No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart

Update: Tom has replied to this post

Is it ever wise to judge a book by it's cover? Perhaps not, but I do think that it's possible to criticise a book without ever having read it - after all no-one has time to read every book that comes before them, and we're kidding ourselves if we claim to reserve any judgement whatsoever until it's been read.

I say this becuase Tom Slee's written a book called No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart, and I believe I have the right to criticise it without having read it. One's knowledge of a book will always increase having read it, but it's ludicrous to say that a cover-to-cover reading is a pre-requisite for any opinion to be formed. Maybe it's because I'm an academic that I think this, since I accept that for my papers only the introduction and conclusions are ever read, if i'm lucky. It's perfectly possible to have a meaningful debate on an article without having read every line. It's easy to pick up the gist, and understand the basic argument. Therefore I believe it's a wimpish cop out if an author deflects any criticism "until you've read the book".

The reason for my criticism is that I suspected Tom didn't fully grasp how market economies function (i.e. the distinction between market process and neoclassical economics), and in the comments to Chris Dillow's review I said:

It's a shame that this book appears to go after an easy target: that markets working perfectly means perfect markets. It's a misunderstanding of what a market is - a process.

As Tom concedes:

His second point is about Hayek, whom I've never read much of. The bits I have always seemed to be talking about a reality I didn't recognize. So I can't really address the point, and will go and read. Mea culpa.

Hence my comment that:

To write a book on the subject of individualism and free markets without reading Hayek is shocking.

And Tom responded:

I might say that dismissing a book without reading any of it is shocking too

I do not need to read a single page of Tom's book for my comment to be valid. The actual content of his book is irrelevent - it is shocking to write a book on a subject without doing your basic research. The focus of his book is individualism and competition, and you can't understand either without knowing about Hayek's Individualism and Economics Order, and The Use of Knowledge in Society. An author should have a higher bar than the reviewer, and a far higher bar than a blog commentator.

I haven't "dismissed" Tom's book, and am sure it contains interesting insights and I'm curious about it, but don't think it's worth reading if he's not familiar with the basics. As a compromise (and to be fair to him) I thought i'd read some of his blog, and noticed an apparantly similar article where Tom analyses the market for low-flush toilets. As suspected, he hasn't got the basics right at all. For example, he starts off by saying that:

In places where households don't pay the full cost of their water, which is a lot of places in North America

Ok - state subsidised water so we should expect over consumption.... But then he says:

the free market was failing to deliver a low-flush toilet.

Which is like saying that the NHS is justified because currently the free market in healthcare isn't providing for us.  To be fair Tom seems to get it right:

Why was the free market failing? Well, probably for lack of a push from consumers. If you're not paying the full cost of the water, you don't really care whether your toilet uses 6 litres or 13.

The analysis is correct, but - as he's already shown - it's not a free market. This isn't an example of market failure. So I stopped reading this article, and won't be reading the book. I did try, but it's so confused I suggest Tom reads the two articles that should be top of his reading list prior to writing on the subject, and then try again.

Comments

[Linda L. Richards]

You write: "I do not need to read a single page of Tom's book for my comment to be valid. The actual content of his book is irrelevent - it is shocking to write a book on a subject without doing your basic research."

While many of the points in your "review" seem well-considered, it seems to me you're potentially creating an endless loop of "writing on a topic without doing your basic research." (Which in the case of a review is reading the darn book.)

By your reasoning, your not having read the book makes your review irrelevent. I dunno, Anthony. I'm finding the whole thing shocking.

[AJE]

This isn't a review of the book, it's a comment on whether it's possible to criticise something you've not read.

My reasoning is simple, i'm making two claims:

-- you don't need to have read every page of a book in order to make a point about one of it's premises

-- you should read up on a topic if you're writing a book on it

I don't think these two points are inconsistent.

[tomslee]

I actually agree with both statements. But a much more long-winded response is at http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/2006/11/on_doing_my_hom.html