A fascinating, thought-provoking thread on the recent Chinese crackdown on tech. We covered this earlier this week, but the thread is worth reading and reflecting upon. Also note Lillian Li‘s background, if you are a student of economics. Studying development economics is not “cool”, got “nothing to do with finance”? Think again. Or, at the risk of being a little meta, ask yourselves about the rules of the game.
Month: July 2021
Yes, But What Did You *Do*?
True story, the one that I am about to narrate, although both the person in question and the firm will remain unnamed.
A firm had come on campus for placements, and I happened to know one of the people who happened to be on their recruitment team that day. Midway through the recruitment process, said person came to my office for a chat.
He appeared to be rather frustrated. And when he was halfway through the cup of coffee that had been offered to him, he spoke about what was frustrating him so.
It was, he said, the same story with all of the candidates he’d interviewed that day. When the interview reached the stage where they asked the candidate about their internship or projects they’d worked on while in college, the same conversation played itself out.
“Tell me about your internship at xyz”
“I interned in the abc department at xyz.”
“Ok, what did you do there?”
“I worked on project pqr”
“Yes, but what did you do in that project?”
“I worked with lmn”
“Yes, but what did you do?”
“I submitted a presentation on def”
And on and on, round and round the mulberry bush. It was frustrating, he said, because it was mostly the same story in most of the colleges and universities where they’d been for recruitment. Now, I’m sure (or hopeful, at any rate) that the story will be not quite as bad in the very top tiers of academia. But based on my own experience of interviewing candidates, his experience rang true.
Interviewers don’t ask you about your internship in order to be impressed by the firm you interned in, or to be impressed by the title of your project. They’re interested in the following:
- What skill sets did you have to use to complete your part of the work?
- Which of these skill sets did you pick up on the job?
- What appreciation have you gained of that skill set as a consequence?
- Are you aware of where you fell short, and if so, what are you doing to get better?
- And as a coda of sorts to all of this, what would you do differently if you got the chance to do the internship/project again?
And so when interviewers ask you about what you did in an internship, you have to answer the unsaid questions. What they’re really asking, what they really want to know, is whether you are have acquired the ability to apply your learning. Whether you have the self awareness to know where you’re lacking. Whether you have the “fight” to acquire those skill sets you don’t possess. And most importantly, are you able to assess work you’ve done, and figure out how to do it better the next time around.
When interviewers talk about “attitude”, “willingness to learn” and “jigar“, this is what they’re talking about.
Which brings me to the most important part of this blogpost. There are two ways to react to what I’ve written so far if you’re a student preparing for job interviews.
The first is to train yourself to tell a story like this better, and more convincingly, in an interview.
But that’d be the wrong approach.
The second is to actually apply all of this in your next project. Actually doing all of this makes talking about that much easier, wouldn’t you say?
And as a consequence, writing your CV becomes that much easier.
The bottom-line: doing the work makes talking about it convincingly that much easier.
How to prepare for interviews, you ask? Simple.
Do the work.
The Chinese Tech Crackdown, Take 2
On Tuesday, I ended my post with this:
At the moment, and that as a consequence of having written all of this out, this is where I find myself:
https://atomic-temporary-112243906.wpcomstaging.com/2021/07/27/the-three-article-problem/
China is optimizing for power, and is willing to give up on innovation in the consumer internet space. America is optimizing for innovation in the consumer internet space, and is willing to cede power to big tech in terms of shaping up what society looks like in the near future.
Have I framed this correctly? If yes, what are the potential ramifications in China, the US and the rest of the world? What ought to be the follow-up questions? Why? Who else should I be following and reading to learn more about these issues?
How might I have been wrong? V Ananta Nageswaran and Nitin Pai wrote posts recently that helped me learn about some answers to at least the first of my questions above.
Let’s find out how I might have been wrong!
Noah Smith had hypothesized that the tech crackdown is because China’s goals are about asserting its power internationally. And not soft power, but the tanks and boots on the ground type power.
China may simply see things differently. It’s possible that the Chinese government has decided that the profits of companies like Alibaba and Tencent come more from rents than from actual value added — that they’re simply squatting on unproductive digital land, by exploiting first-mover advantage to capture strong network effects, or that the IP system is biased to favor these companies, or something like that. There are certainly those in America who believe that Facebook and Google produce little of value relative to the profit they rake in; maybe China’s leaders, for reasons that will remain forever opaque to us, have simply reached the same conclusion.
