Paul Mason

the best route to prosperity is individuals pursuing their own self-interest, and the market is the only way to express that self-interest.

Second, information goods are corroding the market’s ability to form prices correctly. That is because markets are based on scarcity while information is abundant.

info-capitalism has created a new agent of change in history: the educated and connected human being.

If we rewind the tape to New York in September 2008, you can see what was rational about the optimism that drove the boom. In my footage from that day there’s a crowd of people outside the Lehman HQ taking photographs on their Nokias, Motorolas and Sony Ericssons. The handsets are long obsolete, the market dominance of those brand names already gone.

The Latin word ‘fiat’ means the same as it does in the biblical phrase fiat lux – let there be light; it means ‘let there be money’ created out of nowhere.

cheap money being used to fix a crisis caused by cheap money.

Once every human being can generate a financial profit just by consuming – and the poorest can generate the most – a profound change begins in capitalism’s attitude to work.

productivity was off the agenda.

Economists call this ‘extensive growth’ – as opposed to the intensive growth that raises real wealth. In the medium term, a system based on extensive growth cannot survive.

understand that planning is guesswork.