No One Makes You Shop At Wal-Mart: The surprising deceptions of individual choice - Tom Slee
While I’d seen the book around in various places, I’d been under the impression that it was an anti-huge corporation book. It turned out to be something far more interesting and deep than simply slamming another big company.
Author Tom Slee shows the reader in progressively complex ways how it is that the commonly-held view of how the marketplace works - that given options of what to buy, people will always choose what they most prefer, and that the most preferred product/company will therefore prosper while the less preferred will fade away - in fact works very differently. From what orange juice you buy to what car you buy, from where you live to what school you want your children to go to, there are many factors which are at play which skew the way reality works from the MarketThink (as Slee calls it) company line. What we choose, in short, is not indicative of what we would most like, but rather what is the best reasonable option given the choices available in view of those other factors. Hence, those who have the power and inclination to affect those other factors have the ability to alter what our choices will be, leaving us with fewer reasonable options to choose among.
From why people litter, to why McDonald’s thrives in a world of superior food, to how it is that Microsoft can charge an arm and a leg for Windows and get it even when other options are available, Slee delves into many areas of society and demonstrates how we behave in ways that would seem counterintuative in life and in the marketplace, and why.
As with any philosophical subject, this isn’t a light read, but is certainly worth the time for anyone wanting to discover why making logical or good choices can lead to unhappiness, how freedom of choice actually works in day-to-day society, and how it is routinely spun in favour of those who want to stay on top.
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I’ve heard a lot about this book - I hope your summarization isn’t the most insightful part of the book. I think it is pretty well known that when one says the “best product” will win, what that really means is the “best product for the consumer.” Which has a whole bunch of considerations other than merely quality. Price, convenience and preference all figure in. Of course, all three can be manipulated, particularly if you haven’t bought a particular product, or its competitors. Then advertising can have a tremendous impact on preference.
Glad you enjoyed the book, and I will have to look it up some time.
Nah, I just touched on it. The book lays a thick groundwork for why things in the marketplace and life happen in ways that would seem initially to go against the chooser’s best interest, but would end up being their best option, and how it is that other, more obvious (if not tempting) options that seem at first to be the best can - at least when selected collectively - have negative results, aesthetically through to financially. Pretty good stuff.
I found it a bit dry at times (as mentioned to you and Walker, Slee hammers repeatedly at parts of it, which sometimes felt needless), but at the very least, it’s interesting stuff on the whole.