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-is-china-smashing-its-tech-industry
Nitin Pai disagrees:
Now, it’s unclear if the opportunity costs of talent are so stark in China that the government must crack down on consumer internet companies in order to incentivise people to get into hardware. But Smith’s explanation is consistent with the popular view that China’s leaders are astute and inscrutable strategists who think really long term.
https://www.nitinpai.in/2021/07/27/why-china-is-attacking-its-consumer-internet-companies
..
..
My answer is simple: it’s about political power. In fact, if we frame the question differently, the answer becomes readily apparent: “Why is the autocratic leader of the Chinese Communist Party attacking media companies that directly reach almost everyone in the country?” Because size, reach and control of consumer data gives them narrative power comparable to what the Party has. Further, the ability to tap foreign capital gives them more freedom, albeit of the kind with Chinese characteristics. The Party doesn’t like that. And Xi likes it even less. That is why he moved aggressively to pre-empt a challenge to the Party’s narrative dominance and preserve its monopoly on power.
Another way to think about it: it is about soft power, but the soft power that the CCP would like to project to its own people. There is only one storyteller that shapes the societal narrative in China, and anybody else who wants to play is going to be cut down to size. Ruthlessly.
(Of course, it is not just about soft power being projected to its own people. But nobody in China is crazy enough to want to play the hard power game with the CCP. That’s a well established monopoly. But Nitin is saying that the CCP wants all aspects of power to be within its complete control, soft and hard.)
As he puts it towards the end of his post:
It’s consistent with what it has been doing since Mao Zedong’s time: ruthlessly cutting down challenges to its hold on Chinese minds.
https://www.nitinpai.in/2021/07/27/why-china-is-attacking-its-consumer-internet-companies
That’s it, folks. Nothing more to see here.
Ananta Nageswaran also blogged about this yesterday:
In the meantime, a blog post by Noah Smith, an economics teacher and a (former?) columnist for Bloomberg wrote that China’s crackdown on consumer-internet companies was to ensure that China’s financial and intellectual resources were not diverted for creating low value addition. It did not strike him that such an explanation – if it were true – did not do any credit to China. It reeks of central planning and omniscience. Two, even if it were true and even if it was meant to be a benign explanation, malign explanations cannot be ruled and need not be ruled out.
https://thegoldstandardsite.wordpress.com/2021/07/28/fintech-edtech-and-china/
Mutually exclusive explanations help keep the narrative simple and, two, it helps make the narrator appear smart because he/she has figured out the ultimate explanation. More often that not, reality is grey. Or, it has many shades.
In other words, he’s saying that even if what Noah is saying makes sense, there is more to it than that. It’s not just the opportunity cost of having some of the best minds in China work on consumer tech. What else might it be? Ananta Nageswaran finds himself in agreement with Nitin Pai:
I agree. It is political power and the interpretation (of Xi and correctly so) that information (Nitin calls it mindshare) about people’s behaviour that these companies have give them the ability (and the chance) to set the narrative later, in Xi’s thinking, seizing it from the CCP.
https://thegoldstandardsite.wordpress.com/2021/07/28/fintech-edtech-and-china/
A minor point I would like to make here: I don’t think information and mindshare are the same thing, though they certainly are related. The information that tech firms have allows them to shape (sometimes in entirely unexpected ways!) the narrative, and therefore influence mindshare. Information is the tool and mindshare is the outcome – or at least, that is how I see it.
Please read Sanjay Anandram’s quotes from that blogpost too. I learnt about (and am going to shamelessly borrow) the RFRE principle.
So is it Noah’s story, or Nitin and Ananta Nageswaran’s? Regular readers know what’s coming next: the truth lies somewhere in the middle! Or at least, that’s my take, and it seems to be Ananta Nageswaran’s as well:
Of the three explanations that have been on offer, Noah Smith’s is the least persuasive. In some respects, Nitin and Sanjay are aligned and they diverge in some other aspects.
https://thegoldstandardsite.wordpress.com/2021/07/28/fintech-edtech-and-china/
As always, the real motivation behind some of the recent decisions of the government in China will have elements of all three and more.
To a student reading this: spectrum based thinking is a gift. Reasonable people can and should argue about where the truth lies, but always think intervals, never point estimates.
