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The profit motive, indecorous though it may seem, may represent the best chance the poor have to reap some of globalization's benefits.
James Surowiecki
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James Surowiecki
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: April 30
Journalist
Writer
Meriden
Connecticut
James Michael Surowiecki
Chance
Reap
Poor
Globalization
Seems
Represent
May
Motive
Best
Profit
Benefits
Seem
Though
More quotes by James Surowiecki
I typically don't adopt the ascetic approach. In part, that's because I do use the Net for research even as I'm writing (to check facts, or so on). But I think it's also because I find the possibility of distraction comforting.
James Surowiecki
Of course, plenty of people don't think that guaranteeing affordable health insurance is a core responsibility of government.
James Surowiecki
The important thing about groupthink is that it works not so much by censoring dissent as by making dissent seem somehow improbable.
James Surowiecki
Breaking tasks down into smaller sub-tasks can be very useful.
James Surowiecki
Meeting external deadlines is much harder than meeting internal ones. On the other hand, internal deadlines sometimes don't feel real, and are therefore easy to evade.
James Surowiecki
Academics, who work for long periods in a self-directed fashion, may be especially prone to putting things off: surveys suggest that the vast majority of college students procrastinate, and articles in the literature of procrastination often allude to the author's own problems with finishing the piece.
James Surowiecki
If small groups are included in the decision-making process, then they should be allowed to make decisions. If an organization sets up teams and then uses them for purely advisory purposes, it loses the true advantage that a team has: namely, collective wisdom.
James Surowiecki
In order to work well, markets need a basic level of trust.
James Surowiecki
If companies tell us more, insider trading will be worth less.
James Surowiecki
Of course, presidents are always blamed or rewarded for the state of the economy.
James Surowiecki
The challenge for capitalism is that the things that breed trust also breed the environment for fraud.
James Surowiecki
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.
James Surowiecki
The ban on sports betting does exactly what Prohibition did. It makes criminals rich.
James Surowiecki
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
Workers who come to the U.S. see their wages and their standard of living boosted sharply simply by crossing the border. That's a good thing, and one of the best arguments for immigration reform, even if you'll rarely hear a politician make it.
James Surowiecki
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 through an organization. The role that hallway chat plays in driving new ideas has become a cliche of business writing, but that doesn't make it less true.
James Surowiecki
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 salaries are set, after all, including those of major-league baseball players and European soccer players.
James Surowiecki
The smartest groups, then, are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other. Independence doesn't imply rationality or impartiality, though. You can be biased and irrational, but as long as you're independent, you won't make the group any dumber.
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
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 to the future well-being of their families.
James Surowiecki