The Price of Everything Quotes

“Onerous moral strictures weed out the uncommitted and guarantee a minimum level of solidarity and trust within the group.”
― Eduardo Porter, The Price of Everything: Finding Method in the Madness of What Things Cost

“market transactions do not necessarily provide people with what they want; they provide people with what they think they want.”
― Eduardo Porter, The Price of Everything: Finding Method in the Madness of What Things Cost

“You usually can't get something without giving up something in return. You might not always recognize the price, but even hidden prices can be high.”
― Eduardo Porter, The Price of Everything: Solving the Mystery of Why We Pay What We Do

“Our unwillingness to acknowledge life's price does not mean it doesn't have one.”
― Eduardo Porter, The Price of Everything: Solving the Mystery of Why We Pay What We Do

“Onerous moral strictures weed out the uncommitted and guarantee a minimum level of”
― Eduardo Porter, The Price of Everything: Finding Method in the Madness of What Things Cost

“Unlike the competitive utopia described in economic models, where consumers can effortlessly compare competing products to make their choices, the real world is plagued with what Nobel laureate George Stigler called search costs.”
― Eduardo Porter, The Price of Everything: Finding Method in the Madness of What Things Cost

“Wedded to the notion that individuals will only do something if the get something in return, economics cannot properly explain why people help strangers whom they will never see again.”
― Eduardo Porter, The Price of Everything: Solving the Mystery of Why We Pay What We Do

“And those who don't expect to be alive very far into the future care less about what warming will do to it”
― Eduardo Porter, The Price of Everything: Solving the Mystery of Why We Pay What We Do

“The information revolution didn't make information free. What it did was transfer the money from the producers of information to the owners of the technologies that deliver it to their audience”
― Eduardo Porter, The Price of Everything: Solving the Mystery of Why We Pay What We Do

“Sometimes people pay stratospheric prices for humdrum items because doing so proves that they can.”
― Eduardo Porter, The Price of Everything: Solving the Mystery of Why We Pay What We Do

“But the value of a product does not live inside it. It is a subjective quantity determined by the seller and the buyer. The relative value of exchanged things is their relative price. This realization lifted prices into their rightful spot as indicators of human preferences and guides of humankind.”
― Eduardo Porter, The Price of Everything: Finding Method in the Madness of What Things Cost

“Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl,” he said. “Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”
― Eduardo Porter, The Price of Everything: The Cost of Birth, the Price of Death, and the Value of Everything in between

“As is the case with other free things, the lack of a price signal to modulate our consumption will lead us to consume too much, until we deplete the resource at hand.”
― Eduardo Porter, The Price of Everything: Finding Method in the Madness of What Things Cost

“To those who share it, the fundamental appeal of faith derives from the community it creates. If that were religion’s only purpose, churches might not be so ubiquitous. But civilization gave faith another purpose: legitimization of power. For this, churches are indispensable. From pharaonic Egypt to medieval Europe and from Meiji Japan to contemporary Iran, rulers have derived their authority from the divine.”
― Eduardo Porter, The Price of Everything: Finding Method in the Madness of What Things Cost