If you want a critique of the current state of the common law in the US, then this is done with keen wit and thorougness. At first I was disappointed in that it was not what I thought it was, but it's an excellent "read" for anyone interested in Law today. His judgment is that the common law has been destroyed in the US and that another alternative should be considered. Compelling.

It is an unusually straightforward, comprehensive, insightful, and heartfelt book about a nonpartisan, common sense approach to fixing our society's problems. The author intends to shock Americans into the realization that our educational, governmental, and political systems must be fundamentally reformed. He offers a series of very specific solutions. His basic idea is that we must restore individual responsibility. Here is a short list of this unusual writer's proposals: - keep children at grade level until competence is demonstrated; - eliminate the school boards and the educational bureaucracy; - replace the income tax with a consumption tax; - eliminate money from politics; - run universities by faculty and students; - stop the "rights" circus of special interests; etc., etc. I am absolutely astounded by the depth of this man's arguments. This is the book of the year. Read it!

Richard McKenzie does an excellent job of taking all of the dry economic theories that college professors "think" they understand and applies them to real world examples.

Economics is never more "Alive" than it is in this book. This is one of those rare books that brings a lot of loose ends of economic theories together, in easily understandable language. It puts them in real life situations where they make sense.

You don't know as much about Economics as the readers of this book do. Jeff B.

This monograph offers one of the very best introductions to Public Choice economics - and it's written by one of that field's founders and still-premier scholars.

I just re-read this little book for the first time in 15 years. Although it was written in 1976, it stands up extraordinarily well. And even though the last part is an application to the British political system, most of the lessons presented there are useful for understanding the American political process, too.

Reading Gordon Tullock always expands the mind. His creative insight is unfailingly impressive.

The authors claim to be 'scientific', 'rational', 'empirical', 'economic' in their assessment of the public decision making process and the role of public choice, but there are clearly several normative value judgements embedded in their framework. In discussing their choice of optimal rules, the authors state that an assumption of their model is that all votes are considered equal, and that if this assumption is not valid then there model will fail to function properly. They continue in stating that this is not a very large constraint as one vote is only one vote whether or not the individual uses it or cares about it or not. However, a hundred pages later, the author's apply their model to representational democracy, an area where a very compelling argument can be made that all votes are not equal, yet they fail to address this fairly basic flaw in their thinking, or how it effects the functioning of their model. The authors also repeatedly give the same importance to the protection of property that they do to the protection of liberty, another normative assumption that influences their model, as they seem to egg the reader on in thinking that greater decision costs can be tolerated if the stake is Liberty and property. This piggy-backing of the property rights of the wealthy on the civil rights of the working class seems pretty disingenuous as the end result of this piggy-backing is that the workers get screwed while the rich are free to get richer. However the weakest aspect of the text from an 'empirical' perspective, is that the authors leave their definition of costs largely undefined. In other words they can, and indeed do, shift the 'contract locus' at will to ensure that a conservative ideology will prevail no matter the given situation. That the authors oppose the enlargement of government is clear, as is the fact they justify this position by advocating what they call personal liberty, which is in reality the protection of the private property of the few. Those may or may not be convincing arguments depending on the readers own perspective (and pocketbook). However, the authors do not claim to be offering a perspective. They are offering a 'calculus of consent', a scientific method by which to divine our political choices free of the nasty constraints of opinion and values. Put it this way, as passionate intellectual forefathers of slippery right wing rationalizations for greed and inequality, these authors score major points, as dispassionate scientists merely describing the way 'things are' they are merely majorly hilarious.

Some reviewers comment that this book has "a conservative bias." Nothing could be further from the truth. This book is written in the great classical-liberal tradition that motivated the American revolution and the drafting of America's 1787 Constitution. Buchanan and Tullock saw themselves as putting into modern economic language the insights and wisdom of James Madison and Co. The book does indeed counsel skepticism of big government, and it is no great fan of unlimited democracy. But the authors come to this position because they understand that even democratic governments can be tyrannical and that a depoliticized society -- governed largely by private property rights -- promises peace, prosperity, and cultural flourishing. Few books on economics are as original and insightful as is The Calculus of Consent -- and it remains as fresh in 1999 as it was when first published in 1962.

This is probably one of the most rewarding books anyone can read. If you care about government and what it does (or doesn't) do to (or for) you, read this book. It requires patience and concentration, but it's well worth the effort. The authors succeed in showing how it is wrong to assume that government has always the best of intentions. They put a human face on politics and explain with impressive reasoning why government and politics produce unreasonable outcomes. The explanatory power of this book is unmatched. Anyone who cares about what this country is and what it could be should read it. Despite what you may have heard, their agenda is not conservative, it is individualistic, treating each person with dignity. The outcomes may surprise you, but you can't help but be moved by the force of their logic.

Gordon Tullock's "On Voting" Explains the costs and benefits of, and the problems with voting in a manner that any educated person can follow. The early chapters explain the work of Condercet, Borda, and Black so that most readers should be able to follow it without too much work. The latter chapters get into some applications of the Public Choice theory of voting. "On Voting" is a relatively short book too. This is not light reading. However, for those who are serious about learning about how democracy works, you could hardly do worse.

Arthur Seldon uses Abraham Lincoln as an example of a leader who believed in limited government, "of the people, by the people, and for the people". In actuality, Lincoln lead a failed government attempt at state railroad building when he was in the Illinois legislature. He instituted the first conscription in the United States, and the first income tax. He lead the charge of an unconstitutional export tax on Southern cotton and then an actual blockade. He intimidated the Supreme Court and executed Union soldiers for sleeping on duty. Seldon should do a bit of reading about Lincoln before he uses him as an icon for small government. I, personally, was so turned off by the introduction that I couldn't bring myself to read the book.

Collaboratively written by American economists Gordon Tullock, Gordon Brady, and British economist Arthur Seldon, Government Failure: A Primer In Public Choice is a cold, unforgiving look at governmental economic policies, ranging from how American special interest groups lobby reap enormous and destructive favors, to the manifold disasters that have come from British governmental interventions in the economy. A caution about he concentration of power promoted by the European Union rounds out this stark, scholarly, and persuasive treatise. Also available in hardcover (193086521X..,), Government Failure is strongly recommended reading for students of Economics and Political Science.