Pierre Omidyar, the eBay founder, is on the board of my company, and turns out to be just the kind of thoughtful, modest billionaire you’d want next-door. Pierre, I think, would shovel snow from his sidewalk, and later go door-to-door to get the block association to sponsor stem-cell research. This book shows how the philosophy behind his early decisions shaped the company so strongly. Some fundamental Omidyar assumptions, which were not obvious to all at the time he started out:
People are basically good.
People are generally capable of working out disputes without god-like intervention.
Reputation is worth something in itself.
Transparency helps a system regulate itself.
People value what they pay for more than stuff that comes for free.

Come to think of it, these notions share something with the constitution-hashing I’m reading about in Alistair Cooke’s book.