1What is a good business to be in?

We want to increase income without increasing operations. Find a business that scales with low maintenance burden. We want to own systems that can run without ourselves. The ideal amount of operating expenses is zero.

How quickly? About 10 years? We can always speed it up by financial leverage (debt, credit), but leverage also multiplies the risk.

2What?

Make capitalism work for us instead of making us work for capitalism.

Maximize long-term profit: maximize income, minimize expenses.

Business without employees1?

Factory with gig economy?

  • Employ 1 person to teach and supervise.
  • Let workers use our machines, produce things, and sell to us. We give the price. They can come at any time, and go home at any time. Go to the toilet any time. They can be as lazy or diligent as they want. No commitments. Just don't break things.
  • Tidak ada hubungan kerja, karena tidak ada unsur perintah.
  • Gray area: Does the factory have to withhold the gigger's income tax?

On-demand labor market. People can work whenever they want to.

Compare:

  • employment: pay $2/hour wage + $0.1/hour BPJS Kesehatan + $0.1/hour pension + tunjangan hari raya + layoff severance, produce 100 widgets/hour, for 2.1 cents/widget
  • gig: just pay 5 cents/widget

Find better use for the idly deposited moneys at the banks.

"Most startups should be deer hunters"2: Know which customers you want to serve. Target the customers whose sizes are similar to your company.

This page aims to answer "What is the most productive use of my time?" where productivity is defined economically as output (profit potential) per input (labor + capital).

3Think entrepreneurially

Key concepts:

  • entrepreneur
  • capitalism
  • profit
  • business
  • director
  • employee
  • economics
    • externality

The beauty of capitalism is that selfish people can only get rich by helping other people.

The ugly side is negative externality such as environmental damage.

3.1Economic theory of entrepreneurship: profit indicates productivity, and the degree of successfulness of productivity maximization

In free trade, people are paid to satisfy others, to help others. There is an incentive to satisfy others, to help others.

3.2Find out the most productive use of my time and everything else

Find out the most productive use of all my employees and me.

For each business activity plan:

  • Compute the expected net present value.
    • Assume a perpetuity.
    • Guess the probability of success.
    • Guess the yearly profit if success.

If I work hard, I am sure that I can raise my salary by IDR 5,000,000 every 6 months. Can I do better? Should I start my own company?

The thought framework: will, can, should.

Find the business that

  • I will do (I want to do regardless whether it is profitable)
  • I can do (I have enough resources to start and sustain it for at least 5 years)
  • I should do (is actually profitable)
  • does not take too much time; thus I can do it while being employed

Passive income? https://www.nateliason.com/blog/passive-income

4Wealth, poverty, and selling

Someone's wealth is proportional to his ability to sell.

Poor people in a city are poor because they cannot sell anything, not even their labor. Because nobody in the city wants to buy their labor. Because their labor is unskilled.

In an agricultural society, farmers can feed themselves without money. They have to work on lands. Nature feeds everyone who works on fertile land. Self-sufficient farmers may look simple but are not poor. They do not have to sell anything to eat.

To get money, one has to sell.

To have a lot of money, one has to get money consistently.

To get money consistently, one has to sell consistently.

5Write, website, publish ads?

  • 5.1SEO(1w~1m)

5.1SEO

https://moz.com/ugc/7-content-archetypes-that-generate-natural-links

6Educate people

7Teach

  • Getting rich teaching Hong Kong's kids | Unreported World3

8Start a religion?

9Entrepreneur vs director?

Director = CEO (chief executive officer)

10How do we reduce the mortality rate of startups?

11Why do startups die?

Does this USA statistics4 also hold for Indonesia?

  • Entrepreneurs are old: 35% of them are 50–59 years old.
  • Don't people think? 42% of small businesses fail due to "no market need".
  • Startup mortality is high: Only 56% of businesses started in 2014 made it into the fifth year (2018).
  • Only 40% of small businesses are profitable.

12.1What do I expect from Joko Widodo's 2019–2024 presidential term in Indonesia?

  • reduction of red tape, deregulation
  • more roads

12.2World

  • A new world order emerges, led by China. Other countries are losing trust in the US government. I think it is a no-brainer for the Indonesian government to choose China over the US: we economically depend more on China than the US. It's always the economy.
  • Trump does not seem to be going down disgracefully for obstruction of justice, although the evidence is clear, but the post of POTUS is too powerful, it needs some nerfing.
  • <2019-05-11> Trump goes to war with everyone else: China, Iran. If it turns out that Trump were a Russian agent, I would not be surprised; his actions seems to benefit Russia more than the US. It's like he is playing the bad cop and Putin is playing the good cop.
  • The USA and Australia get deeper into corporatocracy.

13Sell/build prefabricated (prefab) houses?

14"Container hotel": Hotel room in a roadside container / in another building?

15Pre-launch rockets with giant spring

16Budidaya buah naga (pitaya, dragon fruit)

Buah naga merah, red pitaya, Hylocereus costaricensis56.

It is a cactus. It evolved to thrive in arid environments.

Grow from seed.7

  • How long does it mature? We should pick.
  • What month is the harvesting period? It seems January 2019.89 We should produce it when supply is lowest.

I have 5 m2 land.

