Quote of the Day

Great labour, either of mind or body, continued for several days together, is in most men naturally followed by a great desire of relaxation, which, if not restrained by force or by some strong necessity, is almost irresistible. It is the call of nature, which requires to be relieved by some indulgence, sometimes of ease only, but sometimes too of dissipation and diversion. If it is not complied with, the consequences are often dangerous, and sometimes fatal, and such as almost always, sooner or later, bring on the peculiar infirmity of the trade. If masters would listen to the dictates of reason and humanity, they have frequently occasion rather to moderate, than to animate the application of many of their workmen.

- Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

Folly of Fools !!

In 2009 Robert Kaplan elegantly predicted the dissonance of masses in a brilliant piece with an apt title - India's Few Face:

Was Modi trying to create another Singapore or Dubai in Gujarat, a place that would be, in a positive sense, distinct from the mother brand of India?, I asked him.

“No,” came the reply. “Singapore and Dubai are city-states. There can be many Singapores and Dubais here. We will have a Singapore in Kutch,” he said, waving his arm dismissively, “and GIFT [Gujarat International Finance Tec-City, a new high-tech city planned nearby] can be like Dubai. Gujarat as a whole will be like South Korea. Global commerce is in our blood,” he added, lifting his eyebrows for emphasis. There was a practiced theatricality about the way he talked. I could see how he moves crowds, or takes over boardrooms. I have met Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and both Bushes. At close range, Modi beats them all in charisma. Whenever he opened his mouth, he suddenly had real, mesmerizing presence.

His ambition seemed grandiose: South Korea is the world’s 13th-largest economy. Yet I could understand the comparison. Like Gujarat, South Korea is a vast peninsula open to major sea-lanes. It emerged as an industrialized, middle-class dynamo, not under democratic rule but under the benign authoritarianism of Park Chung Hee in the 1960s and ’70s. I mentioned this to Modi. He said he wasn’t interested in talking about politics, just development. Of course, politics represents freedom, and his momentary lack of interest in politics was not accidental. Modi’s entire governing style is antidemocratic, albeit quite effective, emphasizing reliance on a lean, stripped-down bureaucracy of which he has taken complete personal control, even as he has pushed his own political party to the sidelines, almost showing contempt for it.

Now in 2014, Kaplan's precognition is now turned into a "wave" with an unfiltered cognitive dissonance:

The results of several opinion polls, large and small, reliable and questionable, all point to one conclusion: a Narendra Modi wave. Of course, they could be wrong, and we all know how such polls missed the emergence of a new party on the Delhi scene. But several, indeed all, opinion polls pointed to a Modi wave in the three other states that went into elections in November-December 2013 — the large states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.

I don't agree with all of Arundhati Roy's philosophies but she might be right this time - Is India on a Totalitarian Path?:

Well, who is Narendra Modi? I think he’s, you know, changing his—changing his idea of who he himself is, you know, because he started out as a kind of activist in this self-proclaimed fascist organization called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the RSS, which was founded in 1925, who the heroes of the RSS were Mussolini and Hitler. Even today, you know, their—the bible of the RSS was written by a man called Golwalkar, you know, who says the Muslims of India are like the Jews of Germany. And so, they have a very clear idea of India as a Hindu nation, very much like the Hindu version of Pakistan.

Modi started out as a worker for the RSS. He, of course, came into great prominence in 2002, when he was already the chief minister of Gujarat but had been losing local municipal elections. And this was at the time when the BJP had run this big campaign in—they had demolished the Babri Masjid, this old 14th century mosque, in 1992. But they were now saying, "We want to build a big Hindu temple in that place." And a group of pilgrims who were returning from the site where this temple was supposed to be built, the train in which they were traveling, the compartment was set on fire, and 58 Hindu pilgrims were burned. Nobody knows, even today, who set that compartment on fire and how it happened.

But, of course, it was immediately, you know, blamed on Muslims. And then there followed an unbelievable pogrom in Gujarat, where more than a thousand people were lynched, were burned alive. Women were raped. Their abdomens were slit open. Their fetuses were taken out and so on. And not only that... these were Muslims, by these Hindu mobs. And it became very clear that they had lists, they had support. The police were, you know, on side of the mobs. And, you know, 100,000 Muslims were driven from their homes. And this happened in 2002, this was 12 years ago. And subsequently, they have been—you know, the killers themselves have come on TV and boasted about their killing, come on—in sting operations. But the more they boasted, the more it became—I mean, for people who thought other people would be outraged, in fact it worked as election propaganda for Modi.

