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Genuine love is rarely an emotional space where needs are instantly gratified. To know love we have to invest time and commitment...'dreaming that love will save us, solve all our problems or provide a steady state of bliss or security only keeps us stuck in wishful fantasy, undermining the real power of the love -- which is to transform us.' Many people want love to function like a drug, giving them an immediate and sustained high. They want to do nothing, just passively receive the good feeling.
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bell hooks
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Anyone who has ever been able to sustain good work has had at least one person--and often many--who have believed in him or her. We just don't get to be competent human beings without a lot of different investments from others.
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Fred Rogers
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Innovation is not a quick fix. It often requires sustained investment and effort over a long period.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Board Room Blitz: Mastering the Art of Corporate Governance)
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We define Greenaissance as an era of renewal with momentous innovation and investment opportunities aligned across fields with the common objective of sustainable energy transition.
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Roger Spitz (The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume I - Reframing and Navigating Disruption)
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A business that doesn’t respect human life, animal life and the ecosystem of our planet earth… that’s a business we don’t want in our portfolio. If the business does more harm than good, facilitates more death than life, and causes more destruction than creation… then we view them as a bad investment.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
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Financial health is the lifeblood of any organization. It's the engine that drives growth, innovation, and long-term sustainability. A company's financial performance determines its ability to invest in new products or services, attract and retain top talent, weather economic downturns, and ultimately, fulfill its mission.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Board Room Blitz: Mastering the Art of Corporate Governance)
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Ultimately, incentive structures and systems drive ESG investing, which can be disingenuous. Structurally, public market investors continue to focus on the incentives which maximize their financial returns, even while taking certain ESG inputs into account in their portfolio allocations. Only by regulating and incentivizing the actual outcomes might investors alter their investment strategies towards new rewards based on ESG outputs.
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Roger Spitz (The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume IV - Disruption as a Springboard to Value Creation)
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Investing is a special thing. In terms of functionality, almost anyone can invest. But in terms of achieving the results of long-term profit and sustainable growth, only some people have the talent or skill sets for that. It’s like baseball for example… anyone can swing a bat at a ball. But only a few people make it to the big league, and even fewer become world champs. These days there are so many apps and platforms for individual investing, but that doesn’t mean everyone is achieving good results or ROI. There are great investors, good investors, and bad investors. A professional investor can achieve exponential growth and profit. A professional investor understands markets and industries and can account for both the traditional and the new.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
“
Investing is a special thing. In terms of functionality, almost anyone invest. But in terms of achieving the results of long-term profit and sustainable growth, only some people have the talent or skill sets for that. It’s like baseball for example… anyone can swing a bat at a ball. But only a few guys make it to the big league, and even fewer become world champs. These days there are so many apps and platforms for individual investing, but that doesn’t mean everyone is achieving the same results. There are great investors, good investors, and bad investors. A professional investor can achieve exponential growth and profit. A professional investor understands markets and industries and can account for both the traditional and the new.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (The Wealth Reference Guide: An American Classic)
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From an investment perspective, every bond should be a green bond.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
“
A useful analogy for what [Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick] calls 'reparative reading' is to be fundamentally more invested in finding nourishment than identifying poison. This doesn't mean being naïve or undeceived, unaware of crisis or undamaged by oppression. What it does mean is being driven to find or invent something new and sustaining out of inimical environments.
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Olivia Laing (Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency)
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I agree that it seems vulgar, decadent, even epistemically violent, to invest energy in the trivialities of sex and friendship when human civilization is facing collapse. But at the same time, that is what I do every day. We can wait, if you like, to ascend to some higher plane of being, at which point we’ll start directing all our mental and material resources toward existential questions and thinking nothing of our own families, friends and lovers and so on. But we’ll be waiting, in my opinion, a long time. And, in fact, we’ll die first. After all, when people are lying on their deathbeds, don’t they always start talking about their spouses and children? And isn’t death just the apocalypse in the first person? So, in that sense, there is nothing bigger than what you so derisively call “breaking up and staying together,” because at the end of our lives, when there is nothing left in front of us, it’s still the only thing we want to talk about. Maybe we’re just born to love and worry about the people we know and to go on loving and worrying, even when there are more important things we should be doing. And if that means the human species is going to die out, isn’t it -- in a way -- a nice reason to die out? The nicest reason you can imagine? Because when we should have been reorganizing the distribution of the world’s resources and transitioning collectively to a sustainable economic model, we were worrying about sex and friendship instead. Because we loved each other too much, and found each other too interesting. And I love that about humanity. And in fact it’s the very reason I root for us to survive -- because we are so stupid about each other.
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Sally Rooney (Beautiful World, Where Are You)
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The more we live as 'free individuals' . . . the more we are effectively non-free, caught within the existing frame of possibilities--we have to be impelled or disturbed into freedom. . . . This paradox thoroughly pervades the form of subjectivity that characterizes 'permissive' liberal society. Since permissiveness and free choice are elevated into a supreme value, social control and domination can no longer appear as infringing on subjects' freedom: they have to appear as (and be sustained by) individuals experiencing themselves as free. There is a multitude of forms of this appearing of un-freedom in the guise of its opposite: in being deprived of universal healthcare, we are told that we are being given a new freedom of choice (to choose our healthcare provider); when we can no longer rely on long-term employment and are compelled to search for a new precarious job every couple of years, we are told that we are being given the opportunity to reinvent ourselves and discover our creative potential; when we have to pay for the education of our children, we are told that we are now able to become 'entrepreneurs of the self," acting like a capitalist freely choosing how to invest the resources he possesses (or has borrowed). In education, health, travel . . . we are constantly bombarded by imposed 'free choices'; forced to make decisions for which we are mostly not qualified (or do not possess enough information), we increasingly experience our freedom as a burden that causes unbearable anxiety. Unable to break out of this vicious cycle alone, as isolated individuals--since the more we act freely the more we become enslaved by the system--we need to be 'awakened' from this 'dogmatic slumber' of fake freedom.
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Slavoj Žižek
“
Another [interviewee] told me that because her relationships aren't built on false ideas about exclusivity forever, she feels more cherished by her partners; she said, "There is an investment in what we have rather than what we should have.
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Tristan Taormino (Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships)
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Sometimes the very things that we’re expending our lives to sustain are the very things that are killing our ability to live. And against our blind and frequently raging protests, these are the very things that God let’s die so that we can live.