Can I produce pitaya below $1 per kg?

I can beat local farms' transportation cost, because my farm is 0.5 km from the grocery store, and their farms are 30 km away. I can beat biggest Banyuwangi farms10 because they are 1,000 km away.

I can even beat Chinese dumps11 because they are 2,000 km away.

Buah naga Banyuwangi12

Beginners should pick a plant that is easy to grow. The beginner's goal is to avoid loss, not to obtain profit.

What are the most profitable plants to grow?1314

17Makanan sehat, terutama untuk orang tua

18Be a Nu Skin agent?

It is a public company, but still, there are some yellow lights15.

Public company doesn't always mean legitimate company. Going public doesn't guarantee the absence of book-cooking. Enron was a publicly traded company.16

Research questions:

Product questions

What are the products? Cosmetics, supplements, things that temporarily and partially reverse the appearance of aging, and so on. See their categories17.

What does a salon sell?1819

Is Mei Fung a hair salon or a beauty salon?

How do the products work? What are the underlying scientific theories? Where are the peer-reviewed scientific publications? Is this20 it?

From what people say, the cosmetic products seem to work as advertised (temporarily tighten the skin to remove wrinkles). but the marketing practices seem convoluted.

Business questions

Is anti-aging trending?

What is MLM (multi-level marketing) or network marketing?

Is MLM sustainable?

Can MLM work?

Is MLM economically feasible?

Is Nu Skin incentive system sustainable?21

Does this cease and desist letter22 mean that I cannot sell it in my personal website? How am I supposed to scale, if not by selling via the Internet?

Yellow lights and red lights

Are these claims23 true?

Is Ethan Vanderbuilt's concerning criticisms24 true? I am interested in the details of the calculation. He said, "When I did the math there is not enough margin to validate a product business! Meaning that you can not mark up the product to sustain a product based business.”

Is Citron Research25 true?

Nu Skin does have products, and their "Brand Affiliate" seems legit; it is pretty much a consignment in which the agent profits by markup (buy low, sell high). But their "Brand Representative" looks too generous and unsustainable.

But there is one strange thing: Does a Brand Affiliate pay membership fees? A marketer should be paid by the producer, not pay the producer for the "privilege" to sell!

I think the Brand Representative qualification rules26 are very convoluted, unjustifiably complex for marketing. In performance marketing, one wants to reward marketers by their performance, that is, how much they sell. What is a Brand Representative rewarded for? Getting new members?

What is "commissionable sales volume"27? In the US, $33,000/year is a low income. But in Indonesia, that is a handsome amount that would enable an Indonesian to live with the same living standards that an American is living with $100,000/year, because USD 1 is IDR 13,000 nominal but IDR 4,000 PPP-adjusted.

What does this mean, is this true, and why should one know? "Nu Skin hides from new distributors the amount of retail sales that are made by distributors to customers. Any direct selling company that hides this information from you should be avoided."28

How much do they sell?

Where are the Nu Skin ex-marketers?

You can make money in a pyramid scheme, but for how long?

How are agents/sellers/marketers paid?

Is the agent free to set the selling price?

  • Principal bears market risk
    • No agents at all: direct marketing.
    • Commission: many possibilities: fixed per sale, proportional per sale, etc.
    • Consignment: price difference?
  • Agent bears market risk (is this an agency at all?)
    • Outright sale:

Network marketing?

19What is the difference between multi-level marketing, pyramid scheme, and Ponzi scheme?

20Labor unions?

https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-people-hate-labor-unions

This is what will happen if you unionize, even though I have given you the best working conditions.

Obviously, for a few months, you will enjoy a rise of wages.

Then, the company becomes unprofitable.

Then, the company closes down, or replaces you with machines, or moves elsewhere.

In all cases, you lose your job.

21Extract wealth from society by seeking rent

There are still rooms for rent seekers29.

If everyone seeks rent, nobody works, and everyone dies.

If some people seek rent, then those rent seekers will be disproportionately enriched.

Here we are trying to use the law to get paid for simply owning something and doing not much else.

The financial markets have ample room for wealth extraction.

21.1Own a property

Buy a property, contract a management agency, and lease the property.

21.2Buy a REIT (real-estate investment trust) / property-backed ETF

<2019-04-24> Indonesia has no REIT. Indonesia is at least 10 years behind the USA.

21.3Find good properties

Determine what is good.

  • Why do people stay at hotels? Attending events. Meetings. Inspections. A combination of closeness to the actual location of interest and the hotel's reputation. People stay at a hotel not because they admire the hotel building, but because they care about the location.
  • Unmarried white-collar workers choose the cheaper between renting and commuting.
  • Nomads who change work location every a few years, and people without enough money to buy houses

Determine why people pay:

  • The only reason people pay you is that they believe you will give them what they want.

21.4Buy properties whose owners are in distress

21.5Crowd-funding

  • Vestifarm30: crowd-funding to micro-agribusinesses, with a return of up to 18% per 4 month (as advertised on <2019-04-22>)

21.6Practice usury, lend money with interest, crowd-lending

I'm thinking about putting my money in these usurious fintech businesses? (Are these crowd-lending or crowd-funding? Crowd-funding is not usurious.)

