Rövid leírás:
How pervasive is deception in the American marketplace? In this pioneering study, Paul Blumberg not only reveals the extent to which fraud is practiced on the American consumer, but offers a penetrating analysis of its causes and social consequences. Among the evidence Blumberg examines are 600 accounts by workers in such businesses as restaurants, gas stations, and drug stores of the fraudulent practices of their employers. Here are eye-opening accounts of gas station owners selling regular gas as high test, auto mechanics who spray-paint old parts and sell them as new, pharmacists who sell generic drugs at brand-name prices, and more. Blumberg suggests that dishonesty is all but built into the American marketplace, and that its social effects include the loss of trust and community.
Több
Hosszú leírás:
Who knows more about a business’s shady practices than the people who work there? In this pioneering study, Paul Blumberg examines a wide variety of evidence, including over 600 accounts written by workers who disclose in elaborate detail the deceptions their employers practiced on the public. Employed in a wide variety of business enterprises–supermarkets, restaurants, fish markets, department stores, gas stations, drug stores, pet stores, and many more–these workers pull back the curtain and reveal the hidden recesses of the American marketplace.
Blumberg documents these deceptions in numerous vivid stories, providing readers with a trenchant handbook on survival in America. He tells of stores that routinely mark prices up before a sale; gas stations that sell regular gas as high test; auto mechanics who spray-paint customers’ old car parts and then charge them for new parts (in one gas stations, the workers claimed that the mechanic’s best tool was his paint can); and pharmacists who sell generic drugs and charge name-brand prices.
But equally important, he provides an insightful analysis of why deception pervades the American marketplace. Though at times amusing, The Predatory Society is also frequently disturbing for what it says about private capitalism: how dishonesty is all but built into the American marketplace, and how this dishonesty has potentially disastrous effects on trust and community in our society.
„[Includes] an excellent, detailed analysis of the causes of immoral behavior in the marketplace….This excellent book is recommended for academic and public library collections.”–Choice
