Product Description

David Friedman has never taken an economics class in his life. Sure, he's taught economics at UCLA. Chicago, Tulane, Cornell, and Santa Clara, but don't hold that against him. After all, everyone's an economist. We all make daily decisions that rely, consciously or not, on an acute understanding of economic theory--from picking the fastest checkout tine at the supermarket to voting or not voting, from negotiating the best job offer to finding the right person to marry.

Hidden Order is an essential guide to rational living, revealing all you need to know to get through each day without being eaten alive. Friedman's wise and immensely accessible book is perfect for amateur economists, struggling economics students, young parents and professionals--just about anyone who wants a clear-cut approach to why we make the choices we do and a sensible strategy for how to make the right ones.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #68118 in Books
• Published on: 1997-08-27
• Released on: 1997-07-18
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Amazon.com
To David Friedman (son of Milton Friedman), economics explains everything. In a way, that's an odd thing for him to say: Friedman Jr. has never taken an economics course in his life (by training he's a physicist). Yet he defines economics broadly and uses it as a tool to understand all aspects of human behavior, from selecting a mate to picking a grocery store line to switching lanes in rush-hour traffic jams. If you like the economics-for-everyman approach of such writers as Steven E. Landsburg, then Friedman is for you.

From Publishers Weekly
Friedman puts the passion back into economics with this unconventional, demanding primer. A professor at Santa Clara University (and son of Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman), he insists that economics is not primarily about money, but rather about needs, wants, choices, values?an imperfect science predicated on the assumption that people tend to rationally choose the best way to achieve their objectives. Using scores of everyday examples to steer the reader through complex concepts, he discusses consumer preferences, street crime, lotteries, plea bargains in trials, sharecropping, financial speculation, political campaign spending and much else. He demystifies international trade (e.g., there's nothing inherently bad about a trade deficit) and deconstructs the economy as an interacting system all of whose elements are interdependent. A rewarding text for serious readers. Translation and U.K. rights: Writer's Representatives.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Friedman (economics, Santa Clara Univ.) has written what he terms an unconventional presentation of the principles of economics. Using generally lively language, although there are also some dreary stretches of technical jargon, he tries to show how these principles determine the basic elements of the economy, such as prices and values, and how they are involved in explaining spending, saving, and investment behavior. Friedman is a strong supporter of the free-market system as the one that makes the economy work best. The framework of his analysis (not too clearly laid out in the text) is essentially that of the classical economists starting with Adam Smith (1776) as expanded and elaborated by his followers in the 19th and 20th centuries. Modern economic theories, particularly those of John Maynard Keynes, so influential in the post-World War II years, are given short shrift. An optional purchase for public libraries.?Harry Frumerman, formerly with Hunter Coll., New York
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Deeply Flawed Analysis
I have to say I didn't read too much of this book before being turned off by it. I will give you a few examples of what immediately caught my eye in the beginning of the book. He claimed that getting rid of the practice of buying used textbooks would not increase sales and then basically said that if you disagree it is because you are stupid. His argument was that the price of selling the book after being used factored in to the cost the consumer would pay. As anyone who has ever attended college knows, you don't get to choose whether or not you will a text book. You have to buy it for the course and the people dictating what book you must buy do not feel the costs themselves and often do not even have much interaction with those that do. This is why my statistics textbook cost over a hundred dollars despite being of far lessing quality than Statistics for Dummies.

In another one of poorly hatched ideas, he claims that poor people do not want universal health care because they are choosing not to buy it; better to have food than antibiotics. And being that government health care would be paid with taxes, we would be forcing those people to forgo basic shelter for medicine. He would have us believe that a person could somehow afford something that costs more money than that person has in the bank or that insurance companies would even insure the dirt poor (and therefor prone to illness) with unreliable, low income workers. And in the whole analysis he seems to forget that virtually every modern country in the world has a progressive tax system.

That's enough of that I suppose. I just wanted you to get an idea of what kinds of things you will be coming across in this book.

Not What It Seems
This book attempts to explain the dry, boring field of economics in an engaging and painless manner. It fails at doing that. The text itself is often times confusing and dry, coupled with graphs that are basically incomprehensible to anyone without an economics degree. I was more confused after reading than the book than before it. To anyone interested in reading about economics actually displayed in an interesting, fun way, I would highly recommend Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan. It is a tremendously informative and funny book, and actually fun to read.

It's an excellent book!
It's an excellent book. Although I enjoyed reading Freakonomics, "Hidden Order" is a much deeper and broader book in terms of issues discussed.
What I really like about it that in additional of covering existing issues, it helps to learn how to approach new problems.

The sad thing is although the book was written in 1996, we(and politicians, and TV/Radio talk heads) are still using the same uninformed reasoning during the discussions.

It would be great if the book became a required reading in the high schools and colleges.

After getting it from a library, I bought it for my friends.