Big Business
A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero
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Narrated by:
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Steve Edwards
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By:
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Tyler Cowen
About this listen
An against-the-grain polemic on American capitalism from New York Times best-selling author Tyler Cowen.
We love to hate the 800-pound gorilla. Walmart and Amazon destroy communities and small businesses. Facebook turns us into addicts while putting our personal data at risk. From skeptical politicians like Bernie Sanders who at a 2016 presidential campaign rally said, “If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist,” to millennials, only 42 percent of whom support capitalism, belief in big business is at an all-time low. But are big companies inherently evil? If business is so bad, why does it remain so integral to the basic functioning of America? Economist and best-selling author Tyler Cowen says our biggest problem is that we don’t love business enough.
In Big Business, Cowen puts forth an impassioned defense of corporations and their essential role in a balanced, productive, and progressive society. He dismantles common misconceptions and untangles conflicting intuitions. According to a 2016 Gallup survey, only 12 percent of Americans trust big business “quite a lot”, and only six percent trust it “a great deal”. Yet Americans as a group are remarkably willing to trust businesses, whether in the form of buying a new phone on the day of its release or simply showing up to work in the expectation they will be paid. Cowen illuminates the crucial role businesses play in spurring innovation, rewarding talent and hard work, and creating the bounty on which we’ve all come to depend.
©2019 Tyler Cowen (P)2019 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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- Unabridged
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Many blame today's economic inequality, stagnation, and political instability on the free market. The solution is to rein in the market, right? Radical Markets turns this thinking - and pretty much all conventional thinking about markets, both for and against - on its head. The book reveals bold new ways to organize markets for the good of everyone.
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Terrible Reader ruins this book
- By Brian W. Veit on 10-30-18
By: Eric A. Posner, and others
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That Used to Be Us
- How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back
- By: Thomas L. Friedman, Michael Mandelbaum
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 16 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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America has a huge problem. It faces four major challenges, on which its future depends, and it is failing to meet them. In That Used to Be Us, Thomas L. Friedman, one of our most influential columnists, and Michael Mandelbaum, one of our leading foreign policy thinkers, analyze those challenges - globalization, the revolution in information technology, the nation's chronic deficits, and its pattern of energy consumption - and spell out what we need to do now to rediscover America and rise to this moment.
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We have met the enemy and it is us.... Pogo
- By Soudant on 09-16-11
By: Thomas L. Friedman, and others
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Plutocrats
- The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else
- By: Chrystia Freeland
- Narrated by: Allyson Ryan
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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There has always been some gap between rich and poor in this country, but in the last few decades what it means to be rich has changed dramatically. Alarmingly, the greatest income gap is not between the 1 percent and the 99 percent, but within the wealthiest 1 percent of our nation-as the merely wealthy are left behind by the rapidly expanding fortunes of the new global super-rich. Forget the 1 percent; Plutocrats proves that it is the wealthiest 0.1 percent who are outpacing the rest of us at break-neck speed.
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Good Storytelling but ... analysis is "eh'
- By Susan on 11-04-12
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Equal Is Unfair
- America's Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality
- By: Don Watkins, Yaron Brook
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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We've all heard that the American Dream is vanishing, and that the cause is rising income inequality. The rich are getting richer by rigging the system in their favor, leaving the rest of us to struggle just to keep our heads above water. To save the American Dream, we're told that we need to fight inequality through tax hikes, wealth redistribution schemes, and a far higher minimum wage.
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While I agree with most of this book,...
- By Wayne on 12-30-16
By: Don Watkins, and others
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FairTax
- The Truth
- By: Neal Boortz, John Linder
- Narrated by: Neal Boortz
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Offering stunning new insights not covered in the original book, FairTax: The Truth debunks the negative myths and gross misrepresentations of this groundbreaking idea. The FairTax plan is simple, brilliant, and it will work - enabling you to keep all the money in your paycheck; eliminating the fraud, hassle, and waste of our current system; and revolutionizing the way America pays for itself.
