No One Makes You Shop At Walmart

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Between the Lines, 2006 M05 15 - 256 pages

We live in a culture of choice. But, in an age of corporate dominance, our freedom to choose has taken on new meaning. Upset with your local big box store? Object to unfair hiring practices at your neighbourhood fast food restaurant? Want to protest the opening of that new multinational coffeeshop? Vote with your feet!

What if it’s not that simple? In No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart, Tom Slee examines the implications of our fervent belief in the power of choice. Pointing out that individual choice has become the lynchpin of a neoconservative corporate ideology he calls MarketThink, he urges us to re-examine our assumptions. Slee makes use of game theory to argue that individual choice is not inherently bad. Nor is it the societal fix-all that our corporations and governments claim it is. A spirited treatise, this book will make you think about choice in a whole new way. 

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Contents

Choosing Our Technologies
The Devil You Know
Choosing Our Culture
ABasket ofLemons
Chapter10 Free toChoose but Exploited
Chapter 11Beyond Whimsley
Notes
Bibliography

That Obscure Object of Desire
What Is It Good For?
ASelection ofHerd Choices
Index
Copyright

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About the author (2006)

Tom Slee writes about technology, politics, and economics and in the last two years has become a leading critic of the sharing economy. He has a PhD in theoretical chemistry, a long career in the software industry, and his book No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart is a game-theoretical investigation of individual choice that has been used in university economics, philosophy and sociology courses. He lives in Waterloo, Canada and blogs at www.tomslee.net.

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