  • Akseleran31: about 18% per year (as advertised <2019-04-24>)
  • Artawana32 (website was down on <2019-04-24>)
  • Avantee33
  • Amartha34
  • Investree35

That seems better than the stock market's average return of 15% per year.

But we have to be cautious, lest our own greed brings us to a loss greater than the promised gain.

21.6.1Own a bank with zero employees, without physical presence, without customer support

So that we can make our own money, charge interests, take some wealth from borrowers, with little hassle.36

21.7Invest

What?

21.8Tengkulak online, bring together farmers and fishermen

How many farmers and fishermen are in Indonesia?

21.9Trade financial assets: stocks, derivatives, currencies

2015 trading idea: get long lithium, in "How to generate stock ideas like a professional, as seen on Million Dollar Traders"37

21.10Start a gambling or insurance company

21.11Open a do-it-yourself brokerage with no employees and no customer support

Having more participants means having more wealth to extract from.

21.12Start a hype-laden "startup" and sell it to "investors"?

This one is too shady for my taste.

22Create wealth?

22.1Get paid writing

22.1.1Get paid doing/making/writing reviews

22.1.2Get paid writing stories?

23Later?

23.1Establish an empire

23.1.1Establish a monarchy, a corporation, a business

Because:

  • Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor38
  • "The wealthy 'make mistakes', the poor go to jail"39

Forget IPO. Skip all the red-tape. We want to keep our companies to ourselves. We want 100% ownership.

Dream big, but start small.

23.1.2Make a business plan

So that we don't fail for stupid reasons.

  1. What are we going to do/make/sell?

    We should sell something that satisfies two criteria:

    • We enjoy designing, making, and operating that thing.
    • We have buyers for that thing.

    There are too many ways to get rich.

    Other people's business ideas:

    • Tech company that sells to engineers; companies like JetBrains (Mufid)
    • Machine transcription of interviews in Bahasa Indonesia using speech-to-text (Mufid)
      • <2019-04-22> He tried GCP text-to-speech for Bahasa Indonesia but he found the result unacceptable.
    • <2018-09-24> Undertaker, mortician, funeral home, mortuary (Willy)
    • <2018-09-24> Dropshipping, buying from someone in Tokopedia and selling to someone else also in Tokopedia (Nigel)
    • <2019-04-22> Catering at Karawang (Mr. Handoko)40
    • Dyson: 6-billion-dollar 7000-employee company owned by one person41
      • These people have one seemingly simple business and they can reach billion-dollar net-worth.
    • Patrick Bet-David's "10 Industries Facing Massive Disruption"42
    • Patrick Bet-David's 6 general business ideas43
    • importir.org44
      • What is imported?
      • Do I have to work or do I only have to put money?

    We can flip companies. We can do active investing.

    • Buy a company that is in shambles, fix it, refurbish it, clean it up, and sell it, hopefully for a profit.
    • Help dying companies in exchange for partial ownership.

    Some other business ideas:

    • SME (small and medium enterprise) strategic-thinking consultant

  2. To whom do we sell it? Who is going to buy it? How many buyers?

  3. How will our buyers know us? Where and how do we find them?

23.1.3Incorporate

Jalankan usaha.

23.1.4Basic definitions

Company Enterprise Business Corporation

23.1.5Network?

23.1.6Create wealth?

23.1.7Move?

Move to Scandinavia?45 But the climate is harsh?

Move outside Jakarta? But what opportunities?

23.1.8Have a high-income skill

Examples: thinking, planning, and software engineering.

23.2Reduce expenses

23.2.1Minimize operational/administrative/bureaucratic/red-tape hassle

Avoid dealing with labor laws; use contractors, freelancers, etc.

Can we operate a company with no employees?464748

Contractors do not mean fire-at-will. Ideally a business relationship improves as time goes by.

23.2.2Minimize tax

  1. Maximize non-taxable income

  2. Minimize taxable income

    • Maximize asset without mark-to-market
    • Minimize profit

  3. Maximize tax deductions

  4. Plant anti-taxation people in the government

23.2.3Write an enterprise operation system in Prolog

  • Write an accountant in Prolog

23.3Build human resource

  • Educate software engineers to a comparable quality but faster than the 16 years of formal education
    • Make all Indonesian people understand English, because most relevant resources on the Internet are in English

23.3.1Have as many powerful descendants as possible

We can think of our family as cheap loyal labor.

In 2019 it costs Rp 150,000/day to decently feed a person in Jakarta.

What is the ROI (return-on-investment) of a child?

In agricultural societies, more children means more labor, and more labor means more wealth.

This is not true in knowledge societies such as cities.

  1. Impregnate as many women with good genetics as possible

    Without going to jail, of course.

    How many women did Genghis Khan impregnate?4950

    Who are the men who have the most children?5152

    With sperm bank, artificial insemination, in-vitro fertilization, and other reproductive technologies, we can be even more prolific than Genghis Khan.

    We may want to do such thing in the 21st century without the 13rd century plunder, rampage, and rape.535455

23.4Make more things doable without going to jail

23.4.1Reduce the ability of government to jail people

  1. Downsize the government, relax the laws

    Put anti-regulation people in the government; laissez-faire liberals; anarcho-capitalists; unwitting opinionated idealistic hard-liners; "confused and misguided sympathizers"56.

