NOTA Voter retweeted
Extremely wise words by Shivshankar Menon, India's former Foreign Secretary and National Security Advisor.
Asked by the host what worries him about India - what is a burden of history for India - he replied that "there is such a thing as excessive pride in your past."
He explains that talking of "your glorious golden ages in the past" to "feel good about yourself" is ok - a normal aspect of building an identity for yourself - but "when you then carry it on into victimhood and into revenge for history" and when that becomes a driving force for today's actions, then it becomes "dangerous."
He takes the example of people in India speaking about "a thousand years of slavery" (meaning Muslim and then British rule) or of Chiang Kai-shek writing every night in the top right of his diary "never forget national humiliation" (I checked and he actually wrote 雪耻 - xuě chǐ - which means "avenge the humiliation": thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forwa…, he did it from 1928 until his last diary entry in July 1972).
It's a wise point in general: when you think about it, nationalism isn't necessarily destructive in and of itself. But it becomes so when you convince yourself as a nation or people that you are a victim and that there is a guilty party. Because, as Menon puts it, it makes you "stop dealing with reality as it is" and leads to "counterproductive policy and ideas."
All the more dangerous because it’s so easy: nothing easier as a people, or as the ruler of a nation, than to blame others for what’s wrong. It spares you the much harder work of looking at your own failings, and absolves the rulers of responsibility.
And the inverse is really hard: nothing harder when you have indeed been a victim than to resist turning that grievance into a political program, and to instead focus on what you can actually build today - which often involves working hand in hand with the guilty party.
Which is, incidentally, why what China did was so impressive. It could have turned national humiliation into policies of revenge and hatred but instead chose to define it largely as China's own mistake for having been weak enough that foreigners could take advantage of that (Xi Jinping himself defines it that way in his book: xitter.cf/RnaudBertrand/status/2…). Which is constructive, because then the objective isn't revenge but building yourself, and China did that working hand in hand with the West.
We’re seeing some version of victimhood drive policies in too many countries around the world. Europe is, sadly, a case in point: Russia and China have become the all-purpose explanation for almost every problem on the continent, from energy prices to deindustrialization. Very practical for EU leaders who never have to answer for their own choices...
It's a good rule of thumb to have: if any politician builds his message around blame, take it as a red flag. That's what you reach for when you won't build.
This is the source video, by the way: youtube.com/watch?v=IQ2ns6-C… On the WorldView Postcast of my friend @Hansong_Li
This is genuinely shocking, and says so much about our approach to China.
I decided to check for independent reviews of the English version Xi Jinping's latest book, published a year ago, to see what people had to say about it since I hadn't read it myself.
To my surprise, I couldn't find any: not a single thoughtful review about the book out there! Even on Amazon, check it for yourself (amazon.com/XI-JINPING-GOVERN…): the book has only 3 ratings, that's it.
No matter where you stand on China, you’ve got to admit that’s pretty crazy: the sitting president of the world's rising superpower publishes a 700-page book explaining exactly what he's doing and why, and we don’t even care to look.
If there ever was a fact that illustrates just how willfully ignorant we are about China, this is it.
All the more because we then go spew the usual clichés around how secretive and impenetrable the Chinese system is: the book is on Amazon for $21 for crying out loud!
Anyhow, this felt so wrong that I figured I'd fix it. I bought the book, read it attentively and wrote what I hope you'll agree is a thoughtful review of it.
The book contains genuinely surprising passages, such as Xi writing that oversight of the Communist Party by "the judiciary, the public, and the media" was not just something the Party must “readily accept,” but something that he framed as historically decisive - an essential component to "escaping the historical cycle of rise and fall" that has doomed every dynasty in China's history.
Other passage that I'm sure would surprise many: a common narrative out there is that China blames the West for the century of humiliation and is driven by revenge. Well, Xi explains that's not true at all: the century of humiliation was China's own mistake, originated in the Ming Dynasty's disastrous "policy of national seclusion" that "resulted in China missing out on the opportunities presented by the Industrial Revolution" and "led to China’s decline."
