I have noticed that the whole store is permeated with these random ratings that are 1 star and they all have the general position that austrian economics is an untested bunch of crap or that all critiques on socialism are just strawman. It's quite ridiculous and quite ignorant that people would rate something, without reading it, just to make it look bad. The one book that is probably trashed the most is The Black Book of Communism. The negative reviews are just trashing the book for being a capitalist ploy or that they it is onesided or that stalin and pol pot weren't actually communist, things along those lines. Its just ridiculous, the same thing could be said about every book attacking capitalism but you don't see us going around the net just trashing books that we haven't read just b/c it espouses a theory different from ours.
Now im not saying that all negative reviews on the store are just a load of collectivist crap b/c we obviously need truly honest reviews so that we can judge what to purchase but the sad thing is that the majority of bad reviews are just shit written just to trash something. Just thought i should vent about it ahaha.
And another thing that shows that we here actually care and actually try to emulate a free society is that we don't have an opposing ideologies section where people are banished, like some internet gulag, for differing opinions like revleft.
Maybe leave the comments up but cross out their star rating?
It's with all the Marxist books. David Gordon's, Ludwig von Mises, Yuri Maltsev. I would just ignore it. If you read the book then put up a good review.
'Men do not change, they unmask themselves' - Germaine de Stael
Anarch,
you do bring a good point in that they likely give the book a bad rating to push down the average rating. Or it could be that the book really is bad/mediocre. Having said that, I learned over time to pay careful attention to the quality of the rating, rather than only on the number itself, and looking at these comments, they are very superficial, do not cite examples and are often "emotional", rather than "rational" (the good ol' "capitalism is evil" type conversations).
One thing that could be done, and i think they do this in Amazon.com as well, is to have responses to comments and criticisms. Sort of like a miniblog where people could discuss the original comment. Additionally, they could vote on the usefulness of the original criticism, and perhaps use the weighted average as the net rating (i.e. "captialism sucks" will count less than "the book does not address the X issue, and only focuses on Y, making capitalism seem better than it is" type of comment).
just my $0.02
Well just like Amazon.com, these people haven't read the book nor are they really planning on too. Why have a mini-blog with such nonsense? It is like talking to children who think they know everything and won't admit that they don't. I think the main reason these 'reviews' are left up is because it shows the idiocy of opposition. While the Austrian school has strived to understand their ideology and produce rational/intellectual criticisms, they have never tried to understand Austrians.
Perhaps I'm odd, but I think emotional rants by lefties clearly upset at the destruction of their ideology would actually motivate me with added onus to read these works. They clearly wouldn't be making such comments if they didn't think such works were mortal threats.
"When the King is far the people are happy." Chinese proverb
For Alexander Zinoviev and the free market there is a shared delight:
"Where there are problems there is life."
"It's with all the Marxist books. David Gordon's, Ludwig von Mises, Yuri Maltsev. I would just ignore it. If you read the book then put up a good review. "
Its almost like these people are just searching for any works with the word "Marxist" in them, then post their crap reviews.
I'd agree with the comment about the Amazon.com reviews. You see a long of similiar "reviews", sometimes from the same poster. Its clear they haven't read the book, have no intention of the book, but feel they are entitled to trash the book with their nonsense. I usually make a point of rating these reviews down.
I've seen quite a few trolls show up in the "tags" section of stories as well. Here's a particularly bad example:
http://mises.org/daily/2066
"Perhaps I'm odd, but I think emotional rants by lefties clearly upset at the destruction of their ideology would actually motivate me with added onus to read these works. They clearly wouldn't be making such comments if they didn't think such works were mortal threats."
Correct. They clearly don't understand unintended consequences.
mahsah: I've seen quite a few trolls show up in the "tags" section of stories as well. Here's a particularly bad example: http://mises.org/daily/2066
LOL I Never noticed that even though I link the article so much.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7rEP0on8FE
haters gonna hate
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I like how a spambot spammed a thread about spam.
Are you saying that no one here is interested in the Nike Air Max 90?
To paraphrase Marc Faber: We're all doomed, but that doesn't mean that we can't make money in the process. Rabbi Lapin: "Let's make bricks!" Stephan Kinsella: "Say you and I both want to make a German chocolate cake."
I sometimes wonder if the spambots here are actually trying to sell anything, as opposed to just being an incredible nuciance factor.