23.5Understand economics deeper?

23.5.1Economics and antinatalism?

  • Increasing the wealth of the human race conflicts with antinatalism?
  • Increasing the minimum/average wealth of the human race doesn't conflict with antinatalism?

23.5.2Initial money supply

  • How is money distributed for the first time (when there is not yet any money)?
  • How do we transition from barter to cash?
    • How do we set prices?
  • WP:Modern monetary theory?

23.5.3Tax

  • Tax enables government to redistribute money (and therefore some wealth).
  • Tax enables government to discourage the consumption of certain goods.
  • Taxation is legalized robbery.
    • The government forcibly takes some of the people's money.
    • The people doesn't get to decide what the tax money is used for.
      • The government is assumed to use that money for the people's good.

23.5.4What?

  • WP:Trickle-down economics

    • How does one arrive at this? How does one think? What is the argument?

  • If the total amount of money is constant, then the only way for you to have more money is to make someone else has less money.

    • WP:Mercantilism assumes that the total wealth in the world is constant?

      • "Mercantilists viewed the economic system as a zero-sum game, in which any gain by one party required a loss by another.[16]"

  • Questions I haven't been able to answer

    • If everybody needs to buy food, then why aren't farmers the richest people on Earth?

      • What if the farmers don't spend?

        • Will money collect at the farmers?
        • Will they be the richest people on Earth?

  • Money circulation

    • Circulating money amount should be proportional to amount of goods/services exchanged?
    • The amount of money in circulation can be reduced by tax or destruction.

    • Why do governments sell bonds?

      • To reduce the amount of money in circulation now?

        • At the cost of increasing a bigger amount of money circulating in the future?
    • Money moves faster in certain areas?

    • How does the government increases the amount of money in circulation?

      • How I think it might be done:

        • Create new money.

        • Spend that money by buying things from a few elites,

          • with the hope that the elites will quickly spend that money to the lesser elites.

            • Thus that money will circulate to more people.

              • But isn't this trickle-down economics?

      • But does it even do this? Isn't it the banks?

    • What is the effect of people's borrowing from banks?

      • Increase circulating money now (boom part of boom-bust cycle).

      • Reduce more circulating money later (bust part of boom-bust cycle, when the loan is paid back with interest).

        • Principal plus interest (money retired) is greater than principal (money created), so the net effect of lending money now is a delayed reduction of a greater amount of money in circulation.

          • Where does the money to pay the interest come from?

            • If left alone, eventually the money collects at the banks?

              • But banks have expenses too.

                • Banks need to pay taxes, pay their utility bills, pay their staffs.

              • But shouldn't the money collect at the farmers?

    • The ideal inflation rate is zero?

  • The difference between wealth creation and wealth extraction
  • The Global Architecture of Wealth Extraction
  • Africa is not poor, we are stealing its wealth

  • rent seeking, wealth extraction

  • Infer: People buy something because they want it.

    • False assumption: People buy something because it makes them better off.
    • False assumption: People buy something because they believe it makes them better off.
    • False assumption: Voluntary exchange makes both parties better off.
    • Counterexample: Cigarette smoking, addictive substances.

    • Why do people want things? Some possible reasons:

      • To sustain life.
      • To avoid pain.
      • To increase happiness.
      • To satisfy curiosity.
      • …

      • Their brains are hijacked.

        • Isn't it generally immoral to harm people?
        • Is it moral to make people harm themselves (e.g. selling them cigarettes)?

    • Murphy's law applied to capitalism?

      • If something is profitable, someone will do it.
      • Some evil is profitable.
      • Therefore someone will do some evil and get rich from doing that evil.

  • Unread

  • Company theory

    • Avoiding personification of companies

      • A company is a group of people.
      • Group is concept. Person is reality.
      • Groups can't think. People think.
      • Groups can't react. People react.
      • Groups can't live. People live.
      • Groups can't work. People work.
      • Groups can't create value. People create value.
      • Groups can't decide. People decide.
      • Groups can't be responsible. People are responsible.
      • Groups can't commit crime. People commit crime.
      • Groups can't damage environment. People damage environment.
      • Groups can't exploit. People exploit.
      • What do we mean when we say "a group of people are walking"? We mean "those people are walking". A group is a concept. We invent it in our language. A group can't walk.

    • The whole is greater than the parts?

      • The value that someone produce alone is less than the value he produces with his coworkers?
      • But social loafing? Bigger team mean less work per person?

      • Companies exist.

        • It shows that owning a company can be profitable.
    • Define: To employ someone is to find/give him things to do.
    • A profitable-company owner employs its employees better than those employees employ themselves.
    • If employees could find great things to do, they will own a company, not work for a company.

    • To employ is to exploit.

      • A company owner who doesn't exploit his employees enough will run out of money.
      • A company owner who exploits his employees too much will run out of employees.

      • "Exploit" there is the same "exploit" in "exploiting natural resources".

  • Does Patreon work?

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve

24What?

24.1Economics vs finance

  • Which is more fundamental, economics or finance? Which is built on which?

24.2Establish company

  • The problem with opening a business is too many choices.
    • Almost all businesses make money.
    • Every obvious business idea is already taken.

