Thoughts on Basil Labib

Thoughts: The Psychology of Money (Book)

gs454236@gmail.com (Basil Labib) — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 08:58:30 +0530

Abstract

Morgan Housel’s “The Psychology of Money” is less of a technical book and more of a collection of wisdom and wishful advices. It is N. Taleb’s “Bed of Procrustes” augmented with real life anecdotes, morsels of history, and a lot of quotations. Although Housel professes a very conservative and frugal approach to managing money, his advice cannot be disputed without a very good counter argument. The cautious models, frameworks, and signposts laid out in the book would prevent an investor from being foolish and that Housel says is too easy to be in the modern financial system.

“A genius is the man who can do the average thing when everyone else around him is losing his mind.”

— Napoleon

The psychology of money

This book is unique with respect to contemporary finance books because it assumes a psychological approach to finance, rather than a quantitative analytical one. The reason being this: Humans are inherently emotional and irrational creatures. Most of our decisions are instinctive and impulsive. Then how can we assume an individual to behave like a well-tuned machine making decisions based on “rational” and precise mathematical formulae? For example: If you were an investor in 2008, it would have been very difficult to hold on to your assets when everybody was selling, or moreover, to dare to buy in the market crash because as Warren Buffett quipped, “Everything got cheaper”. Unless you have the discipline and patience of Warren Buffett, such decisions are hard to even comprehend. And that is essentially what this book is about. It talks about few fundamental basic, even mundane nature of human and how we tend to act upon them, how it all applies to finance and how we can leverage this knowledge to become more disciplined and patient.

“To grasp why people bury themselves in debt you don’t need to study interest rates; you need to study the history of greed, insecurity, and optimism…”

— Introduction, The Psychology of Money

The idea that gives rise to such reasoning is quite potent and an ironically overlooked one in the money business.

My favourite Housel quote would be the following:

“Your personal experiences with money make up maybe 0.00000001% of what’s happened in the world, but maybe 80% of how you think the world works.”

— Morgan Housel

Most people don’t realise it but this is a very powerful idea. It can explain why we don’t usually get the result we think we ought to get. It can point to how we ought to react and improvise under dire as well as lucrative circumstances. Not just in finance but in other aspects of life too. Cultures and systems have grown to be complex and varied. Wisdom has become more diverse and specialized which is exactly what wisdom is not.

I strongly hold the belief that all complex systems and the world in general, is simple. To clarify, this “simple” does not mean “simple to understand”, it means “simple to navigate and emerge successful however one chooses to define the word for themselves”. Because ultimately, all effort of man and woman is to find utility in life.

Things that worked for me:

It’s not a long book which is a boon for me really. It makes its points concise and clear and that’s good.
In the edition which I have, there is a postscript section which chronicles the economic history of the US from 1945 to the present day and that is very cool. In fact, I was looking for something exactly the same but for India. I want to understand how we got were we are.
Entire book summary tacked at the end. It’s a conglomeration of the most important ideas all in one place, kind of like what I do here with my notes. Now, I can refer to that chapter.

Postscript

I’m aware that its been quite a long time since I wrote one of this. I miss those days when I could be more myself. I have been quite busy lately with college admission processes as you have no doubt noticed with a decline in my rate of publication and engagement on the blog. I would like to clarify that this is NOT a book review. This is a preservation of my thoughts that were kindled by this book so I can refer back to them later.

Web 3.0 and The Metaverse Mania

gs454236@gmail.com (Basil Labib) — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 19:54:34 +0530

There is a shot in Steven Spielberg’s 2018 science fiction “Ready Player One” where the protagonist, Wade, sitting in a shack in Columbus puts on a VR headset and is transported to the planet of Incipio where all avatars are born when they enter the OASIS. They can morph into any characters, cartoon, or monster. Customise how they look and sound and smell. Buy virtual assets and fight in hunts on a planet called Doom (Watch the movie if this is lost on you). Although these are mere imagination spewed from the mind of a 80s culture maniac, how would you feel if I tell you this is exactly the place we are headed?

The future? Credits: @sama

Definition and background

Web 3.0 – this is the term being pushed to describe the next generation of underlying architecture that would run the Internet. The 2000s saw the advent of Web2 which emphasised on the development of full-fledged web application when the simple, bland webpages (sometimes spiced up with CSS) served globs of static data. Web applications led to the development of Cloud computing – the idea of outsourcing computation to an outsider agent and AWS today is the biggest player which generated $16.11B in Q3 2021. Eventually, everything began being offered as a service, hence the terms SaaS (Software as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service), and even TaaS (Talent as a Service). But as these new technologies provided a new found avenue for the expansionist capitalist corporations, everybody knew something was lacking and that was integrity and failproof. (1)

How it came about

The traditional client-server architecture suffers from the obvious shortcoming of what is lovingly called the “central point of failure”. Nobody has ever liked this idea for obvious reasons. It was not until 2009 that an anonymous person(s) by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto figured a way to reliably decentralised transactions. They described a method that allowed transactions without the need of a central clearing house and in essence, threatened to endanger the financial fabric of society. They called it Bitcoin. The builder community jumped at the idea. Then, a Russian-Canadian 19 year old saw these ideas in a much bigger tapestry. He envisioned a global computer being able to compute and unanimously agree on a given state across billions of computers or “nodes” spread across the world. These “blockchains” could be used to compute and store non-tamperable data and not just transaction history for a piece of imaginary crypto currency. The fact that these ideas and technologies have developed in just the last 10 years is what should be mind boggling.

Why should anybody care?

Blockchains promise a failproof swarm of computers that maintain untamperable data. This means perfect financial transactions and zero fraud (provided the number of good nodes > number of malicious nodes). Anything that can be computed (which is pretty much everything) and stored can be put on a blockchain consisting of thousands of computers, each an equal node having equal access and right over the data. This decentralised technological haven free from the shackles of tech giants today is what web 3.0 promises. It plans to create a utopia of perfect technological democracy and cooperation. At least that is what the early proponents of this idea had intended.

The conflicted philosophy

A week or so back, Facebook announced that it would rebrand itself as Meta to emphasise their new agenda of “metaverse-first, Facebook-second”. What is metaverse? It’s a perverse realisation of the perfect utopia I described above. Almost all software that enabled blockchains to flourish in its infancy was open sourced and developed mainly by hackers and rookies in their free time. Tech corporations, facing their greatest fear of staying relevant, have taken a plunge into this arena to combine AI, blockchains, fed by gangantuan mountains of data (“Big Data”) accreted for decades, to bring products that mimick the open ethos that have drawn people. But it’s not gonna happen. By definition, any product that corporates build is to make profits because that is what keeps them going and that is the exact antithesis of what web 3.0 means – to decentralise the reliance on a few tech corps and relinquish control and autonomy over our digital presence.

The point is metaverse is definitely the future of the internet as it promises grounds for expression, exploration, and empowerment. But it won’t suffice in the face of totalitarian control by a central organization and definitely not when it’s built by profit-driven organisations whose goals are unlikely to be any different than that. This would incite competitors to build their own metaverses and eventually there would be a pool of tiny “metaverses” which would jostle for consumer base and profit maximization, reducing the entire effort into a capitalist rerun of the web 2.0 scenario, albeit, in a fancier cover.

Take for example the recent hype around NFTs.

Crypto exchanges and markets are volatile and unregulated because they are such a new and misunderstood tech. This has led to many malpractices including blantant market manipulation. Moreover, the danger is people who understand nothing about blockchains or crypto are investing in these markets and hence falling prey to veteran bad actors.

Human behavioral psychology is heavily influenced by others and watching others share news of becoming millionaires can hardly stop our humble crypto uninitiated average man. This is the exact scenario playing out in the non-fungible tokens (or NFTs) economy. People became excited about minting and cashing in millions for their “artworks” and memoribilia because impulse is hard to control.

