Customer Reviews

The Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Around halfway through this book, one of its two main characters asks the other, "Don't you think it's strange that in America, the country where the greatest economic revolution in history has taken place, the average citizen has no idea why we're richer?" Amazing question, and this book was written to give the average citizen an easy way to understand the main driver of our country's wealth. It succeeds masterfully.

The reason a book like this is necessary is that most people don't understand how a society or country becomes wealthier. As this book clearly demonstrates, most peoples' ideas on how to make citizens better off would be counter-productive, actually having the opposite effect.

Without dismissing the ideas and feelings of people who don't typically support free-market solutions to humanitarian challenges, Roberts makes a compelling and easy-to-understand case for the superiority of the free-market in achieving those goals. It's powerful, often counter-intuitive stuff. I believe that if our country is going to have a future as bright as its past, more people will need to be exposed to this type of thinking so they can vote for candidates who will make solid decisions regarding our economy and our future.

The thinking and explanations in this book are wonderful. It gets four stars rather than five because the fictional narrative is painfully stilted and hokey, but please don't let that stop you from reading this book. It will painlessly teach you things that can be very hard to learn. Besides, the hokey narratives are really part of Robert's charm.

Any voter who wants to become better at helping their country to become better off in the future should read this book to help them get a useful framework for evaluating the proposals of candidates. Highly recommended.

The Price of Everything is the story of Ramon Fernandez, a tennis prodigy about to graduate from Stanford and selected to give a commencement speech. At the beginning of the novel, an earthquake rocks the Bay Area and Fernandez and his girlfriend finish their dinner by candlelight and then head to Home Depot for some flashlights. But by the time they get there, they're sold out. So the couple drives out to Hayward, the nearest location of Big Box--which has plenty of stock but which has doubled its prices in the wake of the disaster. Fernandez picks up what he needs but is upset by the plight of a poor woman who didn't bring enough money for baby food and diapers ("How could she have known that Big Box would gouge her with doubled prices?") and ends up rallying a group of people in the parking lot.

Fernandez ends up getting a personalized economics seminar from the provost of the university, Ruth Lieber, a woman truly excited about teaching. And she, along with the ensuing events, changes both Fernandez's mind and his life.

Much of the novel is a one-on-one discussion about how price signals create a market more efficient than central planning could ever do, and Roberts is good at illustrating this difficult concept. There are many examples of how the same unplanned order arises in the natural world, both explicit and implicit--for example, a flock of birds with a common goal, or dancing couples in a nightclub. But it's not strictly a series of lectures. The story of a born teacher, full of passion about even her very last student, and a young man about to go out into the world, is also fully realized.

I wouldn't say this is a novel that should be read just for fun, unless you are as dorky as me and really think this stuff is fun. But if you've ever thought about picking up a book like Freakonomics and aren't so into nonfiction, or if you've read one of the recent pop economics books and want something more basic than the flashy examples often written about, this would be a great place to start.

With this book, Professor Roberts has firmly established himself as one of the top economic educators of our time (or any before us). Like the late Paul Heyne, Roberts has dedicated a career to advancing basic economic understanding. And like Heyne, he has done it with grace, sincerity and humility.

The Price of Everything is an economic page turner (imagine that!) - and a book that you will wish to read more than once. Roberts faces head on the many difficult questions and concerns of people suspicious of economics and commercial society -- corporate greed, price gouging, rapid progress, inequality. In addressing these and other issues, he demonstrates that the major economic question is how to enable individuals to live their lives to the fullest. Sure financial incentives are an important component in the happiness recipe, just as they are an important component in motivating entrepreneurs - but so too are thousands of other motives. These motives vary from person to person, and are wholly unknowable to any one individual - regardless of how intelligent or well intentioned.

With The Price of Everything, Professor Roberts has turned the eponymous criticism of economists on its head - weaving it into a badge of honor each of us -- teachers and students -- can wear proudly.

"The Price of Everything" is the first book I've read by Mr. Roberts. It is both (primarily) an introduction to the fascinating concept of emergent order (order that arises by human action but not guided by anything other than the "unseen hand") and (secondarily) a pretty darn moving novel. For the first few pages I was concerned that the story would get in the way of the information, but that's not the case at all: after a bit, I came to care about the characters as much as in any popular fiction. It is, after all, a parable.

Russell Roberts also hosts EconTalk ([...]), absorbing, detailed, but vastly entertaining interviews on relevant economics subjects, usually around an hour long; those podcasts (some of which the author points to in the "Further Reading" section of the book) are well worth listening to, especially the one that addresses at a little more detail the economics and positive benefits of price gouging after emergencies, something a resident of the Florida panhandle is sure to be interested in! Remember, a "free market" means no one's forced to buy or sell, it's a mutually beneficial transaction.

"The Price of Everything" should be mandatory reading for politicians, but as Mr. Roberts mentions in a podcast regarding the book itself, politicians have their own agenda to pursue and fluency in the market forces driving our economy (sadly) don't fit into those agenda.

Very highly recommended as an easy, quick introduction to pricing and free markets.

