Episode #306: Interview with Aaron Harris, Sage CTO

Ron and Ed are pleased to welcome Aaron Harris, Global CTO of Sage. Aaron is responsible for Sage’s technology and product vision. Aaron is hands-on leading investments in AI/ML, blockchain, and other emerging technologies to transform the way people think and work.

A Bit More About Aaron:
Aaron Harris has more than 25 years of high-tech engineering experience in business applications and software development strategies. From Sage Intacct's earliest days, Aaron has led the company's product vision and technology direction. A pioneer in cloud computing, Aaron helped Intacct build the world's first cloud architecture delivering on-demand financial applications. He regularly contributes to the development of best practices for cloud computing, service oriented architecture, platform as a service, and accounting and finance technology standards. Aaron holds a Master's degree in information systems and a Bachelor of Science in accounting from Brigham Young University.

Ed’s Questions: Segment One

• We are thrilled and privileged to have Aaron Harris who I mentioned as the global CTO of sage. Aaron is responsible for Sage’s technology and product vision. He is hands on leading the investments in artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, and other emerging technologies to transform the way people think and work so their organizations can thrive. And that's the second time you've heard that already. So at least we're on the same page. Aaron holds a master's degree in Information Systems and a Bachelor of Science in accounting from Brigham Young University. Welcome to the Soul of Enterprise Aaron.

• Good to be on the same page. And I actually do really love that phrase. So it's very fun to be able to say it once a week when we do the show as a reminder, but just to let you know, you're only the third person from Sage other than me, obviously, to have appeared on the show. And we just surpassed our 300th episode. So it's like once every hundred episodes we have somebody from Sage on. I won't say that the other two are no longer with Sage. I won't say that.

• Well, I don't think it was a result of the show. So I think we're totally unclear on that. But hey, the last time I saw you was at the Sage Partner Summit in Orlando, and then all hell broke loose [COVID-19], right? How are you doing, personally?

• Yeah, that's great. Do you get more reading in or less reading? I get less reading in because I'm on fewer planes, so it's weird.

• Has American Airlines called and said, “Hey, we'd really like for you to come back at some point.”

• I hadn't planned to ask you this, but you mentioned COVID. I know that you have a fascination with data and as a data guy, what's your analysis from a data set standpoint about what's going on with COVID?

• Actually that's a perfect lead-in because I think that there's some things that we want to talk about that's related to that from an accounting standpoint. And as I mentioned, we last saw each other at the Partner Summit and you had been talking about the release of Sage Business Cloud. In fact, I re- watched your speech and you said put your cell phones away, this isn't out yet. But now it's out and you can talk about it. So why don’t you share with me at a high level, what is Sage Business Cloud and what are we doing with it?

• And interestingly enough, one of the things that you said is that identity is the new tendency for this. And it really all starts off with this notion of identity. And I thought that that was a really cool point. And we've got about two minutes before our break. So if you could just give us a snapshot of that notion of what is identity as the new tenancy mean, since it sounds like gobbledygook, but I think it's really important point.

• Yeah, really, as I said, a critically important point, and perhaps we'll get back to that. I know Ron is going to ask you about some stuff, him being an accountant. So we're going to jump to that in our next segment.

Ron’s Questions: Segment Two

• Welcome back everybody. We're talking with Aaron Harris Sage’s global CTO, and Aaron I watched your Summit presentation as a reference and I thought it was just a great talk; you made so many really good points. But before we get there, one of the first things you said was you’re alumni of Arthur Andersen, and you left before the ship sank. I just wanted to talk to you about your days there, did you end up at St. Charles? Or was that already closed by the time you got there?

• Excellent. What else did you learn from your days there because the Big Four—and I'm a recovering CPA, I started my career, just to give you an idea, at Peat Marwick Mitchell, so that's how you carbon date a CPA, you figure out how they refer to the big eight, big six, whatever—what did you learn there?

• So you left Arthur Anderson and then you went and founded Intacct, with some others, including somebody from AA, is that right?

• That's excellent. It had to be a heck of a journey, given when it was founded, right after the .com explosion.

• That's awesome. And then Sage purchases Intacct in 2017. Were they thinking of going public prior to that, was that part of a process?

• I also wanted to ask you what's the difference between working in a privately held company versus, now, a public company?

• Thanks for that great answer. You also, in your talk, used a couple phrases like the one that you discussed with Ed about identity. I wanted to ask you about what you called “the era of abundant computing.” What do you mean by that?

• I thought that was a great point as well. You also use the term “effortless elasticity.” I hate to do this to you, because we’ve only got about a minute, but explain effortless elasticity.

Ed’s Questions: Segment Three

• We are talking all things technology with Sage CTO Aaron Harris, and Aaron you'll appreciate this. I recently had a Facebook exchange with someone who used to work at one of our competitors in the low market. I won't say who, and the one thing that he said, he said, “Sage is on fire.” And then his first comment was right underneath it: “And I mean that in a good way.”

• And I think that that's largely due to some of the great stuff that you guys have been doing on the innovation side in the last three years. I wanted to pick up on something that you were talking about earlier. And that is through multi-tenancy and identity, what this allows to happen is that artificial intelligence can then learn from all customers and not just one customer. That's going to have a fantastic impact. And I’d really love for you to dig down on that a little bit.

• I heard a couple of years ago that UPS and FedEx both kind of have this side business selling their data in an anonymous way for all of the tracking things that are going on. And I imagine, I'm not saying that we should do this, Aaron, but data is the new oil in that sense, right, that this is a possibility that data in and of itself is so valuable. Sage could have some influence on that.

• And the next thing I want to talk a little bit about is, there's a fear, I think among a lot of people that AI is going to take away a lot of jobs. And in fact, another thing that somebody was talking about this week is don't use the automated machines at Target because they're taking away jobs. And the person who posted this, by the way, happened to be an accountant. And I said to her, “Well, I guess you don't use Excel. It's taken away a job.” But you really believe, as do Ron and I, that AI that with AI jobs will change, but it's really going to elevate humans. And I'd love for you to talk about that. Because I think that's such an important point.

• Yeah, Ron and I often say that we, as a species, humans are really good at figuring out new and better ways to serve one another. And that that's an incredible thing that we can do as human beings. I love the thing that you mentioned to me, I guess this was posters on the wall out in San Jose, “Robots lack social skills.” The last thing I wanted to quickly ask you about, I'm just gonna jump to this and perhaps give Ron a little more time. We I like to do this with some of our guests where we just play underrated and overrated. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you a quick list of five things we'll go through and you're just going to say whether you think they're underrated or overrated, and why, and if you want to add color, that's fine, so are ready? So the first one, DFW Airport underrated or overrated

• Yeah, well I think people who use DFW like we do as the hub love it. Those that have to fly through it, don't, and I'm sure you're aware this great saying, I think Kinky Friedman said it, “You can't get to Heaven or Hell in Texas without going through DFW.” Second, driverless cars, underrated or overrated?

• Okay, and I know you and I are both children of the 80s and I want to know, underrated or overrated: Dexys Midnight Runners’ “Come on, Eileen”?

• Okay, fair enough. This is a Texas reference: Shiner Bock beer, underrated or overrated?

• All right, last one, falls in Vermont, underrated or overrated?

Ron’s Questions: Segment Four

• Welcome back, everybody. We're here with Aaron Harris, Sages CTO. Aaron, you talked about programmatic trust, which is the blockchain. The Economist called it “the trust machine.” Is this as revolutionary as we were led to believe?

• I think Ed recommend to you that you read George Gilder’s book Life After Google, and Gilder is my 40-year mentor. So I think everybody we know has to read his stuff. But he calls it the eighth layer of the internet, the trust and transactions layer. And he also agrees that it's revolutionary. And I want to ask you, if you agree with his assessment in Life After Google, that right now he laments the whole security aspect of the internet. He says, it's a bolt-on app, that instead needs to become part of the architecture. Do you think blockchain can serve that role and can finally get rid of all these passwords and the name of the first street you lived on, and all these dumb questions?

• What do you think about the EU’s GDPR regulation? Is that the path we should follow?

• You've got an interesting perch on the accounting profession. And I wanted your take on what do you see as the biggest threats and opportunities facing the profession?

• Amen, that's fantastic. What are you reading right now?

• Oh, that's a fantastic book [Lonesome Dove]. One of my favorites.

• I'll recommend one to you that I'm in the middle of right now and it's Humanocracy by Gary Hamel. And given what you were saying about the difference between working for a public versus a private company, it's a screed against bureaucracy. But I really like Gary Hamel. I think he's a great management thinker. And I'm just finding it very, very enjoyable.

• I think you'll enjoy it. Who are your mentors? And why? [I'm stealing this question from Ed. He always asks this, but I'll ask it to you].

• Well, unfortunately Aaron, we're at the end of our time, but thank you so much. It's been an honor to have you on, and Ed, what's on store for next week?

Ed: Next week, Ron, we welcome to the show Ronald Bailey.

Ron: Fantastic. All right, I'll see you in 167 hours.

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Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about pricing and member benefits. 

Bonus episode 106 — “Boycotts (huh) and Bordeaux” — features a question from super fan and listener, Donna:

Hey, Ron & Ed! I'm a longtime super fan and Patreon subscriber. I've listened to all of the 304+ episodes and the bonus episodes and I love them! I have a question that I'd love to hear your thoughts on. I am a CPA and our firm works with two very specific niche markets. The majority of our relationships with prospects are built at their industry conventions/trade shows each year. Of course, those are all canceled for this year and as a vendor member of these organizations, they want us to exhibit in the virtual convention. I have tried this for one and I see the value in teaching a class and building credibility, but the normal part of building relationships is a complete bust on the virtual side. 

Any ideas of other ways to build relationships or get around this?

Episode #305: Strategic Positioning

Inspired by our VeraSage Colleague, and former guest on The Soul of Enterprise, Tim Williams, join Ed and Ron for a wide-ranging discussion on strategic positioning. Your organization NEEDS to be able to answer these questions:

• Is your company distinguished by a set of unique services and capabilities?

• Do you focus on what you do best and form strategic alliances for the rest?

• Do you have a clear set of criteria for identifying prospective customers based on your positioning?

• Do your people have a clear understanding of your positioning strategy?

• Does your positioning strategy provide differentiated value in the eyes of the customer?

• Does it allow you to create and capture more value through superior pricing?

Where Are The Show Notes?!!?

We have some fantastic show notes for you this week. Why? The presentation that you can find in this link follows the show and goes into great detail about Ron and Ed’s discussion. While you are listening to the show, you can reference Tim Williams Strategy Box along with extended questions on the Who, What, How, and Why.

One more time, click here for extended show notes in presentation format and remember: No box means no strategy!

Resources We Referenced During the Show

• Positioning for Professionals, by Tim Williams

• The Soul of Enterprise Episode #120: Strategic Planning: Efficient, Effective, Neither?

• Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, by Richard Rumelt

• A Clip from Airplane! “That’s just what they’ll be expecting us to do”

• VeraSage G. Robert Newhart Non-value-added Fellow Greg Kyte’s review of Simon Sinek’s book, Start With Why

• What It Takes: Seven Secrets of Success from the World’s Greatest Professional Firms

• VeraSage Senior Fellow Paul O’Byrne in 2007 on The Specialist vs. The Generalist

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Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about pricing and member benefits. 

Bonus episode 105 - “Rants on California, Texas, and the Post Office” — features conversations on several articles including:

• Twitter scientist who died of COVID-19 turned out to be a hoax 

• A TikTok Ban Is Overdue 

• Why Uber and Lyft Are about to Shut down All Operations in California 

• Why George Orwell's Warning on 'Self-Censorship' Is More Relevant Than Ever 

Episode #304: Interview with Marian Tupy

Marian L. Tupy is the editor of HumanProgress.org, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity and co-author of The Simon Project. He specializes in globalization and global well-being, and politics and economics of Europe and Southern Africa. His articles were published in the Financial Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Newsweek, The U.K. Spectator, Foreign Policy and various other outlets both in the United States and overseas. He appeared on BBC, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, FOX News, FOX Business and other channels. Tupy received his BA in international relations and classics from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and his PhD in international relations from the University of St. Andrews in Great Britain. He is the co-author of an upcoming book, Ten Global Trends that Every Smart Person Needs to Know: And Many Other Trends You Will Find Interesting.

