Here is one curious perspective:
http://www.warsocialism.com/economic.htm
This book triggered my altered perspective on economics.
Hapgood, David: The Screwing of the Average Man
Here are other comments about it:
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 of 5 stars
Lots of detailed information, many practical examples, March 22, 2006
By Pork Chop (Lisbon, Portugal)
The author, who is well traveled, holding advanced degress in economics, and vast experience in writing articles of newspapers and magazines, has come up with a book that reads like burnt toast to the senses. However, even one in a blue moon, a burnt toast is palatable and necessary to wake up the senses, and to smell the coffee.
The author brings out a litany of examples of small-time scams, also known as “the workings of the free market” showing that survival even in America is for the fittest, and is often facilitated by honing one’s skills in finding niches that are not well known or understood to the majority of the population, such that wealth accumulation occurs and prosperity.
Conversely, the author lists many examples of situations where the average man should shy away from, to prevent losing significant sums of money, for products and/or services of questionable value.
The book is a huge brain-storm of ideas, concerns, scenarios that resulted in mental and/or emotional anguish for the author, who feels the average man as well, feels the same way, and puts forth the question.....is all the pain, confusion, victimization, loss of money, by the losers (forming 85&#xof; their population) justifiable by the pleasure, sense of smarts, victory and wealth accumulation by the other 15% of the population ?
As with any boxing match, there’s a loser and victor, and as in many of these, the game may or may not be rigged, as exemplified in the mass media, by tales of unethical corporate behavior. The author struggles with these questions.
A very essential book.....top marks for bringing forth a book that only rarely is seen on the market these days.... iconoclastic in its style.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 of 5 stars
Slavery in its latest reincarnation, March 2, 2004
By louis smith “louis” (U.S.)
This review is from: The screwing of the average man Too bad Hapgoods masterpiece is out of print. Maybe someone will have the guts to reprint this classic. Why? Because this is one of the few books that prints the unstained truth. Its a brutal truth too. The subtitle of this book is how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Hapgood shows how corporations,lawyers,colleges, and the rest get us to pay for unneeded services and products. By so doing they keep the average man tied down to slavery. For instance, he shows that most of the courses you take in college are unnecessary. So why take them? To make money for the state and the people working in the colleges. Theres very little difference he writes, between automobiles, so why are some so expensive? Because the auto industry wants you to pay more for the glamorous image. Exactly. Image with little or no substance, while your hard earned money goes to the rich. You get screwed. Maybe this is where conspiracy theorists get their ideas that cancer was cured long ago, or that engines were made that could run on water. They are hidden, because the new slave holders would lose profits from existing products. Gas shortages are nothing new either. They were around since the 1940s. Intresting how the prices never go down when the supply comes back to “normal”. Slavery has never gone away. Its been updated. Your not a house slave like in the old days. Now your a slave to corporations and propaganda, which brainwash you with ideas of elusive happiness, and keeping up with the Joneses. Think that after death there is going to be justice? Don’t be so sure. He writes that the hindu priests told the slaves in India that they were suffering from their karma and that there was another better life. But the slaves didn’t quite believe it. Hapgood implies that religion may be another invention of the rich to keep the slaves content and happy. So whats the solution? Reading between the lines in Hapgoods book, I find that one should be skeptical of claims and get only what you need. Needs are usually very few. This is enough to make one happy and free without being a slave to profiteers and working to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
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http://blog.sustainablemiddleclass.com/?cat=68
Hapgood collaborated with the editors of the Washington Monthly and contributers including such notables and Milton Friedman and James Fallows. One chapter into it, I can’t say enough about it. I recommend everyone read it to understand how business and government work in the United States. Though published in 1974, it’s probably more true today. His description of “the hustle” is especially enlightening.
A sample from the dust jacket:
The Vocabulary of Screwing
YOUTOOISM: 1. The belief that whatever applies to the rich applies to the average man. 2. The strategy for seducing people into accepting their own screwing. It consists of giving the average man just enough of a break to convince him he’s benefiting from the system.
CATCH-85: The fallacy in youtooism. Under Catch-85, the number of people who benefit from a special privilege is limited to no more than (usually the wealthiest) 15 per cent of the population.
NET SCREWING: The situation 85 per cent of the population is in. Because we’re allowed to win a little every now and then, we don’t realize how much we’re being rooked in all our other transactions.
CAROM SKREWING: One skrewing that leads by chain reaction to another. For example, when cars are made flimsy in order to sell more parts, the customer is exposed to greater loss from two other screwings: auto insurance and the repairs industry.
WORDNOISE: Verbal fakery designed to mask reality. One example is your insurance contract, and another is what the agent says when you ask him what the contract means.
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http://www.shout.net/~bigred/Screwing.htm
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http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/208809?sort=rating&view=reviews
This book definitely contributed to my twisted view of the world. If you’re cynical already, you might want to skip “The Screwing Of The Average Man.” Author Hapgood shows how, with a special language and assortment of weapons at their disposal, doctors, lawyers and even auto mechanics can rip off the rest of us without penalty and evidently without remorse. This book speaks to everyman, and if nothing else makes you feel better about getting screwed.
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http://twincities.indymedia.org/newswire/display/4095/index.php
Read the book “The Screwing of the Average Man” by David Hapgood. Then read “How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World” by Harry Browne. Then, discover that it’s all a con game. That the rulers decide everything, that you can’t stop them, and the best idea is to go around them, get the fuck out of the shithole! Because that’s what we have now. A big fucking shithole. The goverment creeps, the bankers and insurance creeps and the “experts” are all out there to fuck with us! And they do, daily. And we can’t even understand their language! I can understand rapper music, better than their forms and pages of “regulation.” and I’m not even black or young or male or urban! So, it’s a rigged system, that fucks us all, and they get rich. We get sick, they get rich. We get depressed, they get rich. We punch each other out, they get rich. It’s a rigged system. This is not what our Founding Fathers, genuises that they were, had in mind! They wanted a free market system. They did not want this mafia system that we have.
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Hapgood, David: The Screwing of the Average Man.
Warning: This book is not for the weak of heart. If you were ever wondering where to invest your old age, how to sue your landlord, which bank, health insurance, or pension fund to bless with yourblood and sweat, this book will shatter all illusions (that is, ifyou still managed to retain any innocence with regard to organised crime and society). Even if it was written in the 1970s, the book is as relevant today as it was when it first appeared. Hapgood presents a brilliant analysis of how bankers, stock- and insurance brokers, lawyers, other professionals, and government screw up your average Homo Sapien. This quote speaks for itself: “The average man has of course always been a loser, at least since the invention of agriculture made it profitable for one person to exploit another… Sometime in the late sixties, the average man’s domestic economy stalled… In 1974 a group of congressmen led by John McFall of California estimated that wealth was being transferred to the richest one fifth of the population from those below them at the rate of $10 billion a year… This divine right of hustlers flourished from the earliest days in America… “.
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http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/rape10.shtml
