Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself

Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself
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The Optimistic Jew

SOCIAL COMMENTARY DISGUISED AS A HOW-TO GUIDE

Wonderful

Motivation to Get Out There

Salarymen can learn something too

Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself
Daniel H. Pink
Manufacturer: Business Plus
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0446678791

Book Description

Combining the astute social analysis of Alvin Tofflers The Third Wave and Faith Popcorns The Popcorn Report, this book boldly predicts the death of the conventional job and describes the Brave New World of the self-employed society.Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, it has been the organizing principle of society: people are what they do. But at the dawning of the new millennium, Americans are waking up to the fact that commitment to a traditional corporate structure does not guarantee personal validation or financial security. In what is one of the fastest growing movements today, people are rejecting the idea of corporate loyalty to explore more creative ways of making a living. This book addresses this movement and is a must-have for the millions investigating free agency.

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The Organization Man is history. Taking his place is America's new economic icon: the "free agent"--the job-hopping, tech-savvy, fulfillment-seeking, self-reliant, independent worker. Already 30 million strong, these new "dis-organization" men and women are transforming America in ways both profound and exhilarating. Are you ready for . . . · The Peter-Out Principle: Successor to the famous "Peter Principle," this new rule decrees that when the fun peters out, the talented walk out. · Unschooling: Individual-centered learning like homeschooling and apprenticeships will threaten Ivy League colleges and end high school as we know it. · Individual Public Offerings: The upper echelon of free agents will issue these new "IPOs," or stock . . . in themselves.· E-tirement: When Americans reach age sixty-five, more will enter a new stage of life. Working as full-time, part-time, and anytime free agents, they'll be finding and executing work over the Internet.· Just-in-time Politics: This political version of just-in-time manufacturing will challenge the present two-party system.· The Feminine Century: Women are free agency's early adopters. Many analysts estimate that by the year 2005, half of all businesses will be run by women. In this landmark book, Daniel H. Pink offers the definitive account of this revolution in work. He shows who these free agents are--from the marketing consultant down the street to the home-based "mompreneur" to the footloose technology contractor--and why they've forged a new path. His entertaining and provocative account of the new frontier of work reveals how free agents are shaking up all of our institutions--from politics to education to the family.

Customer Reviews:

The Optimistic Jew.......2007-08-31

By varying accounts there are 25-30 million free agents at present in the United States. Most of these work from home. Add millions of micro-businesses and one comes to the conclusion that the 20th century will be known as the first and last century in which most working people were salaried. Up until the 20th century most working people were small farmers, merchants and independent professionals. If present trends continue - and there is every reason to believe they will - then by the middle of the 21st century most working people will be self-employed in one form or another. This will have revolutionary impact on politics, tax and social policy and the economic balance of power. Cultural attitudes that encourage innovation and risk-taking will have tremendous advantages in this emerging reality. This is why I claim that: "No people on earth (referring to the Jews) are better prepared by virtue of education, temperament and historical adaptability to embrace the challenges of the 21st century". This book provided me with much of the information that enabled me to open my own book "The Optimistic Jew" with the above lines.

SOCIAL COMMENTARY DISGUISED AS A HOW-TO GUIDE.......2007-04-25

Free Agent Nation by Daniel H. Pink is not entirely what it seems.

Daniel Pink is a former speech writer for Al Gore. He wrote for him when Al Gore was serving as Vice President, but not during the campaign for president.

When Mr Pink left the White House and became, as it were, a Free Agent, he was surprised at the number of people who earned income from running their own small business. It became apparent to him that if the Republican Party was the party of big business and the Democratic Party was the party of labor unions, then the growing demographic of the self employed had no real representation.

Therefore, Mr Pink explored who these people were, what they were doing, and what they needed. Of course, Mr. Pink is no economist or statistician. Therefore, his analysis seems a bit heavy on the anecdotal. Likewise, this is not a how to book that will tell you step by step what needs to be done to start up your own business.

Regardless, this is an interesting book that explores a growing social phenomenon of the post-industrial world.

Wonderful.......2007-02-24

I go solo after reading this book. It's a new life! I definitely recommend it!

Motivation to Get Out There.......2006-11-05

If you've been thinking of going out on your own, Daniel Pink will motivate you. Without writing a motivational book at all, he has succeeded in showing the reader why being a Free Agent is the way to go in the new economy of the 21st Century.

Salarymen can learn something too.......2006-10-24

In 2006 we are way past the industrial age, and especially so in the TV and entertainment business. Our products are at the forefront -- but what about our ways of working? This book mostly addresses how people work as independents, but has a lot one can learn for how the local and multi-national work environment could be configured better. It's a bit U.S.-centric, but other countries, especially in hi-tech, are not far behind.

