Value of Nothing

Patel, Raj

ISBN 10: 031242924X / ISBN 13: 9780312429249

Verlag: St. Martins Press-3PL, 2010

May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers G031242924XI4N00

Inhaltsangabe:

"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.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor: Raj Patel is an award-winning author, film-maker and academic. He is a Research Professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He worked at the World Bank and WTO, and has been teargassed on four continents protesting against them. A James Beard Foundation Leadership Award winner, he has testified about the causes of the global food crisis to the US, UK and EU governments, and is a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems. He is the author of Stuffed and Starved, the New York Times bestselling The Value of Nothing, and the coauthor of A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, all of which have been translated and taught across the world, as have his scholarly publications in economics, philosophy, politics, and public health journals. His first documentary, filmed over the course of a decade in Malawi and the United States, is The Ants & The Grasshopper. He is a board member of the Deep Medicine Circle.

Bibliografische Details

Titel: Value of Nothing
Verlag: St. Martins Press-3PL
Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
Einband: Paperback
Zustand: Very Good
Zustand des Schutzumschlags: No Jacket