Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this provocative study of behavioral economics, Cowen (Discover Your Inner Economist) reveals that autistic tendencies toward classification, categorization and specialization can be used as a vehicle for understanding how people use information. Cowen spends a great deal of time dispelling autism's societal stigma, arguing that mainstream society is reaping benefits from mimicking autistic cognitive strengths. As stimulating as is the premise, the book often feels like its own long exercise in categorization, with each chapter an analysis of the human mania for classification (e.g., the obsession with ranking achievements and endeavors). According to Cowen, human brains are constantly absorbing bits of information that get smaller and are delivered faster as technology advances. The more information people receive, the more they crave—this shorter attention span is far from a flaw to the author, but a liberating mechanism that allows humans time to contemplate more ambitious, long-range pursuits. The relentless analysis is occasionally overwhelming, but Cowen's illustration of our neurological filing system may help readers understand the mass consumption of information and just about everything else. (July)
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Review

"Only a mind like Tyler Cowen's could weave Facebook, Zen Buddhism, Sherlock Holmes, and so much more into a coherent and compelling argument. Create Your Own Economy will change the way you think about thinking."
-Daniel H. Pink, author of A Whole New Mind

"Create Your Own Economy will open your mind to thinking differently. The unique thought processes of individuals on the autism spectrum provide a great value to our world. This book will help you to be smart and successful in your own way."
-Temple Grandin, author of Thinking in Pictures

"If you're curious about where society and the economy are headed, you'll search in vain for anyone with more interesting insights than Tyler Cowen. He's a genuine visionary and Create Your Own Economy is a tour de force."
-Robert H. Frank, author of The Economic Naturalist and Professor of Economics at Cornell University

"The modern world bombards us with data just begging to be organized, from iPod playlists to digital vacation photos. Tyler Cowen offers an entertaining tour of our information age, pondering implications for how creative we are, how long our attention span is, how our politics work, and the future of our economy."
-Samuel R. Sommers, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Tufts University

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult (July 9, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525951237
• ISBN-13: 978-0525951230
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #24,904 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading for our time, July 19, 2009

By	J. Hausman "Josh" (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As other reviewers have noted, this book is difficult to summarize. Prof. Cowen insightfully touches on topics ranging from Adam Smith, to contemporary classical music, to facebook. Unlike some books that present one idea in the introduction, then repeat it endlessly, nearly page in prof. Cowen's book contains something new and thought-provoking. I found it difficult to put down.

Most exciting for me was the idea that internet, far from making us more impatient, may allow us to assemble long and valuable narratives from 'small bits'. This idea changed how I think about my time spent online. Rather than feeling vaguely guilty about the time I 'waste' reading blogs, I am thinking about the stories that each individual blog post adds to.

Cowen's notes that the internet (and computers, ipods, etc.) are exceptionally good at helping us to organize information. Intriguingly, Cowen argues that this may in a positive sense be making us all more autistic. Far from a being a distraction, the internet may be enabling us to appreciate culture in individual ways that were not previously possible. (For the economists out there, you need to read the book to see how much of this is explained by the most important theorem you've probably never heard of: the Alchian-Allen theorem.)

Whether or not you agree with all of Cowen's arguments, this book is likely to make you see the world - and yourself - differently. Highly recommended.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Mephistophelian Defense of the Current Trend in Curating Info, August 26, 2009

By	Paul Sas "Paul Whitmore Sas" (Berkeley) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is the second consecutive book of Tyler's that I've pre-ordered on Amazon, and I think it is even better than his last book. The unifying themes seem to mystify many who attempt a description of the wide ranging coverage, but I'd hazard a summary thus: 1- Neurodiversity, with particular attention to the Asperger continuum, suggests that many cognitive styles come with special advantages; while there's no exact description of what characterizes Asperger-ish styles, the tendency to generate an order on some specialized domain is key. 2- From the vantage of interiority, the subjective experience of feasting on information, there's a huge win today in the generation of nuggets mined and distilled to brief moments. 3- With great compassion and equanimity, Tyler advocates a kinder re-assessment of the drift toward info-gluttony (he uses the term 'infovore', although I wish he had adopted George Miller's older neologism 'informavore'). For those seeking more information about how an Asperger mind perceives the world, read Daniel Tammett's new book, Embracing the Wide Sky: A Tour Across the Horizons of the Mind.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Autism Spectrum Manifesto, September 12, 2009

By	E. Husman "ehusman" (Las Cruces, NM USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Let me start by stating very clearly that I am not in any way removed from this material. I am a long-time reader of Tyler Cowen's (and Alex Tabarrok's) Marginal Revolution blog. I observed Prof Cowen's third or so reference to autism or Asperger's and pointed it out to my wife, who is an Aspie. She and Tyler then began a correspondence on the subject; she is the Kathleen on page 1. We have since met Tyler and his fellow GMU economists. I have also read three other books of which Tyler was the author or co-author.

That said, I can honestly say that I enjoyed this book much more than Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist. That book, unlike this book, drew heavily on themes he had already explored on the blog. This book was much more like In Praise of Commercial Culture. To be sure, you may see parts of both IPoCC and CYOE pop up in MR from time to time. How could you not? But he has not explicitly explored the arguments pursued in this book, so much of this should be fresh. (and by the way, Tyler's form of "argument" is pleasantly original but not polemic, so do not let that word put you off if you have grown tired of Crossfire-type shouting matches in pop culture).

Both IPoCC and CYOE take very optimistic views of modern culture and the future of humanity. I would not, however, characterize them as Panglossian. Even when I find myself in disagreement with the conclusions or assertions, I do like the arguments Tyler makes in favor of things like Facebook or Twitter, atonal music, and other aspects of modernity. I am not going to relate those here; they are too nuanced to try in a sentence or two. But I will say that one of the themes with which I agree heartily and is one reason why I enjoy much of Prof Cowen's work is that familiar things can become too familiar, and old lines of reasoning can become boring. If we enjoy thinking at the margins, we should seek out the unfamiliar, the different, the thing which we might otherwise reject out of hand. To do otherwise is to revel in confirmation bias.

If there is a word of warning, which I think may be warranted because of some of the negative reviews here, it is that Tyler Cowen's economics is not a "Here is how to invest your money and what is wrong with macro policy" type of economics. First and foremost, economics is a social science. It therefore concerns itself with social interaction; as an undergraduate, I remember hearing it defined as the study of human choice, not of marketplace transactions. The title refers to this bigger picture type of economics, and so may be translated as "Create your own set of choices". If the world seems bigger and more complex than ever, it seems that we also have more tools for selecting, constraining, and customizing our choices from that world than ever. Technology is a two-edged sword.

As to the other controversy, Tyler's discussion of autism, I would say he has nailed it. Without trivializing the actual problems of autistic people, Prof Cowen has written a bold statement of how they are unfairly misunderstood and how this should be corrected. Autism is a spectrum, it is not a well-defined set of characteristics. The problems posed to society are twofold. One, we need to recognize the beneficial characteristics and learn how they might be put to use productively while mitigating the negative characteristics (and in fact we may owe much to autistics who created much of what we take for granted). Two, we should recognize that people who do not think of themselves as autistic may well have some of these and should perhaps use this fact to (A) learn to cope with or exploit them and (B) also recognize the problems faced by autistic people who don't have to "discover" their innate otherness -- in other words, to learn tolerance for people who don't have the necessary social skills to overcome the more negative characteristics. Much of the book is devoted to pointing out the benefits of autistic thinking and how technology can be helpful in this pursuit (and, incidentally, how autistics are in turn helped by technology).