And having read all of the pieces that I have linked to across these two posts, I find myself in the same space on the spectrum as Ananta Nageswaran. That is, it’s not just the Noah Smith/Dan Wang argument at play (regarding which, Noah has updates. Scroll to the bottom of the post where he links to pieces that bolster his argument). But it is more about the CCP asserting its power.
Ananta Nagewaran ends with a Bruno Maçães quote: “the main players compete not under a common set of rules but in order to define what the rules are”.
It is a weird coincidence, but I just introduced some students to Frederich List yesterday. The more things change…
On Valuing Zomato, But Don’t Stop There
If you are a student of economics, you should be able to understand the basics of valuation. It is up to each one of us to determine our level of expertise, but at the very least, we should be able to understand valuations that others have arrived at.
And a great way to learn this is to devour, as greedily as possible, every single blog post written by Professor Aswath Damodaran.
Here’s an excerpt from his blogpost on valuing Zomato:
Eating out and prosperity don’t always go hand in hand, but you are more likely to eat out, as your discretionary income rises. Thus, it should come as no surprise that the number of restaurants increases with per capita GDP, and that one reason for the paucity of restaurants(and food delivery) in India is its low GDP, less than a fifth of per capital GDP in China and a fraction of per capital GDP in the US & EU.
http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-zomato-ipo-bet-on-big-markets-and.html
Read the whole thing, and if it is your first time reading about this topic, read it three times. I’m quite serious! Also download the spreadsheets, and play around with the assumptions in them. It is a great way to teach yourself Excel and valuations at the same time. Excel and valuations is also a great way to understand the concept of complementary goods, and I’m only half joking.
So, ok, you have now got a little bit of a grip on valuation. That’s great, but you shouldn’t stop there. Valuing a company is fine, but how does one think about the valuation of this company (Zomato) in the context of this sector (online food delivery)?
Here are some facts. Zomato raised $1.3 bn through an IPO which was oversubscribed 38 times and which valued it at $14.2 bn. At about the same time, its competitor Swiggy raised $1.25 bn in a Series J fund raise which gave it a post-money valuation of $5.5 bn.
https://gulzar05.blogspot.com/2021/07/some-observations-on-zomato-and-swiggy.html
The post-IPO public market price discovery of Zomato shows that Swiggy is 2.6 times under-valued.
Also from that post, a great way to understand how to start to think about the price one can get in the market. That is, you can learn all the theory you want about valuation, and pricing and what not. At the end of the day, the price you command in the market is about so much more than that:
4. But, if markets stay as frothy as it’s now, Swiggy’s promoters and investors need not worry. Unlike Zomato’s promoters who, judging from the first day pop left huge money on the table, Swiggy’s promoters could rake in much more by pricing its IPO closer to the comparator market price. Swiggy and other could benefit from the later mover advantage.
https://gulzar05.blogspot.com/2021/07/some-observations-on-zomato-and-swiggy.html
5. There appears to have been a first mover disadvantage for Zomato in leaving money at the table and not maximising its IPO takings. Conversely there may have been a first mover advantage for its investors in maximising their returns.
And you shouldn’t stop there either! Valuing a company is fine. Thinking about that company in the context of its competitors is great. Thinking about the IPO rush in the start-up world, and what it means in the context of the overall economy is fantastic.
The Indian startup scene has been set ablaze by the spectacular IPO of Zomato. In a largely conservative market this constitutes a huge collective leap of faith since the company has consistently made increasing losses and several questions hang on its profitability. With some more blockbuster IPOs lined up, the party is likely to go on for some time. Some high-profile boosters even think of it as a new dawn in risk capital raising. The problem is with those left standing when the party ends, as it must. And it’s most likely to be not pretty.
https://gulzar05.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-startup-ipo-bubble-reaches-india.html
The world’s unicorn herd is multiplying at a clip that is more rabbit-like. The number of such firms has grown from a dozen eight years ago to more than 750, worth a combined $2.4trn. In the first six months of 2021 technology startups raised nearly $300bn globally, almost as much as in the whole of 2020. That money helped add 136 new unicorns between April and June alone, a quarterly record, according to cb Insights, a data provider. Compared with the same period last year the number of funding rounds above $100m tripled, to 390. A lot of this helped fatten older members of the herd: all but four of the 34 that now boast valuations of $10bn or more have received new investments since the start of 2020.
https://www.economist.com/business/2021/07/19/technology-unicorns-are-growing-at-a-record-clip
Why is this happening now? Is it because of loose monetary policy the world over? Is it because of optimism about what the world will look like post-covid? Neither, and something else altogether? Or both and something else also? What might the ramifications be? How should that influence your thinking about the next three to five years in your life – when it comes to going abroad to study, or starting an MBA, or being in the job market?
