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This week, the founder of Patagonia gave away his company to two trusts, one for voting shares and one for non-voting shares. The information garnered wide acclaim. I had two initial reactions. First, I respect the move immensely. Most companies say they believe in this or that, but they rarely

When we think about what will happen in the future, we often think about static systems rather than dynamic systems. That is, we think about what will happen in the future given the reality we experience today, not the actual state of things in the future. Imagine, for instance, living

Reality is complex. It doesn’t fit neatly into normal distributions or simplistic versions of the tiny images in our head of how the world should be. Should, by the way, is one of the more frightening words in the English language. This I discovered recently while talking among friends.

When you’ve arrived at the grocery store in the last few months, did the prices surprise you? Did you decide to buy the usual or not to buy that steak or your favorite cereal? Many people are feeling the pinch at the counter and, as The New York Times

There’s no such thing as a free lunch, as the saying goes. That’s because our world was created with limited resources. Unlimited demand from our troubled hearts is everywhere and at all times met with limited supply. “Everything we get,” writes Henry Hazlitt in his classic book Economics

Many people I know have been feeling heavy with the news. I get it. I consume more news than is advisable, checking the homepages of the Journal, the Times, and The Economist at least a few times a day. A swipe of my finger on my laptop’s trackpad reveals

When markets decline, entrepreneurs often rise. Businesses lay off employees as a recession kicks in, and a number of those go on to start their own businesses. In 2020, as the pandemic shut down many types of work, workers started a record 4.4 million new businesses, according to the

To know where the economy is headed, it’s helpful to look where it’s been. Investor and author Ray Dalio might know this better than anyone. He founded what is now the world’s largest hedge fund — Bridgewater Associates. In the latest chapter of his life, he’s dedicated

Last month, we talked about how the Fed raised interest rates. Now, the question is this: When do they stop? Economists believe, according to Reuters, that the Fed will raise interest rates by half a percentage point in both May and June. Half of a point may not sound like

Last time, we discussed how moralizing is often driven by market opportunities rather than a sense of purpose. I’ve criticized the New Capitalist movement enough. The biggest critique involves the conflicts of interest with purpose-driven companies: Milton Friedman argued that doing “social good” in the world is likely to