Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero by Tyler CowenMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
A great book, although not as good as "Average is Over" or "The Great Stagnation".
I like the idea of how we should stop seeing companies as "people", thereby being "loyal" to them and being disappointed when they "let us down". However, he also explains how this is difficult because we, as humans, tend to anthropomorphize because we've been dealing with other humans for our entire existence, but corporations have only existed for around 100 years.
I'm not sure if I agree with his criticism of loyalty programs. I'm sure some people follow them in the manner he describes. I know plenty of people who are members of many loyalty programs, and just pick whichever suits them the most, rather than "show loyalty" to any one brand, as one would to a friend.
He also claims that Trump was elected purely with a promise of jobs. Maybe I'm too influenced by events since his election, but I feel like that wasn't his rallying cry at all (I seem to remember the wall, 'crooked hillary', badmouthing John McCain, and some other incoherent ramblings)
Some of my notes:
Corporations are:
a collection of assets
a nexus of reputations
carriers of legal and contractual responsibility
transactional efficient (and inefficient) relationships.
In terms of words, Republicans are more pro-business, but in terms of Actions, this isn't true. While Republicans pay lip service to business, they are against free trade, market solutions, immigration, outsourcing, etc.
Interesting to hear how the US, and not Switzerland, has now become a banking haven, since I remember hearing the same thing from people in Switzerland over the past couple of years.
Our tendency to anthropomorphize also gives rise to more conspiracy theories.
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