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Craig D. Lounsbrough
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But dignity is also corroded by poverty no matter how poetically we invest the humble with simple graces and charm. No worker can maintain his morale or sustain his spirit if in the market place his capacities are declared to be worthless to society. The
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Martin Luther King Jr. (Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (King Legacy Book 2))
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Profit provides the financial foundation for businesses to invest in CSR initiatives, such as sustainable practices, employee well-being programs, and community development projects.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (The Virtuous Boardroom: How Ethical Corporate Governance Can Cultivate Company Success)
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If a business borrows to buy a machine, it’s a good thing, not a bad thing. During the past six years, America—its government, its families, the country as a whole—has been borrowing to sustain its consumption. Meanwhile, investment in fixed assets—the plants and equipment that help increase our wealth—has been declining.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz (The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them)
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If you can't reuse or repair an item, do you ever really own it? Do you ever really own it? Do you ever develop the sense of pride and proprietorship that comes from maintaining an object in fine working order?
We invest something of ourselves in our material world, which in turn reflects who we are. In the era of disposability that plastic has helped us foster, we have increasingly invested ourselves in objects that have no real meaning in our lives. We think of disposable lighters as conveniences -- which they indisputably are; ask any smoker or backyard-barbecue chef -- and yet we don't think much about the tradeoffs that that convenience entails.
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Susan Freinkel (Plastic: A Toxic Love Story – An Engaging Analysis of Cultural Dependency and the Resulting Environmental Crisis)
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Choosing intrinsic values—like investing in friendships, neighbors, or volunteer groups—has been found to sustain our happiness and well-being in a way that pursuing extrinsic goals, like higher income or higher status in a career, doesn’t.
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Jennifer Breheny Wallace (Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic-and What We Can Do About It)
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Sustained profit is the lifeblood of any business. It fuels growth, investment, and resilience against economic downturns. Without it, a business may struggle to cover expenses, attract talent, or maintain competitiveness. Ultimately, consistent profitability is essential for long-term survival and success.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
“
write these pages, Japan and the U.S. are still practicing widespread selective denial of major problems. Japan currently acknowledges some problems (its large government debt and aging population), and incompletely acknowledges the issue of Japanese women’s role. But Japan still denies other problems: its lack of accepted alternatives to immigration for solving its demographic difficulties; the historical causes of Japan’s tense relations with China and Korea; and denial that Japan’s traditional policy of seeking to grab overseas natural resources rather than to help manage them sustainably is now outdated. The U.S., as I write, is still in widespread denial of our own major problems: political polarization, low voter turnout, obstacles to voter registration, inequality, limited socio-economic mobility, and decreasing government investment in public goods.
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Jared Diamond (Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis (Civilizations Rise and Fall, #3))
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The actual “Root Bug” is the fact that earning opportunities (work) aren’t allocated to people (in the mid-term) according to their willingness to spend and invest.
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Tuure Parkkinen (Fixing the Root Bug: The Simple Hack for a Growth-Independent, Fair and Sustainable Market Economy 2.0)
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Core participants tend to focus on transactions rather than investing in the long-term effort to build sustainable, trust-based relationships on the edge.
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John Seely Brown (The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion)
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all design decisions should ensure the repeatability and sustainability of the core interaction that the platform enables.
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Sangeet Paul Choudary (Platform Scale: How an emerging business model helps startups build large empires with minimum investment)
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For people deeply invested in the way things are, any change would mean confronting decisions they’ve made that created or sustained the troubling reality.
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Michael Schur (How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question)
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Energy invested in success theater is energy that could have been used to help build a sustainable business.
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Eric Ries (The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses)
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Companies should assess and mitigate financial risks because doing so safeguards their financial stability, protects investments, and ensures they are better prepared to weather economic uncertainties. By identifying and managing potential risks, businesses can reduce the likelihood of adverse financial events and maintain a strong, sustainable financial position.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
“
Like it or not, war (cold or hot) is the most powerful funding driver in the public arsenal. Lofty goals such as curiosity, discovery, exploration, and science can get you money for modest-size projects, provided they resonate with the political and cultural views of the moment. But big, expensive activities are inherently long term, and require sustained investment that must survive economic fluctuations and changes in the political winds. In all eras, across time and culture, only war, greed, and the celebration of royal or religious power have fulfilled that funding requirement. Today, the power of kings is supplanted by elected governments, and the power of religion is often expressed in nonarchitectural undertakings, leaving war and greed to run the show. Sometimes those two drivers work hand in hand, as in the art of profiteering from the art of war. But war itself remains the ultimate and most compelling rationale.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson (Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier)
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Dude, this is what I hate about rich old white men.” Nyota sags forward. “They never fail to embody the stereotype, and they’re so damn boring. They have their little midlife crises, and do they decide to invest in sustainability projects? Do they publicly advocate for women’s reproductive rights? Nope, they get married to a girl who was barely potty trained by the time they’d embezzled their first million.
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Ali Hazelwood (Problematic Summer Romance)
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The individualist insists that drastic depressions are the result of credit inflation; (not excessive savings, as the Keynesians would have it) which at all times in history has been caused by direct government action or by government influence. As for aggravated unemployment, the individualist insists that it is exclusively the result of government intervention through inflation, wage rigidities, burdensome taxes, and restrictions on trade and production such as price controls and tariffs. The inflation that comes inevitably with government pump-priming soon catches up with the laborer, wipes away any real increase in his wages, discourages private investment, and sets off a new deflationary spiral which can in turn only be counteracted by more coercive and paternalistic government policies. And so it is that the "long run" is very soon a-coming, and the harmful effects of government intervention are far more durable than those that are sustained by encouraging the unhampered free market to work out its own destiny.
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William F. Buckley Jr. (God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom')
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It is far better to ask what your competitors will likely do before you proceed than to simply wait and see what happens. Only strategies that provide a sustainable advantage—or a significant lead in developing future advantages—are worth investing in.
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A.G. Lafley (Playing to win: How strategy really works)
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The bet illuminated another important investment lesson: Though markets are generally rational, they occasionally do crazy things. Seizing the opportunities then offered does not require great intelligence, a degree in economics or a familiarity with Wall Street jargon such as alpha and beta. What investors then need instead is an ability to both disregard mob fears or enthusiasms and to focus on a few simple fundamentals. A willingness to look unimaginative for a sustained period — or even to look foolish — is also essential.
