Comment on Tyler's new book

I got Tyler's new book Friady and finished it over the weekend, it's quite an easy and enjoyable read, and as planned I am writing a review for him on Amazon.com to get his personal podcast. Here we go:

If you did not know anything about the author, Tyler Cowen, you probably would think him as a psychologist rather than an economist. You might be fooled if somebody told you that this is another book by Dan Gilbert following his best seller "Stumbling on Happiness". While Gilbert tries to explain why there exist a lot of imperfections/illusions of our perception, Cowen takes a step further presenting ways of taking advantage of those imperfections to make our lives better.

This book is likely to come across to you like another self-help book on how to improve your life, here I am not saying self-help book as a put-down -- just the opposite -- this is one of the rare books that is full of original and insightful patterns based on a few fundamental economic principles. Being a natural contrarian, Cowen's ideas might sound conterintuitive to you in the first place, but they will make a lot sense to you once you understand where he comes from. And above all the tips/advice in the book are down right practical in our everyday life. You might be impressed with the ingenuity of Freaknomics, but I doubt how much you can apply it to your real life. This book is very different: it actually shows you how you can be a better lover/husband/wife, how you can enjoy arts better, and how to find out better foods.

Without revealing too many secrets inside the book, here are some key take-away points I think Cowen tries to drive home:

1. Money might not always be the right incentive. We need to identify the social context and apply the right incentive to motivate people.
2. It's not that everything is for trade. Somtimes the sheer idea of trading something we feel so emotionally attached is repulsive.
3. Too often we pretend that we care about something to look good, we might as well admit this and take advantage of this.
4. We don't want to get rid of all of our self-deceptions. A good does of self-deception makes this world a better place and keeps us going. But when the economic stake is high, we better move beyond this self-deception and apply "cold" economics for greater efficiency.
5. We signal all the time. Recognizing and responding to signals is vital to a happy life, especially when market is a ill-suited solution.
6. The law of supply and demand is very powerful, a lot of time it's at work without being noticed.