Everyone Believes It; Most Will Be Wrong: Motley Thoughts on Investing and the Economy
Morgan Housel - 2011
Why are experts so bad at making predictions? Why do rich people take outsized risks to reach for money they don't need? Is America's manufacturing base really dwindling? What did we learn about risk after 9/11? Those questions and many more are tackled in these 21 irreverent and contrarian essays, which will have readers thinking differently about the conventional wisdom.
Digital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency
Finn Brunton - 2019
In fact, it is only the best-known recent experiment in a long line of similar efforts going back to the 1970s. But the story behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and its blockchain technology has largely been untold—until now. In Digital Cash, Finn Brunton reveals how technological utopians and political radicals created experimental money to bring about their visions of the future: protecting privacy or bringing down governments, preparing for apocalypse or launching a civilization of innovation and abundance that would make its creators immortal.The incredible story of the pioneers of cryptocurrency takes us from autonomous zones on the high seas to the world’s most valuable dump, from bank runs to idea coupons, from time travelers in a San Francisco bar to the pattern securing every twenty-dollar bill, and from marketplaces for dangerous secrets to a tank of frozen heads awaiting revival in the far future. Along the way, Digital Cash explores the hard questions and challenges that these innovators faced: How do we learn to trust and use different kinds of money? What makes digital objects valuable? How does currency prove itself as real to us? What would it take to make a digital equivalent to cash, something that could be created but not forged, exchanged but not copied, and which reveals nothing about its users?Filled with marvelous characters, stories, and ideas, Digital Cash is an engaging and accessible account of the strange origins and remarkable technologies behind today’s cryptocurrency explosion.
The Choose Yourself Guide To Wealth
James Altucher - 2015
This is the first financial book in which the author REVEALS HOW HE, PERSONALLY, MAKES HIS OWN MONEY. We are living in an epic period of change, danger and opportunity. The economy is crashing and booming every few years. People are getting fired and replaced by computers and Chinese workers. The stock market crashes with regularity. Every "fix" from the government makes things worse. The Old World has been demolished... and people are desperate for answers. James Altucher's "The Choose Yourself Guide To Wealth" contains those answers. This is the field guide to the "New World" we live in. You can play by the old rules and get left behind, or you can use these new ideas and become wealthy. This is not a book for the faint of heart. Read at your own risk, because sometimes the truth is hard to take. But for those who are ready to hear, James provides an updated map of the new territory for generating wealth and freedom. This book is the eye-opener of the century, it is the guide to building, keeping, and investing your money and breaking free from the chains of rusted, old thinking.
The Infinite Machine: How an Army of Crypto-hackers Is Building the Next Internet with Ethereum
Camila Russo - 2020
He convinced a crack group of coders to join him in his quest to make a super-charged, global computer.The Infinite Machine introduces Vitalik’s ingenious idea and unfolds Ethereum’s chaotic beginnings. It then explores the brilliant innovation and reckless greed the platform—an infinitely adaptable foundation for experimentation and new applications—has unleashed and the consequences that resulted as the frenzy surrounding it grew: increased regulatory scrutiny, incipient Wall Street interest, and the founding team’s effort to get the Ethereum platform to scale so it can eventually be accessible to the masses.Financial journalist and cryptocurrency expert Camila Russo details the wild and often hapless adventures of a team of hippy-anarchists, reluctantly led by an ambivalent visionary, and lays out how this new foundation for the internet will spur both transformation and fraud—turning some into millionaires and others into felons—and revolutionize our ideas about money.
Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street: A Moral Compass for the New Economy
Jim Wallis - 2009
Rather than joining the throngs who are asking, When will this economic crisis be over? Jim Wallis says the right question to ask is How will this crisis change us? The worst thing we can do now, Wallis tells us, is to go back to normal. Normal is what got us into this situation. We need a new normal, and this economic crisis is an invitation to discover what that means. Some of the principles Wallis unpacks for our new normal are . . .• Spending money we don’t have for things we don’t need is a bad foundation for an economy or a family.• It’s time to stop keeping up with the Joneses and start making sure the Joneses are okay.• The values of commercials and billboards are not the things we want to teach our children.• Care for the poor is not just a moral duty but is critical for the common good.• A healthy society is a balanced society in which markets, the government, and our communities all play a role.• The operating principle of God’s economy says that there is enough if we share it.• And much, much more . . .In the pages of this book, Wallis provides us with a moral compass for this new economy—one that will guide us on Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street.Embracing a New Economy Getting back to "the way things were" is not an option. It is time we take our economic uncertainty and use it to find some moral clarity. Too often we have been ruled by the maxims that greed is good, it’s all about me, and I want it now. Those can be challenged only with some of our oldest and best values—enough is enough, we are in it together, and thinking not just for tomorrow but for future generations.Jim Wallis shows that the solution to our problems will be found only as individuals, families, friends, churches, mosques, synagogues, and entire communities wrestle with the question of values together.
Make Money, Live Wealthy: 75 Successful Entrepreneurs Share the 10 Simple Steps to True Wealth: Money, Investing, Lifestyle, Entrepreneurship, Self-Help, Millionaire
Austin Netzley - 2014
but it doesn't have to be. Using the advice and wisdom of 75 successful entrepreneurs, let this book be the roadmap to more success, wealth and fulfillment in your life. The experts highlighted in this book are now iconic investors, super successful entrepreneurs, financial planners, bestselling authors, and more, but they didn't start out that way. They are living proof that you can truly come from any background or situation to ultimately reach a high level of success. All that it takes to find true wealth are the simple actions laid out in this book. This step-by-step guide teaches: - The money secrets of the rich - How to reprogram your mind for massive success - The common traits and skills of the wealthy - A money plan and list of priorities to focus on - The key mistakes that are holding you back - Where to begin so you can take your finances and career to the next level As successful entrepreneur David Wood says, "Wealth is a choice." The choice is yours to make. Take control. Make money. Live wealthy. For free training videos & resources for the book, visit: MakeMoneyLiveWealthy.com
Ploductivity: A Practical Theology of Tools & Wealth
Douglas Wilson - 2020
Be fruitful like a tree, not efficient like a machine.In this book, Douglas Wilson both considers the theology behind technology, work, and mission and advice on how to be productive—and to think about productivity—in the digital age. We should not rush to buy each and every new iPhone or fancy new gadget, but neither neither should we reject the new technology out of nostalgia for the good ol' days when people worked with their hands or starved. Instead, we are called to see modern technology as wealth and tools that we can use, whether for good or for ill. The key is wisdom and the ability to create the right habits and the regular discipline to use what we have been given. Ploductivity: n, 1) the practice of plodding away at a pile of work, instead of frantically trying to sprint through it all2) being stable and graceful, like a buffalo upon the plains, not frantic, like a prairie dog or roadrunner
Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem
Jay W. Richards - 2009
Richards and bestselling author of Indivisible: Restoring Faith, Family, and Freedom Before It's Too Late and Infiltrated: How to Stop the Insiders and Activists Who Are Exploiting the Financial Crisis to Control Our Lives and Our Fortunes, defends capitalism within the context of the Christian faith, revealing how entrepreneurial enterprise, based on hard work, honesty, and trust, actually fosters creativity and growth. In doing so, Money, Greed, and God exposes eight myths about capitalism, and demonstrates that a good Christian can be a good capitalist.
Money: The Unauthorised Biography
Felix Martin - 2013
It's wrong. And not just wrong, but dangerous.Money: the Unauthorised Biography unfolds a panoramic secret history and explains the truth about money: what it is, where it comes from, and how it works.Drawing on stories from throughout human history and around the globe, Money will radically rearrange your understanding of the world and shows how money can once again become the most powerful force for freedom we have ever known.
Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think
Peter H. Diamandis - 2012
We will soon be able to meet and exceed the basic needs of every man, woman and child on the planet. Abundance for all is within our grasp. This bold, contrarian view, backed up by exhaustive research, introduces our near-term future, where exponentially growing technologies and three other powerful forces are conspiring to better the lives of billions. An antidote to pessimism by tech entrepreneur turned philanthropist, Peter H. Diamandis and award-winning science writer Steven Kotler. Since the dawn of humanity, a privileged few have lived in stark contrast to the hardscrabble majority. Conventional wisdom says this gap cannot be closed. But it is closing—fast. The authors document how four forces—exponential technologies, the DIY innovator, the Technophilanthropist, and the Rising Billion—are conspiring to solve our biggest problems. Abundance establishes hard targets for change and lays out a strategic roadmap for governments, industry and entrepreneurs, giving us plenty of reason for optimism.Examining human need by category—water, food, energy, healthcare, education, freedom—Diamandis and Kotler introduce dozens of innovators making great strides in each area: Larry Page, Steven Hawking, Dean Kamen, Daniel Kahneman, Elon Musk, Bill Joy, Stewart Brand, Jeff Skoll, Ray Kurzweil, Ratan Tata, Craig Venter, among many, many others.
Trading in the Zone: Master the Market with Confidence, Discipline, and a Winning Attitude
Mark Douglas - 2000
Douglas uncovers the underlying reasons for lack of consistency and helps traders overcome the ingrained mental habits that cost them money. He takes on the myths of the market and exposes them one by one teaching traders to look beyond random outcomes, to understand the true realities of risk, and to be comfortable with the "probabilities" of market movement that governs all market speculation.
Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World
Steven Johnson - 2016
. . . Wonderland inspires grins and well-what-d'ya-knows" —The New York Times Book Review From the New York Times-bestselling author of How We Got to Now and Where Good Ideas Come From, a look at the world-changing innovations we made while keeping ourselves entertained. This lushly illustrated history of popular entertainment takes a long-zoom approach, contending that the pursuit of novelty and wonder is a powerful driver of world-shaping technological change. Steven Johnson argues that, throughout history, the cutting edge of innovation lies wherever people are working the hardest to keep themselves and others amused.Johnson's storytelling is just as delightful as the inventions he describes, full of surprising stops along the journey from simple concepts to complex modern systems. He introduces us to the colorful innovators of leisure: the explorers, proprietors, showmen, and artists who changed the trajectory of history with their luxurious wares, exotic meals, taverns, gambling tables, and magic shows.In Wonderland, Johnson compellingly argues that observers of technological and social trends should be looking for clues in novel amusements. You'll find the future wherever people are having the most fun.
Wealth Made Easy: Millionaires and Billionaires Help You Crack the Code to Getting Rich
Greg S. Reid - 2019
You need to win and keep winning. To get there you need great connections and insider advice.But it's not as simple as tracking down the elite few - the wealth hackers of the world - and getting them to spill their secrets. . . Or is it?©2019 Dr. Greg Reid (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Marketplace 3.0: Rewriting the Rules of Borderless Business
Hiroshi Mikitani - 2013
And that evolution has huge implications for everything we see, buy and do online. Rejecting the zero-sum, vending-machine model of ecommerce practiced by other leading internet retailers, who view the Internet purely as a facilitator of speed and profit, Hiroshi Mikitani argues for an alternate model that benefits merchants, consumers, and communities alike by empowering players at every step in the process. He envisions retail "ecosystems," where small and mid-sized brick-and-mortar businesses around the world partner with online marketplaces to maximize their customer bases and service capabilities, and he shows why emphasizing collaboration over competition, customization over top-down control, and long-term growth over short-term revenue is by far the best use of the Internet's power, and will define the 3.0 era.Rakuten has already pioneered this new model, and Marketplace 3.0 offers colorful examples of its success in Japan and around the world. Mikitani reveals how the company enforces a global mindset (including the requirement that all its employees speak English, even in Tokyo); how it incorporates new acquisitions rather than seeking to completely remake or sell them for a quick profit; and how it competes with other retailers on speed and quality, without sacrificing the public good. Marketplace 3.0 is an exciting new vision for global commerce, from a company that's challenging all the accepted wisdom.
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk
Peter L. Bernstein - 1996
Peter Bernstein has written a comprehensive history of man's efforts to understand risk and probability, beginning with early gamblers in ancient Greece, continuing through the 17th-century French mathematicians Pascal and Fermat and up to modern chaos theory. Along the way he demonstrates that understanding risk underlies everything from game theory to bridge-building to winemaking.