Steve Jobs was rare: a C.E.O. who actually had a huge impact on his company's fortunes. Contrary to corporate mythology, most C.E.O.s could be easily replaced, if not by your average Joe, then by your average executive vice-president. But Jobs genuinely earned the label of superstar.

All things being equal, letting people make decisions for themselves will produce smarter outcomes, collectively, than relying on government planners.

A long-term crisis, after a certain point, no longer seems like a crisis. It seems like the way things are.

The fact that industries wax and wane is a reality of any economic system that wants to remain dynamic and responsive to people's changing tastes.

I do think that procrastination evolved in humans for good reasons. If you're trying to stay alive as a human being on the savanna 20,000 years ago, worrying about what's right behind that bush is a lot more important than worrying about what might happen three weeks from now.

The smartest groups, then, are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other.

In the heart of the Great Depression, millions of American workers did something they'd never done before: they joined a union. Emboldened by the passage of the Wagner Act, which made collective bargaining easier, unions organized industries across the country, remaking the economy.