Tag: Entrepreneurial Ecosystems

Returns to venture capital have outpaced the S+P 500 over the past decade. Here is the growth of $10,000 over the past decade courtesy of Ycharts.

SPY data by YCharts

Very very good return when you look at historical numbers.

But venture has been better. Chicago Booth professor Steven Kaplan has studied venture returns over time and I linked to his 2017 study. That trend has persisted through today.  Venture returns are outpacing S+P returns.

I think it’s important to understand venture returns vs stock returns because with Covid, capital will get democratized more and new entrepreneurial ecosystems might jumpstart.  We might see new investors enter into venture investing that didn’t do it before.

The next twenty years will bring new technology to the market that will be powerful and some outsized returns will be gained by savvy investors.

High net worth individuals and family offices that might not have considered venture investing before might want to take a stab at it.  They need to understand what they are getting into, establish some systems and rubrics, and then have at it if they want to assume the risk.  Personally, I think it would behoove them and society if they did.

Here is the thing.  In Venture, returns happen in certain companies, and the others fail.  My friend Brian Lund wrote about two different kinds of traders in his weekly blog. 

Time works for long-term investors in a different way. It relieves themselves of the burden of themselves.  

All they need is a drawer to put their stocks in and they are good to go.

The above is the way to invest in the stock market and it’s been proven over and over again.  Stick your money in an S+P 500 fund with no fees/low fees and forget about it.  Eugene Fama showed it in 1962 and wealth managers have been fighting with him ever since.

Venture investing is not the stock market.  Returns are uneven and unpredictable.  Remember a story Bob Okabe told me about an angel investor that lost money on the first 19 companies they invested in.  They should have kept investing….

There also is a liquidity premium in venture vs stocks which demands a higher return.  Venture investing is a roach motel.  You can get in, but you can’t get out.

One of the reasons that putting your stocks in a drawer and forgetting about them works is it takes away “variance”.  You aren’t subjecting yourself to the daily gyrations of the market.  As long as the market goes up, and so far over the course of time it has despite hiccups, you are okay.  Behavioral economics would tell you why people overweight hiccups.  If you need the money, you can get the money.

Day traders want variance.  They are in and out, in and out.  Without variance, they don’t have opportunity.  But, day trading is not investing.  If you day trade and aren’t earning more than a minimum 25% on your capital, you probably won’t be doing it a sustainable period of time.  That day when you take a big loss will wipe you out.  It’s gonna happen.

Venture investing means accepting A LOT of risk, or variance. So by definition, returns should be outsized.  One thing that would be tough to execute, but I believe the time has come, is a fund to raise a huge pool of capital and become an LP in many many venture funds.  That won’t mitigate risk, but improve your chances of finding the outsize return if the manager of that fund chooses funds correctly.  The problem is getting access to the funds.

When you look at the universe of funds that return 3x after fees, it’s very small.  Venture is a tougher business than stock picking.

I have seen people try to execute on this portfolio idea by raising money and putting the same check inside lots and lots of startup firms, but that doesn’t work.  You are only adding more risk with every investment and your expected outcome isn’t any better.  There is no “diversification” in the classic finance sense.

The trick in VC is who is managing the money, or in finding the best deals.  Deal flow is the life blood of a VC because it gives them enough looks so that when they decide to invest they feel like they have an edge over the market.  The only way to make money in VC is to go against the herd.  You see something that the market doesn’t.

The other hard thing in VC is putting enough money in a company to own a big enough chunk of equity so that if it pays, it pays big.  This is why if you are an angel, be disciplined.  Put similar amounts in every company on initial check sizes so that the check sizes combined with the amount of equity you own are replicated across your entire portfolio.  That way, when one pays you probably will pay for your entire portfolio.  Rule of thumb angel math is 50% of your investments will fail.  20%-40% will return 1x-4x.  That means you need 10% of them hit 30x to realize a 27% IRR.

