I’m enjoying Bartley Madden’s Value Creation Thinking. Madden has much real-world experience in business from his years as a managing director at Credit Suisee HOLT. He’s also read deeply into the ethics and economics literature. We all know the complaints about the business world — corporations enjoy low public trust, “capitalism” is a dirty word […]
Bartley Madden’s *Value Creation Thinking* Read More »
About the following list of the top ten oil companies in the world, ask two questions: How many are government-owned and how many privately owned? and Of the privately owned, how many are highly regulated and how many operate in free markets? 1 Saudi Aramco 478.00 (evenue in year 2015) 2 Sinopec 455.499 3 China
The Biggest Oil Companies in the World Read More »
In my “Where are all those free-market economists who caused the financial crisis?”, I cited survey results showing that very few professional economists are deregulation advocates, and I cited data indicating an increase in regulation in the lead-up to the crisis. Here is Regdata’s more recent “Did Deregulation Cause the Financial Crisis? Examining a Common
Before the 2008 financial crisis: increasing or decreasing regulation? Read More »
[A discussion post.] President Trump’s now-serious proposal to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities has elicited the first round of responses ranging from Philistine! to It’s about time! Both agencies were created in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson, who said at the time: “it is necessary and
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In a recent post, philosopher-turned-businessman Robert Garmong made this observation: I’m now convinced that 99% of business success comes down to skill at defining and applying concepts. Those who are mere cogs in the machine, generally speaking, are those who don’t really understand the concepts. They may grasp the rules, but not the reasons. They
Who succeeds in business — Garmong on *conceptual* thinking Read More »
Interview conducted at Rockford University by Stephen Hicks and sponsored by the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship. Part I Hicks: I’m Stephen Hicks. My guest today is Phyllis Johnson, who spoke in the Business and Economics Ethics class today on the theme of Coffee, Entrepreneurship, and Women in Africa. Ms. Johnson is the founder and
Coffee entrepreneur Phyllis Johnson — video interview transcript Read More »
A good paragraph from Niall Ferguson’s 2008. The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World (Penguin Press): “Despite our deeply rooted prejudices against ‘filthy lucre’, however, money is the root of https://www.stephenhicks.org/most progress. To adapt a phrase from Jacob Bronowski (whose marvelous television history of scientific progress I watched avidly as a schoolboy),
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Interview conducted at Rockford University by Stephen Hicks and sponsored by the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship. Hicks: Our guest today is John Chisholm. John is a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, now based in San Francisco, involved in a number of ventures. And he was here today talking to the Business and Economic Ethics
Video Interview with John Chisholm — Transcript Read More »