Ed’s Questions: Segment One

• I have heard you interviewed a number of times on Cato Events, but I’ve never heard you talk about your story. You grew up in South Africa and made your way to the States? Give us the biography and journey of Marian Tupy.

• I didn’t realize that your parents were both medical doctors, so that gives you another insight on the whole COVID-19 situation. I trust you and yours have fared well with regard to that?

• I wanted to ask you about an article that appeared in National Review entitled “COVID-19 Should Make Us Grateful for Technology,” would it be correct to say that without the extraordinary world that largely capitalism has provided us, there would be no such things as lockdowns since, quite frankly, we couldn’t afford it?

• As you point out in that article, there are four main things, and we might be able to touch on a couple of them. First, you talk about healthcare, you mentioned that it took 3,296 years to develop a treatment for smallpox, polio over 3,000 years, cholera over 2,000 years, measles 1,500 years, rubella 350 years, but then you get down to where we are today, AIDS 15 years, Ebola only 5 years until the vaccine. It’s really just amazing.]

• Ron and I are big fans of Russ Robert’s podcast, EconTalk, and he’s alluded to a couple of times on his show that what we’re going to see as a result of COVID-19 it’s really glorious. He’s predicting that it’s going to amazing the technologies that grow out of this, even if they aren’t directly related to COVID.

Ron’s Questions: Segment Two

• Marian I’ve been reading some of your blog posts at Humanprogress.org site, which are fantastic, and one that really hit me was “Are We Really Poorer Than Our Parents,” November 3, 2018. You point out that  Prosperity can be measured by personal income or wealth. But it can also be measured by falling prices. And before we get into your Time Prices and the Simon Index, I wanted to ask you a broader question. I remember reading Nicholas Eberstadt—I know he’s at another think tank—he said that if you measured the poverty rate by consumption, rather than income, it would be 2-4%.

• You wrote another article “No, Americans Are Not Worse Off Today Than They Were in the 1970s,” FEE, July 9, 2019. You quoted someone who repeated the conventional wisdom that wages have stagnated since 1977 at $34,000. This is pure nonsense. Then you mentioned your Time Price calculations. Can you explain that and how it weaves into the standard of living?

• I think you give the example of a blue collar worker throwing a Thanksgiving dinner, and the price of that has dropped dramatically.

• In the article, you compared items from the Sears catalog in 1979 to Walmart in 2019, and the time price declined, on average, by 72%. That’s massive.

• And just one clarification. We teach pricing and discuss the labor theory of value vs. the subjective theory of value. Your time prices are not based on the labor theory of value. You’re using time as a denominator, as a constraint. It has nothing to do with value, right?

• The first time I was exposed to time prices it was in one of Matt Ridley’s books where he talked about [William D.] Nordhaus’s study on how much electricity used to cost and what we spend on it now in terms of labor, it’s a dramatic example. Once your head gets around this idea, it alters your worldview.

Ed’s Questions: Segment Three

• Marian, before we get to your book, perhaps has a setup even, I just want to finish off the conversation on the National Review article. This notion that you bring up called “sociality,” defined as the tendency to associate in, or form, social groups. I think this is one of the big things that has been completely missed, and I don’t see much of it talked about it in society today. We are really suffering a dearth of social capital because of what’s happening with COVID. And I don’t think we will ever be able to measure what we’ve lost because of that.

• I do want to get to your new book, due out at the end of August, the title is Ten Global Trends that Every Smart Person Needs to Know: And Many Other Trends You Will Find Interesting. Let’s start with population. The myth that we have a population problem. I think it was 1798 that the essay on principle of population, known as the Malthusian trap, the increases in the nation’s population would outstrip the production of the food supply. He was kind of right at the time, wasn’t he? But since he’s been proven wrong?

• Is population growth one of the myths in the new book?

• I already have the book on order and I’m looking forward to reading it. We hope to have Ronald Bailey on, your coauthor, after it’s published.

Ron’s Questions: Segment Four

• Marian, I know you specialize in globalization and global well-being, and I just wanted to ask you: What did you think of Brexit?

• Ed and I are big believers in Brexit; we called it Brexit 2.0, because we already did 1.0 in the 1770s.

• Taxation with representation, we have learned, is much more expensive than taxation without representation.

• You wrote “Is This Goodbye for Hong Kong,” June 9, 2020. We’ve been watching with a saddened heart everything going on in Hong Kong. We’re big fans of Jimmy Lai. What can we do about this situation, if anything, about this Marian?

• It was heart-warming to see Boris Johnson say he was going to allow Hong Kong citizens to become UK citizens, and I think Australia’s Prime Minister said that, and I hope we do that here in the States. You also pointed out something else in your Hong Kong article and I have to ask you about this. You got to meet Sir John Cowperthwaite [HK Financial Secretary,1961-1971]. Tell us about that, wow!

• Thank you for that Marian. This has been a treat to have you on, good luck with the book when it comes out, we’ll be the first to read it. Thank you for coming on The Soul of Enterprise.

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Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about pricing and member benefits. 

Bonus Episode 104 — “Hong Kong, C-19, and a Member” — features conversations on several articles including:

• 4 Common Capitalism Myths Debunked 

• Digital Revenue Exceeds Print for 1st Time for New York Times Company 

• Video Games & Subscriptions: A Conversation with Xbox’s Sarah Bond 

• Dad who lost his penis to horrific blood infection becomes first man in the world to have a new one built on his arm 

• Nashville Promised a Crackdown on Mask-Defying Partiers. Then They Arrested a Homeless Man with a Drug and Drinking Problem 

Episode #303: Value Pricing 1.0 vs. Value Pricing 2.0

Ed and Ron discussed an email Ron received from listener Byron Johnson, a CPA in Canada. This episode explores the many differences in the business model of Value Pricing vs. the subscription business model. They are entirely different, and time will tell how well the professions adopt this new model.

Hi Ron,

You were kind enough to share some resources with me 2-3 years ago after I left a firm and started my own firm. I’ve read your Implementing Value Pricing book and I’m a regular listener to TSOE (yes, the Greg Kyte version). I am a fan. Thank you for all of that.

I’ve been wrestling with a thought and wanted to reach out to see if you might have a brief comment. I’ve heard you refer to subscription pricing as VP 2.0 on several occasions. I’ve also heard you indicate a shift (at least I think it’s a shift) from pricing the customer to pricing the portfolio. I’m just really trying to figure out and implement this whole pricing thing better.

It just struck me recently that I don’t think I would like to be value-priced in the true sense of the term. An anecdote to illustrate: My wife and I are currently considering some significant renovations on our home, and we’ve solicited a couple of quotes to do so. Now, I have no objection to receiving quotes that vary. We may have more confidence in a contractor with a higher quote than one with a lower quote. It then becomes our task to evaluate at what point the higher quote becomes too expensive relative to the value received. No harm, no foul with differences there.

But if I knew that the contractor I like (the higher priced one), increased the price of my quote over the quote he gave my neighbor for doing exactly the same job (hypothetically) just because he perceived I valued it more or I had more resources, or whatever, I think I would be royally ticked. Shouldn’t the price he is willing to do the exact same thing for two parties be exactly the same, and then it becomes the duty of those parties to determine if they value it or not and subsequently pay that price or not? 

It just strikes me that the more we deliver a similar service, the more that price should be consistent across customers. Maybe that is what you are getting at when you talk about pricing the portfolio on a subscription basis? Maybe there should be a little more consistency knowing that you are going to win on some and loose on others, but that overall the portfolio is good.

It is almost like with subscription pricing there is a general pricing grid that, yes, has options, but it is more or less the same options for homogenous clients. Maybe that is appealing because of its simplicity.

My partner and I are just realizing how much mental energy we are exerting pricing new clients instead of simply having a “price list” that we go to without thinking (too much) about it. 

The interviews you’ve had with Dr. Paul Thomas have resonated with the simplicity that I refer to here. Each individual pays a certain price. No playing favorites. Some will require more attention than others. Because of this, they will lose money on some.

It has just struck me with this realization that customers/clients don’t want to be value-priced and they would likely object to it if they knew they were. I think I’ve made some mistakes pricing some prospects higher than others (for essentially the same work) and then not converting those prospects to clients.

Anyway, this may be mostly a jumbled ramble. If you care to share any thoughts, I’d be most appreciative.

Thanks,
Byron A. Johnson, MSc, CPA
Canada

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Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about pricing and member benefits. 

Bonus Episode 103, in which Ed tries to convince Ron to leave California, yet again, features conversations on several articles including:

• Celebrities (Besides Joe Rogan) Who Said Goodbye to California 

Episode #302: A More Beautiful Question with Questionologist Warren Berger

Ed and Ron were joined by Warren Berger, author of A More Beautiful Question and The Book of Beautiful Questions. Warren defines himself as a questionologist. To him, any question that causes people to shift their thinking is a beautiful one. They steer you in the right direction at critical moments when you’re trying to decide on something; create something; connect with other people; and be a good and effective leader.

First, a bit more about Warren Berger…
Warren Berger has studied hundreds of the world’s foremost innovators, entrepreneurs, and creative thinkers to learn how they ask questions, generate original ideas, and solve problems. His writing and research appears regularly in Fast Company and Harvard Business Review. He is the author of the internationally acclaimed Glimmer—named one of Businessweek’s Best Innovation and Design Books of the Year—and the bestsellers A More Beautiful Question, and The Book of Beautiful Questions.  He lives in New York.

Ed’s Questions: Segment One

• Warren, first I have to tell you that developing questions for a questionologist was intimidating. The first question I have for you is actually a directive statement: tell me how you became a questionologist.

• You started out as a journalist. What do you think the state of journalism today is with regard to questions?

• Having watched a little of the hearings with the tech companies being pulled before Congress yet again. These Congressman could use some work with you about asking questions. They don’t seem to ask many questions, rather they just make statements.

• Even questions that are designed to intimidate. I think back on “Are you for us or against us?”

• There’s one particular type of question that I find intriguing, and I do hear it from politicians relatively often, and consultants—I’m a consultant by trade, which is how I got into this whole question thing—when someone asks “Can I be honest with you?” Meaning everything I said to you previously…

• How much of being a good questioner is also being a good listener?

• One of the first books I read about questions was Mahan Khalsa’s great book called Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play. But the original book that that was based on and he gave to me as a gift, was called Asking Effective Questions. One of things he says, and he’s doing this in the business sales context, he was a big believer in not taking notes or writing down what the person is saying. Instead, just intently focus on listening to them, and asking permission to take a note on that? The makes sure you remain fully engaged with them.

Ron’s Questions: Segment Two

• We’re here with Warren Berger, author of A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas, which I read the following year, and it was on my favorite books of the year. We even used your Q-Force exercise in some groups, and it was just really powerful. What is a Beautiful Question?

• You give many examples in the book of businesses that basically were inspired by a question. Was it Edward Land of Polaroid who was taking pictures of his daughter?

• You anticipated my next question. You wrote that a child asks about forty thousand questions between the ages of two and five. It dwindles down after that. Of course,  teenagers don’t ask questions because they have all the answers. Why do you  think that is, Warren? Why do we drum out questions, is it the school system?

• One of the things you point out that I just love is that a beautiful question can come from the dumbest kid in the room.

• Another thing that really came home from the Q-Force exercise, getting groups to think in terms of questions, everyone recognizes a great question. It’s really easy to separate the great ones from the not so great ones. They inspire you. You want to answer the question.

• We’re big fans of Richard Feynman, and he said: "I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned." Somewhere in the book, you pose the thought that questions are becoming more valuable than answers? Make that case for that, which I find convincing.

• As you wrote in your follow-up book, The Book of Beautiful Questions, “The best questions, the beautiful ones, cannot be answered by Google They require a different kind of search.”

Ed’s Questions: Segment Three

• Longshoreman turned philosopher Eric Hoffer said (in his book Reflections on the Human Condition): “Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.” Warren, what are your thoughts on Mr. Hoffer’s statement?

• I do think Hoffer nailed that idea of social stagnation, it’s not from a lack of answers. Politicians on both sides of the aisle all have answers but none of them ask new questions. I think that’s really the problem we are experiencing right now.

