Book Review: The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond

Try to understand this Neo-Melanesian advertisement for a department store:

Kam insait long stua bilong mipela stua bilong salim olgeta samting-mipela i-ken helpim yu long kisim wanem samting yu laikim bikpela na liklik long gutpela prais. I-gat gutpela kain kago long baim na igat strap long helpim yu na lukautim yu long taim yu kam insait long dispela stua.

If some of the words look strangely familiar but don't quite make sense, read the ad aloud to yourself, concentrate on the sounds and ignore the strange spelling. 

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I was quite intrigued by this snippet found in the book titled The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal. It is a 28 year old Jared Diamond classic that followed his Guns, Germs and Steel and is equally satisfying to read. If you have read his GGS and/or Collapse, you'd vividly recall the magnificent scope his books provide, analyzing a vast array of evidence to support his underlying thesis. This one does the same to claim that human beings are biologically so close to two different chimpanzee species (common and bonobo) that they can be considered the third chimpanzee variation. From 98.4% similarity in DNA to what/how we eat, what our social structures are, there is a lot of evidence to show that human beings are just another species in the continuum of animal spectrum. Then how did we come to differentiate ourselves from the rest of the animal kingdom to dominate the planet so profoundly? Initial chapters point out that the extremely crude stone tools that human beings used 2.5 million years ago starts to differentiate us from other animals. Bonobo (also called pygmy) chimpanzees and gorillas don't use tools. While the common chimpanzee occasionally uses some, it doesn't really depend on tools much for survival. Thus, tools usage is an initial differentiator. Over the next 1.5 million years, we slowly spread across warm parts of Africa and Asia but are still less widespread in the planet than many other animals, like lions. We didn't evolve much for another 900,000 years. About 100,000 years back we seem to have started using fire regularly, which is a big improvement but that's about it. An alien flying into earth and seeing Neanderthals, predecessors to human beings, 100K years back, would have considered them as yet another big mammal roaming around the earth. That's it.

Diamond thinks we took a great leap forward about 40,000 years ago, coinciding with the arrival of the anatomically modern Homo Sapiens. He guesses this spectacular jump to be the development of language. Since the 1.6% difference in DNA between us and chimps came in long before 40K years, author argues that this great leap forward cannot be attributed to genetic differences but just variations in the vocal chord construction that allowed us to create different sounds. The snippet at the top is part of the chapter deftly discussing the evolution of language. If we hadn't paid attention, we might think pidgin as a grammar less, poor quality means of communication uneducated people practice in a language they don't know well. Diamond explains nicely as to how pidgin is the first stage of two different language speakers communicating with each other using broken words and very short sentences that then evolves into creole, if and only if a new community of that pidgin language speakers continue to thrive bringing in the need for sophisticated grammar, and expressions of complicated thought. If not, neither side bothers to learn the language of the other side, leaving the pidgin usage where it is. The list of pidgin and creole used around the world, the kind of detective painstaking work linguists do to trace and time languages are all quite fascinating. For example, take a word like gun. Unlike sun or sea, gun didn't exist forever but was invented at a point in time. So, tracing the term for gun in various languages around the world gives fascinating insights into whether a set of languages had a common ancestor or not. Now look at the same two lines given above rewritten using English spelling to see if it makes better sense (another snippet from the book):

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Come inside long store belong me-fellow-store belong sellim altogether something - me-fellow can helpim you long catchim what-name something you likeim, big-fellow na lik-lik, long good-fellow price. He-got  good-fellow kind cargo long buyim, na he-got staff long helpem you na lookoutim you long time you come inside long this-fellow store.

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Although scientists and philosophers trying to glorify human beings will claim that we differ from other animals in having innate sense of ethics and other such noble traits, author thinks that human beings actually differ from other animals in two other notorious traits: our capacity to murder each other in really large numbers very efficiently and our capability to destroy the environment extremely quickly than any other species on the planet! He thinks if this capacity for self-destruction is a standard part of the evolution of any advanced civilization, it might explain Fermi's Paradox. About 10K years back we started occupying lot more parts of the planet, killing off many species into extinction around the globe, and invented agriculture. Of course the last 500 or so years have been detailed very well with written records available in many places. He thinks with the advent of modern technology & science, we might fall into a false complacency thinking that we are much more civilized and are all set to live and rule the planet forever. But under closer examination, many things look fragile, there are still genocide going on in different parts of the world, consumption of natural resources has been accelerating without any possibility of replenishment, and so on that may lead us towards a lot of pessimism. But Diamond is optimistic since the problem we face were created by us and so potentially they could be solved by us as well. 