Note the chain of thought in this blogpost: valuing a company, thinking about that specific sector, thinking about IPO’s in general, thinking about the overall economy… and getting all of that back to your life. Apply this to all of the news you read, everyday, and you’ll soon start to build your own little picture of the world. That is, you’ll start to see the world like an economist. And trust me, that is a superpower. 🙂
The Three Article Problem
I’ve been mulling over three separate columns/posts/interviews over the past few days. Today’s post was supposed to be me reflecting on my thoughts about all of them together, but as it turns out, I have more questions than I do thoughts.
Worse (or if you think like I do, better) I don’t even have a framework to go through these questions in my own head. That is to say, I do not have a mental model that helps me think about which questions to ask first, and which later, and why.
So this is not me copping out from writing today’s post. This is me asking all of you for help. What framework should I be using to think about these three pieces of content together?
All three posts revolve around technology, and two are about the Chinese tech crackdown. Two are about innovation in tech and America. And one of the three is, obviously, the intersection set.
The first is a write-up from Noah Smith’s Substack (which you should read, and if you can afford it, pay for. Note that I am well over my budget for subscribing to content for this year, so I don’t. But based on what I have read of his free posts, I have no hesitation in recommending it to you.)
In other words, the crackdown on China’s internet industry seems to be part of the country’s emerging national industrial policy. Instead of simply letting local governments throw resources at whatever they think will produce rapid growth (the strategy in the 90s and early 00s), China’s top leaders are now trying to direct the country’s industrial mix toward what they think will serve the nation as a whole.
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-is-china-smashing-its-tech-industry
And what do they think will serve the nation as a whole? My guess is: Power. Geopolitical and military power for the People’s Republic of China, relative to its rival nations.
If you’re going to fight a cold war or a hot war against the U.S. or Japan or India or whoever, you need a bunch of military hardware. That means you need materials, engines, fuel, engineering and design, and so on. You also need chips to run that hardware, because military tech is increasingly software-driven. And of course you need firmware as well. You’ll also need surveillance capability, for keeping an eye on your opponents, for any attempts you make to destabilize them, and for maintaining social control in case they try to destabilize you.
As always, read the whole thing. But in particular, read his excerpts from Dan Wang’s letters from 2019 and 2020. It goes without saying that you should subscribe to Dan Wang’s annual letters (here are past EFE posts that mention Dan Wang). As Noah Smith says, China is optimizing for power, and is willing to pay for it by sacrificing, at least in part, the “consumer internet”.
That makes sense, in the sense that I understand the argument.
The second is an excellent column in the Economist, from its business section. Schumpeter is a column worth reading almost always, but this edition in particular was really thought-provoking. The column starts off by comparing how China and the United States of America are dealing with the influence of “big” technology firms.
As the column says, when it comes to the following:
- The speed with which China has dealt with the problem
- The scope of its tech crackdown
- The harshness of the punishments (fines is just one part of the Chinese government’s arsenal)
… China has America beat hollow. As Noah Smith argues, China is optimizing for power, and has done so for ages. As he mentions elsewhere in his essay, “in classic CCP fashion, it was time to smash”. Well, they have.
But the concluding paragraph of the Schumpeter column is worth savoring in full, and over multiple mugs of coffee:
But autarky carries its own risks. Already, Chinese tech darlings are cancelling plans to issue shares in America, derailing a gravy train that allowed Chinese firms listed there to reach a market value of nearly $2trn. The techlash also risks stifling the animal spirits that make China a hotbed of innovation. Ironically, at just the moment China is applying water torture to its tech giants, both it and America are seeing a flurry of digital competition, as incumbents invade each other’s turf and are taken on by new challengers. It is a time for encouragement, not crackdowns. Instead of tearing down the tech giants, American trustbusters should strengthen what has always served the country best: free markets, rule of law and due process. That is the one lesson America can teach China. It is the most important lesson of all.
https://www.economist.com/business/2021/07/24/china-offers-a-masterclass-in-how-to-humble-big-tech-right
This makes sense, in the sense that I understand the argument being made. Given what little I understand of economics and how the world works, I am in complete agreement with the idea being espoused.
