{"id":1958,"date":"2007-06-04T23:07:52","date_gmt":"2007-06-04T23:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/2007\/06\/the_undercover\/"},"modified":"2007-06-04T23:07:52","modified_gmt":"2007-06-04T23:07:52","slug":"the_undercover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/the_undercover\/","title":{"rendered":"The Undercover Economist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/rcm-uk.amazon.co.uk\/e\/cm?t=friday05-21&#038;o=2&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=0349119856&#038;fc1=000000&#038;lc1=0000ff&#038;bc1=ffffff&#038;npa=1&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;IS1=1&#038;f=ifr&#038;bg1=ffffff\" width=\"120\" height=\"240\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\" align=\"right\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe><br \/>\nThe success of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/weblog\/archive\/001466.html\">Freakonomics<\/a> was almost certainly the reason that this book got the green light from the publishers. That&#8217;s not to say that it&#8217;s bad, because it&#8217;s not. Seemingly based on a column from the Financial Times, the author attempts to use economic theory to explain day to day things that we experience.<br \/>\nFor example, he looks at the way the takeaway coffee market works, and examines how the pricing of these expensive beverages is determined (basically, it&#8217;s our own fault that our disposable income means that we can spend two quid on a coffee at a station).<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s all fascinating stuff, and I definitely learnt quite a lot reading this book.<br \/>\nBut I don&#8217;t always agree with the author&#8217;s views. For example, he&#8217;s of the opinion that all those people working in Far-Eastern sweatshops were doing so out of choice, as they earn more and therefore have better lives as a result. Except it&#8217;s not always their choice. Society might dictate that you have to work there &#8211; if your family says you do something, you do it. And there are well documented cases of bonded slavery where children are &#8220;sold&#8221; to factory managers who force the kids to work off the debt in a manner not dissimilar to loan sharks.<br \/>\nOne or two differences of opinion aside, this is still a worthwhile book, and the examination of the game theory behind the infamous UK sell-off of 3G licences probably makes the book worth reading on its own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The success of Freakonomics was almost certainly the reason that this book got the green light from the publishers. That&#8217;s not to say that it&#8217;s bad, because it&#8217;s not. Seemingly based on a column from the Financial Times, the author attempts to use economic theory to explain day to day things that we experience. For [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}