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Shiny Objects: Why We Spend Money We Don't Have In Search Of Happiness We Can't Buy (2011)

by James A. Roberts(Favorite Author)

3.3 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0062093606 (ISBN13: 9780062093608)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

HarperOne

review 1: I really enjoyed this book. It covers a problem that we sometimes moralize about but do little in the way of correcting. It is materialism. It is the way we distract ourselves by purchasing "shiny objects" to make us feel better. Meanwhile we wind up spending more money than we have and go into debt and make our lives worse. We take on more jobs to pay off the debt for the shiny objects while important things like relationships to family, friends and community suffer. Materialistic people who chase after shiny objects tend to be more unhappy than less materialistic people. So if you are a hedonist the best strategy ironically for happiness is to be less materialistic and pay attention to things that really make people happy. Again these are friends, family, helping others... more and being less selfish and having some meaning in life. It is not shiny objects as alluring as a big house and a fancy car may seem in an ad it is an illusion of the good life not the good life itself. The book criticizes materialism and consumerism which has grown through the twentieth and twenty first centuries while happiness has stayed flat despite increasing wealth in our society. It has lead to massive credit card debt averaging over 8000$ per person and turned us into joyless workaholics who soothe our empty lives with "human toys". It has permeated religion with the prosperity gospel of the Megachurches "give to my church and god will make you rich". Even the Amish have been infected by it. The end of the book has tips to stay out of debt and avoid shopping addiction. The main thing is to use your credit card as little as possible or even get rid of it. I liked this book and may use some of its tips to avoid the temptation to overspend and get to hooked into the consumer culture.
review 2: I just finished reading this book, and I am disappointed. This book had a great deal of potential. James Roberts presents a wealth of information and cites numerous studies, all of which is good. However, he fails in his writing in two major ways. First, he confuses positive correlation and causation. Just because a study can show that two states or items are associated with one another does not necessarily mean that one causes the other. For example, one of Roberts's concepts is that materialism causes unhappiness. He has many studies to demonstrate that materialistic people are not happy. However, none of the example studies he cites can prove that being materialistic makes one unhappy, or if being unhappy makes one materialistic, or if there is a third cause that results in both materialism and unhappiness. Second, he assumes that his conclusions are correct rather than demonstrating that he is right. Roberts states that happiness is derived from strong relationships with family and friends, community involvement, and church participation. He makes many arguments to defend this point rather than trying to demonstrate it from his data. Quite frankly, it isn't difficult to construct hypothetical situations where he is simply wrong. Are all atheists unhappy because they do not participate in church? Are people born to dysfunctional families doomed to a life of unhappiness? According to Roberts both of these questions would be answered affirmatively. However he provides no data to demonstrate this, and it seems unlikely that all atheists and people born to dysfunctional families are fated to never be happy. The logical errors of Roberts (causation vs. correlation and assumption of his conclusions) are very disappointing and would not likely have been made if the author's training had been scientific or philosophical. Unfortunately, Roberts obtained his training in the field of marketing, and it shows in his weak grasp of how to properly utilize scientific data.There are numerous other points where I can point out errors in Roberts's narrative, but they are fairly minor compared to the above. In particular I found his pontificating about obsolescence of computer batteries to be terrible. He suggests that batteries die because of deliberate choice by the engineers. However, the battery life issue has been a major technical problem for engineers for years. It's a problem with physics and chemistry, but Roberts would have us believe it is a grand conspiracy to steal our money. Also, his pontificating about the glory of President Jimmy Carter was a bit much. Save your politics for a book about politics Mr. Roberts, we're not interested.This would have been an excellent book if Mr. Roberts had stuck to the data and analyzed it properly. As it is, this book is a mess of good data with poor conclusions drawn from it. One out of five stars. less

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