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Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders: 1965-2024)
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The most prevalent form of slavery is being a slave of your own insecurities Or exploiting another's vulnerabilities.
Lust, greed and anger are the pitfalls of the short sighted. Long term business is not possible through lust, greed, anger or guile; it is done based on 'sustainable' relationships; And that is possible when happiness is your goal and each individual you transact with, is a 'strong adult Individual'. We need to invest in ourselves to make us one and in others to help them become the same.
It IS in my Selfish interest to have strong, adult individuals around!
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Amit Chatterjee
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In family conversation, much of the work is done as children learn they are in a place they can come back to, tomorrow and tomorrow. When digital media encourage us to edit ourselves until we have said the “right thing,” we can lose sight of the important thing: Relationships deepen not because we necessarily say anything in particular but because we are invested enough to show up for another conversation. In family conversations, children learn that what can matter most is not the information shared but the relationships sustained. It is hard to sustain those relationships if you are on your phone.
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Sherry Turkle (Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age)
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Why, then, did the Americans invest so much in Vietnam when, in comparison with the whole of their interests at the time, so little was at stake there? Thucydidean resemblances, I think, suggest an answer. Megara might look like a trifle, Pericles told the Athenians in 432 B.C.E., but if they yielded on that small matter “you will instantly have to meet some greater demand.” “Without the United States,” John F. Kennedy warned a Texas audience on the morning of November 22, 1963, “South Viet-Nam would collapse overnight,” and American alliances everywhere were equally vulnerable. There was no choice, Pericles insisted, but to “resist our enemies in any way and in every way.” For, as Kennedy added: “We are still the keystone in the arch of freedom.” 58 However distant they may be in time and space, statements like these perch precariously across scale. For if credibility is always in doubt, then capabilities must become infinite or bluffs must become routine. Neither approach is sustainable: that’s why walls exist in the first place. They buffer what’s important from what’s not. When one’s own imprecisions pull walls down—as Pericles and Kennedy did when they dismissed the possibility of giving anything up—then fears become images, images become projections, and projections as they expand blur into indistinctiveness.
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John Lewis Gaddis (On Grand Strategy)
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We have good news and bad news. The good news is that the dismal vision of human sexuality reflected in the standard narrative is mistaken. Men have not evolved to be deceitful cads, nor have millions of years shaped women into lying, two-timing gold-diggers. But the bad news is that the amoral agencies of evolution have created in us a species with a secret it just can’t keep. Homo sapiens evolved to be shamelessly, undeniably, inescapably sexual. Lusty libertines. Rakes, rogues, and roués. Tomcats and sex kittens. Horndogs. Bitches in heat.1 True, some of us manage to rise above this aspect of our nature (or to sink below it). But these preconscious impulses remain our biological baseline, our reference point, the zero in our own personal number system. Our evolved tendencies are considered “normal” by the body each of us occupies. Willpower fortified with plenty of guilt, fear, shame, and mutilation of body and soul may provide some control over these urges and impulses. Sometimes. Occasionally. Once in a blue moon. But even when controlled, they refuse to be ignored. As German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer pointed out, Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will. (One can choose what to do, but not what to want.) Acknowledged or not, these evolved yearnings persist and clamor for our attention. And there are costs involved in denying one’s evolved sexual nature, costs paid by individuals, couples, families, and societies every day and every night. They are paid in what E. O. Wilson called “the less tangible currency of human happiness that must be spent to circumvent our natural predispositions.”2 Whether or not our society’s investment in sexual repression is a net gain or loss is a question for another time. For now, we’ll just suggest that trying to rise above nature is always a risky, exhausting endeavor, often resulting in spectacular collapse. Any attempt to understand who we are, how we got to be this way, and what to do about it must begin by facing up to our evolved human sexual predispositions. Why do so many forces resist our sustained fulfillment? Why is conventional marriage so much damned work? How has the incessant, grinding campaign of socio-scientific insistence upon the naturalness of sexual monogamy combined with a couple thousand years of fire and brimstone failed to rid even the priests, preachers, politicians, and professors of their prohibited desires? To see ourselves as we are, we must begin by acknowledging that of all Earth’s creatures, none is as urgently, creatively, and constantly sexual as Homo sapiens.
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Christopher Ryan (Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships)
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Let's put our money where our mouth is; let's invest in the future by investing in the education of our youth and the re-education of those who need it and aren't so young anymore. It's not charity; it's an investment in the mental, intellectual, and social infrastructure of our country and our planet. Charity is something you give to corporations when they commit crimes of fraud and plunge the world into economic turmoil.
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Steve Bivans (Be a Hobbit, Save the Earth: the Guide to Sustainable Shire Living)
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On these accounts He came to us; on these accounts, though He was incorporeal, He formed for Himself a body after our fashion, -appearing as a sheep, yet still remaining the Shepherd; being esteemed a servant, yet not renouncing the Sonship; being carried in the womb of Mary, yet arrayed in the nature of His Father; treading upon the earth, yet filling heaven; appearing as an infant, yet not discarding the eternity of His nature; being invested with a body, yet not circumscribing the unmixed simplicity of His Godhead; being esteemed poor, yet not divested of His riches; needing sustenance inasmuch as He was man, yet not ceasing to feed the entire world inasmuch as He is God; putting on the likeness of a servant, yet not impairing the likeness of His Father. He sustained every character belonging to Him in an immutable nature: He was standing before Pilate, and at the same time was sitting with His Father; He was nailed upon the tree, and yet was the Lord of all things.
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Melito of Sardis
“
Impoverished Spain depended on imports not only for manufactured products but even for sufficient food. Spanish agriculture was hampered by poor soil and by the strange institution known as the Mesta. Spanish sheep grew high-quality fleeces—not as good as those of English sheep but better than could be found elsewhere—and Spain had, in fact, replaced England as the source of wool for the Flemish and Italian cloth industries. The Mesta was an organization of sheep owners who had royal privileges to sustain migratory flocks of millions of sheep. The flocks moved all across Spain—north in the summer, south in the winter—grazing as they went, making it impossible to farm along their routes.42 When conflicts arose with landowners, the crown always sided with the Mesta on grounds that nothing was more important to the economy than the wool exports. The government’s protection of the Mesta discouraged investments in agriculture, so Spain needed to import large shipments of grain and other foodstuffs.