The 21st Century at Work: Forces Shaping the Future Workforce and Workplace in the United States

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The 21st Century at Work: Forces Shaping the Future Workforce and Workplace in the United States
Lynn A. Karoly
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Conflict Over the World's Resources: Background, Trends, Case Studies, and Considerations for the Future (Contributions in Political Science)

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Conflict Over the World's Resources: Background, Trends, Case Studies, and Considerations for the Future (Contributions in Political Science)
Robert Mandel
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0313261296

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As resource scarcity threatens and the economic gap between affluent and poorer nations continues to widen, conflict over natural resources is assuming critical dimensions. Mandel analyzes the causes and consequences of present tensions and offers case studies of five recent or ongoing resource conflicts illustrating major areas of confrontation and identifying the range of policy issues we need to confront. Synthesizing his findings, Mandel demonstrates the need for rethinking current policy and suggests alternative approaches that may help to reduce international conflict. The author first describes worldwide scarcity trends and trends in resource conflict and their relation to international conflict as a whole. He looks at the dynamics of resource competition, assessing the impact of scarcity, declining economic development, environmental awareness, resource interdependence, and other factors. The first case study, centering on the protection of an endangered species, examines the whaling confrontation that began in 1972. The oil crisis and the continuing conflict over fossil fuels is considered next. Other case studies focus on political coercion in the conflict over food; the scarcity of strategic minerals and competition to control them; and the conflict arising from nuclear pollution in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster. The concluding chapter, dealing with policy implications, explains why prevailing attitudes toward resources are counterproductive, and suggests ways of working more effectively to minimize international resource conflict. Combining solid empirical analysis with a thorough understanding of environmental theory and comparative resource issues, Mandel's study will be important reading for students and specialists concerned with resource policy, development, international relations, and conflict resolution.

China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World

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Lacks critical analysis, nothing more than a collection of (incomplete) stories
Could have been at least 100 pages shorter
The Tom Wolfe of China
Please blame everything on China, is this a new trend to cover up American "disastrous" foreign policy?
Excellent reference background.....

China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World
Ted C. Fishman
Manufacturer: Scribner
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ASIN: 0743257529

Amazon.com

China has the world's most rapidly changing large economy, and according to Ted Fishman, it is forcing the world to change along with it. "No country has ever before made a better run at climbing every step of economic development all at once," he writes, in China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World. China is currently the largest maker of toys, clothing, and consumer electronics, and is swiftly moving up the ladder in car production, computer manufacturing, biotechnology, aerospace, telecommunications, and other sectors thanks to low-cost, high-tech factories. China is also where the world is investing. In 2004, for instance, the city of Shanghai alone attracted over $12 billion in direct foreign investment, roughly the same amount as all of Indonesia and Mexico received. In tracing China's ascendancy over the past 30 years (with annual growth of an astonishing 9.5 percent), Fishman presents a flood of facts, figures, forecasts, and anecdotes and examines the implications of this unprecedented growth for China, the U.S., and the rest of the world.

Calling China's huge population "arguably the greatest natural resource on the planet," Fishman details how hundreds of millions of peasants have migrated from rural to urban areas to find manufacturing jobs, providing an unlimited, low-wage workforce to power China's economy. In the process, this shift has changed both Chinese culture and the global business climate in significant ways. Simply put, American companies can't compete with wages as low as 25 cents an hour and lack of regulation and oversight, so are forced to move their operations to China or completely change the focus of their business. And it's not just a problem for the U.S.--even Mexico is outsourcing to China. Though it remains to be seen whether this will truly be the "Chinese Century" as Fishman asserts, China, Inc. is a brisk and informative look at why so many American corporations, and American jobs, are heading to China. --Shawn Carkonen

Book Description

China today is visible everywhere -- in the news, in the economic pressures battering america, in the workplace, and in every trip to the store. provocative, timely, and essential, this dramatic account of china's growing dominance as an industrial super-power by journalist Ted C. Fishman explains how the profound shift in the global economic order has occurred -- and why it already affects us all.

How has an enormous country once hobbled by poverty and Communist ideology come to be the supercharged center of global capitalism? What does it mean that China now grows three times faster than the United States? That China uses 40 percent of the world's concrete and 25 percent of its steel? What is the global impact of 300 million rural Chinese walking off their farms and heading to the cities in the greatest migration in human history? Why do nearly all of the world's biggest companies now have large-scale operations in China? What does the corporate march into China mean for workers left behind in America, Europe, and the rest of the world?

Meanwhile, what makes China's emerging corporations so dangerously competitive? What could happen when China will be able to manufacture nearly everything -- computers, cars, jumbo jets, and pharmaceuticals -- that the United States and Europe can, at perhaps half the cost? How do these developments reach around the world and straight into the lives of all Americans?

