James Surowiecki Quotes - Page 6

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When Americans are asked to rank professions in terms of honesty and ethics, insurance agents routinely end up near the bottom of the list - somewhere between politicians and car salesmen. Generally, insurers are seen as clever hucksters who prey on insecurity and ignorance to sell people what they don't need at prices they shouldn't have to pay.

James Surowiecki

Clever, Honesty, Ignorance

"Mixed Motives". www.newyorker.com. November 8, 2004.

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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

College, Thinking, Mind

"Rent-Seekers". www.newyorker.com. August 13, 2007.

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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

Immigration, Reform, Borders

"Immigration Reform and the American Worker". www.newyorker.com. February 21, 2013.

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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.

James Surowiecki

Thinking, Might, Buying

"Innovative Consumption". www.newyorker.com. May 16, 2011.

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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

Wisdom, Team, Organization

James Surowiecki (2005). “The Wisdom of Crowds”, p.190, Anchor

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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

Wise, Smart, Independent

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This intelligence, or what I'll call "the wisdom of crowds," is at work in the world in many different guises. It's the reason the Internet search engine Google can scan a billion Web pages and find the one page that has the exact piece of information you were looking for. It's the reason it's so hard to make money betting on NFL games, and it helps explain why, for the past fifteen years, a few hundred amateur traders in the middle of Iowa have done a better job of predicting election results than Gallup polls have.

James Surowiecki

Wisdom, Jobs, Past

"The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations". Book by James Surowiecki, 2004.

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One key to successful group decisions is getting people to pay much less attention to what everyone else is saying.

James Surowiecki

Successful, Keys, People

James Surowiecki (2005). “The Wisdom of Crowds”, p.65, Anchor

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Unfortunately, there is something of a flaw in this idealized picture of the way the scientific community discovers truth. And the flaw is that most scientific work never gets noticed. Study after study has shown that most scientific papers are read by almost no one, while a small number of papers are read by many people.

James Surowiecki

Science, Small Numbers, People

James Surowiecki (2005). “The Wisdom of Crowds”, p.170, Anchor

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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

Shells, May, Victim

"Disaster Economics". www.newyorker.com. December 3, 2012.

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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

Innovation, Littles, Fields

"Net Losses". www.newyorker.com. March 20, 2006.

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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

Jobs, Government, Principles

"Special Interest" by James Surowiecki, www.newyorker.com. March 15, 2010.

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In a world where companies increasingly know about their business in real time, it makes no sense that public reporting mostly follows the old quarterly schedule. Companies sit on vital information until reporting day, at which point the market goes crazy.

James Surowiecki

Crazy, Real, Schedules

"Inside Tracks". www.newyorker.com. June 10 & 17, 2013.

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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

Cutting, Technology, Practice

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In terms of productivity - that is, how much a worker produces in an hour - there's little difference between the U.S., France, and Germany. But since more people work in America, and since they work so many more hours, Americans create more wealth.

James Surowiecki

Differences, America, People

"No Work and No Play". www.newyorker.com. November 28, 2005.

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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

Safety, Environmental, Disaster

"Fuel for Thought". www.newyorker.com. July 23, 2007.

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In the days when corporate downsizing was all the rage, Wall Street took a lot of flak for judging companies too harshly and setting the bar for corporate performance so high that executives felt their only option was to slash payrolls.

James Surowiecki

Wall, Judging, Bars

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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.

James Surowiecki

Real, Struggle, Assets

"Net Worth". www.newyorker.com. March 14, 2005.

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Of course, looking tough on inflation is part of any central banker's job description: if investors believe that inflation is going to get out of control, you end up with higher interest rates and capital flight, and a vicious circle quickly ensues.

James Surowiecki

Jobs, Believe, Circles

"Inflated Fears". www.newyorker.com. September 14, 2009.

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Of course, politicians always say they're just describing their opponents' positions, even if they are in fact offering absurd caricatures, if not outright lies.

James Surowiecki

Lying, Offering, Opponents

"Stand Up For Your Budget, Paul Ryan". www.newyorker.com. April 4, 2012.

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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

Moving, Writing, Play

"Face Time". www.newyorker.com. March 18, 2013.

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Political risk is hard to manage because so much comes down to the personal choices of policymakers, whether prime ministers or heads of central banks.

James Surowiecki

Choices, Political, Risk

"The Age of Political Risk". www.newyorker.com. May 24, 2010.

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Publishers, naturally, loathe used books and have developed strategies to depress the secondhand market. They bring out new, even more expensive editions of popular textbooks every three to four years, in a classic cycle of planned obsolescence.

James Surowiecki

Depressing, Book, Years

"Class Action". www.newyorker.com. November 7, 2005.

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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

Rocks, Musical, Punk

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The fundamental problem with banks is what it's always been: they're in the business of banking, and banking, whether plain vanilla or incredibly sophisticated, is inherently risky.

James Surowiecki

Banking, Fundamentals, Vanilla

"The Real Problem with the Big Banks". www.newyorker.com. February 18, 2013.

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"Framing effects can be very influential, and to the degree that you can think of a task as close rather than distant, you're more likely to actually get it done."

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www.newyorker.com, added Oct 6, 2015

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James Surowiecki

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Born: 1967
Occupation: Journalist
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