It takes slightly over 200 pages to get to the core principles of Sam Pocker’s Retail Anarchy. When the “stand-up economist” ultimately does describe his model, it rings exceptionally hollow and sounds incredibly naive. Perhaps working in reverse through the book would further clarify the central aim, but somehow that seems doubtful.
Pocker, who constructed the Your Mileage May Vary documentary and created the YMMV Radio program, is a “professional bargain hunter,” but he is also a man with a heart. His documentary and radio show are dedicated to helping people save money, sometimes earn money, and really stick it to retailers.
Pocker’s book claims to hold the answers to a variety of questions, such as why “grown men sleep on the street overnight to buy video game systems” and “why does no one blink when they are charged three dollars for a cup of coffee.”
The “answers,” insomuch as they can be called informative in any fashion, are buried underneath Pocker’s sprawling, narcissistic, dishonourable writing. He offers a “Disclaimer,” noting that the book will be full of “contradictions” because it was written by a person “just like me.” Pocker is telling a “story about people and money,” it says, and that apparently excuses a lack of actual supportive data.
It is fair to say that Retail Anarchy is baffling, remarkably tangential, excessive, habitually vindictive, desperately crude, and unenlightening wholly by design. Pocker frequently leaves the back door open in order that he may hobble away from some of his harsher statements, much like the teller of an especially pitiless “joke” expects the postscript of “just kidding” to cover his or her tracks.
The author begins by telling us that he is an economist. He is not. It is entirely possible that Pocker is simply making a point about the snare of branding. He is, in effect, self-branding based exclusively on a vacant assertion. This comes into focus later when he tells us that Wal-Mart’s “Every Day Low Prices” slogan is just a slogan and that those with “Genius” written on their T-shirts at the Apple store are not, in fact, authentic geniuses. So there we are: branding can be dishonest and we shouldn’t trust it.
Why, then, should we trust Sam Pocker?
To say that the aforementioned question ran through my head relentlessly throughout reading Retail Anarchy would be an understatement. As I read through mean-spirited tale after mean-spirited tale about how retail workers are the scum of the earth, how Cheesecake Factory hostesses are sluts and prostitutes, and how the Chinese government has so many people that it can’t kill them off fast enough, I was troubled by the query.
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