Is Sowell's Basic Economics overly biased?

Personally, I'm very biased toward the economic principles that have brought tremendous prosperity and against those that have not been successful. That's may be simplistic, but it's real.

Haven't finished reading it yet but I think I observe three things:

1. It really is Basic. Everything he talks about is inherent in the basic things taught in Economics 101. Which is fair enough. Only I was expecting to be introduced to some completely new theory that would sweep away the old. No. Nothing new here just a trenchant going over these first principles again in a way that will make them understood and appreciated by anyone, student or not.

2. So far he seems to tacitly totally approve of these economic principles and the financial and national systems they give rise to. Seems he has no quibble with the idea at all. Points out errors at the extremes - such as monopolies but basically all for it I think.

3. The system is clearly inhuman and he doesn't seem to be aware of or care about this. Many instances can be found. Basically lets look at the fundamental operation: enterprises that make a profit will continue and those that don't will fail. This is seen as good as it drives all innovation and progress and prevents wasted effort on production of that which is not wanted.

But every enterprise that fails represents any amount of disaster to any amount of people. i.e. the system relies on distaster. This is inhuman.

And you can go on from there and that's what we must do in the world, in fact.

Our capitalistic profit driven system is of great utility and there's no use in attempting to scrap it, as though we could, but it needs the inhumanity inherent in it addressing.

I looked it up. It's not a textbook, so it does not need to be objective.

Every person has their biases, and economists are no exception. If you want a balanced view, you have to read arguments of both sides.

About your specific concerns. Profit maximization is widely accepted as the primary explanation of firms' behavior. The only other explanations that are seriously considered are CEOs being lazy, corrupted or favoring their pet projects.

Price controls are widely accepted to be a bad idea, as both theory and history tell us that they lead to shortages and black market, or wasteful overproduction.