This book is an analysis of economic fallacies that are at last so prevalent that they have almost become a new orthodoxy. The one thing that has prevented this has been their own self-contradictions, which have scattered those who accept the same premises into a hundred different “schools,” for the simple reason that it is impossible in matters touching practical life to be consistently wrong. But the difference between one new school and another is merely that one group wakes up earlier than another to the absurdities to which its false premises are driving it, and becomes at that moment inconsistent by either unwittingly abandoning its false premises or accepting conclusions from them less disturbing or fantastic than those that logic would demand.

这本书是对经济谬论的分析，这些谬论最终如此盛行，以至于几乎成了一种新的正统学说。阻止这种情况发生的一个原因是他们自身的矛盾，他们把那些接受同一前提的人分散到上百个不同的“学校”，原因很简单，在涉及实际生活的事情上，不可能始终如一地出错。但是，一个新学派和另一个学派的区别仅仅是，一个群体比另一个群体更早地意识到它的错误前提驱使它走向荒谬，并且在那一刻变得不一致，因为要么不自觉地放弃它的错误前提，要么接受他们的结论，比那些逻辑更不令人不安或更奇妙会要求的。