24.3Frank Abagnale tips

  • 2017, 1 hour, Frank Abagnale: "Catch Me If You Can" - Talks at Google
  • The job of a company (a company director?) is to find what to do and find who should do it.
    • Everyone has different tendencies, strengths, weaknesses, desires, preferences, habits, upbringings, backgrounds.
    • Some people are more suited for some jobs.
      • Some jobs require high IQ; otherwise the employee will take too long to learn.
      • Some jobs require low IQ; otherwise the employee will get bored too soon.
    • The company has goals.
    • The director breaks down the goals into jobs.
    • The director matches employees and jobs.
    • Which comes first: the job or the employee?
      • Do you formulate a job description first, and then find people to do that?
      • Do you hire people first, and then formulate jobs suitable for them?
    • A good company accomplishes more than each employee can accomplish individually.
  • Who controls the world? - James B. Glattfelder
    • physical modeling/explanation of financial inequality
  • The Third Industrial Revolution: A Radical New Sharing Economy
    • Jeremy Rifkin, Third Industrial Revolution, sharing economy, Germany, Digital Europe, China Internet Plus, aggregate efficiency, distributed system
      • The Second Industrial Revolution peaked at 20% aggregate efficiency.
      • Difference between post-Westphalian worldview and Millenial worldview.
        • The 21st century way of living is radically different. Different ideas of freedom.
          • In the post-Westphalian worldview, freedom means sovereignty, being autonomous, being an island.
      • Second Industrial Revolution teaches kids to be factory workers. Obedient. Unquestioning. Hardworking.
    • Jeremy Rifkin on the Fall of Capitalism and the Internet of Things - YouTube
  • Corporate Greed Isn't New. The Internet Is Just the New Playing Field, says Douglas Rushkoff - YouTube
    • Corporates were invented by aristocrats to make sure peasants stay peasants?
    • transcript
      • We should verify and distill these texts. These are some bold claims.
        • "As the peasants became wealthy the aristocracy got scared, who are these people? They're not going to be dependent on us any more. So they came up with two main financial innovations to prevent the rise of this peer to peer economy. The first one was the chartered monopoly, really the parent to the modern corporation. All the chartered monopoly was was a way to say all of you small businesses are now illegal. If you want to be in the shoe business you have to work for his majesty's royal shoe company. You want to be in the grain business you have to work for his majesty's royal grain company. So people who were small business people now became employees. Instead of selling the value they created, now they sold their time as servants, as wage laborers."
        • "The second invention they came up with was central currency. Not such a terrible thing in itself. It's great to have a long distance currency that lots of people can use and value, but the problem was they made all of the local currencies illegal. So the only way people could trade with each other, the candlestick maker could trade with the chicken farmer was by borrowing central currency from the treasury. So now you had to borrow money at interest just in order to transact. And that set in motion really a growth cascade. If you have a currency that has to be paid back with interest, in order to just make end meet you need an economy that's growing. You need more money next year than there was this year."
        • "So that worked well for colonial powers, as long as we could extend into Africa and South America and North America, find slaves, find new resources, we could grow. But what happens when you reach the end of the planet's growth as we did really at the end of World War II?"
  • Online Companies Like Facebook Have Created a Meaningless Economy, says Douglas Rushkoff - YouTube
  • Work-life balance?
    • Don't confuse being busy and working.
      • Work should create value.
      • You can feel busy while not producing anything.
      • Work has goals. Being busy doesn't have goals.
    • People don't care about processes. They only care about results.
    • If you are not working in all your waking hours, then it's not the work you want.
    • If I could work in my sleep, I would!
  • Transport is waste. Hence travel is waste.
  • Why can't people stay at home on holidays?
    • If you don't like staying at home on holidays, that means something is wrong with your home. Fix it. Make it the best place on Earth. Face reality. Don't escape.
  • https://www.quora.com/What-are-possible-warning-signs-of-an-imminent-economic-collapse
  • Communism
    • The USSR was beyond communism; it was Stalinism.
    • Stalinism failed because it overcentralizes power.
      • Power corrupts.
      • Oppression isn't a good long-term strategy.
      • People are like gas.
        • Increasing pressure (oppression, stress, overcrowding) increases temperature (collisions, friction, conflicts, clashes).
    • People would still work even if they couldn't get rich.
      • People work to give their life meaning, not to get rich.
        • Getting rich is a side-effect.
      • Would they work better if they could get rich?
  • If you buy land and let it idle, only to sell it higher in the future, then you're seeking rent.
    • You are not creating any value. You burden society. You get rich by burdening others, making them poorer. The world is better without you. You contribute to city sprawl, which causes winding roads, more fuel consumption, more traffic, more pollution, and more heat. You should be heavily taxed for the huge negative externality you cause.
  • Is all speculation rent-seeking?

24.4Dan Lok

3 Types Of Employees (grunt, mercenary, and patriot) - How To Hire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kILJN6eu1P8

How To Build Systems In Your Business - Systemize Your Business Ep. 7 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g6sTH8FiFY

Kingpin strategy: Sell to the person who matters, who can bestow you authority, everyone else follows; "The One Thing You Can Do To Grow Your Business And Sales Faster" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M33aMYxuY60

How To Get What You Want - 3 Proven Persuasion Tactics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLA_T1AXd6o

24.5If you win a lottery

Don't tell anyone. Even families, friends, and lovers.