In reality, an NFT token is an immutable record that decrees ownership of a particular digital asset to an individual. A digital asset that has no physical value or purpose other than being a money-making machine for the ultra capitalists.

Teenage psychology and business

Today, Instagram, a subsidiary of Meta, appeals to the youth and teenage populace because they understand well how youth psychology works. Millions of kids today spend hours customising their “profiles” and masquerading behind their ideal perception of themselves. It is the basic teenage desire to feel inclusive and belonged to a group they admire. Imagine metaverse avatars and the frivolous, untangible economy it will give rise to.

Economies are one of the most unstable systems on this planet (which would have been fine if it were one of the most critical too) because it is an emergent property; an outcome of the individual actions of billions of tiny beings wholly unaware of the actions of almost everybody else. Nobody has an idea of what is valuable and worth spending their money on but modern financial systems rely on the behavior of these ignorant individuals to define what is valuable and hence produce more of it. This is a recipe for complete economic collapse if you think about it and also happens to be the definition of capitalism. Who will regulate these companies? Which brings me to . . .

Govermment regulations

Anonymous by design

Govermental or third-party regulations of blockchain transactions are virtually impossible due to the inherent design of such systems. Blockchain transactions are designed to be anonymous and untrackable. It was one of the reasons why bitcoin was used as a payment method in the infamous Silk Road . Moreover, unrestricted financial transactions can give a stupendous advantage to terror groups, criminals, and drug peddlers, making the job a lot harder for law-enforcing bodies. It is one of the reasons why nations are wary of legalising crypto.

Unregulated hate content

Facebook / Meta, has been prosecuted countless times for their failure to regulate hate content on their platforms. I am not against content creators because they genuinely add value to society. But as social platforms have reduced the bar to become celebrities to almost nothing, everyone has found a corner on the internet to preach and inject their thoughts into the societal thoughtstream. India is a primal example of this paradigm.

A study last year showed that India leads in the origin and propagation of fake information about the coronavirus and its “remedies”. Underdeveloped and developing countries are shown to be correlated to misinformation on social sites. Non-English content pose a greater problem because of lack of sufficient clearing houses in the respective languages, cultures, and / or disciplines. The impeding question remains: Who is responsible for the resulting violence and crimes? What is the definitive solution to this mishap? As it can be understood, these are challenging questions even for policymakers.

My personal belief is that the power resides with the masses. Ethical education, digital etiquette and financial empowerment (this is easier said than done) are the sole factors for these people to act responsibly. Corporations move towards profits driven by demand and that is all they will do in the future.

Where we going?

Web 3.0 is, no doubt, a suite of impressive technologies that promise mind-boggling sovereignity and independence. Yet, as we have tamed forces of nature, from lightning to information, we have been gravely aware of our growing responsibility for our own well-being. The consequences of what we choose to do right now can be either disastrous or rewarding.

Footnotes

(1): Note that the development of assymetric key cryptography made it possible for stranger parties to securely transact over a foul network and hence help make internet economy feasible.

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar and feminism

gs454236@gmail.com (Basil Labib) — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 11:27:04 +0530

"What I hate is the thought of being under a man’s thumb", Sylvia fearlessly thundered in her only published novel “The Bell Jar”. Published in 1963, Jar is one of the prominent texts on feminism and the vocalisation of a woman’s apprehensions, rights and freedom. Sylvia’s words, like brazen dagger, are used today in protest marches as well as analysed in literary circles.

Sylvia Plath

Jar stands as testimony to the ephemeral skills of Sylvia as a writer. She took everyday objects and turned them into metaphors and similes that resonated with the soul. Her poetry is acclaimed for this and even in Jar, it can be noticed.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig-tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

The metaphor of the fig tree represents her apprehension of being a failure in life inspite of all wonderful possibilities within her arms reach, due to doubt or uncertainty on her part. Most of us have felt this way atleast once in our lives and it is the spontaneity and common grounds of consolation that we find ourselves on with Sylvia that lends this metaphor its potency.

The silence depressed me, It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence.

Depression, self-doubt and mental illness forms recurrent and central themes in the novel. It reveals a vulnerable and wounded side of a woman. Sylvia openly writes about judging other women, an encounter with a misogynist that almost ended in rape, a subtle rejection, being embarrassed, wardrobe negotiations, mischiefs, and other “vulgarities” and trivialities of life with such eloquence, it is impressive.

My mind slipped from the noose of the thought and swung, like a bird, in the centre of empty air.

Jar is brimming with such wonderful similes and analogies.

Yet, what shines through in these lyrical sentences is the experiences that gave rise to them. Plath, known for a class of poetry called confessional poetry, struggled with clinical depression and turbulence in her life. Sample this:

“I felt it was very important not to be recognized.”

It is not difficult to picture Slyvia in place of Miss Esther Greenwood, the protagonist in Jar. Sylvia’s handful but potent poetry is still considered first class material in English literature and speaks against women oppression, freedom, rights, marriage, sexuality, child rearing and so forth. “Ariel” is considered the best among her collection which shot her into the limelight. Published in 1965 posthumously.

ON CHILDREN

Children made me sick.

Despite this, she bore two of them. What was it? The overpowering of her rebellious spirit by the craving of motherly love or the overpowering of her rebellious spirit by the current of societal norms?

If I had to wait on a baby all day, I would go mad.

A man doesn’t have a worry in the world, while I’ve got a baby hanging over my head like a big stick, to keep me in line.

I have noticed that men have a general desperation in speaking on these matters as if in a vain attempt to get rid of the guilt of not being the one who bears the child. Now, men are not at fault of being selected by natural selection to be the sperm donor. But the point is, this doesn’t give men a right to speak on matters that they cannot really experience. The best way to behave for a man, IMHO, would be to be respectful and kind towards the other, even if it is not justified. That is chivalry, isn’t it?

ON MEN

With Ted Hughes

The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way.

I felt the first man I slept with must be intelligent, so I would respect him.

I like this woman.

ON HERSELF, BEING A WOMAN AND FIGHTING MENTAL DEPRESSION

The silence between us was so profound I thought part of it was my fault.

While walking with a girl who, like her, had won a month long scholarship to New York. They were on uneasy terms. A passing note, men are different from women in this regard. Even if two are arch nemesis of one another, they’ll still receive each other with open arms and whole hearts. Disdain and competition is, and should be, confined to the profession.

What did I think was wrong?
That made it sound as if nothing was really wrong, I only thought it was wrong.

Wow.

On receiving electrotherapy at a mental asylum.

I wondered what terrible thing it was that I had done.

Multiple suicide attempts (tried to drown, swallowed pills, slit her veins) and descend into mental deterioration.

“I knew when I was beaten.”

“I wanted to be where nobody I knew could ever come.”

“I am, I am, I am.”

DISAGREEMENTS

What does a woman see in a woman that she can’t see in a man?
Doctor Nolan paused. Then she said, “Tenderness”.

Ugh. Men can be tender too. I know it.

And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs Willard’s kitchen mat.

What sort of men were you hanging out with, dear?

THE CHARACTER OF MISS ESTHER GREENWOOD

Bell Jar was received with mixed acclaims and disdain by critiques. Perhaps, because of the explicit description in the second half of the book inspired by Plath’s own multiple suicide attempts and experiences of treatment at a mental institution. The first half is commendable and novel in its own right as she draws a picture of her protagonist as an independent, hopeful young woman. She is loud and vocal and indifferent to societal norms pertaining to female etiquette.

I hate handing over money to people for doing what I could just as easily do myself, it makes me nervous.

Sylvia constructs her character not as a woman a man would be pleased to read about but as a woman as she really is.

There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room.

She shamelessly admits her craving for jewellery and clothes and food. How she plots and strategises on the dinner table to have all of the caviar without sharing with her friends.

