On the Edge - Book Review

Good book from Nate Silver!

• The Introduction in the book reminds us of the instances when a provision gets sneakily inserted into an unrelated bill. The example - author gives is for the UIGEA bill that established regulations for payment processors for online gambling, but was part of a Homeland Security Bill. Another such famous example is - when “minimum wage” was sneakily inserted in an Iraq War bill.
• Lots of discussion around Expected Value. EV = P(win) x Profit + P(loss) x Loss.
• Book contains lots of references to Game Theory.
• Good examples of Prisoner’s Dilemma. This arises only in situations that are not zero sum. It is what happens when people are unable to cooperate,even though they would be better off if they could.
• A good way to play poker is to randomize. That means, not just that you should play different hands in different ways; but you should play the same hand in different ways.
• Deception is very important in poker.
• Game Theory Optimal.
• In Poker - player’s checks are highly predictable, as though they’ve turned their hand face up. The term for this is “Capped”.
• Defense mechanism against the above is - to occasionally check with their “best hands”.
• Sports book odds - point spread, and fractional odds.
• Annie Duke’s book Quit, has well researched evidence - that when people volunteered to put major life decisions as to whether to stay at a job or in a relationship up to the outcome of a coin flip, they were happier on average when they made a change. It’s because most people do NOT take enough risk.
• System 1 Thinking : Little or no conscious effort.
• System 2 Thinking : Deliberate, structured thought process.
• Book name mentioned : The Luck factor
• Nevada regulation asks that the casino and success of gaming is dependent upon public confidence and trust and free from criminal and corrupt elements. It means that it is very unlikely that a casino will remove a single ace from a six-deck blackjack shoe. Although, it’d be hard for someone to find it out. But the problem is once the other casino operators also start following this to maximize their profits, it’d become hard for consumers to find trustworthy operators. Also, many casino resorts are the most expensive building projects and developers count on many decades’ worth of profits to get their investments back.
• As a result, Nevada’s gaming revenues exceed those of the next three states combined.
• Never play slots in a casino. Because slots have a heavy house edge. And they are addictive.
• Slots prey on people who are looking to escape from the world.
• Sports Betting -

• Middling arbitrage. Bet differently over two betting sites if they are favoring opposing teams.
• It’s easy to find edges but not easy to find people willing to bet real money for an extended period of time.
• There is something called the Moneyline - it refers to which team is more likely to win. The team with a minus sign in front of it - is the favorite. Example - If Team A has -225 in front then it means you’ve to bet $225 to win $100.
• Point spread talks about the difference between the two team’s scores.
• Total is about the total number of points scored in a match.

• In the chapter, Acceleration, the author very convincingly points out that Silicon Valley might not be as contrarian as it pretends to be.
• Peter Thiel seemed to rely on the fact that the world is deterministic.
• Non-fungible token = One of its kind.
• Thomas Schelling i.e concept of Focal Point. A solution that people tend to choose by default in the absence of communication in order to avoid coordination failure.
• John Rawls talks about maximizing the well-being of the least well-off person.
• SBF’s philosophy that “0 is not the correct number of times to miss a flight.”
• Are holding investments who have low probability of success like a 1% chance to return 1000x the money, worth it?
• SBF is cunning enough to cultivate an image of an eccentric founder who believes in taking risks. Like some politicians too.
• The chapter Quantification - gives a very fascinating example of a small dog which got loose from her owner and went on the tracks following the route of an F train.

