If You're Curious About These Questions...
You should listen to this audiobook
- Did you know that the very free markets we trust to be efficient are actually designed to systematically manipulate you into acting against your own self-interest?
- Have you ever wondered why we constantly fall for marketing traps and financial pitfalls, even when we think we’re being rational consumers?
- What if the 'invisible hand' of the economy isn't just guiding growth, but is actively working to 'phish' for your money through psychological deceit?
Listen to Phishing for Phools — Free Audiobook
Loading player...
Key Takeaways from Phishing for Phools
- Understand why free markets are not perfectly rational systems, but rather ideal environments for companies to exploit consumer weaknesses through temptation.
- See how everyday retail environments manipulate your buying habits, such as supermarkets placing essential items at the back of the store to force you past extra merchandise.
- Learn how 'reputation mining' triggered the 2008 financial crisis when established credit rating agencies leveraged their trusted status to approve high-risk financial products.
- Discover how advertisers graft compelling narratives into your internal thoughts, using emotional stories and positive wordplay to unconsciously influence what you buy.
- Find out why paying with credit cards acts as a subtle psychological trap, causing consumers to spend significantly more money and leave larger tips than they would with cash.
Phishing for Phools — Full Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: Recommendation
Chapter 2: Though not rational, free markets today teem with irrational lures for the phool consumer everywhere.
Chapter 3: Reputation mining, one method of phishing for phools, played a central role in the 2008 financial crisis.
Chapter 4: Advertisers phish by crafting stories that slip into our minds, tugging at our emotions.
Chapter 5: Politicians phish by withholding sufficient policy information; big pharma similarly often phishes in comparable ways too.
Chapter 6: Innovations also create avenues for phishing and the tobacco industry is the master of them all.
Chapter 7: Wise laws and standardization can help keep consumers from being phished.
Phishing for Phools Summary & Overview
Phishing for Phools (2015) reveals the ways in which modern free-market systems, so often praised as the epitome of rational exchange, are fueled instead by willful deceit, with the goal of pushing you to act against your self-interest.
Who Should Listen to Phishing for Phools?
- Economists or students examining free-market systems
- Any consumer interested in how the market works
- Socially-conscious business owners
Books Similar to Phishing for Phools
Readers who enjoyed this also liked these titles.
Who Gets What – and Why
★ 3.5 / 5 • 31 ratingsThe New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design
Flipnosis
★ 4.3 / 5 • 136 ratingsThe Art of Split-Second Persuasion
Priceless
★ 4.2 / 5 • 29 ratingsThe Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It)
Fooled by Randomness
★ 4.6 / 5 • 571 ratingsThe Hidden Role of Chance in Life and the Markets