The Costs of Living [Paperback]

Barry Schwartz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 10, 2001

We all value freedom, family, friends, work, education, health, and leisure-"the best things in life." But the pressure we experience to chase the dollar in order to satisfy both the demands of the bottom line and the demands of our seemingly insatiable desire to consume are eroding these best things in life. Our children now value profit centers, not sports heroes. Our educational system is fast becoming nothing more than a financial investment where students are encouraged to expend more energy on making the grade than on learning about their world. Our business leaders are turning young idealists into cynics when they cut corners and explain that "everybody's doing it." The need to achieve in our careers intrudes so greatly on our personal world that we find ourselves weighing the "costs" of enjoying friendships rather than working. In this book, psychologist Barry Schwartz unravels how market freedom has insidiously expanded its reach into domains where it does not belong. He shows how this trend developed from a misguided application of the American value of individuality and self-pursuit, and how it was aided by our turning away from the basic social institutions that once offered traditional community values. These developments have left us within an overall framework for living where worth is measured entirely by usefulness in the marketplace. The more we allow market considerations to guide our lives, the more we will continue to incur the real costs of living, among them disappointment and loneliness.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Schwartz (psychology, Swarthmore) here applies the Socratic maxim that the unexamined life is not worth living. For him, the contemporary inquiry is personal, encompassing education, business, sports, and religion. The illusion in vogue is that we can "have it all." "I would like" becomes "I want," which becomes "I need." Inevitably, reality and illusion crash. Such is the stuff of moral philosophy and the substance of Schwartz's book, which concludes that the "continued spread of economic objectives and tactics into domains of life that people have traditionally regarded as governed by other goals and rules are turning social life into a jungle." Perhaps so. Among the phenomena Schwartz points to is the "guilding" of the white-collar professions, which has not always been for the better. Whether one agrees with Schwartz or not, his book bears reading because it addresses key issues of today and asks questions seldom raised.
Steven Silkunas, Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, Philadelphia
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

This broad-brush essay starts from the premise that ``there can be too much freedom in life, and that too much freedom has a serious moral, social, and emotional price.'' Schwartz (Psychology/Swarthmore) is concerned with the darker side of the seemingly limitless choices of middle-class American life. Addressing the psychic toll exacted by too fervent a pursuit of money, power, and position, he catalogues many disturbing features of our time: predatory corporations, the status of medicine and law as self-regulating monopolies, the commercialization of professional sports. Ultimately, he concludes that we must sacrifice some individual freedom for community values and ``reform our institutions so that being a good person is less costly.'' The author is at his best is when he draws on his psychological expertise to make arguments about human nature, our attitudes toward consumption and status, the components of love, the value of work, and the importance of classroom attitudes that foster lifelong learning. Schwartz's grasp of politics and economics is less solid--he doesn't mention the communitarian movement, whose critique of individualism and advocacy of a sense of social responsibility would seem to make it a natural ally. Similarly, he offers only sketchy analyses of what's needed to reorient law and medicine, how to revamp college sports or foster model retail outlets such as consumer cooperatives. He offers an absorbing discussion of his own return to Judaism through a congregation rife with conflict over the relation between religion and politics, but he might also have explored whether institutions other than religious ones can help us ``reintroduce the language of responsibility and morality into our public life.'' Schwartz's ambitious reach understandably exceeds his grasp. But his effort is worthy, and his conclusions contain much sense. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Xlibris, Corp.; 1 edition (March 10, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 073885252X
• ISBN-13: 978-0738852522
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,157,531 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Barry Schwartz is the Dorwin Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action in the psychology department at Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, where he has taught for thirty years. He is the author of several leading textbooks on the psychology of learning and memory, as well as a penetrating look at contemporary life, The Battle for Human Nature: Science, Morality, and Modern Life. Dr. Schwartz is married and has two children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful, Provocative, and Readable, May 11, 2001

By 

Book Lover "Book Lover" (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Costs of Living (Paperback)

Ever worry that your doctor has the HMO profit margins in mind more than your care? Ever get disgusted by big time college sports? Ever worry about the erosion of values and cohesion in your community? Then this book is for you.

This is a marvelous book that explores how people should think about their places in our society. Schwartz, a Professor at Swarthmore College, has a well-deserved reputation for debunking commonly held myths promulgated by economists and others who seek to explain all human behavior by supply and demand curves, and irresistible biological imperatives.

Yes, we do have a choice about how we want our communities to function, and Schwartz tells us how we can ``reintroduce the language of responsibility and morality into our public life.''

Schwartz also has a rare gift for making complex topics seem easy to understand. This is a surprisingly readable book, full of anecdotes and examples that will help you relate the ideas to your own life. Its conclusion, about a dilemma Schwartz faced in his own community, is notable for its drama as well as for the fact that Schwartz declines to offer easy answers.

Read this book, and you will think differently (and more perceptively) about the world around you. It is *that* good.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vision of the Future, September 29, 2004

By 

Richard Nelson (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Costs of Living (Paperback)

The Costs of Living isn't what you'd call light reading. Published in 1994, its subject could be broadly classified as the meaning of life. But the subtitle, "How Market Freedom Erodes the Best Things in Life," offers the constraint on the topic that prevents this book from being endless.

It's an enchanting but difficult read. Barry Schwartz, whose more recent Paradox of Choice garnered a New Yorker review and positive press for dealing with the same topics on the level of the individual, here demonstrates instead the powerlessness of the individual to stop the relentless advance of market forces into every domain of life. Moving from business to medicine to law to sports to love to education to democracy, Schawrtz shows how the things we purport to value most in life are now subject to market influence--and argues, persuasively, that they are far worse for it.

This is enchanting because Schwartz is a fantastic writer, good at using examples to make his points and capable of humor and serious concern in equal measure. The reading is made difficult by the fact that the book was written in 1994. Rather than the doomsday prophet that Schwartz surely seemed upon publication, he now appears oddly prescient about the continuing advances the market would make into all spheres of life if people did not band together to stop it. While he could not have anticipated the ways in which people's yearning for community in the face of these forces would be exploited by politicians willing to wield those communities' principles as marketable commodities--and how those politicians would use their resulting power to help the market forces advance ever faster--the ingredients of that recipe for disaster are all quite plain to the reader with benefit of knowledge of the ensuing decade.

Can we still turn things around? The task is undoubtedly even more difficult now than Schwartz suggested it would be ten years ago. But we ought to try, and Costs of Living still offers a good way to start constructing the framework by which we might begin to do so. Highly recommended.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good description of the choices of middle class life., June 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Costs of Living: How Market Freedom Erodes the Best Things in Life (Hardcover)

A good attempt at explaining the costs of living in capitalism. A bit dated considering the World Trade Organization, computerization and downsizing, but he makes points most people need to hear and consider. Well worth reading and thinking about. Order a copy and begin to think!