• It was close to rush-hour traffic and the trains were shut down for an hour. It raises the trolley problem i.e a moral dilemma.
• Do we save 5 people or just 1 person?
• In this case - 100s of thousands of people ride this route daily, so if we shut down the trains for an hour - it means that 10s of thousands are delayed. If the average hourly wage in NY is $40/hour - then if we delayed 50,000 people - the cost is ~$2 million.
• Is Dakota’s life worth more or less than $2 million?
• It’s a rough simplification. Because in this case, we erased 1 hour from the commuters’ lives that day. Sure they can keep scrolling TikTok or some will try to find an alternate route. However, delays for some of these commuters might endanger other people. A hospital worker might not be able to get to the hospital to attend to a victim, or a father might not be able to pick up their special-needs kid.
• How many of you will support shutting down the subway for an hour if a squirrel got onto the tracks? What about a human toddler - hope everyone agrees. With a poodle - reasonable people will argue the case back & forth.
• William MacAskill argues that we need to go by the number of neurons in the animal.
• Could it be a speech -  Hard choices are often unavoidable.

[include the covid instances as well]

• The author gives us a primer on Effective Altruism in the chapter Quantification.
• Eliezer Yudkowsky is leading proponent, and the author of LessWrong blog.
• Table

Effective Altruists	Rationalists
Influenced by Peter Singer.	Influenced by Yudkowsky.
Do things from the heart - i.e want to do good.	Do things from the Head - want to do what is logical.

• EAs prioritize morals/how-to-do-good. This is in contrast to rationalists who prioritize logic and think about long-term problems.
• Utilitarianism states that the best action is the one that maximizes overall well-being (often referred to as "utility") and reduces suffering for the greatest number of people.
• “Common sense morality” has some flaws in it. Example - why we eat pigs but not dogs. If you raise too much fuss around it, then either you are a radical activist or puppy killer.
• Can fully self-denying ourselves lead to a better world?
• I like how the author made an astute observation i.e people of different stripes of political and other identity - all believe that the world as we know it, will end soon?
  Climate Change -> Democrats ;
  Social Decay -> Republicans ;
  AI Risk -> Tech Bro
• Peter Singer’s EA philosophy poses the following scenario: a variation of the Trolley Problem. You’re walking past a child who is drowning and you can easily pull her out without any risk to yourself. Although, there is one thing - you’re wearing nice clothes and they would get dirty. What should you do? The answer is you should rescue her - everyone will agree that you’d be some sort of sociopath if you didn’t.
• If we were to up the ante - how about saving a kid which you are not close to or will never know the name of? If your answer is no, then are you placing a value on the life of a kid in the U.S versus rest of the world.
• If someone indulges in luxury - then they could’ve potentially saved someone somewhere for that amount. It is the same way a man who refused to save a kid.
• Kelly Criterion - Describes what fraction of your current wealth you should bet on an opportunity where you believe the odds are in your favor. It talks about bet sizing.
• St. Petersburg paradox - even though the expected value of this gamble is infinite, most people would be willing to pay only a small, finite amount to play it. Imagine a game where you flip a fair coin repeatedly until it lands on heads. The game ends as soon as the first head appears. The payout depends on when the first head occurs: If the first head appears on the 1st flip, you win $2^1 = $2. If the first head appears on the 2nd flip (meaning the sequence was Tails, Heads), you win $2^2 = $4. If the first head appears on the 3rd flip (Tails, Tails, Heads), you win $2^3 = $8. And so on... If the first head appears on the nth flip (n-1 tails followed by a head), you win 2^n dollars.
• If it is wrong to take a chance to press a button when 50% probability the world will end, 50% probability the world will be twice as good. The Manhattan Project had its doubts too.
• Yudkowsky : AI thesis is orthogonal i.e AI’s intelligence and its goals are uncorrelated.
• Interesting tidbit : The UN was formed 6 weeks before the Hiroshima bombing.
• Prospect theory states - people are risk-averse when it comes to losing what they already have.
• Another interesting theory was - how the decision to nuke Hiroshima and spare Kyoto was taken. The then Sec of Defense at the time Henry Stimson - didn’t want to destroy Kyoto, a city of cultural significance as he and his wife had vacationed there, so zeroed on Hiroshima.
• System 1 thinking is Fast, Effortless, Associative, Emotional.
• System 2 thinking is Slow, Analytical, Complex, Conscious
• AI can make the world - more - gamified, commodified, quantified, monitored and manipulated.
• Food for thought - How to stop becoming stuck in a loop of “button-clicking” AI with a weapon for AI?
• SBF made a strange comment that - If you never miss a flight, you're spending too much time at airports.

