17 Comments
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VK's avatar
May 8Edited

I didn't use the link above and just went to Amazon and searched for "Bryan Caplan". The book was the last search result on the first page. There were several random items in search results above the new book and they weren't even books or associated with Bryan at all. Several of the results listed above the new book were books I already purchased from Amazon.

I order roughly 100 books from Amazon per year and probably do 1000 searches per year. My intent in clear. Google understands me very very well based on my habits and data.

Amazon is great in general but one consistently terrible part of their website infrastructure is search. It was terrible when I worked at Amazon (A9) and is still terrible.

They don't prioritize fixing it because they are essentially a monopoly for US online shopping. I wish I had an alternative place to shop so I could help them see that this terrible customer experience needs to be addressed with my feet.

I did buy the book, but it was yet another frustrating experience that was not customer centric at all.

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Henri Hein's avatar

I loved to see this. I have similarly frustrating experiences with the Amazon search feature. It's nearly useless. I thought it was because they favored results (or even non-results) they wanted to promote over an actual useful selection and ordering. I also often see pages and pages of the exact same small collection of items that are clearly duplicates but just offered by different vendors. Their digital library is even worse on search. I can't find tracks in my own collection even when they have a distinct name. I get all kinds of junk in the search results that don't even have anything to do with what's in my collection.

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Buzen's avatar

Amazon own Goodreads and it has an equally bad search function. Maybe it’s a corporate genetic defect.

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Buzen's avatar

Thanks, just bought it for Kindle, although I always buy paper versions of your graphic books for a better experience.

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Scott Alexander's avatar

You should have done the blurb as "Jeff Yass, richest man in the state of Pennsylvania". I don't know what SIG is, but that would have caught my attention!

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EN DMZ's avatar

I am looking forward to the audiobook version of "Pro-Market AND Pro-Business" so that I can listen to it while I do other things with my eyes and hands like yard work and household chores. What is the ETA for the audio version?

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Boring Radical Centrism's avatar

You don't support the TikTok ban? I find it very concerning that China has such an easy source of propaganda into the West. Not to mention the possibility that it contains hidden malware.

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DavesNotHere's avatar

First they came for TikTok, and I thought, “Who cares about TikTok?”

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SolarxPvP's avatar

Of course not! Bryan’s Ancap.

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Boring Radical Centrism's avatar

I thought he'd allow for certain exceptions for national security.

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SolarxPvP's avatar

I’ve never met a libertarian who supported the TikTok ban. Most see it as mass hysteria along with any “national security” policy. The correct national security strategy is to not intervene with other people’s affairs so they don’t become a threat, not pass PATRIOT acts, TikTok bans, etc.

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Boring Radical Centrism's avatar

America itself is quite safe with oceans protecting it from harm. But America does have lots of allies to help abroad, and I think that's good. Helping to discourage big countries from invading their neighbors is a good thing imo. China can use TikTok to share propaganda that makes Americans less interested in helping Taiwan.

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SolarxPvP's avatar

I don’t think taking sides and making enemies is a good idea. As Caplan has noted, foreign policy is too unpredictable to make the correct decision even from a consequentialist perspective.

If China wanted to spread propaganda and steal data, there are countless ways they could do that without TikTok, and I don’t think violating millions (perhaps billions!) of people’s rights to freedom of business association and speech is justified. The right thing to do is to stop blowing places up, crushing trade, and making foreigners angry!

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Casey James's avatar

If you had not been able to become a professor or work in academia and had to enter the private workforce after graduate school what do you imagine you would have done for work? What quirks about you make you better suited for academia comparted to working in the private sector, if any?

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Misha Valdman's avatar

Oh, you just haven’t found the right one yet.

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Luis's avatar

You should make a post responding to Milton Friedman. Personally, I think Friedman is correct.

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Jason Ford's avatar

Purchased!

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