7 Comments
Mar 29Liked by Dan Davies

Ah yes, the stations of the Keynesian cross.

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The last few sentences were the most amusing thing I have read in weeks. Thank you.

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You might get a kick out of China's version of this, system engineering. Look up Qian Xuesen. He worked on the Manhattan Project and was one of Von Karman's pupils at JPL but lost his security clearance in one of the Red Scares. He moved to China where he helped China develop its atomic bomb and aerospace industry, but he also was very big on applied systems engineering and the CCP gave him a broad canvas. He trained a cadre of systems engineers for big projects like the Three Gorges Dam and the Great Firewall of China. I'll recommend the article on him in Science, "A revered rocket scientist set in motion China’s mass surveillance of its citizens".

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I would summarise my business experience as using only two tools: logic and data. In large organisations the former was invariably corrupted by motivated reasoning, and the later by confirmation bias. My rear-view summary of 45 years in business and the markets: incentives matter.

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Yep. I rarely used anything more complex than supply and demand, and opportunity cost when I worked as a government economist.

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