The third is an interview of Mark Zuckerberg by Casey Newton of the Verge.
It is a difficult interview to read, and it is also a great argument for why we should all read more science fiction (note that the title of today’s post is a little bit meta, and that in more ways than one). Read books by Neal Stephenson. Listen to his conversation with Tyler Cowen. Read these essays by Matthew Ball.
Towards the end of the interview, Casey Newton asks Mark Zuckerberg about the role of the government, and the importance of public spaces, in the metaverse. Don’t worry right now if the concept of the metaverse seems a little abstract. Twenty years ago, driverless cars and small devices that could stream for you all of the world’s content (ever produced) also seemed a little abstract. Techno-optimism is great, I heavily recommend it to you.
Here is Mark Zuckerberg’s answer:
I certainly think that there should be public spaces. I think that’s important for having healthy communities and a healthy sphere. And I think that those spaces range from things that are government-built or administered, to nonprofits, which I guess are technically private, but are operating in the public interest without a profit goal. So you think about things like Wikipedia, which I think is really like a public good, even though it’s run by a nonprofit, not a government.
https://www.theverge.com/22588022/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-ceo-metaverse-interview
One of the things that I’ve been thinking about a lot is: there are a set of big technology problems today that, it’s almost like 50 years ago the government, I guess I’m talking about the US government here specifically, would have invested a ton in building out these things. But now in this country, that’s not quite how it’s working. Instead, you have a number of Big Tech companies or big companies that are investing in building out this infrastructure. And I don’t know, maybe that’s the right way for it to work. When 5G is rolled out, it’s tough for a startup to really go fund the tens of billions of dollars of infrastructure to go do that. So, you have Verizon and AT&T and T-Mobile do it, and that’s pretty good, I guess.
But there are a bunch of big technology problems, [like] defining augmented and virtual reality in this overall metaverse vision. I think that that’s going to be a problem that is going to require tens of billions of dollars of research, but should unlock hundreds of billions of dollars of value or more. I think that there are things like self-driving cars, which seems like it’s turning out to be pretty close to AI-complete; needing to almost solve a lot of different aspects of AI to really fully solve that. So that’s just a massive problem in terms of investment. And some of the aspects around space exploration. Disease research is still one that our government does a lot in.
But I do wonder, especially when we look at China, for example, which does invest a lot directly in these spaces, how that is kind of setting this up to go over time. But look, in the absence of that, yeah, I do think having public spaces is a healthy part of communities. And you’re going to have creators and developers with all different motivations, even on the mobile internet and internet today, you have a lot of people who are interested in doing public-good work. Even if they’re not directly funded by the government to do that. And I think that certainly, you’re going to have a lot of that here as well.
But yeah, I do think that there is this long-term question where, as a society, we should want a very large amount of capital and our most talented technical people working on these futuristic problems, to lead and innovate in these spaces. And I think that there probably is a little bit more of a balance of space, where some of this could come from government, but I think startups and the open-source community and the creator economy is going to fill in a huge amount of this as well.
I think he’s saying that the truth lies somewhere in the middle, and god knows I’m sympathetic to that argument. But who decides where in the middle? Who determines the breadth of this spectrum, governments or businesses? With what objective, over what time horizon, and with what opportunity costs?
At the moment, and that as a consequence of having written all of this out, this is where I find myself:
China is optimizing for power, and is willing to give up on innovation in the consumer internet space. America is optimizing for innovation in the consumer internet space, and is willing to cede power to big tech in terms of shaping up what society looks like in the near future.
Have I framed this correctly? If yes, what are the potential ramifications in China, the US and the rest of the world? What ought to be the follow-up questions? Why? Who else should I be following and reading to learn more about these issues?
I don’t have the answers to these questions, and would appreciate the help.
Thank you!
Observe, and Ask
Most students who take introductory economics seem to leave the course without really having learned even the most important basic economic principles. For example, their ability to answer simple economic questions several months after leaving the course is not measurably different from that of people who never took a principles course (Hansen, Salemi and Siegfried 2002). The problem seems to be that instructors of principles courses almost always try to teach students far too much. In the process, really important ideas get no more coverage than minor ones. Everything ends up going by in a blur
Frank, R. H. (2006). The economic naturalist writing assignment. The Journal of Economic Education, 37(1), 58-67.