Over the past few years I had some angel investments pay off.  They had been in my portfolio over 10 years.  The internal rate of return was well over 20%.  It beat the same return on the SPY over the same period by quite a bit.  What I mean by this is if I invested $1 in the SPY, or $1 in this company, I was far better off accepting the risk, lack of liquidity, and being in the company.  I also had some companies fail over that same time period.  Your failures happen early.  That’s the thing about venture investing, your choices are highly dependent and the outcomes highly variable.

By the way, I co-founded Hyde Park Angels in April of 2007.  4 out of the first 5 investments paid off and the other company is still a going concern.  That’s an amazing track record.

Risk is severely misunderstood in America and not taught well.  Conditional probability is not understood, and not taught well either.  That’s apparent in how we have dealt with Covid.

I will post tomorrow on what I see for the future of VC and the stock market.

The post Venture Returns first appeared on Points and Figures.

Returns to venture capital have outpaced the S+P 500 over the past decade. Here is the growth of $10,000 over the past decade courtesy of Ycharts.

SPY data by YCharts

Very very good return when you look at historical numbers.

But venture has been better. Chicago Booth professor Steven Kaplan has studied venture returns over time and I linked to his 2017 study. That trend has persisted through today.  Venture returns are outpacing S+P returns.

I think it’s important to understand venture returns vs stock returns because with Covid, capital will get democratized more and new entrepreneurial ecosystems might jumpstart.  We might see new investors enter into venture investing that didn’t do it before.

The next twenty years will bring new technology to the market that will be powerful and some outsized returns will be gained by savvy investors.

High net worth individuals and family offices that might not have considered venture investing before might want to take a stab at it.  They need to understand what they are getting into, establish some systems and rubrics, and then have at it if they want to assume the risk.  Personally, I think it would behoove them and society if they did.

Here is the thing.  In Venture, returns happen in certain companies, and the others fail.  My friend Brian Lund wrote about two different kinds of traders in his weekly blog. 

Time works for long-term investors in a different way. It relieves themselves of the burden of themselves.  

All they need is a drawer to put their stocks in and they are good to go.

The above is the way to invest in the stock market and it’s been proven over and over again.  Stick your money in an S+P 500 fund with no fees/low fees and forget about it.  Eugene Fama showed it in 1962 and wealth managers have been fighting with him ever since.

Venture investing is not the stock market.  Returns are uneven and unpredictable.  Remember a story Bob Okabe told me about an angel investor that lost money on the first 19 companies they invested in.  They should have kept investing….

There also is a liquidity premium in venture vs stocks which demands a higher return.  Venture investing is a roach motel.  You can get in, but you can’t get out.

One of the reasons that putting your stocks in a drawer and forgetting about them works is it takes away “variance”.  You aren’t subjecting yourself to the daily gyrations of the market.  As long as the market goes up, and so far over the course of time it has despite hiccups, you are okay.  Behavioral economics would tell you why people overweight hiccups.  If you need the money, you can get the money.

Day traders want variance.  They are in and out, in and out.  Without variance, they don’t have opportunity.  But, day trading is not investing.  If you day trade and aren’t earning more than a minimum 25% on your capital, you probably won’t be doing it a sustainable period of time.  That day when you take a big loss will wipe you out.  It’s gonna happen.

Venture investing means accepting A LOT of risk, or variance. So by definition, returns should be outsized.  One thing that would be tough to execute, but I believe the time has come, is a fund to raise a huge pool of capital and become an LP in many many venture funds.  That won’t mitigate risk, but improve your chances of finding the outsize return if the manager of that fund chooses funds correctly.  The problem is getting access to the funds.

When you look at the universe of funds that return 3x after fees, it’s very small.  Venture is a tougher business than stock picking.

I have seen people try to execute on this portfolio idea by raising money and putting the same check inside lots and lots of startup firms, but that doesn’t work.  You are only adding more risk with every investment and your expected outcome isn’t any better.  There is no “diversification” in the classic finance sense.

The trick in VC is who is managing the money, or in finding the best deals.  Deal flow is the life blood of a VC because it gives them enough looks so that when they decide to invest they feel like they have an edge over the market.  The only way to make money in VC is to go against the herd.  You see something that the market doesn’t.

