you are the product - joshua klein - chapter 1

Excerpts from “You are the product” by Joshua Klein (Chapter 1)

Book Title: You Are The Product

Written by: Joshua Klein

Chapter Title: What Is Your Mother Worth?

You are the product - Joshua Klein - Front cover of the book

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Note: To comply with the requirements of the fair use, the excerpts here are not necessarily the most important or the core concepts or even summary of the book. They are just a few sentences and statements I have highlighted in the book for later reference, hoping that reading them encourage you to buy the book and read it.

Chapter 1: What Is Your Mother Worth?

The unnatural assumption that financial currencies (and their related banking, loan, credit, and other services) are the pinnacle of human commercial development, and not an artifact of a time before the internet.

… A more human form of regulation and currency: reputation.

The financial systems we relied on became unable to support these platforms [Facebook, Twitter, etc.], we started implementing workarounds for new kinds of exchanges of our own […]. eBay seller ratings to allow strangers to buy from strangers with confidence.

Welcome… to Reputation Economics […] They are exchanges that use more (or other) measures than just financial currency.

If you’ve given a birthday gift […] o hired a friend of friend, you’ve done it.

Money is a great idea […], but human beings aren’t reductionist enough to turn everything into cash value. After all, what’s you mom worth? That’s not a trick question, by the way.

Reputation is the closest thing we have for facilitating transactions […]. It’s inherently and relatively qualitative instead of quantitative.