Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth.

From “Ill Fares the Land” by Tony Judt as published in The New York Review of Books (Judt extended the argument and published it as a book with the same title). 

via epsteinian