The Value of Nothing

Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
-- Oscar Wilde

Last summer, a friend, Raj Patel, sent me a draft of his new book, The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy. The book is out now, and I couldn't more highly recommend it. The Value of Nothing is a good critique of our present political economy and gives an incisive look of how it came to be, where we are now, and begins most essentially to look at some ideas and practices on how we begin to evolve a more sustainable and satisfying political economy.

We are in need not of revolution, but of reformation. When a ruling doctrine becomes ubiquitous across a society, it is difficult for members of the society to imagine any alternative. The doctrine comes to define all aspects of life, and facts are interpreted not for what they may say, but how they support the ruling doctrine, even if they don't. The Value of Nothing offers an excellent historical look at how "free-market" doctrine and institutions came to dominate our lives. From Adam Smith to Karl Polanyi, Patel shows how "free market" philosophy came to redefine human culture, and that the doctrine of laissez faire relied totally on government to be instituted.

The pinnacle of free market thought was reached in the last several decades with efficient market theory, which led to the retreat of even minimal government oversight in the affairs of mega-corporations. This, as Patel points out, led to the recent financial disaster, which in the halls of power, that is in the vestibules of our free market temple, has yet to lead to any serious rethinking. An interesting point Raj brings up is how the top of the system, Wall Street, is now inundated with data in the belief this gives them knowledge. He writes, "Data pelting down monitors is what the masters of the universe on the global financial exchanges stare at, their eyes darting from screen to screen, trying to see through the world and profit from it."

This made me think how our present circumstances are much different from the 1930s. In Keynes', Treatise on Money, he is constantly lamenting the lack of data available being a hindrance for making any definitive judgment on his equations or theories.(As an aside, this should give rise to great skepticism on what people today say they learned from the data poor 30s.) What The Value of Nothing reveals is that it isn't the data that is problem today, but it is the categories, equations, and theories we are plugging the data into.

What The Value of Nothing shows is markets and market theory have run ramshackle over every other social institution. We no longer have the ability to value anything outside market terms, because the institutions and social constructs to do so, have all been eliminated or subverted. We are Patel states simply "homo economicus", looking and acting only from this perspective. We are not simply mis-pricing but devaluing some of the most basic necessities of homo sapiens, most importantly food and the environment. It is not us or flawed markets that are the determinant of these values, but mega-corporations who hold the most influence, and corporate power is not a factor in our ruling economic theory.

How do we become more fuller human beings is the essential and necessary question of The Value of Nothing. And at a time where the most fundamental tenet of industrial capitalism, unlimited growth, is meeting its limits and causing havoc with the practice of unbridled consumption, Patel offers food for thought, "The opposite of consumption isn’t thrift - it’s generosity."

The Value of Nothing provides examples in the developing world, which are in the midst of overturning their old institutions thus values, and replacing them with the institutions and pricing of free-markets. It gives examples how people are standing up, and maybe it will be from the global south, where we evolve new institutions and thought to cope with the realities of the 21st century. "The Value of Nothing" shows we must reform and evolve our institutions. Our democratic infrastructure, be it government, political, or social institutions have been quashed or are in disrepair. The solution to our economic problems is not better economic theory, but a democratic revival, a revaluation of value.


Don't miss Raj on the Colbert Report tonight, he has a wonderful sense of humor, should be great fun