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in markets and government both. What I love about it is the chance to prove ideas. |
love Wall Street innovations such as swaps and futures and ETFs and mortgage-
backed securities, even admitting their dangers. And who would have thought that
the San Francisco Bay area, a stronghold of political correctness at the voters’ booth,
would nonetheless innovate Siri and Alexa and driverless cars, in its free market
havens here and there, over the past five years? Remind me the last innovation by a
committee. Who would have thought we would make the world’s best car, the Tesla,
in this labor stronghold? It takes guys who prefer the impossible. It takes guys like
my father.
Yes, that was J. Paul Getty. I’ll declare a bias for him. His faults were just what we
read they were. | liked them fine. My times with him, with an exception I'll note in
Chapter 1, are some of my favorite memories. I seem to be the opposite of pharaohs
who began their reigns by chiseling off their father’s names from the monuments
and substituting their own. That was something about a ticket to the afterlife. I put
my father’s name on things I build. The afterlife will come as it comes.
Since this book is about growth first, I should say how I feel about growth. Most
economists, which I’m anything but, treat it as a goal. | love innovation, which has
translated to growth, while worrying plenty about growth itself. What happens
when anyone can make a doomsday weapon on his desktop? Depressed people do
away with themselves every day. Some might take the rest of the world with them if
they could. Armageddonist religions wouldn't be needed. Not even destructive
intentions need be. A doomsday weapon bought at the five and ten might go off by
accident.
Then why do | root for innovation when I’m scared stiff about its consequences?
Because alternatives are scarier still. Humans will innovate anyhow, while Big
Brother or the religious authorities aren’t looking, and | don’t like the prospects of
innovation driven underground. We'll have to find some way to face the risks and
Forward By The Author 04/18/16 2
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