The human race is hopelessly optimistic. Thank goodness it is. If we knew in advance how difficult things will become, we’d abandon a lot of projects before we start. We’d never have had the get-up-and-go to beat the Neanderthals. Optimism is part of what it means to be human. What helped us in the ice
Evidence from archaeology apparently shows that ancient hunter-gatherers were healthier than the generations that followed. Living close together in towns and cities made us vulnerable to disease. Civilisation was bad for our health. I’ve often wondered if the analogy can be stretched to companies. Does the harsher, less predictable environment of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle make
Here’s a stretch: double entry bookkeeping deserves to be ranked among the glories of the renaissance. Around the time Columbus discovered the Americas and Michelangelo sculpted David, an Italian monk was codifying the rules of double entry bookkeeping; rules that had been in practice among Italian merchants for some time. His effort deserves to rank
In the eighties a culture war was fought over who ran companies. Was it the unions or management? At times, during the miners’ strike, it seemed like an actual war. Management won, but their victory applied only to the private sector. The public sector remained just as it was, but starved of funds. The labour
‘Where’s economic growth going to come from?’ On the radio and in the newspapers I keep hearing that we’ve run out of money, got lazy, and can’t expect to be better off in the future, and I think, ‘Are you kidding me?’ Compared with the carnage of the recession of the early eighties, we’ve lost