Macromegas #6
Hi friends,
Happy Friday!
Useful Knowledge
Best articles I read over the past few weeks that can help you understand the world better around strategy, macroeconomics, finance, and economic history.
COVID-19 has had a much higher negative impact on low incomes
Recently, I wrote about how one of the reasons stock markets are so optimistic, is that most participants are also the ones who can work from home. The part of the population who hardly feels the pain.
You can read this short essay here: Post-COVID-19 stock market price - Two non-standard hypotheses for current high stock market prices
This recent (US) data by the Becker Friedman Institute shows the magnitude of this disproportionate negative effect on society.
Why and how people communicate - different level of incentives
One of the most intellectually challenging non-STEM article I have read in a long time.
If you have watched the fascinating Lie to Me series - the lead actor's motto being "Everone lies." - this help you understand Why people lie. What their underlying goal is.
The author explains the different levels of personal and group incentives for telling the truth or lying. Huge implications in the way you understand communication in politics or in the corporate world.
Really difficult to summarize, so I have not tried it yet, but the framework will definitely be part of my online course on learning, decision-making and executing.
In the meantime, for the courageous ones or the ones who love complexity for the sake of complexity, here is a funny teaser of the four levels:
Level 1: “There’s a lion across the river.” = There’s a lion across the river.
Level 2: “There’s a lion across the river.” = I don’t want to go (or have other people go) across the river.
Level 3: “There’s a lion across the river.” = I’m with the popular kids who are too cool to go across the river.
Level 4: “There’s a lion across the river.” = A firm stance against trans-river expansionism focus grouped well with undecided voters in my constituency.
Read the full essay there: Simulacra Levels and their Interactions
How the top 1% competing for political power impacts society (and people lives)
Spoiler:
The political power supply is limited by definition: one president, a defined number of parliamentarians, a defined number of regional/local representatives.
The political power demand can become way too large to be filled by the unelastic supply.
As long as demand is more or less fulfilled and the completion remains intra-secular-elites, states can remain more or less stable (modulo external factors, including economics ones).
As soon as demand is n longer fulfilled, things turn into class warfare at the top, and it usually leads to political change, mass movements, and social revolutions.
Being French-born, it does make me think of the French Revolution, lead by newly empowered businessmen being fed up with political power being monopolized by blood-inherited nobility - and not by hungry farmers striving for the 5th Republic as school books would have pupil think. Tocqueville showed it admirably in The Old Regime and the French Revolution.
Read the full (shortish) essay here: Intra-Elite Competition: A Key Concept for Understanding the Dynamics of Complex Societies
Personal Growth
"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."
- Alvin Toffler, tech futurist
"If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough."
- Mario Andretti, racing driver
These quotes are operating principles I will be explaining in the online course I am releasing this summer, "Systematize Success - Success Fundamentals".
If you are interested, simply hit reply and I'll add you to the waiting list (discount code when it launches).
If you think I am doing great at helping you understand the world, making you think, or even just entertaining you positively, please forward to 3 of your friends/colleagues who might enjoy this as well. Your help means A LOT!
If I don't, please let me know by hitting "reply" - I want to know and improve.
Thanks for reading. Have a great weekend, and talk to you next week,
V
PS: as usual, if you have questions, comments, suggestions, or ideas to explore, feel free to write: simply hit "reply".