Monetizing Risk

Abstract

The three most personally interesting subjects I have come across in my personal journey are history, politics, and business. I love history, in its truest form, because it is rooted in fact. Either things happened or they did not. Certainly, there are examples of revisionist history in which people twist the facts in order to support their position or view of the world, but history that can be proven by fact and does not rely on eyewitness accounts has an element of purity to it, in my opinion. There is also an element to history where we get to choose in what ways we would like to apply lessons in order to shape our current actions in an effort to achieve our desired outcomes. The convergence of indisputable fact with conjecture and opinion makes for very interesting discussions. I find politics fascinating because there are no universally accepted truths. Each side tends to be able to produce contrary facts and figures that should not be able to coexist in the natural world. The fact that the sides of an issue never tend to agree and yet accept their side of the argument as universally correct without exception is a fascinating journey through the human mind. Business is fascinating to me because the results of decisions present enormous consequences to those involved, and there are few things in business that can be qualitatively analyzed without also being quantified at some point. Businesses forecast many things based on assumption, but all things, at some point have an economic impact, which provides universal truths in business for those who know where to find it. When evaluating my options after leaving the military and beginning my college career, I chose business over political science and history because of not only its universal application, but also because of the fact that given enough time, there will be an inarguable result of efforts that can be quantified in terms of economic impact.