The Price of Everything

Improbable as it might seem, perhaps the most important fact for a voter or politician to know is: No one can make a pencil. That truth is the essence of a novella that is, remarkably, both didactic and romantic. Even more remarkable, its author is an economist. If you read Russell Roberts’s The Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity you will see the world afresh.

This book is the third foray into the world of economic fiction for Roberts. In terms of prose and content, it is also his best effort. . . . In this new book, set on and around the Stanford University campus, Roberts bundles several clever insights about everyday economics with the overriding theme of prosperity and economic growth, and pulls it all off with warmth and plenty of heart.

This is a great story about human, social, and economic betterment brought about by the forces of spontaneous coordination. It’s also about justice and there’s a warm ending. Read and enjoy.

The best attempt to teach economics through fiction that the world has seen to date.

The Price of Everything illuminates the astonishing economic world we live in. This book could change your life—reading it will give you a sense of wonder about the everyday marvels that are all around us.

I loved the way Roberts wove into the story examples of what Hayek called spontaneous order that even those who believe that order happens only from the top down would have to acknowledge–from dancers moving unpredictably on the dance floor without ever colliding to the thousands of people and bits of specialized knowledge it takes to make a pencil, which nobody can make by himself. This little book deserves an audience as wide as eventually developed for ‘Economics in One Lesson.’ It conveys similar information in a more nuanced, personal and humanistic way. Nice work.

The Price of Everything is a must read for anybody interested in how market capitalism works.

[The Price of Everything] is Roberts’s third economics novel–the first two were Choice: A Fable of Free Trade and Protectionism and The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance. They are great introductions to free-market economic theory, especially for those who are easily turned off by numbers and graphs. Wrapping a narrative around economic theories may seem like a peculiar approach to teaching, but didactic novels have a long and noble pedigree.

A remarkable use of parables and dialogues to convey economic intuitions. This should be mandatory reading for anyone who wants to understand this branch of applied philosophy we call economics.

[T]he novel is eminently readable. And if you did not know anything about how the American system works you would come away from reading it better informed.