Critical Review of the Book No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart by Tom Slee

From the first glance at the book, Tom Slee and his title, "No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart," grasps your attention and slowly loses it the more and more you read. Slee begins his book with eye-opening examples of when individual choice goes awry and continues to tell you about it for the remaining 200 pages. Through presenting the concept of "MarketThink" Slee is able to argue against it, and while he makes very compelling arguments, he provides little in the way of solutions for the entirety of the book. He explains "Game Theory" concepts, "Free-Riding" and other problems that spawn from a "MarketThink" society in order to support his arguments and counteract the belief of the "invisible hand" as being infoulable. After reading Slee's book and agreeing with most of his arguments I make a proposal where he lacks one. In order for individual choice to truly present us with what we desire, there must be guidelines implemented by government on individual choice to help benefit the community long-term. Overall, Slee does a solid job of completing his goal of exposing the "deceptions of individual choice" yet does so in too much length and without any original solution.

Slee begins his book by giving a brief history of individual choice in modern society as well as presenting the concepts of "MarketThink." He starts off by claiming that individual choice does not always lead to the desired outcome by citing CEO vs. average income trends in the past 30 years (Slee 2). His argument is very compelling and exposes the faults in leaving the market to be completely trusted to the workings of the "invisible hand." He moves on to begin talking about "MarketThink" which he explains as a system of thinking in which the market and individual choice will govern the economy and help to protect consumers from market corruption (Slee 6). He proposes that this is the popular belief and as so people are able to dismiss all social and economic problems to "the market will take care of it" (Slee 7). Slee then contends that this form of thinking does not incorporate very well into the real world, and that it ignores many externalities and only works in a picture perfect society (Slee 9). Throughout the book Slee uses the imaginary town of "Whimsley" to simplify difficult issues to discuss in a controllable environment. He begins with his first example involving a character named "Jack" and his decision to shop at the new Wal-Mart instead of the downtown area that he so throroughly enjoys (Slee 12). He uses this first example to help show how while Jack benefits from shopping at Wal-Mart because of its low prices, once everyone begins shopping at Wal-Mart, Jack's beloved downtown area will be forgotten and abandoned. This first example is one of many Slee uses to show how through making good decisions, bad outcomes can present themselves (Slee 13). This is about where interest in Slee's book peaks and continues to list endless examples stating the same "good decisions can lead to bad outcomes" idea until it ends with yet more examples and no solutions.

In the next few chapters of the book, Slee presents us with a multitude of different ways at looking at the concept "Good choices bad outcomes" including the Prisoner's dilemma, private choices involving public goods and the Free-Rider issue. First, returning to the town of Whimsley, we again meet Jack, and his soon-to-be ex-wife, Jill (Slee 18). This is how Slee decides to present the game theory concept of the "Prisoner's Dilemma" (Slee 21). The Prisoner's dilemma is a situation in which two prisoners are both given the choice to either confess or stay silent to their crimes, where both of them stay silent they each receive 5 years off their sentence, where one confesses and the other stays silent, the confessor receives 8 years off, and when they both confess, they each only get 3 years off (Slee 23). Because the prisoners are not permitted to communicate with eachother, each reaches the decision to confess, because no matter what the other does, it is their best possible choice, despite that if they both stay silent they both benefit more. Slee provides this example as a way of seeing how communication is necessary in order for the best possible outcome for a society, whereas if everyone makes their own decision they may not end up with the best collective result (Slee 23). This leads him into the theory of "Free-Riders," a Free-Rider being someone who instead of working collectively with the group, acts on their own best interest, which in turn causes everyone to work in their own best interest, and in the end leaves everyone less happy. To more simply explain this, Slee uses Jill from Whimsley, and her walk through the park. In Slee's story of Jill, she is walking through the park and holds a styrofoam cup. This styrofoam cup though is disturbing Jill's tranquility and disallows her from being able to fully enjoy her walk, so she decides that dropping just one cup will not be enough of an eyesore to outweigh the inconvenience of carrying it (Slee 38). Unfortunately, so does everyone else in Whimsley and eventually, just like the downtown area, Jill's park becomes a littered mess. Slee shows how this can affect us in a much larger scale as well, while it may benefit everyone if commercial fishing has many regulations to protect fish stock, it'd be most beneficial for one country if they ignore the regulations while everyone else has to live by them, which obviously does not work with the other countries (Slee 49). Overall, with many different examples, Slee does nothing more than to present the same theory and pound it endlessly into submission.

Eventually though, Slee does move on to talk about slightly different concepts such as Arms-Races, Herding and more examples that in the end just state, "Good Choices Bad Outcomes." He explains that Arms Races are situations that involve free-riders, but do not involve a public good (Slee 65). Slee claims that when involved in an arms race, the players will continually be buying goods or expanding, only to expand at the same rate as their competitor, and therefor leave them in the same position they started in (Slee 68). With the theory of herding, Slee explains that it is always in the best interest of people to go with the flow of the pack rather than to be trampled and left behind. He uses school choice as an example by showing that when everyone choses the best school, it only increases the already successful school, and further decreases the appeal of the abandoned school and its students (Slee 148). Slee once again presents solid arguments, but only vaguely presents solutions to these problems. He cites one example of a Milwalkee school system in which they target specific communities for school choice, yet still claims that it creates problems and in the end, most everyone still loses out (Slee 151).

If you look at all of Slee's examples of "Good Choices Bad Outcomes" you will see a trend, that when limitations are placed on individual choice, the community usually ends up benefiting as a whole. For example, referring back to the overfishing of seas, when governments do place regulations on the amount of fishing that can be done, stock of fish goes up and fishing can be prolonged for years to come (Slee 49). If this concept is applied to many more things in our society it can be very beneficial in preventing the instances of bad collective outcomes made by good individual decisions. Though it has been taboo in modern society to do anything that reflects even the smallest shred of socialism, we must begin taking measures towards regulating things in the past seen as left to the market. We can no longer simply set up institutions and just assume that "the market will take care of it." I propose that the government begin leveling the playing field by placing restrictions on establishments ranging from the amount of multinationals to independently owned business per capita to taxing pollution and actually disallowing companies from dealing with abusive suppliers instead of just assuming, "consumers will not buy from companies that support slave labor." Without making these adjustments to our current societies and idealologies we will eventually run into the same demise many civilizations have seen in the past, where the few control the masses and the masses revolt.

Throughout the book Slee does well to explain the deceptions of the philosophy of "MarketThink" and of the power of the "invisible hand" but reinforces too long and provides too few solutions. After reading this book, one should know more examples where good choices led to bad outcomes than they'd care to, but overall be more informed as to the actual lack of choice we really poses. Slee's book will hopefully inspire its readers to realize the urge for major reform and regulation now. Individual choice has led us into a society in which we believe the market is infoulable, and that is simply not the case. We need to act now before just like Whimsley, all of our parks are littered with cups and all of our historic downtown areas are nothing more than future Wal-Mart shopping centers.