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Rodney Stark (How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity)
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raising chickens. It was almost as hard for Eisman to imagine himself raising chickens as it was for people who knew him, but he’d agreed. “The idea of it was so unbelievably unappealing to him,” says his wife, “that he started to work harder.” Eisman traveled all over Europe and the United States searching for people willing to invest with him and found exactly one: an insurance company, which staked him to $50 million. It wasn’t enough to create a sustainable equity fund, but it was a start. Instead of money, Eisman
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Michael Lewis (The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine)
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More often than not, risk takers underestimate the odds they face, and do not invest sufficient effort to find out what the odds are. Because they misread the risks, optimistic entrepreneurs often believe they are prudent, even when they are not. Their confidence in their future success sustains a positive mood that helps them obtain resources from others, raise the morale of their employees, and enhance their prospects of prevailing. When action is needed, optimism, even of the mildly delusional variety, may be a good thing.
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Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow)
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He intuitively understood, as we must today, that leaders need to construct a reinforced base to support all that they are going to do. What are the most important pillars of your thinking about a vital issue? Why are you invested in this particular problem? What do you hope to achieve as you delve into it, and what is your best guess about how you will do this? The answers to these questions are vital not only to your actions going forward, but also to how you sustain your commitment when you run into obstacles and setbacks.
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Nancy F. Koehn (Forged in Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times)
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The need to produce today is today’s reality and represents the demands of capital, but the real mantra of success is sustainability and growth. You may be able to meet your quarterly numbers, but the real question is, are you making the necessary investment that will sustain and increase that success one, five, and ten years from now? Our culture and Wall Street scream for results today. But the principle of balancing the need to meet today’s demands with the need to invest in the capabilities that will produce tomorrow’s success is unavoidable.
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Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change)
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Even if the initial home-base advantage is hard to sustain, a global strategy can contribute to supplementing and upgrading it. A good example is in consumer electronics, where Matsushita, Sanyo, Sharp, and other Japanese firms initially competed on cost in selling simply designed, portable televisions. As they began penetrating foreign markets, they gained economies of scale and further reduced cost by moving down the learning curve. Worldwide volume then helped to support aggressive investments in marketing, new production equipment, and R&D and to achieve proprietary technology.
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Anonymous
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I won’t dwell on other glamorous businesses that dramatically changed our lives but concurrently failed to deliver rewards to U.S. investors: the manufacture of radios and televisions, for example. But I will draw a lesson from these businesses: The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage. The products or services that have wide, sustainable moats around them are the ones that deliver rewards to investors.
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Anonymous
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But the most profound irony is currently on display at the very site of Ford’s most ambitious attempt to realize his pastoralist vision. In the Tapajós valley, three prominent elements of Ford’s vision—lumber, which he hoped to profit from while at the same time finding ways to conserve nature; roads, which he believed would knit small towns together and create sustainable markets; and soybeans, in which he invested millions, hoping that the industrial crop would revive rural life—have become the primary agents of the Amazon’s ruin, not just of its flora and fauna but of many of its communities.
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Greg Grandin (Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City)
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Make school affordable. For example, provide family stipends for keeping girls in school. Help girls overcome health barriers.
For example, offer deworming treatments. Reduce the time and distance to get to school.
For example, provide girls with bikes. Make schools more girl-friendly.
For example, offer child-care programs for
young mothers. Improve school quality.
For example, invest in more and better teachers. Increase community engagement.
For example, train community education activists. Sustain girls’ education during emergencies.
For example, establish schools in refugee camps. Today,
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Paul Hawken (Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming)
“
the planned destruction of Iraq’s agriculture is not widely known. Modern Iraq is part of the ‘fertile crescent’ of Mesopotamia where man first domesticated wheat between 8,000 and 13,000 years ago, and home to several thousand varieties of local wheat. As soon as the US took over Iraq, it became clear its interests were not limited to oil. In 2004, Paul Bremer, the then military head of the Provisional Authority imposed as many as a hundred laws which made short work of Iraq’s sovereignty. The most crippling for the people and the economy of Iraq was Order 81 which deals, among other things, with plant varieties and patents. The goal was brutally clear-cut and sweeping — to wipe out Iraq’s traditional, sustainable agriculture and replace it with oil-chemical-genetically-modified-seed-based industrial agriculture. There was no public or parliamentary debate for the conquered people who never sought war. The conquerors made unilateral changes in Iraq’s 1970 patent law: henceforth, plant forms could be patented — which was never allowed before — while genetically-modified organisms were to be introduced. Farmers were strictly banned from saving their own seeds: this, in a country where, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, 97 per cent of Iraqi farmers planted only their own saved seeds. With a single stroke of the pen, Iraq’s agriculture was axed, while Order 81 facilitated the introduction and domination of imported, high-priced corporate seeds, mainly from the US — which neither reproduce, nor give yields without their prescribed chemical fertiliser and pesticide inputs. It meant that the majority of farmers who had never spent money on seed and inputs that came free from nature, would henceforth have to heavily invest in corporate inputs and equipment — or go into debt to obtain them, or accept lowered profits, or give up farming altogether.
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Anonymous
“
It is too soon to say when or how this era will end or what will succeed it. But what is clear is that a good many of the trends are worrisome. If, for example, a Sino-American cold war materializes, it is quite possible this era may come to be known as the inter–Cold War era, one bookended by the U.S.-Soviet Cold War and one between the United States and China. Such an outcome would result in lower rates of economic growth for both because trade and investment would inevitably be curtailed. It would also reduce the potential for cooperation on regional and global issues. If the liberal world order is sustained and strengthened with the United States resuming a leading role, this could continue to be an era largely characterized by stability, prosperity, and freedom. It is possible, though, that the United States will choose to largely abandon its leading role in the world. In this case, we could in principle see an era of Chinese primacy, but given China’s character, internal constraints, and the nature and scale of the domestic challenges it faces, this is improbable. More likely is that this will turn out to be an era of deterioration, one in which no country or group of countries exercises effective global leadership. In that case, the future would be one of accelerating global disorder.