These are ground-shaking questions, and China, Inc. provides answers.Veteran journalist and former commodities trader Ted C. Fishman paints a vivid picture of the megatrends radiating out of China. Fishman's account begins with the burgeoning output of China's vast low-cost factories and the swelling appetite of its 1.3 billion consumers, both of which are being driven by historically unprecedented infusions of foreign capital and technological know-how. Traveling through China's frenetic landscape of growth, Fishman visits the factories, markets, streets, stores, towns, and cities where the story of Chinese capitalism is being lived by one-fifth of all humanity. Fishman also draws on interviews with Chinese, American, and European workers, managers, and executives to show how China will force all of us to make big changes in how we think about ourselves as consumers, workers, citizens, and even as parents. The result is a richly engaging work of penetrating, up-to-the-minute reportage and brilliant analysis that will forever change how readers think about America's future.

Download Description

"China today is visible everywhere -- in the news, in the economic pressures battering america, in the workplace, and in every trip to the store. provocative, timely, and essential, this dramatic account of china's growing dominance as an industrial super-power by journalist Ted C. Fishman explains how the profound shift in the global economic order has occurred -- and why it already affects us all. How has an enormous country once hobbled by poverty and Communist ideology come to be the supercharged center of global capitalism? What does it mean that China now grows three times faster than the United States? That China uses 40 percent of the world's concrete and 25 percent of its steel? What is the global impact of 300 million rural Chinese walking off their farms and heading to the cities in the greatest migration in human history? Why do nearly all of the world's biggest companies now have large-scale operations in China? What does the corporate march into China mean for workers left behind in America, Europe, and the rest of the world? Meanwhile, what makes China's emerging corporations so dangerously competitive? What could happen when China will be able to manufacture nearly everything -- computers, cars, jumbo jets, and pharmaceuticals -- that the United States and Europe can, at perhaps half the cost? How do these developments reach around the world and straight into the lives of all Americans? These are ground-shaking questions, and China, Inc. provides answers.Veteran journalist and former commodities trader Ted C. Fishman paints a vivid picture of the megatrends radiating out of China. Fishman's account begins with the burgeoning output of China's vast low-cost factories and the swelling appetite of its 1.3 billion consumers, both of which are being driven by historically unprecedented infusions of foreign capital and technological know-how. Traveling through China's frenetic landscape of growth, Fishman visits the factories, markets, streets, stores, towns, and cities where the story of Chinese capitalism is being lived by one-fifth of all humanity. Fishman also draws on interviews with Chinese, American, and European workers, managers, and executives to show how China will force all of us to make big changes in how we think about ourselves as consumers, workers, citizens, and even as parents. The result is a richly engaging work of penetrating, up-to-the-minute reportage and brilliant analysis that will forever change how readers think about America's future. "

Customer Reviews:

Lacks critical analysis, nothing more than a collection of (incomplete) stories .......2007-09-04

Half of the book is like a PR campaign for Shanghai, saying how fascinating the city is without really critically examining its glories. It seems like the author has not ventured far away from Shanghai (even Zhejiang Province is bordering Shanghai) and to really delve into the rest of China. It is just like reading a book on U.S. economy while all it talks about is New York. Projecting New York for the rest of the U.S. is laughable, so is thinking Shanghai epitomizes the entire China.

Shanghai's success, at least in the past, critically relied on the extremely favorable national policies steered by Jiang Ze-ming, the former mayor of Shanghai who became the president after 1989 Tiananmen. Such biased national policies are highly questionable, and its impact on Shanghai long-term economic sustainability is also open for debate.

It's also weird for a book on China's economic transition to exclude meaningful discussion of the economic reforms in the Pearl River Delta area where all of the initial economic reforms started, and which is still one of the most important economic regions in China. Also, China's attempts to balance economic development between the coastal region and the inland region are largely ignored in the book (except some very light discussions here and there).

The second half of the book is not very organized and it is not clear what message the author was trying to get across. Overall, the book is nothing more than a collection of stories you can easily find in Economist. A better book for a quick intro and analysis of China's rise is The World is Flat, side by side is an analysis of India as a bonus...

Could have been at least 100 pages shorter.......2007-07-15

A lot of insights from the book but at the same time a lot of non-insights.

The book covers the movement of Chinese people from the farms to the cities and the attitude towards rapid modernization including piracy. However, you cannot FEEL it from first person point of view. You feel very detached reading the book.

It could have been more straight to the point and a lot of pages bored me.

