assistance or anything. Just fuck 'em. What Market wants, Market gets, Market help us all! Chapter 15 basically baldly asserts that the strong efficient market hypothesis is true and prices can never be wrong, and markets can never fail, unless that pesky government gets in the way. Chapter 16 says there should be no government interest in stabilizing commodity prices. No need to have a strategic reserve or release some to prevent the worst of heavy volatility and price swings. Just make people deal with it. They can't afford it? Fuck 'em. Let 'em freeze. Chapter 17 explains why nothing ever under any circumstances whatsoever should be subsidized, no matter how good the ROI or social benefit is on it. Chapter 18 goes back to minimum wage and really shits all over it EVEN MORE. Because you really have to understand how evil that one is. Chapter 19 goes back to unions and really shits all over them EVEN MORE. Because unions are the root of all evil. Chapter 20 is literally about how it's stupid to pay your workers enough money such that they can go out and buy the product you're building. In fact, it dismisses the idea of a just or living wage at all and insists the best price you can pay for labor is the lowest possible price. Chapter 21 is about how profits are good, how little profits there are, and about how more money should go to profit than wages compared to now (1930s). Chapter 22 is about how inflation is the worst thing in the universe and always and everywhere at all times absolutely awful. Chapter 23 insists there is "an assault on saving." Probably has something to do with the Bowling Green Massacre, as far as I can figure. Chapter 24 is a restatement of the previous chapters, half of which were restatements of earlier chapters. At this point it's more like chanting extreme right wing dogma from an Episcopalian Hymnal than reading a book about economics. But did I mention that it finally introduces "The Forgotten Man" from "The Silent Majority?" It does so in the most convoluted, pseudo-scientific way possible, but here it goes: As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine what C shall do for X or, in the better case, what A, B and C shall do for X. .. . What I want to do is to look up C. .. . I call him the Forgotten Man. . . . He is the man who never is thought of. He is the victim of the reformer, social speculator and philanthropist, and I hope to show you before I get through that he deserves your notice both for his character and for the many burdens which are laid upon him. }}
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