When Americans think of college these days, the first word that often comes to mind is ‘debt.’ And from ‘debt’ it’s just a short hop to other unpleasant words, like ‘payola,’ ‘kickback,’ and ‘bribery.’ – James Surowiecki
Flexible supply chains are great for multinationals and consumers. But they erode already thin profit margins in developing-world factories and foster a pell-mell work environment in which getting the order out the door is the only thing that matters. – James Surowiecki
To be sure, if you watch CNBC all day long you’ll pick up some interesting news about particular companies and the economy as a whole. Unfortunately, to get to the useful information, you have to wade through reams of useless stuff, with little guidance on how to distinguish between the two. – James Surowiecki
If you thought the advent of the Internet, the spread of cheap and efficient information technology, and the growing fragmentation of the consumer market were all going to help smaller companies thrive at the expense of the slow-moving giants of the Fortune 500, apparently you were wrong. – James Surowiecki
The truth is that the United States doesn’t need, and shouldn’t have, a debt ceiling. Every other democratic country, with the exception of Denmark, does fine without one. – James Surowiecki
The essence of procrastination lies in not doing what you think you should be doing, a mental contortion that surely accounts for the great psychic toll the habit takes on people. This is the perplexing thing about procrastination: although it seems to involve avoiding unpleasant tasks, indulging in it generally doesn’t make people happy. – James Surowiecki
You can’t fuel real economic growth with indiscriminate credit. You can only fuel it with well-allocated, long-term investment. – James Surowiecki
In the heart of the Great Depression, millions of American workers did something they’d never done before: they joined a union. Emboldened by the passage of the Wagner Act, which made collective bargaining easier, unions organized industries across the country, remaking the economy. – James Surowiecki
Pop music thrives on repetition. You know a song’s a hit when you’ve heard it so often that you’ll be happy never to hear it again. – James Surowiecki
The Internet has become a remarkable fount of economic and social innovation largely because it’s been an archetypal level playing field, on which even sites with little or no money behind them – blogs, say, or Wikipedia – can become influential. – James Surowiecki
The ban on sports betting does exactly what Prohibition did. It makes criminals rich. – James Surowiecki
The value of a currency is, ultimately, what someone will give you for it – whether in food, fuel, assets, or labor. And that’s always and everywhere a subjective decision. – James Surowiecki
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, the IRA’s prospects for success through political channels have always been limited. – James Surowiecki
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 future Fords and General Motors of cyberspace that are getting the capital they need. – James Surowiecki
The paradox of Steve Jobs’s career is that he had no interest in listening to consumers – he was famously dismissive of market research – yet nonetheless had an amazing sense of what consumers actually wanted. – James Surowiecki
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 work in a decentralized way – that is, without anyone really directing their efforts in a particular direction – and still trust that they’re going to come up with good answers. – James Surowiecki
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 means that venture capital should steer clear of tech projects. – James Surowiecki
I started in business journalism from the outside, so when I started writing about markets and business, I was struck by the fact that markets seemed to work well even though people are often irrational, lack good information and are not perfect in the way they think about decisions. – James Surowiecki
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 prepare for the worst when you think you’re the best. – James Surowiecki
The Xbox 360 is the best game console ever designed. It’s fast and powerful – games look as good on the 360 as on high-end PCs that cost six times as much. It’s easy to navigate and has lots of useful secondary features – the ability to play digital video, stream MP3s, and so on. – James Surowiecki
Patrimonial capitalism’s legacy is that many people see reform as a euphemism for corruption and self-dealing. – James Surowiecki
From a social point of view, it’s beneficial that homeownership encourages commitment to a given town or city. But, from an economic point of view, it’s good for people to be able to leave places where there’s less work and move to places where there’s more. – James Surowiecki
If someone really wants my company’s business, why shouldn’t he be able to do everything he can – including paying me off – to get that business? Because bribery encourages people to make decisions based on the wrong criteria, which means in the business world that it distorts the efficient allocation of resources. – James Surowiecki
When all is said and done, cheap gas is an illusion, because our reliance on gas creates a whole series of costs that aren’t factored in to the pump price – among them congestion, pollution, and increased risk of accidents. – James Surowiecki
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 been ascendant and radicals relatively subdued, and vice versa when prices have been high. – James Surowiecki