This paints a scary picture of the future of the US economy and of many other world economies, particularly of the EU. The book talks about the monetary systems of many countries, before problems, after problems, and current states. From what I understand of the book the US economy is on the edge, due to too much debt being taken on by the public sector. The public sector debt then makes private sector investment more difficult. Private sector startups are then the source of net jobs in major economies. I think that the worst things they talk about in the book won’t happen to the US primarily because we are more likely to inflate away our debt, without hyperinflation, than any of the other scenarios that are presented in the book.
This book is a decent listen. I think it has some good points on competition driving innovation for the west vs. the east. It also points out that consumerism is one of the big factors that made capitalism the dominating force that it is today. It makes some broad strokes about what is likely to happen with the Muslim world growing at the rate that it is and China expanding at the rate that it is leading to the West being overtaken. I see this as shortsighted in that it is more likely that China will fully integrate into the West and begin to dominate it instead of overturning it. The Muslim issue is something that will be toppled by the spread of information. The strongholds of the Muslim world are those parts that are lacking in information, and they will be liberalized in world view once information permeates their societies. As something pointed out in ‘What Would Google Do?’: any group based on the control and secrecy of information will be overtaken by the spread of information. I see the future to be a more integrated world based around an internet/information nation that isn’t segmented into Chinese, Muslim, Western, or American.
This book points out something i’ve been trying to do for a while. Doing things purposefully. The book states that doing purposeful practice is the way to become great at something. As the title is concerned it would be something along the lines of “Talent is not innate, but instilled by hard and purposeful work.” I am going to try doing things even more purposefully and trying to determine what practice would look like. I may start an analysis or creation of games group at work to get the best to help me be better.
This audiobook was an interesting listen. While I already knew many of the tenants discussed in it, as I work in silicon valley startups, I did notice a lot of ideas that I had not fully understood. The concept of free was something I knew existed but didn’t fully appreciate. Making you service free to get users, and then monetizing those users is a method that should not be dismissed as it is hard to compete with free. It is especially hard to compete with free done well. The book also pointed out that openness and crowdsourcing are good policies as you will get more help and better direction from the crowds than you will get by sitting in a room and thinking. You shouldn’t do everything your crowd says to do, but they will be a great source of ideas of where you could go. I hope to use these concepts in any startup I work on.
This audiobook has some very interesting points about human sexuality and how the social situations of today and the last 10,000 years have changed it. The book points out that there are similarities between us and our closest ape cousins that demonstrate the tendency for multi-male multi-female relationships among members of close groups (less than 150). The movement to agriculture seems to be the defining moment in the change, making it more possible to accumulate wealth. With the accumulation of wealth came also the accumulation of power and control, making people dependent on the powerful person instead of purely co-dependent. There are some communities living in the world that still live by multi-male multi-female relations, but those people are still fully co-dependent and living in small communities. The current fast paced life, massive cities, and constant changing social circles make this small co-dependent structure not feasible. From the number of scandals that are on the news, and quantity of failed mariages that fails it is certain that we have not evolved beyond this (not to imply that we should be evolving in that direction). We are mostly just living in a society where control is driven by prudes who push a warped view of sexuality that they themselves do not always follow.
It's an Exciting World 