Western society in a nutshell
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Sorry, it's my fault for interjecting in an ongoing thread, but I wasn't trying to make a broader argument. I just saw his name and wanted to comment on his book, since I've been reading it.
Less impressed than I expected to be. He's taught me one or two things and helped clarify some others, but mostly he's told me a lot of what I already know, and in the most retardedly ineloquent, wall-of-text way possible.
I haven't read the whole thing yet but at the very least it should be half the length that it is. He needs an editor even more badly than Ayn Rand did.
I take issue with the notion that he's impressive just by virtue of being an economist. There are lots of retarded economists. I don't think he's one of them - his retardation lies in his method of communication.
I was mocking your criticism because it's so ridiculously flawed that I don't believe you read the book, which one was it again? He's literally a prolific writer, so there are a litany of economic texts that he's written. More-over, some of his books include sections of other books he's previously written to save time, because he explained the issue well enough in those. "Black Rednecks And White Liberals" is comprised of 3 separate books, and some additional original work to simplify the text.
This also goes to the writing style on his books. Different books are meant for different audiences at different reading levels. I would never call him ineloquent, but in the simpler books he will go into detail about how simple concepts work. And in more complicated books he will make multiple examples or case studies to explain larger concepts.
Basic Economics, fifth edition. I haven't read the book, I'm in the process of reading it.
That justifies the length, but it doesn't justify the presentation. If he's trying to get simple information across, one endless narrative wall of text is the worst way to do it. I don't know exactly when it happened (I have reference books from the 1800s that are the same) but that problem was solved a long time ago.
It's essentially a For Dummies book that doesn't understand why they use a helpful, distinct format. This is just an endless ramble (often very preachy) with some facts sprinkled in. You want to go back and revisit a point he made a while ago? Well, where the fuck was it? Which page was it? It's buried somewhere in a dry, barely formatted wall of text that constantly repeats itself. Damn, you wanted to reflect on that information again in light of this new context but you'll be searching for 15 minutes and still probably won't find it.
That's partly on me for expecting a useful reference book instead of The Economist Manifesto but it doesn't change how poorly written it is.
It would actually be much better with the graphs and equations. I don't know how anybody can think 704 pages of wall-to-wall text is a good way to present information.
It's worse than John Galt's speech. In fact, it basically IS John Galt's speech, but less passionate and eight times as long.