Thought of the Day

There is a story (probably apocryphal, like most good stories) that when Mikhail Gorbachev tried to resuscitate the moribund Soviet economy, he sent one of his chief aids to London to find out what Thatcherism was all about, and how a capitalist system actually functioned. The hosts took their Soviet visitor on a tour of the City, of the London stock exchange and of the London School of Economics, where he had lengthy talks with bank managers, entrepreneurs and professors. After a few hours, the Soviet expert burst out: ‘Just one moment, please. Forget about all these complicated economic theories. We have been going back and forth across London for a whole day now, and there’s one thing I cannot understand. Back in Moscow, our finest minds are working on the bread supply system, and yet there are such long queues in every bakery and grocery store. Here in London live millions of people, and we have passed today in front of many shops and supermarkets, yet I haven’t seen a single bread queue. Please take me to meet the person in charge of supplying bread to London. I must learn his secret.’ The hosts scratched their heads, thought for a moment, and said: ‘Nobody is in charge of supplying bread to London.’

Yuval Noah Hariri, Homo Deus

small independent decisions almost always wins vs big fat centralized decisions

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Homo-Deus-Brief-History-Tomorrow/dp/1784703931/ref=as_sl_pc_qf_sp_asin_til?tag=carneirao101-21&linkCode=w00&linkId=b01c3b33e5a03ff21ec120cf43cfa947&creativeASIN=1784703931

From The NYT - Ten Navy sailors were missing and five were injured on Monday after a United States destroyer collided with an oil tanker off the coast of Singapore.Maritime collisions involving two ships are considered rare, but this was the second collision involving an American naval destroyer since June.

I am going to rent SAL to the US Navy he barks everytime something gets near our door. Last week he even barked before a small night earthquake in Lisbon

Here is the new hire from the US Navy

Empirical Evidence from a Panel of OECD Countries,Jens Arnold, OECD, France

: 09 Oct 2008

This paper examines the relationship between tax structures and economic growth by entering indicators of the tax structure into a set of panel growth regressions for 21 OECD countries, in which both the accumulation of physical and human capital are accounted for. The results of the analysis suggest that income taxes are generally associated with lower economic growth than taxes on consumption and property. More precisely, the findings allow the establishment of a ranking of tax instruments with respect to their relationship to economic growth. Property taxes, and particularly recurrent taxes on immovable property, seem to be the most growth-friendly, followed by consumption taxes and then by personal income taxes. Corporate income taxes appear to have the most negative effect on GDP per capita. These findings suggest that a revenue-neutral growth-oriented tax reform would be to shift part of the revenue base towards recurrent property and consumption taxes and away from income taxes, especially corporate taxes. There is also evidence of a negative relationship between the progressivity of personal income taxes and growth. All of the results are robust to a number of different specifications, including controlling for other determinants of economic growth and instrumenting tax indicators.

No one plays the lottery if there are no winners
Seth Godin...

Moravec's paradox is the discovery by artificial intelligence and robotics researchers that, contrary to traditional assumptions, high-level reasoning requires very little computation, but low-level sensorimotor skills require enormous computational resources. The principle was articulated by Hans Moravec, Rodney Brooks, Marvin Minsky and others in the 1980s. As Moravec writes, "it is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility."

BCA reserch wisely as usual concludes that middle incomes will be squeezed and low pay jobs will survive. Why because the computers will destroy the false specialists.

what is a False Specialist? A medical Doctor, a Management Guru, etc..... you never know if what they prescribe works or not. why ?Doctor prescribes medicine A and you get better, who knows if you were going to get better anyway.
Another example a patient with the same conditions sees 10 different medical Doctors and gets 5 or 6 different diagnostics

what is a real specialist? A plumber. Something does not work and after he leaves the House it works. A bike repair mechanic is also a real specialist.

Don't study to be a false specialist. soft education creates false specialists (Management, Economics, sociology etc....) study only hard sciences or physical skils, music, gymnastics, dancing, sports etc...