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Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception
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About Phishing For Phools: The Economics Of Manipulation
Product Description Why the free-market system encourages so much trickery even as it creates so much good 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. Review "One of The Times Literary Supplement’s Books of the Year 2016, chosen by Paul Collier" "An interesting and entertaining new book by George Akerlof and Robert Shiller looks at the role of trickery in market economies. Phishing for Phools explains that sellers are often out to deceive you, and shows that this isn't an occasional glitch in the market system so much as an intrinsic and pervasive trait. . . . Phishing for Phools aims to help readers understand their psychological weaknesses, so that the phishermen can be phended off more ephectively." ---Clive Crook, Bloomberg View "Bob and George urge us to slap Adam Smith's invisible hand when it steals from everybody's cookie jar. They ask us to ponder those situations, economic or political, that provide particularly tempting opportunities to phish for phools. . . . Penetrating insights rendered in accessible prose." ---Marlene Lang May, Commonweal "Akerlof and Shiller show that unregulated free markets systematically make people worse off by providing the unscrupulous with opportunities to take advantage of the unwary." ---Adam Bouyamourn, The National "George Akerlof and Robert Shiller, two of the biggest names in economics for the past half century, take aim at the widespread assumption that free markets ted to produce the best outcomes." ---Adam Creighton, The Australian "One of The Independent’s Best Economics Books 2015" "This unusual book offers a simple but challenging corrective to the assumptions made by most mainstream economists. . . . Probably not every reader will agree with every interpretation or argument--but every reader will find something that enlightens and stimulates." ---James Ledbetter, Yale Alumni Magazine "One of BusinessInsider.com’s Best Business Books of 2015" "[ Phishing for Phools] serves the important purpose of holding up a mirror to economics, a subject that prides itself on (supposedly) being the most sophisticated of all the social sciences. Economics may look sophisticated on paper, but it is often completely out of touch when it come
