No decision-making system is going to guarantee corporate success. The strategic decisions that corporations have to make are of mind-numbing complexity. But we know that the more power you give a single individual in the face of complexity and uncertainty, the more likely it is that bad decisions will get made.

Now, modern economies have a very effective mechanism for deciding if salaries are really too high: it's called the free market. That's how most people's salaries are set, after all, including those of major-league baseball players and European soccer players.

Pop music thrives on repetition. You know a song's a hit when you've heard it so often that you'll be happy never to hear it again.

In effect, dividing your attention means that neither (or none) of the things you're working on is really getting the full effect of your intelligence, and that it in the end takes you longer than it would if you did one thing at a time.

Defense contractors are able to reap tremendous profits while rarely confronting the risks for which those profits are supposed to be the reward.

Lower oil prices won't, by themselves, topple the mullahs in Iran. But it's significant that, historically, when oil prices have been low, Iranian reformers have been ascendant and radicals relatively subdued, and vice versa when prices have been high.

I think there is clearly a connection between free time and procrastination. The more you have of the former, all things being equal, the more likely you are to procrastinate.