So begins a paper called “The Economic Naturalist Writing Assignment”, a paper that everybody can (and dare I say should) read. Robert Frank has forgotten more about teaching principles of economics than most of us will ever learn. 48 years of teaching, so that last sentence isn’t rhetorical.
A successful economics learning experience should mirror these same steps. A short list of basic principles should be presented to students, one at a time in the context of simple examples drawn from familiar settings. Following each, students should be asked to practice the principle by using it to solve simple problems that are closely parallel to the ones used to illustrate the principle. The student should then be given the opportunity to pose original questions and use the same basic principles to answer them.
Frank, R. H. (2006). The economic naturalist writing assignment. The Journal of Economic Education, 37(1), 58-67.
Readers who are familiar with the book The Economic Naturalist will have guessed where this is going. For years, Professor Frank asked his students to write essays about things they saw around them that they found puzzling, interesting, or counterintuitive. The point of the essays was to, well, observe and ask. And then, using the principles of economics that had just been taught to them, try and come up with answers.
A really successful paper is one that begins with a really interesting question (one that makes the listener instantly curious to learn the answer) and then uses an economic principle or principles to construct a plausible answer. You’ll know you have a good paper if the first thing your roommate wants to do upon reading it is to tell friends about it.
Frank, R. H. (2006). The economic naturalist writing assignment. The Journal of Economic Education, 37(1), 58-67.
What kind of questions? Here are just two (the names in parentheses are of the students who asked the question, and went on to answer them in their essays):
- Why do brides spend so much money on wedding dresses, whereas grooms often rent cheap tuxedos, even though grooms could potentially wear their tuxedos on many other occasions and brides will never wear their dresses again?
(Jennifer Dulski) - Why are round-trip fares from Hawaii to the mainland higher than the corresponding fares from the mainland to Hawaii? (Karen Hittle)
Curious to hear the answers? Please, read the paper as an appetizer, and for the mains, buy the book.
In the paper I have been excerpting from, Professor Frank uses the analogy of how tennis is taught to beginners, beginning with basic drills (of which the forehand comes first).
Those who aspire to move their games to a higher level typically continue with formal instruction. However, for them, too, an important part of the learning process is continued play.
Same as earlier, which is what ibid means
Now, about that “continued play” being an important part of the learning process, Tyler Cowen has a post out today, titled “Why do they keep the books wrapped in Mexican bookstores?“:
Yes, wrapped in clear shrink wrap. So you can’t page through them and see what the book might be like. I can think of a few hypotheses:
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/07/why-do-they-keep-the-books-wrapped-in-mexican-bookstores.html
They don’t want you standing in the bookstore reading the thing, rather than buying it. A bit like some U.S. comics news stands in days past. Yet this doesn’t seem so plausible for longer books or most novels.
They want the books to look nicer and less grimy.
How about price discrimination?
If Tyler Cowen can take the time out to practice his forehand, surely the rest of us can also train like athletes?
Principles of economics can be learnt for free online, using any resource of your choice. I’m not linking to any specific one because I want to make the point that you can very, very easily choose a resource, and it will likely be great.
But better still, principles of economics can be practiced very easily too! What are you waiting for? 🙂
Finally: Crosswords (at least the one closest to my home) wraps some books in clear shrink wrap, but not others. Does anybody know why?
Martin Scorsese and Roger Ebert Talking Movies
Most of you will have heard of Martin Scorsese (duh), but perhaps not everybody will have heard of Roger Ebert. If you’re looking to improve your writing, read his reviews.
His reviews are also a great way to pick what to watch on pretty much any night. Also watch his reviews with Gene Siskel.
But for today, enjoy this conversation between two people who knew just a little bit about movies
Food, by Krish Ashok
If you’re coming cross this thread for the first time, I envy you. Scroll up to the top, and drool your way through 🙂
Please read his book, Masala Lab, if you haven’t read it yet.
On Networking
It’s a question I get quite often: can you teach me about how to network better?
- I actually don’t network all that well. I suck at small talk, for starters. I’m never sure of what to do when I walk into a large gathering. My preferred thing to do at large parties is to seek out a person I’m comfortable with, and chat with that person for as long as possible. So if that is the kind of networking you have in mind, I’m not the guy to ask.
- But reaching out to folks to ask for help, I have a lot of experience in. I’ve been doing it for years, and will do it for life. Unashamedly, unabashedly. That I can speak about, since I have skin in the game.
