Instead, they may simply be unable to get enough information to make correct judgments about the value of securities, or indeed may be given misleading information by insiders such as company executives or salesmen from the financial-services industry.

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And while Eli may be correct that people who produce a lot of external value get rewarded in the long run, it would help if the economics field did a better job of rewarding positive externality generating behavior and of explicitly arguing for optimal social norms.

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In particular, he must move fast to correct three persistent failings of the company: lack of direction, low transparency and poor shareholder value.

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For the only possible route to profit is by guessing (you might have very good information, might even be correct, but it is still a guess) on what people of the future believe the value of gold is.

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For example, what visibility or value will a customer enjoy if she tells an employee about a way to improve the product or correct a service problem?

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