All in all, the book is remarkably self-reflective and thoughtful. For instance Xi recognizes that his drive for “full and rigorous internal governance” - including to rid the Party of corruption - risked "instill[ing] fear and apprehension, or intimidate members into inaction.” He emphasizes the need for pragmatism in this regard, codified in a framework called the “Three Distinctions” that separates honest mistakes - made while experimenting, reforming, or operating without precedent - from deliberate violations committed for personal gain.
And many other surprises still. I found it a genuinely fascinating read for anyone interested in how the Chinese system works and how Xi thinks - or anyone interested in governance, period, as so much of what he writes is pretty universally applicable.
This is the link to my review of the book, an article I titled "The Book the West Refuses to Read": open.substack.com/pub/arnaud…
NOTA Voter retweeted
Every time something scarce became abundant, the world changed so fast that the people living through it mistook the beginning for the end.
Food was scarce for a hundred thousand years. Agriculture made it abundant, and people who had spent every waking hour chasing their next meal suddenly had something they had never owned before.
Time.
That time became villages. The villages became cities. The cities became language carved into clay, and then law.
Nobody standing in a wheat field understood they were building Rome.
Information was scarce for millennia. The printing press made it abundant. The church lost its monopoly on knowledge, and within two centuries every throne in Europe was shaking.
Nobody pulling letters from a press understood they were ending the divine right of kings.
Energy was scarce until we learned to crack the earth open. Coal and oil made it abundant, and a single person could suddenly command the force of a thousand. Within one generation the entire structure of work turned inside out.
Nobody shoveling coal understood they were building the middle class.
The pattern never changes. A resource that was hoarded becomes available. The people who held it resist. The structures built on that scarcity fall. And whatever rises in their place is invisible from where everyone is standing.
Here is the part almost everyone misses.
Information stopped being scarce a long time ago. The library, the search engine, the endless feed. We have been drowning in information for decades, and it never set anyone free, because information just sits there. It answers only the question you already knew how to ask.
Intelligence was the thing still locked away.
A mind on the other side. Something that explains, argues back, catches your mistake, and meets you exactly where you are standing. The part that bends toward you instead of forcing you to bend toward it.
That is what broke open.
For the first time, a person with nothing but curiosity and a connection can reach an intelligence that teaches, challenges, and builds alongside them in real time. No tuition. No admissions office. No permission.
The distance between what a person can imagine and what they can actually make is collapsing in front of us.
And the people most threatened by that are not the ones without talent. They are the ones whose entire standing depends on talent staying rare.
Every credential, every hierarchy, every quiet system that decided who was allowed to build and who was told to watch, is resting on a foundation dissolving underneath it.
They will fight it. They always do.
The church fought the press. The aristocracy fought the vote. The owners fought the union. Every single time a scarce thing became abundant, the ones who controlled it warned everyone else that the sky was falling.
The sky was never falling. The ceiling was lifting.
And the people underneath it, the ones who had been told their whole lives that the ceiling was the sky, finally looked up and saw nothing there to stop them.
That is what is happening right now.
Intelligence was never rare. Access to it was.
Access just became free.
Whatever gets built in the next ten years will not come from the rooms we are all watching. It will come from someone who was never supposed to have the tools, who right now has no idea that the thing they are doing has a name, or a scale, or a future.
Same as the wheat field. Same as the press. Same as the coal.
We never recognize Rome while we are still building it.
NOTA Voter retweeted
No government in India has survived after sending police into a gurudwara. Cops went to Bangla Sahib today to prevent peaceful protestors from taking refuge there. Cops were turned away. Modi tera time aa gaya …
Dear @rapidoapp_ ypur customer service is stupid. Never accessible. I had booked cab for my saved office location and in my view in app, thr drop is at office only. However, the driver side the drop point is selected at 200-300 mts from my pickup and the ride ends. (1/2)
Today my instagram is suddenly filled with painting videos 🤣🤣
Sometime in 2024, I fell in love with watches. The good, expensive kind. I was down a YouTube rabbit hole for something else and ended up in a watch-watching rabbit hole instead. Teddy Baldassarre. Kevin O'Leary. John Mayer's collection. I started making grand plans. But as with any decision in my life that involves spending a significant amount of money, I delayed the purchase as long as I could.