And even now, though he took off his sort of saffron turban and his red tikka and then put on a sharp suit and became the development chief minister, and yet, you know, when—recently, when he was interviewed by Reuters and asked whether he regretted what happened in 2002, he more or less said, "You know, I mean, even if I were driving a car and I drove over a puppy, I would feel bad," you know? But he very expressly has refused to take any responsibility or regret what happened.

And The fundamental trouble and delusional hope:

Of course, Modi has not won yet, and stranger things have happened in politics than a last minute upset, but nearly all signs point to the May 16 announcement that the next Prime Minister of the world's largest democracy is a man who was unequivocally complicit, if not directly responsible, for mass murder of a minority group. This outcome was unfathomable to many acutely politically attuned (albeit left leaning) Indians just two years ago. What precisely has changed to allow the rise of Narendra Modi, whose taint from 2002 was thought to be crippling? The answer is that both circumstance and individual cunning have allowed Modi to exploit a deeply frustrated Indian populace. As Zakaria admits, Modi, "has a reputation for autocratic rule and a dark Hindu-nationalist streak. But those concerns are waning in a country desperate for change."

It's stupid to be an eternal dystopian but it's wise to be cautious. I cannot think of anything better than Martin Niemöller's classic poem First They Came about the cowardice of German intellectuals following the Nazis' rise to power.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out--

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out--

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.

And "they came for me" stands for all inhabitant's of this beautiful blue planet. 

Wisdom Of The Week

After 1980, ongoing capital accumulation, slower technological progress, and rising inequality heralded a regression to something akin to the conditions of the nineteenth century. But few notice the resemblance between now and then, especially in one crucial respect: the role of inherited wealth. So many nineteenth-century novelists were obsessed with estates and inheritance -- think of Jane Austen, George Eliot, or Charles Dickens -- precisely because receiving wealth from one’s parents was such a common way of prospering during that era. In nineteenth-century France, the flow of inheritances represented about 20–25 percent of national income during a typical year. According to Piketty’s calculations, the Western world is headed toward a roughly comparable situation. The relatively thrifty and wealthy baby boomers will soon begin to die off in greater numbers, and inheritance as a source of income disproportionately benefits the families of the very wealthy.

At the core of Piketty’s story are the tragic consequences of capitalism’s success: peace and a declining population bring notable gains, but they also create a society dominated by wealth and by income from capital. In essence, Piketty presents a novel and somewhat disconcerting way of thinking about how hard it is to avoid growing inequality.

Yet there are flaws in this tale. Although r > g is an elegant and compelling explanation for the persistence and growth of inequality, Piketty is not completely clear on what he means by the rate of return on capital. As Piketty readily admits, there is no single rate of return that everyone enjoys. Sitting on short-term U.S. Treasury bills does not yield much: a bit over one percent historically in inflation-adjusted terms and, at the moment, negative real returns. Equity investments such as stocks, on the other hand, have a historical rate of return of about seven percent. In other words, it is risk taking -- a concept mostly missing from this book -- that pays off.

- Tyler Cowen review of the book Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty and Arthur Goldhammer (Translator)

Quote of the Day

If we ask ourselves how the structure of society and the cultural attitude of man should be changed in order to make human life as satisfying as possible, we should constantly be conscious of the fact that there are certain conditions which we are unable to modify. As mentioned before, the biological nature of man is, for all practical purposes, not subject to change.

- Albert Einstein, Why Socialism?

The Antifragile Person

I was talking to some other people there afterwards and one of his old friends from Lebanon said something about Taleb that’s stuck with me -

“Nassim doesn’t care about normal people. Normal people don’t get it.”

And that’s true. None of his writing makes sense unless you’ve been through some shit.For Taleb it was his father being shot, his country falling apart, and the collapse of financial markets as a trader.

I’ve found it to be an extremely effective heuristic for figuring out if a relationship is worth pursuing.How long into a conversation does a person go before they call you out on your bullshit?

The Antifragile person both appreciates being called out and aren’t afraid to do it to others. They aren’t so insecure. Antifragile people take failure, criticism and feedback and actually get stronger.

