[1][2] The book encourages its readers to become skeptics, urging critical thinking against the hegemony of rigid free market ideology.

Arguments from the field of game theory explain limited rationality and the balance of power of corporations over the individual.

Overall, the authors argue – with reference to Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions – that the existing economic paradigm is due for a change.

[13] The book was part of a movement of economists attempting to offer explanations of economic theory to the general public in the wake of the Great Recession.

[14] Despite not yet being reviewed in mainstream journals, as of February 2011 the introductory chapter has received 13,000 views on stumbleupon[15] and the book has attracted positive comment on various blogs.

[17] In the journal Labour / Le Travail, Jim Stanford described it as a "needed antidote to the unreal and infuriating doctrines of fundamentalist free-market theory" taught in standard introductory economics courses and textbooks.