Big Business

A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero

By: Tyler Cowen

Narrated by: Steve Edwards

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 Audio

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.

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.)

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.

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.

Tyler Cowen at his best

Great book by a great economist, thinker and polymath arguing that big business is underrated

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.

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.

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.

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

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.