• Ron mentioned Richard Feynman, and he said he was asked by his mom whenever he got home from school, “What questions did you ask today?” [It was actually Isidor Rabi, Nobel prize winner and discoverer of nuclear magnetic resonance that makes MRIs possible].

• I direct my kids, when we did go to school, on their way out the door my advice to them was ask good questions today.

• Sadly, in business, there’s this saying “there’s no such thing as a bad question,” and then if you ask one, the response is, “Well, that’s stupid.”

• I want to bounce some great questions that I’ve collected in my consulting career. I want to ask you about them. Ask: “Would it be appropriate for me to ask you questions at this time?”

• I’m replacing advice with curiosity with that question. This is one I recently added to my repertoire: “If you had any doubts about me, what would they be?”

• The use of the word “if” at the beginning puts a conditional on it so it’s less intimidating. I’ve got two more for you. If I could nail a job interview to one question to decide whether or not to hire somebody: “Who is a hero of yours and why?”

• Here’s the last one, which I stole from Peter Block—who I think stole it from someone else—and it’s what he calls The Mother of All Questions (MOAQ): “What is the question that if you had the answer would you make you free?” Block says it’s an unanswerable question, it can only be pondered, which is why it’s a great question.

Ron’s Questions: Segment Four

• I’d like to jump to your follow-up book, The Book of Beautiful Questions: The Powerful Questions That Will Help You Decide, Create, Connect, and Lead that came out in 2018. I love that  Elie Wiesel line you cite, American-Romanian writer and Holocaust survivor once observed: “People are united by questions. It is the answers that divide them.” That’s profound.

• You also discuss, and I love this metaphor, the difference between a soldier and a scout. What is that difference?

• I was recently asked about business books. I’ve written a few, you have. The question was Will business books survive? My answer was yes because people gravitate toward easy answers. They don’t want to engage in deep thinking, they just want to be told “how to” do it.

• I want to ask you the Peter Thiel question, which I read in his book Zero to One: What is something you believe Warren that nearly no one agrees with you on?

---

Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about pricing and member benefits. 

Bonus Episode 103, in which Ed tries to convince Ron to leave California, yet again, features conversations on several articles including:

• Celebrities (Besides Joe Rogan) Who Said Goodbye to California 

Episode #301: The Economy and COVID-19: Recovery or Relapse?

Will there be an effective COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year? Will schools reopen? Will there be another expansion of government subsidies? As COVID cases increase, will more states lockdown again? Join Ed and Ron for all these questions and more, on our update on COVID-19 and the economy.

Segment One Topics

Recovery or relapse? Neither of us really know, nor does anyone else.

Will and when the economy return to normal? Rabbi Daniel Lapin points out in a recent Thought Tool, that there is no word in Hebrew for “normal.” Yes, eventually the economy will rebound, but Lapin thinks a better question is: “When shall we live our lives to the fullest?”

Men lose their mind in herds but recover them only one by one.

Four assumptions about COVID-19, from National Review’s Jim Geraghty, July 16, 2020:

1. COVID in the USA is more contagious (ten times more) than the strain initially found in Asia.

2. The death rate is extremely low, but with millions infected that still translates into a horrific loss of life.

3. A vaccine is coming as fast as anyone could hope for.

4. Our battle with this virus will last at least till the end of this year, and very well for several more years.

And, as The Economist notes, America has gained nearly 30 new billionaires since March. The top five are thought to be 26% richer collectively than before COVID-19.

Segment Two Topics

Operation Warp Speed (OWS): OWS is a partnership among components of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), and the Department of Defense (DoD). OWS engages with private firms and other federal agencies, including the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. It will coordinate existing HHS-wide efforts, including the NIH’s Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) partnership, NIH’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) initiative, and work by BARDA.

$3 billion has been spent on two vaccines. Pfizer has rejected cash from OWS, saying the government just slows the firm down. The Economist reports in “Moonshot,” July 4, 2020, that 180 vaccines are in development. Making a dose of the vaccine costs about as much as a cup of coffee.

“Oxford University Coronavirus Vaccine Trial Produces Strong Immune Response,” National Review, Mairead Mcardle, July 2020.

“The people with hidden immunity against Covid-19,” BBC July 19, 2020, Zaria Gorvett.

Sir Isaac Newton had it right when trying to cure the bubonic plague. The answer? Toad vomit. From smithsoinianmag.com, June 5, 2020, by Alex Fox.

Segment Three Topics

The most silly story Ed has read is from Reuters out of South Korea: “People are more likely to contract COVID-19 at home, study finds,” July 21, 2020.

David Bahnsen at Dividend Cafe has a podcast, COVID and Markets, that reports daily on the pandemic and the economy. Ron listened to July 22 and 23 episodes, and one theory posited is that New York City, Sweden, and Delhi, India are approaching herd immunity.

The five states where new cases are rising most rapidly: Mississippi, Alaska, Nevada, Louisiana, and Idaho.

“Retail Subscriptions Thrive During COVID-19,” Forbes, Kaleigh Moore, July 15, 2020. It reports that one in five consumers have purchased a subscription during the pandemic.

If we don't start to see inflation then Ron and Ed think we need to reconsider the theory of inflation—specifically, the Quantity Theory of Money.

Segment Four Topics

Should we reopen the schools? NPR OnPoint did an interesting show on this topic, speaking with pediatricians from around the world. Also, The Economist says “Let them learn,” arguing that keeping schools closed will do more harm than good.

“Florida Teachers Unions Sues to Stop School Openings amid Virus Surge,” National Review, Brittany Bernstein, July 21, 2020.

Why is there a shortage of coins in the economy? “COVID’s Latest Trick: Making Coins Disappear,” FEE, July 20, 2020.

---

Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about pricing and member benefits. 

Episode #300: Celebrating 300 — Ron and Ed are interviewed by Matt Burgess

Join us as we celebrate the 300th episode of The Soul of Enterprise. Ron and Ed had the tables turned on them and were interviewed by Matthew Burgess, a previous Guest on the show. Matthew promised and delivered on some fun conversation and insights into the workings of the show. A BIG THANK YOU to YOU, our audience, who has made this all possible.

But first…a bit more about Matthew Burgess
Matthew Burgess founded specialist timeless Australian law firm View in 2014 (see www.viewlegal.com.au). For the previous 17 years, he was a lawyer and partner of one of Australia’s leading independent law firms and in 2002 was one of the firm’s youngest ever partner appointments. In part leveraging off the skills gained from advising a range of successful businesses, Matthew Burgess has been the catalyst in developing a number of innovative legal solutions; including establishing what is widely regarded as Australia’s first virtual law firm. Matthew last filled in a timesheet in 2013, and has been a passionate and vocal advocate for professional service firms to abandon the heritage inputs based time billing business model. In 2017, Matthew’s vision of an integrated fintech and legal solution based on membership pricing (ie subscription) was realised with the joint venture between NowInfinity (see: www.nowinfinity.com.au) and View Legal.

So what does episode 300 look like?
Given that the format was a bit different for this show, we found ourselves talking about a lot of the past episodes. This list is a GREAT resource if you are new to the show or would like to catch up on some of the best shows throughout the years.

Segment One Shows

• Episode #6 - Interview with Distinguished Professor of Economics, Deirdre McCloskey

• Episode #293: Second Interview with Professor Deirdre McCloskey

• Episode #25 - Interview with Dr. Thomas Sowell

• Episode #11 - Interview with Howard Hansen and Steven Geske

• Episode #168: Interview with Howard Hansen on Healing Leadership

• Episode #299: Healing Leadership 2020 — Interview with Howard Hansen

• Episode #60 - Interview with George Gilder

• Episode #207: Interview with George Gilder

• Episode #257: Third Interview with George Gilder

• Episode #106: Interview with Professor Steven Landsburg

• Episode #117: Interview with David Friedman, Anarchist, Anachronist, Economist

Segment Two Shows

• Episode #183: Interview with Peter Block

• Episode #73: Business Lessons from A Christmas Carol

• Episode #213: Interview with Russ Roberts

• Episode #20 - Interview with Rabbi Daniel Lapin

• Episode #86 - Second Interview with Rabbi Daniel Lapin

• Episode #16 - Interview with Father Robert Sirico

• Episode #134: Second Interview with Father Robert Sirico

• Episode #226: A Priest and a Rabbi...

• Episode #112: Interview with Reginald Tomas Lee

• Episode #200: Interview with Reginald Lee

• Episode #96 - Interview with Doug Sleeter

• Episode #99 - Interview with Doug Sleeter, Part II

• Episode #166: Interview with Chris “Elroy” Stricklin, Colonel (Ret), USAF

• Episode #214: Interview with Chris “Elroy” Stricklin, Colonel (Ret), USAF

• Episode #262: Survivor’s Obligation — Interview with Chris Stricklin

• Episode #269 — The Subscription Model in Medicine

• Episode #286: Talking Coronavirus with Dr. Paul Thomas

• Episode #298 - Third interview with Dr. Paul Thomas

Segment Three Shows

• Episode #289: The War on Cancer — Interview with Dr. Azra Raza

• Episode #160: Interview with Magatte Wade

• Episode #271: Interview with Dr. Keith Smith, Co-Founder, The Surgery Center of Oklahoma

• Episode #192: Interview with Mary Ruwart

• Episode #9 - Interview with Rory Sutherland

• Episode #267: The REALLY REAL Second Interview with Rory Sutherland

• Episode #270: Communist Humor

• Episode #64 - Famous Last Words

• Episode #164: Antitrust Law and Price Signaling

• Episode #204: Interview with John Stossel

• Episode #240: Interview with Economist Tyler Cowen

Segment Four Questions

• Episode #68 - Proper Project Management

• Episode #79 - Project Management: Proper project initiation

• Episode #194: Project Management - Execution

• Episode #44 - Public Choice Theory

• Episode #26 - Interview with Adam Davidson

• Episode #291: The Passion Economy — Adam Davidson

• Episode #22 - Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn’t Buy Presents for the Holidays

---

Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about pricing and member benefits. 

Episode #299: Healing Leadership 2020 — Interview with Howard Hansen

Ed and Ron are thrilled to bring back Howard Hansen, coauthor of the groundbreaking book Healing Leadership - A Survival Guide for the Enlightened Leader. Here is a brief summary of what Healing Leadership is all about: "We see leadership as primarily an emotional process, rather than a strategic one. It is about courage and being oneself, rather than strategies and techniques to change someone. It is being the one who says what he or she sees ("The emperor has no clothes.") and letting people make their own choices accordingly. We call “bullshit” on traditional models of leadership and advocate for a rational approach to leadership that will not hinder meaningful change. Quite simply, the “Command and Conquer” style of leadership does not work, long term. What’s more, it ultimately proves to be toxic. Therefore, Healing Leadership is about giving up the irrational hope of trying to change others."

A bit more about Howard Hansen
“My travels through the world of work and leadership include roles in management and consulting. I've watched and participated in the stories I now tell. The stories reflect moments of joy, pain and truth. They offer insights into what works and doesn't work for leaders. Now, approaching my 40th year of practicing management, consulting and coaching, I have been struck by how unhealthy workplaces have become. My journey now focuses on helping these places to heal by helping heal the leaders who lead them.”

Segment One Questions

• Leadership as a concept needed to be healed, but also, if leadership is done well, it could be healing in and of itself – it could actually heal some of the harms that people come with and you guys profess that the best place that this could happen was inside businesses. Give us a few minutes overview of the concept of healing leadership.

• With the addition to the COVID-19 crisis, but also the situation that has happened with Black Lives Matter and the increase anxiety, have we lost? Should we just wrap this show up and go home?

• Howard, and it struck me as you're talking is that this is not a question of the notion of leaders themselves. This is that you're just hearing or we're just not hearing any conversation about the about the concept of leadership and the importance of it.

• Which gets back to my first question a moment ago, and your first observation, is this even worth talking about anymore?

• In a book called The Extraordinary Popular Delusions and Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackey in 1841, he says, “Men go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.

