Consider our difficulties avoiding junk food and overspending. Such addictions were carefully planned-for by professional marketing teams.

A major boom in real stock prices in the US after Black Tuesday brought them halfway back to 1929 levels by 1930. This was followed by a second crash, another boom from 1932 to 1937, and a third crash. Speculative bubbles do not end like a short story, novel, or play. There is no final denouement that brings all the strands of a narrative into an impressive final conclusion. In the real world, we never know when the story is over.

There is more uncertainty than usual about job futures because computers are replacing more and more human intelligence, and globalization is proceeding at an accelerating pace.

My father, Benjamin Shiller, told me not to believe in authorities or celebrities - that society tends to imagine them as superhuman. It's good advice. People are snowed by celebrities all the time. In academia people have this idea of achieving stardom - publishing in the best journals, being at the best university, writing on the hot topic everyone else is writing about. But that's what my father told me not to do. He taught me that you have to pursue things that sound right to you.

I have argued that we need livelihood insurance, which would protect people against the risk of seeing their skills and expertise no longer needed. Such insurance could be offered by the private sector.

It amazes me how people are often more willing to act based on little or no data than to use data that is a challenge to assemble.

Liberalism downplays certain of our moral senses: loyalty, authority, and sanctity.