RELEVANCE OF ‘THE BELL JAR’

I see Jar as a touchbearer for a different interpretation of life, society and the status quo. Feminists, especially young ones, express their pleas in a manner that subtly blames man for all the trouble and misery and so forth. I think that is wrong and malformed. Man never asked for any of his roles in the natural order of things. If the woman think they are ill-treated (and I acknowledge that) then so is man. It certainly offends me the way some think of feminism as a “Us versus them” debate. The real monster is the set of ideas that dictate disparity and discrimination based on gender. It must be noted, and this is important, that such ideas can flourish in any human’s mind, irrespective of gender. I think texts like Jar empowers people, especially men to introspect and correct themselves. As Plath knew, nobody is perfect. This is why I think Jar should be read by more men than women today.

THE SYLVIA PLATH SYNDROME & ARTISTIC EXPRESSION

“The Sylvia Plath Syndrome” is a condition of severe mental illness that plagues an artist and threatens their life. Her explicit suicide, at the tender age of 30, by shoving her head in an oven while her two children were in another room, is evidence of the untold difficulties that woman had to go through, that is, until Sylvia stood up and chose to protest them. The thorny questions it raises even today is: Where do we go wrong? To coerce a young soul into such pain that the only escape they see befitting is taking their own lives? Are we any different today? How are we safeguarding artistic creativity and freedom today?

CONCLUSION

“The Bell Jar” is a text repeatedly held to light and examined from different prisms. It is a text debunking the ideal woman figure and casting her in a new light, as a real woman with her flaws and strengths. Together with pioneers like Simone de Beauvoir (“The Second Sex”) and Virginia Woolf (“A Room of One’s Own”), young Sylvia Plath stands in great company and continues to inspire both young men and women alike.

31 Years of 'Heaven or Las Vegas'

gs454236@gmail.com (Basil Labib) — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 10:18:49 +0530

Most CT fans agree (and frankly, there ain’t many) that Heaven or Las Vegas is their definitive production: ephemeral and sublime, cocky song titles and discernable vocals, sweet sounds and fragments of bitter lyrics, it is a very Twins album in spirit. Garlands (1982), their debut, was too much on the punk and goth style, a desperate searching phase for their identity which was fulfilled by Treasure (1984), a commendable opus in itself. But it is Heaven or Las Vegas or a song therein, that the CT are most remembered for.

Heaven or Las Vegas, Cocteau Twins, 1990

Like each of their album, HOLV has a balanced mix of slow and swift music. “Pitch the Baby” is a fast moving song with very understandable lyrics sung by Liz. In fact, many songs on HOLV such as “Iceblink Luck”, chorus of “Fotzepolitic” and of course, “Heaven or Las Vegas” can be understood in the sense that certain phrases and fragments of words can be deciphered which is a lot to ask for considering the band’s previous output.

The last track, “Frou-frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires”, aside from being a signature CT track, has one of the most curious and bizarre song title I have come across in recent memory. Leave it to the Cocteaus for enigmatic and funny song titles; “High Monkey Monk”, “Sugar Hiccup”, “The Spangle Maker”, “The Itchy Glowbo Blow”, “Ella Megalast Blurs Forever” and some that conjure happy, ethereal images like “A Kissed out Red Float Boat”, “Spooning Good Singing Gum”. Most of these quirky titles belong to HOLV’s predecessor, “Blue Bell Knoll” of 1988.

It is quite a task to decipher the meaning of the lyrics. Most of what Liz wrote was just random words and phrases that “sounded” right (which she further distorted as she sang). But that is not to say, all CT songs are gibberish. There are strong undertones of gender disparity, struggles of bad marriage, adultery, motherhood, feminity in much of her songs. “Summerhead” (“Are you the right man for me? Are you my friend?”) is a strong woman vocalizing her doubts, “Pitch the Baby” and “For Phoebe Still a Baby” (BBK) talks of motherhood, “I Wear Your Ring” certainly highlights the hopes and desolation of a newly wed. There are novel experiments too such as “Melonella” (Echoes in a Shallow Bay) which is literally a list of various species of butterflies sung as a song.

First song, favorite album and such things

I remember my very first CT song was “Fotzepolitic” (Ok, it was “Perly Dewdrops-drop” technically but shhh…) and I still relive that moment everytime I listen to the song. The shimmering guitars, rhythm, the unusual melody and Liz’s angelic vocals almost made it an auditory painting — not to be seen, but listened. I remember going like, “What on earth is this?!” because it was so different from the rock that I had expected.

My dreams are alone,
They’re sick and must be dross.
They’re young girls dreams…
~verse 1, Fotzepolitic

and then the refrain which she loops over and over again in the outro,

See and saw bounce me back to you.

To say HOLV is my favorite CT album is not a outrageous thing to say but it is certainly not accurate. I love HOLV (I even have their CDs bought with the first money I earned!). I also love Treasure and some of BBK, Milk and Kises, Four Calendar which is nothing to say of their large and equally magnificent EP produce (Check out “The Spangle Maker” or “Domino”).

Today HOLV turns 31 which is almost twice my age! I abhor that I was born in the 21st century which is just war, diseases, repulsive music and capitalism. It is my most sincere (and perhaps most daft) wish to be reborn in 80s Britain – to be surrounded by all these punk, rock, progressive artists. Ah.

Listen

'Please myself': An interpretation 30 years later

gs454236@gmail.com (Basil Labib) — Sat, 11 Sep 2021 08:02:53 +0530

Polly, a common American girl name, quickly rose to fame as the 6th songtrack on Nirvana’s second album, Nevermind, one of the best-selling albums of all time, having sold over 30 million copies since its release in 1991.

Polly became a conversation starter, an ice-breaker, a household catalyst for people everywhere to talk about woman abuse. Polly is a protest song, a song born out of the anguish that Kurt felt for the condition and treatment of woman in the society. It has often been dubbed as Nirvana’s “darkest” song – which, in my opinion, is a fairly glorified sobriquet because most of Nirvana’s songs are dark and ghastly.

Polly is striking from the moment the first two lines of the verse are sung. The simple chord progression that Kurt repeats over and over again throughout the song draws the audience in to suspend the job at hand and listen which is what he wants the audience to do. Unlike, the other songs on Nevermind which are loud and choked of wailing guitars and pounding drums, making it a task for the brain to process the lyrics, Polly is eerily antithetical.

Structure of the song

Let me spare a few lines to talk about the simple structure of Polly. Most of Nirvana songs are simple in structure, generally following the rock song structure with minimal lyrics, often the same phrase repeated over and over again for chorus as seen in “Lithium”, “Breed”, “Smells like Teen Spirit” and “Stay Away”.

4 bars of a simple Em-G-D-C progression repeated twice forms the intro followed by the first verse and chorus. A 8 bar break followed by the second verse and the chorus. Then, interestingly there is a little interludic bass solo by presumably Krist Novoselic. The outro is marked by the third verse and the chorus. That’s it. Drums are non-existent, the over-driven electric guitar is traded for an acoustic and the progression is the same throughout.

The lyrics

“Polly wants a cracker
I think I should get off her first”

Kurt puts us straight into the shoes of the rapist. This choice of perspective is a genius of Cobain who crafts a song that is chilling and introspective at the same time. Not only do we get a glimpse of what goes on in his mind, it compels us to ask ourselves how we would have reacted in such a situation. Kurt sings, in a disconnected, nonchalant tone expressing the casual mindset of the rapist, harsh and striking words and never in complete sentences which is almost a signature of the band. But those phrases give us enough clue to pieces together everything we need, a ghastly portrayal of an outrageous and vicious crime.

“I think she wants some water
To put out the blow torch”

The lyrics get extremely vivid and explicit, the imagery are very disturbing as it goes on to describe everything that happens to the girl as the rapist sees it. A 14-year old girl was kidnapped from a local rock concert in Tacoma, Washington in the August of 1987 by a man with a history of such crimes. She was raped and tortured with a blow torch while hanging upside down.