The Tom Wolfe of China.......2007-05-24

This a kaleidoscopic view of the most dynamic country today on the planet. Sit down, strap up, and read the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test of the 21st Century. For a harder analytical edge, read my own volume The Coming China Wars: Where They Will Be Fought and How They Can Be Won

Please blame everything on China, is this a new trend to cover up American "disastrous" foreign policy? .......2007-05-11

So with all due respect:

1) If China is so bad, don't do business there, no one is forcing you
2) All American CEO who deals with China are unpatriotic Americans
3) All American CEO who outsource to China and India are immoral capitalist
4) All American CEO who deal with China should pay a fine or go to Jail. -But they are not! And as matter of facts, they are getting big bonuses.
5) Don't blame the Chinese, they are providing a service (cheap) but American consumers and executives are the ones knocking on their doors.
6) You can't have both ways; you can't try to use cheap labor in 3rd world countries and then turn around and point fingers at the people you are doing business with.

7) Stop bringing up the WWII theory on some of these comments, just because the USA fought and won WWI -which is GREAT! It does not mean the USA is correct FOREVER...common sense.

Excellent reference background............2007-04-11

My team at work does a lot of business with China and after one of the engineers read the book, we ordered about 15 copies for the entire department to read, we felt it was so worthwhile!

Trust Us We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future

Average customer rating:

The Death of Capitalism
The book is very idealistic/ unrealistic
If Everybody Believes Something, It's Probably Wrong
Take critical thinking one step further...
Beware of "Experts" -- Follow the Money!

Trust Us We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future
Sheldon Rampton , and John Stauber
Manufacturer: Tarcher
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Amazon.com

Fearless investigative journalists Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber (Toxic Sludge Is Good for You! and Mad Cow U.S.A.) are back with a gripping exposé of the public relations industry and the scientists who back their business-funded, anti-consumer-safety agendas. There are two kinds of "experts" in question--the PR spin doctors behind the scenes and the "independent" experts paraded before the public, scientists who have been hand-selected, cultivated, and paid handsomely to promote the views of corporations involved in controversial actions. Lively writing on controversial topics such as dioxin, bovine growth hormone, and genetically modified food makes this a real page-turner, shocking in its portrayal of the real and potential dangers in each of these technological innovations and of the "media pseudo-environment" created to obfuscate the risks. By financing and publicizing views that support the goals of corporate sponsors, PR campaigns have, over the course of the century, managed to suppress the dangers of lead poisoning for decades, silence the scientist who discovered that rats fed on genetically modified corn had significant organ abnormalities, squelch television and newspaper stories about the risks of bovine growth hormone, and place enough confusion and doubt in the public's mind about global warming to suppress any mobilization for action.

Rampton and Stauber introduce the movers and shakers of the PR industry, from the "risk communicators" (whose job is to downplay all risks) and "outrage managers" (with their four strategies--deflect, defer, dismiss, or defeat) to those who specialize in "public policy intelligence" (spying on opponents). Evidently, these elaborate PR campaigns are created for our own good. According to public relations philosophers, the public reacts emotionally to topics related to health and safety and is incapable of holding rational discourse. Needless to say, Rampton and Stauber find these views rather antidemocratic and intend to pull back the curtain to reveal the real wizard in Oz. This is one wake-up call that's hard to resist. --Lesley Reed

Book Description

The book that unmasks the sneaky and widespread methods industry uses to influence opinion through bogus experts, doctored data, and manufactured facts.

"Finally a long-overdue exposé of the shenanigans and subterfuge that lie behind the making of experts in America." (Jeremy Rifkin)

"If you want to know how the world wags, and who's wagging it, here's your answer." (Bill Moyers)

"Meticulously researched . . . Rampton and Stauber's documentation of PR campaigns proves that they are the real 'experts.' " (Brill's Content) AUTHOBIO: John Stauber is the founder and director of the Center for Media & Democracy. He and Sheldon Rampton write and edit the quarterly PR Watch: Public Interest Reporting on the PR/Public Affairs Industry.

Customer Reviews:

