#AcademicRunPlaylist - 4/17/25

Author

Ben Waber
April 17, 2025

A selfie of me in front of the Charles River, with a dock behind me with small sailboats on it, two of which have red sails on them. Beyond is the Boston skyline, with a few clouds over the skyscrapers on an otherwise clear day. I'm a bald, middle-aged, white man with a red beard flecked with white. I'm wearing black sunglasses and a dark blue running shirt.

It was a lovely, brisk day to run to campus, and besides saluting Harvard on the way I also listened to some talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an engaging conversation with Tom Vogl on the global decline in extreme poverty from the 1980s on the VoxDev podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcSM1dcVKsU

Next was a timely and troubling panel on privacy law issues involving DOGE and the Trump administration with Mark Lemley, Mario Trujillo, Alexandra Reeve Givens, and Daniel Solove at TeachPrivacy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6eQ5D9xUuc

Next was "The Technology Trap" by Carl Benedikt Frey. Frey goes on a tour of technological change since the industrial revolution and its impact on labor markets and society more broadly. What becomes clear is just how common technological disruption has become, as well as how long it typically takes for benefits to percolate to society and for larger productivity/earnings gains to be realized. Better technology, in short, does not guarantee better earnings absent government and labor pressure. Frey does get a bit techno-determinist, and the book overall is very US and UK focused. This is, however, the best book I've seen on this topic. Highly recommend https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691172798/the-technology-trap

Last was "Reimagining Capitalism In a World on Fire" by Rebecca Henderson. This book takes a very corporate-focused view of rethinking corporate goals, advocating for enlightened CEOs and investors to drive change. Using a number of intriguing cases, Henderson demonstrates how this has been accomplished (albeit for short timeframes). There is some time spent on unions and government regulation, but it's surprisingly relegated to a very small portion of this book given how central regulation has been in banning things such as child labor, dangerous working conditions, etc. My favorite part of the book was on how accounting practice can aid these efforts by providing validated, non-financial but material metrics to investors.

Importantly, this book was written in 2020. Many of the conclusions now seem quaint given the current environment in the US and backpedaling by most of the firms mentioned here https://reimaginingcapitalism.org/