“Isn’t me, have a seed
Let me clip your dirty wings”

We can listen to the rapist’s mind screaming in a state of confusion and delusion, asking itself what to do next. He is in a deliberation with himself if he should bring the girl some water or whether he should untie her.

“Want some help, please myself”

Perhaps, the most disconcerting is the last line of the chorus. It bares before us the motive of the crime. The criminal isn’t capable of sustaining himself. From his perspective, he is in need of help. And believes that the girl can help him. What do we understand about the psychology of this feeble man? He is vicious and self-imposing and yet his malices are motivated by a desire to be pleased. Though, there is nothing wrong with wanting to be please yet the path that this man takes is evil and that is the underlying conflict between the criminal and the victim.

When and how I was introduced to Nirvana

I was born more than a decade after Nevermind first hit the shelves of record stores. Moreover, I was born into the era of online streaming. I haven’t seen a record player, let alone held a vinyl record in my hands! (Not very happy about it, though) I was introduced to Nirvana quite late in my music exploration journey. I was mostly into rock those days and tried “Lithium” for the first time. The “Yeah” chorus sent me into a semi trance-like state. It was the embodiment of nonchalance, angst and everything teenager. The quirky lyrics and the instantly recognizable riff. I liked it. However, it was much later that I actually listened to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and didn’t like it that much at first. On a second revisit, it became one of my favourite songs. And that’s how I listened to Nevermind. PS: I am still yet to listen to their entire discography which I have constantly procrastinated telling myself that I’m waiting for that perfect moment to listen to them!

Nirvana was a feminist band and why that’s important

Nirvana. From left: Krist Novoselic (bass), Dave Grohl (drums) and Kurt Cobain (guitar and vocals)

As you stroll through Nirvana’s song palace, one feature is consistently recurrent. Kurt, the principal songwriter for the band, cared about women. He was a feminist and pro-LGBTQ+ before these became mainstream and vocal which is a pretty cool thing. Most of his songs are marred by such lyrics:

“Never met a wise man, if so, it’s a woman”
~Territorial Pissings, Nevermind (1991)

“God is Gay”
~Stay Away, Nevermind (1991)

“Polly says her back hurts”
~Polly, Nevermind (1991)

“I don’t mean to stare, we don’t have to breed”
~Breed, Nevermind (1991)

So, when he heard about the crime, it was inevitable that he would leverage his position to get people talking. He often combined the freedom and expertise of his art with the prevailing social conditions and norms. Bob Dylan once remarked after listening to Polly, “The kid has got a heart”. Dylan was a folk singer-songwriter and widely acclaimed for his protest songs (“Times They Are A’ Changing”) of the 50s-60s and his role in shaping American history and minds.

There is a sweet parallel as Nirvana were seen as the spokesmen for the 90s generation to whom the squaling guitars and deafening sounds bore testimony to their inner angst and anger. Though, Kurt pioneered a completely different music genre called “Grunge Rock”, he was praised by a folk singer which goes on to say that art is ultimately a unified form.

In fact, art supercedes musics, generations and even other disciplines. I cringe when teachers and educators profess and segregate students. What is a microprocessor’s cricuit diagram if not art? Or the traverse section of a human heart? Anyone bold enough to express himself is an artist.

Notes, Footnotes and Credits

Nevermind was released on September 24th, 1991. In a couple of weeks, the album will turn 30 (Oh boy, it’s almost twice my age!). This post is my tribute to the band who spoke for a generation I have never known.
Footnote 1: Umm, Basil, why are there no weird he/she, him/her in this artice? Are the girls not represented? Good question. Please read this to understand the inherent limitation of the language I an working under .
I would like to thank Nerdwriter1 on YouTube. Check out his video for an audio visual experience. Also, I’d like to thank Micheal Azerrad for his book, “Come as you are: The story of Nirvana”.

To be or not to be: Understanding Hamlet

gs454236@gmail.com (Basil Labib) — Tue, 31 Aug 2021 10:20:23 +0530

Volumes have been written on the “meaning” of Hamlet (the play) by more qualified people than me. I do not seek to compete with them. What follows is my perception of Hamlet, a sketch so if you will, from a modern day perspective.

Hamlet is a complex character. I have strived to deduce Hamlet strictly from the source text and not get influenced by writings elsewhere because I feel external analysis somehow shrouds (glorifies or diminishs, whichever) the essence of what Shakespeare intended. I also acknowledge there are passages and portions that are still unclear to me. I take them as deficiencies on my part and the excellence of the play.

Act 1, Scene 2

Hamlet
Seems,madam! nay it is; I know not “seems.”
’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly. These indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play,
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

Paraphrase:

Hamlet
Seems? No, it is. I do not know how to “seem”.
It is not my inky coat, mother,
nor the conventional black suits,
nor the forceful restrained/artificial sighs,
nor the copious tears in my eyes,
nor the frowning on my face,
together with all forms, moods and shapes of grief
that can truly represent my sadness. These may seem
like actions that man may act upon,
But I feel and that feeling surpasses show
of these frowning and crying and black suits.

Hamlet’s first speech in the play in response to her mother who suggests that his father’s demise shouldn’t affect him in such grave manners. Multiple facets of Hamlet can be deduced from this text itself. The first striking observation that a reader will make (in retrospect to the characters so far) is his superior choice of words, usage of similies and eloquence in speech all indicating an educated, civilized mind, and a modest upbringing. He sharply criticises his mother for asking him to “move on” which suggest an authoritative, disciplined prince capable of experiencing deep emotions and who mourns his father’s death with sincere remorse.

Act 1, Scene 4

Hamlet
…This heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduced and taxed of other nations.
They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase
Soil our addition, and indeed it takes
From our achievements, though performed at height,
The pith and marrow of our attribute…

Hamlet
…This heavy-headed (drunken) revelry everywhere
Makes Denmark slandered/looked down upon by other nations
They call us drunkards, with gross/coarse phrases.
Malign our titles, and injures
our achievements, though accomplished at the highest level,
which are an essential and vital part of our reputation…

Hamlet’s uncle, the present King of Denmark, is having a debaucherous party. Hamlet’s personality befitting a king shines through before his coronation. He is concerned about the reputation of Denmark in the eyes of other nations and how they perceive his kingdom. He succintly criticises his uncle and doesn’t mince words in pointing out the malicious at a time when aristocracy was generally wary of their opinions and words.

Act 1, Scene 5

Hamlet
…And so, without more circumstance at all,
I hold it fit that we shake hands and part,
You, as your business and desire shall point you;
For every man has business and desire,
Such as it is, and for mine own poor part,
Look you, I’ll go pray.

Hamlet
…And so, without any further detail at all,
I think it is suitable that we shake hands and part,
You, as your business and desire shall guide you;
For every man has business and desire,
Such as it is, and for mine own humble part,
Look at me, I’ll go and pray.

This is a crucial point in the play where Hamlet has just conversed with the Ghost (the spirit of his slain father) who has revealed to him the serpentine nature of his uncle and asked him to revenge the scandal. Upon a lot of insistence and request from his friends, even his trusty Horatio, he doesn’t reveal to them anything. Hamlet’s prudence and diplomacy is highlighted. He is not swayed by excitement or passion. He has taken the task by heart and won’t take any chances that might culminate in its collapse.

Act 2, Scene 2

This is a long scene and a lot of different plots progresses through it.

Hamlet is eloquent and learned. Excellent memory. Recited the play speech (Slaying of Pyrrhus by Priam and the reaction of his wife Hecuba) almost impromptu by heart and with good deliverance as remarked by Polonius who was standing nearby. The speech is skipped as it will bloat this essay.
Am I a coward?

First instance when Hamlet is doubtful of his passion to pursue his vengeance. It is not surprising that a slew of modern phrases in English draws from Shakespeare. His words succintly flows from the instinctive thoughts of man.

