Of course, most luxury goods in China are for corrupted officials and their relatives. And that made China become the biggest luxury-goods market. In this kind of dictatorship, in this kind of totalitarian society, it is easy to make deals that you cannot make in a democratic society.
Our characterization of collective folly is that sound judgment is not feasible when there is forced or false agreement in groups. We also show how group polarization sets the stage for risky and even dangerous decisions to be made. How we navigate between false agreement and polarization is the kind of mastery that collective wisdom represents.
Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.
My mom was on welfare and the occasional food stamp, but I have never participated in any of those governmental programs, even the ones that kind of work like education, scholarships and whatever, and I managed to do just fine.
There are two kinds of terrorism. Rational terrorism such as Palestinian terrorism and apocalyptic terrorism like Sept. 11. You have to distinguish between the two.