Thought-Provoking Things of 2020

Here are the books, podcasts, and television shows I encountered this year that I’ve found myself thinking about again and again:

Review- The Fifth Risk, by Michael Lewis

I first fell in love with Michael Lewis after attending a lunch as a policy intern on Capitol Hill. The featured speaker, a member of Congress, said that “Moneyball” was the best book on business he had ever read and he forced all his staff to read it. Intrigued, I picked it up to figure out how a book about baseball could merit such a distinction. I was hooked. I will read any book (or podcast) by Michael Lewis. Our world is complicated and chaotic and no other writer can unravel a dense topic like baseball analytics, credit default swaps, high frequency trading, or behavioral economics all while telling a captivating story that makes you flip pages like an airport thriller.

In his latest book, Lewis tackles perhaps his most formidable mundane topic to date: the Federal Government. A favorite pastime of all its detractors — and even some of its advocates — is dunking on the “bloated” and wasteful government. Lewis shows just how intertwined the federal government is in all our lives, not in the creepy big-brother surveillance state, but in the little things: the weather data that helps us plan our weekend, the GPS satellites that help find our way, the small-business loans that fuel our communities, the seed loans that fuel family farms and thousands of other ways. All this is possible because rather than being lazy DMV sloths, the Fed is (or at least was) full of mission-driven dedicated people that want to make the country better. No matter where you live or what you do, Lewis shows how the government plays a critical role in your individual and our collective success.

Lewis convincingly shows that there really is no alternative to government in certain spaces. For all its warts, the Fed shoulders a risk portfolio for which there is no private market (or any chance of one developing), because the risks are too large, diffuse, or remote. If we neglect our government agencies or cut them off at the knees through anemic budgets or political power-plays, we do so at our peril.

Continue to Part 2- Nietzsche’s Will to Power >>