Over and over again, in every industry, precisely the same calculation takes place. “Should I pay significantly more to have it done the old way, the local way, the traditional way, the way that pays my neighbor a living wage—or should I keep the money?”

[...]

Abstract macroeconomic theories are irrelevant to the people making a million tiny microeconomic decisions every day in a hypercompetitive world. And those decisions repeatedly favor fast and cheap over slow and expensive.

Over the weekend I picked up Seth Godin’s new book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? from the library. (My hold request was behind a few others. I think this is a good thing: it means there’s people in the Sarasota area who (a) use the library for its intended purposes, and (b) know enough about Seth Godin to want to reserve his new book within the first few weeks after it hits the shelves.)

I’m still only in the first chapter, but I really like what I’ve read so far. This seems to be a bit different from Godin’s previous books.

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but he almost seems to be focusing more on sociological issues and concepts in this book’s opening, where previous books started off using more personal anecdotes and individual experiences. It makes Linchpin feel like it doesn’t belong with his previous “business/marketing” books so much as with McKibben’s Deep Economy and Postman’s Technopoly.

I like that. And even if it’s not how the rest of the book will read, it’s still good for Godin. Criticism levied toward the ideas in his books often takes the tone of “he’s just a clueless huckster using anecdotes to advance untested ideas.” This opening shows that, at the very least, he’s done his homework.