The Value of Nothing: How to reshape market society and redefine democray [Hardcover]

`A penetrating and admirably concise guide to the follies of market fundamentalism' - John Gray, Observer --Review

'Patel reveals the distorted prices and compromised values at the heart of contemporary society' - GQ --Review

`Patel combines sociology and neuroeconomics to ask the most fundamental question of the season: why do things cost what they do?' - Prospect
--Review

Credit has crunched, debt has turned toxic, the gears of the world economy have ground to a halt. It's now clear that the market doesn't only get it wrong about sub-prime mortgages, it gets it wrong about everything. We need to ask again one of the most fundamental questions a society ever addresses, and one to which very few people know or understand the answer: Why do things cost what they do? Radical, original, nimbly argued, "The Value of Nothing" uses some fundamental but forgotten economics and some cutting-edge neuroeconomics to show how the price we pay for everything from food, to handbags, to fridges, to entertainment, is systematically distorted. After reading this book, the question 'How much?' should never just be about the price on the sticker.

RAJ PATEL was educated at Oxford, the LSE, and Cornell. A former fellow at Yale and Berkeley, he is now at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He has worked for the World Bank, interned at the WTO, consulted for the UN, and protested against his former employers. His first book was Stuffed & Starved. www.rajpatel.org