Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, allowing us to do things more quickly and efficiently. But too often it seems to make things harder, leaving us with fifty-button remote controls, digital cameras with hundreds of mysterious features and book-length manuals, and cars with dashboard systems worthy of the space shuttle.

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

If being the biggest company was a guarantee of success, we'd all be using IBM computers and driving GM cars.

James Surowiecki

Speculators get a bad rap. In the popular imagination they're greedy, heedless, and amoral, adept at price manipulations and dirty tricks. In reality, they often play a key role in making markets run smoothly.

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

In practice, downsizing is too often about cutting your work force while keeping your business the same, and doing so not by investments in productivity-enhancing technology, but by making people pull 80-hour weeks and bringing in temps to fill the gap.

James Surowiecki

The challenge for capitalism is that the things that breed trust also breed the environment for fraud.

James Surowiecki

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

Downsizing itself is an inevitable part of any creatively destructive economy.

James Surowiecki

If companies tell us more, insider trading will be worth less.

James Surowiecki

Medical tourism can be considered a kind of import: instead of the product coming to the consumer, as it does with cars or sneakers, the consumer is going to the product.

James Surowiecki

In conditions of uncertainty, humans, like other animals, herd together for protection.

James Surowiecki

In the business world, bad news is usually good news - for somebody else.

James Surowiecki

The ban on sports betting does exactly what Prohibition did. It makes criminals rich.

James Surowiecki

The reason advertising is governed by fear, after all, is that most agencies rely on just a few clients to bring in the lion's share of their revenues.

James Surowiecki

The problem with venality in business is that getting outraged about it makes it easy to miss the systemic problems that venality often disguises.

James Surowiecki

Making loans and fighting poverty are normally two of the least glamorous pursuits around, but put the two together and you have an economic innovation that has become not just popular but downright chic. The innovation - microfinance - involves making small loans to poor entrepreneurs, usually in developing countries.

James Surowiecki

Intellectual-property rules are clearly necessary to spur innovation: if every invention could be stolen, or every new drug immediately copied, few people would invest in innovation. But too much protection can strangle competition and can limit what economists call 'incremental innovation' - innovations that build, in some way, on others.

James Surowiecki

If we want our regulators to do better, we have to embrace a simple idea: regulation isn't an obstacle to thriving free markets; it's a vital part of them.

James Surowiecki

Sometimes even a smart crowd will make a mistake.

James Surowiecki

James Surowiecki Quotes

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.

If being the biggest company was a guarantee of success, we'd all be using IBM computers and driving GM cars.

Speculators get a bad rap. In the popular imagination they're greedy, heedless, and amoral, adept at price manipulations and dirty tricks. In reality, they often play a key role in making markets run smoothly.

In practice, downsizing is too often about cutting your work force while keeping your business the same, and doing so not by investments in productivity-enhancing technology, but by making people pull 80-hour weeks and bringing in temps to fill the gap.

The challenge for capitalism is that the things that breed trust also breed the environment for fraud.

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.

Downsizing itself is an inevitable part of any creatively destructive economy.

If companies tell us more, insider trading will be worth less.

Medical tourism can be considered a kind of import: instead of the product coming to the consumer, as it does with cars or sneakers, the consumer is going to the product.

In conditions of uncertainty, humans, like other animals, herd together for protection.

In the business world, bad news is usually good news - for somebody else.

The ban on sports betting does exactly what Prohibition did. It makes criminals rich.

The reason advertising is governed by fear, after all, is that most agencies rely on just a few clients to bring in the lion's share of their revenues.

The problem with venality in business is that getting outraged about it makes it easy to miss the systemic problems that venality often disguises.

If we want our regulators to do better, we have to embrace a simple idea: regulation isn't an obstacle to thriving free markets; it's a vital part of them.

Sometimes even a smart crowd will make a mistake.