It’s way worse than you think and way way worse than you want it to be.
6 months ago
Wealth Inequality in America
08October
8 months ago
Conspiracies and Corporations
23August
I try and keep politics off of this blog, but sometimes the coverage from politics sparks a question about entrepreneurship. Specifically today it was an explanation in The New York Times about how the law punishes conspiracy above and beyond the underlying crime. That triggered the question of what is the difference between a conspiracy and a corporation? Both are groups of people planning to...
December 19, 2017
A No-Lose Lottery
19December
The staff at the Freakonomics podcast does an amazing job of uncovering interesting business ideas. Two weeks ago the episode was “A No-Lose Lottery“. The idea is incredibly simple, but feels enough like a lottery that it is illegal in most countries. It goes like this: Create a savings account, where the savers are guaranteed to not lose their savings (if not earn a small interest...
December 10, 2017
Are We Running Out of Ideas?
10December
Last month I pointed out that tech seems to be peaking, but social good feels like its in its infancy. The “peaking” story has cropped up a few more times: Freakonomics recent podcast asks, “Are We Running Out of Ideas?” This podcast, like the book it is named after, always does a good job analyzing the root causes rather than just skimming over the surface. That root...
November 28, 2017
The American Angel
28November
Here we are in 2017 and only now are we uncovering who the Angel investors really are. The Angel Capital Association (ACA), Wharton School of Business, and Rev1 Ventures sponsored research to let us all know. The results are not surprising. 78% male 88% white Average age: 48 Standard check: $25,000 Most live in CA or in and around NYC The men don’t care about gender (and thus don’t...
November 7, 2017
Tech is peaking… social good is rising
07November
For the first twenty years of my career I was a techie. And it was an amazing two decades to be in tech, spanning the dot com bubble, the ubiquity of the personal computer, the Web, a mobile phone in every pocket, smartphones, tablets, social media, and the cloud. Six years outside of tech, it is interesting to watch how that market seems to be reaching a zenith. My computer is almost six years...
November 6, 2017
The Vicious Cycle of Inequality
06November
When the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business starts talking about the world being in a vicious cycle of inequality, you know we’re well into the end game. From this blog post: Earlier this year, a Stigler Center paper by Luigi Zingales [Faculty Director of the Stigler Center] argued that market concentration can lead to a vicious circle, in which companies use market...
October 2, 2017
Of the people, By the people, For the people
02October
Twice in the last year I felt obliged to post about politics, given few others speaking up. This time it is right fundamental human right for the people to choose their own government. What is utterly amazing to me is that we live in a world where the voting booth can choose not only the members of government, but the borders of the country itself. For millennia, borders were only moved by guns...
August 30, 2017
Where inequality leads?
30August
From The Wealth of Nations to The Divide, I’ve spent months with my nose in a book looking for answers to income and wealth inequality. Meanwhile, down on a trip to Lima in Peru, simply walking around answered one key question that keeps going unanswered by the writers, “Where does inequality lead us to?“ When that question comes up in my circle of friends, the conversation...
August 13, 2017
The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality
13August
It has been four months since Debt: The First 5,000 Years, and my quest to find answers to inequality. In that time I came across The Divide, by Jason Hickel, which claimed in the subtitle “A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and it’s Solutions” to provide not just problems but also solutions. That jumped it to the top of my growing stack of books. The first two thirds of the...