Review - What Went Wrong With Capitalism

Notes from a book that helped me understand better the problem of ever increasing regulations.

• The author in the Intro charges BJP along with Congress for continuing on the path of overpromising and under-delivering.

• He reminds that NaMo promised “minimum government, maximum governance” - but then went on to offer more freebies than Congress (pucca home with gas and electricity).

• The book’s main premise is debunking the idea that Ronald Reagan fulfilled his promise of shrinking the government.

• The author details how it infact grew then and has been growing ever since and Joe Biden enlarged it even more.

• He highlights how there is political and popular support among both camps to grow the government more to deal with any issues. Easy to see that the author fundamentally believes the government should be smaller in size and staying out of certain areas.

• Big government never went away.

• Another reason that capitalism doesn’t work (as alluded to in the title) : At the first sign of crisis - the government steps in and money is pumped into the system to stabilize it; rather than capitalism work and pick its winners and losers.

• Thus, “socializing” the risk to everyone - and the government. Extending safety net to poor, middle class and the rich.

• Hauser’s Law - empirical observation which suggests that there's a natural limit to how much the federal government can collect in taxes, regardless of the tax rate. Around 20%

• The RR era spawned a belief that deficits and debts do not matter, and the Republican solution to every problem is a tax cut. Similarly, Democrats would make the case of “more” spending on schools, health, public infra as an investment in the future.

• The Keynesian idea is that the government should run deficits in hard times to create jobs and surpluses in good times.

• This and the book I read last year (Lords of Easy Money) reiterates that it is the central bankers that stand between the world and the Great Depression.

• One severe criticism the author gives to the Biden admin is that they picked 3 winners (industry) in the economy, even when they claimed to not want to pick winners. They were in semiconductors, green technology and precious metals. As per the author, this is no different than how China decides which industries to pick from.

• One tidbit around Private Equity - I gathered from the book is that bigger the Private Equity firms get, bigger their insight and collection of data becomes. Because they have so many subsidiaries at different steps of the supply-chain of an industry that they can paint a picture of what is going on.

• Jefferson, one of the US founding fathers, believed that the government had to be small.

• But politicians and central bankers are now programmed to think that the Fed needs to do more in the times of crisis.

• The author reminds that when the Fed did not interfere in the 1930 depression that coincided with the highest productivity growth in US history.

• Paul Volcker showed toughness with the willingness to fight inflation in the 1980s. And it would not be repeated until 2022, when J Powell had to fight inflation, almost 40 years later.

• Paul Volcker then faced severe criticism and political pressure for his decision to increase interest rates (high teens) but stuck to his task.

• After Volcker’s victory over stubborn inflation, interest rates remained around 2% from 1992-2022.

• Ronald Reagan (RR) did cut the top tax brackets but then also introduced a bunch of other taxes like sales tax etc.

• In the 2000 US POTUS election, the last time the US had a surplus, the question in the debate was - How to spend the windfall (surplus)? Al Gore said - we will pay down the debt; HW Bush said - I’d return that money to the voters. Guess who won?

• Reagan did less to “reverse the course of government” than he had intended or gets credit for.

• Greenspan Put, later known as the Fed Put = Central Bank guarantee to minimize market pain in future crises i.e in market speak Fed would put a floor under the market prices.

• The author also blames a generous welfare program contributing to spending and deficits. He points out that the US ranks second in developed countries with 30% of GDP towards welfare. Surprising stat!

• It does not make sense to me personally - the Stanford online course on Poverty in America highlighted the need for more welfare, the public transit infra in the US is dismal. It implies that somewhere there is a lot of wastage.

