Beyond the bottom line: should business put purpose before profit?
A fairly balanced and constructive debate around the need for ‘purposeful capitalism’, that can even carry the most ardent of Friedman’s followers. “Milton Friedman’s argument that for a company to pursue anything other than (legal) profit would be “pure and unadulterated socialism”” effectively underpinned the unbridled rise of capitalism over the last 50yrs. Of late though, criticisms […]
Too rich to jail
Maureen Dowd says that the rise of populist politicians like Trump is due to the failure of the American political system and Barack Obama to punish the Wall Street bankers who wrecked the economy and the lives of millions of people in 2008. She says, “We let the corrupt bankers who ravaged our economy roam free […]
How Competitive Advantage Drives Churn in the Stockmarket
Published on: 4 Jan, 2019 The extent of competitive advantage possessed by a firm can fluctuate as the sector in which the firm operates grows (from niche to nationwide). The aggregation of this phenomenon across the entire stockmarket results in the BSE500 demonstrating twice as much churn as the Sensex. In fact, no other […]
My life as an oracle
An introspective piece by Gideon Rachman, arguably one of the best commentators on geopolitics. The introspection brings about two key aspects which most commentators might relate to – first, how one or two key guiding ideas underpin most of your opinions as a commentator and second, how one tends to find more success in doomsday […]
Wedding excess has reached giddy new heights
John Gapper helps us understand why intelligent, rich people like Isha Ambani and Priyanka Chopra spend so much money on their marriage. For answers he looks at the customs of Native Indian tribes in Canada. These tribes would mark a wedding with something called “Potlatch”. “Their display is reminiscent of potlatch, the traditional ceremony of […]
People who exercise have different proteins moving through their bloodstreams than those who are generally sedentary
We know that people who exercise are healthier and live longer. What we don’t know is why is there a link between exercise and a longer life. “…for the new study, which was published in November in the Journal of Applied Physiology, researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder, set out to look at various people’s […]
How the Surprise New Interactive Black Mirror Came Together
For the uninitiated, Black Mirror is a futuristic series on Netflix about the dark side of mankind’s advances in technology. In reality, the biggest horror is from the fact that what was considered futuristic in its earlier seasons are already playing out in the real world. But this article is about television’s next step – […]
How McKinsey has helped raise the stature of authoritarian Governments?
This year McKinsey’s annual retreat for its busy consultants was in Kashgar in China, a country which McKinsey, like many other MNCs, believes is important for its future. “About four miles from where the McKinsey consultants discussed their work, which includes advising some of China’s most important state-owned companies, a sprawling internment camp had sprung up […]
Why you should care about the Nate Silver vs. Nassim Taleb Twitter war
In case you have not heard about Nate Silver, here is the bluffer’s guide. “Nate Silver is the co-founder of FiveThirtyEight. A massively popular data focused blog that gained fame for its accuracy predicting the outcomes for the U.S. elections in 2008. Silver generates predictions using a clever poll aggregating technique which accounts for biases, such […]
Grand Fortunes and the Illusion of Competition
Published on: 28 Dec, 2018 Through the ages, the greatest and most lasting fortunes have been built on the back of commercial opportunism allied with the willingness to bend the rule of the law repeatedly & ruthlessly. The Medicis in Italy, the Mitsui in Japan and JP Morgan in America are exemplars of this template […]
What Our Elitist Reaction to the Zomato Delivery Man Tells Us About Our Lack of Empathy
A video uploaded on Twitter showed a Zomato delivery rider eating the customer’s order before proceeding with his delivery. This lead to Zomato users reacting with rage – ‘how could the rider do this?’ they asked. Predictably, the rider was fired. The author says that the incident highlights the growing disparity in Indian society. The […]
FT big read – India: The most polluted place on earth
This graphics rich FT article shows why those who live in India (especially those of us who are raising our children in India) need to be alive to the biggest threat to public health in this country. “The FT collated NASA satellite data of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), a key standard for measuring air quality, […]
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