24.6Justify my value

  • <2018-08-18>
    • Today, in an hour, I advised my friend. My advice, if implemented, would save him Rp 450 million / year. His cost is Rp 3000 million / year. He makes 300 sales per year.
      • Talking with me for an hour could cut your business unit economic costs by 15%.
      • Should I be a SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) consultant?
      • Is Rp 450 million / year big?
      • Is 15% unit economics improvement big?
    • Inefficiency kills a company. A competitor finds a more efficient way to do the same thing. Either slowly/incrementally from an ordinary competitor, or radically/disruptively by an unexpected competitor.

24.7Morality of power?

  • Is evil a necessity or a consequence?58
  • Power corrupts, but with more power we can do more good?

24.8Morality of capitalism

24.9decision theory?

24.10Is Indonesia basic income feasible?

24.11Undigested

24.12Economics, finance, real economy vs financial economy?

Richard A. Werner "Shifting from Central Planning to a Decentralised Economy" https://professorwerner.org/blog/

Important: "two-loop economy": real economy and financial economy https://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/is-there-enough-money-to-pay-off-debt-plus-interest-a-closer-look/

Interest can be repaid if the lender spends that interest back into the real economy.

Prof. Werner brilliantly explains how the banking system and financial sector really work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC0G7pY4wRE debunked: City of London a sovereign state https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-city-of-london-a-sovereign-state.t587/

He asked an important question: What is the value-added of financial economy?

24.13Company value extraction efficiency

Company value extraction efficiency = gross revenue attributable to employee labor / expenses attributable to employees

Profit = revenue - wage

Extraction efficiency = Profit / wage

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateCommunism/comments/6li8f4/why_is_profit_theft/ "Profit comes from the worth of the workers' labor minus their wage. The difference is what is stolen."

What is "stolen"?

If a capitalist finds better things for a worker to do, then:

  • Is the capitalist entitled to the profits?
  • Is the worker entitled to the profits?

The image is nonsensical, but the writing is sound? https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/profit-is-theft-it-sounds-absurd-but-heres-why/

Command economy is absurd.

Principle

  • Mutual benefit. A contract should make all parties better off.
  • Keep only one accounting book. Don't make two books. Both insiders and outsiders see the same financial report.
  • Skip the small-talk in report.

24.14The key to employee retention?

Which?

  • good pay
  • good culture
  • good job satisfaction
  • absence of force majeures
  • communalism vs individualism?
  • autonomy and mastery: whose idea is this?
  • idiosyncratic (individual-dependent) issues?

24.15Economics

24.15.1Cooperatives?

What is the difference between cooperative and nonprofit?

Do cooperatives have limited liabilities like limited liability companies?

Cooperative is not a legal form?

How to measure member contribution? This is hard, if even possible at all. Thus it's a bad idea to distribute profit according to member contribution. An alternative way to distribute is WP:From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs, but it only works if there is abundance.

24.15.2Should we assume scarcity or abundance?

  • Which assumption is better?
    • Assumption of scarcity: Human always wants more than what exists. There is never enough resources for everybody.
    • Assumption of abundance: There is a point where humans are satisfied. There are enough resources for everybody.

I think the assumption of abundance is saner. But unfortunately it seems to lead to communism.

24.15.3Converting between goods and services

SaaS converts goods (software) into services. If you have goods, and you want to make it a service, then you host a software that controls access to that goods.

Robot converts services into goods. If you have a service, and you want to make it a goods, then you make a robot that does that service.

24.15.4The law of demand and supply only happens with order-book-like markets?

24.15.5<2018-09-11> Microeconomics

An economy consists of actors.

  • No economic actor has complete view of the economy. Every actor can only see his suppliers and consumers.
  • Every actor responds only to what immediately affects it: its direct suppliers and consumers.
  • Actors need time to respond to change in demand/supply.
  • Some actors maintain buffers/inventories.
  • Some actors get involved in futures.

Hypotheses:

  • Shocks ripple through actors.
  • Demand collapse may waste inventory.

Statistics can give us an accurate picture of the economy. Random sampling of actors.

25Find alternatives to passwords

How should we authenticate users? Passwords are annoying and insecure.

  • Frank Abagnale mentioned Trusona in his Google talk.
  • Outsourcing to third-party authentication services
    • OpenID?
    • Google OAuth?
  • Temporary authentication link sent via email, such as Slack/Tumblr. (Can we assume that each of our users has an email address?)
  • Multi-factor authentication
    • Google Authenticator?
  • Zero-trust security?

26Managing organizations

To get someone's attention, get on his critical path.60

Netflix culture https://jobs.netflix.com/culture

27Standardize organizations

27.1Build an organization operating system

Build an organization that builds organizations

  • An organization is a group, a company, a business, a non-profit, etc..
  • The goal: Every organization should use the same software for operations: accounting, financing, ERP, human resource management, issue tracking, workflow.
  • Every library should use the same library information system.
  • The organization can focus on its core competency.
  • The business operations software should be so good that every organization uses it.

27.2Spreading information in an organization

  • Two choices of where we can put the burden: the seeker and the source.

