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Politically speaking, it's always easier to shell out money for a disaster that has already happened, with clearly identifiable victims, than to invest money in protecting against something that may or may not happen in the future.

James Surowiecki

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James Surowiecki
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: April 30
Journalist
Writer
Meriden
Connecticut
James Michael Surowiecki
Future
Disaster
Money
Speaking
Identifiable
Happens
Clearly
Shell
May
Victim
Protecting
Something
Easier
Shells
Always
Already
Politically
Happen
Invest
Happened
Victims

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There does seem to be some evidence that as people get older, they procrastinate less, perhaps because they feel the pressure of time more.
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If being the biggest company was a guarantee of success, we'd all be using IBM computers and driving GM cars.
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I think people don't understand compound interest because typically no one ever explains it to them and the level of financial literacy in the US is very low.
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What corporations fear is the phenomenon now known, rather inelegantly, as 'commoditization.' What the term means is simply the conversion of the market for a given product into a commodity market, which is characterized by declining prices and profit margins, increasing competition, and lowered barriers to entry.
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On Wall Street, fraudulent schemes tend to thrive during economic booms, and to blow up when times turn tough.
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The history of the Internet is, in part, a series of opportunities missed.
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You'll sometimes hear from people that they actually do a better job of getting their work done when they have a lot of other obligations - in effect, it removes the possibility of procrastinating.
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In order to work well, markets need a basic level of trust.
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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.
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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 been the hard assets that they owned and controlled.
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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.
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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, election outcomes, and box-office results. But they're bad at predicting things like who will be the next Supreme Court nominee, as that depends on the whim of the president.
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In industries where a lot of competitors are selling the same product - mangoes, gasoline, DVD players - price is the easiest way to distinguish yourself. The hope is that if you cut prices enough you can increase your market share, and even your profits. But this works only if your competitors won't, or can't, follow suit.
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Wall Street has come a long way from the insider-dominated world that was blown apart by the Great Depression.
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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.
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I think there is clearly a connection between free time and procrastination. The more you have of the former, all things being equal, the more likely you are to procrastinate.
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A general principle of good taxation is that similar jobs, and similar kinds of compensation, should be taxed the same way: otherwise, the government is effectively subsidizing some jobs over others.
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Campaigns fail if they waste resources courting voters who are unpersuadable or already persuaded. Their most urgent task is to find and persuade the few voters who are genuinely undecided and the larger number who are favorably disposed but need a push to actually vote.
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Companies, like people, don't much like to change.
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You might think of consumption as a fairly passive activity, but buying new products and services is actually pretty risky, at least if you value your time and money.
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