Hi madeinuk,
Thanks for the comment. Is your position more that:
(a) Naked Economics is biased relative to mainstream economics
(b) Mainstream economics is biased?
On the first point, I think that the book is solidly in the mainstream of economic thought (one can point to surveys of economists, the spread views of economics Nobel Prize winners, etc.) On the second point, I guess discussion would start to strain the "no politics" rule of this forum.
Concerning your higher level point (whether children are ready to read books with claims that should be treated with skepticism):
We have a list of reading recommendations for books with a contested thesis, where we write
The books in this category are of an "applied" nature. They draw on ideas across many fields to advocate for a case. The cases made in these books may be controversial among scholars. Readers of the books should not blindly accept the arguments put forth by the authors, but should use the books to obtain a richer understanding of the ideas being discussed. For a richer understanding, readers are encouraged to look for online reviews, debates, and discussions surrounding the books and the theses presented in them. [...] Readers often require a strong interdisciplinary grasp in order to be able to form independent informed evaluations of the arguments presented in the books. Readers without such a grasp should be particularly wary of accepting statements made by the authors at face value without verifying them against independent sources.
In principle, children can fact check and read a diverse collection of books on a given subject as a guard against bias, but in practice, they might not have time or attention to.
One thought is that a parent can read a book with a contested thesis together with his or her child and raise counter-considerations as appropriate, but this takes time and interest (and sometimes subject matter knowledge) on the parent's part. I'll ponder this some more.
Last edited by JonahSinick; 03/11/14 10:14 AM.
