I am an educator. I have been teaching for 10 years. This week, as I reach a huge milestone in my own continuing education, finishing my Master’s degree, the field of education is facing an existential crisis. K-12 schools are underfunded by state and local governments and have huge issues in inequality. College educations are increasingly necessary but wildly expensive. Covid-19 has magnified many of these problems and brought to our attention how vulnerable the system is. To use a finance metaphor, our society is in a period of price discovery for education. We cannot figure out what it is worth to us.
Continue reading “Education and a Happy Life”Tag: books
Book Review: Meltdown by Chris Clearfield
Our society increasingly relies on complex, tightly coupled systems that handle our healthcare, finances, travel, and more. While those systems can be more productive and theoretically safer, they have vulnerabilities, including the complexity in itself. Sometimes, the addition of more safety features can actually make something less safe by making it more complex and therefore more likely to allow for a mistake to be made. Continue reading “Book Review: Meltdown by Chris Clearfield”
Book Review: Good to Great
Good to Great, which is sort of a prequel to Collins’s bestselling Built to Last, is a study of 11 established companies that suddenly broke out and outperformed the market in an unbelievable fashion. 11 comparison companies that remained stable in the same industry and environment are used in the study. Continue reading “Book Review: Good to Great”
Book Review: A History of the US in 5 Crashes
A History of the United States in Five Crashes describes the 1907, 1929, 1987, 2008, and 2010 stock market crashes. Scott Nations’ thesis is that crashes tend to follow a pattern where some new financial construct causes investors to let their guard down. The false sense of security allows for a rapid market run, then some event triggers it to come crashing back down. The introduction of algorithms and computer-directed trading has also sped up this process and created new vulnerabilities in the market. Continue reading “Book Review: A History of the US in 5 Crashes”