Segment Two Questions

• We had a conversation about Chronic vs Episodic Anxiety

Here is a graph that represents a person or system with a low level of chronic anxiety

View fullsize

Here is a graph that represents a person or system with a higher level of chronic anxiety

View fullsize

Segment Three Questions

• Howard, I wanted to see if we can talk perhaps a little bit about organizational gridlock, and then even move into what potentially people can do about this.

• I just think that the notion of anxious versus non anxious is worth exploring. Could you talk a little bit about that?

• Why don't we even hear the concept of mature vs immature anymore?

Segment Four Questions

• Listener David asks, “I'm interested to know if Howard has a perspective on whether remote working (whether COVID-19 related or not) is material to him as it impairs the ability of a workplace to deliver on meaningfulness? And if so, what can a conscientious employer do to maintain the possibility of workplace contributing to a sense of meaning.

• After answering the above question, Ed asked if Howard was comfortable revealing who that boss was in this context (referred to as the best boss Howard ever had)?

  • [Howard Hansen] Yes, it is Doug Burgum, the current governor of North Dakota.

---

Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about pricing and member benefits. 

Episode Reprise: Interview with economist Dan Mitchell

Dan Mitchell fights for more freedom and less government (which is purposefully redundant).

You can now use the link above to listen to our interview with Dan Mitchell (if reading this via email, then just visit TheSoulOfEnterprise.com). Originally aired as Episode #290, we ran this again during the (observed) 4th of July holiday here in the United States. Subscribe to The Soul of Enterprise in your podcast player of choice and never miss an episode again.

A Bit More About Dan Mitchell

Daniel J. Mitchell is a co-founder of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity and the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation. He is one of the nation’s leading experts on tax reform and supply-side tax policy. In addition to tax policy, Dr. Mitchell is a trenchant observer of economic developments and an expert on Social Security privatization – particularly the fiscal policy impact of reform and what the US can learn from other nations that have created personal retirement accounts. Dr. Mitchell’s by-line can be found in such national publications as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Investor’s Business Daily. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from George Mason University and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in economics from the University of Georgia. Mitchell was a senior fellow with the Cato Institute and The Heritage Foundation, and an economist for Senator Bob Packwood and the Senate Finance Committee. 

Episode #298 - Third interview with Dr. Paul Thomas

In his previous appearances, Dr. Paul has shared his experiences with subscription based pricing and COVID-19. In this episode, we spend the balance of our time talking about his new book, Startup DPC: How To Start And Grow Your Direct Primary Care Practice.

From the Foreword: We all know that our current healthcare system is broken, especially for primary care doctors and their patients. Primary care physicians have to see more and more patients in less and less time in order to keep up with declining reimbursement from insurance companies. This leads to rushed office visits, missed opportunities for genuine connections between doctors and their patients, frustrated patients, and burned out doctors. But it doesn't have to be this way.

But first…a bit more about Dr. Paul Thomas
Dr. Paul Thomas is a board-certified family medicine physician practicing in Corktown Detroit. His practice is Plum Health DPC, a Direct Primary Care service that is the first of its kind in Detroit and Wayne County. His mission is to deliver affordable, accessible health care services in Detroit and beyond. He has been featured on WDIV-TV Channel 4, WXYZ Channel 7, Crain's Detroit Business and CBS Radio. He has been a speaker at TEDxDetroit. He is a graduate of Wayne State University School of Medicine and now a Clinical Assistant Professor. Finally, he is an author of the book Direct Primary Care: The Cure for Our Broken Healthcare System.

Segment One Questions

• We had you back Episode 286 right as the Coronavirus was just starting to break loose. Let's quick talk about that to get that out of the way so we can move on to the more important things which is your book, what's going on in your neck of the woods with Corona?

• How about your practice, though? Just your practice is good from that perspective. You haven't had too many people come down?

• Your book, released in May is, Startup DPC, how to start and grow your direct primary care practice. How's the book doing?

• What is the difference between direct primary care and concierge medicine?

• One of the questions that we get on a frequent basis is one that you get, which is, what about the hybrid model where you're taking insurance and trying to do direct primary care you recommend against that, don't you?

• One of the things that you talked about at the beginning of the book is that electronic medical records were billing tool, not clinical care tools. And I'd really love for you to explain that.

Segment Two Questions

• I wanted to talk with you a little bit about starting from scratch versus converting your practice now you started your practice from scratch?

• Talk about if you're mid-career, can you start from scratch? Or can you convert? Which one would you lean towards?

• You say that one of the more common criticisms is, “abandoning patients who are not in your practice, and that they'll people will say to you that if every primary care physician became a direct primary care doctor, there would be a shortage.” Do you believe that to be true? And if so, why or why not?

• Yeah. Well, you write that one of the greatest lessons that you've learned as a maxim, “It's not the decisions. It's the decisiveness.” I really love that. I'd like to expand on that for me,

• So I want to ask you something on a very personal note, but you write this in the book that you had to get over your “personal discomfort with money.” Why talk about that struggle? I'm really interested in that that part of your life.

Segment Three Questions

• How did you come up with your pricing model?

• Did you consider a family plan?

• And you haven't had a price increase as of yet, correct?

• And while we're on the subject of pricing, one of the things that you do talk about also is whether or not you should charge an enrollment fee. What are your thoughts on that?

• How's your churn rate?

• Companies contracting with you for it for a group of people, who does that work?

• Talk about Mapper.DPCfrontier.com. Is that your site or is that just a site that you are aware of?

Segment Four Questions

• I want to share this great quote with that you said that a marketing specialist once told you, “If your website sucks, you suck.”

• And you are, as am I, a big fan of Gary Vee Gary Vaynerchuk of VaynerMedia and I want you to expound on his great quote “Document don't create.”

• Do you have you have a newsletter I think that you send out to folks Is that for your practice, but it is and but also for your consulting practice as well?

• And you quote, Benjamin Foley, who said, “Building a personal brand is all the rage right now, personal brands have always been around, they just used to be referred to as a different word, character.” Talk a little bit about that.

• This direct primary care business is all about developing trusting relationships between doctors and their patients, wrap up on that point.

---

Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about pricing and member benefits. 

Episode #297: Blockchain Update: Interview with Ron Quaranta and Sean Stein Smith

"We will know the blockchain has really made it when we stop talking about blockchain." So said Ron Quaranta, founder of the Wall Street Block Chain Alliance, during his last appearance on The Soul of Enterprise.

This time Ron was joined by Sean Stein Smith, professor at Lehman College, to share their insights into the latest news and use cases of the blockchain. Sadly, Ron Baker is working through a medical situation and was unable to be on the show.

But first…a bit more about Sean Stein Smith
Dr. Stein Smith is an Assistant Professor in the Business and Economics department. Before transitioning to academia full time, beginning with his appointment to a faculty position at Rutgers University, he worked in several corporate financial planning and accounting roles in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Dr. Stein Smith is actively engaged in the accounting community, having been awarded the NJCPA 30 under 30 in 2015, the Institute of Management Accountants Young Professional of the Year Award in 2016, and currently serves on the Fairleigh Dickinson University Alumni Association Board of Governors. Sean is also a member of the 2017 Class of the AICPA Leadership Academy.

Also, here is a bit more about Ron Quaranta
Ron possesses almost three decades of experience in the global financial services and technology industries. He currently serves as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Wall Street Blockchain Alliance, the world’s leading non-profit trade association promoting the comprehensive adoption of blockchain technology and cryptoassets across global financial markets. Prior to this, Ron served as CEO of DerivaTrust Technologies, a pioneering software and technology firm for financial market participants. Ron is the editor and contributing author of the book “Blockchain in Financial Markets and Beyond: Challenges and Applications”, published Risk Books, as well as contributor to “Blockchain & Cryptocurrency Regulation 2019”, published by Global Legal Insights.

Segment One Questions

• To Ron Q: You were last on our show in October of 2018 which in COVID years is a decade ago, but even in crypto world, that's a long time. Talk a little bit of what what's happened for you specifically at the Wall Street Blockchain Alliance in the last 18 months.

• To Sean: You have spent a lot of time thinking about or concerned with blockchain as well as Bitcoin even and the integration into the accounting market space. Talk a little bit about your journey through that process.

• To both: But what are some of the newer use cases that we're seeing that you're working on right now?

• To both: What I'm hearing from both of you is that the possible small business use case will be that if you want to sell your product to these guys [big box retailers], you're going to be have to be on a system capable of doing that [using their blockchain]. And whether that's appified on their iPhone, or whether that's an accounting system that ties into blockchain, that's going to be the place where that's going to connect. Did I get that about right?

Segment Two Questions

• To Sean: You just were completed, I believe last summer, a fellowship with AIER up in Massachusetts and would love to hear the about the connections that you made when you were up there last summer.

• To Sean: Did you get a chance to talk with one of our favorite people on the planet here at The Soul of Enterprise George Gilder?

• To Sean: I attended the Acton Institute's online on Acton University this week, and George Gilder was one of the speakers there. He thinks people are crazy and nuts about the privacy issues as they exist today. He just dismisses it as a total non issue because he truly believes that the blockchain is going to replace the internet as it is right now with an internet where security and individuality is baked into the system. Do you think that George has that right?

• To Ron Q: What are your thoughts on that security and the blockchain being an answer to some of the security holes that we see now?

Segment Three Questions

• To Ron Q: What if you connect via blockchain, your 23andme result, the DNA ,the essence of who you are in some kind of a blockchain technology and that goes with your profile, not only to the first doctor, but to all doctors [on your case].

• To Sean: The [killer] application from an accounting perspective might be something more along the lines of preventing identity theft or income tax filing, or even perhaps voting. What about thoughts on that?

• To Ron Q: When you were on last with Eric Assgeirson [of CPA.com], we talked about the interplay and interchange between private blockchains and public blockchains. And how we saw that that might be something that emerges. Have you started to see that at the at the Wall Street level?

• To Ron Q: How about with respect to COVID-19 and or any other future pandemic or disease that comes down the pike and using blockchain for contact tracing?

Segment Four Questions

• To both: I want to talk to you a little bit more about the most famous use case and that is Bitcoin. Using the date of Ron's last appearance it was just after the Bitcoin Cash split when Bitcoin Cash split it was about 10% of the price of current of what Bitcoin was at. Bitcoin was at $3,300 and Bitcoin cash was at $330, that's a 10% ratio. Well, I checked today and Bitcoin Cash is now 2.5% of the value with Bitcoin being at $9,333 versus $230 for Bitcoin Cash today. What's up with that?

• To both: Bitcoin is not classified by the government as a currency, it’s property, but I think we are headed for a time when there's good where there's going to be a challenge. I don't know if it's going to happen at the Supreme Court level, but, it's going to have to be dealt with and perhaps recognized to a certain extent as a currency.

• To both: I believe it was about a month ago, the Chinese government has released a fiat currency based on blockchain. And it's a major state trial of this with transactions flowing through, so is China ahead of us on this?

• To Ron Q: What do you think Facebook pulled back on that [Libra]?

• To both: What is BitCoin going to be priced at in one year, five years, and ten years from now?

---

Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about pricing and member benefits. 

Episode #296: Subscription Pricing at Summit CPA — Jody Grunden

We were thrilled to interview Jody Grunden, CEO and Co-Founder of Summit CPA. The firm adopted a subscription pricing model and we are eager to learn how he grew the firm from $600,000 in revenue in 2004 to $7,000,000 today.

But first…a bit more about Jody
Jody Grunden is the managing member of Summit CPA Group. Jody focuses his attentions primarily on Virtual CFO Services. Jody meets with business owners on a weekly basis to assist them with Cash Flow Management, Forecasting, Budgeting, Debt Restructuring, Cost Accounting, and Cutting Edge Tax Planning. He takes great pride in helping business owner strive in all economic conditions. He strongly believes that a well-run company will excel in both a good and bad economy. Jody is also the author of Digital Dollars and Cents. Jody graduated from Indiana University with a bachelor's degree in accounting. Jody has been happily married to his wife, April for over 25 years. April is an estate planning attorney for Grunden Law Offices where she concentrates her practice on estate planning, succession planning, and business formations. They have two children, Tyler and Lexi.

Here are Ed’s questions from the interview

• You have a fairly unique pricing model, a weekly subscription. But before we get to that, let’s talk about your background. How did you get to Summit CPA?

• For how long did you do timesheets? You started with them when you first started the firm?

