At Slate, Edward Ongweso Jr. treats the Silicon Valley Bank failure as “emblematic of a startup ecosystem and venture-capital apparatus that are too unstable, too risky, and too unmoored from reality to be left in charge of something as important as the direction of our technological development.” It’s fair to say there’s a considerable gap…

If you haven’t subscribed to Roderick Long’s Agoric Cafe YouTube channel yet, you’re really missing out! On the Agoric Cafe channel, you can find videos and interviews “devoted to philosophy, politics, history, literature, and whatever else [Roderick feels] like sounding off on.” The interview episodes have been interesting and explorative and the most recent two…

First, most producers are employees of firms, not owners. Viewed from the vantage point of classical theory, they have no reason to maximize the profits of firms, except to the extent that they can be controlled by owners. Moreover, profit-making firms, nonprofit organizations, and bureaucratic organizations all have exactly the same problem of inducing their…