To lead us to his conclusions author walks through a wide array of topics ranging from how survival of the fittest evolution could have brought about menopause in women, the science of adultery, Indonesian martial arts experts who drink kerosene once in a while to prove to themselves they remain strong, drug addiction, how perpetrators of genocide practice "blame the victims" to justify their acts (several pages of analysis on how Native Americans were killed of by the European settlers in US), etc. The GGS and Collapse book themes also show up in few pages that may feel a bit repetitive to those who have already read those books. Similarly while detailed slow moving discussion of various species carrying a burden as a display of its strength (e.g. peacock with a long plume) might feel like an argument seen in many other books (e.g. Richard Dawkins), if I had read this book 28 years back, I am sure it might have been new to me. Diamond also seems to have detractors who argue that many is his conclusions can't be proven and his claims are dubious. I am not an anthropologist. But he himself says that in his line of work, speculation is often involved since you can't go back thousands of years to see exactly how, what, when something happened. I wonder some of his critics make the criticism to ride his coat tails, with any publicity is good publicity attitude. To me, his easily accessible prose, varied discussion carrying an underlying directional motive are all nice signature characteristics of this book making it thoroughly enjoyable. 

Regards.

-sundar.

P.S. Have you bought the Thought Experiments book yet? :-)

You can buy the e-book from Google: https://tinyurl.com/TESVGoogle 

or from Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/TESVAmazon

P.P.S. If you are wondering what does that Neo-Melanesian advertisement exactly mean, drop me a line. Will send you the precise translation with mapping details. :-)

Book Reviews: Innovation Nation by John Kao and Breakout Nations by Ruchir Sharma

This book titled "Innovation Nation - How America is Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why it Matters, and What We Can Do to Get it Back" by John Kao is a little dated, since it was published in 2007, considering its topic/content is not as timeless as say "Origin of the Species". I remember reading it a while back but didn't finish it then thanks to some distraction that popped up to turn me away. Got the second book titled, "Breakout Nations - In Search of the Next Economic Miracle" by Ruchir Sharma published in 2012 as a gift few years back.Started reading promptly and again got distracted. Both books were lot more interesting to read now with dozen additional years of developmental perspective we all have gathered. While both books are focused on nation level innovation, Kao's book is more US focused comparing it to other countries that are keen on overtaking US in their own progress. Kao argues that while we love a national narrative of a good come-from-behind story and are generally confident that US will prevail, we tend to drift along in our current direction, which happens to be sideways! Since there is no national consensus about what US stands for as a country, there is no vital sense of purpose. This sounds all the more appropriate today in 2020 compared to 2007. His solution is to develop a national agenda around innovation that will bring in cohesion and propel the nation forward. But right off the bat he points to microlending as a major recent innovation, that has since been debunked by books like Due Diligence by David Roodman that said while it is useful, microlending is not all that it cracked up to be. I wouldn't have had that insight if I had read this book in 2007. :-)

In the initial chapters, Kao delves into national innovation agendas set forth by countries like China, how much each industrialized country spends on R&D, how they differ or appear more coordinated than what is going on in the US. In this non-fiction book, he has two sections where he had tried to be a story spinner. In the first story he paints a dystopian version of the future US where due to a lack of innovation, US has lost its preeminence and so an average Joe struggles to find work to support a decent family life.. In the second version, with a perfect agenda in place, US is leading the world and so Joe is doing swimmingly well. It is amusing to read these two story lines interspersed in a book rest of which is totally non-fiction. He is all praise for Singapore and Finland, claiming they got the formula right, countering them with Soviet Union's five year plans that didn't work very well. He doesn't think China's efforts & progress will amount to much, which is puzzling to read even with the 2007 mindset. 

His prescription for ailing US is to put together a Government initiated agenda to drive innovation with 20 innovation hubs spread across the country each designed to tackle one big, wicked problem, with a billion dollar funding for each hub. He asks those who may roll their eyes about another big bureaucratic government initiative to go back and evaluate how successful  were the Manhattan project that created the atomic bomb during the second world war and the mission to the moon that put the first man on the moon in the late 60's. Both are huge government initiated projects that brought the nation together with a large cohesive vision and drove the country forward in multiple fronts. If $20B funding sounds too big to you, he counters pointing out the $800B US spends on military alone. Thus, $20B funding may not be a big deal and is needed to kick start the process. I am with him on these points since politicians who cry wolf on deficit spending are willing to push it up considerably when they want, with the recent $2T stimulus package being a good example. He does conclude the book saying we need to get out of the what is good for America is good for the world cockiness and get into the mindset of what is good for the world is good for America so that we can learn from other countries. 