Meanwhile I went deeper. My YouTube was only watch videos. My Insta explore page was only watch reels. I was in love.
Then a friend I never thought would be into watches started posting about them. Then a couple of influencers who had never once mentioned watches, whose audiences couldn't care less about watches, started posting too. It didn't look paid. It looked like genuine love, which was the weird part.
Then I saw the pattern. Everyone around me who had suddenly discovered watches had the same profile as me: same age, same circle, same assumed income, same life stage. We hadn't found a passion. We were a TG with wrists.
Instantly, I fell out of love.
I retraced my steps. I had been reading a lot about equities, finance, numbers. Enough for the algorithm to figure out I could be sold watches as an asset class disguised as good taste. And I'm fairly sure everyone around me got the same treatment.
Here's how it works. First the recommendation engine gets you. Then performance marketing takes over. Then the feeds of your entire circle hit resonance, and FOMO finishes the job. True for recent watch lovers. True for recent coffee machine buyers. True for any trend where people who look like you all buy the same thing in the same year.
Who benefits? The platforms. Nobody at Instagram sat in a room and decided I should like watches. The machine just optimises for watch time, and it's very convenient that the things that hold a man in his 30s' attention cost as much as a hatchback. More watch time, more brands who need to reach that interest, more ad money. The platform gets paid whether you buy the watch or not.
The other winners are the early movers, the people who genuinely loved the craft before the rest of us got enrolled. In investing terms, they get to dump their interest on retail. They become the influencers, launch the product lines, land the brand deals. Teddy Baldassarre has a watch store now.
And the asset class part? Most watches lose value the minute you wear them out of the store. Even the hyped ones had been sliding on the resale market since 2022. So in 2024, I wasn't getting in early. I was being recruited after the top. I was the retail.
So these days I look out for the next planted interest and find the people who were there before the algorithm arrived, because capital will flow through them. Partner early and you can capitalise a little. Yes, I know. My response to discovering the scam is to ask for equity in it. Or at least profit from it.
How do you protect yourself from being planted? Every time I feel a new want, I ask how I felt about it at 13 or 14. Did it make me go, "one day I'm going to get that"? For me that's cars. Something beautiful would pass me on the road and it would actually take my breath away. And sneakers. Just walking into a shoe store made me happy.
Was 13-year-old me also brainwashed? Obviously. By car magazines and Nike ads. But a want that has survived all these years with nobody retargeting me has earned its place.
So now I run every want past my 13-year-old self. Because my adult self is heavily compromised.
NOTA Voter retweeted
I can’t stop emphasising it enough that when you have a stable relationship and family life, your professional life just keeps becoming better
The best video of the day
Professor Karl Deisseroth, professor of bioengineering and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, shares the news of his Nobel Prize with his family
And even better thing about this video is making scientists as celebrities.. a much needed step in this age where students are shying away from deep work and research
Very inspiring 🙏🙏
NOTA Voter retweeted
Lawyers’ Association for Constitution writes to CJI Surya Kant raising concerns over the “out-of-turn” listing of a plea arising from strictures against the Noida District Magistrate and the muting of live proceedings during its hearing
The letter flags that the petitioner, a public servant, is the daughter of the Chief Election Commissioner of India and alleges that the matter was specially assigned to a particular Bench despite the prevailing roster
@MedhaRoopam #SupremeCourt
NOTA Voter retweeted
Markets Sense a Long Era of Instability: Don’t Buy the Fall
(a) Govt is distracted (b) FIIs dislike mass protests (c) 2021-26: Nifty below-FD Return (d) FD rates will rise; Build Cash (d) China 17 yrs 0 return (e) Here’s India Data & Facts:
Second Order Effects on Economy
a. Govt is facing real political storms. It has no bandwidth left for major economic policy or reforms to attract foreign investment.
b. Foreign funds don’t invest where mass protests and public discontent are a daily affair. Their bet on India was a strong govt; strong economic agenda.
c. Inflation rising, unemployment rising; IT exports declining; Rupee under pressure. RBI is forced to fight inflation. FD rates will rise in Oct.
