Against this backdrop, so-called natural monopolies like Microsoft look benign. Eye-opening and sure to make libertarian...
Of robber barons, monopsonists, and oligarchs, in which it’s revealed that the free market is anything but free.
Want to become “obscenely” rich, as the subtitle of this illuminating book has it? Well, the best bet is to be born that way. The next best bet is to have a “wealth secret,” the better-mousetrap sine qua non for building an empire. Economic forecaster Wilkin, head of business research at Oxford Economics, has good fun looking at how some fabulously rich people got to be that way. Though he teases a bit with the thought that you and I can “exploit their wealth secrets to become fabulously rich” as well, in the end, his book becomes a subtle, between-the-lines indictment of capitalism as it is mostly practiced these days. For instance, as Wilkin notes, the aspiring wealthy person doesn’t want a level playing field—far from it. Nor does he or she want competition, for competition is messy and tedious, and “when masters of wealth secrets compete, they do not compete in the market” but instead, the courtroom and other arenas where they can effectively destroy their enemies without having to face them on the shelves and divide the market. This was the way of the great 19th-century robber barons, too, as with John D. Rockefeller, “strangling his competitors with cartels,” and his ilk, who regarded competition as “that oppressive force that prevents great men from achieving fortunes commensurate with their greatness.” Thus it is in emerging markets, where Wilkin counsels would-be monopolists to head, since corrupt political systems favor creative and extralegal ways of securing the startup money necessary to become a tycoon. And besides, he writes, “it’s good to go where no one else wants to go.”
Against this backdrop, so-called natural monopolies like Microsoft look benign. Eye-opening and sure to make libertarian heads explode.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-37893-2
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
An informative and creatively multilayered Google guidebook from the businessman’s perspective.
Two distinguished technology executives share the methodology behind what made Google a global business leader.
Former Google CEO Schmidt (co-author: The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business, 2013) and former senior vice president of products Rosenberg share accumulated wisdom and business acumen from their early careers in technology, then later as management at the Internet search giant. Though little is particularly revelatory or unexpected, the companywide processes that have made Google a household name remain timely and relevant within today’s digitized culture. After several months at Google, the authors found it necessary to retool their management strategies by emphasizing employee culture, codifying company values, and rethinking the way staff is internally positioned in order to best compliment their efforts and potential. Their text places “Googlers” front and center as they adopted the business systems first implemented by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who stressed the importance of company-wide open communication. Schmidt and Rosenberg discuss the value of technological insights, Google’s effective “growth mindset” hiring practices, staff meeting maximization, email tips, and the company’s effective solutions to branding competition and product development complications. They also offer a condensed, two-page strategy checklist that serves as an apt blueprint for managers. At times, statements leak into self-congratulatory territory, as when Schmidt and Rosenberg insinuate that a majority of business plans are flawed and that the Google model is superior. Analogies focused on corporate retention and methods of maximizing Google’s historically impressive culture of “smart creatives” reflect the firm’s legacy of spinning intellect and creativity into Internet gold. The authors also demarcate legendary application missteps like “Wave” and “Buzz” while applauding the independent thinkers responsible for catapulting the company into the upper echelons of technological innovation.
An informative and creatively multilayered Google guidebook from the businessman’s perspective.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-1455582341
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Business Plus/Grand Central
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
A declaration worth hearing out in a time of growing inequality—and indignity.
Noted number cruncher Sperling delivers an economist’s rejoinder to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Former director of the National Economic Council in the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the author has long taken a view of the dismal science that takes economic justice fully into account. Alongside all the metrics and estimates and reckonings of GDP, inflation, and the supply curve, he holds the great goal of economic policy to be the advancement of human dignity, a concept intangible enough to chase the econometricians away. Growth, the sacred mantra of most economic policy, “should never be considered an appropriate ultimate end goal” for it, he counsels. Though 4% is the magic number for annual growth to be considered healthy, it is healthy only if everyone is getting the benefits and not just the ultrawealthy who are making away with the spoils today. Defining dignity, admits Sperling, can be a kind of “I know it when I see it” problem, but it does not exist where people are a paycheck away from homelessness; the fact, however, that people widely share a view of indignity suggests the “intuitive universality” of its opposite. That said, the author identifies three qualifications, one of them the “ability to meaningfully participate in the economy with respect, not domination and humiliation.” Though these latter terms are also essentially unquantifiable, Sperling holds that this respect—lack of abuse, in another phrasing—can be obtained through a tight labor market and monetary and fiscal policy that pushes for full employment. In other words, where management needs to come looking for workers, workers are likely to be better treated than when the opposite holds. In still other words, writes the author, dignity is in part a function of “ ‘take this job and shove it’ power,” which is a power worth fighting for.
A declaration worth hearing out in a time of growing inequality—and indignity.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-7987-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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