• Other than timesheets and hourly billing, why did you want to change your business model?

• Talk to us about the time of transition from billing by the hour for about two years to fixed pricing? How did you change? Did you start with current customers, new customers, how did it happen?

• What was the secret sauce, the magic that helped you turn the corner?

• You mentioned you brought the pricing into equilibrium with what is valuable in the minds of the customers. What conversations did you have with your current customers as you were trying to help them make the transition. Was there pushback from them to the new pricing and just wanted to stay on the old method?

• I noticed on your website, you talk about offering flat-fee pricing, but it’s unique because it’s done on a weekly basis, as well as you offer them choices. Why weekly?

• You have three distinct categories: Transactional, Controller, and Virtual CFO, and priced as of June 12, 2020 at $750/week, $1,000/week, and $1,500/week. Talk to me about how you got to those prices for those three distinct levels?

• You also offer some bundled services on top of those levels, such as individual and business tax returns—listed as optional—and also paying bills, cash flow management, payroll that are a la carte. What’s the difference between optional and a la carte?

• Do you consider this to be more subscription-based pricing than, say, value pricing?

• Do you have a lot of customers who jump on and jump off after they get their mess cleaned up?

• You also mentioned that you teach what you call “profit-focused accounting.” Talk to me about that.

• Let’s discuss marketing. You have a great website, it’s really well organized. You have a podcast, a blog. Talk to me about how you use that as an integrated marketing approach to get new customers.

• One of the things most intriguing on your website is that you’ve created an accountant community, The CFO Community, for CFOs as well as firm owners. Give us a little run down on that?

• If you were to give one or two pieces of advice to someone who has an accounting firm right now and is thinking of going to a new model, either going virtual or to a subscription model, what would it be?

• If you are talking to a recent graduate who has their degree in accounting, and is interested in doing this, would you recommend they go right into it, or should they spend some time doing pain work with a regular CPA?

---

Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about pricing and member benefits. 

Episode #295: The Perennial Gale of Creative Destruction

Evolutionary biologists have proven that the more adapted you are in your existing environment, the less able you are to adapt to environmental changes. We blindly cling to “that is the way we have always done it” in defiance of the evidence that this way is no longer relevant to success.

This is the history of business. New ideas, inventions, and business models from the tinkerer in the garage change the world, while rendering obsolete the existing modes of production, infrastructure, and business models. The automobile replaced the horse and buggy, the calculator replaced the slide rule, and the personal computer replaced the typewriter, and so on in a never-ending “perennial gale of creative destruction,” as described by economist Joseph Schumpeter.

“Generally, the leading practitioners of the old order become the victims of disruption, not the initiators of it.”

— Clayton Christensen

• Werner Sombart (1863-1941) coined the phrase “Creative Destruction”. Joseph A. Schumpeter [1883-1950] made it famous.

• Two books highly recommend on this topic: the first by Schumpeter, and the second a biography of Schumpeter:

  • Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Joseph A. Schumpeter, 1942

  • Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction, Thomas K. McCraw, 2007

Background on Schumpeter

Schumpeter was to capitalism what Sigmund Freud was to the mind: someone whose ideas have become so ubiquitous and ingrained that we can’t separate his foundational thoughts from our own. There are many mini-narratives in economics: Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” Thorstein Veblen’s “conspicuous consumption,” Paul Samuelson’s “revealed preference,” Larry Summers, “Nobody ever washed a rental car,” even Ron’s, “surgeons piercing ears.” Schumpeter “Enjoyed saying he aspired to become the greatest economist, horseman, and lover in the world. Things were not going well with the horses.”

Origins of the phrase, creative destruction

He first used the phrase in 1942: “Creative destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. Stabilized capitalism is a contradiction in terms.” 

“Every piece of business strategy acquires its true significance only against the background of that process and within the situation created by it. It must be seen it its role in the perennial gale of creative destruction; it cannot be understood irrespective of it.”

— Joseph Schumpeter

Economic progress, in capitalist society, means turmoil. Dynamic Disequilibrium. Every day, businessmen feel themselves in a situation that is sure to change presently. They are standing on ground that is crumbling beneath their feet. 

“Generally, the leading practitioners of the old order become the victims of disruption, not the initiators of it.”

— Clayton Christensen

One problem with creative destruction is the destruction is visible and measurable, but the creativity is not. New ideas hurt people earning their income from old ideas. But if we don’t allow anyone to get hurt, we stay at $3/day. If we allow creative destruction we achieve $137/day, and we can provide a safety net.

The acceptance of creative destruction relieved poverty, not wage regulations or other legislation, or even labor unions. Those preserved poverty by preserving old jobs. 

“The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens. The Achievement consists in bringing silk stockings within the reach of factory girls in return for steadily diminishing amounts of effort.”

— Joseph Schumpeter

Schumpeter said in a speech to businesspeople: “I’m not into remedies: I am not running a drug store. I have no pills to hand out; no clear-cut solutions for any practical problems that may arise.”

In 1911, Schumpeter laid out five types of innovation that define the entrepreneurial act:

1. Introduction of a new good

2. New method of production

3. Opening a new market

4. New source of supply of raw materials

5. Carrying out of new organization of any industry (business model)

Michelin producing radial tires in 1940s ended Akron’s reign as rubber capital of the world, killing off five tire companies (except Goodyear). GM’s innovation in financing is how it beat Ford in market share.

Another book on creative destruction is Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism,  by Arthur M. Diamond Jr. In it, the author explains two epiphanies he had: Innovative dynamism (ID) can give consumers both lower prices and new goods; and, both consumers and workers benefit. Inevitablists, those who believe innovation runs on autopilot, with the entrepreneur a bystander (if Edison hadn’t invented the light bulb many others would have). But we can be open or closed to innovation, as history has proven. There’s nothing inevitable about it. Bad government and bad policies can shut it down. Chinese culture valued credentialed civil service more than entrepreneurship. Kevin Kelly once argued that innovation is so inevitable that no Marxist could slow it. But under Stalin that’s exactly what happened.

Innovative Dynamism is not inevitable. The entrepreneurs swan song is the best way to predict the future is to invent it. Necessity is not the mother of invention. You are.

The difference between the economist’s vision and the management consultants vision: “Is it necessarily tragic for a firm to die? Why not celebrate what it did or tried to do and move on to new projects pursued by new firms?”

Daniel Kahneman posits “theory-induced blindness” that leads us to see what our theories predict, rather than what is actually in front of us.

Warren Buffet popularized the term moat, shield yourself from the competition, thereby creating a sustainable competitive advantage. The following can create a moat around your business:

1. intellectual property

2. Specialized skills or business processes

3. Exclusive access to relationships, data, or cheap materials

4. Strong, trusted brand

5. Substantial control of a distribution channel

6. Team of people uniquely qualified to solve a particular problem

7. Network effects or other types of flywheels

8. A higher pace of innovation

Elon Musk, on a May 2, 2018, Tesla earnings call said: “Moats are lame,” and “If your only defense against invading armies is a moat, you will not last long.” His opinion is that the most important sustainable competitive advantage is creating a culture that supports a higher pace of innovation.

Eastman Kodak Company had all of Buffet’s criteria, but still declared bankruptcy in 2012 after a century of market dominance. And Kodak developed the very first digital camera, way back in 1975! Kodak was even initially market leader in digital cameras too, with a 27 percent share as late as 1999. But it didn’t invest heavily enough in the technology relative to its competitors, the way Intel did when pivoting to microprocessors. Kodak simply wasn’t paranoid enough.

Richard Feynman famously wrote in his 1988 book, What Do You Care What Other People Think?, “I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.”

George Gilder, author, economist—and Ron’s mentor—wrote of the ultimate conflict in Wealth and Poverty:

In every economy there is one crucial and definitive conflict.  This is not the split between capitalists and workers, technocrats and humanists, government and business, liberals and conservatives, or rich and poor. All these divisions are partial and distorted reflections of the deeper conflict: the struggle between past and future, between the existing configuration of industries and the industries that will someday replace them. It is a conflict between established factories, technologies, formations of capital, and the ventures that may soon make them worthless—venture that today may not even exist; that today may flicker only as ideas, or tiny companies, or obscure research projects, or fierce but penniless ambitions; that today are unidentifiable and incalculable from above, but which, in time, in a progressing economy, must rise up if growth is to occur.

This YouTube video complements our show notes and provides a broad overview of creative destruction.

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Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about pricing and member benefits. 

Here are a few topics discussed from the most recent bonus episode:

• Opinion | Jimmy Lai: Does Hong Kong Have a Fighting Chance Against China? 

• New Study Casts More Doubt on Effectiveness of Masks in Preventing COVID-19 Spread 

• Netflix to Cancel Inactive Streaming Video Subscriptions - Subscription Insider 

• Wait, So We Now Can’t Say ‘Human Capital’? – AIER 

Episode #294: Evasive Entrepreneurs with Adam Thierer

Adam Thierer is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He has spent more than 25 years covering the intersection of emerging technologies and public policy and has authored or edited eight books

Book topics range from media regulation and child safety issues to the role of federalism in high-technology markets, including Permissionless Innovation: The Continuing Case for Comprehensive Technological Freedom.

A bit more about Adam Thierer
Adam Thierer is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He has spent more than 25 years covering the intersection of emerging technologies and public policy and has authored or edited eight books on topics ranging from media regulation and child safety issues to the role of federalism in high-technology markets, including Permissionless Innovation: The Continuing Case for Comprehensive Technological Freedom. Previously, Thierer was president of the Progress and Freedom Foundation, director of Telecommunications Studies at the Cato Institute, and a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He received his MA in international business management and trade theory at the University of Maryland and his BA in journalism and political science from Indiana University.

Here are Ed’s questions from the interview…

• Welcome to TSOE, Adam. We had our mutual friend Professor Deirdre McCloskey on the show last week (Episode #293), and I know you cite her a couple of times in your book [Evasive Entrepreneurs and the Future of Governance: How Innovation Improves Economies and Governments]. You write specifically McCloskey reminds us that “betterment” and “improvement” and especially ‘innovation’ were long seen in Europe as violations of God’s will or as unsettling heresies.” Explain what your relationship is to Deirdre McCloskey and how you have furthered her work in this area.

• Having you and her on is the perfect one-two punch around this topic. I’d like to jump into more current events. Yesterday Donald Trump signed an Executive Order reclassifying social platforms as publishers. I wanted to get your thoughts on that?

• I’m amazed by some of my conservative friends on Facebook saying what a great idea this is because they are “monopolistic.” Even if you believe that, the way to make sure they become more monopolistic is to impose more government regulations.

• I kept pleading with them, “there will be a D[emocrat] in the White House someday, you do realize this, don’t you?

• Let’s launch into your book. Because it’s really an input to the evasive entrepreneur, what is permissionless innovation?

• I want to pick up on something you were talking about with Ron. Do you think that we in the United States in a way have over-scaled democracy in trying to apply democracy to too many people under the same place. In other words, would we better off seeing more federalism, or maybe even further down to the local level, as Thomas Jefferson envisioned, down to the ward level?

• I don’t think drones are going to be necessary because with the advent of everyone homeschooling now, all the public schools will be turned into Amazon distribution centers.

• What about permissionless innovation in China. Would you say more of it goes on in China, but less evasive entrepreneurship?

• Are you familiar with George Gilder? He’s been a guest on the show, and last time we had him on he had written an article, The Huawei Test. What were your thoughts on that article, in which he posits that yes, the Chinese government is a problem, but Huawei itself is really very much independent?

• It is clearly a difficult situation, and we are also monitoring the situation in Hong Kong. There’s just a lot of things that are boiling, let’s hope all of our optimism remains true. You did mention you’re not a crypto-anarchist, what are your thoughts long-term on Bitcoin and blockchain, understanding they are two separate things obviously?

• Last question. What about the application of these technologies with regard to voting? The big thing right now is this whole mail-in voting that everyone is up in arms about. But I want to vote on my phone, that’s what I want to do?

…and here are Ron’s questions:

• Adam, I love how you say, “Economists, political scientists, and business theorists don’t usually agree on much, but to the extent that they share a consensus about anything, it is that technological innovation is widely considered the main source of economic progress.” What is your definition of innovation versus invention? Do you have the same distinction that Matt Ridley uses in his recent book, How Innovation Works?

