The Cure for What Ails Us: Market Crash and Mass Defaults
There are many possible answers to the question “what ails us?” but they all boil down to one reality: the socio-political-economic system has slowly…
The 8 Essentials We Need to Control
I often reference our dependence on long supply chains and complex systems whose apparent robustness in normal operations masks their inherent fragility and vulnerability…
The Seeds of Social Revolution: Extreme Wealth Inequality
If there is any potential catalyst for social upheaval that attracts less attention than extreme wealth inequality, it’s mighty obscure. As I noted yesterday,…
The Elephant in the Room–No, the Other Elephant
Ah, yes, the elephant in the room, a problem that’s 1) big and obvious and 2) can’t be solved with the usual painless policy…
Machiavelli’s Sage Advice to Transformational Leaders
Machiavellian has negative connotations–cynically unscrupulous scheming to gain or maintain power–but this misses the mark of Machiavelli the man who sought a livelihood in…
The Cost of Owning a Home Is Soaring
We all know that buying a house is now unaffordable, but owning a house is increasingly unaffordable, too. Gordon Long and I have laid…
What Kind of Society Will We Have?
The question “what kind of society will we have?” doesn’t arise very often, as politics and the economy dominate the zeitgeist. This is likely…
Central Planning: China’s Miracle–and Malaise
China offers a real-time case study of the upsides and downsides of central planning, broadly defined as the central state establishing the goals, financing,…