    • Polling: The person who needs an information seeks the person who might have it. This is hard because the person who needs an information might not realize that he needs the information. "Why wasn't I informed?"

    • Reacting: The person who has an information seeks the person who might need it. This is hard because this requires empathy and knowing the whole organization.

      • We can't depend on people.

    • Third way: There are people who specialize in collecting information from the sources and spreading information to the seekers.

  • Which of those two systems is best?

    • I think the "polling" choice is the only sane choice. The "reacting" choice assumes too much about human altruism.

  • A computer can help, but the final burden will always be on the seeker?

    • Mixture?

  • 2009, thesis, "The most effective communication channel to spread information in an organization", Susanna Ketoja, information, pdf

    • The most effective way to spread information in an organization is a combination of email and informal meetings.

28Hiring, interviewing, recruiting

28.1We should use machine learning to hire?

28.2Hiring standards, what to test in work sample tests

28.2.1IOT engineer

Must master some of hardware, software, and business.

  • Software
    • C++ smart pointers
  • Hardware
    • soldering skills
    • basic understanding of electric circuits
    • designing and making PCBs, including local knowledge of where to buy components and services

What the employer may expect the employee to do:

  • design and make systems (hardware and software) with constrained production cost and field operation
  • maintain existing programs written in C++/Java (or whatever the employer uses), including documenting software
  • travel to maintain remote hardware

28.3What is the best predictor?

According to eskill.com:

  • past behavior
  • conscientiousness (what is this? how do we test this?)
  • cognitive ability

Interviews must be structured. Unstructured interviews waste time.

How to conduct a structured interview | Workable

We can test skill.

How do we test behavior?

Questions are unreliable. Actions are reliable.

Where is the research paper?

How does Google hire?

What is the best predictor of on-the-job performance? How do we interview to best predict on-the-job/post-interview performance?

  • the reputation of recent employers (2 years?), and how long the employee worked at those employers
  • past experience
  • work sample test
  • education/university
  • IQ
  • github
  • tricky questions
  • school grades
  • what else?

Is there evidence-based hiring like evidence-based medicine?

Can we use machine learning to hire people? Can Pre-Employment Tests Predict Employee Success Better than a Human?

28.4Uncertainty in hiring

In hiring, if a candidate leaves good impressions (not exceptional, but decent nonetheless), but you aren't sure about him, should you just reject him? Does "maybe" mean "no"?

28.5To avoid wasting time, begin with the most selective test.

Begin with the test with the highest failure ratio. End the interview as soon as the candidates fail the test. Respect their time and your time. Don't force them to do what they can't do well. Don't set them up to fail. If you aren't going to hire them, don't waste their time.

28.6Recruitment pipeline

  • Review the resume / curriculum vitae.

28.7You know your job ad is wrong when…

You know your job ad is wrong when you have to obviously reject a lot of candidates without thinking.

People don't read the job description. People only read the job title.

To make sure that people read the job description, you can require that the applicant include a secret word that can only be found in the job ad. Auto-reject people who don't read the job description.

28.8Personality-based hiring doesn't work?

What are these trying to say?

29AI/ML

https://www.wired.com/story/karl-friston-free-energy-principle-artificial-intelligence/

https://twitter.com/Reza_Zadeh/status/1061006675933450240 "GANs to generate photo-realistic faces with some control over characteristics. Pretty realistic."

Indeed https://www.quora.com/In-a-world-where-everything-is-google-able-what-aspect-of-knowledge-experience-in-the-information-economy-remains-scarce

"Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning" https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/cmbishop/#!prml-book

https://twitter.com/MSFTResearchCam/status/1067019684481048576

https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/06/engineer-ai-raises-29-5m-series-a-for-its-aihumans-software-building-platform/amp/

AI, ML, NLP "Machine-Generated Knowledge Bases" https://primer.ai/blog/quicksilver

https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub46203 One Model To Learn Them All

https://ai.google/research/ https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub46203 https://www.uni-obuda.hu/journal/Nguyen_Qafmolla_Richta_54.pdf

30Solar cells?

31Be a coach, a marriage counselor

  • Let's go back to the day you married. Why did you marry? What changed? How have you changed? What change makes you unaligned?

If we can realign, then we can reconcile. Otherwise, we can divorce, amicably of course.

32The proper response to a low-paying job

The proper response to a low-paying job is to get another higher-paying job, not to set an arbitrary minimum wage.

Your low pay means that the market believes that your work is not important.

Minimum wage laws cannot make the market believe that your job is important. The market will simply replace you with machines. You go from low-income to zero-income.

But what if you can't work? We need some social safety nets.

Temporary family. Rent a family. Like in Japan. Like in "Conan Rents A Family In Japan"61.

34Use machines to teach English to many people at once

  • Machine teaching, use machine to immerse people
  • Tell people to talk to a speech recognition machine until those people can speak English
  • Tell people to talk to an English-speaking virtual assistant (AI persona/simulacrum) a lot
  • Install a dictionary app in their phones
  • Teach writing and speaking simultaneously?

How effective is Kampung Inggris6263? How well do the participants retain their abilities? If they don't use English everyday, their study will be wasted.

