Can Ron Bloom and the White House Save the US Auto Industry?
I think very highly of Ron Bloom, the Steelworker Financial adviser just named by President Obama as the car czar. Ron and Diana Farrell of the National Economic Council will head...
Understanding the Economic Triple Whammy
We are in the middle of three economic crises. Although it would be preferable to handle an attack of food poisoning, a vicious cold, and the flu separately, we got all...
The Economics and Politics of Choice Architecture
Some years back, I passed through Schiphol in Amsterdam and realized why some designers consider it the world’s finest airport. Its layout is logical and efficient, public internet terminals are numerous...
Media Wants to Be Digital and Free
Intel founder Gordon Moore famously observed that chip density doubles about every two years. Thanks to Moore's Law, computer processing gets cheaper exponentially, not arithmetically.
Metcalfe's Law is a lesser known but...
Thinking Inside the Box
The Nobel Prize winning physicist and genius quantum mechanic Niels Bohr once pointed out that "Prediction is difficult, especially about the future" -- a fact that he demonstrated empirically with respect...
Who is Norman Borlaug? Why is He our Greatest Living American?
For my money, the highest award a human being can receive is the Nobel Peace Prize, even if the process for determining the award makes it far from a perfect.
Like the...
To Infinity and Beyond: Steve Jobs Does it Again
Every year at this time I make a habit of watching the finest business presentation on the planet: the Steve Jobs keynote address at Mac World. The event is held nearby,...
“No Power in the Market and No Voice in the System”
Bill Gates' Harvard commencement address is being circulated widely in Silicon Valley -- and with good reason. He gave an outstanding speech (rather, he wrote an outstanding speech -- he cannot...
Protect Income, not Industries, Companies, or Jobs
What if, in order to protect workers, we made it illegal for an employer to fire any employee for any reason? This would not be an especially controversial idea in some...
The Immortal Game
During the summer of 1972, I worked as a cook in a small resort in New York's Hudson Valley. It was a small, family-run place patronized entirely by elderly Jews from...
China After 32 years
Thanks to a series of peculiar accidents, I was granted a visa and allowed to visit China under government supervision for 25 days in November of 1974. Nixon had opened the...
Are We Richer Than the Data Say We Are?
The always-interesting Virginia Postrel celebrates the ten year anniversary of Clinton's welfare reform by asking why people often believe that things are getting worse, when they are actually improving? Postrel notes...
Longer Tails — and Taller Heads
This is the question of the season for two reasons: Dead Man's Chest, the recent installment of Pirates of the Caribbean, which launched last night, and The Long Tail the much-blogged,...
All Ballots Secret, All Contributions Blind
We tend to regard transparency as a universal antiseptic in matters corporate and regulatory. Worried about crooked managers? Increase disclosure requirements. Concerned about administrative rulings taken behind close doors? Require open...
The Money Campaign: A Diary of the Alibris Open IPO
American stock markets have replaced commercial banks as our most important source of corporate financial capital. Today about 15,000 companies worth trillions of dollars sell shares to the public. Public companies...