• Author seems to be silent on what his objection is more public spending towards healthcare, and childcare. Will it not lead to more productivity? Perhaps, it is an ideological issue.

• To generate growth - government spending has continued at unprecedented levels backed by debt. Some money has gone towards productivity growth, and rest in speculative assets or corners.

• For advanced economies - fastest possible growth rate is 1 to 2%.

Impact of low interest rates (free money)

• Free money distorts and disorients the capitalist system.

• People make purchases and investments they normally would have dismissed as excessive/irrational in normal times.

• Free money inflates prices for stocks, bonds and other assets.

• Thus, free money leads to asset bubbles.

• After 9/11, low interest rates became permanent. What was something to be done only in a state of emergency, became a permanent feature.

• Fed started to make an asymmetric promise - To help if times get tough but to leave you alone when times are good.

• Fed technically does not order the Mint to print more money.

• But it creates money out of thin air.

• Fed’s purchasing agents in NY call their contacts at the 24 primary dealers in big banks like JP Morgan, Chase, GS and offer to buy their bonds. With 1 keystroke, money is deposited in the dealer’s account and money is created.

• Also, during the 2008-09 crisis and then in 2020, Fed bought so many 10 year Treasury bonds that it brought the bond’s yield down (because price went up and inverse relationship). Because of low yield, investors now had to look for more riskier assets.

• Ben Bernanke (Fed chair in 2008) did this to make Americans feel richer as their asset prices increased in value because the Fed was buying government bonds in bulk.

• Alan Greenspan (Fed chair) kept cutting interest rates even with low inflation thus fuelling the bubble.

• Since the Fed can move faster than the elected government - they have taken over the responsibility of rescuing an ailing economy.

• Based on the above, people do not pay enough attention to this transfer of power from the government to the central bank.

• In the 2020 crisis - the mandate was to err on the side of excess with respect to help.

• The U.S government issued more debt in the first 12 months of the pandemic than it had issued in the first two centuries (200 years) after its founding in 1776.

• Easy money has the households and corporations addicted to the rising asset prices, and made them intolerant of what once had been “healthy” market corrections.

• No elected politician can now dare take the “easy money” away and say the truth.

• Until DJT, debt (stimulus) was only used for recovery from wars, recessions but since then the mode has become “permanent stimulus” - stimulating growth due to massive tax cuts while racking up debt.

• Easy money leads to zombie companies.

• Zombie company = unprofitable company living on bank support or company earning too little to cover its interest payments for 3 years running.

• There is also a connection between zombie banks and zombie companies.

• Just because zombie companies survive - they make the otherwise healthy companies compete with them for resources.

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Ever growing regulations and bureaucracy

• The author makes a good point that many people (smart) believe that we are living in the era of small government, when infact the data shows the opposite. It is because people think markets have been doing well, that means the government must have shrunk.

• Ronald Reagan’s era resulted in less full-time government employees but a lot more private contractors working for the government.

• Liberals view contractors as greedy corner cutters. Conservatives view public government employees as lazy incompetent. Regardless, of whether it is a full-time or a contractor working for the government - it’d impact spending and deficit in the same way.

• Since WWII ended, securities agencies in the US have now jumped to 18 from 3 before.

• The agency that performs security checks at the airports now has 60,000 employees.

• Incoming tourists to US airports now face 2-4 hour waits at immigration checks.

• Author claims above are the signs of a bloated bureaucracy?!!

• Every agency develops a circle of supporters - its own staff, clients in public, Congress backers - who defined and formed it. Connect to “turf wars”.

• Code of Federal Regulations is now 180,000 pages as of 2023.

• U.S Congress tax code is 7000 pages long. And then IRS rules around it are 68,000 pages long.

• The U.S has more lawyers per capita than any other country partially due to the above.

• I am now able to appreciate the criticism of having too many regulations, and rules and a bloated bureaucracy much better.