• You point out the pothole vigilantes as an example of free innovation, I just loved that. You say your most controversial claim is that technological change itself may become the most important check on government power going forward. What do you mean by that?

• You go even further. Most of our listeners would be familiar with smartphones, cryptocurrencies, blockchain, drones, 3D printing. You have a specific definition for these things. You call them “technologies of resistance” and how they enable “technological civil disobedience.” Can you explain your thinking there?

• You’re not an anarchist, you believe there’s a pragmatic approach to regulation.

• You have another great term that I just love, “regulatory entrepreneurialism,” where policy change is part of their business model. And of course everybody instantly thinks of Uber, or Airbnb, and there’s probably a host of other examples as well.

• It illustrates two other concepts that you define really well, which are the “pacing problem” and the “compliance paradox.” Can you explain those two?

• Another distinction you make is between technologies born free and born captive. In one podcast you did, the interviewer asked you when we’ll drone burritos. I don’t care about that, Adam, but will we get supersonic planes?

• Adam, another thing I learned from your book is that Benjamin Franklin had proposed that the Great Seal of the United States include the phrase “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.” You also cite Charles Murray’s 2016 book, By the People: Rebuilding Liberty without Permission, where he advises to avoid or defy regulations. You don’t take that approach, but you also you point out—and this is hard to swallow for libertarians and conservatives—that  the last time a federal agency has been abolished was in 1985 with the Civil Aeronautics Board, then the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1995. How would you reform the FDA today?

• Another really uncomfortable thought in your book, which comes from Tyler Cowen who has also been a guest on the show, he pointed out that modern technology (especially transportation and communications networks) has greatly facilitated the growth of government in the 20th century. Is that inevitable though?

• Adam, we have about a minute, would you reform Intellectual Property law, specifically patents?

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Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about pricing and member benefits. 

Here are a few topics discussed from the most recent bonus episode:

• Deepfakes Are Going To Wreak Havoc On Society. We Are Not Prepared 

• White House Considering $450 Weekly ‘Back To Work Bonus’ 

Episode #293: Second Interview with Professor Deirdre McCloskey

Deirdre McCloskey is a “literary, quantitative, postmodern, free-market, progressive-Episcopalian, ex-Marxist, Midwestern woman from Boston who was once a man.” She is also AN AMAZING GUEST!

A bit more about Deirdre McCloskey
Deirdre McCloskey is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Economics and of History, and Professor Emerita of English and of Communication, at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Trained at Harvard in the 1960s as an economist, she has written twenty books and some four hundred academic articles on economic theory, economic history, philosophy, rhetoric, statistical theory, feminism, ethics, and law. She taught for twelve years at the University of Chicago in the Economics Department in its glory days, but now describes herself as a “literary, quantitative, postmodern, free-market, progressive-Episcopalian, ex-Marxist, Midwestern woman from Boston who was once a man. Not ‘conservative’! I’m a Christian classical liberal.” Her most recent popular books, for example, are Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World for All, and with Art Carden Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich: The Bourgeois Deal.

Here are Ron’s questions from the interview…

• Professor, Welcome back to TSOE! You were our first guest, Episode #6, August 2014. Your work continues to blow, and change, our minds!

• In your recent book, Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World for All, (October 2019), you wrote:

“The point here is to convert you to a ‘humane true liberalism.’ Capitalism” (innovism) has raised the real income per person of the poorest since 1800 not by 10 percent or 100 percent, but by over 3,000 percent, or a 2,900 percent increase over the base, stunning Great Enrichment, well beyond the classic Industrial Revolution of 1760–1860, which had merely doubled income per head.”

This is the greatest untold story of the world. How did it happen, Professor?

• Yours is such a powerful argument because we continue to all these materialist explanations (for the Great Enrichment), and yet you take them down one by one. You point out in the old days, especially around Europe, the only way to get honor was being a soldier or being a priest. These ideas started to change, we started to accept creative destruction, we no longer looked at innovation as a sin or a heresy, wasn’t it?

• And freedom is an attitudinal, ideological change. What role did religion play role in helping to change those attitudes?

• I was listening to Tyler Cowen’s podcast the other day, and he had on Paul Romer [former student of Professor McCloskey]. Tyler asked Romer why China didn’t develop the Industrial Revolution, and Romer cited a paper by Justin Lind, because China didn’t invent the social system we call science. You don’t buy that theory, do you?

• One of the things your trilogy of books taught me is how many inventions came out of China [and believed by The California School], and then you wonder why it stopped.

• In your book, Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World for All, you have a few chapters on Thomas Piketty and his work [especially his book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century]. You point out for all his data fetish, he doesn't include human capital in his inequality statistics. To me that’s just a glaring error. How can you draw any conclusions from his book? [The World Bank Estimates that about 80% of developed nation’s wealth].

• Are you worried if Jeff Bezos becomes the world’s first trillionaire?

• As the Nobel (2018) economist William Nordhaus estimates, inventors in the United States since World War II have kept only 2 percent of the social value of the betterment they produce.

• What was your position on Brexit?

• You discuss economists Robert Gordon of Northwestern, Tyler Cowen, and John Maynard Keynes who all believe we’ll lose jobs because of technology. Why all this talk about the “winners” compensating the “losers”? You quote Stephen Landsburg, “Suppose, after years of buying shampoo at your local pharmacy, you discover you can order the same shampoo for less money online. Do you have an obligation to compensate your pharmacist?

• You quote essayist T. B. Macaulay who wrote in 1830, “On what principle is it that, when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?” That pessimism just bleeds through some of the recent economic work. Are you optimistic or pessimistic with respect to liberty?

…and here are Ed’s questions:

• I just wanted to thank you for being our first guest. You were incredibly gracious. If you weren’t as gracious as you were, I don’t know if we would have had a second guest.

• On COVID-19, Steven Landsburg [also a student of Professor McCloskey’s], wrote on his blog the other day [This is What a Pandemic Looks Like] that nobody considered locking down the economy in 1969 during the Hong Kong flu, because they couldn’t afford to given their relative poverty, they preferred to spend their wealth on other things. Today’s lockdown is widely supported because it’s a luxury we’ve grown rich enough to afford. In other words, a lockdown is yet another triumph of capitalism!

• The word that’s thrown around so often is “unprecedented,” but as an economic historian are there some precedents that we can put into practice for what we’ve done to the economy—one economist calls it “The Great Suppression”?

• We’re facing here an 18% unemployment, 38 million people, which is Great Depression era levels. You said at the end of our last show that Keynesianism works in the case of mass unemployment. Is it still the case we can spend our way out of this current one, or no?

• With all of the spending we’ve done, is this a situation where if we don’t have a significant inflation in six months to a year, we have to rethink what causes inflation? Because I would think this “helicopter money,” this would be it?

• There was a question from one of our listeners, Bo, a friend of mine and a delegate to the Libertarian Party convention tonight, asks: “Psychologists keep telling us that rationales come last, so how do we know that the changing attitudes weren’t a trailing indicator of the changing situation on the ground?”

• What are your thoughts on the New York Times 1619 Project?

• Have you seen Hamilton, and if so, what did you think of that?

• This July on Disney+ they are releasing the Hamilton movie?

• Do you have a half-baked or fully-baked Constitutional Amendment you’d like to make?

  • [1. Get rid of the Electoral College; 2. Pass the Equal Rights Amendment; and 3. Remove the two-term limitation on the president].

---

Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about pricing and member benefits. 

Episode #292: Interview with Connor Boyack

Connor Boyack is nothing short of prolific, most notably as the author of The Tuttle Twins books. They (the twins) teach young children the important values that schools won't—economics, civics, philosophy, and more!

A Bit More About Connor Boyack

Connor Boyack is president of Libertas Institute, a free-market think tank in Utah. He is the author of over a dozen books on politics, education, and culture, along with hundreds of columns and articles championing individual liberty. He is also president of The Association for Teaching Kids Economics, a national non-profit helping K-8 students learn free-market ideas. A California native and Brigham Young University graduate, Connor currently resides in Lehi, Utah, with his wife and two children.

Here are Ed’s questions from the interview:

• How are you and your family doing during the Great Suppression?

• Ed told Connor how he was first introduced to his work. A book one of Ed’s brought home from school was The Rainbow Fish, the only banned book in the Kless household. As an antidote to that book, I came across another book, The Big Orange Splot, the most anti-homeowner association book ever written. Then, Amazon recommended one of your books, the first was The Tuttle Twins Learn About the Law, which is about Frédéric Bastiat’s work (see our Episode #125) and you bring it down to a K-8 level. I was thrilled to buy it, and even more amazed when I read it. Tell us how you got to writing children’s books that promote free market ideas.

• I have five of your books, and perhaps two or three others. I don’t have the complete set. I was told by my son to tell you that his favorite book of yours is The Tuttle Twins Learn About the Law, and my daughter’s favorite is The Tuttle Twins and the Miraculous Pencil.

• I’ve read a couple of them to my kid’s classes. Because of what’s going on with COVID-19, we almost need a reverse I, Pencil essay, to try to explain to people what we are doing by hitting the pause button on the economy.

• The rhetoric we’re hearing about how this economic pause is a market failure is maddening.

• The word unprecedented is thrown around a lot, but we truly never have had the snooze button hit on the economy.

• Connor, I want to bring it up to a more adult level conversation, though many of things you write about in your blog are related back to your books. Shelly Luther, the salon owner in Dallas, who engaged in civil disobedience violating the Governor’s order, and a county judge’s order, was arrested and put in jail for seven day for opening her salon during the lock down. Governor Abbott then changed his mind about not wanting people to go to jail,  you wrote in a blog post called “Are All Laws Inherently Violent?” Could you unpack that for us?

• Usually when I ask this question it is with irony in mind, but I am genuinely curious now, do you think taxation is theft?

• I’ve often thought the best type of taxation would be on transactions, like a use tax. But that leads to the creature from Jekyll island, which is using the Federal Reserve currency. But I wanted to ask you, at the end of The Tuttle Twins and the Creature from Jekyll Island, you mention Bitcoin. What are your thoughts on alternative currencies, the gold standard, or would you rather see a system of privatized currencies that people use.

• I’ve been a fan of the Brave browser for over a year, and anticipate making money from surfing the Internet. Another essay you recently wrote, in light of what’s happening with the Great Suppression—what do you think will happen with regard to homeschooling? Are we going to have a pick uptick in that, or will there be a backlash the other way?

…and here are Ron’s questions:

• I have such respect for what you do because I’ve written nonfiction books, but children’s books are completely different. You probably know this,  William F. Buckley, Jr. who wrote 50-plus books over his career, and one children’s book. He said it was, without a doubt, the hardest to write. Rush Limbaugh also writes children’s books. I’m curious, did you find it harder, easier, what you expected?

• The reason I could never write a children’s book, I can tell stories in a nonfiction book, but you only have to deal with what people think. But you have to plot—deal with what people do—which I think is really, really hard.

• To prepare for this show, I went back and listened to some of your earlier interviews with Tom Woods and you had quoted Frederick Douglas (you think apocryphally): “It’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” Was that the driver behind these books? Because that’s a profound line.

• To concretize this, how do you, for example, teach the non-aggression principle to children (5-10 years of age, or at a Congressman’s level, as you say)?

• Not only did you take on Frederick Bastiat in The Tuttle Twins Learn About the Law (April 2014), you’ve taken on Frederick Hayek in The Tuttle Twins and the Road to Surfdom (2017), and The Tuttle Twins and the Miraculous Pencil (Dec 2014), which I wish I would have read when I was a kid because I think it’s one of the most mind-blowing essays to read. You mentioned to Ed that The Tuttle Twins and the Creature from Jekyll Island is the most popular book, but I would imagine The Tuttle Twins and the Miraculous Pencil was really popular as well.

• Have you ever run across a book called The Toaster Project? It’s about a UK design student who tries to build a toaster from scratch. He spends a ton of money, it takes him well over a year, and in the end it doesn’t work. It’s I, Pencil on steroids. A great story of how ridiculously complex it is to build something we can buy for $8.