While Kao is an academic, Ruchir Sharma is an investment manager. He claims that he spends a month or so each year in a different country to get a good view of how things work there. The Breakout Nations book is his attempt to talk about a dozen or so such countries he has spent time on. When I started reading the initial chapters that focused on China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, and so on with one chapter dedicated to each country, I thought that the whole book may turn out to be a collection disconnected reports on various nations. I was getting ready to feel a bit disappointed. Still since the writing was lucid, kept going thinking that I'd imbibe ideas similar to the ones mutual funds prospects may provide on whether to invest in and travel to that country. :-) But I was pleasantly surprised to see Sharma tie them all together in the last couple of chapters providing a coherent narrative. 

In discussing each country, he throws around a lot of interesting nuggets based on his time there. For example with the roads so congested and traffic so chaotic, Brazilian cities like Sao Paulo, have a helicopter network used by corporate CEOs that jump from one roof top to another to get to their next appointment on time. In a totally different domain, China that wants to encourage capitalism, lets multi billionaires pop-up one by one. But it doesn't want anyone becoming way too rich as it may lead to social unrest brought in by income inequalities. So, once someone's net worth crosses ten billion, they are on the government's cross hair and are either forced to keep their net worth well below the $10B mark or be charged with some crime and thrown behind bars! Of course this is not true anymore since there are very notable exceptions now like Jack Ma, who is worth $45B.

I loved many lines of Sharma's second-order analysis that look at details beyond the first order factors like a countries GDP. There are several examples including the following few:

- Churn rate of the wealthiest people in a country (more churn indicates dynamism in the country's economy that allows newer individuals to come to the top, while no change for decades may indicate corruption, entrenched privileges for a few)

- Shifts in commodity prices yielding highly lopsided and skewed valuations projecting incorrect pictures (e.g. Brazilian oil giant Petrobas alone reaching a valuation of $300B, while the entire stock market of Turkey amounting only to $200B)

- South Africa having come out of apartheid thanks to ANC, not being in any hurry to improve the economy resulting in high income inequalities, since ANC can't be challenged 

- Which country in the world is the biggest market for armored cars, as it indicates lack of systemic security despite individuals being rich.

Each one of these bullets run into few pages of intriguing discussions. 

In Sharma's analysis Indonesia is rated high as one of the best run commodity economies. He is iffy on China. With my advantage of additional eight years of hindsight, neither one appears accurate. He does a nice comparison of Taiwan and South Korea, two tiger economies, saying Taiwan actually has the recommended set of ingredients, like welcoming immigrants, open corporate books, no family run conglomerates but is not doing as well as S. Korea which is on the opposite end of the spectrum but is thriving. He finds it counter-intuitive but accepts that the S. Korea model could work since it has been on the raise for decades now, establishing brands that are well recognized all over the world.

In the end he looks at countries that are potentially going to increase the per-capita income range substantially over the next decade (i.e. current decade coming to an end since the book is almost a decade old) as a mark of overall growth that points to a breakout nation. In the $20K to $25K range, he lists Czech Republic and South Korea. He places Turkey and Poland in the $10K to $15K range, and Thailand in the $5K to $10K range. Below that range, he places China hesitantly and lists India, Sri Lanka and Nigeria as other potential break outs. He places many of the countries where the data available are unreliable combined with a level of opaqueness due to corruption that makes objective analysis difficult in the "Fourth World" bucket. His assessment is that as they straighten out their act, any of them may suddenly turn out to be a great break out nation. Makes sense. 

It was nice to read two different books more or less simultaneously as they both covered overlapping domains by happenstance. Neither one is a difficult read. Material being a bit dated, instead of making them feel less useful, gave me the feeling of having an advantage over the authors that made the read more enjoyable. :-)

Regards.

-sundar.

In praise of inefficiencies

Paying homage to Russell's famous essay titled, "In praise of idleness", thought will write down some thoughts related to what we shun as inefficiency that actually brings value in times of crisis like the current one.

