No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart: The Surprising Deceptions of Individual ChoiceBetween the Lines, 2006 - 240 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 unpacks 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. |
From inside the book
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Page 58
... cost on all the other road users : a cost that the individual driver is usually not asked to bear , at least alone . Instead the costs are shared among everyone - which means that they add up and , in the end , can easily outweigh the ...
... cost on all the other road users : a cost that the individual driver is usually not asked to bear , at least alone . Instead the costs are shared among everyone - which means that they add up and , in the end , can easily outweigh the ...
Page 169
... costs " ( the amount of money that has to be spent before the product even sees the light of day ) , including both ... cost of $ 2 million , a cast of largely unknown actors , and no special effects . To recoup the expenses of ...
... costs " ( the amount of money that has to be spent before the product even sees the light of day ) , including both ... cost of $ 2 million , a cast of largely unknown actors , and no special effects . To recoup the expenses of ...
Page 196
... costs are close to zero , consumers do have a source of real power . But as transaction costs increase , so too does the power associ- ated with the ability to walk away decrease . If companies can find a way of imposing a cost on the ...
... costs are close to zero , consumers do have a source of real power . But as transaction costs increase , so too does the power associ- ated with the ability to walk away decrease . If companies can find a way of imposing a cost on the ...
Contents
A World of Choice | 1 |
Good Choices and Bad Outcomes | 17 |
Private Choices and Public Failures | 34 |
Copyright | |
10 other sections not shown
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No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart: The Surprising Deceptions of Individual ... Tom Slee Limited preview - 2006 |
Common terms and phrases
Adidas Akerlof argue arms race become behaviour benefit best choice best reply better big-box stores Bill and Adrian buy Nike cent choose Club co-operation co-ordination game collective action common companies competition consumers corporations cost countries culture decision defection Dirty Pretty Things dominant drive economics economists employees end result environment equilibrium outcome example externalities factors Figure free exchange free-rider problem game theory graph happy herbicide herd choices idea ideal gas identity incentives increasing returns individual choice industry Jack and Jill Jack's look market for lemons MarketThink ment move movie Nike offer option payoff person play player points pollution preferences prisoner's dilemma Roundup Ready side sidewalks situation sneakers society Spider-Man Star Wars story strategy success temptation things thinking tion Tit-for-Tat ultimatum game utility Wal-Mart walk Whimsley Whimsley Park word-of-mouth