Book of the Week · Money Media Moguls

Book of the Week

Now, just because I call it "Book of the week" doesn't mean I'll recommend one every week.

I'd love to get through a book a week, but sadly, it hasn't happened yet. And even if I did, they wouldn't all be finance and economics.

I've been quiet this week as I got away for a few days with my wife to spectacular Istanbul.

On the flight, I added this book to my Kindle on a newspaper recommendation (Yes! I still read those).

Here's the review from Martin Wolf in the Financial Times:

Link to article, so I'm not in breach of T&Cs https://on.ft.com/4iA5yhB

"Fixed: Why Personal Finance Is Broken and How to Make It Work for Everyone by John Y Campbell and Tarun Ramadorai (Princeton)

"This book would be the ideal present for anybody who needs lessons in finance. The authors, professors at Harvard and Imperial College respectively, are informed critics of a system that fools its users. “The problems of today’s financial system can be summarized as complexity and cost,” they explain. These two defects are related since “complexity increases costs to consumers”. A better financial system would, they argue, adhere to four principles: simple, cheap, safe and easy. With modern information technology, they add, these requirements could be met relatively easily. They recommend, in particular, creation of a “starter kit” for beginners."

Has anyone read this?

When I've finished it, I'll come back with a review.

Also on the flight, I finished Cory Doctorow's "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It"

Very entertaining and informative. Now, I'm far from agreeing with him on everything, but the main thrust of the book hits the nail on the head. Our governments (right, left, US, Europe, WTO) have dropped the ball on antitrust and straightforward rules that protect consumers like interoperability. Moreover, we've written into law protections for tech companies that seriously prejudice consumers and leave them open to exploitative pricing.

There are loads of examples. (I have to deal with Google and Meta acting as a cartel and fixing ad prices on a daily basis, but that's not for this forum. But why is the FTC not all over this?). A good example is the world of subscriptions and the fact that everything now is an app. If you buy a new car, that car may have certain features that will not be available to you unless you pay a monthly subscription. Some electric cars will even deny you access to part of the battery charge! The music you "bought" in the Apple store is no longer available to you if you no longer use an Apple device. I could go on.

For those of a FIRE mentality, choosing one product over another should look hard at:

Interoperability

No subscriptions

Repairability

No obligations (or extorsion!) to use authorized service agents.

This wouldn't be so necessary if our governments weren't dragging their feet on these issues.

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