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GreeniFi's comments

GreeniFi | 5 years ago | on: Write Simply

For low friction, transfer of ideas, Graham is right. But sometimes sounding like passport application form instructions doesn’t get the right feeling across.

Words have a magic about them, and I don’t think Paul Graham would dispute that.

GreeniFi | 5 years ago | on: Write Simply

Less to do with insecurity, more to do with signifying membership of a club. A bit like a regimental tie, vocal fry or the latest pair of sneakers.

GreeniFi | 5 years ago | on: Germany to order large companies to include women on executive boards

There was much resistance to quotas in South African rugby through the late 90s and noughts. But this was the team which won the 2019 rugby World Cup: https://www.straitstimes.com/sport/south-africa-win-rugby-wo....

I’m really not an expert here, but I think partly what happened is that quotas force a rethink on the part of the establishment: “what do we need to do to make sure we can meet these quotas with high quality players/managers?”. And then there is system change around that.

The parallel is when we set ourselves sales targets at work, we then put in place the structures to meet those targets.

GreeniFi | 5 years ago | on: Danes Get 20-Year 0% Mortgages

Sheeesh. Bad news for entrepreneurship. As due to mortgage lending rules, it’s very difficult to get a loan as a business owner rather than an employee with steady, bankable, salary

GreeniFi | 5 years ago | on: Decaying Tanker Has 4 Times the Amount of Oil as the Exxon Valdez

Every man has a balance sheet associated with his person: a sum of all his assets and liabilities, burdens and obligations. It captures one’s true wealth (or poverty). A large part of its content can only be settled in the political realm. If it’s not a balance sheet, I don’t know what else to call it.

GreeniFi | 5 years ago | on: Decaying Tanker Has 4 Times the Amount of Oil as the Exxon Valdez

It was my comment and I’d like to reply to that specific point, elaborating my initial comment: a true balance sheet is beyond the purely financial. It covers natural capital and social capital too. It’s only the narrow contemporary understanding of balance sheet that means that so many costs (and gains) are hidden to us and therefore ignored. Part of society’s problem is the phoney baloney system of financial accounting that leaves so much unaccounted for. To refine my initial point: there will be many horrific costs to this mess. Some poor sod will end up paying the cost. If owners think they can escape full liability, they will continue to take risks because they can privatize the profit and socialize the costs.

GreeniFi | 5 years ago | on: Decaying Tanker Has 4 Times the Amount of Oil as the Exxon Valdez

It’s interesting that the article does not attribute responsibility. Ultimately, that tanker was under the control of a group of decision-makers and liability should be attributed. I say this, because what pollution is in economic terms is the movement of cost from one person’s balance sheet to another’s - whether by hook or by crook. We do ourselves a disfavour when we don’t identify how liability moves.
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