When I was in middle school (junior high school), some time between 2001 and 2004, … 15-minute break time with English. Unfortunately, the result was that nobody talked at all.

35Harris: baju gamis (male Muslim fashion)

36Nuclear

Nuclear fusion catalysts? 2016 article "The Curious Story of the Muon-Catalyzed Fusion Reaction" http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph241/yoon1/

2016 article "Oklo: Nature's Nuclear Reactor": "The combination of aluminum phosphate grains to trap radioactive materials and the groundwater to regulate the reaction allowed for an extremely safe reactor." http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph241/zhao1/

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  2. https://bothsidesofthetable.com/most-startups-should-be-deer-hunters-7fdecf58f4f6↩

  3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l1pBWDkTDw↩

  4. https://smallbiztrends.com/2019/03/startup-statistics-small-business.html↩

  5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hylocereus_costaricensis↩

  6. https://infobuah.com/pohon-buah-naga/↩

  7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgN0g_pF910↩

  8. https://regional.kompas.com/read/2019/01/24/06275941/buah-naga-merah-banyuwangi-yang-disayang-dan-dibuang?page=all↩

  9. https://finance.detik.com/berita-ekonomi-bisnis/d-4394385/harga-buah-naga-di-banyuwangi-anjlok-ini-penyebabnya↩

  10. https://finance.detik.com/berita-ekonomi-bisnis/d-4394385/harga-buah-naga-di-banyuwangi-anjlok-ini-penyebabnya↩

  11. https://www.alibaba.com/countrysearch/CN/dragon-fruit-price.html↩

  12. https://regional.kompas.com/read/2019/01/24/06275941/buah-naga-merah-banyuwangi-yang-disayang-dan-dibuang?page=all↩

  13. https://www.profitableplants.com/8-most-profitable-plants-to-grow/↩

  14. https://www.cheapvegetablegardener.com/most-profitable-fruits-to-grow-in-your-home-garden-2/↩

  15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nu_Skin_Enterprises↩

  16. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron↩

  17. https://www.nuskin.com/content/nuskin/en_ID/home.html↩

  18. https://www.quora.com/Which-services-are-offered-in-a-salon↩

  19. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty_salon↩

  20. http://www.nuskinantiagingscience.com/content/science/en/ageloc_nutritionalsscience/nutritional_downloads.html↩

  21. https://www.nuskin.com/content/nuskin/en_ID/join/financial_rewards/Velocity.html↩

  22. https://www.nuskin.com/content/dam/sea/id/Download/2019/2019_04_Pengumuman_Penjualan_Produk_Nu_Skin_dibawah_Harga.pdf↩

  23. https://pyramidschemealert.org/nu-skin-facing-the-ultimate-whistle-blower/↩

  24. https://ethanvanderbuilt.com/2014/11/24/nu-skin-scam-yes-opinion/↩

  25. https://citronresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/NuSkin-Citron-ChinaandUS1.pdf↩

  26. https://www.nuskin.com/content/nuskin/en_US/join/financial_rewards/velocity/qualification.html↩

  27. https://www.finance-guy.net/streetonomic/money-nuskin-review↩

  28. https://web.archive.org/web/20180418200517/http://www.mlm-thetruth.com:80/nu-skins-naughty-numbers/↩

  29. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking↩

  30. https://vestifarm.com/↩

  31. https://www.akseleran.com/↩

  32. https://www.artawana.com/↩

  33. https://avantee.co.id↩

  34. https://amartha.com/id_ID/↩

  35. https://www.investree.id/↩

  36. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzCegQVljdY↩

  37. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2QdGJElJRs↩

  38. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_for_the_rich_and_capitalism_for_the_poor↩

  39. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/08/wall-street-versus-poor-in-america↩

  40. https://www.facebook.com/Dapur-Rempah-267685393886789/↩

  41. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-largest-company-owned-entirely-by-one-person↩

  42. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuymeBMFe5I↩

  43. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKAAzZFLPEs↩

  44. https://importir.org↩

  45. Does this article make sense? http://evonomics.com/where-in-the-world-is-it-easiest-to-get-rich/↩

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  47. https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-build-a-company-without-employees-but-still-create-a-profitable-organization↩

  48. https://www.forbes.com/sites/allbusiness/2018/07/26/build-million-dollar-business-with-no-employees/#c4079af270f6↩

  49. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-456789/Genghis-Khan-The-daddy-lovers.html↩

  50. https://thetyee.ca/Books/2010/07/26/GenghisFeminist/↩

  51. https://www.quora.com/Who-is-the-man-who-impregnated-the-highest-number-of-women-in-modern-history↩

  52. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_the_most_children↩

  53. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genghis_Khan↩

  54. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasions_and_conquests↩

  55. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_under_the_Mongol_Empire↩

  56. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot↩

  57. https://www.chimebank.com/2017/08/08/are-credit-cards-really-safer-than-debit-cards/↩

  58. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SlowlySlippingIntoEvil↩

  59. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_capitalism↩

  60. 2014, article, "Whose critical path are you on?", Philip J. Guo, http://www.pgbovine.net/critical-path.htm↩

  61. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzaXw2ztCqU↩

  62. https://www.kampung-inggris.com↩

  63. https://www.kampunginggris.id↩