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Raj Patel

The Value of Nothing

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“A deeply though-provoking book about the dramatic changes we must make to save the planet from financial madness.”--Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine
Opening with Oscar Wilde's observation that “nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing,” Patel shows how our faith in prices as a way of valuing the world is misplaced. He reveals the hidden ecological and social costs of a hamburger (as much as $200), and asks how we came to have markets in the first place. Both the corporate capture of government and our current financial crisis, Patel argues, are a result of our democratically bankrupt political system.
If part one asks how we can rebalance society and limit markets, part two answers by showing how social organizations, in America and around the globe, are finding new ways to describe the world's worth. If we don't want the market to price every aspect of our lives, we need to learn how such organizations have discovered democratic ways in which people, and not simply governments, can play a crucial role in deciding how we might share our world and its resources in common.
This short, timely and inspiring book reveals that our current crisis is not simply the result of too much of the wrong kind of economics. While we need to rethink our economic model, Patel argues that the larger failure beneath the food, climate and economic crises is a political one. If economics is about choices, Patel writes, it isn't often said who gets to make them. The Value of Nothing offers a fresh and accessible way to think about economics and the choices we will all need to make in order to create a sustainable economy and society.
This book is currently unavailable
300 printed pages
Original publication
2010
Publication year
2010
Publisher
Picador
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Quotes

  • b0174785621has quoted4 years ago
    In other words, there is nothing natural about buying and selling things for profit, and allowing markets to determine their value. Before commodities can be bought and sold, they have to become objects that people think can be bought or sold.
  • b0174785621has quoted4 years ago
    there are now even prohibitions on the way we can place ourselves into markets. We are not, for instance, legally allowed to sell our organs. Give them away, yes. Sell, no.
  • b0174785621has quoted4 years ago
    Professors Binding and Hoche took it a step further. They suggested that not all human life is worth the same, and that society as a whole could save money by killing the mentally ill.

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