In the decades past and still in many parts of the world, there was/is a lot of wastage in how resources are consumed and value is derived out of work human beings do. This has lead to relentless efficiency improvements and Just In Time solutions to keep RoI (Return on Investment) high. Compared to how things were a century back, this move to make things more efficient is desirable. But in capitalistic societies, this idea is on overdrive widely applied to any and every domain. Thus, the total number of hospital beds available in the USA has come down from 1.5 million in 1975 to 900K now, while the population has increased from 220 million to 330 million! In other words, there were about 8 beds per 1000 people in the 1970's. That number has been reduced to less than 3 per 1000 now! While this makes the system very efficient, keeping the occupancy rates very high making full use of all the available hospital beds, when we have a pandemic, there is hardly any surplus capacity to serve the need. 

This is not limited to hospital beds alone. We keep seeing news clips these days that show farmers ploughing away their own crop destroying millions of tons of potatoes and tomatoes, pouring down milk into the drain, etc. while there are long lines of starving people in front of food banks. This jarring disconnect is a result of highly efficient farming model that produces vegetables/milk matched to the needs of their specific buyers and so has only equipment & packaging material to ship the product to that specific type of clientele. Thus, a potato farmer selling his potatoes to restaurants has only 100 lb bagging machines. Now that the restaurants are closed and people need to eat at home, he should be able to package them in 5 or 10 lb bags to ship to grocery stores and food banks for consumption by small families. But equipment or even the needed packing material is no longer available! 

Of course I fully understand that under normal working conditions, if the farmer maintains multiple packing equipment/material or if the hospitals keep a large number of beds in reserve for that rare pandemic, their capital/operational expenses will go up, putting them at a disadvantage with their competition. The overhead will probably even put them out of business. But before we brush this off as "nothing can be done", let us look at it from another angle.

In the "Due Diligence" book about microlending, the author David Roodman points out that the economically poor view the notion of  insurance very apprehensively. To them, buying insurance policies appears like throwing away good money into a product that most probably will never give you back anything of value. Of course we all understand the value of insurance since we carry, life, automobile, property and other types of insurances. But you get the idea since most of the years go by without us filing any claims. In situations where the poor could have used the safety net provided by insurance, they get totally wiped out. If we can understand the value of insurance, we should be able to understand the value of some fat being left in the system as well. 

While we have been drinking the efficiency cool aid for decades (and reaping its benefits under normal conditions), it is interesting to note that extremely robust systems that exist in nature tend to be extremely inefficient, giving us a clue for complex system designs. Consider this fact: the human DNA when laid out in a straight line can stretch from US to Europe. If you fly over this line in a plane, clusters of genes may be found like small islands seen as pin pricks in the ocean! Collecting all the pin prick land masses, at the most you may be able to  form something like Tokyo's metro train line equivalent. This mental picture helps you easily understand the sparseness with which genes are distributed in the DNA structure. We can point to many such examples in nature. Think of Fermi's paradoxical question of "Where is everybody?" that indicates the way our entire universe is structured sparsely. 

We do have the responsibility of feeding everyone in the planet, continuously improving the quality of life for everyone and so on where improved efficiency in whatever we do helps. But if there is another global crisis where efficiency pushed to the limit results in a lot of causalities, that is not good either. Hopefully we will learn our lessons this time around to internalize the idea that being hyper efficient is not always necessary or good. Relaxing a bit, be it in personal, societal, national or international level, allowing some fat to remain in the system may help us in lean times. A recent study said people of Denmark are happier overall, since the Danish society prefers and encourages the middle class lifestyle and looks down upon hyper competitive, hyper driven silicon valley types that are out to dominate the world. May be there are some lessons in that culture & lifestyle to lower our stress levels and build more sustainable societies. 

Next time around you ate a bit more or didn't get a promotion or bought something that you don't absolutely need, rather than feeling bad, perhaps you should think that you are helping the world add on some fat for lean times.  Not only that it may be good for you, you might even be doing the world a favor by being a bit mediocre & inefficient. :-)

PLMK your thoughts on how you will design a society that encourages moderation and is happy to maintain enough reserves for unexpected emergencies. Giving out incentives? Govt maintaining the reserves?

Book Review: Our Bodies, Our Data by Adam Tanner

As a part of an office project, we were researching data mismanagement in various corporate sectors. During that process a long time colleague of mine came across this book titled "Our Bodies, Our Data - How Companies Make Billions Selling Our Medical Records" by Adam Tanner, read it and gave it to me. Tanner is a long time journalist/academic and has done a lot of research to write this easy to read book. Without any hyperbole in his language, he manages to get our blood to boil! First line of the first chapter (Introduction) starts with, "Soon after you tell your doctor about an intimate medical problem, data about your condition are sold commercially to companies that have nothing to do with your treatment or billing." 