The devil hath power T’ assume a pleasing shape…

Hamlet is analytical and thoughtful. He judges a situation from every aspect. He is cunning enough to setup experiments to test his postulates and wants to ascertain the guilt of his uncle before seeking revenge. He is aware that the devil might assume a pleasing shape (for instance, the ghost of his father) and exploit his youthful passion to make him commit a sin and hence damn him.

Act 3, Scene 1

“…That if you be fair and honest, your honesty shall admit no discourse to your beauty.”

Is Hamlet talking abour fidelity and adultery? I am in the dark in these lines.

This scene is home to perhaps the most famous of Shakespeare’s phrases. Yet, I believe the brilliance lies in the speech in its entirety which is paraphrased here for better understanding.

Hamlet To be, or not to be: that is the question.
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep
No more, and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. ’Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep –
To sleep, perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause.There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life –
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despisèd love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of ?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.

Hamlet To exist or not to exist: that is the question.
Whether it is befitting to the mind to suffer/endure
The challenges and hurdles of outrageous fortune/life,
Or to revolt against the sea of troubles,
And end them by opposing them? To die, to sleep no more (the mortal sleep),
and say adieu to the heart ache and the thousand natural shocks
that mortal flesh is entitled to by sleeping forever. It is an end
to be wished for devoutly. To die, to sleep –
To sleep, perhaps to dream: ah, but there’s the conflict,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have gotten rid of this mortal tangle of obligations
It must give us rest. That is the matter/point
That makes a disaster of such a long life –
For who would bear the pain and insults of time,
The oppression of the oppressor, the arrogant man’s abuse,
The pain of hated love, the delay in seeking justice,
The contemptous speech of officeholders, and the rejections
That the patient ordinary person endures,
When he can discharge himself from the debt of life
With a bare dagger? Who would bear burdens of sorrow,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But the dread of that something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose borders
No traveller returns, confuses the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we do not know about?
Thus our consciousness/awareness of moral obligations makes cowards of us all,
And thus the original passion of resolution
Is painted with the pale gray of considerations,
And initiatives of great height and weight
With this regard have their objectives muddled/perverted
And thus lose the effectiveness of action/being acted upon…

Act 3, Scene 2

Ophelia Tis brief, my lord.
Hamlet As woman’s love.

Quick witted and a presence of mind. Ophelia, Polonius’ daughter and the play’s heroine, is describing the short preamble to the play being enacted for the King (Yes, a play within a play).

Hamlet
Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you
make of me! You would play upon me; you would seem to
know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my
mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to
the top of my compass – and there is much music,
excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it
speak. ’Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than
a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can
fret me, yet you cannot play upon me.

Here, Hamlet is criticizing his friend Rosencrantz for secretly conspiring with the King to spy upon him and extract from him the true nature of his “madness”. Hamlet is prompt in pointing out what people are trying to do. He can handle confrontations well when the need arises. He isn’t easily manipulated.

Act 4, Scene 3

Hamlet
Not where he eats,but where ’a is eaten. A certain
convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your worm
is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat
us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your
lean beggar is but variable service – two dishes, but to one table.
That’s the end.

Hamlet
He (Polonius) is not where he eats, but is where he is being eaten.
An assembly of diplomatic worms
are feeding on him now. The worm
is the emperor of all diets. We fatten all creatures to eat them, but we fatten ourselves for the maggots. Your volumptous king and the skinny beggar are only a variation in the courses served (to the worms) – two dishes at the same earth/grave.
That’s the end.

Well spoken. And then immediately,

“A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.”

A man may fish with a worm that has fed on a king and then eat of the fish that was caught by the worm.

In essence, how a common man can eat the king.

Act 5, Scene 1

This is a very interesting and tense scene. The different subplots have developed to a climax and are yearning to be resolved. Perhaps the most dramatic is Laertes’ hatred towards Hamlet for the death of Polonius and his sister. He fearlessly proclaims, “The devil take thy soul!”. The first half of the scene has many interesting monologues by Hamlet emphasising on the transitory nature of life and privileges. For example:

Hamlet To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bing-hole?

Hamlet To what degraded use we may return, Horatio! Why may not thoughts trace the ash of Alexander from its grave to stopping the bottle of liquor (that is, become a cork)?

The ash is washed into the soil, that soil is used to make loam and eventually corks which sit on top of liquor bottles. To think so critically and speak so liberally does require a confident and thoughtful mind. This part is littered by Hamlet justifying the meaninglessness of property, fame and worldly possessions for after all, everyone has to inevitably return to the same dirt.

Laertes is a figure in himself to be reckoned with. I have only been quoting Hamlet so for a change,

Laertes Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead
Till of this flat a mountain you have made
To o’ertop old Pelion or the skyish head
Of blue Olympus.

Laertes, Polonius’ son, is overcome with extreme grief at his sister’s death (probably a suicide as may be inferred from the discussion on her method and ceremony of burial). The Olympians were said to live on Mount Olympus, the highest mountain unreachable by mortals. Often, the giants tried to reach and overthrow it by stacking mountains on top of others. Pelion was one such mountain stacked on Mount Ossa. This is quite a striking manner of expressing sadness and hints at the learned, chivalric nature of Laertes.

Thoughtful dialogues

Hamlet …For there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.
Player King (to Player Queen) What to ourselves in passion we propose,
The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.
Player King (to Player Queen) What we claim/propose in moments of ecstasy/passion, Loses its potency when that moment of passion recedes.
Player King This world is not for aye, nor ’tis not strange
That even our loves should with our fortunes change,
For ’tis a question left us yet to prove,
Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.
Player King This world/the condition that prevails is not forever and it is not strange
If we change our lovers with our fortunes,
For it is a question still unproven,
Whether love guides fortune, or fortune leads love.

In essence asking: Is love a morality or an economic convenience?

Ophelia …we know what we are, but know not what we may be.
Hamlet …The hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.
Hamlet …Those who work little and know little about hardship (the aristocracy) have much delicate feelings/interpretations of life.

How relevant is Hamlet today?

And a more practical question, should you read Hamlet today? Yes, by all means. The hype and reverance that enshrouds Hamlet is justified. Being one of the most significant plays by argubly the greatest playwright in English literature, it justifies its position with its brilliance. The language, the symbolism, the metaphors, analogies are potent, coherent and dramatic.

Hamlet, the prince, who we started out to understand, is without doubt a prominent and poignant Shakespearean prince. He is learned and thoughtful. Analytical, witty and cunning, he understands diplomacy and social interactions well. But to clarify, I think Hamlet is flawed too. He did hesitate and waver when he could have easily revenged his father’s death. He was in a constant conflict with his conscience and the people without. His brilliance shines in handling them well, both within and without but he lost sight of his objective and became something else. He couldn’t confess his love for Ophelia when she was alive and only naively did so at her funeral. He is a hero and an antihero at the same time.

A Closer Look at 'Inside Job'

gs454236@gmail.com (Basil Labib) — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 16:56:47 +0530

“Inside Job” is a 2010 documentary written, directed and produced by Charles Ferguson on the 2008 global financial crisis. It won the Oscar in the “Best Documentary Feature” category in 2011. Notwithstanding, it makes for an enlightening and thrilling watch that every citizen, who cares about where their hard earned money goes, should watch.

This documentary is not an easy watch that one can grab on a lazy afternoon comfortable on their couch. It has complex sounding terms and concepts that should keep one on the edge of their seat. As those financial experts makes the layman believe, “What we do is far more complicated for you to understand so you better leave us alone as we do it.” They are soft-headed people who will make one feel witless and run away with their money. That is exactly what happened in 2008.

Poster of Inside Job

Economics is a fascinating subject

Economics, the “dismal science”, is a fascinating subject because it aims to study the very fondation that runs our society: money. To me, it is a study of resource allocation (More on this in a future post). It is a set of the simplest ideas that sustain our lives. A small section of people deliberately obfuscate those ideas with cooked-up complex terms just to con everybody else.

