Ever since Adam Smith, the central teaching of economics has been that free markets provide us with material well-being, as if by an invisible hand. In Phishing for Phools, Nobel Prize–winning economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller deliver a fundamental challenge to this insight, arguing that markets harm as well as help us. As long as there is profit to be made, sellers will systematically exploit our psychological weaknesses and our ignorance through manipulation and deception. Rather than being essentially benign and always creating the greater good, markets are inherently filled with tricks and traps and will "phish" us as "phools."

Phishing for Phools therefore strikes a radically new direction in economics, based on the intuitive idea that markets both give and take away. Akerlof and Shiller bring this idea to life through dozens of stories that show how phishing affects everyone, in almost every walk of life. We spend our money up to the limit, and then worry about how to pay the next month's bills. The financial system soars, then crashes. We are attracted, more than we know, by advertising. Our political system is distorted by money. We pay too much for gym memberships, cars, houses, and credit cards. Drug companies ingeniously market pharmaceuticals that do us little good, and sometimes are downright dangerous.

Phishing for Phools explores the central role of manipulation and deception in fascinating detail in each of these areas and many more. It thereby explains a paradox: why, at a time when we are better off than ever before in history, all too many of us are leading lives of quiet desperation. At the same time, the book tells stories of individuals who have stood against economic trickery—and how it can be reduced through greater knowledge, reform, and regulation.

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File Size: 4276 KB
Print Length: 280 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press (September 22, 2015)
Publication Date: September 22, 2015
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B00WAM14RE
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Jason L. Mcdonald

The Coming Rediscovery of Karl Marx?

November 1, 2015

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

As someone who was an exchanged student in the Soviet Union (1983), and lived in Eastern Europe during the twilight years of Communism (1992), I have always wondered when Karl Marx would make a recovery unto the Western stage. One of the great intellectual tragedies in economics was that the terrible totalitarianism of the Soviet Union discredited many of Marx' foundational insights into capitalism and its instabilities.

Without mentioning Marx, nor certainly without being Marxists, Akerlof and Shiller are "rediscovering" many of the basic truths of Marxism and then adding on an informational Marxism (information "haves" vs. information "have nots").

Instability of markets? Check.
Information haves vs. information have-not's? Check.
Opiate of the people? Check.
The production of an ideology to support capitalism that makes even those at the bottom "support" it? A.K.A. Antonio Gramsci? Check.

Instabilities, Inequities, and Informational Inbalances

The anecdotes of the book are a tale of instability, inequity and informational imbalance. They make a wonderful read. And to those of us who lived through the Financial Crisis and subsequent Great Recession, remind us of how the reputations of the bond raters were "phished" to make millions for the few yet cause misery for the masses. Not to mention how the capitalist state "came to the rescue" of capitalists and capitalism itself.

I am not a Marxist - don't get me wrong. I am a believer in capitalism and a conservative in the traditional (not American) sense of the word.

Perhaps Phishing for Phools is a small step towards a rediscovery of the instabilities and inequities that bedevil the capitalist system as well as a first step towards an intellectual framework that is non-Marxist yet cognizant of how unstable things really are.

I highly recommend the book. It's fun, it's easy-to-read, and when you really think about it... it gets you to think in a foundational way about what's fundamentally wrong with our current economic and political system.

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Caveat emptor

August 7, 2016

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Many of us are aware of the concept of “phishing.” Wikipedia defines this notion thus: “Phishing is the attempt to obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details (and sometimes, indirectly, money), often for malicious reasons, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. The word is a neologism created as a homophone of fishing due to the similarity of using a bait in an attempt to catch a victim.” This book notes that phishing is also done, using different tools, by businesses—including big business. That is, they try to lure consumers into purchasing products that are, perhaps, not very useful to individuals.

Examples? Smoking. The book notes the efforts of tobacco companies to poo poo arguments that smoking was harmful to individuals. In short, such corporations masqueraded as trustworthy in order to “catch a victim.” Big pharma has done the same thing (note the example of VIOXX, which ended up costing the lives of thousands of people). In short, con people to purchase items that are not in the best interests of consumers. Is this an elitist argument (always a first attack by those who defend the indefensible—casting aspersions against those who speak truth to power).

Manipulation and deception are a part of this process. Corporations want to create demand for products that may or may not be of value (John Kenneth Galbraith, many years ago, used the term “induced consumption: to speak of a process by which ads and other messages convinced people to purchase items of dubious value to them).

Of course, free markets can be robust institutions facilitating efficient production and distribution of goods ands services. But there are plenty of opportunities to use the market to “phish” people. The authors have faith in the market—but understand that it can be manipulated.

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PAH

Could we possibly be "phools" less of the time?

August 13, 2017

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

We are all, to a greater or lesser extent, "phools" being "phished" almost all the time unless we are especially mindful about our purchases. The trouble is that the US economy is driven 70% we are told, by consumer spending. How much of this is essential spending, how much responsible purchasing, how much contributes to our sense of well being vs. some impulse or vanity or merely the result of some slick or pursuasive advertising? It is hard in our culture to avoid being "phooled" and let's face it, who is doing the "phishing" much of the time but us directly in selling stuff or indirectly in working for companies that sell stuff or promote the stuff. Would this be a better world if less stuff was "phished" with less waste, less junk in the landfills, less energy used to create the stuff etc., etc. Good book for being more thoughtful and selective about our purchasing decisions.

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