Principles of Economics

With a growing global readership across 36 languages, Saifedean Ammous' first two books are among the best-selling economics books of the last decade, establishing him as a top educator and communicator of complex economic ideas, and garnering the praise of noted scholars, successful entrepreneurs, elite athletes, and countless readers from all walks of life. After two decades of learning and teaching economics at university level, Ammous realized most economic textbooks confuse more than they illuminate, and most economics university students learn little that is useful. In Principles of Economics, his most ambitious and elaborate work, Ammous has written the potent antidote to the modern economics textbook. Principles of Economics uses the underappreciated approach of the Austrian school to introduce the principles, methods, and concepts of economics in a readable, engaging, and informative manner valuable to the university student, general reader, and professional economist. Rather than rely on mathematical analysis of aggregates and theoretical models, the book relies on the clear written word. The book begins by explaining the Austrian school method and the concepts of value and time. The second part explores how humans act individually to achieve their ends under scarcity; or in other words, how humans economize. A chapter is dedicated to a detailed overview of each of the concepts of labor, property, capital, technology, and energy, along with vivid examples of their relevance to the reader. The third part examines economizing in the social context, with chapters examining trade, money, the market order, and capitalism, important concepts shrouded by misconceptions. Ammous then presents the Austrian perspective on monetary economics, laying the groundwork through a discussion of time preference, followed by a discussion of banking and credit, and the business cycle and its monetary origins. The final three chapters discuss violence, how a free society defends itself, the failures of monopoly provision of defense, how peaceful exchange in the extended market order is the basis for human civilization, why civilization rests on an irreplaceable foundation of respect for property rights, and humanity's chances of keeping the fruits of civilization as its private property and market foundations are weakened.