Initial chapters talk about how in the 60's and 70's pharmaceutical industry tried to get an idea of the prescriptions being filled in each pharmacy by sending their reps to individual pharmacies. They paid some money to the small pharmacy store owners to reveal the details of the prescriptions being filled at their stores. With the introduction of computers, the process became easier/faster in the late 70's. In the 80's and 90's Cardinal Health started doing this analysis on a massive scale and found itself on the Fortune 500 list at the 145th spot. It then created a new company called ArcLight and competed with IMS Health, a veteran in this realm, by making pharmacies ArcLight partners in business, sharing profits (rather than just paying them a fee like IMS did) and soon was processing about 60% of the US pharmacy records. Eventually with IMS buying off or managing to kill off competition, now a days each Pharma company pays $10 to $40 million per year to IMS to get access to their data. Doctors who were irritated by the extent of tracking IMS does about their prescription practices, got the US states of New Hampshire and Vermont to pass laws against it. But IMS fought it all the way to the US Supreme Court and won the right to track/sell individual doctor identified prescription patterns/numbers. Book even quotes a gentleman named Larry Weed, one of the founders of EMR (Electronic Medical Records) saying, "The Doctor shouldn't be making a judgement of anything." 

What initially started as a good attempt by drug companies to do market research, mushroomed into a huge privacy problem, Clinton administration passed HIPAA (Health Insurance Privacy and Accountability Act) in 1996, proclaiming that patients have privacy rights. This law is still held up as a paragon of patient rights/privacy protection statute even today. My US friends/colleagues who work in healthcare themselves incorrectly believe that HIPAA provides lot more protection than it actually does. But in reality, this seems to be a joke since it is riddled with so many holes. For example, while doctors, nurses, insurance companies type providers are governed by HIPAA, companies like IMS Health (now part of IQVIA.com), that don't get classified as care providers are not covered by HIPAA and so can do whatever they want! Even the covered entities can legally sell the data as long as they de-identify the data by removing individually identifiable information (like name, SSN). But using today's data crunching techniques, it is so easy to re-identify all this data with a simple home computer and publicly available information. This has has been proven by multiple researchers. As an example, you can go to the website aboutmyinfo.org and enter your DoB, gender and Zip code to see how close it comes to individually identifying you. If it is not unique already, any additional information related to the patient can lead today's data tracking systems to easily re-identify the individual in question. 

Now this has moved far beyond pharma companies, and covers hospitals, insurance companies, drug trial companies and so on. Whenever companies that deal with medical data are approached with questions by journalists about their business model, they either dodge (as it may bring in more regulations restricting what they can legally do) or provide some vague explanation/PR statement of how wonderful it is when things work perfectly. But in reality things never work as professed. For example, when a person is hit by a car and taken to the hospital in unconscious state, if the doctor in the emergency room can look up the person's medical history, understand the victim's past, any allergies, Living Will/DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) preferences, before starting the treatment, it would be fantastic. But till date this is not possible in the US due to multiple incompatible systems in which patient data is stored without providing any universal easy to access data model. Such systems do exists in other countries but is blocked by multiple lobby groups that prevent such a system being developed in US. Author claims that whenever he tried to ask executives or company reps that tout the advantages of digitized medical data, they always talk about some vague potential synergy but when pushed to give specific examples, back off and run away. Author had traveled around the world to Korea, Japan, China, European countries to assess the extent of this problem. While Europe is a little better, issue exists allover the world. There is hardly any discussion or laws on these topics in many parts of the world allowing the same data miners to extend their reach internationally.

In the Chapter 11, Tanner talks about President Obama's initiative to get EMR deployed widely, spending about $31 Billion dollars to subsidize the migration effort to hospitals and smaller practices. That effort has made billionaires out of companies like Epic, Cerner that are massive EMR service providers. But since the law didn't require that the EMR systems should inter-operate, each company intentionally created its own silo, locked in its customers and made sure competitors can not access the patient data they manage. Just couple of months back when Trump administration started pushing for more patient rights that will allow patients to access their own records, Epic campaigned against it vigorously saying it will compromise patient privacy! Judy Faulkner, CEO of Epic claims in an interview with the author that standardization is like asking iPhone developers to use Blackberry technology because we think that is the only way iPhone and Blackberry users can talk to each other! Since I come from the tech world, that analogy doesn't make any sense to me. It is more like Yahoo mail and Gmail can't send/receive information to each other since they use different technologies. This should be easy to solve. Apple, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Amazon like companies are all for opening up and standardizing the patient record databases but are so far struggling to make headway and have shuttered several initiatives since the domain is fraught with emotions, dominant players worried about losing their market share, common public not understanding how better things could be, etc. as discussed in the book.