The Death of Capitalism.......2007-09-04

Capitalism - market economy - free enterprise - these are the jewels in the crown of civilization which, since the renaissance, have brought unprecedented wealth, prosperity and freedom to large parts of the world. Capitalism has struggled and eventually triumphed over its historical adversaries; in earlier times, popes and kings and in our time socialism and communism. In the 21st century, since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, international corporate capitalism is bursting, like fireworks, in triumph; merging, globalizing and buying governments. What puny opposition remains is easily dispatched with a broad range of powerful weapons which have been developed over the years. Today the only real threat to capitalism is capitalism!
Socialists may practice socialism and Christians may practice Christianity but if by capitalism we mean a competitive market driven economic system, then capitalists do not practice capitalism. Theorists notwithstanding, capitalism is not an ideology, it is merely a description. Capitalists are not trying to implement some philosophy, they are only trying to make a buck any way they can. To a capitalist the biggest enemy is not socialism or labor unions or liberals or environmentalists, or even big government, the biggest enemy is risk. Risk of not making money. Risk of losing money.
Making money and avoiding risk in doing so is what capitalism is all about. But it is precisely in the risk taking that society draws its benefits from capitalism. That is the dilemma. Risk promotes wise investment resulting in efficiency, innovation and the creation of wealth, not just for the capitalist but for society as a whole. But a lot of capitalists fall by the wayside in the process. It is in the capitalist's interest to eliminate risk and society's interest to prevent them from doing so. The way to avoid risk is to control the market and to do that they must also control the government. This struggle has been going on for hundreds of years: capitalists forming monopolies, oligarchies and trusts and society breaking them up.
So long as society can keep pace with all the tricks and turns that capitalists take to avoid risk, the world would continue to reap the blessings of capitalism. But for the capitalists to succeed in eliminating risk, they would have to eliminate competition resulting in a monopoly of corporations with as much efficiency and innovation as any government bureaucracy. The ultimate risk-free climax would be monopoly and oligarchy and the corporate-run government necessary to keep it that way -- functionally indistinguishable from a Mafia run state or a Stalinist one. Capitalism, instead of an engine which pumps wealth to society and makes some capitalist wealthy in the process, would become an engine which sucks the wealth out of society, making a handful wealthy by impoverishing the rest.
We see this process going on in third world countries today and we are seeing the beginnings of it at home, in America. All three branches of government are increasingly under the control of corporations. Both political parties are addicted to corporate financing. Mergers, acquisitions and globalization, all techniques for eliminating risk, are rampant. The media is being merged and taken over by corporations and increasingly being used as public relations outlets for the corporations.
Right now society is not keeping pace. The tricks and turns that corporate capitalists use to avoid risk have gotten trickier and twistier. Just as a mosquito injects an anesthetic so that you will not feel it is sucking your blood, corporations are coopting the very processes by which people recognize what is going on so that more and more we are living in a virtual reality without realizing it. Sort of like a Potemkin village or like the movie The Truman Story where a boy is born and raised on a television set without knowing it. And as corporations merge and grow larger, they have even bigger budgets to build even more elaborate and convincing "sets". But this is not science fiction. The "sets" are being built around us as you read this.
Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber of the Center for Media & Democracy have been documenting this process for years. Their publications include a quarterly newsletter, PR Watch, and several books including: Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry, Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?, and now Trust Us, We're Experts. While flippant and amusing, these books and articles tell a very chilling story of corporate public relations manipulation and spin control growing exponentially in size, audacity and sophistication.
The "father of public relations", Rampton and Stauber point out in Trust Us, is Edward L. Bernays, son in law and disciple of Sigmund Freud. By following Bernays' philosophy one can see the road map to the future. Here are some of his ideas [pp 42 - 44]:

** scientific manipulation of public opinion is necessary to overcome chaos and conflict in society
** In almost every act of our lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons ... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.
** while most people respond to their world instinctively, without thought, there exist an intelligent few who have been charged with the responsibility of contemplating and influencing the tide of history
** public relations is an applied science, like engineering, through which society's leaders could bring order out of chaos
** being herd like also made people remarkably susceptible to leadership.

