When it comes to popular economics books, some people will find themselves interested primarily in works about the failures of the market (and/or the virtues of the public sector), and some are more oriented towards books on the shortcomings of the government (and/or the superiority of the private sector). This crude liberal/conservative conceptual divide probably captures a majority of readers of non-technical, non-academic books out there; and while like most dichotomies it's maybe a little regrettable, in that the world is too complex for solid red team/blue team splits on a big complicated issue like markets vs. government, it's harder than it should be to find a work intended for a popular audience that doesn't seem like it's shilling for a Team in one way or the other.

Slee's No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart isn't one of those books. It could be accused of being in the anti-market camp, due to widespread use of the term "MarketThink" for a hyper-libertarian viewpoint he dislikes, but I don't see it that way. MarketThink, in his telling, is the conviction that markets, as collections of nominally competitive corporations, constitute the best organizing principle for the overwhelming majority of social goals and activities. While Slee uses the term slightly perjoratively, he doesn't exaggerate or caricature its proponents; in fact he is scrupulous about presenting its commonly-used prescriptions of deregulation, privatization, and commercialization in order to ask and answer the many facets of a deceptively simple question - why, if few people seem to like or actually prefer Wal-Mart to other stores, do Wal-Marts keep moving and displacing those stores, and then getting business from the very people who claimed they disliked them?

Game theory, along with some social psychology, features very heavily as an explanation for this seeming inconsistency, with practical illustrations of many concepts like prisoner's dilemmas with multiple equilibria, arms races, asymmetric information, collective action, externalities, free riders, network effects, increasing returns, monopoly power, transaction costs, and the relevance of search, experience, and credence goods. Above all are the distinctions between actual preferences (such as not to have a Wal-Mart at all) and choices (once a Wal-Mart is built, you may as well shop there), and between mere money (which might be maximized by shopping at a Wal-Mart) and actual utility (a far subtler concept, which might not). Scholars whose work features prominently in somewhat abbreviated form are George Akerlof, Richard Dawkins, Jane Jacobs, Mancur Olson, John Maynard Smith, Thomas Schelling, and Joe Stiglitz.

I was interested in this book because my home city of Austin has a complicated relationship with Wal-Mart: several years ago, the company wanted to build a superstore on the ruins of Northcross Mall, which was once-prominent but then-decrepit. Activists banded together to prevent the store from being built; after a multi-year delay, they failed at stopping the store but did force it to downsize and make other concessions to the neighborhood. Were these activists deluded, essentially subsidizing inefficient old stores and a run-down old mall at the cost of driving up everyone's prices and forcing them to drive farther for the goods they needed? Or were they trying to preserve a distinctive neighborhood with unique local stores, lower traffic, pollution, and crime in their area, and do something about Wal-Mart's well-known troublesome labor and environmental practices? The reason why I don't see this book as taking a "side", per se, is that while it does admittedly oppose extreme right-wing viewpoints, it's primarily interested in expanding the way that people think about questions that involve complicated sets of tradeoffs.

Urban issues can be very complex, and seemingly-simple choices to pursue one set of goals like maximizing economic activity can work against goals like ensuring quality of life and sustainability. While it's certainly possible to strangle the economy by putting in too many roadblocks to development, and indeed nothing in this book argues against the many virtues of free trade and entrepreneurship, it's in the essence of a well-functioning democracy to ponder the consequences of big decisions and question whether what seems like a sure-fire bet - turn a ghost mall into a place people actually want to shop - might have other hidden costs. Some day fights against Wal-Mart will be ancient history, but the issues in this book are applicable at all times and places, and you will find very few guides as lucid and cogent. ( )

A surprisingly readable explanation of game theory with real world examples. ( )