Monday, September 24, 2012

The Most Expensive Priced Austrian Economics Book Award....

Goes to Mario Rizzo.

His book Austrian Law and Economics has a retail price of $790.


11 comments:

  1. lol. Its just about 1500 pages.

    Guess what else is about 1500 pages? Rothbard's treatise "Man, Economy State" (including the version with Power and Market) Its available FREE here. mises.org/Books/mespm.PDF

    But if you are like me and hate reading books on a computer screen (and like stacking books on your shelf) go ahead and get the old fashion here for $35 http://www.amazon.com/Man-Economy-State-Market-Scholars/dp/1933550279

    A mere savings of $755.

    I highly doubt Mr. Rizzio's book is worth spending nearly $800 on. Why not wait till you can buy a used copy.

    You can buy yourself the top ten most important austrian books in history for $800.

    Or Man Economy and State plus a nice pistol (and a little silver too).

    I'll wait for the reviews and used copies to roll in.

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  2. It's part of some Economic Approaches to Law Series. All of the books are outrageously priced. There's even another one for $790, Law and Economics of Insurance.

    I can't imagine anyone is voluntarily paying that much for a book. My guess is they're all "college" "textbooks," and wouldn't sell a single copy if students weren't required to buy them for classes, and even then, they'll go after the $575 used copies.

    Hopefully more Austrian/libertarian authors will go the Mises Institute publishing route, with 1,500-2,000 page hardcover books available for reasonable prices, along with the built-in market.

    I'd love to read Austrian Law and Economics, but I know enough about preference scales to value my $500-$800 more than the book.

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  3. ill wait for someone to pirate it

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  4. Interesting. Just the other day I was reading about this art history textbook that contained no actual art. It was priced at $180, but if it had contained all the necessary art images, it would also have had a $800 price tag.

    But this ''Art textbook without art'' was pretty funny. Peter Schiff would say ''this is like one of those Twilight Zone episodes.''

    http://c4sif.org/2012/09/whereupon-copyright-becomes-a-parody-of-itself-art-schools-expensive-art-history-textbook-contains-no-actual-art/

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  5. Maybe he's simply making the point that value is subjective. If a single person buys at that price, he will have proven wrong everyone making the assertion that it's not worth it.

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  6. Maybe he is aiming at the Koch brothers market.

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  7. It may be expensive, but...this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping.

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  8. It's an academic book, numbskulls. They sell exclusively to libraries and Rizzo is making almost nothing.

    If any of you have actually managed to enter an institution of higher learning, go request the book at the library desk and they will buy it for you. Not hard at all.

    You'd think he personally set the price the way some of you mouth-breathers react: "OMG Austrian economist publishes collection of journal articles in academic journals for other academics. What a sellout."

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    Replies
    1. You can get the entire collection of The Review of Austrian Economics (an academic journal!) for $150 through the Mises Institute. So.... yeah, this is a bit ridiculous.

      It is priced intentionally to keep non-academics away, even if they want to read it. Which is Rizzo's publishers right, I suppose, but is still a bit ridiculous and elitist.

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  9. What a waist of money. That guy is a statist. It would be smarter to purchase Anarchy and the Law from the Independent Institute, How Privatized Banking Really Works by Bob Murphy or any of Rothbard's magnificent books. People sure do brown nose the intelligentsia statist like Kirzner, RIzzo, Selgin, White and Cowen. They are poor excuses for Austrian Economists.

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  10. It only outpaces "The Legacy of Friedrich von Hayek" edited by Peter Boettke by ten dollars.

    The "numbskulls" are the Austrian economists who sell books to government funded libraries at outrageous prices while professing to understand the free market.

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