Life is boring...except these magicians

Business as usual life is very boring...think about it...anything predictable is boring.

So what makes life worth living...discovering unknown unknowns..miracles and magic.

If you want to get fun out of your life, fill your life with magicians!

You can find magicians everywhere(a great manager is a magician, a great cook as well)...make them your friend..learn from them and try to become one of them.

Can the fear of 2012 Apocalypse stop the imminent recession?

If the world is going to end next year we will live like there is no tomorrow. We will spend like anything - try to fulfill  our wildest dreams. We will travel the world, splurge in the best hotels and restaurants, buy our dream Louis Vuitton leather accessories and what not.

I am probably giving examples of Rich world, but the case stands true for everyone. A poor farmer in Bangladesh probably dreams of a vacation in Goa or a Financial Analyst in Mumbai wants to see Wall Street. You get the point right?

Can you think of any better stimulus if the whole world starts living a desperate life?

Are the world leaders listening? Forget economic stimulus...push the Adrenalin flow. There is no better stimulus than Fear of Death!

Josette Sheeran: Ending hunger now

Great TED talk on solving hunger problem - it has one of the best Return on Investment(ROI) considering the improved productivity and reduction in healthcare cost. I especially love the strategy proposals - starting mid-day meals in schools instead of food subsidies etc.

 

Jeremy Gilley: One day of peace - Spread the thought

Like the idea..but more than that I like the speaker and his passion..check this TED talk.

Let’s Cancel 9/11 - Love this article

'The attacks of September 11, 2001 were in every sense abusive, horrific acts.  And the saddest thing is that the victims of those suicidal monstrosities have been misused here ever since under the guise of pious remembrance.  This country has become dependent on the dead of 9/11 -- who have no way of defending themselves against how they have been used -- as an all-purpose explanation for our own goodness and the horrors we’ve visited on others, for the many towers-worth of dead in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere whose blood is on our hands..'

Read the full story here

One of the best article I read in recent past

Here is the CNN link and if you want to know more about the author and read related comments check his blog.

We have to move to Independent Collaborative Value-addition model as the big corporation mode will be obsolete.

There is no way with Technological Progress and Automation we can continue to add(or even keep) jobs.

We need to reimagine,rework and rediscover work.

Hopeless RBI

Reserve Bank of India(RBI) governor thinks he can control Food Inflation by increasing Interest rate. High Food Inflation has nothing to do with the Interest rate. It can be controlled only by increasing efficiency  and reducing leakage in the Farm and Food distribution system. Government's approach is risking growth, creating more pain for middle/lower middle class on top of high Food inflation.

I am ok to compromise with growth if Inflation can be controlled, but till now RBI has not been successful. Policymakers - please keep in mind India had huge food inflation even during Nehru-growth days. So growth is not the culprit - at least for food inflation.

Stop playing with RBI rates( reduce it) and better concentrate in reducing the wastage in Food Corporation of India warehouses.

Code Wars - See if all Traffic signal stop working

Can US Solve these issues?

Barry Ritholtz posted a fantastic piece in his blog The Big picture. As I mentioned in my previous post innovation is highly overrated and just being optimistic(hope and pray) will not be enough. We need to be realistic, accept that we don't have an answer yet and try to solve the big problems. 

Quickly!

Additional Note: There is a chance that I am overreacing to the problems(some notes here). But as they say,"Only the Paranoid Survive".

Solving Big Problems

It seems that we know the solution for most of the problems. We know big government is bad, huge national debt is worse. We know banker-politician nexus is ruining the economy - they are privatizing profits and socializing losses. We know we waste a lot of resource when the world is starving. We know we all can use public transport and significantly reduce our carbon footprint. We know we have limited fossil fuels, our alternate energy solutions are nowhere near sustainable model and we should invest significant effort, money and talent in discovering new energy technologies.


But still nothing changes...we continue to print money, waste huge amount of stuff(including food), drive gas-guzzlers, package debts in more complex CDOs and get excited about next about generation iPads (and think that our innovation can solve any problems). Why?


I think we have not really understood the root causes and/or have been able to solve those.  


Let me give some examples to clarify this. Let's start with Game-theory issues. Most of the Americans know that they are one of the biggest per capita greenhouse gas producers. Still most of them are really not interested in improving on this(I am talking about significant efforts(not using hybrids but using Public transports) and only motivated by the thought of 'good karma'(and not for controlling cost in the days rising fuel prices)). Are they bad people who are destroying our world for material comfort. Not really. It's a game theory problem. They are not sure even if they reduce the greenhouse emission their life(or for that matter everyone's life) will be any better. They don't have a guarantee that even if they compromise with their lifestyle billions of people in China and India will also do so. It's a case of prisoner's dilemma. Nobody wants to compromise because they are not sure about the other parties.


Another case - Politician and Business lobby nexus - again a story of short term gain('in the long term we will all die'). Do you think Obama has no idea how to fix the economy or for that matter Ben Bernanke. There may be some amount of analysis-paralysis but know for sure that they have the most informed and knowledgeable advisers available in the world. Above all they have enough amount of intelligence to understand the situation. Then why they cannot take bold action? Why can't they solve the 'Too big to fail' problem? Why can't they solve conflicts of interest problem between business and rating agencies? Because politicians need financial supports from banks and businesses. A too big to fail bank can provide huge campaign support which an average Joe cannnot. 


Last case(most won't agree) - our technological or business process innovation is highly overrated and we have misinvested our talent in low priority problems. We see a lot of changes. But I have a feel that most of our changes are cosmetic and there has been very few epoch-making improvements in recent past(except Internet or few other stuff). Think about it - most of us still drive to office everyday, do 8-5 job, comeback home, see TV/movies and sleep. We still have very low level of control over many diseases(AIDS, Cancer etc.). We still can not control natural forces(flood) or even predict them(earthquake). We still have billions of people in the world who are dying for basic needs - food, drinking water and safety. Millions are people fight against each other and die. If you think Apple will can save the world - think again! Companies concentrate on opportunities which can be monetized quickly(low hanging fruits). Solving big problems such as energy is a high risk high gain play. Most investors do not have capacity or attitude to take that risk. Governments should pitch in but again government is never good in execution(different parties have different views, less focus etc.).All in all no progress.


Bottomline: We need to solve big problems. Our Innovation need to tackle these root causes(game-theory, Information Asymmetry, conflict of interest, pricing etc.) and should not be busy in walkman-> ipod kind of progression. I don't have a answer on how to do it but I have a sample solution how it should look like.You must have heard of 'invisible hand of the market'.