Few years back Intel's Ex-CEO Craig Barrett, had a heart attack while visiting his ranch in Montana and had a very tough time getting his own medical records to the hospital treating him. Trying to solve the problem, he started a company to help individual patients get access to their full record. The initiative didn't go anywhere. Currently in US, we are in a paradox were individual patients cannot access their own lifetime medical record in any comprehensive way, while a for-profit data miner can compile the dossier legally and sell it.

If rational solutions are needed, they are easy to develop as discussed in the last chapter. More transparency, more consent, and more control. Book closes out proposing a series of simple solutions related to more open information sharing with patients, compatible patient record systems and EMRs designed more to facilitate better patient care instead of being focused on billing and lawsuit prevention (by making doctors spend an enormous amount of time documenting each visit for CYA). Even this New Yorker article by the popular writer Atul Gawande attests to these same issues.

On a related note, please listen to this podcast where EconTalk host Russ Roberts discusses the price of cancer drugs in the US with Dr. Vinay Prasad: https://www.econtalk.org/vinay-prasad-on-cancer-drugs-medical-ethics-and-malignant/ I look forward to hearing my pharma research friends' feedback. 

 Regards.

-sundar.

P.S. Have you bought the Thought Experiments book yet? Help me get to the "1000 copies sold" mark. I am barely at 100 now. :-)

Google: https://tinyurl.com/TESVGoogle 

Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/TESVAmazon

Thought Experiments - An Inexpensive Tour of the Entire Universe

Is there a connection between the COVID-19 pandemic, four students who skipped a class to watch a movie, Greek philosopher Socrates, and a clock tower in Switzerland? Yes, these are all involved in various thought experiments floating around in this universe. A new book titled "Thought Experiments - An Inexpensive Tour of the Entire Universe" captures them all touching a wide range of topics such as economics, ethics, physics, mathematics, medicine, democracy, artificial intelligence and machine learning. Carrying about three years' worth of my work, written in simple language, the ideas discussed in this book may serve as material for family discussions during this lock down, party conversations with friends or intriguing classroom debates. Once you get the book, a virtual tour of the entire universe will be on your fingertips. Consider jumping on board to support the cause. 

You can buy the e-book from Google: https://tinyurl.com/TESVGoogle or from Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/TESVAmazon

Amazon has a paperback edition also available. Whichever version you buy, please provide feedback to me and write reviews on those sites to help improve/promote the book. 

As I have promised in the preface, 100% of the generated profit from this book sales will be donated to Solvanam, a non-profit web magazine run by volunteers spending their time and money to help improve the discourse in Tamil, publishing high quality articles, discussions, reviews and literature covering all the topics this book touches upon. I published many of the chapters in this book as individual Solvanam magazine articles in the years past, that vouches for their support to discussions related to STEM type topics. 

After Google and Amazon take their service fee, I will hardly receive $1 per book. I am hoping to sell 1000 copies so that I can raise $1000 to donate. I know 1000 copies is a really big target to reach. Please help out by buying a copy for yourself and 10 more to give to your friends & family. Ask your extend circle to buy. Hopefully they will all thank you along with me. :-)

-sundar.

Book Reviews to take your mind off of the big topic! :-)

Enjoyed reading couple of short & simple books. There is a Credit Union (US parlance for a small bank type institution that is non-profit and member owned) in the town where we live in. I serve as a Supervisory Committee volunteer. This is similar to being on the board, monitoring the functioning of the organization as an outsider (i.e. not part of the paid management chain) to ensure that it is run well. The CEO of the CU selects a book each year during the annual retreat and gives a copy of the book to all the employees. Thus, ended up with a copy of "Humble Leadership: The Power of Relationships, Openness, and Trust" by Edgar H. Schein & Peter A. Schein. I found the title appealing and so picked it up to read. They seemed to have created an industry out of this idea, writing multiple books, starting a consultancy business, etc. all connected with the "Humble" notion. 

