The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy

The use of punishment to condemn uncooperative behavior is a

happiness is about matching our level of consumption with our peers, and when they do better and we don’t, even if we are better off in absolute terms, we are less happy.

More and more wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few, whose lifestyles are glorified by the media, which means that the expectations of the majority have become increasingly beyond their means.

whatever else a corporation makes, it’ll invariably produce externalities.

The word value . . . has two different meanings, and sometimes expresses the utility of some particular object, and sometimes the power of purchasing other goods which the possession of that object conveys.

interest rate is the price for money, the demand for which is slave to the individual psychologies of entrepreneurs. When entrepreneurs consider how to invest, they need to evaluate not their own opinion on the best return, but everyone else’s opinion too.

“artificial people” were, in fact, precisely possessed of the characteristics that Hobbes saw in the state of nature.

Under this model, rights are what governments give, not what citizens take.

That woman values her children no less than a German or American, and wants them to grow up healthy just as much as her richer counterparts—but because she’s poorer, her love is worth less in the calculus of costs and benefits facing the corporations dumping their waste (and the policy makers who support them).

By choosing to value the world through markets, we choose the principle of “The more money you have, the more you can get.”