Concepts at the root of the 08’ crisis that I have broken down to simple language and added examples to make them concrete:

Information assymmetry: It means when a party has more information regarding a transaction than the other party. A rampant example is the real estate industry where the agent has a more intimate knowledge of the market and the value of the property than you do and clearly, they have no incentive to act in your favor.
Incentives: The powerhouse of any transaction in a economy. I have an incentive to educate myself because I know I can earn more money that way. People basically get up in the morning and do any work (even go out and shoot somebody) because they have an incentive. Incentives drives all our actions, even non-economical. (Don’t proceed further if you get offensed easily) Think about your relationships. You may love your partner. But (really) deep down, it’s just an incentive to have something you don’t.
Value: The basic principle why any transaction is carried out is because you are valuable to the other party. Maybe you invented something, maybe only you can offer a service. The idea is, people should be paid proportionately for the value they create in society. Money is a measure and storehouse of that value. It is a token that says, “Yes, this person is entitled to redeem this much worth for anything else”. This is crucial.

That’s all there is at the core of the crisis. So, let’s dig into it.

How it happened?

A newspaper headline in the wake of the crisis

The following is a brief summary of what led to the housing market crash.

Deregulation in the financial market of the US from the 1980s

Following the Great Depression of 1930s, the financial market of the US was stable and secure due to government regulation. However, during and after the Cold War, few lobbyists started putting pressure on the Congress to deregulate those institutions. What it basically meant was remove restrictions on private banks and firms to use depositor’s (that is, you) money and invest them more freely. It made bankers more greedy and ambitious.

Explosion of derivatives

Think of derivatives as artificial products that banks can offer you. Traditionally, banks are generally involved in lending and borrowing money. But, bankers can devise creative “instruments” – agreements really, that can allow people to bet on anything. Rising crude oil prices, the bankruptcy of a company, or even the weather. Why? Because they get to keep the service charges. Those institutes began exerting power over the political system of the US and got a law passed that essentially banned regulations on derivatives.

Securitization

40 years ago, home buyers would go to a willing lender, ask them for money and then repay them on a fixed basis. Naturally, those lenders were very carefully as to who they lent their money.

Securitization is a concept whereby the lender has no fear of not being repaid. They simply sell their mortgages to an investment bank. Consequently, lenders started making riskier loans because they didn’t care if people don’t repay. Loans for over 90% of the home price started being offered.

Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs)

Banks would buy mortgages from lenders, package a lot of them into a CDO, and sell them to investors around the world who would be happy to have a steady flow of cash because who doesn’t pay their mortgages? You see, it’s just the same, boring “I have money. You don’t but you need it. Okay, let me give you my money but you promise to pay me that and some more” packaged in new wrapping foil. Only this time, those mortgages were subprime. Meaning they were bad debt. Those people had over 90% of the home price paid by the mortgage and so had no incentive to keep the house. The moment they couldn’t pay their bills, they can simply walk away because they had no stake in it.

Rating agencies

These are institutes, Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s and Fitch were the key players at that time, that independently assess a financial instruments risk, returns etc and give them ratings to assist the investor in making an investment in those products. The problem was, the banks were paying these agencies to give AAA, or triple A rating (highest rating, equivalent to a goverment bond in terms of security) to subprime CDOs. Why? Because how else will they sell those rotten apples? Further, the agency had no liability if those CDOs turned bad.

Predatory lending

Subprime loans carried higher interest rates. So, the banker had an incentive to offer you those products that maximized his profits, not caring if those borrowers would be able to pay those loans. This is predatory lending.

This cycle reinforced one another, pumping out more loans, feeding the bankers. Employees of major banks like Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers among others were paid “bonuses”. People owned not one, but five houses. Expensive penthouses, private jets. They degraded to drugs. Prostitution was rampant (and these charges were shown as business expenses), among other things. These greedy, bald people saw money, an unrestricted environment to operate, and a way to extract money for practically creating no value. They were artificially creating these instruments that they knew were bad, bribing rating agencies, and selling them off for the profits. But, there is more.

Credit Default Swaps

AIG, the premier American insurance company, offered others to bet on certain events, such as the fall of a company, or debts going bad, asking them to pay a monthly premium for a return if their bet yielded. Few investment banks saw those CDOs will go bad and started betting against their success and simultaneously selling them off to investors citing they were excellent triple-A products! Moreover, others can speculate on these too. So, if something those CDOs do go bad, AIG is in big trouble. Such chain enforcements blew the crisis out of proportions. There is even more.

After a time, they saw that AIG will go bust trying to repay them after those CDOs go bad which they new were a certainty, so they began to insure themselves for being guaranteed payments from AIG in case the CDOs failed.

The destruction

Bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, one of the major investment firms on Wall Street

People said $x was wiped out from the economy. But that is absurd. How can money be just wiped out in a flash? The truth is, there was no money to start with. Only on paper. There was no value backing that money. It was just a facade conjured by those bankers in their heads. What was the price?

Iceland went bust. Millions of migrant workers in China lost their jobs. Americans lost their savings, jobs, homes. Lehman Brothers dissolved. Stock markets around the world plunged. Nobody was lending any money. The financial system came to a stand still. Yes, pretty horrible for misaligned incentives, ghost value, and people not knowing what the hell they were doing.

From left: Henry Paulson, Chairman of Goldman Sachs and later Secretary of Treasury, US, Ben Bernanke, Chair of the Federal Reserve, and Timothy Geithner, President of Fed Reserve Bank of NY followed by Secretary of Treasury

Who were accountable? What happened to them?

All of them walked home smiling with severance, reimbursements and damages running in the millions. Most still serve on advisory boards, and board of directors of major companies.

Even, academic economists were incentivised to misdirect the community into believing certain facts that weren’t true and got compensated. After all, money runs the world. Not morals.

What is to come and what we should do

I personally believe, overall prosperity (and survival) of everyone depends on equal access to informational and consumer rights. As we enter the second quarter of the 21st century, the world economy will be even more closely knit. Corporations and firms will continue to act in their best interests. Economics and government policies have to stabilise this delicate balance of powers to ensure basic rights and progress for all.

It is only when we, the citizens, have accurate knowledge as to what goes “up there” that we can safeguard our interests, voice our opinions, and strengthen our opposition. The Internet had democratized knowledge and allowed unrestrained access to information for even the remotest sections of society. People must learn to leverage it effectively.

Notes from the Author

I have refrained from naming any person/persons specifically to avoid unnecessary finger pointing at each other. I encourage you to watch the documentary.
I apologise if any of the dates/years mentioned are wrongly quoted. All errors, typographical or otherwise, are my own.

Rereading 'A Thousand Splendid Suns'

gs454236@gmail.com (Basil Labib) — Sun, 18 Jul 2021 18:37:19 +0530

There are all these people constantly questioning me about my identity, my aspirations, my worth. What I want to do? What I want to be? So, I am forced to think about these questions. Indeed, what do I wanna do?

I reread the poignant “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini. So, I have a habit, for better or worse, of poking around the central content to appreciate the big picture. I read a Wikipedia article on Afghanistan’s history. I found it interesting. And included 3 books on Afghan history in my library – looking forward to “A Brief History of Afghanistan” by Shaista Wahab et. al.

So here’s what I want: I want to go to Afghanistan. Stand and take a deep breath of Afghani air and remember the greatness and the massacre. Remember all the great leaders, the corrupt dictators, the murders, the rapes, the genocide, the bullets, the bombs, the cries, the anguish. I want to experience the sweetness of the land, the beautiful mountains, the pretty women, the hopeful youth. I want to savour the delicacies, the smells, the sounds. I want to go to these places I read about. The poorest, deprived of villages to the teeming metropolises.

I want to know how Herati accent is different from Kabuli. I want to see vineyards and orchards. Fields of them. I want to shake the hands of the Afghani women and tell them how brave they are. I want to sit down and listen to their tales of sacrifice and greatness. Such greatness that I can only imagine for myself.

