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I tend to delay writing by doing more research - it's really the act of writing the piece that I have the hardest time with.

James Surowiecki

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James Surowiecki
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: April 30
Journalist
Writer
Meriden
Connecticut
James Michael Surowiecki
Time
Delay
Hardest
Tend
Piece
Research
Pieces
Writing
Really

More quotes by James Surowiecki

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What an economy really wants, after all, is not more investment per se but better investment. It wants capital to flow to companies that will create value - not in the form of a rising stock price but in the form of more goods for less cost, more jobs, and rising wages - by enhancing productivity.
James Surowiecki
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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.
James Surowiecki
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Businesses that have gone through an episode of hyperinflation become understandably alert to the threat of it: at the first hint of inflation, they're likely to increase prices, since they've learned that if they don't, and inflation hits, their businesses will be wrecked.
James Surowiecki
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On Wall Street, fraudulent schemes tend to thrive during economic booms, and to blow up when times turn tough.
James Surowiecki
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Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise.
James Surowiecki
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Companies, like people, don't much like to change.
James Surowiecki
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If private-equity firms are as good at remaking companies as they claim, they don't need tax loopholes to make money.
James Surowiecki
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As technology improves, on-screen avatars look more and more like real people. When they start looking too real, though, we pull away. These almost-humans aren't quite right they look creepy, like zombies.
James Surowiecki
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In the auto industry, there's one thing you can always count on: if a new environmental or safety rule is proposed, executives will prophesy disaster.
James Surowiecki
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Groups are only smart when there is a balance between the information that everyone in the group shares and the information that each of the members of the group holds privately. It's the combination of all those pieces of independent information, some of them right, some of the wrong, that keeps the group wise.
James Surowiecki
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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 has been actively hostile to virtuosity.
James Surowiecki
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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 prices.
James Surowiecki
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Behavioral economists have shown that a sizable percentage of people are willing to pay real money to punish people who are taking from a common pot but not contributing to it. Just to insure that shirkers get what they deserve, we are prepared to make ourselves poorer.
James Surowiecki
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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.
James Surowiecki
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Of course, presidents are always blamed or rewarded for the state of the economy.
James Surowiecki
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The financial crisis of 2008 was not caused by investment banks betting against the housing market in 2007. It was caused by the fact that too few investors - including all of the big investment banks - bet too heavily on the housing market in the years before 2007.
James Surowiecki
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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.
James Surowiecki
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No decision-making system is going to guarantee corporate success. The strategic decisions that corporations have to make are of mind-numbing complexity. But we know that the more power you give a single individual in the face of complexity and uncertainty, the more likely it is that bad decisions will get made.
James Surowiecki
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In the business world, bad news is usually good news - for somebody else.
James Surowiecki
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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.
James Surowiecki