Chapter 2

I thought it was interesting how he compared the KKK, stock brokers, and real estate agents based on the fact that they have there own circle of private information and once the information was made public it started to negatively affect the group. Like the example of when John Brown was an inside man in the KKK and he broadcasted his findings on the radio, which resulted in the attendance rate to drop at future meetings. This makes sense because if everyone had all the information that a real estate agent had, which is becoming more of a possibility with the internet, then they are not needed any more. I agree that information asymmetry is becoming a thing of the past because of the internet. An example was shown with term life insurance, and how when websites started popping up comparing prices, term life insurance prices dropped. The next study that got me thinking was the online dating sites and the stats that go along with them. When guys listed that they were looking for casual encounters they ended up getting less emails in proportion to women who put the same thing. Also, blond girls as well as guys with higher incomes got more emails than others, which is something that I would have expected to occur. The story about Duke of the KKK who had a mailing list of thousands of KKK members was pretty funny. Duke sold the list for a large amount of money and then used it again after he sold it to satisfy his gambling addiction by sending out a sad story about almost losing his house and needing money. This resulted in him receiving more money. So he basically robbed other KKK members by proclaiming one thing and using the money for his addiction, which is pretty funny because all those involved were KKK members and deserved to get robbed. The basic lesson I got from the chapter was know how to find the difference between the information proclaimed and what the truth really is.