• 
  

Privatization of Services

• Many European countries have private rail services, seaports, airports and postal service.

• Why should the US not do the same?

• Does it make sense to have bureaucrats who have, at best, a modest experience running a business - run a huge entity like a postal service, airport?

• Having the government run these entities is a factor towards big government.

• The only sectors the government has retreated are airlines and electric/water utilities.

• He defines a phenomenon “privatization by malign neglect”. Incases where the government is not allowed to sell an entity - the entity is ignored, languishes and loses value over time with significant decline in utility and benefit. This helps the private competitors and eventually this entity is sold off at a much lower rate.

• 
  

Countries where capitalism has been doing well

• Mixed capitalism, with a strong role of the state is the best option.

• Pure free-market ideas went away at the time of the Great Depression in the 1930s, the question before us is how to get the balance right between regulations and growth.

• Author lists 3 examples where capitalism has performed well - Switzerland (high income); Taiwan (medium income); and Vietnam (low income).

• At one point, the author mentions in relation to Taiwan - to become rich a country needs to make things and Taiwan excels here (semiconductor chips).

• Same thing Raghuram Rajan also suggested - move away from the service economy.

• Vietnam’s per capita income ($14,000 as of 2023) is higher than India’s ($10,000 as of 2023).

• Vietnam has gotten the balance right when it comes to building infrastructure and education. Test scores in Vietnam are higher than U.S and U.K.

Way forward

• Author reminds us that the top 2% in NYC pay 50% of the city’s taxes, perhaps hinting at the golden goose and egg fable?

• I like that he then quotes F. Hayek who said “road to serfdom is paved by government planners too sure of their economic science but with full support from citizens who are willing to forfeit the burden of making choices in favor of comforts of certainty”.

• Ruchir Sharma reminds us that the ever increasing deficit can become a turning point and lead to a decline. He gives the example of Greece, birthplace of democracy, now known as a parody of financial irresponsibility.

• Every global empire by virtue has the “world’s reserve currency” title - Portugal, Netherlands, France, Spain, England and USA.

• With being the “world’s reserve currency” you get some borrowing privileges. BUT, if you spend/live beyond your means - debt will accrue.

• He references Ernest Hemingway’s novel “The Sun Also Rises” - where Hemingway describes how one of the characters went bankrupt - “two ways, Gradually and then suddenly”.

• An economist then said “ the crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you think.”

• Currently, the only argument made in favor of USD is that the competition to replace it is weak; not that USD has some merits to it.

• The U.S is the 2nd rank in developed countries after Portugal that owes a lot of debt to foreigners - showing how far old empires can fall.

• Brazil’s President Lula in 2023 said, “Every night I ask myself why all countries have to base their trade on dollars.”

• Author is critical of Bidenomics which made excess spending, regulation, bailouts for US companies and the world.

Lessons from a Biotech CEO

 

I heard about the book from a podcast where Vineeta Agarwala (a16z) mentioned it as a source of inspiration and a book that left a lot of imprint on her. It was fascinating to read the account of Gordon Binder, one of the early CEOs of AMGEN - now a very big pharmaceutical company. The challenges a CEO of a biotech company faces are very different and unique than an ordinary one. For example - out of every 5000 compounds that show promise in the lab and in animals - only 5 proceed further. In terms of operating expenses - there are immense costs to run a lab. Along with paying the talented scientists, one also has to foot the bill for fitting the lab per square foot. Similarly, the cost of having a drug approved from the lab to the stores is enormous. It can take 6+ years in clinical trials.Requiring many volunteers. And, then before all that 3-5 years of pre-clinical trials.

Biotech is a tough field because even when you do everything right, follow the process - the project may implode at any point without warning. Clinical trials are tough because anything can go wrong at any phase. Clinical studies need to be designed very accurately in a balanced manner. Sometimes pre-clinical trials on different species of animals can take 1-2 years themselves.