The other hard thing in VC is putting enough money in a company to own a big enough chunk of equity so that if it pays, it pays big.  This is why if you are an angel, be disciplined.  Put similar amounts in every company on initial check sizes so that the check sizes combined with the amount of equity you own are replicated across your entire portfolio.  That way, when one pays you probably will pay for your entire portfolio.  Rule of thumb angel math is 50% of your investments will fail.  20%-40% will return 1x-4x.  That means you need 10% of them hit 30x to realize a 27% IRR.

Over the past few years I had some angel investments pay off.  They had been in my portfolio over 10 years.  The internal rate of return was well over 20%.  It beat the same return on the SPY over the same period by quite a bit.  What I mean by this is if I invested $1 in the SPY, or $1 in this company, I was far better off accepting the risk, lack of liquidity, and being in the company.  I also had some companies fail over that same time period.  Your failures happen early.  That’s the thing about venture investing, your choices are highly dependent and the outcomes highly variable.

By the way, I co-founded Hyde Park Angels in April of 2007.  4 out of the first 5 investments paid off and the other company is still a going concern.  That’s an amazing track record.

Risk is severely misunderstood in America and not taught well.  Conditional probability is not understood, and not taught well either.  That’s apparent in how we have dealt with Covid.

I will post tomorrow on what I see for the future of VC and the stock market.

The post Venture Returns first appeared on Points and Figures.

Returns to venture capital have outpaced the S+P 500 over the past decade. Here is the growth of $10,000 over the past decade courtesy of Ycharts.

SPY data by YCharts

Very very good return when you look at historical numbers.

But venture has been better. Chicago Booth professor Steven Kaplan has studied venture returns over time and I linked to his 2017 study. That trend has persisted through today.  Venture returns are outpacing S+P returns.

I think it’s important to understand venture returns vs stock returns because with Covid, capital will get democratized more and new entrepreneurial ecosystems might jumpstart.  We might see new investors enter into venture investing that didn’t do it before.

The next twenty years will bring new technology to the market that will be powerful and some outsized returns will be gained by savvy investors.

High net worth individuals and family offices that might not have considered venture investing before might want to take a stab at it.  They need to understand what they are getting into, establish some systems and rubrics, and then have at it if they want to assume the risk.  Personally, I think it would behoove them and society if they did.

Here is the thing.  In Venture, returns happen in certain companies, and the others fail.  My friend Brian Lund wrote about two different kinds of traders in his weekly blog. 

Time works for long-term investors in a different way. It relieves themselves of the burden of themselves.  

All they need is a drawer to put their stocks in and they are good to go.

The above is the way to invest in the stock market and it’s been proven over and over again.  Stick your money in an S+P 500 fund with no fees/low fees and forget about it.  Eugene Fama showed it in 1962 and wealth managers have been fighting with him ever since.

Venture investing is not the stock market.  Returns are uneven and unpredictable.  Remember a story Bob Okabe told me about an angel investor that lost money on the first 19 companies they invested in.  They should have kept investing….

There also is a liquidity premium in venture vs stocks which demands a higher return.  Venture investing is a roach motel.  You can get in, but you can’t get out.

One of the reasons that putting your stocks in a drawer and forgetting about them works is it takes away “variance”.  You aren’t subjecting yourself to the daily gyrations of the market.  As long as the market goes up, and so far over the course of time it has despite hiccups, you are okay.  Behavioral economics would tell you why people overweight hiccups.  If you need the money, you can get the money.

Day traders want variance.  They are in and out, in and out.  Without variance, they don’t have opportunity.  But, day trading is not investing.  If you day trade and aren’t earning more than a minimum 25% on your capital, you probably won’t be doing it a sustainable period of time.  That day when you take a big loss will wipe you out.  It’s gonna happen.

Venture investing means accepting A LOT of risk, or variance. So by definition, returns should be outsized.  One thing that would be tough to execute, but I believe the time has come, is a fund to raise a huge pool of capital and become an LP in many many venture funds.  That won’t mitigate risk, but improve your chances of finding the outsize return if the manager of that fund chooses funds correctly.  The problem is getting access to the funds.

When you look at the universe of funds that return 3x after fees, it’s very small.  Venture is a tougher business than stock picking.