Of course that "leadership" can only be exercised by those who can afford the price of the Hill & Knowltons and APCOs of this world.
Here are some cases of virtual reality cited in their latest book. Big contributions, free junkets and the promise of future jobs are the more obvious ways of corrupting legislators but less obvious and more subtle is the use of public relations to actually manipulate the "facts". A typical example of how this works is illustrated on page 14.
"In the Fall of 1997, Georgetown University's Credit Research Center issued a study which concluded that many debtors are using bankruptcy as an excuse to wriggle out of their obligations to creditors. Lobbyists for bank and credit card companies seized on the study as they lobbied Congress for changes in federal law that would make it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy relief. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen cited the study in a Washington Times opinion column, offering Georgetown's academic imprimatur as evidence of the need for `bankruptcy reform'. What Bentsen failed to mention was that the Credit Research Center is funded in its entirety by credit card companies, banks, retailers, and others in the credit industry. The study itself was produced with a $100,000 grant from Visa USA and MasterCard International Inc. Bentsen also failed to mention that he himself had been hired to work as a credit-industry lobbyist."
Coopting and distorting the very sources of knowledge and information which informed people, legislators, scientists, government officials, the press, etc. rely on as being objective and scientific is one of the most clever and the most egregious techniques for creating virtual reality. As an EPA employee I have seen many examples of self-serving corporate sponsored "scientific" studies being foisted off on EPA and used to justify weak ineffective regulations or no regulations at all. The fraud, if discovered at all, is rarely discovered by EPA. In the absence of high level support there is very little incentive for science bureaucrats to look closely at studies with powerful backers.
From p. 199: If you want to know just how craven some scientists can be, the archives of the tobacco industry offer a treasure trove of examples. Thanks to whistle-blowers and lawsuits, millions of pages of once-secret industry documents have become public and are freely available over the Internet. In 1998, for example, documents came to light regarding an industry- sponsored campaign in the early 1990s to plant sympathetic letters and articles in influential medical journals. Tobacco companies had secretly paid 13 scientists a total of $156,000 simply to write a few letters to influential medical journals. One biostatistician, Nathan Mantel of American University in Washington, received $10,000 for writing a single, eight-paragraph letter that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Cancer researcher Gio Batta Cori received $20,137 for writing four letters and an opinion piece to the Lancet, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, and the Wall Street Journal - nice work if you can get it, especially since the scientists didn't even have to write the letters themselves. Two tobacco-industry law firms were available to do the actual drafting and editing. All the scientists really had to do was sign their names at the bottom."
If the virtual reality created by public relation firms were only limited to selling toothpaste and deodorant we might not get too concerned about it. Falsifying medical research to defend harmful and dangerous products is a troublesome escalation. But there appears to be no limits to the uses of PR and no concern by the users of its ultimate impact. The issue of global warming, which could possibly plunge humanity into a new dark age, is being surrounded by the fog of virtual reality by the practitioners of PR as if the stakes were no more important than the selling of mouthwash.
Rampton and Stauber point out in pp 267-288 of Trust Us that PR firms hired by the major industrial emitters of greenhouse gasses have created dozens of influential sounding front organization such as "The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition", "The Global Climate Information Project", "The Information Council for the Environment" and "The Greening Earth Society" which have saturated the media, Congress and the public with industry spin so as to make their case by sheer volume and noise. Since the facts and the scientific community are so overwhelming against them, the object of the public relations onslaught has been to slow down, confuse and defuse public clamor for resolute action. Friends of the Earth International calls this "lobbying for lethargy".
There is legitimate scientific debate about the source and rate of global warming and a lot of the spin addresses that, but a lot doesn't. Some of the dirtier tricks played are:

** An attempt to stimulate anti Kyoto Treaty email to President Clinton by promising to enter writers' names in a $1000 sweepstakes drawing.
** Appealing to anti-abortion activists with the claim that "Al Gore has said abortion should be used to reduce global warming."
** Touting phoney petitions of scientists discrediting the theory of global warming.
** Circulating phoney "scientific" papers made up to look like they had appeared in reputable peer reviewed scientific journals.
** Some industry flacks claim the Earth is actually cooling while other claim that global warming is a good thing.

The scary thing is that lobbying for lethargy is working.

The book is very idealistic/ unrealistic.......2007-04-13

One thing that the authors don't think about is that: Most people are not only not educated enough to understand the specialist jargon that goes with many industrial products, but that if they did try to interpret it *based on their limited information/ understanding* disaster would result.

The authors also don't get into what happens when a well meaning government agency overregulates an industry SO MUCH that it ends up being of benefit to no one. Examples abound-- that were not dealt with in the book.

1. The FDA has such tight regulations on drugs that they end up costing 2-3 times more to produce/ sell to the American public than what they should. And much of this cost is legal fees, excessive testing, and clinical trials.

2. The trucking industry is also something that is heavily regulated. There is a chronic shortage of truck drivers in the industry because there are so many regulations that many people who would be perfectly competent truck drivers can't get a chance at working. (For reference, automobiles kill 40,000+ Americans per year, and trucks kill about 900. An average truck driver might drive 55 hours per week compared to the single digit hours that are driven by a passenger car.)

3. Everyone is whining about the price of gas, but no one knows whether the high cost is because of refineries operating at peak capacity or because of insufficient existing oil supplies. No one will ever be able to test this, since a single refinery has not been built in the last 30 years in the United States.

If people were able to regulate industries by the political process (say, by referenda or voting for candidates that would pass strict legislation), whatever came along after what currently exists would be FAR WORSE.

These authors need to pick up some books on Economics-- specifically ones that deal with information asymmetry (as in, how corporations have a better idea of what they are doing than third party observers).

Other than that, the book is very well written with lots of good examples. It's worth picking up-- in spite of my low rating thereof.

If Everybody Believes Something, It's Probably Wrong.......2006-12-29

If everybody believes something, it's probably wrong! We call that Conventional Wisdom. "Trust Us We're Experts" is one of the few books that I recommend to all of my patients that enter my office. The information in this book has the power to potentially save your life, since it provides the reader with the tools to spot propaganda that's regularly disseminated to the masses.

Americans are the most conditioned, programmed beings on the planet. Not only are our thoughts and attitudes continually being shaped and molded; our very awareness of the whole design seems like it is being subtly and inexorably erased! It is an exhausting and endless task to keep explaining to people how most issues of conventional wisdom are scientifically implanted in the public consciousness by a thousand media clips per day. I feel that Stauber and Rampton do an excellent job at guiding the reader through the PR industry and expert deception that is propagated daily. My recommendation is to buy this book today then kill your TV!