Basic thesis of the book is this: In the Western hemisphere, relationships, interactions and even how people are managed, all tend to be too transactional. This is not good in the long run as it becomes difficult to develop trust with people you work with but don't really know well. So getting to know the other side a little better will be beneficial in the long run. 

I have noticed this overall trend in US over the last three decades since many of my colleagues often know next to nothing about their other colleagues or their managers. Even simple personal details like is someone married or have kids might not be known as many think those are personal details we don't need to know or divulge. The authors call this Level 1 relationship, where there is a not a lot of context to interactions. What is being said could be taken at face value without any underlying meaning. Book encourages everyone to get to Level 2 relationships where you know the person you are dealing with a bit better, understand their background, family, social/political/business views so that you are able to understand what they are saying/committing to a lot better. Trust can be high when you know the person you are interacting with very well. Authors then talk about Level 3 relationships where you know the other person extremely well, almost like a close family member. While it may be a desirable state, cultivating such close relationship with everyone is very difficult as it involves a lot of time and effort. So, the authors advice the readers to focus on getting to Level 2 at the least, with all those you work with regularly. They go on to cite examples of how this mode of working will be better in hospital, military, business and other settings. 

This is all very different from the Eastern culture, where the pendulum tends to swing to the other extreme. Among Indian colleagues, it is a very common practice to invite all the office colleagues for their sons/daughter's weddings or other family functions. In Asian cultures what is being said often need to be contextualized based on who says it, what are the circumstances, etc. While I understand the authors' p.o.v., since I have been on both sides, I do think both sides have advantages/disadvantages and so we need to find a balance. I like the low context models where a commitment is a simple promise that will be kept & delivered without any need for context/interpretation. Of course the authors are careful to point out that they don't mean letting people slide or not take responsibilities for the commitments they make. I came away thinking that while there is certainly value in what they are prescribing to the Western hemisphere, the East can benefit from a flipped version of the prescription. :-)

On a totally different area, read a small book called "IKIGAI - The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life" by Héctor García and Frances Miralles (translated into English by Heather Cleary) based on a pointer my brother gave me. Authors have done a lot of research in areas defined as Blue Zones on the planet that have a very high density of centenarians. Okinawa in Japan, Sardinia in Italy, Loma Linda, CA in USA, The Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica and Ikaria in Greece are these blue zones. Digging through the life styles of the residents of these five places, authors derive simple conclusions that can potentially keep us all happy and healthy living long lives. The Japanese word Ikigai, symbolizes this whole life style and roughly means "the joy of being busy". People in these places are not extraordinarily wealthy or has accomplished some great career success or any such thing by which society may be measuring each other. But they all have a continuing purpose to get out of bed each day, never retire (even when they are 90+), form close knit communities they consistently hangout with, help each other, each simple meals to fill only up to 80% of their stomach and in the end develop the needed physical and psychological resilience to lead a long and happy life. The Ikigai notion (similar to raison d’etre in French) while practiced in the other four blue zones as well, its integration into daily lives is a cultural part in Japan and hence the title of the book. Authors point out a lady who works in a paint brush manufacturing plant and an owner of a sushi restaurant, who all seems to have found an inner peace in doing a perfect version of their what appears to be a simple job for years. They are respected by their peers for achieving this zen quality in their work though it may not have resulted in a lot of material wealth for them. For example the sushi restaurant owner never bothers to franchise their business or even make their one restaurant much larger but continue to focus on the quality for so many decades while still shutting down the restaurant once their purchased stock has been consumed. There is a chapter dedicated to discussing Logotherapy invented by Viktor Frankl (whose thin book Man's Search For Meaning is another great read) and mapping it to this domain. While we continue to live in world bombarding us relentlessly with Western individualism and material wealth & success, this book's prescription of a simple life with everything in moderation that is possible for anyone to follow is quite a welcome message as we grow into our old age.

Regards.

-sundar.