• Maybe I’ll ask you when we come back, you wrote The Tuttle Twins and the Search for Atlas (2017), which is about Ayn Rand’s ideas. What was the reaction to that book?

• Connor, you take on so many great topics. Have you ever tackled the subjective vs. labor theory of value?

• Another possible topic I wish I had known as a kid is negative vs. positive rights.

• What’s your take on the Universal Basic Income? And have you ever thought about doing a book on that topic?

• Tell us about your book Passion-Driven Education: How to Use Your Child’s Interests to Ignite a Lifelong Love of Learning (2016)?

• It’s sort of like the motto of the Unschooling movement isn’t it?

• And tell us about your book, Skip College (July 2019)?

• Thank you so much, Connor, it’s been a pleasure to get to know you. Keep up the good work because it is vitally important!

---

Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about pricing and member benefits. 

Here are a few topics discussed from the most recent bonus episode:

• Cuomo Gives People Another Reason to Hate New York: He'll Tax Coronavirus Volunteers 

• Golf course on Massachusetts-Rhode Island state line faces guidelines 

• Elon Musk and Grimes’ baby name X Æ A-12 Musk, explained: If it’s real, it’s probably not legal 

• Coronavirus Has Infected 2.8 Percent of Hoosiers, Says New Study 

• Tesla CEO Explains Why His Company Is Leaving California 

Episode #291: The Passion Economy — Adam Davidson

From Adam’s new book, The Passion Economy, we have rule #6: TECHNOLOGY SHOULD ALWAYS SUPPORT YOUR BUSINESS, NOT DRIVE IT.

We talk about this rule plus several others in the show. But first let’s learn more about Adam…

A Bit More About Adam Davidson

Adam Davidson has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 2016. He founded, hosted, and ran NPR’s Planet Money from 2008 to 2013. He then became an economics writer and columnist for The New York Times Magazine. He has won the Peabody, Polk, and duPont-Columbia Awards. He hosts the Passion Economy podcast, based on the ideas in this book, for Luminary Media and cofounded Three Uncanny Four, a podcast company. Davidson was the technical adviser for the film The Big Short, working closely with its writer and director, Adam McKay. He and McKay were executive producers of the Amazon television program This Giant Beast That Is the Global Economy, starring Kal Penn. Davidson is married to the journalist and novelist Jen Banbury; they live with their son in Brooklyn, New York. You can listen to our first interview with Adam at Episode #26.

Here are Ron’s questions from the interview:

• How are you, personally, holding up during this COVID crisis, the lockdown, lack of travel?

• Adam, why did you write this book, which came out this year, and why did you write it now? [The Passion Economy: The New Rules for Thriving in the Twenty-First Century].

• You start out the book with a story that I absolutely love—the conflict between two Stanleys. Can you explain that?

• I was heartened to read what you wrote: “Simply pursuing one’s passion is not enough. We must pay close attention to the marketplace.” We’ve had Rabbi Daniel Lapin on the show a few times, and he believes the whole “follow your passion” that you get at commencement addresses is bad advice. He says, you have to do something that serves other people, something that they value, and then you learn to love it over time. Because if you just follow your passion, it can sink into narcissism. React to that.

• Your passions can change, can’t they?

• I get this question a lot from young people, “I haven’t found my passion. How do I find my passion?” How do you answer that to a high school or college student?

• You were talking with Ed about your Rule #6 about technology, the most fascinating profiles in the book was Pioneer, the Amish company. What did you learn from them, since they aren’t known for being on the technological edge?

• I love that story. You also spent some time at a winery, and I always say that wineries are farmers, but they are also incredible marketers, different price points, target markets, etc. But folks you’ll have to read the book to get some of these great profiles.

…and here are Ed’s questions:

• You talk about the rules for the passion economy. The first one I found particularly interesting, because at first glance it appears that might be contradictory, and I hope you can unpack it for us: RULE #1: PURSUE INTIMACY AT SCALE.

• I want to jump to your RULE #4: FEWER PASSIONATE CUSTOMERS ARE BETTER THAN A LOT OF INDIFFERENT ONES.

• What’s interesting about that is, sure Mark Zuckerberg goes for the scale of the world, yet it’s his platform that allows us to get very specific with regards to our targeted ads.

• And your RULE #6, this is really important because the folks I work with, especially in accounting: TECHNOLOGY SHOULD ALWAYS SUPPORT YOUR BUSINESS, NOT DRIVE IT. I think that’s been one of the big mistakes people have fallen for. They think technology is the business, and it’s not, it’s a supporter, a tool. Take that apart a bit more.

• And RULE #8, which I also love, it is similar to number one because it sounds like an apparent contradiction, but I know it’s not. In fact, Ron and I have done at least one entire show on this topic [Episode #28]: NEVER BE IN THE COMMODITY BUSINESS, EVEN IF YOU SELL WHAT OTHER PEOPLE CONSIDER A COMMODITY.

• Our favorite example of this is giveashare.com, which sells one share of stock, the very definition of a commodity.

• Adam, I wanted to ask you about something that I notice that you repeat over and over in the book, and it’s certainly in the chapter about Jason Blumer with Ron and Tim Williams. At one point, you write that when Ron said “prices justify costs” this confounded Jason. And I’m going to ask you a question: were you also talking about yourself? Was that a discovery that you made in conversations with Ron as well?

• I love that you’re a word guy, the word “transaction” itself has this notion that means “beyond the action” of an exchange of goods, there’s something beyond that, it’s deeper. You write “I happen to be an unobservant Jew and spend little time thinking about God or spiritual things. I found that the closer I adhere to a Passion Economy approach to my work, the more meaningful my work becomes.” Ron talked about Rabbi Lapin earlier, and something he says that the Hebrew word for work and worship are the same word. How incredibly profound that is, and it seems you’ve gotten to the essence of that without even knowing it?

• What are your thoughts on The Passion Economy in the age of COVID-19?

• Several pharmaceutical companies, some bitter rivals, are cooperating to come up with a vaccine. For COVID-19 and the technology that enables them to do that. I’ll let you react to that in the last 30 seconds.

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Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about pricing and member benefits. 

Here are a few topics discussed from the most recent bonus episode:

• Clinic that doesn't accept insurance opening in Idaho Falls | East Idaho News 

• Salon A La Mode Owner, Shelley Luther Arrested: ‘Feeding My Kids Isn’t Selfish, I’m Not Closing The Salon’ – CBS Dallas / Fort Worth 

Episode #290: Interview with economist Dan Mitchell

Dan Mitchell fights for more freedom and less government (which is purposefully redundant).

A Bit More About Dan Mitchell

Daniel J. Mitchell is a co-founder of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity and the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation. He is one of the nation’s leading experts on tax reform and supply-side tax policy. In addition to tax policy, Dr. Mitchell is a trenchant observer of economic developments and an expert on Social Security privatization – particularly the fiscal policy impact of reform and what the US can learn from other nations that have created personal retirement accounts. Dr. Mitchell’s by-line can be found in such national publications as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Investor’s Business Daily. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from George Mason University and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in economics from the University of Georgia. Mitchell was a senior fellow with the Cato Institute and The Heritage Foundation, and an economist for Senator Bob Packwood and the Senate Finance Committee. 

Ed and Ron were honored to have the chance to interview economist Dan Mitchell. As former Presidential candidate Steve Forbes said of Mitchell’s 1996 book, The Flat Tax: Freedom, Fairness, Jobs, and Growth, “Mitchell marvelously demonstrates how the flat tax will rip away the principal source of political pollution in Washington.” He also is the nation’s leading opponent of tax harmonization schemes developed by the Brussels-based European Union, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the United Nations. His September 2000 analysis of the OECD’s “harmful tax competition” initiative was the opening salvo in a campaign that ended with the United States announcing it could no longer support international proposals to persecute low-tax jurisdictions. He has now turned his attention to the EU’s infamous “Savings Tax Directive” and a UN proposal to undermine the sovereign right of nations to determine their own tax policy.

Here are Ed’s questions from the interview:

• First, Dan, how are you doing in these crazy times before we get into tax policy?

• What is your overall evaluation of the federal government’s reaction to the COVID-19 crisis? The spending seems to be a crazy mish-mosh of stuff, isn’t it?

• The first stimulus was $2.1 trillion and the second was $2.3 Trillion, there was no conversation about all this spending.

• You refuted a claim by Dana Milbank at the Washington Post, who wrote: “Our response to the Corona virus was hampered because our government is too small.”

• And yet the states themselves, which are the smaller governments, their fiscal burdens run the gamut in terms of debt and unfunded liabilities. [Ed quotes from Dan’s blog post, “Coronavirus and the States: Spending Restraint, Bailouts, Default, or Bankruptcy?” May 1, 2020]. Can you unpack that, there’s a lot there?

• On the unfunded liabilities, a lot of those were caused by guaranteed pension plans that the state employees got, is that correct?

• Then the question becomes, are the good people of Texas willing to bail out the good people of New Jersey, that’s the challenge.

• Dan, I wanted to ask you one more corona virus related questions, and then move on to some other random topics. What would have been better: assuming we had to do something, what should have been done. Would have been direct deposits to individuals, or what, I’ll let you go from there?

• To steal a phrase, is it really the spending stupid? Does it ultimately come down to the size and scope of government that’s the problem, and then taxation just becomes the result of that?

• One way that has been proposed by some Libertarians, such as Charles Murray’s idea of a Universal Basic Income, along with a Constitutional Amendment to remove all other spending programs. What are your thoughts on UBI?

• On the subject of not trusting politicians, what are your thoughts on Justin Amash potentially declaring for the LP candidate for president?

…and here are Ron’s questions:

• I’d like to talk with you about tax policy, one of your areas of expertise. When you look at all the different type of tax systems we could have, such as a VAT, National Sales Tax, Consumption Tax, Flat Tax, if you were king for a day—knowing you’d probably turn down that role—what tax system do you favor?

• Look at the history of the VAT in Europe, which started fairly low, and now look at their rates, on top of their confiscatory income tax rates.

• Dan, is it true from a technical economic point of view, no matter what you call the tax, aren’t all taxes at the end of day income taxes because that is how most people have control over resources?

• What would you do with the corporate and capital gains taxes?

• The corporate tax incidence debate, I remember reading Kevin Hasset, who I’m sure you know, he believes nearly all the corporate tax burden is actually paid by the workers. What’s your take on that? How much do the workers versus the shareholders versus the consumers pay of the corporate tax burden?

• I wish more people understood exactly what you just said. It seems there’s a feeling out there that we can keep taxing the corporation, and it’s no, only people pay taxes.

• I used to be really young and naïve back when Newt Gingrich took back the House in 1994, I really thought we were going to see major tax reform. What is your assessment of real tax reform. Do you think we’ll ever live long enough to see it?

• I think you’re exactly right on that. It took me about a decade to learn that.

• Dan, I know you have a worldwide grasp on tax policy, and I’d love your opinion how this country should we go about privatizing Social Security. Which model works? Is it Chile’s, Singapore’s, Great Britain’s? How should we deal with the Social Security Crisis?

• So you’re saying you’ll be the Yankee’s pitcher before we even attempt to fix Social Security or Medicare?

• Yes, Clinton could have got it done because he was a Democrat, rather than when George W. Bush tried it.

• I know you’re a big opponent of the tax harmonization schemes of the EU and the UN, and this oxymoronic notion of “harmful tax competition,” where do you stand on the EU in general, and this ties into Brexit, too. I would imagine you were for Brexit, is that safe to say?

• I’m just such a pessimist with respect to the EU, it’s just a meta-mess, with their regulations, I just can’t imagine a country like Great Britain transferring its sovereignty to the EU.

• Dan, should we be worried about inequality or poverty?

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Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about pricing and member benefits. 

Here are a few topics discussed from the most recent bonus episode:

• Garbage Math 

• US virus numbers now include probable cases without tests 

• Common-Good Constitutionalism - The Atlantic

Episode #289: The War on Cancer — Interview with Dr. Azra Raza

A Profound and Moving Conversation About Cancer, Dr. Azra Raza’s Research, and Her Life Experiences

A Bit More About Dr. Azra Raza

Dr. Azra Raza is the Chan Soon-Shiong Professor of Medicine and Director of the MDS Center at Columbia University in New York. She is considered an international authority on pre-leukemia (MDS) and acute leukemia and is one of those rare physician-scientists who divide their time equally between caring for patients and supervising a state-of-the-art basic research lab which is well-funded by multiple large grants.

