http://pro-libertate.net/20160212/288-read-phishing-phools ( )

Disappointing- merely an overview of important consumer exploitation issues across a wide range of corporate endeavor. You will want to seek out more in depth books on each of the subjects covered here. Essentially an index of ills generated by unregulated corporate greed. This serves as an appetizer, you will be left hungry for more. ( )

This book is readable and probably not entirely wrong. I didn't find it compelling or life-changing. Rather, it felt like old white guys lecturing that life isn't always fair and you shouldn't believe advertising. As the daughter of a mechanic I found the shock that "Bob and George" expressed when they realized the dealer was screwing them on "maintenance packages" to be particularly amusing. ( )

"Free market equilibrium" is always maintained to the extent that there is always someone willing to sell you what you want to buy, or point out things you haven't even thought about buying, but now that they've come to your attention, you find irresistable. However, if what you want to buy makes you sick, fat, drunk, broke or dead from lung disease, it's not the fault of that juggernaut-like free market. You have been phished for a phool.

I admire the authors' attempt to level the playing field by pointing out to consumers the areas where they are most likely to be successfully phished: houses, cars, "phood and pharma", tobacco, liquor, and mortgage-backed securities based on subprime loans with phony Triple A ratings. Unless you are very canny, as the Scots say, or have better powers of resistance than most of your fellow-men, you will be phished.

The reminder that "phishing for phools" is built into the system, and we have to negotiate that system more or less successfully every day, is depressing but very real. In other words, "There's a sucker born every minute - and one to take him". There really is nothing new under the sun.

I was amused by the image of a "monkey on your shoulder", egging you on to make bad decisions, but in general, I didn't find this book as interesting as I thought it might be. ( )

Whirlwind tour of many of the ways people can be fooled by other people, such as ready access to credit cards (people spend more than when they have to part with cash) and campaign advertising. Not much new if you are into behavioral economics; ends with a defense of government regulation to disrupt “phishing equilibria,” where a certain amount of exploitation of everyone is just accepted as normal. ( )