Zero Risk Premium in Equity
a. 5-Year Returns: Sept 2021 to Sept 2026 (5 Yrs): Nifty 50 Return: 32.3%; Post Office Deposit Return: 34.4%; SBI 5-Yr FD Return: 30.8%
b. 3-Year Returns: Nifty 50 Return: 15.58%; Sensex Return: 9.94%; Post Office Deposit Return: 21.56%; SBI FD Risk-Free Return: 21.34%
c. Last 3 Years: Out of a universe of 2,867 stocks, 43.3% delivered negative returns (one-third lost up to 50% value; 11% lost above 50% value).
d. Risk-Reward Ratio: In last 3 years, you had a 43.3% probability of destroying your capital. Against such high risk, even if you won, the returns were far too negligible to justify such volatile investment.
Don’t Bet on Growth Narrative
a. Yesterday, Kotak published a chart showing that China stock market (CSI 300) has remained sideways for the last 17 yrs; and has not yet regained the level it set 18 yrs ago.
b. Howard Marks published data in his recent memo: In the last 100 yrs, each time you bought S&P 500 at forward PE 23x, the annualized return in the next 10 yrs has been between +2% and -2%. Every single time. No exceptions.
c. India is no exception. India’s growth story of FDI, FII, IT boom, low inflation is long over. Over the next 5 yrs, the downside risk looks higher than the upside potential. If you go all-in, that’s a risky bet for your mental peace, with little potential upside.
Why Are FIIs So Pessimistic?
a. On Aug 28, Bernstein published a hard-hitting strategy note: "India’s corporate earnings are artificially engineered through state subsidies, fiscal cushions, and borrowed offshore dollars rather than through genuine productivity gains."
b. Market bulls touted NSE 200 top-line growth was 12%. Yet, net profit grew only 7%. Bernstein questioned the practice of excluding loss-making oil marketing companies (OMCs) "to manufacture a strong earnings growth story."
c. Govt expanded LPG/fertilizer subsidies, took $10B hit through excise duty reductions, $20B GST cuts, OMCs took $2B loss. So govt subsidized consumer spending power, which artificially padded the firms’ operating margins. That's not a long-term play.
d. $70B Pay Commission wage revision is coming, which will encumber sovereign balance sheet and cut govt’s capacity for public capex. Plus, with costly FCNR deposits, govt is purchasing rupee stability on credit, Bernstein warned.
e. Finally, Bernstein says India’s large caps are not investing in the future, and are consolidating their past (preserving balance sheets). Companies with deepest pockets don’t want to commit capital to emerging technologies, and want policy protection.
f. In this scenario, FIIs are forced to look at small and midcaps (SMIDs). But those companies remain sub-scale, with low free-floats, high volatility, and risky corporate governance. Institutional capital is not interested.
Bernstein concludes: With these problems, why should FIIs invest in India?
ENDPIECE: Investor Strategy
a. PE de-rating is going on globally. World-class US companies are available at throwaway prices, and there are no buyers. So, don’t get tempted by a falling market in India.
b. Build cash patiently. Unwind risky positions. Cash has 3 benefits: (1) Emergency funds give security & happiness (2) FD may beat equity for next few years (3) If global equity crashes, you will be the only buyer in town.
c. Think in Probabilities: Considering all macro factors: (1) India Equity Boom: 20% chance (2) Sideways: 60% chance (3) Bust: 20% chance
FD wins: 60% + 20% = 80% chance
Equity wins: 20% chance
Markets are the greatest game on earth. The dream to get rich is as old as the hills. Most investors will still pick equity.
@arabicatrader
NOTA Voter retweeted
You make money so that your 4th generation can do this. (after securing a good passport) xitter.cf/P_Remarks/status/21013…