I have seen people try to execute on this portfolio idea by raising money and putting the same check inside lots and lots of startup firms, but that doesn’t work.  You are only adding more risk with every investment and your expected outcome isn’t any better.  There is no “diversification” in the classic finance sense.

The trick in VC is who is managing the money, or in finding the best deals.  Deal flow is the life blood of a VC because it gives them enough looks so that when they decide to invest they feel like they have an edge over the market.  The only way to make money in VC is to go against the herd.  You see something that the market doesn’t.

The other hard thing in VC is putting enough money in a company to own a big enough chunk of equity so that if it pays, it pays big.  This is why if you are an angel, be disciplined.  Put similar amounts in every company on initial check sizes so that the check sizes combined with the amount of equity you own are replicated across your entire portfolio.  That way, when one pays you probably will pay for your entire portfolio.  Rule of thumb angel math is 50% of your investments will fail.  20%-40% will return 1x-4x.  That means you need 10% of them hit 30x to realize a 27% IRR.

Over the past few years I had some angel investments pay off.  They had been in my portfolio over 10 years.  The internal rate of return was well over 20%.  It beat the same return on the SPY over the same period by quite a bit.  What I mean by this is if I invested $1 in the SPY, or $1 in this company, I was far better off accepting the risk, lack of liquidity, and being in the company.  I also had some companies fail over that same time period.  Your failures happen early.  That’s the thing about venture investing, your choices are highly dependent and the outcomes highly variable.

By the way, I co-founded Hyde Park Angels in April of 2007.  4 out of the first 5 investments paid off and the other company is still a going concern.  That’s an amazing track record.

Risk is severely misunderstood in America and not taught well.  Conditional probability is not understood, and not taught well either.  That’s apparent in how we have dealt with Covid.

I will post tomorrow on what I see for the future of VC and the stock market.

The post Venture Returns first appeared on Points and Figures.

Returns to venture capital have outpaced the S+P 500 over the past decade. Here is the growth of $10,000 over the past decade courtesy of Ycharts.

SPY data by YCharts

Very very good return when you look at historical numbers.

But venture has been better. Chicago Booth professor Steven Kaplan has studied venture returns over time and I linked to his 2017 study. That trend has persisted through today.  Venture returns are outpacing S+P returns.

I think it’s important to understand venture returns vs stock returns because with Covid, capital will get democratized more and new entrepreneurial ecosystems might jumpstart.  We might see new investors enter into venture investing that didn’t do it before.

The next twenty years will bring new technology to the market that will be powerful and some outsized returns will be gained by savvy investors.

High net worth individuals and family offices that might not have considered venture investing before might want to take a stab at it.  They need to understand what they are getting into, establish some systems and rubrics, and then have at it if they want to assume the risk.  Personally, I think it would behoove them and society if they did.

Here is the thing.  In Venture, returns happen in certain companies, and the others fail.  My friend Brian Lund wrote about two different kinds of traders in his weekly blog. 

Time works for long-term investors in a different way. It relieves themselves of the burden of themselves.  

All they need is a drawer to put their stocks in and they are good to go.

The above is the way to invest in the stock market and it’s been proven over and over again.  Stick your money in an S+P 500 fund with no fees/low fees and forget about it.  Eugene Fama showed it in 1962 and wealth managers have been fighting with him ever since.

Venture investing is not the stock market.  Returns are uneven and unpredictable.  Remember a story Bob Okabe told me about an angel investor that lost money on the first 19 companies they invested in.  They should have kept investing….

There also is a liquidity premium in venture vs stocks which demands a higher return.  Venture investing is a roach motel.  You can get in, but you can’t get out.

One of the reasons that putting your stocks in a drawer and forgetting about them works is it takes away “variance”.  You aren’t subjecting yourself to the daily gyrations of the market.  As long as the market goes up, and so far over the course of time it has despite hiccups, you are okay.  Behavioral economics would tell you why people overweight hiccups.  If you need the money, you can get the money.