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Sound, well-researched plan
- By Tim Hibbetts on 03-06-08
By: Neal Boortz, and others
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The Prosperity Paradox
- How Innovation Can Lift Nations out of Poverty
- By: Clayton M. Christensen, Efosa Ojomo, Karen Dillon
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Clayton M. Christensen, the author of such business classics as The Innovator’s Dilemma and the New York Times best-seller How Will You Measure Your Life, and coauthors Efosa Ojomo and Karen Dillon reveal why so many investments in economic development fail to generate sustainable prosperity and offers a groundbreaking solution for true and lasting change.
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Simplistic, lack of insights
- By D. Cameron on 05-24-21
By: Clayton M. Christensen, and others
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Hostile Takeover
- Resisting Centralized Government's Stranglehold on America
- By: Matt Kibbe
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Hostile Takeover is a rebellious challenge to the "upper management" of government, who are choking American prosperity and liberty. Matt Kibbe exposes the privileged collusion of Washington insiders - and maps out a proven plan for how to return power from the self-appointed "experts" back to the people. Dubbed "one of the Tea Party's masterminds" by Newsweek, Kibbe reveals how grassroots citizens can and will check the federal behemoth and restore the American enterprise.
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An amazing book from an interesting perspective
- By Aaron on 12-28-12
By: Matt Kibbe
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Kids These Days
- Human Capital and the Making of Millennials
- By: Malcolm Harris
- Narrated by: Will Collyer
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Everyone knows "what's wrong with millennials". Glenn Beck says we've been ruined by "participation trophies". Simon Sinek says we have low self-esteem. An Australian millionaire says millennials could all afford homes if we'd just give up avocado toast. Thanks, millionaire. This millennial is here to prove them all wrong.
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A devastating dream of revolution
- By Kevin Tierney Jr on 11-23-17
By: Malcolm Harris
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The New Geography of Jobs
- By: Enrico Moretti
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Today, there are three Americas. At one extreme are the brain hubs with workers who are among the most productive, creative, and best-paid on the planet. At the other extreme are former manufacturing capitals that are rapidly losing jobs and residents. The rest of America could go either way. For the past 30 years, the three Americas have been growing apart at an accelerating rate. This divergence is one the most important developments in the history of the US and is reshaping the very fabric of our society. But the winners and losers aren't necessarily who you'd expect.
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Almost Stopped Listening
- By R. Hartley on 03-29-19
By: Enrico Moretti
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The Instant Economist
- Everything You Need to Know About How the Economy Works
- By: Timothy Taylor
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Economics isn't just about numbers: It's about politics, psychology, history, and so much more. We are all economists - when we work, save for the future, invest, pay taxes, and buy our groceries. Yet many of us feel lost when the subject arises. Award-winning professor Timothy Taylor here tackles all the key questions and hot topics of both microeconomics and macroeconomics, so you can understand and discuss economics on a personal, national, and global level.
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Timothy Taylor is the best
- By Jake on 02-15-15
By: Timothy Taylor
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Phishing for Phools
- The Economics of Manipulation and Deception
- By: George A. Akerlof, Robert J. Shiller
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
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Ever since Adam Smith, the central teaching of economics has been that free markets provide us with material well-being, as if by an invisible hand. In Phishing for Phools, Nobel Prize-winning economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller deliver a fundamental challenge to this insight, arguing that markets harm as well as help us. As long as there is profit to be made, sellers will systematically exploit our psychological weaknesses and our ignorance through manipulation and deception.
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Useful for a certain audience, but ...
- By Philo on 02-29-16
By: George A. Akerlof, and others
What listeners say about Big Business
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Matthew
- 06-25-19
Well worth it
Although I don't agree with everything and done of the premises of his arguments, overall this book is well worth the listen.