Dr. Raza started collecting blood and marrow samples on her patients in 1984 and now her Tissue Bank, the largest and oldest in the country with >60,000 samples, is considered a unique national treasure. Dr. Raza has published her original clinical and basic research comprising over 300 peer-reviewed manuscripts in high profile journals like Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, Cell, Molecular Cell, Cancer Research, Blood, Leukemia. She is the author of The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last published October 2019.

Here are Ron’s questions from the interview:

• Welcome to TSOE, Azra. It is such an honor to get to speak with you. Before we get into your book, during this COVID crisis, how are you holding up, personally?

• Do you still have to see some patients for cancer treatments?

• The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last, Amazons Best Science book of 2019.

• Azra, we were introduced to you and your book from Russ Robert’s podcast, EconTalk, Ed’s and my favorite podcast. We jokingly refer to TSOE as the “poor man’s Econtalk.” I read your book after hearing the interview, and Russ Roberts said it best: Your book is hard to read, and harder to put down.” It is beautifully written. I had to stop to cry many times, I lost count. It’s so human, so profound, thank you for writing it and educating us lay people on the effects of cancer. Let’s start with what type of cancer you specialize in.

• You actually started in pediatric oncology and couldn’t handle it, is that right?

• You write, Today, one in two men and one in three women will get cancer. Nearly 18 million worldwide. You wrote:

  • My surroundings may not have changed much, but my perceptions have.

  • Like the difference between illness and disease; between what it means to cure and to heal; between what it means to feel no pain and to feel well.

  • I have felt like a fraud, a posturing intellectual phony. In the march to death, I have begun to catalog the tragedies of survival.

• That is profoundly self-introspective. What brought on these feelings?

• You write that “treatments for cancer haven’t changed in 50 years. Cancer treatment was just as primitive a century ago. With minor variations, a protocol of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation—the slash-poison-burn approach to treating cancer—remains unchanged. It is an embarrassment. Equally embarrassing is the arrogant denial of that embarrassment.” Azra, why is that?

• Azra, before we get into the more hopeful things, I just want to ask you one more thing. You say no one is winning the war on cancer. It is mostly hype. I would think most folks probably think since president Nixon declared a war on cancer progress we have been making progress. What’s the disconnect there?

• Let’s pivot to your strategy and the name of your book. You think the strategy is to stop chasing after the last cancer cell and focus on eliminating the first. You believe experiments with animals, mice in particular, don’t teach us much on how treatments will work in humans. Is it really possible, Azra, with your strategy to reduce cancer deaths by 75 percent?

• When you say the first cell, you quoted one of your colleagues who basically said that early detection screening for cancer has not fulfilled our expectations, PSA tests, things like that. You’re actually talking about things that are being worked on like a machine that automatically images your body while you are in the shower, or wearing a smart bra that has two hundred tiny biosensors, and other ways of measuring things from your urine, blood, and saliva. You’re optimistic that some of things they are working will come to fruition?

• Azra, is a cancer vaccine possible?

• Azra, this was painful for me to read: “I wish I felt like an exceptional oncologist. Most days, I feel like a complete failure.” I have to tell you, even though I know you work against great odds, my Mom is a three-time cancer survivor, she had Uterus, Breast, and liver cancer. Her oncologists are heroes to me, because she’s still living at 87. You tell a story at the end of the book about walking in the mall with your older sister and your brother, Tasnim, a cardiac surgeon at Buffalo General Hospital, and people were running up to him and hugging him. Your mother said: “You have been in Buffalo for almost ten years. I have never met any of your patients. Why are heart patients doing so much better than cancer patients?” Wow, that’s profound.

• Azra, we’re at the end of our time together, and I just wanted to point out the other thing I learned from your book that I just loved, I didn’t know that “The response to a greeting from a younger person in Arabic is often, ‘May you live to bury me.’ That is beautiful. Ed will take you home, thank you so much for appearing on TSOE. 

…and here are Ed’s questions:

• I learned so much about cancer from your book. The thing that struck me was the complexity of cancer. As a layperson, I think we look at disease as monolithic. You write in the book, “If you biopsy a patient with breast cancer twice in the same day, once in the breast and once in the lymph node, you can get cancer cells with different sequences.” So cancer is not the same in the same person even hours apart, or even in different parts of their body. I never realized the level of complexity, can you expound on that?

• You mention the four different causes. Do we think those different causes cause the different forms of cancer, or could all four of those cause similar cancers?

• The complexity of what is happening with COVID is an example of a macrocosm of the cancer cell. It is so complex, and you are talking about small little cells in the body, and now we are trying to figure this out for all of society. I just thought it was an interesting parallel.

• Would you address the so-called CAR-T therapies that are being developed?

• Another treatment going after the last cell rather than the first cell, hence the name of your book. Hopefully for the second half of our conversation we can begin to transition over to the positive side of things and what you’re doing to get people to think about this differently.

• I wanted to take us in a different direction. I was intrigued about smart bras, etc., to detect cancer. Are there privacy concerns with this scanning, like with 23andMe worries about some insurance company is going to find about the results. Are there are any privacy concerns we have to worry ourselves with regards to this type of screening?

• Talk a little about the research lab you run. You created this lab two decades ago, is that correct?

• I wish I had $200 million to give you. Hopefully, we’ll help get your message out. Is there anyone else who has done anything similar?

• One of the things that is also great about your book is it is peppered with great references to literature, I know it’s something you are very passionate about. I’m a word guy as well, and I found the whole thing about “pharmakon,” the Greek word meaning remedy, poison, and sacrifice. Do I have that right?

• One of the things I wanted to share with you, is the importance of art and literature in the treatment of us as human beings. I also saw this in one of your videos as well, the whole notion of sacrifice came out, I was reminded of the William Butler Yeats poem, “Easter 1916,” I’m going to share part of it with you that I’ve committed to memory:

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.   
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part   
To murmur name upon name,   
As a mother names her child   
When sleep at last has come   
On limbs that had run wild.   
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;   
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith   
For all that is done and said.   
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;   
And what if excess of love   
Bewildered them till they died?   
I write it out in a verse—
MacDonagh and MacBride   
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:   
A terrible beauty is born.

Dr. Raza ended by citing Emily Dickinson’s poem, “I measure every Grief I meet”:

I measure every Grief I meet
With analytic eyes – 
I wonder if It weighs like Mine – 
Or has a different size. 

I wonder if They bore it long – 
Or did it just begin – 
I cannot find the Date of Mine – 
It been so long a pain – 

I wonder if it hurts to live – 
And if They have to try – 
And whether – could They choose between – 
They would not rather – die – 

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Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about pricing and member benefits. 

Episode #288: Interview with Accounting Thought Leader Doug Sleeter

Blockchain, Bitcoin, and The Future of Accounting — This was a GREAT episode featuring Doug Sleeter

A Bit More About Doug

DougSleeter (@dougsleeter) is the founder and former CEO of The Sleeter Group, an international network of accounting software consultants, and the former producer of SleeterCon, an annual conference for accounting professionals. As a CPA firm veteran and former Apple Computer Evangelist, he melded his two great passions (accounting and technology) to guide developers in the innovation of new products and to educate and lead accounting professionals who serve small businesses. He is currently focusing on digital currencies and blockchaintechnology. He was inducted into The CPA Practice Advisor Hall of Fame in the accounting profession, and named to Accounting Today's "Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting," 2008-2015. Doug attended the University of California Santa Cruz and Santa Clara University, holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Computer Information Systems, and lives in Pleasanton, CA.

Here are Ed’s questions from the interview:

• Doug, welcome back to the show. You were on twice before (Episode #96 and #99), back in June 2016. Feels like that was an eon ago, doesn’t it?

• Just to remind folks who don’t know, who’s this Doug Sleeter guy?

• Let’s do a quick update on where you’re seeing blockchain. What’s your latest thinking around where blockchain is today?

• There was use case with tuna, but we’re not talking about Internet of Things, it’s really more the process and production stage of things, correct

• It’s similar to our fingerprint and facial recognition on our mobile devices today, that information is stored locally on the device, and not something the government is using to track us. We need airport security, but I think it should be run by the airlines and not the government.

• Blockchain might be a partial answer to keep our data private and secure, which is part of the promise of the blockchain.

• I tend to trust the private sector slightly more than the public sector just because as a customer I can change, whereas as a citizen I’m pretty stuck, unless I move to a different country.

• I don’t think any of the three of us believes that COVID is no big deal, or less than the flu. But the unknowns with the data are a problem. A recent study by Stanford, on the “denominator” we could have missed it by a factor of 50-85 times. I just want to get your take on this. It’s furthering your point, but what are your thoughts on this? This is something we have to be on the lookout for, not just for COVID, but from a business perspective.

• I want to pivot over to a book I recommended to you, which I mentioned on our show, Best Books of 2019 (Episode #275), and on my list was a book called The Case Against Reality by Donald Hoffman. I noticed just three days ago you posted a review on your GoodReads page.

• In your review, you write at the end about how its helped you further your thinking about creativity and what does consciousness mean for robots, and the last sentence is “But I'm pretty sure we'll create robots that we won't be able to distinguish from conscious beings.” My question is what led you to that conclusion, because I’ve come to the exact opposite conclusion, which is pretty cool?

• I don’t think we can get there, because I can’t prove your consciousness, so how do I go about proving the consciousness of this robot? I guess it could fool us, but we still wouldn’t know, because we can’t prove conscious in another being anyway.

• I just love his notion that the fundamental element of the world is not space time, but rather consciousness. That’s the thing that just blew my mind about the book. He does a great job using evolution to prove his theory.

• What are your thoughts on what you are seeing in the accounting market now? 

  …and here are Ron’s questions:
  

• On blockchain, Bill Gates has that famous line: “We overestimate technology’s short-term impact, and under-estimate its long-term impact. Have we hit the long-term impact with blockchain [and Bitcoin], or are we still in the experimental, early stages?

• George Gilder talks about blockchain being the 7th layer of the internet, that trust and transactions layer, it’s going to be built into the architecture. To get us over that hump, will this technology need to be taken on by an Amazon, Google, Facebook, combination thereof, to democratize it and make it more understandable, or is it something that will be just layered on the Internet and we’ll never talk about it?

• Did you have an opinion on Facebook’s Libra?

• Since we last spoke in 2016, have you changed your mind or evolved your thinking about Bitcoin or blockchain?

• They have to work on that volatility of value, a currency has to be stable, it’s a measuring stick. You can’t float the ruler, a foot always has to be 12 inches.

• I’m going to pivot to COVID-19. You’ve been talking since I’ve known you about Big Bad Data, and we are getting a real live example of that on just the numbers these various websites are tracking, number cases, number of deaths, mortality. What’s your take on all this, does it just confirm your priors about how dangerous data can be?

• I couldn’t agree with you more that we need to blow the whole accounting infrastructure up and start over. Triple entry accounting made possible by blockchain is the route. But the other thing you said that I loved: When people roll their eyes you know you’re on to something. That is so true. When people are scared of a new idea, that’s how you know it’s a great idea. The dog barks at what he doesn’t understand.

• Doug, one of our prior guests was economist Tyler Cowen (Episode #240) he does something he calls Overrated or Underrated, and Why on his podcast, Conversations with Tyler:
  

  • TED talks [Both]

  • Living in California [Overrated]

  • The Masters [Underrated]

  • Pebble Beach golf course [Underrated]

  • Retirement [Underrated]

  • Donald Trump [Underrated]

  • Apple, Inc. [Underrated]

  • Income inequality [Overrated]

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Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about pricing and member benefits. 

Here are some of the topics and links Ron and Ed discussed during the bonus episode this past week:

• Doug Sleeter stayed over and we were also joined by Garrett Wagner to talk about his COVID-19 subscription plan that he will be releasing on Monday. There is both an audio AND a video available for this bonus episode.

• COVID-19 Antibody Seroprevalence in Santa Clara County, California

• Some Good News from the Nation’s Hospitals

• Non-COVID Patients Need Care, Too