Day traders want variance.  They are in and out, in and out.  Without variance, they don’t have opportunity.  But, day trading is not investing.  If you day trade and aren’t earning more than a minimum 25% on your capital, you probably won’t be doing it a sustainable period of time.  That day when you take a big loss will wipe you out.  It’s gonna happen.

Venture investing means accepting A LOT of risk, or variance. So by definition, returns should be outsized.  One thing that would be tough to execute, but I believe the time has come, is a fund to raise a huge pool of capital and become an LP in many many venture funds.  That won’t mitigate risk, but improve your chances of finding the outsize return if the manager of that fund chooses funds correctly.  The problem is getting access to the funds.

When you look at the universe of funds that return 3x after fees, it’s very small.  Venture is a tougher business than stock picking.

I have seen people try to execute on this portfolio idea by raising money and putting the same check inside lots and lots of startup firms, but that doesn’t work.  You are only adding more risk with every investment and your expected outcome isn’t any better.  There is no “diversification” in the classic finance sense.

The trick in VC is who is managing the money, or in finding the best deals.  Deal flow is the life blood of a VC because it gives them enough looks so that when they decide to invest they feel like they have an edge over the market.  The only way to make money in VC is to go against the herd.  You see something that the market doesn’t.

The other hard thing in VC is putting enough money in a company to own a big enough chunk of equity so that if it pays, it pays big.  This is why if you are an angel, be disciplined.  Put similar amounts in every company on initial check sizes so that the check sizes combined with the amount of equity you own are replicated across your entire portfolio.  That way, when one pays you probably will pay for your entire portfolio.  Rule of thumb angel math is 50% of your investments will fail.  20%-40% will return 1x-4x.  That means you need 10% of them hit 30x to realize a 27% IRR.

Over the past few years I had some angel investments pay off.  They had been in my portfolio over 10 years.  The internal rate of return was well over 20%.  It beat the same return on the SPY over the same period by quite a bit.  What I mean by this is if I invested $1 in the SPY, or $1 in this company, I was far better off accepting the risk, lack of liquidity, and being in the company.  I also had some companies fail over that same time period.  Your failures happen early.  That’s the thing about venture investing, your choices are highly dependent and the outcomes highly variable.

By the way, I co-founded Hyde Park Angels in April of 2007.  4 out of the first 5 investments paid off and the other company is still a going concern.  That’s an amazing track record.

Risk is severely misunderstood in America and not taught well.  Conditional probability is not understood, and not taught well either.  That’s apparent in how we have dealt with Covid.

I will post tomorrow on what I see for the future of VC and the stock market.

The post Venture Returns first appeared on Points and Figures.

Returns to venture capital have outpaced the S+P 500 over the past decade. Here is the growth of $10,000 over the past decade courtesy of Ycharts.

SPY data by YCharts

Very very good return when you look at historical numbers.

But venture has been better. Chicago Booth professor Steven Kaplan has studied venture returns over time and I linked to his 2017 study. That trend has persisted through today.  Venture returns are outpacing S+P returns.

I think it’s important to understand venture returns vs stock returns because with Covid, capital will get democratized more and new entrepreneurial ecosystems might jumpstart.  We might see new investors enter into venture investing that didn’t do it before.

The next twenty years will bring new technology to the market that will be powerful and some outsized returns will be gained by savvy investors.

High net worth individuals and family offices that might not have considered venture investing before might want to take a stab at it.  They need to understand what they are getting into, establish some systems and rubrics, and then have at it if they want to assume the risk.  Personally, I think it would behoove them and society if they did.

Here is the thing.  In Venture, returns happen in certain companies, and the others fail.  My friend Brian Lund wrote about two different kinds of traders in his weekly blog. 

Time works for long-term investors in a different way. It relieves themselves of the burden of themselves.  

All they need is a drawer to put their stocks in and they are good to go.

The above is the way to invest in the stock market and it’s been proven over and over again.  Stick your money in an S+P 500 fund with no fees/low fees and forget about it.  Eugene Fama showed it in 1962 and wealth managers have been fighting with him ever since.

Venture investing is not the stock market.  Returns are uneven and unpredictable.  Remember a story Bob Okabe told me about an angel investor that lost money on the first 19 companies they invested in.  They should have kept investing….

