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Hormegeddon
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Hormegeddon

How Too Much of a Good Thing Leads to Disaster

Bill Bonner
Lioncrest Publishing, 2014
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Controversial
  • Analytical
  • Scientific

Recommendation

Best-selling author Bill Bonner examines a serious problem he finds running through history and modern society: “Hormesis,” which is what happens when a little of something thrills, but too much of it kills. Bonner explains his coinage, “Hormegeddon,” as meaning having “too much of a good thing in a public policy context.” His lively lecture, which covers many instances he sees as governmental overreaching, pretty much deflates any belief that human beings can understand and control the world. He sets forth in this engagingly written, contrarian complaint to expose the lies, misunderstandings and ideologies he says have ended up in governmental errors and financial crises. When impassioned, Bonner can swing wide, blunt some sharp corners and make bold assertions, some of which are flatly judgmental. However, he anchors his opinions in historical examples of public policy gone awry. While always politically neutral, getAbstract thinks Bonner’s ardent viewpoint – agree with him or not – will intrigue those who follow social planning, political theory and economics.

Summary

“Hormegeddon”

If you add a little bit of poison to yeast, the yeast grows better. This is “hormesis”: A little of something is good, but if you add a lot of it, that extra can be bad. You need food every day, but if you eat too much, you could get fat and develop diabetes or heart trouble. Exercise, sex, you name it, almost everything is “subject to the law of declining marginal utility.”

Hormegeddon is “what happens when you have too much of a good thing in a public policy context.” Governments create “public policy disasters” when they apply “rational, small-scale problem-solving logic” to “inappropriately broad” situations. Then, these situations move from being fine to escalating gradually into full-blown disasters. Policy makers create hormegeddons when they apply reasoning to “large scale planning” and support it with armed force. Government involvement disrupts the feedback loop – in which trouble tells you something is wrong and needs fixing – and prevents society from learning from the feedback. One side effect is the creation of a class of people who benefit from a disaster.

Modern society requires complex thought. “Public information” cripples that...

About the Author

Bill Bonner, founder of Agora Publishing, writes the daily financial newsletter Diary of a Rogue Economist. He is the co-author of several bestsellers, including Financial Reckoning Day, The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis, and Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets.

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