A Plebspective

 from watching The Americans, what I can conclude is that the US was formed by a bunch of rich successful people who knew what they were doing, and the prosperity continued until the 80s and 90s, showing cracks eventually

the Soviets were on a lurching dash for prosperity,  starting from starving peasantry documented in, say,   Flashman . While they could execute fantastically, the majority of the mindset was not that of the wealthy.

All revolutions that executed the top classes in their country were instinctively tackling what they hated -they 'have's while they were the 'have-not's.

These  have almost always failed (feels good to speak so authoritatively and definitively with no backing credentials whatsoever), or at least struggled until the 'have' mindset kicked in into the masses.

America kept the dream going - and folks could also get rich, for a while, and this is where the others seem lacking

American manufacturing was also a game changer. Drucker somewhere I remember saying the Americans came up during the war due to their management practices - esp training. From this I gather the general idea was of dumb-simple machinery that could allow anyone to be trained to operate them, and a complete lack of unions or Left  allowing for incompetents to persist in the jobs in the name of 'humanity'*

Reading Inspector Singh stories about the South East and East Asia , it's troubling how much death has been dealt out in the name of revolution and progress. Apparently , one thing the White Man got right was the idea implementation of egalite, without gulags.

from wherein comes the 'have-and-let-have' mindset ?

There's a concept called Pareto-positive. I came across this in the 'cartoon guide to economics' in around 2015? 16 ? I have been reading  'smart' since, say 2001 ? probably not as smart as I thought, However , that's a term or idea I believe that ought to be thrown about a lot more . 'Win-win' as a term has been there for some time , but only in management /consultant jargon, not plebspeak

however, fundamentals are always hidden , by the nature of the beast, and not any malice

the only others I see talking about this, stilling or suppressing the fight-flight-animal, is the likes of Ajahn Brahm and Gaur Gopal Das - their message is to un-conditionally chill - socially very  though they don't cover wealth

Gabriel in the Americans gives me the creeps. He is pure evil ; lying, corrupting and ruthlessly getting work done out of the protagonists. Reminds me of the tech-leads/project-managers early in my career. One of them happily told me in 2004 ? - that there is no more software development going in the world.

The middle-manager is the manifestation of the agent-principal problem. We don't see them as such, but that's what it is. The middle-manager is a broker, plain and simple, but masquerading as one of your own tribe.

Where are we ? we started talking about the Americans then escaped  segued into high-level analysis of Soviet era psycho-economics, with a compare and contrast with the American 'way' during the war2, added a mention of modern-day healthy psycho-economic attitude  name-dropped Drucker, then bashed our famous hate-candidate - the middle managers of the past ... no structure or goal, which is probably well, a bowl of soup is more focussed than a goulash... 

While we're here, I want to name the two latest sources on Asia - Shamini Flint's Inspector Singh series, and the Asianometry youtube series. 

What Asianometry mentioned in one small 5 min segment of the video helped me draw a straight line outline of Japan from the time of Gai-jin to the days of Rising Sun  (and also the mention in Liar's poker)- esp. the social make-up that drove society , and which changed over time.

Aside, Shinto-ism has been compared to Hinduism in some way, and has been said to be used as a tool to build national pride to make Japan into an imperial nation.  A map showing the extent of the Japanese territory during ww2, before the decline, is very impressive - they literally ownd Asia - parts of China, Malaysia, Philippines ... the Byomkesh Bakshi movie has them planning to enter Calcutta via Burma, and providing support to the Indians against the British. In typical Indian fashion, we don't mention Bose's armies lurking beneath the surface, awaiting to overthrow the status-quo.

Will the joy of consuming Bean and Douglas Adams overshadow the anger, sadness, dismay, terror of the negatives of the Raj in India ? Flashman's  Mountain-of-light is an extremely depressing story, lost my appetite at the end of it - and Rudyard Kipling's Kim was the opposite - energising and renewed an appetite for Indian cultural product and architecture

We are way past 500 words but then this is not an essay. An essay starts with the concrete, de-stratifies, and then re-calcifies. We are rambling, wandering , meandering. Not zen-writing -in which we don't edit any.

Asianometry also helped me to understand Korea and their socio-economics better.  The paragons of quality, efficiency and virtue - were/are as corrupt as India, and yet produce more - the take-away is that it's not corruption..

The Inspector Singh brings home the point that the Asia that we know of as Asia broke out from feudalism to communism in the 80s/90s - modernisation notwithstanding - and got aerially bombed by the US, then turned to a modern society. Probably the US tried the same approach to the middle-east expecting a similar result but was unpleasantly surprised when they quickly developed (or revived) their perennial j-crusade

With the abolishment of the gold standard everywhere, the economy is no more a zero-sum game. Inflation is the (literally) cost of that, coupled with growth in product? and services.
Product growth seems to be larger chunkier bulkier carsSUVs, and services seems to be Swiggy that gets you your neighbourhood idli-sambar-chutney for a 50Rs markup and 80Rs delivery/packing/service charge. Also IPOs of loss-makers.

I am piqued by the Qute and the Mahindra e2o than by the behemoths like Harrier and the Morris .There are billions without cars, or basic things, and the world seems focussing on selling to larger and larger cars to bangalore-ites

I keep leaking into ranprieur.com - the dream is to do an into-the-wild without the dying part, apparently mental health improves along with the physical, economy be damned. Then build a cabin of clay and wattles, then write another walden. Living next to a water body is probably the best thing you can do - read the opening of Moby Dick

What is the story of larger and larger cycles of debt ? looking at Evergrande ( also Asianometry ,thanks Am)

For another day:

1. hobsbawm vs sowell

2. when I was small, and in school, English had a short story by Roald Dahl, about a new car owner who gives a ride to a hitch-hiker.

* Is there a better way ? if you do know one, do tell me