All James Surowiecki Quotes
- In the struggle between capital and labor, more often than not capital has won, because the real source of value for most companies has historically… Assets
- Instead of mindlessly tossing billions at or taking billions from the Net as such, investors should be spending their time making sure that it's the… Billions
- Intellectual-property rules are clearly necessary to spur innovation: if every invention could be stolen, or every new drug immediately copied, few people would invest in… Build
- It may be that the very qualities that help people get ahead are the ones that make them ill-suited for managing crises. It's hard to… Ahead
- Life insurance became popular only when insurance companies stopped emphasizing it as a good investment and sold it instead as a symbolic commitment by fathers… Became
- Linux is a complex example of the wisdom of crowds. It's a good example in the sense that it shows you can set people to… Answers
- Lower oil prices won't, by themselves, topple the mullahs in Iran. But it's significant that, historically, when oil prices have been low, Iranian reformers have… Ascendant
- Making loans and fighting poverty are normally two of the least glamorous pursuits around, but put the two together and you have an economic innovation… Chic
- Markets work best when there's lots of information available and a historical track record to go on; they excel at predicting things like horse races,… Available
- Medical tourism can be considered a kind of import: instead of the product coming to the consumer, as it does with cars or sneakers, the… Car
- Nike used to be known as Blue Ribbon Sports. What's now Sara Lee used to be Consolidated Foods. And Exxon was once Standard Oil Company… All
- Now, modern economies have a very effective mechanism for deciding if salaries are really too high: it's called the free market. That's how most people's… All
- Of course, looking tough on inflation is part of any central banker's job description: if investors believe that inflation is going to get out of… Any
- Of course, politicians always say they're just describing their opponents' positions, even if they are in fact offering absurd caricatures, if not outright lies. Absurd
- On the simplest level, telecommuting makes it harder for people to have the kinds of informal interactions that are crucial to the way knowledge moves… Business
- Political risk is hard to manage because so much comes down to the personal choices of policymakers, whether prime ministers or heads of central banks. Banks
- Publishers, naturally, loathe used books and have developed strategies to depress the secondhand market. They bring out new, even more expensive editions of popular textbooks… Book
- Punk rock has never really had much patience with musical virtuosity. Actually, it'd be more accurate to say that for most of its history, punk… Accurate
- Self-dealing, essentially, occurs when managers run companies to line their own pockets instead of those of the companies' owners. It's been a perennial problem in… America
- Since the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland wants to remain a part of Great Britain, and since Ireland itself has shown little interest in reunification,… Been
- Solyndra's failure isn't a reason for the government to give up on alternative energy, any more than the failure of Pets.com during the Internet bubble… Alternative
- Speculators get a bad rap. In the popular imagination they're greedy, heedless, and amoral, adept at price manipulations and dirty tricks. In reality, they often… Adept
- Standards wars involve lots of variables, and understanding them often seems more an art than a science. They generally involve just two big players, and… All
- Technological innovation has dramatically lowered the cost of computing, making it possible for large numbers of consumers to own powerful new technologies at reasonably low… Computing
- The fundamental problem with banks is what it's always been: they're in the business of banking, and banking, whether plain vanilla or incredibly sophisticated, is… Banking