HN user
For low friction, transfer of ideas, Graham is right. But sometimes sounding like passport application form instructions doesn’t get the right feeling across.
Words have a magic about them, and I don’t think Paul Graham would dispute that.
Less to do with insecurity, more to do with signifying membership of a club. A bit like a regimental tie, vocal fry or the latest pair of sneakers.
What could possibly go wrong?
Great comment. I might go further and say that cherry-picking is either an attempt to deceive the listener or oneself. I’d put it on the same pedestal as lying.
I found this very insightful, thank you.
There was much resistance to quotas in South African rugby through the late 90s and noughts. But this was the team which won the 2019 rugby World Cup: https://www.straitstimes.com/sport/south-africa-win-rugby-wo....
I’m really not an expert here, but I think partly what happened is that quotas force a rethink on the part of the establishment: “what do we need to do to make sure we can meet these quotas with high quality players/managers?”. And then there is system change around that.
The parallel is when we set ourselves sales targets at work, we then put in place the structures to meet those targets.
Sheeesh. Bad news for entrepreneurship. As due to mortgage lending rules, it’s very difficult to get a loan as a business owner rather than an employee with steady, bankable, salary
What is the incentive for a bank to lend at 0%?
Surely it’s more profitable to do nothing?
That’s an interesting site. I liked this essay more, dealing as it does with change and technology:
https://www.richardhughestherapy.com/post/discovering-the-li...
Thanks for doing this. I’ve a few to add and have already messaged this around a few people.
I’ll look up that Wikipedia page. Thanks.
Every man has a balance sheet associated with his person: a sum of all his assets and liabilities, burdens and obligations. It captures one’s true wealth (or poverty). A large part of its content can only be settled in the political realm. If it’s not a balance sheet, I don’t know what else to call it.
Fair point.
It was my comment and I’d like to reply to that specific point, elaborating my initial comment: a true balance sheet is beyond the purely financial. It covers natural capital and social capital too. It’s only the narrow contemporary understanding of balance sheet that means that so many costs (and gains) are hidden to us and therefore ignored. Part of society’s problem is the phoney baloney system of financial accounting that leaves so much unaccounted for. To refine my initial point: there will be many horrific costs to this mess. Some poor sod will end up paying the cost. If owners think they can escape full liability, they will continue to take risks because they can privatize the profit and socialize the costs.
Agreed. And the owners billed.
There’s a difference between “control” and “ownership”. And attributing causation is not a political point, it’s a point of fact.
Private Eye is one of the few publications which identifies this type of detail. I’m a regular buyer. Thanks for sharing.
It’s interesting that the article does not attribute responsibility. Ultimately, that tanker was under the control of a group of decision-makers and liability should be attributed. I say this, because what pollution is in economic terms is the movement of cost from one person’s balance sheet to another’s - whether by hook or by crook. We do ourselves a disfavour when we don’t identify how liability moves.
Sorry to hear this story. Sounds like you’re over it, but maybe your younger self would have benefited from hearing this: https://twitter.com/JIMrichards1010/status/12391407105589698...
Thanks Dang!
Just to say, I’m case you’ve never heard it before, but there’s a theory that humanity as a whole only started seeing blue in modern times. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sciencealert.com/humans-did...
There’s a sense that colour is a bit weird like that and your story about only seeing the green once it was pointed out to you reminded me of that.
If this is how they treat investors, how will they persuade investors to invest again? Stupid question?
This sounds biblical. But it could also be Conan the Barbarian.
The “policy take-away” from the article seems to be that governments let it happen. I wonder if anyone on this board understands whether government inaction is due to incompetence, complacency or corruption. I guess like many issues these days it’s a bit of all 3, but I say that on the basis of my priors rather than domain experience.
His obituary. An excellent read, even if you don’t agree with his world view.
https://novaramedia.com/2020/09/04/the-opposite-of-a-cynic-d...
Here is his series on debt on the BBC. Fascinating stuff if you are or have an interest in economics.
As a response to my original post, I believe you are (the more) correct to the extent execs need to receive a risk premium for helping save the business. I query whether the execs who (likely not always) oversaw the transition to bankruptcy are the ones to salvage value - but their institutional knowledge is also surely needed and you need to keep a few around.
Interesting article. The final “cliff-hanger” was great and not what I was expecting. But I wondered if there was bias in the collection of skulls. Did researchers, to satisfy their own biases, collect skulls which had a specific appearance?
One thing that I noticed traipsing around German castles in my youth was how ugly, to my eyes, the portraits of medieval castle denizens were. It could well have been that poor diet, lack of antibiotics and similar were the reasons for this.
Writing this, I recall an essay, sadly I can’t remember the writer, who said that adult beauty is really a function of exposure to parasites in childhood.
Final point: I thought big jaws were a result of exposure to testosterone. As is clearly the case when you see the before/after pics or steroid users.
Organisations run on a charitable basis in this space on balance tend to be less transparent on impact than organisations run as businesses, which are better focused on effectively managing and reporting impact[1].
Oikocredit is probably my favourite and investing in climate-smart agriculture at the moment. They should also give you your money back.
One thing to bear in mind is that adaptation at this point is as important as mitigation.
[1]The reason being that on balance they have more resources available for management.
“ Companies across America are awarding top executives multimillion-dollar “retention” bonuses shortly before declaring bankruptcy”.
Shouldn’t this read: “Companies’ top executives are awarding themselves million dollar bonuses before declaring bankruptcy”.
The moral hazard here is insane.
Secondly, I do find it interesting how rotten execs can hide behind a corporate brand. Corporate scandals are often household names, not so the individuals who were the true instigators of the scandal.
you’re right. We don’t live in a hellscape yet. But slow drawdown of environmental capital could bring this about. Climate change is the foremost example of this.