- ISBN13: 9780312429249
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
“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… More >>
The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy
Does the author take into consideration how much the USA does for these struggling nations for free? Just yesterday an earthquake hit Haiti and the president offered aid to them any way we could.
I do hope that his ideas are thought provoking to other nations that are struggling.
Rating: 3 / 5
I heard this author present the key ideas from this book for 40 minutes and cannot remember hearing so much muddled thinking crammed into such a short period. If you are a glutton for unredeemed and loosely targeted attacks on the market economy, this may be the book for you. If not, at least skim the book before parting with good money for it. Among the loosely thought-out doctrines that Patel put forward is “food sovereignty” under which heading he glided easily across the question of just who was to exercise this sovereignty (”the people”? the state? the producers, peasants or otherwise?). If you think food supply needs to be more politicized than it already is, call to mind the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (or, heaven help us, Soviet state farms).
Rating: 2 / 5
Too much disjointed material. The author starts out relatively clearly and then gets into all sorts of disjointed ideas. I kept hoping he would make his point.
I liked the effort but the net result is just confusion.
Rating: 2 / 5
This book had some thought-provoking ideas about price vs. value, markets, and man’s impact on the environment, and contained a litany of examples of multinational corporate tyranny.
However, it didn’t really do a good job of weaving the disparate ideas together into a cohesive narrative. I don’t think the author could really relate the concept of value to commercial trawlers off of the coast of Pakistan.
It also ended abruptly; the actual text ends at 54% in the Kindle edition, with the rest of it being notes, bibliography, and an unnecessarily large index.
Rating: 3 / 5
I am 63 now and have been a follower of Ayn Rand since high school. Several decades ago I realized how wrong her analyses were, but never really took the time to carefully diagnose the concerns I had been harboring.
Mr. Patel seems brilliant and insightful. He takes great care to be specific, yet his prose style is not cloying.
This book is a real treat, though I suspect the “glancers and browsers” may miss his syllogisms and logic by merely using conventional biases in a rearrangement of their prejudices. This book needs digestion and musing. Mr. Patel is really onto something fundamental and moral about commerce for our own benefit.
I think free markets are a great idea. We should have some, not global corporations replacing the real nations. Markets are not more “real” than societies.
Rating: 5 / 5