Our lives are governed by numbered pieces of paper called money. We are all linked to each other by these numbered notes which fix everybody's standard of living. Yet we are buried in ignorance and lies about how this distribution system works. Meanwhile the rich get steadily richer and large populations throughout the world are condemned to starvation and disease.
Grasping how this system works seems to be a complicated task but it isn't. You probably think you need mathematical skills but you don't. If you can count on your fingers, you can understand economics. Of course some effort is needed at the beginning to disentangle the relationships that govern the price network in a simple economy. But there are only three concepts to master, the bulk price, the bulk supply and the unit price. Once these basic concepts are clearly visualised in dynamic relation to each other in a self-contained market, the main obstacles and confusions in economic theory are removed, and the ignorant rigmaroles in the text-books can be recognised for what they are.
The method of presentation is based on realistic models, not mathematical abstractions, and not logical deductions from commonplace assumptions. The entire argument is laid out in fully functional diagrams which are demonstrably either right or wrong. The ordinary reader can see at once whether the models "work" or whether they don't, and he or she can trace the way forward from one model to the next in a sequential chain.
The workforce, the wages bill, the commodity prices, the costs, the profit and so on, are never treated as generalised concepts. They are always individually itemised. Firms are shown in concrete relation to eachother, whether factorial or as producers of finished goods. Marketing services and transport are similarly specified, operating realistically in a closed market economy where all relationships can be seen at a glance, with banking services and inflation present as in a real-life setting. The exposition consists of a series of such models, linked progressively from one to the next. Every model updates the previous version and the reader can check the continuity both backwards and forwards. It is a fundamental right of every citizen to understand and to participate in collective decisions about how the world's economic wealth is allocated. Of all human rights this is probably the most important. It is certainly the most deliberately suppressed and obstructed area of human knowledge. Politicians, the press and the academic textbooks all combine to maintain a fog of dedicated ignorance about the workings of the economic system.
In the profession itself there is plenty of disquiet about the status of economics as a scientific discipline. Leading academics admit that modern neo-classical doctrines based on marginalism do not provide a satisfactory theoretical foundation. This book establishes the theoretical core on a secure basis, using a realistic market community as a kind of living proof for the progressive unfolding of each logical step.