Book Review: Due Diligence: An Impertinent Inquiry Into Microfinance by David Roodman

More than 10 years back I came to know about the micro lending organization Kiva.org designed to connect lenders and borrowers allover the world. You can signup getting an account, deposit some money, view a catalog of loan applications and lend as little as $25 at a time to people located in different countries to help them start really small businesses. A typical loan application could be from a woman in Azerbaijan or Nicaragua trying to buy a cow to start a milk vending business asking for $400. When a bunch of lenders like us loan small amounts (say $25 or $50 each) meeting the total loan amount, she gets the funds, runs the business and pays it back over ~6 months. When you get your money back, you can lend it again. The Kiva.org website provides a catalog of loan applicants with pictures/small write-ups to help you make a connection with the borrowers. I loved the idea and so placed few hundred dollars there and used the interface to get my kids exposed to notions like what kind of money can make which type of businesses possible around the world. My son/daughter will read through the requests and enthusiastically say let's lend $25 to this lady trying to start a business selling seeds in Vietnam. It was fun, educational and fulfilling. We have given out 100 loans now recycling the few hundred dollars into more than $4000 worth of loans. Once in a blue moon we lose some funds when loans default. But that is really rare since it happened only once or twice in the last ten+ years. We don't get any interest but do get recurring requests to donate to Kiva that can be ignored/obliged as you see fit. 

I describe this Kiva.org model to friends now and then to get them interested. When I told about it to an Intel colleague, he got quite excited and so went and looked it up to sign up as a lender. But after reading up enough, he came back and told me that Kiva often charges interest rate as high as 40% and wondered aloud as to whether I am still sure that this is helpful to poor borrowers. Kiva itself has responded to such criticisms saying since they work with risky borrowers, and do need to support NGOs that do all the field work in the impoverished countries & societies they work, such high rates are justified. One thing that I pride myself is that I am not emotionally attached to any of my ideas. If/when convincing contrary evidence is presented, I rationally think about it and change my positions based on the evidence. So, taking the cue from my Intel colleague's nudge, I decided to do some serious reading to assess the efficacy of micro lending and ordered this book called Due Diligence by David Roodman. He is seen as a sincere, balanced critic that has put out unbiased reports and articles evaluating the MFIs (Micro Finance Institutions) allover the world.

Book starts off with an anecdote (promoted by MFI) pointing out how a poor woman used micro credits to dig her way out of poverty and gained self-esteem and respect from her family. It then pairs it off with the story of another woman who faced with real life difficulties that prevents her from paying back her monthly installments, ends up losing her house and cattle to pay her dues as she was forced to do so by her peers in the borrowing community. She swears never to borrow money for the rest of her life since it ruined her family. Such stories are powerful on both ends when selectively highlighted and so he steps back and starts off discussing various forms of credits/savings, groups that are formed to guarantee each other's debts, co-operative societies that help each other and many such phenomenons found throughout thousands of years of history all around the world. Subsequent chapters analyze dozens and dozens of micro lending institutions located in multiple continents (including many like Spandana, BASIX in India) in extensive details to conclude that there is no clear evidence that microlending has eliminated poverty. Author does say repeatedly that microlending certainly has value, just like regular lending, in the society. But it is not all that it is hyped up to be. 

Roodman points out that when people are said to be living under $2 per day, their income varies widely day-to-day and so mechanisms that will even out the flow of money is valuable, including micro lending. But achieving that end via micro savings and even better via micro insurance programs will be far better. Normally it is hard for poor people to pay money to buy insurance since most of the time it will not give you anything back. So, they tend to look at it suspiciously. There are very nuanced discussions in the book about how being part of even a borrowing group can raise the status of a woman in her family as well as how it can suck up several hours of her time each week as she has to attend weekly meetings to remain part of the group to be able to avail the loans when needed. He goes to a lot of length to shine spotlights on Grameen-II that Muhammad Yunus (of Nobel fame) has developed that embraces savings as well as lending evolving as a better model, Indonesia's Government funded MFI that refused international aid since they wanted to maintain their own discipline of relying on members' savings to make lending possible (rather than lazily depending on foreign donors) and other varying models that work better (like allowing people to "top off" their loan by borrowing the money they paid off before fully paying back their loan (treating it more like a line of credit) that helps even out financial ups & downs and so on.

In the last chapter he concludes by saying that while we are still struggling to make well known bank like services work for the poor by making it micro & efficient, programs like M-PESA, implemented in Kenya by Safaricom telephone company that successfully handles more financial transactions than Western Union may actually provide the kind of inexpensive but very efficient solutions poor people really need. I am getting convinced that while it makes me feel good, lending via Kiva is not really helping people get out of poverty. Many Kiva loans are actually given first, even before their stories get posted on the website asking you to lend, which while being the correct/efficient process, is not truth in advertising. I am planning to pull out my remaining money and perhaps donate it more directly via GiveDirectly.org type organizations. PLMK your thoughts/views on microlending. If you are seriously interested in this topic, this book is certainly a good read.