There does seem to be some evidence that as people get older, they procrastinate less, perhaps because they feel the pressure of… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
A long-term crisis, after a certain point, no longer seems like a crisis. It seems like the way things are. — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
All things being equal, letting people make decisions for themselves will produce smarter outcomes, collectively, than relying on government planners. — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
If private-equity firms are as good at remaking companies as they claim, they don't need tax loopholes to make money. — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
Of course, plenty of people don't think that guaranteeing affordable health insurance is a core responsibility of government. — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise. — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
Patrimonial capitalism's legacy is that many people see reform as a euphemism for corruption and self-dealing. — James Surowiecki Capitalism Copy Share Image
Traditionally, tours were a means of promoting a record. Today, the record promotes the tour. — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
In effect, dividing your attention means that neither (or none) of the things you're working on is really getting the full effect… — James Surowiecki Attention Copy Share Image
Speculators get a bad rap. In the popular imagination they're greedy, heedless, and amoral, adept at price manipulations and dirty tricks. In… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
Medical tourism can be considered a kind of import: instead of the product coming to the consumer, as it does with cars… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
When Americans think of college these days, the first word that often comes to mind is 'debt.' And from 'debt' it's just… — James Surowiecki Bribery Copy Share Image
Academics, who work for long periods in a self-directed fashion, may be especially prone to putting things off: surveys suggest that the… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
In a world where companies increasingly know about their business in real time, it makes no sense that public reporting mostly follows… — James Surowiecki Business Copy Share Image
What corporations fear is the phenomenon now known, rather inelegantly, as 'commoditization.' What the term means is simply the conversion of the… — James Surowiecki Barriers Copy Share Image
If army ants are wandering around and they get lost, they start to follow a simple rule:Just do what the ant in… — James Surowiecki Ants Copy Share Image
I do think to some extent multitasking is a way of fooling ourselves that we're being exceptionally efficient. — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
You might say that economic history is the history of people learning to manage risk. — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
What the investment community does like is short-term measures designed to boost share prices. — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
The fact that industries wax and wane is a reality of any economic system that wants to remain dynamic and responsive to… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
You can't fuel real economic growth with indiscriminate credit. You can only fuel it with well-allocated, long-term investment. — James Surowiecki Credit Copy Share Image
The problem with venality in business is that getting outraged about it makes it easy to miss the systemic problems that venality… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
Developing countries often have hypertrophied bureaucracies, requiring businesses to deal with enormous amounts of red tape. — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
In confusing stock options with ownership, corporations confuse trappings with substance. — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
You might think of consumption as a fairly passive activity, but buying new products and services is actually pretty risky, at least… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
The reason advertising is governed by fear, after all, is that most agencies rely on just a few clients to bring in… — James Surowiecki Advertising Copy Share Image
Framing effects can be very influential, and to the degree that you can think of a task as close rather than distant,… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
The important thing about groupthink is that it works not so much by censoring dissent as by making dissent seem somehow improbable. — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
The oil market is especially sensitive even to a hint of expansion or contraction in supply. — James Surowiecki Climate Copy Share Image
The challenge for capitalism is that the things that breed trust also breed the environment for fraud. — James Surowiecki Capitalism Copy Share Image
In part because individual judgement is not accurate enough or consistent enough, cognitive diversity is essential to good decision making. — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
The desire for reinvention seems to arise most often when companies hear the siren call of synergy and start to expand beyond… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
The autocracies of the Arab world have been as economically destructive as they've been politically repressive. — James Surowiecki Arab world Copy Share Image
Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably smart - smarter even sometimes than the smartest people in them. — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
Popular as Keynesian fiscal policy may be, many economists are skeptical that it works. They argue that fine-tuning the economy is a… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
For a crowd to be smart, the people in it need to be not only diverse in their perspectives but also, relatively… — James Surowiecki Being smart Copy Share Image
The smartest groups, then, are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other. Independence… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
Unlike most government programs, Social Security and, in part, Medicare are funded by payroll taxes dedicated specifically to them. Some of the… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
Behavioral economists have shown that a sizable percentage of people are willing to pay real money to punish people who are taking… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
Punk rock has never really had much patience with musical virtuosity. Actually, it'd be more accurate to say that for most of… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
