The institutions of advanced economies are being ever more perfectly tuned for wealth extraction. The result, of course: impoverishment.
A young person could be forgiven for believing that the way in which economic and social policy is now conducted is little less than a conspiracy by the middle-aged against the young.
The best money during the nascent years of a business is patient for growth but impatient for profit.
That was what the currency union always implied: entire peoples had to change their ways of life. Conceived as a tool for integrating Germany into Europe, and preventing Germans from dominating others, it has become the opposite. For better or for worse, the Germans now own Europe. If the rest of Europe is to continue to enjoy the benefits of what is essentially a German currency, they need to become more German. And so, once again, all sorts of people who would rather not think about what it means to be “German” are compelled to do so.
Interesting & Interested
… it helps to be both. These are the two ways you earn attention.
If it’s so obvious, why is it so difficult?
Iteration is not an excuse to release a crappy product.
(Source: twitter.com)
Stuck is a state of mind, and it’s curable.
The information is true enough. It is slanted. It is propagandistic. But it is not false.
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
Jobs imagines his garbage regularly not being emptied in his office, and when he asks the janitor why, he gets an excuse: The locks have been changed, and the janitor doesn’t have a key. This is an acceptable excuse coming from someone who empties trash bins for a living. The janitor gets to explain why something went wrong. Senior people do not. “When you’re the janitor,” Jobs has repeatedly told incoming VPs, “reasons matter.” He continues: “Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering.” That “Rubicon,” he has said, “is crossed when you become a VP.
http://www.macstories.net/news/inside-apple-reveals-steve-jobs-anecdotes-apples-little-known-facts/
The next time you’re puzzled by the behavior of a colleague or prospect, consider the reason might have nothing to do with the situation and everything to do with who is making the decision and what they bring to it.
What gets measured, gets managed.
“American cities, New York is the best example, are designed to accommodate immigrants, poor descendants of prior generations of immigrants and the rich. The first two groups send their children to public schools while the third group send their children to elite private schools where their future place in society is secured. The middle and upper middle classes usually get a better deal in the suburbs where the cost of living is lower and the public schools are far, far better. This, coupled with the fact that the U.S. is land rich, has an individualist culture and a significant disparity in incomes across the population means that America’s urban regions spread out. Joel Kotkin is simply observing the reality on the ground in the U.S.
Japanese cities on the other hand, Tokyo is the best example, are designed to accommodate the average Japanese person. There are few immigrants to speak of, relatively few are poor and relatively few rich. Most people are therefore average, that is, in the broad middle class. In addition, most good jobs are located in city central areas since Japanese want to work in an environment where they can spend the day working with colleagues and their evenings drinking with them. Not surprisingly, public schools are consistently good to a standard most everywhere and public transport (especially high density rail) is of the highest quality.
The result is that, even as the national population stagnates, the urban centers of cities like Tokyo and Osaka have been experiencing robust population growth for the past decade. Unlike America, young Japanese want to live near city centers and have urban amenities at their fingertips.
All of this points out that central city growth trends are cultural in origin. Joel Kotkin correctly points out the dichotomy between American cultural reality, the wide open spaces of America (in spite of population growth) and and “progressive” notions of urban idealism.”
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