Friday Hodgepodge

Blog Roundup


1. Writing at New Ideal, Tom Bowden notes that "Wall Street needs a moral defense against [Elizabeth] Warren [and Bernie] Sanders," as he reviews In Pursuit of Wealth: The Moral Case for Finance, by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins:

Image by Roberto Júnior, via Unsplash, license.

The lead essay, "The Moral Case for Finance," is a tour de force, describing in detail what financiers actually do to deserve the enormous profits they generate. By channeling savings to the most productive businesses and creditworthy consumers, financiers "match money with talent" and "maximize the financial well-being of everyone involved in trade," write Brook and Watkins. Large profits, they argue, are not a cause for shame but a sign of virtue...

Bowden then briefly indicates topics covered by other chapters in the book, including one that was scheduled to be posted on the same blog afterwards. (Part I of "The Morality of Moneylending: A Short History" now appears here.)

2. Although it's laudable to try to learn from failure, Jean Moroney of Thinking Directions argues that it is better to learn from mistakes:

There's a big difference. You can make a good decision, based on sound reasons, and still have it result in failure. For example, there can be many external factors that affect whether you win a contract or make a profit on a product or have the right person for a job.

That doesn't necessarily mean you should change the way you price your contracts, promote your products, or hire new people.

Failure does not always imply you did something wrong or you should do something differently. Success is not guaranteed on this earth -- not even to those who do everything in their control as well as possible.

On the other hand, you can make a colossal mistake and luck out so that you don't suffer any bad consequences. But if you don't realize that, you risk making the same mistake, again -- with terrible consequences.

Continue reading there for how to become better at detecting mistakes.

In addition to this being a better way to learn how to become more effective, it is more fair to yourself, and thus better, emotionally as well.

3. Over at the Center for Industrial Progress, Alex Epstein lists some key takeaways from a discussion of a climate change town hall on his Power Hour podcast, which he calls a "wake-up call." His post concludes:

The key is to counter the anti-fossil fuel movement in a very aggressive way that makes clear to people that these anti-fossil policies are not going to make our country and our environment better -- that they are actually deadly and miserable for human beings.

The podcast aired last September, but it is no less relevant now.

4. At New Ideal, ARI announces that its online campus now hosts a collection of previously unpublished letters of Ayn Rand, from 1938-1950. (Specifically, a final group of these letters had just been added to the collection.) The announcement includes the following excerpt from a letter Rand sent after outlining The Fountainhead:

At present, I am working on my next novel -- the very big one about American architects. For the last few months I have been wracking my brain and nerves upon the preliminary outline. It is always the hardest part of the work for me -- and my particular kind of torture. Now it is done, finished, every chapter outlined -- and there are eighty of them at present! The actual writing of it is now before me, but I would rather write ten chapters than plan one. So the worst of it is over.

Here are links to the four parts of this 40-letter collection, which was selected by Michael Berliner, the editor of Letters of Ayn Rand: 1, 2, 3, and 4.

-- CAV