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Notes -
As the debate kids would say: “cap solves.” Leave the problem for someone else, so long as we can be reasonably confident their incentives are aligned correctly. Our best way of doing that is by letting them make money on the free market.
It’s interesting that @jeroboam mentioned Taleb, because I was thinking of his other works. Companies have their plans for the present. With a sufficient time horizon, they’ll also hedge against the “known unknowns” of the future. But how do they deal with “unknown unknowns?” Black swan events which defy the models and do incalculable damage before anyone pivots. The best-laid plans of mice and men oft go awry.
So how much of that risk is correctly measured by agriculture companies? Modern farming is capital-intensive and low-margin. I would expect this to pull their time horizon closer. Every dollar spent on contingency plans is one not spent on something more urgent.
There’s a fun little story which I also encountered via Scott. Vincent Kosuga managed to ruin onion futures for the entire country. It turns out what’s good for stock prices isn’t necessarily beneficial for everyone—or anyone—else.
How do pre-modern subsistence farmers deal with the "unknown unknowns"? How much of that risk was correctly measured? My sense is that they mostly just died.
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