Dr. Matthew J. Loop

- Author of "Cracking the Cancer Code"

Take critical thinking one step further..........2005-11-19

...and use the techniques in this book on the book itself. Sadly, a book with so much promise falls victim to its own PR machine all too often. Face it, if you're going to use critical thinking, use it consistently. If you use it against what you don't like, but cast a blind eye on things you are passionate about, how critical is that, really?

Beware of "Experts" -- Follow the Money! .......2005-07-02

John Stauber tells it like it is, and I wish this book were a bestseller. Readers who can accept these truths may also want to read a highly detailed yet fascinating expose of a huge and profitable industry that has been manipulating science and gambling with your health -- "The Whole Soy Story:The Dark Side of America's Favorite Health Food" by Kaayla Daniel, The fact that you are probably thinking, "No, we all know that soy is healthy for us" is proof of how thoroughly you've been conned. I was too, but no longer. "Fluoride Deception" by Christopher Bryson is another good one. Thanks to John Stauber, I'm wary of experts and now know enough to follow the money.

The Wall Street Journal Guide to Planning Your Financial Future, 3rd Edition (Wall Street Journal Guide to Planning Your Financial Future)

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Great information
Wall St. Journal Guide/Planning your Financial Future
STILL STRONG ADVICE
Not Bad but Not Great Either
a very good book, on its topic, and very esy to read

The Wall Street Journal Guide to Planning Your Financial Future, 3rd Edition (Wall Street Journal Guide to Planning Your Financial Future)
Kenneth M. Morris , and Virginia B. Morris
Manufacturer: Fireside
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Human Resources & Personnel Management | Industries & Professions | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Industrial Relations | Industries & Professions | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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The Wall Street Journal Complete Money and Investing Guidebook (The Wall Street Journal Guidebooks)
The Wall Street Journal. Complete Personal Finance Guidebook (The Wall Street Journal Guidebooks)
Standard and Poor's Guide to Money and Investing (Standard & Poor)
The Wall Street Journal. Personal Finance Workbook
Wall Street Journal Guide to Understanding Money and Investing (Wall Street Journal Guide to Understanding Money & Investing)

Accessories:

Philips HeartStart Home Defibrillator (AED)

ASIN: 0743225376
Release Date: 2002-09-03

Book Description

The Wall Street Journal Guide To Planning Your Financial Future

provides clear explanations of the things you need to know and guidelines for the decisions you have to make to enjoy a comfortable retirement. It covers the advantages of salary reduction plans, clarifies the difference between Roth and traditional IRAs, and describes the benefits of effective tax planning. And it provides practical, helpful ideas to get you started.

Customer Reviews:

Great information.......2006-11-10

I was very much impressed by the book. It had all the information you would ever need and to find it in one book was great.

Wall St. Journal Guide/Planning your Financial Future.......2006-02-23

A very well written guide, put in true layman's terms. Easy to understand, with just the right amount of explanation and information. Great book!

STILL STRONG ADVICE.......2005-08-06

I have been a fan of this series from WSJ since 1995 during college. its very simple and easy to read. Yet again in the updated version it made macr/micro economics real easy to grasp.

Not Bad but Not Great Either.......2004-02-01

I had high hopes for this simple book since I am totally a visual learner. The pictures and colors greatly appealed to me, and they are indeed very nice.

That being said, I felt like the organization of the book was lacking; too many concepts were explained out of order or in such a way that a smooth flow didn't occur. Also, knowledge was assumed on the part of the reader in a manner that I found unacceptable. It was like, "Jeese, I'm reading this kind of book to find out WHAT such and such is, not just to read ABOUT it." Kind of like being told lots of details about a 401(k) without ever being told what it really is.

Overall: Helpful as a supplement to another book, such as _Retirement Bible_, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy. Good for reinforcing your learning.

a very good book, on its topic, and very esy to read.......2003-02-24

Its a very easy to read guide on planning your financial, future, I bought this one, and after reading it, I also bought the one on "money and invesing" and the one on "personal finance". I live in Mexico, and altough retirement doesnt works the same way as in US, the books does works in some parts (65%) to planning your financial future in Mexico

Frontiers of Development Economics: The Future in Perspective

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Complex subject

Frontiers of Development Economics: The Future in Perspective

Manufacturer: A World Bank Publication
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Policy & Current Events | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Development & Growth | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Economic Policy & Development | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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Similar Items:

Development as Freedom
The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics
The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good
Rethinking Development Economics (Anthem Studies in Political Economy and Globalization)
Leading Issues in Economic Development

ASIN: 0195215923

Book Description

Co-edited by the Vice President of the World Bank, this volume offers cutting edge work from a new generation of dynamic thinkers in development economics.

