Tyler Cowen, who is perhaps the most lateral-thinking economist I know, talks of the rise of America’s ‘complacent classes’ – the creep of a risk-averse and conformist mindset. In a supposed age of hyper-individualism, eccentricity is penalised. Software screens out job applicants before they have a chance to show their faces. Matchmaking algorithms do the same for our love lives. Cowen detects conformism even in the liveliest Silicon Valley companies. Most of its denizens wear some variation on the casual hipster uniform and all dutifully strip the paint off their office walls. They litter
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