There also is a liquidity premium in venture vs stocks which demands a higher return.  Venture investing is a roach motel.  You can get in, but you can’t get out.

One of the reasons that putting your stocks in a drawer and forgetting about them works is it takes away “variance”.  You aren’t subjecting yourself to the daily gyrations of the market.  As long as the market goes up, and so far over the course of time it has despite hiccups, you are okay.  Behavioral economics would tell you why people overweight hiccups.  If you need the money, you can get the money.

Day traders want variance.  They are in and out, in and out.  Without variance, they don’t have opportunity.  But, day trading is not investing.  If you day trade and aren’t earning more than a minimum 25% on your capital, you probably won’t be doing it a sustainable period of time.  That day when you take a big loss will wipe you out.  It’s gonna happen.

Venture investing means accepting A LOT of risk, or variance. So by definition, returns should be outsized.  One thing that would be tough to execute, but I believe the time has come, is a fund to raise a huge pool of capital and become an LP in many many venture funds.  That won’t mitigate risk, but improve your chances of finding the outsize return if the manager of that fund chooses funds correctly.  The problem is getting access to the funds.

When you look at the universe of funds that return 3x after fees, it’s very small.  Venture is a tougher business than stock picking.

I have seen people try to execute on this portfolio idea by raising money and putting the same check inside lots and lots of startup firms, but that doesn’t work.  You are only adding more risk with every investment and your expected outcome isn’t any better.  There is no “diversification” in the classic finance sense.

The trick in VC is who is managing the money, or in finding the best deals.  Deal flow is the life blood of a VC because it gives them enough looks so that when they decide to invest they feel like they have an edge over the market.  The only way to make money in VC is to go against the herd.  You see something that the market doesn’t.

The other hard thing in VC is putting enough money in a company to own a big enough chunk of equity so that if it pays, it pays big.  This is why if you are an angel, be disciplined.  Put similar amounts in every company on initial check sizes so that the check sizes combined with the amount of equity you own are replicated across your entire portfolio.  That way, when one pays you probably will pay for your entire portfolio.  Rule of thumb angel math is 50% of your investments will fail.  20%-40% will return 1x-4x.  That means you need 10% of them hit 30x to realize a 27% IRR.

Over the past few years I had some angel investments pay off.  They had been in my portfolio over 10 years.  The internal rate of return was well over 20%.  It beat the same return on the SPY over the same period by quite a bit.  What I mean by this is if I invested $1 in the SPY, or $1 in this company, I was far better off accepting the risk, lack of liquidity, and being in the company.  I also had some companies fail over that same time period.  Your failures happen early.  That’s the thing about venture investing, your choices are highly dependent and the outcomes highly variable.

By the way, I co-founded Hyde Park Angels in April of 2007.  4 out of the first 5 investments paid off and the other company is still a going concern.  That’s an amazing track record.

Risk is severely misunderstood in America and not taught well.  Conditional probability is not understood, and not taught well either.  That’s apparent in how we have dealt with Covid.

I will post tomorrow on what I see for the future of VC and the stock market.

The post Venture Returns first appeared on Points and Figures.

It’s been challenging to get stuff done since the COVID 19 outbreak manifested itself far and wide back in February.  The other goings on made it more difficult.  However, FinMkt and their terrific CEO Luan Cox have been working steadfastly.

FinMkt is a network.  WLV is a seed investor.  Manchester Story led the seed round and Fin Top Capital led the last round.  It’s not something consumers would see, but it is something that consumers benefit from.  Lenders of all stripes like leading banks, credit unions, and non-traditional lenders are part of the FinMkt network.  The network is growing quickly because of the efficiency FinMkt brings, and the high-quality loans that the network gets a look at funding.

Prior to all this going down, they had been working on several partnerships.  They recently launched a partnership with Porch, PenFed Credit Union, and Genesis Financial Solutions.  With Porch, contractors and home improvement outlets can have customers finance purchases through their new link at FinFi.

Here is a video of how it all works.

Great news for consumers, suppliers, and FinMkt.