Customer Reviews:

Complex subject.......2001-10-14

This is a very good book on a complex subject. It's full of interesting and cutting edge perpectives on development economics. However, the book leaves out an important viewpoint, which can be found in The Elusive Quest for Growth by Easterly.

Benefits for the Workplace of the Future (Pension Research Council Publications)

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Benefits for the Workplace of the Future
Benefits

Benefits for the Workplace of the Future (Pension Research Council Publications)
Judith F. Mazo
Manufacturer: University of Pennsylvania Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Workplace | Organizational Behavior | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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Labor & Industrial Relations | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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Workforce Crisis: How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills And Talent

ASIN: 0812237080

Book Description

The workforce of the future promises to be very different from that of the past. A generation ago, there were few workers over the age of 65, but in the future we will see many more employees remain on the job longer than ever before. At the same time, as global markets grow more closely integrated, companies are having to reinvent the workplace, which requires more skilled, more reliable, and more flexible employees. Benefits for the Workplace of the Future explores how workforce and workplace changes are reshaping the form and design of employee benefits and what these trends portend for the future of compensation.

An increasingly diverse range of workers and new types of companies are forcing a redefinition of what it means to be an employee, what it means to offer someone a job, and how to compensate workers. These changes are spurring nontraditional benefits, such as child and elder care, flexible medical benefits, employee assistance programs, and investment education. Major developments in the pension and health care arenas provide new opportunities and challenges for rank and file workers as they are asked to take on more responsibility for their own benefits design.

Contributors to the volume--academics, employers, consultants, and policymakers--evaluate these trends and their implications. They chart new methods for developing benefits plans and provide assessments of past trends and clear-eyed forecasts for future benefit challenges. The book will be invaluable to those who seek to structure and benefit from well-designed compensation packages.

Customer Reviews:

Benefits for the Workplace of the Future.......2004-10-21

From Noteworthy Books in Industrial Relations and Labor Economics, Princeton University (July 2004):
"The essays in this volume examine how benefits and compensation packages will respond to the need for economic restructuring, demographic shifts and changes in the role of government versus private sector. The chapters in the first section deal with developments in the future workplace and outline the implications for benefit coverage and design. The authors in the second section look at challenges to benefits and compensation design such as recession and economic volatility, the interaction of business conditions with the slower labor growth predicted for the future, and the benefit effects of the evolving labor-management relationship. The case and sector studies in the last three chapters provide insights into specific company and sectoral practices."

Benefits.......2004-06-02

The future workforce promises to be quite different from that of the past. As global markets grow more closely integrated, companies are having to reinvent the workplace, which requires more skilled, more reliable, and more flexible employees. This book explores how anticipated workforce and workplace changes will alter the form and design of employee benefits.

Gender and International Relations: Issues, Debates and Future Directions

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Gender and International Relations: Issues, Debates and Future Directions
Jill Steans
Manufacturer: Polity Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Feminist Theory | Women's Studies | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Occupational & Organizational | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Feminist Methodologies for International Relations
Theories of International Relations: Third Edition
Women and Gender Equity in Development Theory and Practice: Institutions, Resources, and Mobilization
Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey (Cambridge Studies in International Relations)
Gendering World Politics

ASIN: 0745635822

Book Description

The second edition of Jill Steans ' successful and highly respected book offers a comprehensive overview of feminist scholarship and feminist contributions to international relations, and provides an in-depth discussion of how feminist IR has sought to re-think key concepts and central areas of concern in the field.Its ten chapters cover core topics, such as feminist theories; international relations theory; gender in the theory and practice of 'state-making ' feminist perspectives on war and peace; feminist approaches to security; the gender dimension of international political economy; gender and the politics of development; and women 's human rights as both a 'universal project ' and a political tool. The book also discusses some of the key debates and exchanges that have taken place between feminist IR scholars and those located both in the 'mainstream ' of IR and the newly constructed 'middle ground ' of IR. It concludes by exploring the affinities between feminist IR and other 'critical ' theories of IR and identifies new research trajectories and potentially productive lines of future theoretical inquiry in the discipline.The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of international relations. It will also be useful to the general reader interested in exploring the complexities of thinking about gender issues and feminism in a global context.

The Unabomber Manifesto: Industrial Society and Its Future

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The Unabomber Manifesto: Industrial Society and Its Future
The Unabomber , and Theodore Kaczynski
Manufacturer: Filiquarian Publishing, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Reference | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Unabomber: The Secret Life of Ted Kaczynski
Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist
Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization
Unabomber: On the Trail of America's Most-Wanted Serial Killer
American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing

ASIN: 159986990X

Book Description

The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in "advanced" countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in "advanced" countries.

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