Value(s)
A bold, urgent argument on the misplacement of value in financial markets and how we can and need to maximize value for the many, not few…

✒ Books read in 2022 #07

It touches on various interesting topics that I find amusing so I wouldn’t mind the longer than expected read:

  • Values represent the principles or standards of behaviour; they are judgements of what is important in life. Examples include integrity, fairness, kindness, excellence, sustainability, passion and reason. Value is the regard that something is held to deserve — the importance, worth or usefulness of something. Both value and values are judgements, and it is increasingly common to equate the monetary estimate of something with its worth and , in turn, that worth with society’s values.
  • How finance can make a contribution to turn market back into humanity — adequately incentive the market to build social capital, which requires a sense of purpose and common values among individuals, companies, investors and countries.
  • The objective and subjective theories of value.
  • A crash course on the history of money — from Magna Carta to modern money; from gold standard to the future of money (spoiler: the author favors CBDC over Bitcoin).
  • Roles of Central banks — maintaining monetary stability (ensuring the money’s value can be depended on, which is represented by a low, stable and predictable inflation) and financial stability (ensuring the financial system can support households and business in both good and bad times).
  • Commentaries on Global Financial Crisis and Covid-19 Pandemic.
  • Valuation of human life with various approaches.
  • The duties of governments (i.e. state capacity) — legal capacity (create regulations, enforce contracts and protect property rights), collective capacity (provide public services) and fiscal capacity (tax and spend). The passages are a condensed version of Jurisprudence, Contract Law and Property Law.
  • The five essential and universal attributes of leadership: purpose, perspective, clarity, competence, and humility.
  • A big coverage on environmental sustainability issues and climate policy, and how transformational leaders can put “values” into “value”.
  • Author’s conclusion: we have a choice. We can continue to let financial valuation narrow our values or we can create an ecosystem in which society values broaden the market’s conceptions of value. In this way, individual creativity and market dynamism will be channelled to achieve society’s highest goals.