Current Affairs
Humanity is not that Simple
Well, what are you getting out of this constant resentment?
In our present society, the competition is for victimhood. It’s almost hilarious how people want to rush onstage to tell you how they’re the victim. And they’re almost in competition to see who’s the most wronged. Who’s the most wronged gender or race or color? Who’s a victim of money, social position, politics? Everybody’s out there in the competition to see who has been the most wronged. It’s like a moral competition. Who’s the most wronged here? Is it the old people or the young people? The Republicans or the Democrats? Who’s getting the biggest part of the wrong? It’s almost comical when you see it. Everybody just loves to rush on television and say how they’ve been wronged. That’s narcissism—to milk everything for all you can get out of it. And then when you finally see it for what it’s worth, and you see it through the viewpoint of the self-feeding of narcissism, you only feel sorry that people got stuck in it. It’s one thing to, as a passing phase, milk a crisis for all it’s worth, but then there’s a time to get over it. What you want to do is help people get over it and move on in life.
David Hawkins
Book of the Month – January 2022 : The Platform Delusion by Jonathan Knee
![The Platform Delusion: Who Wins and Who Loses in the Age of Tech Titans by [Jonathan A. Knee]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41QFzYc7l6S.jpg)
An investment banker and professor explains what really drives success in the tech economy
Many think that they understand the secrets to the success of the biggest tech companies: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google. It’s the platform economy, or network effects, or some other magical power that makes their ultimate world domination inevitable. Investment banker and professor Jonathan Knee argues that the truth is much more complicated–but entrepreneurs and investors can understand what makes the giants work, and learn the keys to lasting success in the digital economy.
Knee explains what really makes the biggest tech companies work: a surprisingly disparate portfolio of structural advantages buttressed by shrewd acquisitions, strong management, lax regulation, and often, encouraging the myth that they are invincible to discourage competitors. By offering fresh insights into the true sources of strength and very real vulnerabilities of these companies, The Platform Delusion shows how investors, existing businesses, and startups might value them, compete with them, and imitate them.
The Platform Delusion demystifies the success of the biggest digital companies in sectors from retail to media to software to hardware, offering readers what those companies don’t want everyone else to know. Knee’s insights are invaluable for entrepreneurs and investors in digital businesses seeking to understand what drives resilience and profitability for the long term.
Book of the Month – May 2021- Value(s) by Mark Carney
As an economist and former banker, Mark Carney has spent his life in various financial roles, in both the public and private sector. VALUE(S) is a meditation on his experiences that examines the short-comings and challenges of the market in the past decade which he argues has led to rampant, public distrust and the need for radical change.
Focusing on four major crises-the Global Financial Crisis, the Global Health Crisis, Climate Change and the 4th Industrial Revolution– Carney proposes responses to each. His solutions are tangible action plans for leaders, companies and countries to transform the value of the market back into the value of humanity.
(Recommended by Barry T)
Common Values and Beliefs that underpin a successful economy
The experience of the three crises ( Credit, Covid and Climate) of the 21st century, suggests that the common values and beliefs that underpin a successful economy are:
– dynamism to help create solutions and channel human creativity;
– resilience to make it easier to bounce back from shocks while protecting the most vulnerable in society;
– sustainability with long-term perspectives that align incentives across generations; – fairness, particularly in markets to sustain their legitimacy;
– responsibility so that individuals feel accountable for their actions;
– solidarity whereby citizens recognise their obligations to each other and share a sense of community and society;
and
– humility to recognise the limits of our knowledge, understanding and power so that we act as custodians seeking to improve the common good.
Value(s): Building a Better World for All by Mark Carney
If you want to be successful in business (in life, actually), you have to create more than you consume….
Jeff Bezoz’s final letter as CEO of Amazon.
“If you want to be successful in business (in life, actually), you have to create more than you consume. Your goal should be to create value for everyone you interact with. Any business that doesn’t create value for those it touches, even if it appears successful on the surface, isn’t long for this world. It’s on the way out.”
“In what ways does the world pull at you in an attempt to make you normal? How much work does it take to maintain your distinctiveness? To keep alive the thing or things that make you special?
I know a happily married couple who have a running joke in their relationship. Not infrequently, the husband looks at the wife with faux distress and says to her, “Can’t you just be normal?” They both smile and laugh, and of course the deep truth is that her distinctiveness is something he loves about her. But, at the same time, it’s also true that things would often be easier – take less energy – if we were a little more normal.
We all know that distinctiveness – originality – is valuable. We are all taught to “be yourself.” What I’m really asking you to do is to embrace and be realistic about how much energy it takes to maintain that distinctiveness. The world wants you to be typical – in a thousand ways, it pulls at you. Don’t let it happen.
You have to pay a price for your distinctiveness, and it’s worth it. The fairy tale version of “be yourself” is that all the pain stops as soon as you allow your distinctiveness to shine. That version is misleading. Being yourself is worth it, but don’t expect it to be easy or free. You’ll have to put energy into it continuously.
The world will always try to make Amazon more typical – to bring us into equilibrium with our environment. It will take continuous effort, but we can and must be better than that.
(Recommended by Farrel)
The Promise of Quantum Computers
Democracy
(From Eamon)
It’s coming through a hole in the air
From those nights in Tiananmen Square
It’s coming from the feel
That this ain’t exactly real
Or it’s real, but it ain’t exactly there
From the wars against disorder
From the sirens night and day
From the fires of the homeless
From the ashes of the gay
Democracy is coming to the USA
It’s coming through a crack in the wall
On a visionary flood of alcohol
From the staggering account
Of the Sermon on the Mount
Which I don’t pretend to understand at all
It’s coming from the silence
On the dock of the bay,
From the brave, the bold, the battered
Heart of Chevrolet
Democracy is coming to the USAIt’s coming from the sorrow in the street
The holy places where the races meet
From the homicidal bitchin’
That goes down in every kitchen
To determine who will serve and who will eat
From the wells of disappointment
Where the women kneel to pray
For the grace of God in the desert here
And the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the USASail on, sail on
Oh mighty ship of State
To the shores of need
Past the reefs of greed
Through the Squalls of hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail onIt’s coming to America first
The cradle of the best and of the worst
It’s here they got the range
And the machinery for change
And it’s here they got the spiritual thirst
It’s here the family’s broken
And it’s here the lonely say
That the heart has got to open
In a fundamental way
Democracy is coming to the USAIt’s coming from the women and the men
Oh baby, we’ll be making love again
We’ll be going down so deep
The river’s going to weep,
And the mountain’s going to shout Amen
It’s coming like the tidal flood
Beneath the lunar sway
Imperial, mysterious
In amorous array
Democracy is coming to the USASail on, sail on
O mighty ship of State
To the shores of need
Past the reefs of greed
Through the squalls of hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail onI’m sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can’t stand the scene
And I’m neither left or right
I’m just staying home tonight
Getting lost in that hopeless little screen
But I’m stubborn as those garbage bags
As time cannot decay
I’m junk but I’m still holding up this little wild bouquet
Democracy is coming to the USA
To the USA
ONE TUSK 