[p2p-research] Fwd: real-world economics review / post-autistic economics review - Toxic Textbooks

Tue May 19 11:13:05 CEST 2009

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: real-world economics review <pae_news at btinternet.com>
Date: Tue, May 19, 2009 at 12:19 AM
Subject: real-world economics review / post-autistic economics review -
Toxic Textbooks
To: michelsub2004 <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>

    **

Dear 11,000 subscribers of the *real-world economics review*,

A new movement (its manifesto is at the bottom of this message) is being
launched to encourage universities and schools to use economics textbooks
that engage honestly with the real world.

Recently several prominent economists, including Hodgson and Keen, have
publicly called for worldwide student protest to help bring about serious
change in academic economics, especially in teaching. Although the
circumstances for this have never been so favourable, the problem is how to
get protest started up to the point where it becomes self-sustaining and
nationally and internationally contagious.

 To this end a website www.toxictextbooks.com
<http://www.feedblitz.com/t.asp?/332386/8347871/http://www.toxictextbooks.com/>has
been set up and, more importantly, also a Facebook group
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=73911783278
<http://www.feedblitz.com/t.asp?/332386/8347871/http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=73911783278>named
Toxic Textbooks. The Facebook group is intended to provide the means by
which students and others can organize themselves and spread the word.

 Three or four minutes, literally, of help from each of you will give this
movement a big kick start. I imagine that most of you, like myself until a
few days ago, have had no experience with Facebook. But the thinking is: if
it worked for Obama, it might also work for us.

Most of you are teachers of economics rather than students, and, true, this
Facebook group is more likely to be run on the contributions of the many
students who we hope will join it. But seeding it and legitimising protest
by students is a very important role.

Joining Facebook and then the group is dead easy. Click
http://www.facebook.com
<http://www.feedblitz.com/t.asp?/332386/8347871/http://www.facebook.com/>. Now
all you need to give them is your name, email address and date of birth,
which if you request, as I did, they promise not to reveal. Skip the
optional rest (no photo required), click and you are signed up – two
minutes.

Now to join Toxic Textbooks, click on "View and edit your profile". At the
very bottom of the screen there should be a toolbar labelled "Applications".
Click on the first icon to the right, a pair of heads, and this takes you to
Groups. In the "Search for Groups" box at the top of the page type in Toxic
Textbooks and click. A Toxic Textbooks rectangle should appear with a "Join
Group" box on right. Click it, and then click "join" again and that's it.

 When after having become a member and you get to the Toxic Textbooks group
page, if you could post something, anything, on the discussion board or on
the Wall that would be great.

If you would encourage a couple of your colleagues or students to join or if
you would place links for the movement on your website, that would be better
still.

Thank you for your help,

 Edward Fullbrook

editor

*Toxic Textbooks

*

 *Toxic textbooks helped cause the economic meltdown *

The current economic meltdown is not the result of natural causes or human
conspiracy, but because society at all levels became infected with false
beliefs regarding the nature of economic reality. And the primary sources of
this infection are the “neoclassical” or “mainstream” textbooks long used in
introductory economics courses in universities throughout the world.

**

*Mass miseducation *

Every year these “mainstream” books serve to indoctrinate millions of
students in a quaint ideology (perfect rationality of economic agents,
market efficiency, the invisible hand, etc.) cunningly disguised as
science. This
mass miseducation deprives society of the moral and intellectual capacities
it needs in order to design and maintain the support systems required by
market economies.

**

*We need new, non-toxic textbooks *

More economic catastrophes will befall us and our children if we do not
replace these toxic textbooks with non-toxic ones immediately. If decency
and good sense prevail in academia, then affecting this reform will not be a
problem. But textbook reform will damage many economic faculties and toxic
textbook authors. The former will suffer losses to their reputations, the
latter to their royalties, which in some cases run to millions of dollars.

*Together, we can overcome these vested interests *

Society can therefore expect well-placed and richly-funded strategic
resistance to doing the right and necessary thing. The Facebook group Toxic
Textbooks http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=73911783278
<http://www.feedblitz.com/t.asp?/332386/8347871/http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=73911783278>and
the website www.toxictextbooks.com
<http://www.feedblitz.com/t.asp?/332386/8347871/http://www.toxictextbooks.com/>exist
to help citizens, especially students, mobilize and organize themselves to
overcome these vested interests.

Here<http://www.feedblitz.com/t.asp?/332386/8347871/http://toxictextbooks.com/textotoxicos.htm>
you
will find the manifesto in Spanish.

**
**

**

****

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