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Richard N. Haass (The World: A Brief Introduction)
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Entering the office, Evie found Sebastian and Cam on opposite sides of the desk. They both mulled over account ledgers, scratching out some entries with freshly inked pens, and making notations beside the long columns. Both men looked up as she crossed the threshold. Evie met Sebastian’s gaze only briefly; she found it hard to maintain her composure around him after the intimacy of the previous night. He paused in mid-sentence as he stared at her, seeming to forget what he had been saying to Cam. It seemed that neither of them was yet comfortable with feelings that were still too new and powerful. Murmuring good morning to them both, she bid them to remain seated, and she went to stand beside Sebastian’s chair.
“Have you breakfasted yet, my lord?” she asked.
Sebastian shook his head, a smile glinting in his eyes. “Not yet.”
“I’ll go to the kitchen and see what is to be had.”
“Stay a moment,” he urged. “We’re almost finished.”
As the two men discussed a few last points of business, which pertained to a potential investment in a proposed shopping bazaar to be constructed on St. James Street, Sebastian picked up Evie’s hand, which was resting on the desk. Absently he drew the backs of her fingers against the edge of his jaw and his ear while contemplating the written proposal on the desk before him. Although Sebastian was not aware of what the casual familiarity of the gesture revealed, Evie felt her color rise as she met Cam’s gaze over her husband’s downbent head. The boy sent her a glance of mock reproof, like that of a nursemaid who had caught two children playing a kissing game, and he grinned as her blush heightened further.
Oblivious to the byplay, Sebastian handed the proposal to Cam, who sobered instantly. “I don’t like the looks of this,” Sebastian commented. “It’s doubtful there will be enough business in the area to sustain an entire bazaar, especially at those rents. I suspect within a year it will turn into a white elephant.”
“White elephant?” Evie asked.
A new voice came from the doorway, belonging to Lord Westcliff. “A white elephant is a rare animal,” the earl replied, smiling, “that is not only expensive but difficult to maintain. Historically, when an ancient king wished to ruin someone he would gift him with a white elephant.” Stepping into the office, Westcliff bowed over Evie’s hand and spoke to Sebastian. “Your assessment of the proposed bazaar is correct, in my opinion. I was approached with the same investment opportunity not long ago, and I rejected it on the same grounds.”
“No doubt we’ll both be proven wrong,” Sebastian said wryly. “One should never try to predict anything regarding women and their shopping.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Winter (Wallflowers, #3))
“
We depended on the indigenous of this land to teach us farming and harvesting skills that we largely lacked upon arrival. Indeed, had it not been for the wisdom of native North Americans, the first attempt at European colonization would have failed entirely. We were starving in droves, perishing in Jamestown because we had spent so much time looking for gold that we’d forgotten to plant crops that could sustain us through the harsh winters. Four hundred–plus years later that folly has been repeated, at least metaphorically, in an economy so focused on the chasing of wealth for wealth’s sake that it has failed to re-sow its crops, to invest in the future, to actually produce anything of value as it opts, instead, to chase financial fortunes and immediate riches.
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”
Tim Wise (Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority)
“
In comparing Dutch and American families' attitudes toward teen sexuality, for instance, sociologist Amy Schalet found that parents in the Netherlands considered boys to be both capable and desirous of emotional connection; US parents by contrast, dismissed young men as 'driven by hormones' and only interested in sex. Perhaps not surprisingly, although teen boys in both countries overwhelmingly said they wanted to combine lust with love, only the Dutch saw that as normal: American boys each thought his perspective was a personal quirk, unusual among his peers. Yet, a large-scale survey of high school students found our boys were as emotionally invested in their relationships as girls; perhaps having had less practice or support in sustaining intimacy, though, they were less confident in navigating them.
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Peggy Orenstein (Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity)
“
The economist Paul Romer distinguishes between complacent optimism, the feeling of a child waiting for presents on Christmas morning, and conditional optimism, the feeling of a child who wants a treehouse and realizes that if he gets some wood and nails and persuades other kids to help him, he can build one.108 We cannot be complacently optimistic about climate change, but we can be conditionally optimistic. We have some practicable ways to prevent the harms and we have the means to learn more. Problems are solvable. That does not mean that they will solve themselves, but it does mean that we can solve them if we sustain the benevolent forces of modernity that have allowed us to solve problems so far, including societal prosperity, wisely regulated markets, international governance, and investments in science and technology.
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”
Steven Pinker (Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress)
“
There are hundreds of examples of highly functioning commons around the world today. Some have been around for centuries, others have risen in response to economic and environmental crises, and still others have been inspired by the distributive bias of digital networks. From the seed-sharing commons of India to the Potato Park of Peru, indigenous populations have been maintaining their lands and managing biodiversity through a highly articulated set of rules about sharing and preservation. From informal rationing of parking spaces in Boston to Richard Stallman’s General Public License (GPL) for software, new commons are serving to reinstate the value of land and labor, as well as the ability of people to manage them better than markets can. In the 1990s, Elinor Ostrom, the American political scientist most responsible for reviving serious thought about commoning, studied what specifically makes a commons successful. She concluded that a commons must have an evolving set of rules about access and usage and that it must have a way of punishing transgressions. It must also respect the particular character of the resource being managed and the people who have worked with that resource the longest. Managing a fixed supply of minerals is different from managing a replenishing supply of timber. Finally, size and place matter. It’s easier for a town to manage its water supply than for the planet to establish water-sharing rules.78 In short, a commons must be bound by people, place, and rules. Contrary to prevailing wisdom, it’s not an anything-goes race to the bottom. It is simply a recognition of boundaries and limits. It’s pooled, multifaceted investment in pursuit of sustainable production. It is also an affront to the limitless expansion sought by pure capital. If anything, the notion of a commons’ becoming “enclosed” by privatization is a misnomer: privatizing a commons breaks the boundaries that protected its land and labor from pure market forces. For instance, the open-source seed-sharing networks of India promote biodiversity and fertilizer-free practices among farmers who can’t afford Western pesticides.79 They have sustained themselves over many generations by developing and adhering to a complex set of rules about how seed species are preserved, as well as how to mix crops on soil to recycle its nutrients over centuries of growing. Today, they are in battle with corporations claiming patents on these heirloom seeds and indigenous plants. So it’s not the seed commons that have been enclosed by the market at all; rather, the many-generations-old boundaries have been penetrated and dissolved by disingenuously argued free-market principles.
