Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals

Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals by Tyler Cowen

Wealth and prosperity allows people to live happier, better lives. While some studies have shown a plateauing of "happiness", Cowen argues that this is primarily due to the way that questions are asked. With more happiness, people "level set" to that level. Greater happiness, will raise the level higher. What should we do to maximize happiness and prosperity? Are there fixed rules we can use? Utilitarian views carry it to an extreme of maximizing utility. However, this may end up allocating money from the poor to the wealthy to maximize benefits. More likely, we will give some resources to the poor to help bring them up. We should also focus more on the longer term. There is a tendency to spend more on the old than the young, even though the benefits to the young can accrue over a long term. The book is short and fairly "common sense".

The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better

The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better by Tyler Cowen

America has experienced a couple centuries of great economic growth. This was enabled by picking the "low hanging fruit" of land, immigrants and technology. However, this has slowed significantly in the past few decades. Politicians try to boost the economy via tax cuts or spending increases. With either approach, the party enjoys touting the benefits, but is reluctant to actually pick up the tab. 

Today, the government spending as a portion of the economy is much higher than it has been in the past. The government does provide more. However, government expenditures tend to decrease in value. (The expenditures with a greatest value are quickly adopted. Additional expenditures tend to be decrease in efficiency and economic value.) The decreasing marginal value of government results in less overall economic benefit.

The private sector is not necessarily better. Much of the "growth" in the economy has been in finance. While there is some financial activity the provides general economic benefit, much of the modern innovation has just served to enrich the practitioners. Complex financial products were behind the great recession of the early 2000s.

What should we do? The author proposes attaching greater value to scientists. They provide much of the research that helps fuel the economy. They have a respectable place in society, but are not deemed as one of the top professions. They need to have a more important role to help economy regain its mojo. 

GOAT: Who is the Greatest Economist of all Time and Why Does it Matter?

GOAT: Who is the Greatest Economist of all Time and Why Does it Matter? by Tyler Cowen

In this very readable book, Tyler Cowen attempts to determine who was the greatest economist of all time. in the process he provides background on some of the most important economic thinkers and why their thoughts matter. The conclusion ends up being somewhat of a tie with a further lament that modern academia makes it harder for a new GOAT to emerge.

He explores 20th century economists such as Hayek, Keynes and Friedman, as well as older ones like Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and Malthus. There are also a number mentioned as not quite making the list. The criteria are quite broad, with significance of publications as well as the general persona all important.

The content is quite good. However, Cowen also used it as a means to explore AI. The audiobook was generated with an AI version of his voice. (It is quite good - a solid step above text to speech.) He also encourages using AI to explore the book.

Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World

The typical interview process is great at finding "least offensive" employees. It helps filter out those that will absolutely fail, but does a poor job of identifying great talent. This book was written by an economist and a tech entrepreneur to identify sources of  transcendental talent. 

For an interview, it is useful to delve into an area that the candidate has not prepared. One question today is to ask "what are your current open browser tabs?" This helps identify what they are interested in. Personality is often defined more with a what a person does on the weekend than while at work. Another question is "What do you believe that everybody else finds irrational?" The goal is to find things that really make the person unique.

A person can't learn charisma from book and list of traits. It is much better to find examples of people that have the desired traits and try to emulate them.

Interviewing is very different in the world of Zoom than it is in person. A video call leaves off many of the cues that we would have in a face to face conversation. An audio call can in some ways be better since it does not provide "false clues". The skills to make a good video call appearance are different than those for an in-person conversation. 

Finding the best talent often involves seeking out diversity. Those from different cultures may appear to be very polite or quiet. This could be just a reflection of being in an unfamiliar surrounding rather than their true personality. Sometimes the best talent will have a different outward appearance, be that gender, race, age, language, or other characteristic. Great talent can be uncovered by being willing to work with people with different neurologies. (One of the author's even states that there is a need to have a degree of neuroticism.) Those on the autism spectrum are an especially overlooked source of talent. (The author's even mention that a number of actors may be on the spectrum. They need to "act" to function in the world, so emulating different characters is a natural extension.) Work needs to be done to accommodate those that are different, but it will often pay off.

Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero

Big Business is often derided as one of the sources of problems in American society. Small business tends to be more greatly respected. However, big business provides higher paying jobs, more diversity, and generally more benefit to society. Even large CEO pay packages are not out of line when compared to the increased responsibilities of CEOs. The size of large businesses is usually a result of the will of the people. Companies like Google produce something that people want and grow to produce more of it. Amazon sells things at low prices, generating more happy customers and more sales. Government regulation also contributes to sizes of companies. Cell phone carriers need to be large to cover the country and purchase spectrum from the government. Companies in highly regulated industries need to be large in order to justify the expenses of the regulation. It is the regulation that creates the monopoly. Companies that manage to create monopolies on their own without benefiting consumers are extremely rare.
People tend to treat big businesses as other "people". They also use anecdotal strategies to attack large companies. They are run by people. People make mistakes. It is human nature to amplify the 1 mistake at the expense of the 1000 good things that were done. Thus, the few bad actors tend to unjustly malign big business. There are problems with big businesses. However, the capitalist system does a good job of weeding out the bad actors. (Protective regulations tend to make things worse, allowing dinosaurs to remain around longer than they should.) Maybe we should give businesses a little more respect.