- “Life is a non-zero sum game” is an axiom for me. So if somebody asks me for help, I will always try to help. I’d advise you to do the same. And that is a good way to start building out your network: help other folks when they ask you for it. Two advantages, one personal, one societal.
- Of course that person is likelier to help you when you reach out to them for help. You can, Vito Corleone style((don’t take that analogy too far, please!)), call in favors, even years down the line.
- But at the margin, that person is also likelier to pay it forward. That is, there is a non-zero chance that the person you helped will in turn help other folks who ask that person for help. If your ultimate aim is to build a society that is more willing to help each other to learn (as mine is), help others as much as possible. And you can call that networking, if you like. 🙂
- But that is the larger point about networking. I think most people have “how can I get others to help me?” in mind when they want to get better at networking. And sure, that’s very much a part of it.
- But it cuts both ways, no? I think it makes sense to first ask “How can I help others?”, before asking others for their help. Exports matter as much as imports!
- And a college student (my primary target audience on this blog) might well say, “But what can I help them with? They have so much more experience and knowledge than me!”
- True, for the most part. Not always, mind you, but I get the merits of that argument.
- But can you help somebody else? Can you help your juniors learn better? Can you help your neighbor’s schoolkids out with a project? Can you put out blogposts regularly that other folks may eventually read?
- If at least a part of your personal mission in life is to help other people, you will be that much more confident in asking others for help. Because you’re not asking for help only for yourself to get a job (for example), but through the help you’re receiving, others are benefitting too.
- The bottom-line is this: networking isn’t just about asking how to get others to help you. It is also about asking how you might help others. And doing the latter first makes it much easier to ask for the former.
- One final point: it is of course still entirely possible that the person you’ve asked for help will say no. They’re not doing it because they don’t like you, or your work. It is because they have commitments of their own, and honestly and really don’t have the time.
- Which is fine! There’s seven billion of us out there, you can always find someone else 🙂
Should social media ban political parties?
I came to this interesting article via Mostly Economics:
In many countries, Facebook is one of the few alternatives to the government-aligned outlets that dominate national media ecosystems. That is why authorities have devoted so many resources to manipulating it, and why the company must take responsibility for stopping them.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/facebook-ban-trump-world-leaders-by-courtney-c-radsch-2021-07
Which led me to ask myself this question: what are the long term costs and benefits of having political parties on social media, and whether it makes sense to ban them from being on it?
- In these politically charged times, disclaimers might be a good way to start. This is not about Trump and Facebook, which is what the article I excerpted from is about. Nor is it about Twitter and the Indian government. It is about, more broadly speaking, the separation of societal discourse from discourse led by, shaped by and manipulated by, political parties. All political parties from all nations across all social media platforms.
- What is the aim of political parties on social media? Are they playing the non-zero game of asking what is best for their country (and preferably the world)? Or are they playing the zero-sum game of showing how the other side is wrong?
- Do they lead by example in terms of what societal discourse ought to be like? I know what my answer is to this question. If yours is yes, and you are willing to engage in a conversation, I would love to learn why my answer is wrong.
- My utopian societal discourse is one in which I take the help of others to learn what is best. And I hope to do this by improving my own knowledge and thinking, by conversing with others.
- Perhaps I’m too cynical when I say this, but this is not the aim of any political party on any social media platform. The aim of any political party on any social media platform is to prove “The Other” wrong. More, to insist that glory for your tribe/state/nation is all that matters. Still more, to insist that this glorious destination can only be reached via supporting “Us”, not “The Other”.
- Political parties play the zero sum game on social media. And we get sucked into playing that game ourselves.
- They’re not the root cause of the state of societal discourse, to be clear. But have they made the problem worse? Maybe I’m blinkered in my view, but I fail to see how this is not the case.
- The devil, as always, lies in the details. Are representatives of political parties to be allowed? If yes, are they free to make political statements? Who decides? This is not, I’m very aware, a very practical solution to the problem I’m highlighting. But I’ll make two final points.
- I’d much rather have this conversation than a debate on whether America should rein in Facebook, and whether India should ban Twitter, or any other match the following of your choice.
- If the two alternatives given to me are a country without social media of my choice, OR social media of my choice without political parties’ handles on it, I’m going with the latter.
- The truth lies somewhere in the middle. But maybe there’s merit in approaching the middle from this side of the spectrum rather than that one? (Yes, I know, third point. But this is my platform, and therefore my choice.)
EconForEverybody 