The drug that features heavily in the book is erythropoietin (EPO). It occurs naturally in the body but this drug artificially creates a longer lasting protein.

The book also highlighted why some drugs can be taken orally v/s why some drugs had to be taken via injection. Large proteins if taken orally are chopped by the enzymes in the digestive tract. Thus, they don’t get into the bloodstream. 

It was interesting to observe that even in a biotech company there are conflicts arising on the lines of high or low science, and R&D politics are common. 

The author at one point says that he learned over many years that always favor Talent over Experience (Talent > Experience) because talent always has room to grow and adapt. 

He also said that Employee of the Month is always a bad idea considering bruised egos and issues around fairness. Furthermore, it shouldn’t be relegated to a monthly contest or just one employee. 

Assessing the legacy of any business leader - one must take into account the company he took over as well as the company he left behind.

Africa is a Continent

The motivation to pick up this book was to learn more about Africa - a continent that the media usually refers only to highlight the negatives and stereotypes - famine, hunger and child poverty. 

• The Berlin Conference was where 14 European countries and the U.S met to decide upon the regulation of Africa. The borders and boundaries drawn then still exist today. Historically, it is looked at as a necessary evil with no resulting conflicts among European Powers.

• 14 European countries = Britain, France, Portugal, Netherlands, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Austria, Hungary, Russia, Sweden-Norway, Ottoman Empire and Germany.

• King Leopold of Belgium ruled Democratic Republic of Congo, a country 5x the size of Belgium. And remarkably he never visited DRC. His reign is known as the most ruthless rule.
  
  

• The book has some common figures as mentioned in the book Cobalt Red like Henry Stanley, Cecil Rhodes.
  
  

• I learned through this that Nigeria and Cameroon have a border conflict (in Bakassi peninsula) whose roots can be traced back to how arbitrarily the Europeans divided the countries.
  
  

• 60% of all territorial disputes that make it to the International Court of Justice come from the continent. But only 30% of all borders in the world are in Africa. Another stat that highlights how badly the boundaries of the countries were configured. The colonizers set the boundaries without any regard of natural features like rivers, mountains, race, language and ethnicity. Considering Africa is 4x the size of the U.S.
  
  

• A big problem newly independent African countries faced was that after their borders and boundaries were drawn recklessly - their population was not bound in any common thread or trust or understanding. There was no strong bond that instilled patriotism.

• There is a chapter dedicated to the song Kony 2012 and the movement surrounding it and the whole irony about the “white saviour imagery.”
  
  

• I also learned about Consequentialism (end justify the means) v/s Deontology (means justify the ends). It can be viewed as the basis of all debates. In the context of Kony 2012 - the author is on the side of deontology i.e it is not okay to raise money by any means necessary. He makes a good point that the current model of charity does not involve understanding the problem but instead just impulsive donations. And that’s because proper due-diligence takes time and it doesn’t have the same emotional pull as photos.
  
  

• Another bad thing is that Africa has become a mecca of 1000s of young people who treat the continent as the official volunteering leg of their gap year.
  

  • Beautiful sentence -

    When we are at our hungriest, we are left with no other option than to fully reveal our true selves and bare for all to see the madness we normally do so well at hiding.

  • Many African countries have the same problem as many mature democracies i.e of gerontocracy. The average age of the population is way lower than the average age of the ruler. And often the ruler wants to hold on to power at all costs. 

  • Botswana is doing the best among all countries economically.

  • OXFAM: Amount of CO2 a citizen in U.K emits in 2 weeks = Amount of CO2 a citizen emits in 1 year in Africa(Burkina Faso) - touches upon the debate where some people in the developed countries want others to sacrifice more to reduce carbon emissions. Seems unfair?

  Museums and Artifacts from Africa

• The author presents a strong case about how the Western museums are holding on to the symbols and artifacts looted by the British army and brought to the UK. On top of that, they use empty platitudes about how by holding it in London - people of the world can see them. When in fact, many people find it hard to secure a visa to travel to the UK. Many museums like the Louvre, Guggenheim and MOMA are guilty of that. 

