We should all commend the scientists responsible for the speedy rollout of various Covid vaccines. True, we understate the risks of mass inoculation with an inadequately tested product. But we could easily make a case that the global emergency warrants such risk taking. Yet, as illustrated by its latest conflict with President Biden, the pharmaceutical industry does not consider public health its main priority. I’ll go further: Big Pharma lacks any decency. I’ll admit that I appear to have underestimated …
The Urgency for an Enlightenment 2.0
April 30, 2021When you automate an industry you modernize it; when you automate a life you primitivize it. (Eric Hoffer) It is well known that rationality and science emerged during the Age of Enlightenment. Many indeed attribute human progress over the past few centuries to reason and discovery. Despite a Romantic reaction against some of the worst excesses of the Industrial Revolution, there is little doubt that human reason, empiricism, and science ultimately became the dominant world view. The “defeat” of Romanticism …
Revenge of the Little Guy
February 1, 2021By now everyone has heard about the recent “assault” on Wall Street by legions of day traders. Coordinating purchases over Reddit and using the Robin Hood app, possibly a few million individuals bought large quantities of shares from GameStop as well as other companies like Blackberry, AMC Entertainment, and Nokia, pumping up their prices as much as 300 percent – and much more in the case of GameStop. The surge in their share prices caused hedge funds like Melvin, Point72, …
Technological Complexity: The Next Black Swan?
December 14, 2020A comment in Friday’s Financial Times by John Thornhill caught my eye, although not for the reason you might think. His piece was mostly a warning about how our overreliance on technology could spark the next global crisis. The article elaborated on a number of cyberwar and cybersecurity risks that make our modern society increasingly vulnerable to any number of attacks. And sure enough – would you believe it! – just two days later it appears that some Russians successfully …
The Free Competitive Market as Red Herring
August 28, 2020I like to ask my economics students whether competitive free markets are a good thing. Despite the fact that many of them want to go into business as a career, they mostly agree that competition and free markets are universally desirable. I try to remind them that absence of competition is what most helps businesses stay alive – never mind rake in abnormal profits – but they are not easily persuaded. Further discussion with them reveals a widespread and ingrained …