I am seeing more and more predictions about the future. Most are produced by Captain Obvious.  For example, as a society, we will do more and more online.  Duh.  That trend was happening prior to the Wuhan Flu.

I was chatting with a friend yesterday. In late January, he had a horrible flu. I brought him some chicken soup. I was around him in his house for a bit. Around 8 days later I had a horrible cold. Turns out my friend was on a plane next to a Chinese gentleman who was hacking up a storm. I can’t wait for antibody tests because I may have had it.

It’s pretty easy to say telemedicine will happen.  Great.  We knew that and anyone that invested in telemedicine in the last five years is hopefully reaping a windfall now.

The real hard stuff though happens in structure.  For example, many hospitals are laying off people and closing during this Wuhan Flu crisis.  Crazy right?  Amazing that a health care professional would be out of work during a medical crisis.  Why is this happening?  A lot of the healthcare system runs on elective surgery.  The government bans elective surgery and the revenue driver that holds the health care system up goes away.  Welcome to your taste of single-payer socialized medicine.

We are seeing that the regulatory system our country has for lots and lots of industries is out of whack and when stressors happen the system buckles.  Don’t fall for the “the free market doesn’t work” meme.  The free market does work.  We don’t have a lot of truly “free” markets in the United States.

What if you unbundled the medical system?  Wouldn’t it be more efficient not to have general hospitals but have smaller specialty clinics?  When a crisis happens, the orthopedic surgeon, the plastic surgeon, the dermatologist, the ophthalmologist don’t have to shut down.  They are away from the action.  They just operate as normal.

Wouldn’t it be better not to have single-payer but more price transparency?  We were recently in Nevada.  I asked someone about getting medical insurance there and what were the costs.  It’s amazingly byzantine.  My health care plan that I have had since 1992 in Illinois doesn’t transfer at all.  My plan in Illinois is byzantine too.  Socializing the health care system will only make it worse.  Why not remove all the price floors, price ceilings, mandates and let everyone from insurance companies to providers compete? Why not remove the tax write off for employers to provide insurance so that your insurance isn’t tied to your job?

Oh, scary!  The naysayers will immediately criticize the free market idea because someone is going to make money.  Yup.  That’s how America works.  Will some people get better or more access to care than others?  Yup.  Will there be a baseline of basic care.  Yup, because the market will fill the need for it.

There are plenty of other industries that could be totally blown up and remade through free-market competition.  Insurance, Banking, Distribution, and Mining to name but a few.

What about conferences?  My friend Nilesh posted on his Facebook that software might eat conferences.  I had been thinking about that too.  It also came up on a webinar I was listening too.  If you are an executive and looking at your budget you might be spending millions of dollars to sponsor various events and big conferences around the country-or world.

I have been to a few of these things and generally find them to be a waste of time.  The information is not fresh, and often times it’s been filtered through a legal department.  The “networking” is generally lame.  How do the big conferences change to really add value for participants and sponsors?  I don’t know the answer to that.  But, if they don’t they will go away.

I am seeing protests happening now across the country. People are seeing the death count from the Wuhan Flu and realize it’s not as serious as the faulty models projected. They are ticked as they see their rights trampled on by government that is making decisions based on politics and not science. Michigan’s governor might be the worst but there are plenty of other examples.

Maybe we are waking up. Why is it that I can buy liquor at a grocery store, but some states have closed liquor stores? Why is it that I can get my dog washed at some big box store that might provide that service, but I can’t use a boutique business set up to do the same? How is the government determining what is essential and what’s not essential? Why are we giving the government the power to even do that?  Why is a throw pillow non-essential and a sleeping pillow essential?  Why is my cancer biopsy non-essential?  How about my hip replacement?  Maybe those things are essential to me.

Instead of trying to predict what will happen, maybe we ought to take a really hard look at our regulatory regimes and look at how much power local government has over our lives.  As Thomas Sowell said,

As many have warned in the past, freedom is unlikely to be lost all at once and openly. It is far more likely to be eroded away, bit by bit, amid glittering promises and expressions of noble ideas.

— Thomas Sowell (@ThomasSowell) April 14, 2020