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We’ve Been Getting The Wrong Answers Because We’ve Been Asking The Wrong Questions
“Greed…is good,” declared Gordon Gekko, the legendary character from the 80s hit film Wall Street. “Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind”
The line resonated because it answered a question that people cared deeply about at the time, “how can we become more efficient?” In the face of heightened competition from Japan’s doctrine of total quality management, American firms appeared too sclerotic to compete. Corporate raiders preaching shareholder capitalism offered an easy answer.
The results are clear. Since then the stock market has crashed a number of times, the last one resulting in a Great Recession. Productivity growth has been depressed for half a century. The incidence of extreme weather events and pandemics like coronavirus is on the rise. Clearly we’ve been getting the wrong answers. It’s time we started asking different questions.
How Can We Become More Resilient?
We’ve grown accustomed to a reasonably stable world in which disasters were relatively rare. In the 19th century, wars, epidemics and financial panics…