• Surprisingly, the British PM Gladstone wanted to return all the artifacts from Maqdala, Ethiopia back but couldn’t.
  
  

• Belgium in 2020 announced that they would be returning artifacts to African countries like D.R of Congo. U.K’s museums released what were perfunctory statements supporting the cause of racial equality without addressing the issue of stolen artifacts.

• In 2017, French President Macron acknowledged that France had in its possession artifacts that should be returned to Africa. He pledged to return them and appointed a French art historian and a Senegalese economist. The museums in France were thrilled initially until the report came out and said at least half of the artifacts in the museums’ possession were acquired through plunder and theft. And the report also rejected any idea of any long term loans in favor of restitution.

• I also learned that French Presidents like to build museums (cultural museums) as remembrance of their time in office. In contrast, the U.S Presidents like to build Presidential libraries.
  
  

• Also, the British TV show - The British Tribe Next Door was in a very poor taste. Not sure how it got the green light.
  
  

  
  
  

P.S : This excellent satirical piece by Kenyan writer Wainaina, titled "How to Write About Africa"
https://www.bu.edu/africa/files/2013/10/How-to-Write-about-Africa.pdf

Ahead of the Curve

Ahead of the Curve is a book that is about the author’s experience at HBS. He left a stable, prestigious job of a foreign correspondent in Paris for a British newspaper to do a MBA and understand how the business world works and operates. The idea behind picking up this book was to read and know about the experience of going to such a prestigious school - a sharp contrast than the sugary, dreamy vlogs put out by Youtubers. 

The book did provide me good insights into how students feel, experience and evolve over their time at HBS.

A few standouts - 

• Most students start with different viewpoints i.e detest investment banking and consulting jobs but by the end of the course most of them are trying to snag the jobs with the highest pay package.
  
  
• This is in spite of almost every other dignitary/personality visiting the school and commenting how grueling their schedule is/how little time they have to spend with their spouse and kids. The book is based in 2006-08 and the author mentioned at a few points that, at least then, the consulting job required traveling i.e fly out on Sunday and come back home on Thursday.
  
  The author references a 2006 New Yorker article by Calvin Trillin that says bluntly - in life there cannot be multiple centers. Centers as in areas of focus. Either kids/family is the center of your life or not. That is an interesting viewpoint to think about it!
  
  
• It was interesting to read the author's anecdotes of interactions in the classroom combined with personality descriptions and spot the undertones of tension between European and American students on topics of work-life balance and worldviews.
  
  
• HBS claimed to give students a fresh start in their careers but very few people were actually able to succeed. The path of least resistance was to do banking and consulting. But to get out of those fields was very hard. If you didn’t have experience in an industry, then they didn’t want you. So you ended up going back to the industries they had experience in.
  
  
• The author refers to a profile HBS did of its 1985 class : 65 graduates were prosecuted for SEC violations. Even ENRON CEO was a HBS alumni proving that the school produced its share of crooks even after a rigorous entrance process.
  Similarly, in the class of 1976 - every 10 years a profile was done for 6 students. 5 out of 6 admitted to having wretched personal lives but successful from a societal perspective. Only one of them reported to be content and that was because he chose to stay with the same firm and his main career objective in his own words was “making it through the day”.
  
  

The author remarked that for Harvard MBAs who are so used to being applauded, the idea of a private discreet life of fulfillment was nearly impossible to grasp.

In the book, the author stops and highlights the major things he learned during his courses. Like, -

• Serious investors place a greater importance on risk than an average investor. Sophisticated investors place way more weight to tail risks i.e small chance of disaster = moderate risk of something quite bad.
  
  
• Accounting gimmicks!
  
  Ads can be an asset or an expense. When the benefit of the ad is uncertain, it can be an expense. But when the revenue from the ad is measurable - it can be treated as an asset and then depreciate the cost over time.
  