And I want to learn, not only from books but from life itself. Yes, that is what I want to do.

I find life so worthy of living. Is there anyone out there who can hear my cry? Who knows exactly how I feel?

Is Governance Really So Difficult?

gs454236@gmail.com (Basil Labib) — Thu, 15 Jul 2021 13:15:37 +0530

Why is taking economic decisions at a national level such a tantalizing task? Why do government policies fail (sometimes miserably)? Why are people still living on the streets under BPL?

You can expose yourself to an array of criticism and theories spun by supposedly thoughtful individuals at any cafe. These folks go on blurting how the present is worse than a decade ago and on and on. I had heard about their side, I wanted to know about the other side too.

Does anybody know how to govern? How to implement schemes and incentive programs to propel a nation to zero inequality, equitable distribution and a teeming economy? The truth is, nobody knows. Neither the cafe hotshot nor the Chief Economic Advisor to the President. It is because systems such as human society are bafflingly complex. Let me share a simple scenario that highlights how incentives can play out in the real world.

A Tale of Two Companies

Logical behavior of rational humans acting in their own best interest end up making the situation worse off for all — Prisoner’s dilemma.

Imagine a town that is infested by rats. To solve the rat problem, two companies are formed. One sells rat traps and the other sells rat poison. Sales were good and gradually, the rat population started to dwindle.

For sake of argument, let’s say a rat trap sells for $100 and rat poison for $50. The town has 1000 customers, 500 of which go to Rat Poison Company (RPC) and 500 buy from Rat Trap Company (RTC).

Company	Share of market	Number of customer * Profit per customer	Total profit
Rat Trap Company (RTC)	50%	500 * $100	$50000
Rat Poison Company (RPC)	50%	500 * $50	$25000

Both companies have a share of the market based on marketing, customer preference and most importantly, the financial demography of the town (which basically means those who can’t afford expensive goods won’t buy it).

But one day, the manager at RTC had an ingenious idea. He summoned the manager of its rival RPC to a secret meeting and coolly laid out his plan before him. By the end of their secret meeting, both parties were shaking hands and grinning sheepishly.

To everyone’s surprise, the sales of RPC started declining. And it didn’t recover. In fact, RTC ended up dominating the market. Why? The potency of rat poison produced by RPC was decreasing thereby making them ineffective to kill rats. And because rats were an imminent mishap to the town in the absence of a preventive measure, those who used rat poison were forced to switch to rat traps.

This raises the very interesting question, why did RPC allow itself to suffer lose and possibly bankruptcy? Can you figure out what is happening here? (Hint: Think incentives).

Here is what happened at that secret rendezvous of the competitors. RTC stated flatly that because they were competing for market dominance, both of them were depriving themselves of potential profit. So, they asked RPC to deliberately reduce the effectiveness of their poison. This will force all customers to buy rat traps because they cannot do without.

Company	Share of market	Number of customer * Profit per customer	Total profit
Rat Trap Company	100%	1000 * $100	$100000
Rat Poison Company	0%	0 * $50	$0

Rat Trap Company promised RPC to give them $35000/mo as reimbursement. RTC pockets an additional $15000 and RPC gets an additional $10000 without doing anything. The companies walk home not only pulling money from thin air but also becoming brothers in conspiracy. This is the reason why the rivals were shaking hands and grinning at the confidential meeting.

Is this optimal?

As morally upsetting and conventionally twisted this arrangement might seem, according to an economist, it is a perfectly justified case of how firms act in ways to optimize profit. Why? Because incentives!

She might even approve of this strategy but she won’t. Because the firms actions don’t play out in a vacuum. They affect everybody in the real world. So, is this arrangement bad? Yes. Very bad.

As there is virtually no competition to RTC, they can establish a monopoly and charge whatever they want. This is detrimental to the customers who are forced to pay more because of their constrained circumstance (the rat problem). Money that should pay electric bill goes to buy traps. Hospital bills for Uncle Sam’s treatment goes unpaid. You get the point.
Lack of competition stifles any attempt at innovation. People look for better ways to do things in the hopes of making profits off a successful venture (an invention, a discovery etc). Innovation creates real value in society. Lack of innovation will lead to a dead-end of real value growth, making everybody in the town worse off in the long run.
Concentration of wealth. Money that should go to pay for a youth’s college is going into the hands of RPC and RTC. Wealth inequality is almost always an indicator of a poor economy. Because, people can’t get exponentially productive and if earning is a measure of one’s productivity, how are a selected few earning exponential gains especially when the town cannot afford to send kids to college? (Note: Exponential gain in itself is not an anomaly, especially in a highly advanced society. Think Zuckerberg creating Facebook. That was instantaneous creation of a lot of value and simultaneously, a fountain of exponential profit for Mark).

This is something I cooked up but it is not hard to see how such incentive driven behavior can affect others, the people and the environment. Such behavior plays out all the time across thousands of companies and firms in inconceivable ways. The real question is, Can we do any better at understanding this web of intricacy?

I was motivated to think about incentives while reading the newspaper today. Hilsa, a sought-after fish species, swims to the river to lay eggs in still water and then swim back to the sea. Newborn Hilsa then join the sea later. Fishing of young Hilsa is banned around the Bay of Bengal. However, due to skyrocketing petrol prices, fishermen are unable to keep up their profits. That further supplemented by Covid induced demand slash has forced them to break law and fish in the river or near the shores thereby depleting the young Hilsa population fiercely who are caught in finer fishing nets while swimming back to the sea. Seemingly unrelated, eh?

In conclusion

I found sharing these scenarios fruitful because they concisely highlight how is it not obvious to anticipate human behavior.

It is buffoonery to criticise someone without prior knowledge of all facets relevant to the case. With that note, governments (good governments at least) always optimize their decisions in the long-run. And at the hazard of sounding obvious, behavioral economics is a fucking awesome subject to study!

Notes: The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco

gs454236@gmail.com (Basil Labib) — Sat, 03 Jul 2021 21:02:21 +0530

Are you able to successfully leverage the opportunities at your disposal? That is the question that this book tries to answer and provides advice backed by the author’s own experiences. The book is written in a comfortable conversational style, including way too many metaphors and analogies.

The author, himself, has a remarkable lifestyle: starting a tech company during the dot-com bubble, growing it, selling it and so on. Below I have aggregated few core ideas from the book. Enjoy!

My highlights

Beliefs

Beliefs are powerful mechanisms that drive action, whether true or not.

What is wealth?

“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life” — Henry David Thoreau
Wealth is the state when each unit of money that you own earns more than its worth without you doing anything. (mine)
Wealth is composed of fitness (health), family (relationships) and, freedom (choice).

Luck on demand & Accountability

Luck is the residue of process.
“Responsibility is the price of greatness” - Winston Churchill
Responsibility is acknowledging your flaws. Accountability is modifying your ways to eliminate them.

Skills & Education

To trade time is to trade life.
Confined set of skills makes you expendable if demands for them becomes obsolete.
“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education” — A. Einstein

build a machine for yourself.
Impact millions
Maximum control and leverage.
Wealth = Units sold * Unit profit + Asset value
Appreciable assets - businesses, brands, cashflows, notes, IPs, licenses, patents, inventions and real estates.
Passive income - earning income while not working
Start with $5m at 25, and let it compound. Wanna skip the first 30 years.
Become a producer first and a consumer second.
Business structures - C corp, S corp, LLC (Limited Liability Corporation)

Life choices

Poor choices are the leading cause of poverty.
Decisions made early in life are most impactful and irreversible.
Be willingly to accept your flaws.
“Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities” — Oscar Wilde
Create “free time” - time not spend working or recharging from work.
Pledge to never stop learning. Not from books but by engagement.
The acquisition and application of knowledge will make you rich.
Are you interested or committed?
Take intelligent risks.
Big dreams, materialistic or altrusic non-profit foundations, cost money.