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”
Douglas Rushkoff (Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity)
“
On the face of it, most people do not think of Jesus as a depressive realist. Yet the Biblical Jesus was clearly anything but a facilely happy consumerist, bureautype or bovine citizen. Rather, he espoused an ascetic lifestyle, nomadic, without possessions, possibly without sex, without career anxieties (‘consider the lilies’) and at best paying lip service to civic authorities and traditional religious institutions. Along with Diogenes, many anarchists, and latter day hip-pies, Jesus has been regarded as a model of the be-here-now philosophy, and hardly a champion of a work ethic and investment portfolio agenda. Jesus and others did not expect to find fulfilment in this world (meaning this civilisation) but looked forward to another world, or another kind of existence. Since that fantasised world has never materialised, we can only wonder about the likeness between early Christian communities and theoretical DR communities. There are certainly some overlaps but one distinctive dissimilarity: the DR has no illusory better world to look forward to, whereas the Christian had (and many Christians still have) illusions of rapture and heaven to look forward to. The key problematic here, however, for Jesus, the early Christians, anarchists, beats, hippies and DRs hoping for a DR-friendly society, is that intentional communities require some sense of overcoming adversity, having purpose, a means of functioning and maintaining morale in the medium to long-term. It is always one thing to gain identity from opposing society at large, and quite another to sustain ongoing commitment.
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”
Colin Feltham (Depressive Realism: Interdisciplinary perspectives (Explorations in Mental Health))
“
Westerners, not just Lincoln Steffens. It took in the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. It even took in the Soviet Union’s own leaders, such as Nikita Khrushchev, who famously boasted in a speech to Western diplomats in 1956 that “we will bury you [the West].” As late as 1977, a leading academic textbook by an English economist argued that Soviet-style economies were superior to capitalist ones in terms of economic growth, providing full employment and price stability and even in producing people with altruistic motivation. Poor old Western capitalism did better only at providing political freedom. Indeed, the most widely used university textbook in economics, written by Nobel Prize–winner Paul Samuelson, repeatedly predicted the coming economic dominance of the Soviet Union. In the 1961 edition, Samuelson predicted that Soviet national income would overtake that of the United States possibly by 1984, but probably by 1997. In the 1980 edition there was little change in the analysis, though the two dates were delayed to 2002 and 2012. Though the policies of Stalin and subsequent Soviet leaders could produce rapid economic growth, they could not do so in a sustained way. By the 1970s, economic growth had all but stopped. The most important lesson is that extractive institutions cannot generate sustained technological change for two reasons: the lack of economic incentives and resistance by the elites. In addition, once all the very inefficiently used resources had been reallocated to industry, there were few economic gains to be had by fiat. Then the Soviet system hit a roadblock, with lack of innovation and poor economic incentives preventing any further progress. The only area in which the Soviets did manage to sustain some innovation was through enormous efforts in military and aerospace technology. As a result they managed to put the first dog, Leika, and the first man, Yuri Gagarin, in space. They also left the world the AK-47 as one of their legacies. Gosplan was the supposedly all-powerful planning agency in charge of the central planning of the Soviet economy. One of the benefits of the sequence of five-year plans written and administered by Gosplan was supposed to have been the long time horizon necessary for rational investment and innovation. In reality, what got implemented in Soviet industry had little to do with the five-year plans, which were frequently revised and rewritten or simply ignored. The development of industry took place on the basis of commands by Stalin and the Politburo, who changed their minds frequently and often completely revised their previous decisions. All plans were labeled “draft” or “preliminary.” Only one copy of a plan labeled “final”—that for light industry in 1939—has ever come to light. Stalin himself said in 1937 that “only bureaucrats can think that planning work ends with the creation of the plan. The creation of the plan is just the beginning. The real direction of the plan develops only after the putting together of the plan.” Stalin wanted to maximize his discretion to reward people or groups who were politically loyal, and punish those who were not. As for Gosplan, its main role was to provide Stalin with information so he could better monitor his friends and enemies. It actually tried to avoid making decisions. If you made a decision that turned
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”
Daron Acemoğlu (Why Nations Fail: FROM THE WINNERS OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty)
“
This bio-power was without question an indispensable element in the development of capitalism; the latter would not have been possible without the controlled insertion of bodies into the machinery of production and the adjustment of the phenomena of population to economic processes. But this was not all it required; it also needed the growth of both these factors, their reinforcement as well as their availability and docility; it had to have methods of power capable of optimizing forces, aptitudes, and life in general without at the same time making them more difficult to govern. If the development of the great instruments of the state, as institutions of power, ensured the maintenance of production relations, the rudiments of anatomo- and bio-politics, created in the eighteenth century as techniques of power present at every level of the social body and utilized by very diverse institutions (the family and the army, schools and the police, individual medicine and the administration of collective bodies), operated in the sphere of economic processes, their development, and the forces working to sustain them. They also acted as factors of segregation and social hierarchization, exerting their influence on the respective forces of both these movements, guaranteeing relations of domination and effects of hegemony. The adjustment of the accumulation of men to that of capital, the joining of the growth of human groups to the expansion of productive forces and the differential allocation of profit, were made possible in part by the exercise of bio-power in its many forms and modes of application. The investment of the body, its valorization, and the distributive management of its forces were at the time indispensable.
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Michel Foucault (The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction)
“
Why do families blame themselves?
If so many of the family theories have been discredited why spend so much time on the issue here? Family theories in mental illness continue to exercise a remarkably powerful hold over us despite the evidence. And not just in schizophrenia but in depression, anorexia nervosa, personality disorder, drug and alcohol abuse, etc. Parents seem to have an endless capacity to blame themselves for what happens to their children (and perhaps children to blame their parents). This is probably because we need to believe it. Just as we need to believe in free will and our influence on the outside world, family members need to believe that they influence each other. If we didn’t why would we bother? The evolutionary psychologists would say that parents need to believe it to invest years and years bringing up their children. We’re biologically programmed to look after our children so we need some belief system to support it (just as they might say we’re biologically programmed to mate and need to believe in love to support it). It is proposed that such a belief is a mechanism for sustaining our attention to our biological task.
