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With Apologies to Debbie

The flat-earthers are coming out of the woodwork.  Here’s a self-explanatory e-mail that I sent last evening to a correspondent:

Dear Mr. P_____________:

Thanks for your e-mail responding to my blog-post on William Greider’s recent article.

You recommend, as do some other patrons of Cafe Hayek, that I read Greider’s book One World, Ready or Not.

I’ve already read it and, inferring that it’s a favorite of yours, regret to report to you that my opinion of it is unfavorable.

Greider’s book is to economics what “Debbie Does Dallas” is to cinema: an intensely titillating fictional tale without a single moment that demands of its audience the use of their powers of higher reasoning.

If you’re really interested in understanding international economics, you should instead read such books as Russell Roberts’s The Choice, Johan Norberg’s In Defense of Global Capitalism, Martin Wolf’s Why Globalization Works, Jagdish Bhagwati’s In Defense of Globalization, Paul Krugman’s Pop Internationalism, and Douglas Irwin’s Free Trade Under Fire.

Sincerely,
Don Boudreaux

I must say that being advised to read anything by William Greider on trade is annoying.  When I receive such advice I feel like I imagine an astronomer feels when he or she is advised to read a modern-day effort to revive Ptolemy’s theory of the solar system.

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