Rules of thumb for business

- Need - “What’s in it for me?”
- Control - Over the variables
- Entry - barrier for competition, monopoly, license etc
- Scale - Units sold and Unit profit
- Time - business detached from your time
Live below your means with the intent to expand your means
Financial literacy - I mean, obviously

Entrepreneurship 101

The owner of an idea is not he who imagines it, but he who executes it.
Listen to people’s complains. Customers are foremost.
Look big to impress customers and intimidate competitors.
When supply exceeds demand, prices must drop, suddenly, the product becomes commoditized. Avoid such industries entirely.
Differentiation. Force innovation.
Be copied, never copy. (mine)

Partners:

Accountants and attorneys (among others) must be top-notch
Verify first, trust later
Spectacular product features cannot overcome poor services.

Branding

Build a brand. Rise above the noise.

Discipline & Focus

“…No life grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.” — Harry E. Fosdick
When you segregate your effort among assets, you build weak assets.

The Sun After A Thuderstorm

gs454236@gmail.com (Basil Labib) — Thu, 17 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

There is something magical about the first sunshine after a thunderstorm. The coolness of the still wet ground and the warm sunshine vapourising the dew. The mist hanging low over the floor mixing with the musky smell of freshly spawned algae. The chirping of the songbird as they return to their nests mingling with the chattering of the hawkers and peddlers as they return to the streets below.

Thoughts: UNIX - History and Memoir (Book)

gs454236@gmail.com (Basil Labib) — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

It’s always good to know about the things you love the most. It somehow makes you love them even more. I am glad non-living things are not stupidly self-conscious and self-doubting like us and I can understand them more deeply than I can understand other humans.

Some mind(ful|less) blabberings

With that said, I enjoyed this book. In Brian’s succint prose, he recollects the history of the mother of all operating systems: UNIX. And along the way, describes the sideways development that it encouraged such as the development of C (the “lingua franca of computing”), various timeless tools like grep, awk, sed, yacc, lex, make, document formatters and so on. He talks about what lead to the development of UNIX and ruminates on the kind of environment contagious to such breakthroughs. Unfettered management, fun atmosphere, great minds, stable funding and the freedom and willingness to solve real-world problems. He also points out and clear a lot of the admittedly confusing history that is the legacy of Unix as the (licensed) source code of Unix reached Berkeley. As he correctly pointed out, AT&T tried to “lock the barn door after the crown jewels had flown the coop”. And then we had BSD, Minix, Linux, Xenix and yada yada.

He talks about the revered “Unix philosophy” and spells it out in its entirety which is what I was looking for. He talks about the genius of Ken Thompson (May the Nerd God bless him), the technical eloquence of Dennis Ritchie, the management of Doug and so on. Who wouldn’t love to work at a place where people respect and rever things they loves?

He kind of skims very gently on the technical innovation that Unix brought to the table such as pipes, hierarchial file system, user-level shell programs along with the basic good design decisions and principles of system design.

He talks about pranks on other colleagues, defiance of the management and other geeky things that sound wholesome and naive (It makes me feel that Gods do sometimes play). He points out rather coyly the Unix system in use in the Jurassic Park which controlled the security locks and latches and how Lex navigated it and saved the day. He talks about the infamous comment in the Unix source code that apparently described code responsible for context-switching between processes and it went like:

/** You are not expected to understand this. **/

I think I can safely attribute the code it described to Ken :P.

And he did all that in his usual mix of humour and nostalgia which is heart-warming and I guess will be to anyone who had helped build something that has literally changed the world.

The masters have shown the way, it is time we lead.

Logs

This was a (relatively) short book and I think I completed it in three to four sittings. I finished it on Mar 30, 2021 though I’m sure to dig into the myriad of resources Brian has linked to. I also want to get my hands on the Unix src (6th edition) preferably with Lions’ commentary.

Thoughts: The Selfish Gene (Book)

gs454236@gmail.com (Basil Labib) — Wed, 30 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract

My favourite non-fiction read of 2020.

Devil in the details

With natural selection manifesting itself in the most outspoken of ways this year, it was most apt that I stumbled upon this book. (A Twitter suggestion by PG) And I must say it’s quite a lovable book (for rational and open individuals, anyway).

It’s a book about evolution from the perspective of the gene; the so-called “selfish gene theory”. Dawkins asks the question, “What if evolution happens at the genetic level, individuals and species being mere vehicles (contrary to popular belief that Darwinism is focused on the organism level)?” The book is basically an answer to that question. And such a magnificent work, with Dawkins well-formed ideas coupled with intriguing (read: very bizarre) examples from the kingdom of life presented in his terse words. Perhaps never had a book been so opaque in nature yet so transparent at the same time.

I can safely say a part of me (my ideas) resides in the pages of this book. It is humbling to know what we truly are and even more terrifying to know that we can understand us ourselves. The book invites criticism for some of its “purple passages” but as it is said, truth is what it is. On the face of it, Dawkins may look like a vile antihumanist but on the contrary, he’s doing better than most humans in being outspoken and hence, helping in disrobing that fake robe of arrogance and pride some of us guise under for indeed misunderstanding must be nipped as soon as possible.

The programs fed by the genes are the default factory settings for organisms. But of course, at least we override it by conscious awareness, cultural influences, and the education that we receive.

It’s definitely not a book to be rushed through but devoured slowly. I’d say relish a chapter a day (with possibly a metaphorical lipsmack) and draw connections between the ideas presented. For it is in this diffused state that the mind can do magic.

If there is to be a list of books I’d like to revisit every year (and I’m actively working on making something akin to one), The Selfish Gene will undoubtedly be one of them. A book that will be as immemorial as the subject that it chooses to talk about.

Log

I started around Dec 17 and completed on Dec 28, so around 1.5 weeks.

Thoughts on Basil Labib

Thoughts: The Psychology of Money (Book)

Abstract

The psychology of money

Things that worked for me:

Postscript

Web 3.0 and The Metaverse Mania

Definition and background

How it came about

Why should anybody care?

The conflicted philosophy

Teenage psychology and business

Govermment regulations

Anonymous by design

Unregulated hate content

Where we going?

Footnotes

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar and feminism

ON CHILDREN

ON MEN

ON HERSELF, BEING A WOMAN AND FIGHTING MENTAL DEPRESSION

DISAGREEMENTS

THE CHARACTER OF MISS ESTHER GREENWOOD

RELEVANCE OF ‘THE BELL JAR’

THE SYLVIA PLATH SYNDROME & ARTISTIC EXPRESSION

CONCLUSION

31 Years of 'Heaven or Las Vegas'

First song, favorite album and such things

Further reading

Listen

'Please myself': An interpretation 30 years later

Structure of the song

The lyrics

When and how I was introduced to Nirvana

Nirvana was a feminist band and why that’s important

Notes, Footnotes and Credits

To be or not to be: Understanding Hamlet

Act 1, Scene 2

Act 1, Scene 4

Act 1, Scene 5

Act 2, Scene 2

Act 3, Scene 1

Act 3, Scene 2

Act 4, Scene 3

Act 5, Scene 1

Thoughtful dialogues

How relevant is Hamlet today?

A Closer Look at 'Inside Job'

Economics is a fascinating subject

How it happened?

The destruction

Who were accountable? What happened to them?

What is to come and what we should do

Notes from the Author

Rereading 'A Thousand Splendid Suns'

Is Governance Really So Difficult?

A Tale of Two Companies

Is this optimal?

How is Hilsa population related to rising petroleum prices?

In conclusion

Notes: The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco

My highlights

Beliefs

What is wealth?

Luck on demand & Accountability

Skills & Education

Life choices

Rules of thumb for business

Entrepreneurship 101

Partners:

Branding

Discipline & Focus

The Sun After A Thuderstorm

Thoughts: UNIX - History and Memoir (Book)

Some mind(ful|less) blabberings

Logs

Thoughts: The Selfish Gene (Book)

Abstract

Devil in the details

Log