The downside is, of course, guilt and blame. If we believe we have an influence we feel we have failed if things do not work out well. It is inescapable. Even in expressed emotion work where therapists insist emphatically that no one is to blame and that the aim is solely to find more effective coping strategies, families do feel blamed. ‘If only we weren’t so over-involved he would not have so many relapses.’ ‘Other families must have dealt with it better otherwise how would the therapist know what to advise?’ For some families feeling responsible, despite the guilt, is preferable. It implies the logical consequence that there must be something they can do to influence the outcome. Cultures which value resignation are less likely to blame themselves (high expressed emotion is less common in India than in Europe).
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Tom Burns (Psychiatry: A Very Short Introduction)
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It is not only in childhood that people of high potential can be encouraged or held back and their promise subverted or sustained. The year before I went to Amherst, a group of women had declined to stand for tenure. One of them simply said that after six years she was used up, too weary and too eroded by constant belittlement to accept tenure if it were offered to her. Women were worn down or burnt out. During the three years I spent as dean of the faculty, as I watched some young faculty members flourish and others falter, I gradually realized that the principal instrument of sexism was not the refusal to appoint women or even the refusal to promote (though both occurred, for minorities as well as women), but the habit of hiring women and then dealing with them in such a way that when the time came for promotion it would be reasonable to deny it. It was not hard to show that a particular individual who was a star in graduate school had somehow belied her promise, had proved unable to achieve up to her potential. This subversion was accomplished by taking advantage of two kinds of vulnerability that women raised in our society tend to have. The first is the quality of self-sacrifice, a learned willingness to set their own interests aside and be used and even used up by the community. Many women at Amherst ended up investing vast amounts of time in needed public-service activities, committee work, and teaching nondepartmental courses. Since these activities were not weighed significantly in promotion decisions, they were self-destructive. The second kind of vulnerability trained into women is a readiness to believe messages of disdain and derogation. Even women who arrived at Amherst full of confidence gradually became vulnerable to distorted visions of themselves, no longer secure that their sense of who they were matched the perceptions of others. When a new president, appointed in 1983, told me before coming and without previous discussion with me that he had heard I was “consistently confrontational,” that I had made Amherst “a tense, unhappy place,” and that he would want to select a new dean, I should have reacted to his picture of me as bizarre, and indeed confronted its inaccuracy, but instead I was shattered. It took me a year to understand that he was simply accepting the semantics of senior men who expected a female dean to be easily disparaged and bullied, like so many of the young women they had managed to dislodge. It took me a year to recover a sense of myself as worth defending and to learn to be angry both for myself and for the college as I watched a tranquil campus turned into one that was truly tense and unhappy.
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Mary Catherine Bateson (Composing a Life)
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Collateral Capacity or Net Worth?
If young Bill Gates had knocked on your door asking you to invest $10,000 in his new company, Microsoft, could you get your hands on the money? Collateral capacity is access to capital. Your net worth is irrelevant if you can’t access any of the money. Collateral capacity is my favorite wealth concept. It’s almost like having a Golden Goose! Collateral can help a borrower secure loans. It gives the lender the assurance that if the borrower defaults on the loan, the lender can repossess the collateral. For example, car loans are secured by cars, and mortgages are secured by homes. Your collateral capacity helps you to avoid or minimize unnecessary wealth transfers where possible, and accumulate an increasing pool of capital providing accessibility, control and uninterrupted compounding. It is the amount of money that you can access through collateralizing a loan against your money, allowing your money to continue earning interest and working for you. It’s very important to understand that accessibility, control and uninterrupted compounding are the key components of collateral capacity. It’s one thing to look good on paper, but when times get tough, assets that you can’t touch or can’t convert easily to cash, will do you little good.
Three things affect your collateral capacity:
① The first is contributions into savings and investment accounts that you can access. It would be wise to keep feeding your Golden Goose. Often the lure of higher return potential also brings with it lack of liquidity. Make sure you maintain a good balance between long-term accounts and accounts that provide immediate liquidity and access. ② Second is the growth on the money from interest earned on the money you have in your account. Some assets earn compound interest and grow every year. Others either appreciate or depreciate. Some accounts could be worth a great deal but you have to sell or close them to access the money. That would be like killing your Golden Goose. Having access to money to make it through downtimes is an important factor in sustaining long-term growth. ③ Third is the reduction of any liens you may have against these accounts. As you pay off liens against your collateral positions, your collateral capacity will increase allowing you to access more capital in the future. The goose never quit laying golden eggs – uninterrupted compounding.
Years ago, shortly after starting my first business, I laughed at a banker that told me I needed at least $25,000 in my business account in order to borrow $10,000. My business owner friends thought that was ridiculously funny too. We didn’t understand collateral capacity and quite a few other things about money.
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Annette Wise
“
Punishment is not care, and poverty is not a crime. We need to create safe, supportive pathways for reentry into the community for all people and especially young people who are left out and act out. Interventions like decriminalizing youthful indiscretions for juvenile offenders and providing foster children and their families with targeted services and support would require significant investment and deliberate collaboration at the community, state, and federal levels, as well as a concerted commitment to dismantling our carceral state. These interventions happen automatically and privately for young offenders who are not poor, whose families can access treatment and hire help, and who have the privilege of living and making mistakes in neighborhoods that are not over-policed. We need to provide, not punish, and to foster belonging and self-sufficiency for our neighbors’ kids. More, funded YMCAs and community centers and summer jobs, for example, would help do this. These kinds of interventions would benefit all the Carloses, Wesleys, Haydens, Franks, and Leons, and would benefit our collective well-being. Only if we consider ourselves bound together can we reimagine our obligation to each other as community. When we consider ourselves bound together in community, the radically civil act of redistributing resources from tables with more to tables with less is not charity, it is responsibility; it is the beginning of reparation. Here is where I tell you that we can change this story, now. If we seek to repair systemic inequalities, we cannot do it with hope and prayers; we have to build beyond the systems and begin not with rehabilitation but prevention. We must reimagine our communities, redistribute our wealth, and give our neighbors access to what they need to live healthy, sustainable lives, too. This means more generous social benefits. This means access to affordable housing, well-resourced public schools, affordable healthcare, jobs, and a higher minimum wage, and, of course, plenty of good food. People ask me what educational policy reform I would suggest investing time and money in, if I had to pick only one. I am tempted to talk about curriculum and literacy, or teacher preparation and salary, to challenge whether police belong in schools, to push back on standardized testing, or maybe debate vocational education and reiterate that educational policy is housing policy and that we cannot consider one without the other. Instead, as a place to start, I say free breakfast and lunch. A singular reform that would benefit all students is the provision of good, free food at school. (Data show that this practice yields positive results; but do we need data to know this?) Imagine what would happen if, across our communities, people had enough to feel fed.
