Masel group

Bypass Wall Street: A Biologist's Guide to the Rat Race

Pundits urge you to save more money for retirement. But you can’t eat piles of saved money; unless this money is used to increase our ability to produce food, medicine and nursing, the money might as well be destroyed today and reprinted later. How is money saved today converted into something that will be useful decades from now? In the meantime, who benefits from these pools of saved money?

In this book, I use insights about competition and demography to deconstruct the false economic premises behind our bloated financial system. Written for a trade audience, the book delivers accessible advice not only for policy makers, but also for individuals, suggesting alternatives that work for your ordinary savers rather than the benefit of financiers. By focusing on the fundamentals of what investment means, ordinary individuals can bypass the middleman, and take direct control over how their saved money is converted into enduring wealth. This book challenges you to think differently, and gives new meaning to the old advice to invest only in things you understand.

The ideas of the book grew out of the distinction between absolute and relative competitions in biology. In economics, the same issues arise, with money acting as a relative points system and wealth as an absolute store of value. You can start reading the beginning of the book here, read a free article How Your Savings Plan Fuels an Arms Race on Wall Street on one of the main ideas of the book, or you can of course just buy the book.