Background on the Book

Why have several hundred people and more than forty public policy institutes and organizations around the globe produced or promoted a couple hundred thousand copies of JG in 80+ published editions in 50+ languages?

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Satire has always been used among intellectuals throughout the world to circumvent censors and to send messages without triggering resistance. The book and film "Hammer and Tickle" asserts that humor helped bring down the Soviet empire. Is satire still useful? I believe so. It is sometimes necessary in order to get past the censors in Iran, in China, and even in many local American school boards that are hostile to free markets.

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One case of effective use of JG was in Hong Kong. When Hong Kong was being transferred from British to Chinese authority in 1997, people in Hong Kong worried that many economic freedoms would be lost. Thus Joy Shan Lam Kung, jslkung@hkej.com, editor of The Hong Kong Economic Journal, serialized the book as a way of sending a veiled message to a sophisticated audience.

Said Joy Shan Lam Kung: "Our company has two publications, The Hong Kong Economic Journal, a Chinese business daily catering to professionals, investors and the intelligentsia and The Hong Kong Economic Journal Monthly, a magazine on politics, economics and culture. The daily, which carried your book in serialized form has three main sections, 1)  news 2) investment analysis and political and economic commentary and 3) culture and enrichment. All our non-staff writers are either professionals (lawyers, doctors, finance professionals) or academics. Your book appeared in the third section as we sometimes carry an educational series on economics and management.The paper was founded by my father in 1973 and he still has a daily column on politics and economics. It has the highest credibility ranking of all media in HK and has the most educated as well as affluent readership. I guess I could give you a lot of reasons why we chose your book to translate but it all boils down to the owner thought it was a wonderful book! In case it is of interest, our freelance writers from all seven HK universities are able to cite their publications in our magazine and newspaper as academic publications."
 

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Business and Academia

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The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible: A Free Market Odyssey originated as a series of economic and political commentaries for KHVH, an all-news radio station catering to the business and professional community in Hawaii. Response to my weekly economics commentaries was at zero until I tried satire along the lines of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. The response was electrifying.

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The book has since been serialized for business and academic communities with The Boss magazine in Nepal and the Keizar (Economic) Seminar Journal in Japan. Assen Kanev, founder of the Bulgarian Free Market Institute, reports that during serialization of the book in SEDEM Weekly, the newspaper rose in circulation from 10,000 to 20,000 during the run, helping to make SEDEM the second largest weekly newspaper in Bulgaria. There was so much interest that Assen arranged an interview with me on Radio Free Europe to expound on the philosophy. The book has now been published in two editions in Sofia, becoming a regular reader in both government and private schools.

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Dimitrios Malamoulis explained the success of the Greek edition in the daily newspaper Neos Typos of Volos, "As you already know this is a local newspaper with limited circulation, however the response was very high and they estimate that the newspaper circulation increased by at least 25%. The response gave us new courage, we are already in discussion with the newspaper of Athens Kathimerini, which is the most prominent and old newspaper of the center-right with the second highest circulation of the country, second only to the liberal Ta Nea."
 

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Theater, Animation, Film, Internet

One’s first impression of the book cover illustration in some editions gives the feeling that it is for a younger audience. True enough. The book has appealed to youth, just as did Gulliver's Travels. Yet many of the editions have been published without illustrations, targeting the business, professional, or academic audiences in Korean, Italian, German, Bengali, Mongolian, Sinahalese, and the two UK Commentary English editions for the Commonwealth nations, published separately in South Africa and India.

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The theme of the story is useful for introducing free market lessons in an inoffensive manner and has been successful in circumventing the mullah censors of the Farsi (Persian) edition in Tehran. It has also been successful with the Urdu edition in Lahore and the Chinese edition in Shanghai. It was one of the first free market books published in St. Petersburg, Russia and in Hanoi, Vietnam.

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JG has been endorsed by Milton Friedman, Walter Williams, John Stossel, Steve Forbes, Mark Skousen, Fred Foldvary, and Walter Block as a useful tool in promoting free market economics. The book has been used at the undergraduate level in economics classes at San Jose State University by Prof. Terry Easton, Santa Clara University by Prof. Fred Foldvary, and others at the Buffalo campus of the State University of New York.

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Prof. Ali Massoud used the English edition of his book in his Economic Law class of 500 students at Asiut University in Egypt. Ali said he will order the new Arabic edition, sponsored by the CATO Institute in Jordan, for his 5,000 introductory economics students every year.

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Stage plays have been produced from the book in three countries: Kenya, Slovakia, and Nigeria. Olokesina Peters Ijagbenu wrote this review of the play in Nigeria that was based on the book, written and produced by Adedayo Thomas & Paul Ugbede and directed by Dr. Sam Kafewo at the Drama Village, Ahmadu Bello University this past summer. The play is currently touring various countries in Africa.

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"We were pleasantly surprised when the play started and the audience sat in rapt attention, following its message and even comparing images and symbols to the contemporary Nigerian situation. For instance, when one of the lords said that a house was not built according to specification and had to be demolished, the audience chorused the name of Nasir El Rufai. He was the immediate past Minister of the Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria who became infamous for demolishing ‘illegal’ structures in his bid to return the city of Abuja to its original master plan. The audience members were unanimous on the three nights that the play should go beyond the four walls of the University and should be taken to the authorities in Abuja who perpetuate the problems enunciated in the play."

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A musical production was written, composed, and produced for elementary children in Kazakhstan by Lyudmila Melnikova. Lyudmila has adapted the musical production, with a cast of more than 25 for television and theater, with performances in Kazakh, Russian, and English. Her troupe performed in a theatrical competition in Finland. 

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An animated film short has been produced from the epilogue of the book, The Philosophy of Liberty, that is being viewed in 46 languages on dozens of sites over the internet. We next hope to develop a movie version of the book.

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What's Missing in Education?

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What's the importance of a new approach to economics? 1) Economics is usually not taught from a free market perspective and 2) economics is usually boring.

The Economist magazine bemoaned this saying: "Why has economics not done better? Economists tend to blame others for being too lazy or too stupid to understand their textbooks. There is doubtless something to this. Economics is hard to teach well. To the uninitiated, its basic principles often seem surprising or odd. But the economics profession itself also deserves much of the blame. Crucial ideas about the role of prices and markets are the first ideas that politicians and the public need to grasp if they are to think intelligently about public policy, and the fact is that they are not widely understood. Smith's Wealth of Nations conveyed this sense that the market, for all its 'failures', is a marvel. Today precious few textbooks even try to guide their readers to any such inspiration." (Economist, April 19th, 1997)

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JG is intended to remedy these problems in all levels of economics education. Surveys of my own university economics students show a very positive level of interest. In the Spring of 2005 three Principles of Macroeconomics classes were surveyed to determine how the students reflected on the general level of interest in: 1) general college textbooks; 2) economics textbooks; and 3) the The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible: A Free Market Odyssey:

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Surveys of Student Interest

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Student response      All texts   Econ texts     JG

Very interesting             0%           2%            61%

Somewhat interesting   35%         27%          34%

Not very interesting      47%         41%           5%

Very dull & boring         18%         31%           0%

Students rarely find standard college textbooks to be very interesting. Indeed, two thirds of the students have a negative opinion of these texts. On the other hand, ninety-five percent of the students had a positive opinion of the Jonathan Gullible book and only 5% held a negative opinion. One student, Stuart Hayashi, wrote saying, "Thank you, thank you, thank you for that wonderful book!! It was very refreshing to read a book so logical, entertaining, and enlightening. The story may be set in a fantasy world, but the situations involved come way too close to reality. Again, thank you for the wonderful book!"