Undercover Economist by Tim Harford
The book explains things about Starbucks (price targeting, who get the most from Starbucks’ premium price, etc), supermarkets, used car markets, insurance companies, property price (and rental rates), environmental issues related to free trade, how poor countries stay poor, how China grows and so on, using economic theories (scarcity, externalities), game theory, marketing principles, etc. Entertaining, fun, and easy to read, yet, personally, makes me think.
Tim Harford argues that free trade and free movement of capital are the best for all. For developing countries, regarding the foreign direct investments (which are good things to help the developing countries), there are issues related to environmental abuses, poor working conditions for labors (cheap labors being used inhumanely), but he defends that foreign domestic investments doesn’t cause environmental damages (local corrupt governments are more likely to be the sinners) and that working in poor working conditions is better for the labors since other choices are worse or simply unavailable.
Reading about Cameroon in this book makes me feel that I should be grateful to be Indonesian, despite the many many bad things we have here. But imagining our country to be growing like China now (or India), I feel hopeless. We are so left behind. My generation here now is doomed by the greeds and selfishness of many of our fathers (but not my own beloved father), the generation after me will still suffer (I believe education is one of the cures, but most of the poors will be filtered out by high price of education), and may God help the generations after.