  
• Strategy != Operating Efficiency. You can run the best laundry in the world, but if what I was doing was quite simple and 1000s could do it - no money was to be made. Good products alone won’t get you there!
  
  
• In a career - Be a principal or decision maker. Not a service provider.
  
  
• It was interesting to find out that prior to 2008 there was a loophole in the HBS admission process for granting financial aid. Students used to report their savings/bank statements but not report the type of the car they had. So, what a lot of them did was they used to buy an expensive car and then report their drawn-down/near-empty accounts only to be awarded financial aid. HBS was buying students a car! Future CEOs/administrators supposed to be stewards of right business practices were exploiting the loophole.
  
  
  Ultimately, the author was one of a handful of the 900 students who were without job offers come graduation time. For him, since he placed importance on work-life balance and didn’t want to do a stereotypical job at investment banking/consulting - his options were limited. And in addition he said it aptly that he “seeked out the frailest shred of evidence to support my assumptions”.
  
  
  Good book that gives us an insight into the psyche of supposedly the smartest and most business savvy cohort of overachievers and their doubts and insecurities.
  
  
  

Dark side of the Green Energy Revolution

Cobalt Red is the culmination of the investigative work done by the author over a period of years - the contents of which make it a very moving read. It gives a detailed account of how the Cobalt supply chain relies heavily on artisanal mining and child labour in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). 

Cobalt element allows batteries to hold more charge. Cobalt is used in primarily three types of rechargeable batteries - Lithium Cobalt Oxide (LCO) , Lithium Nickel Manganese Cobalt Oxide (L-NMC) and Lithium Nickel Cobalt Aluminium Oxide (L-NCA) (used by Tesla). Cobalt can make up-to 60% of the battery composition. It is found alongside Copper in the ground and at times Uranium has also been found in the deposits. Due to geographical quirks, widespread Cobalt deposits have been found alongside the East African Rift. 

Mining giant Glencore has a big presence in Africa and has been criticized for working conditions in its operational mines and how it has manipulated Cobalt supply in the global markets. In one instance, it shut down a mine in DRC claiming shortage of Sulphuric acid to process the ore but it resulted in low supply of Cobalt and the price shot up on the London Metal Exchange.

Even though big technology and car companies have multiple press-releases swearing of any such elements in their supply chain. The reality found by the author in multiple visits to DRC was very different. The organizations, which have big tech and car companies as affiliates, that are supposed to enforce and vouch for keeping the supply chain clean seemingly have no presence on the ground specially in DRC which has 70% of world's supply. The author saw first-hand the brutal working conditions in DRC which resembled more of 18-19th century.

Specially, since artisanal miners aren't employed by any company - no one takes ownership of this problem. And because the sources of information for the government and the miners are different for obvious reasons - this aspect of mining never comes up to the surface.

It was particularly depressing to read about DRC's tragic past - from Belgium's King Leopold who ruthlessly ruled and extracted profits from them until the 1960s to how political leaders have assassinated and governed the country in a dictatorial fashion. This particular tidbit mentioned in the book caught my attention: when DRC gained independence in the 1960 - King Leopold's grandson Boudain was present at the ceremony and said this was the culmination of the genius of King Leopold. To which the democratically elected DRC PM, seething with anger responded "nous ne sommes plus vos singes".

Also, there are elements of economic imperialism making matters worse i.e Chinese companies running mines in the interiors of DRC with no regard for safe working conditions, fleecing the country by underpaying taxes and treating the native Congolese as second-class citizens. Since DRC doesn't have sufficient infrastructure to process these ores, they are shipped to China for processing and battery manufacturing.

The Cobalt supply chain is the dark underbelly of push to renewables and electrification of everything. Something that's not talked much about in the western world.

The author ends the book by posing a very obvious question -

If kids from Cupertino aren't supposed to dig for a living, then why should the kids from Congo?