I’ve always felt that one of my problems is that almost everyone likes me. I’m non-confrontational and agreeable. Besides having a nasty habit of showing up 5 minutes late for all my meetings, I’m pretty easy to get along with.However, a lot of people that I respect tend to be more polarizing than I am.Not polarizing in that they use it as a way to create drama and get attention but in the sense that they have strong convictions and express them confidently. By the nature of social dynamics, that turns off most people.

I was talking to a friend recently and he cut me off to say - “Taylor – It sounds like you’re using this as a rationalization for a decision you’ve already made for entirely different reasons. Which is fine and may be a convenient excuse, but realize that it’s a rationalization.”

At that point I had already spent a couple of days working on and thinking about what we were discussing, but I stopped and thought about it for maybe 5 seconds before I realized that he was absolutely right.

And it was an extremely valuable insight.

One of the characteristics that people I really connect with is that they’re exceptionally good at calling me out on my bullshit.

- More Here

War Dogs - Tales of Canine Heroism, History, and Love

Rebecca's War Dog of the Week is a brilliant blog and now Rebecca Frankel is writing a new book War Dogs: Tales of Canine Heroism, History, and Love. The book is scheduled to come out in October 2014 and you can preorder it now.

The Up Side of Down

Brilliant EconTalk interview with Megan McArdle author of The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success:

Russ: So, let's talk about survivorship bias, which is something that I thought of while reading your book. The book is very inspiring at many, many different levels, personal, policy-wise, etc. We'll get to the policy stuff next. But the thought I had when you talk about these examples is it's very easy to romanticize failure if you are not careful. So, Colonel Sanders gets beat up, knocked down, but eventually becomes fabulously successful. Same with Steve Jobs--fired, failed new company, looks like his story is over but he persists and he makes it. And let's be optimistic--let's say he did learn and that was part of the reason he made it. What we don't see are the people who get beat up, give up, fail, try again, fail, and never learn enough to succeed. And so these stories about the virtues of failure are very unrepresentative of what failure really does. Failure is not good. It's awful. It's demoralizing. You don't learn that much, because a lot of it's luck. And as a result, failure is--you are making it sound like there's this great learning experience; actually, it stinks. And we only think it's good because we see the ones who survived it somehow. What do you think of that?

McArdle: Well, let me make a couple of points about that. I think that's a completely fair question. And I really tried hard to avoid that, actually. I tried to avoid saying, oh, this is just, learn to love failure and it will be fantastic. Failure doesn't feel good. Right? I went through it. It's terrible. It really is terrible. It doesn't just kind of, you know, sometimes feel terrible. It always feels terrible. And even people who are optimistic don't like it. It's not like Steve Jobs enjoyed getting fired. He was pretty beat down about it. And then he got up and founded Next; and angry and so forth. But he didn't like it. So it's not about learning to like failure and think that it's just a walk in the park and a garden of roses all rolled into one, because that's not true. And the second thing is it really is true that it can be phenomenally difficult to recover. And some people don't. And I try not to say otherwise. And the third thing is that yes, luck--in fact I wrote one of the chapters about this, about the way that we tell stories in retrospect and we say, oh, well, I can describe the Mona Lisa and the things that make it the Mona Lisa, and we leave out things like the fact that it wasn't very famous until it got stolen in the early 20th century. And what Duncan Watts, the sociologist, says is we are telling a story why we think the Mona Lisa is famous, but what we are actually doing is just describing the Mona Lisa. And all of those things are true. But here's what is also true. First is that, I love those movies where they say: Failure is not an option. Like, failure is always an option. There's no--um. Second is the price of admission to success is the willingness to fail. That, being willing to fail does not guarantee that you will you succeed; but not being willing to fail guarantees that you won't. And the third thing is that after you recognize that, right, after you've recognized that the only possibility for me having the kind of success that I wanted is taking some pretty big risks, is that you need to first of all plan for that and try to minimize the downside. It's not about taking stupid risks. It's not about saying, well, we'll do anything.

Quote of the Day

Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.

- Epictetus, The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness

Are athletes really getting faster, better, stronger? - David Epstein

David Epstein is the author of The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance

Changing technology, changing genes, and a changing mindset. Innovation in sports, whether that's new track surfaces or new swimming techniques, the democratization of sport, the spread to new bodies and to new populations around the world, and imagination in sport, an understanding of what the human body is truly capable of, have conspired to make athletes stronger, faster, bolder, and better than ever.

Quote of the Day

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.

- Albert A. Bartlett