Our Mountain of Silver
When the Spanish explored the new world in search of riches, they eventually reached what is now Bolivia and found a veritable mountain of silver. The flow of gold and silver to Spain from Cerro Rico (pictured) and other mines…
COVID-19’s Creative Destruction
“Creative destruction refers to the incessant product and process innovation mechanism by which new production units replace outdated ones. Over the long run, the process of creative destruction accounts for over 50 per cent of productivity growth.” – Joseph Schumpeter,…
Operation Warp Speed – the Last Mile Problem
I’ve spent the last month as a Peace Corps volunteer deployed to support a mobile vaccination clinic in rural Maine. The mission is to reach underserved communities to make it as convenient as possible for everyone to get the shot….
A Return of that Other Bubble?
I was working on Wall Street during the crash of October 19, 1987, when the Dow dropped 22% (or about 7,000 points in today’s market). That evening, traders gathered at Harry’s Bar to commiserate. One of the old timers pulled…
So Now What?
Was the election outcome a reaffirmation of free market capitalism or a headlong lurch towards socialism or what Hayek termed, “The Road to Serfdom”? Wait! Is that what this election was about? Struggling with the daily COVID fear and loathing,…
Ghost Town and Peak Valley
Ghost Town? A few weeks ago I took my car to the mechanic in downtown San Francisco. It was nice day, with nothing else to do and contemplating the assorted possibilities of COVID exposure in an Uber or public transport,…
Greenback Boogie
“Money is the mother’s milk of politics” – Jesse M. Unruh, 1966 Each day I get more than 20 requests for money from both political parties. The friendly missives come via text and email. Happily, they haven’t discovered my WhatsApp…
The Incorporeal Economy
In October 2006, Netflix launched a contest. They offered a $1 million prize to any team that could improve their movie-recommendation software engine by 10%. Netflix’s global hackathon eventually engaged 30,000 engineers loosely organized and endlessly re-organized into hundreds of…
Social Capital and Social Distancing
Most of us have worked in high performance teams at some time. Those were the teams that took pride in doing what others said was impossible, where debate was open and energized and sometimes at high volume, where decisions were…
Walking With Virus
I live in the city. My neighbors are out walking. Not just a few but lots of them. Most are walking alone or at most two abreast. They walk slowly, without purpose, as if they have no place to go….