Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception Kindle Edition PDF Free Download

Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception Kindle Edition
Author: George A. Akerlof ID: B00WAM14RE

Done.
File Size: 4219 KBPrint Length: 280 pagesPublisher: Princeton University Press (September 22, 2015)Publication Date: September 22, 2015 Sold by:  Digital Services, Inc. Language: EnglishID: B00WAM14REText-to-Speech: Enabled X-Ray: Enabled Word Wise: EnabledLending: Not Enabled Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled Best Sellers Rank: #4,763 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store) #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Economics > Free Enterprise #2 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Marketing & Sales > Consumer Behavior #2 in Books > Business & Money > Economics > Free Enterprise
It seems that the capitalist world is divided into two kinds of people: phishers and phools. Those who phish look for leverage and advantage and milk it; the phools pay for it, even when they don’t need to, don’t want to, and can’t afford to. The result is financial crises, on the national level, the local level and the individual level. And it never stops. We buy too much, we buy the wrong things, and we overpay all the time. Shiller and Akerlof say the very first phool was Eve. The serpent phished her into taking something she did not want, did not need, and which she knew in advance she should not take. The cost was going to be too high. So it has been ever since, whether it’s cable bundles or junk bonds.

There’s a lot going on in this little book. It ranges from individual (struggling) bill payers to government lobbyists, drug marketing and financial services. It is of necessity cursory, and therefore incomplete. In the chapter on credit cards, which treats both merchants and consumers as phools, spending $150 billion annually for the privilege, the authors neglect the fact that to use cash is even worse. While true that credit card users tip more and spend more freely, it is also true stores price in the cost of credit cards and the premiums they give to holders. So paying cash means paying more than we should, making us even bigger phools. Similarly the War on Cancer assumes cancer is internally sourced, making it difficult if not impossible to overcome. That’s because the focus is on treatment. But even the UN says 75% of cancers today are environmental, not genetic; they can be prevented. We can reduce cancer by a whopping 75% by not polluting ourselves, our food, our air, water and soil. The phoolish analysis is leading us to the pill phishers.
The publication of this book suffered a few delays and, frankly, I was tempted to cancel my preorder. “Phishing for Phools” (!) not a title to inspire confidence in a serious read. I’m happy I didn’t. By two nobel laureates and published by Princeton. Gotta have something worthwhile. And so it does.

The book is organized into an intro, a main body and a conclusion and all along the authors (who by internal comments seem to have been assembling it for years) tell us where we’ve been and where we’re going. Broadly it falls into that psychology of economics genre we’ve seen so much of the last decade or so. Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow is referenced early on.
The reader will be aware that for, oh, the last couple centuries, there has been a default assumption about economics. There is an identifiable model of organization called Capitalism, which, if properly cultivated, yields the optimal ‘good life’ outcome for all within its venue. It’s based on the totally theoretical (and ridiculous) “theory” of human behavior that left to one’s own devices one will choose what is “best” for oneself and the aggregate of all these choices results in what is best for all. (Even typing this makes me laugh.)
Phishing begins with the report of a trial with Capusin monkeys who totally discredit this worldview. We could add a thousand such experiments and life observations to this example. The authors refer to this as the “monkey on the shoulder” effect. The “rational decider” view of economic activities is still alive in reactionary circles and among the talking heads, but it would be difficult to find anyone who has a brain championing it now.
Download Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception Kindle Edition PDF Free Download

PribadiKahrab519