Bob
<a href="diploma of management

I often say that the quality of a book is proportional to the speed which reads (in days straight), and this is proof!

There were several funny experiences along the reading, from unknown people who here reading and using on dailly work some of the ideias, to create a small publicity to my friends.

If you mix an anchor, a free concept and”-A”, more than demonstrate the irrationality of human behavior, proved its weakness against the predatory advertising.

How to combat the Pareto Principle?

20% of bankers, insurers, pharmaceutical, governors, education control 80% are responsible to people behaviou, information.

How do we protect ourselves from our “protectors”?

Irrational Daniel

Porto, Portugal

The above thought is smart and doesn’t require any further addition. It’s perfect thought from my side.

Garcia

temping work in london

I really enjoyed meeting you in St. Louis the other morning and our discussion. I guess you did not notice that I was wearing the official Adam Smith Society tie!

Unfortunately I must disagree with your conclusions as well of those of Mr. Greenspan’s. Mr. Smiths’ invisible hand works perfectly. Unfortunately, at least since the founding of our country, the government has not liked the outcome of the invisible hand when these outcomes caused political problems. Since the Revolutionary War, the Conventions, Congresses and Presidents have intervened in the markets with sincere intentions of funding the conflicts, honoring the debt, and improving the credit availability for its citizens. History has demonstrated that these series of interventions only pushed the problems off on later generations and administrations creating larger and larger issues The result was these cumulative government interventions and actions over 230 years actually culminated when the impact and complexity of this activity actually froze the free markets this past fall. The potential buyers were confounded and disappeared! Not because the market did not work – it was because the weight and complexity of the cumulative government interventions was too much for the market to digest. Now it appears that the free markets have been “shocked” into a new paradigm of determining what the government is going to do next.

Every time the government intervened over the past 230 years people and businesses modified their behavior to “game” the system to enrich their interest. Isn’t this behavior modification perfect evidence that the invisible hand not only works but is formative and real force?

Take Care

Jim

Do you have any thoughts to share as to why companies would irrationally practice gender discrimination when the penalties are so great and the rewards (at least from this study) very small, just 4% to 6% savings on the payroll of female workers?

Many believe that Adam Smith was a great thinker and an even greater economist. I don’t dispute this but we cannot hold on to his ideas of the “invisible hand.” In fact, many of us have long since abandoned it and we have only to look at the fact that most if not all of the economies in the “industrialized” world are actually mixed economies. If all policy-makers believed whole-heartedly in Smith’s “invisible hand” theory, public health care, public education, and all forms of publicly funded security (eg. police officers) would have all been turned over to the “private” sector.

Oh what a wonderful web we weave when first we practice to deceive…