Archive October 2018

Role of Central Banks in Economic Crisis: Japan and Thailand

Bank of Thailand Story: 1997 Crisis

1:07:53 – 1:19:16

The IMF by the way asks countries to implement free-market policies except the IMF policies themselves are not free-market policies, they are credit guidance. You are forced to reduce your credit creation (now) turning this banking crisis into a massive recession. So essentially this combination of IMF and central bank caused this.

Bank of Japan Story: 1945 Crisis vs 1991 Crisis

1:00:05 – 1:07:53

Foreign vs Domestic Investors

Foreign Direct Investment [See Why is FDI Important here] is good when the money comes into the host country. However, foreign investors tend to be focused on short term returns. Temporary changes in the local geo-political or political landscape, or direction indicators from central banks in wealthy countries tends to have an exaggerated panic-stricken, paranoid influence on such investors. When FDI investors run for the exits in such circumstances, the consequences for the host country can be quite disastrous. Stock markets panic and make the overall investment climate appear to become undesirable rapidly and irrationally.

Hence, Domestic Investment is a far better option for emerging economies. When a country enters a cycle of sustained growth due to trends such as a positive demographic dividend, then certain segments of the country’s population invariably have high disposable incomes. Such segments of the population have to be educated and motivated to invest in productive investments rather than investing in assets or spending on consumer goods. See Prof Richard Werner’s presentation below where he makes his case for the benefits of investment credits for creation of goods and services in order to achieve sustainable growth. It is quite silly for investors in emerging economies, particularly folks with high disposable incomes, to invest in assets (real estate) or in high end consumer goods (imported cars, etc) when the critical, pivotal need is domestic investment in goods/services creation. And when such investment is essential for sustainable long term growth.

The question of who captures most of the profits from the creation of new value is also very important. It is safe to assume that most of the financial returns derived from new goods/service offerings is captured by the investors. So, in a high growth emerging economy it would be preferable for domestic investors to derive most of these benefits as opposed to foreign investors. Indeed, all businesses including foreigner funded ones do create jobs and this results in multiplier effects in the local economy. However, as mentioned earlier, the finicky behaviour of foreign investors exposes the host country’s economy to far greater risks than any possible rewards.

Meaning of True Innovation

One has to appreciate her intellectual candour as it relates to her decision to not point to “hard work” as the reason behind the disparity. For anyone to do so in the year 2018 would be truly pitiful.

Little child: You know mommy how come our friend here makes less than $1,000 a year but you just bought a two thousand dollar ukulele?

Mom: I looked at my husband I said well what are we gonna say? We could tell them this Ayn Randian thing about “you know we work harder so we make and we deserve that stuff”. But, at the end of the day we just said “you know what, life’s unfair and you know we’re lucky enough to be born in a place where we can afford those things and where we can afford good education and good healthcare and some aren’t as lucky”.

Little child: I get it. You know we’re not all born equally, but we still have to treat people equally right?

Mom’s narrative: It’s such a simple concept and I had to think about it. And over the next couple months I (you know) went to a number of tech conferences and what I realised was that the greatest innovations of our time have always happened when we actually treat everyone equally. Innovation is not incremental (right). True innovation, revolutionary innovation, is something where it touches everyone and it can touch everyone and it touches the masses.

Side Note. When an extraordinary businessperson such as Mei Mei Hu, CEO of United Neuroscience, has to point to ‘luck’ as being the reason for the quality of life that the family enjoys, that is shameful. Shameful, not for Mei Mei, but for all humanity. One has to appreciate her intellectual candour as it relates to her decision to not point to “hard work” as the reason behind the disparity. For anyone to do so in the year 2018 would be truly pitiful.

Knowledge Web vs Human Web

The current internet – the HTTP based world wide web – is not what Tim Berners Lee envisioned when he laid the foundation for it in 1993. On the positive side of things, the internet has democratised access to information which in turn has given tremendous confidence to individuals, particularly those from developing countries. However, it has proven to be ill-suited for personal and social topics.

Platforms such as Facebook have clearly and consistently demonstrated that they lack the competence, maturity and wisdom that is required to secure and manage users’ data. Also, they have created massive societal problems on a global scale by providing the framework under which fake news is easily propagated and extremist viewpoints are self-reinforced amongst uninformed users and groups. Extraordinary data breaches and violation of user privacy has become the norm.
 

The Knowledge Web

Data aggregation by a few oligarchic technology behemoths might actually be beneficial when it comes to dissemination of knowledge. Perhaps some entities such as Google and Amazon Retail can continue to thrive as we look forward to the 2020s and 2030s, under the umbrella of the “Knowledge Web”. But, for topics related to individuals, we have to reach back to Berner Lee’s original vision.
 

The Human Web

The Human Web is for human beings. It is the web where the primary focus is the interests of individual humans – not nation-states, not continents, not religions, not races, not corporations, not non-profits, not surveillance agents, not hackers, not animals, not reptiles, not aliens, not any other grouping. The motivation for this web is to protect and promote individual interests and individual privacy.
 

Blockchain

TODO

Global Impact

you should be thinking that this is more and more of a treasure that you have and that the best thing you can do with it is to share it laterally horizontally, copy and paste that everywhere so that the thing that you have in your hands that might have been useful to people goes everywhere that it needs to be …

“.. it is a form of censorship if you bully change makers and innovators by making them prove to you how they can self sustain and grow financially. If that’s what you put them through first, you are censoring our ability to be creative, communal and collaborative right when we most need to do that. And I would encourage you if you have the comfort, the privilege, the power to maybe back off on that a little bit and try investing in some of the people that are running these experiments with ownership design, (then) you are making a very timely and helpful investment (for the humanity, for the planet) .. ”

If you are fortunate enough to have a company, to have resources or even bump into a change maker or an innovator who has a good idea, if you have something that’s relevant right now in your hands, that’s amazing. That is so fortunate obviously, obviously most people don’t have that. If you have that and then you think ‘you know what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna build myself like an empire out of this. And how would I do that (is) okay I got to really consolidate in .. 2-3 countries over .. 3-4 years, it doesn’t make sense to do that anymore … (to) maintain all (of) our power and control as we get over there …’ ”

“you should be thinking that this is more and more of a treasure that you have and that the best thing you can do with it is to share it laterally horizontally, copy and paste that everywhere so that the thing that you have in your hands that might have been useful to people goes everywhere that it needs to be …”

Future Workers – Creative, Adaptable, Problem-Explorers

Invigorating talk “Future of Human Potential” by Vivienne Ming, PhD in NeuroScience & Psychology from Carnegie Mellon, Entrepreneur, Speaker.

Here are my takeaways from this presentation:

  • The best performers on any job are those that do the job because of the pure joy they derive from it. For these folks, incentives are not the driving force.
  • “Explorers” is what the society needs and will value as AI and automation become more pervasive over the coming years. The Meta-Learning slide below shows the 50 characteristics of Explorers.

The hilarious part is at 11:24-12:08: “If you really want to understand. I mean actually everything I’m gonna say about the future (of) work doesn’t matter, this is what’s really important. After a whole session here of innovation and exponential technologies, if you can appreciate that tens of millions of dollars of CIA funding, two dozen dissertations, 20 years of research distilled down into animating cats on your phone, then you (y’all) truly understand (that) all innovation ends up being animated cats on phones. It’s just a fundamental reality. …”