The Road to Truth

As the title suggests, this book rebuilds economics from its foundations.

It devotes an entire chapter to rationality and another to the concept of cost—a concept carefully defined at the outset, yet, as the book shows, rarely applied consistently in the theory built on top of it. Working through this foundation step by step, the book arrives at a series of conclusions that overturn familiar errors. The concept of rent, it argues, is unnecessary—rent is always zero. The concepts of shortage and surplus are likewise unnecessary: once price is correctly understood, both turn out to be superficial and misleading. The book completes the theory of interest, corrects a long-misguided theory of monopoly, and disproves the inverse Coase Theorem. It further argues that externalities are not the exception but the rule—ubiquitous in every exchange—and that the market itself is the mechanism that reduces them, which rules out market failure as a coherent concept altogether.

There are more discoveries waiting for readers throughout.

Throughout, the author draws on examples from his own life and work, applying economic reasoning in real time, as well as laying out his own methodology.