Eddie the Educator

That's Conard, Edward Conard who has been ubiquitous on cable television talk shows promoting his new book, Unintended Consequences.

Arnold Kling now points to an interview Conard has done with Nick Schulz, in which there is more straight talk than has been heard since Danny DeVito laid out the facts of business life to the shareholders of New England Wire and Cable.  A small sample;

It is near impossible to predict which sectors will grow and decline. If we knew that, we would all be rich! And we wouldn’t need to pay successful entrepreneurs to take the risk necessary to find new growth opportunities for us. Instead, the economy must run millions of experiments. These business experiments compete fiercely with each other for customers and capital. Competition prunes away all but the most valuable—by my estimate, companies that probably produce 20 times more value for customers than the cost of their products. Before the fact, entrepreneurs face near certain failure. After the fact, they only earn a dollar more than the next-best alternative—a small and uncertain share of the value they create for us. If there is a better way to find growth, no one has found it.

Amen. Amen. Amen.