A Student’s Guide to Socialism: How It Will Trash Your Lives

This book is brief and accessible to everyone. It contains many bite-sized pieces of economic wisdom and examples which will leave anyone who reads them thoroughly inoculated against the Socialist fallacies that just seems to re-surface and harm civilization over and over. Prof. Rubin's emphasis on looking at economic competition as more of a way for businesses/entrepreneurs to cooperate is also a much welcomed linguistic change or emphasis on something that does not scare people(cooperation as opposed to competition). I also highly recommend readers watch his F.A. Hayek Memorial Lecture titled "How We Talk About Economics and Why It Matters" given at the Ludwig von Mises Institute for a very relevant and wonderful discussion of this linguistic change.

This is a handy-dandy guide to the best research and thinking on why socialism inevitably destroys people's welfare and hopes, and how it ushers in dictatorship and tyranny.

Second half of book more technical. A quick read that we all should take to heart.

Pres

Another poorly thought out, poorly argued, poorly researched, and overall just plain poor book, claiming to have something important to say about history and politics. And unfortunately, typical example of books, which critique, socialism, and Marxism without understanding it at all. There are plenty, good reasons to critique either, but you won’t find any of those reasons in this book.

The premise is not false, but the arguments are illogical and many points are historically inaccurate. It's practically propaganda and won't appeal to the people who actually need to know better than to subscribe to socialism.The book largely fails to underline that the vast inequality gap we currently have between classes in the western world is due to socialistic policies that favor corporate interests, otherwise known as "crony capitalism" and even monopoly, which was illegal until socialists took over the ruling class in the 60's. Occupy Wall Street taught us this much.A better topic for a book on this subject would be "how the press and the ruling classes that control it lie about what capitalism is".

This was an interesting read.Marx has been around for a long time and his ideas have caused a lot of suffering indeed.Because as with all ideas, there is a difference between their theory and the application in practice.Marx's deconstruction of how the capitalist system works has a lot of truth in it, that is why he has been lingering around for so long. Its hard to argue with how capitalism alienates the workers and his criticism of power structures. But overall, one can say that his prescription on how to solve those problems was a total failure and should be disregarded for this purpose.I wish the author would expand more on how the "labor theory of value" and "capital" has evolved now days. Especially the definition of "capital".It looks to me that we are back to those early times when value was only created by labor alone, especially when capital is conjured out of thin air by central bankers in trillions.If that is the case, what is the need for property rights, other than to protect the interest of the bankers ?

This book is founded in the same garbage that has turned the United States into a second world country with a crappy infrastructure, horrendous public schools, social division, and outrageous inequality. Anyone that understands the history of this country knows what the middle class was built when we had progressive taxation and social spending. Do yourself a favor and learn some TRUTH about the American, neoliberal economic model—a model both Republican AND Democratic politicians are beholden to—and listen to the podcast Pitchfork Economics. This book is full of flat out lies and inaccuracies. I was born in the 60s and unlike a lot of people my age I will tell you our problem is not socialistic youth, this country is in the poor shape it’s in because of the trickle down economic policies instituted in the 1980s that are still the dominant form of thought to this day.