This is the second book by Russell Roberts which I have read. Roberts has a great talent for explaining esoteric economic concepts in simple language, and in an engaging manner. Indeed, this book is a real "page turner"; I could hardly put it down, and completed it in one day.

Among other things, the book explains how complex systems, such as biological, cultural, and economic systems, arise spontaneously, without any commander or central planner. This concept, which was the basis of the work of economist F. A. Hayek, is very relevant to the issues of the day. We hear politicians advocate a national energy policy, but Hayek, and Roberts, show that decisions made by government bureaucrats are not likely to lead to the best results.

More specifically, Roberts explains how prices work as "signals" in an economy, enabling an economic system to adjust to varying conditions, and providing incentives for entrepreneurs to make the investments necessary to improve the lives of others. The title of the book reflects this concept.

The book is filled with quotable, pithy lines. My favorite, and one which I will post on my refrigerator, is from page 38:

Prices are the pheromones of the human ant colony

we call an economy, the signals that hold the whole

thing together, the tendons of the invisible hand."

William H. Eilberg

Ramon, a Stanford University student, is outraged to find out that a nearby mega-store hiked prices the night of a disaster and he plans to take action against the price-gouging retailer.

Most of us in Ramon's situation would be equally outraged, but we should stop and reconsider. There is more to the price hike than meets the eye. Ramon is forced to reconsider everything he thought he knew after crossing paths with an economics professor. In talking with Ramon, the professor effortlessly explains hard to grasp economic ideas in easily understood language.

The Price of Everything masterfully illuminates how free markets--despite drawbacks-has lead to one of the greatest economic revolutions in history. Economist and author Russell Roberts passionately argues that the emergent order of capitalism brings prosperity and order to our daily lives.

This should be mandatory reading for all students of life.

The idea of building a basic Economics course into an interesting and fun story would seem overwhelming, but Roberts makes it look easy. It proves that the things we take for granted, the invisible threads of our lives, are so hidden from our daily thoughts and actions that when a light is cast on them in the context of life's activities, it seems to reveal a previously secret dimension. For most Americans, unfortunately, it's like being told that the earth revolves around the sun for the very first time. Or that "caring for the poor" often leads down a path that only makes poor people's lives worse.

Children are not taught the basics of capitalism in school. This would be a wonderful book to discuss around the dinner table. The kids, especially those near college age, would find this more palatable than a text book, and it may prepare them for the likely anti-capitalism they'll encounter in college (and high school).

Though presented as fiction, this is the best (and most painless) primer on free-market economics I have ever read, and have been recommending it my friends to help them understand free-market thinking. It is very well plotted, flowed seamlessly and was a joy to read (and re-read). The protagonist is a Stanford economics professor named Ruth Lieber and the novel recounts her discussions with students both in her seminar and beyond.

The very best characteristic of this novel is that most of the characters who are at least initially unsympathetic to Prof. Lieber's free-market viewpoints are treated fairly, and presented as honorable persons of intelligence, passion and compassion. This stands out in our otherwise horribly fractured society in which so many, on all sides, labor mightily to demonize and excoriate anyone daring to adopt contrary points of view. It is possible, even likely, that an advocate of the students' positions could have put more persuasive or poignant arguments in the mouths of their fictional proxies. The simple fact that the author tried and succeeded in making their viewpoints seem plausible and honorable demonstrates that he respects his adversaries and their views, even though he disagrees with them. Do you remember when adversaries could politely disagree, without resorting to distortion and vitriol?

I tend to dog-ear pages that contain points worth pondering, writing worth remembering, and for easy access to useful examples that I might wish to revisit in a subsequent session. In my library, the average book has three or four pages so marked. I found that I had dog-eared so many pages in this gem that it is the untouched pages that now are easier to find in the book, if only because there were so very few of them.

As with his other two books (The Invisible Heart and The Choice) Russ Roberts has given us another wonderful economics lesson disguised as an entertaining and heartwarming fable, and they just keep getting better.

We come to truly understand how a company doubling its prices on the heels of an earthquake is actually doing the best thing it can do for its customers. Through honest dialogue between a student who has an anti-big-business agenda and his compassionate teacher, we work through this reality.

This book also explains very clearly and understandably how more jobs can be created when some jobs are destroyed due to technology and innovation and how most of us benefit from that change.

Because of books like this it is entirely possible that the study of economics will lose that ugly epithet of being the "dismal science" and will become an exciting mainstream, popular activity.

Roberts' protagonist says, "...understanding economics does have one small area of real practical application. It helps you vote wisely. Having some idea of the complexity of the world teaches you to be skeptical of the quick fix and to understand that most political promises come with more strings than a yo-yo factory."

Wonderful book on the idea of emergent order. The reviews that say the story line is not believable because the fictionalized student wouldn't be this ignorant of economics must have never taught or had a conversation with a reasonably well educated friend who proceeds to utter economic nonsense during the course of a conversation. To you I say, "Just wait." That conversation is coming soon. I have taught college economics for almost 20 years now and have had numerous conversations with well intentioned, well educated peers who have prattled of utter gibberish when it comes to the basics of how market decisions happen. This book is not only a wonderful way to introduce economics to anyone it is also utterly believable. Thanks Professor Roberts. Great book