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- Jared Hansen
- 05-12-19
Does what it says on the tin
Right in general and almost all particulars, but feels a little unnecessary. if you're reading books by Tyler Cowen you probably already know most of this anyway so there aren't any surprises. This is itself a demonstration of one of the book's main points (that corporations - or in this case, an individual with a personal brand sufficiently recognizable that he may as well be one) mostly tend to do whatever it is the customer hired them to do.
Five stars for Striking a Blow for Truth And Justice; -1 for being somewhat redundant.
(I still enjoyed it, as one enjoys all cheering for one's own side. And I'll definitely still buy Tyler's next book, proving yet another of the book's points in the process.)
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- Alan
- 10-01-19
Good book poorly read
I enjoyed the content of this book, but I've rarely heard an Audible title read so poorly. The reader has a pleasing voice, so I can see why he's found work. But his reading style is mechanical, and he misses many nuances in the writing. And in many ways, he sounds like a computer tasked with reading the book, with no feel for the English language. For example, he pronounces almost every "the" as "thee" when a normal English speaker would usually say "thuh," and he pronounces almost every "a" as "ay" when it would usually be "uh." He also doesn't seem to know that "estimate" ends in "mate" when it's a verb and "mutt" when it's a noun. Is English his second language? It's puzzling to me that no director or editor was involved to correct these failings. And I feel bad for the author, who wrote a first-rate book but got a second-rate reading.
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3 people found this helpful
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- J. Franks
- 10-27-23
Wow, what an eye-opener
If only folks in the “anti-work movement” would read Chapter 3. Cowen defends work for providing flow states and regularity, social connections and a sense of accomplishment.
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- Martin Ågerup
- 05-27-19
Tyler Cowen at his best
Great book by a great economist, thinker and polymath arguing that big business is underrated
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- David A. Rowe
- 08-24-19
Good but awful narration
Interesting content but robotic narration. Surprised I stuck it out. Book is a good counterpoint to a lot of popular sentiment though.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Savor
- 06-08-19
Marred, for me, by performance
I'm here to lament one aspect of the performance. It is otherwise competent, but the reader mispronounces two of the most-frequently occurring English words: the definite and indefinite articles, "the" and "a". In their normal, as opposed to emphatic, uses, the pronunciation should be with short vowel sounds: "thuh" and "uh"; the vowel sound is what is called a schwa. Pronunciation with a long vowel sound, as "thee" and "ay [to rhyme with "hay]" is appropriate only for emphasis, as in, "This is *the* store for fresh produce", or "it's *a* book, but not the *best* book" (asterisks here in lieu of italics or boldface). For "the", the long vowel sound may also be used before a word with an initial vowel. But in ordinary usage, the schwa vowel sound is correct, whether you prefer a prescriptivist or descriptivist interpretation of "correct."
To my ear, the pronunciation with the long vowels is like that of an elementary-school child, and is a constant source of irritation in listening to this audiobook.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Bear
- 12-28-21
Reason to not be a Bernie Bro
Ive never heard an argument made on behalf of large corporations before. I reckon this might be why so many youth are skeptical of capitalism. Tyler still acknowledges and sometimes refutes the flaws. I wish I'd heard this sooner.
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- Arizzle
- 06-14-23
Great short book; narrator sorely needed pronunciation guide
Great short book; narrator sorely needed pronunciation guide. Recommended for those who think free markets and corporations are unalloyed evils or in much need of government intervention
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- Chris Eldridge
- 09-22-24
Shallow and unconvincing
I'm very sympathetic to his premise, but he merely asserts the important facts in passing (e.g. larger firms are more productive / provide higher compensation) with minimal explanation, before doing deep dives on topics that don't matter (e.g. Costa Rican coffee executives cooperate in contrived games). I would love a book which assessed and explained the higher efficiency/productivity of large firms, and to the extent that Tyler Cowen's book would be expected to contain evidence in favor of these claims, I came away less confident in his position than I was before.
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