”
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Liz Hauck (Home Made: A Story of Grief, Groceries, Showing Up--and What We Make When We Make Dinner)
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Posting consistently is one of the most effective ways to build free TikTok followers & fans. Develop a content calendar to post daily or several times a week, focusing on quality over quantity. Use trending and niche-specific hashtags with long-tail phrases such as #FreeTikTokFollowersAndFans #OrganicTikTokGrowthTips. Videos that provide valuable information, entertain, or tell a story tend to generate more engagement, which leads to organic growth in free TikTok followers & fans.
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(10K-LIKES) Free TikTok Followers Ultimate Guide [Boost Views & Fans)
“
Growth was so rapid that it took in generations of Westerners, not just Lincoln Steffens. It took in the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. It even took in the Soviet Union’s own leaders, such as Nikita Khrushchev, who famously boasted in a speech to Western diplomats in 1956 that “we will bury you [the West].” As late as 1977, a leading academic textbook by an English economist argued that Soviet-style economies were superior to capitalist ones in terms of economic growth, providing full employment and price stability and even in producing people with altruistic motivation. Poor old Western capitalism did better only at providing political freedom. Indeed, the most widely used university textbook in economics, written by Nobel Prize–winner Paul Samuelson, repeatedly predicted the coming economic dominance of the Soviet Union. In the 1961 edition, Samuelson predicted that Soviet national income would overtake that of the United States possibly by 1984, but probably by 1997. In the 1980 edition there was little change in the analysis, though the two dates were delayed to 2002 and 2012. Though the policies of Stalin and subsequent Soviet leaders could produce rapid economic growth, they could not do so in a sustained way. By the 1970s, economic growth had all but stopped. The most important lesson is that extractive institutions cannot generate sustained technological change for two reasons: the lack of economic incentives and resistance by the elites. In addition, once all the very inefficiently used resources had been reallocated to industry, there were few economic gains to be had by fiat. Then the Soviet system hit a roadblock, with lack of innovation and poor economic incentives preventing any further progress. The only area in which the Soviets did manage to sustain some innovation was through enormous efforts in military and aerospace technology. As a result they managed to put the first dog, Leika, and the first man, Yuri Gagarin, in space. They also left the world the AK-47 as one of their legacies. Gosplan was the supposedly all-powerful planning agency in charge of the central planning of the Soviet economy. One of the benefits of the sequence of five-year plans written and administered by Gosplan was supposed to have been the long time horizon necessary for rational investment and innovation. In reality, what got implemented in Soviet industry had little to do with the five-year plans, which were frequently revised and rewritten or simply ignored. The development of industry took place on the basis of commands by Stalin and the Politburo, who changed their minds frequently and often completely revised their previous decisions. All plans were labeled “draft” or “preliminary.” Only one copy of a plan labeled “final”—that for light industry in 1939—has ever come to light. Stalin himself said in 1937 that “only bureaucrats can think that planning work ends with the creation of the plan. The creation of the plan is just the beginning. The real direction of the plan develops only after the putting together of the plan.” Stalin wanted to maximize his discretion to reward people or groups who were politically loyal, and punish those who were not. As for Gosplan, its main role was to provide Stalin with information so he could better monitor his friends and enemies. It actually tried to avoid making decisions. If you made a decision that turned out badly, you might get shot. Better to avoid all responsibility. An example of what could happen
”
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Daron Acemoğlu (Why Nations Fail: FROM THE WINNERS OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty)
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Companies whose investment processes demand quantification of market sizes and financial returns before they can enter a market get paralyzed or make serious mistakes when faced with disruptive technologies. They demand market data when none exists and make judgments based upon financial projections when neither revenues or costs can, in fact, be known. Using planning and marketing techniques that were developed to manage sustaining technologies in the very different context of disruptive ones is an exercise in flapping wings.
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Clayton M. Christensen (The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Management of Innovation and Change))
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Can’t beat them? Drown them in cash. Almost none of the companies spending so profligately was anywhere near profitable, and the discounts made it difficult for anyone to figure out the natural demand for their product. The deals also made it hard for competitors to keep up. Hodari and other WeWork rivals said they lost only a small chunk of their tenants to WeWork’s marketing blitz, but if the campaign continued, none of them would have the cash reserves to survive what amounted to predatory pricing. Prior to SoftBank’s arrival, back in the era of Managing the Nickel, WeWork executives had been talking about finding a more balanced growth trajectory. T. Rowe Price, which invested in WeWork in 2014, had pushed for a more sustainable strategy and was so skeptical of the SoftBank-funded bonanza that they sold as much as they could when SoftBank agreed to buy stock from existing shareholders.
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Reeves Wiedeman (Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork)
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Empowered Liveability
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As a physics major, before getting her hands dirty in New York, she had assumed that money is printed by a nation’s central bank, from where it is distributed to commercial banks. But while this is indeed how cash is created, cash accounts for only 3 per cent of all money. What of the remaining 97 per cent? Surprise and then foreboding were the reactions of every student to whom she had explained how the missing 97 per cent was created – and by whom: not by central banks but by commercial and investment bankers. At this point, her students would ask, ‘Without access to state-sanctioned printing presses, how do private bankers create money?’ ‘Simple,’ she would reply. ‘Every time a banker approves a loan of, say, one million dollars for Jack, a typical business customer, the banker just types 1,000,000 on Jack’s bank statement. However incredible it may seem, that’s all it takes. Bankers create money by granting loans by typing in some numbers!’ The crucial thing, she would explain, is that these numbers are typed into a shared database – or ledger – to which only the bankers have access. When their customers transfer this ‘money’ between them – when Jack transfers numbers from his account to the account of a supplier, say Jill, or of a builder, say Bob, or of a worker, say Kate, and when in turn, Jill, Bob and Kate transfer their numbers on, in the same way, to others to whom they owe money – these numbers simply migrate from one cell in the database to another. For this system to be sustainable, and not merely a pyramid scheme, there is a single condition: that, somewhere down the line, the one million dollars which some banker typed into existence on Jack’s behalf results in new goods and services whose total market value exceeds one million dollars. It is from this surplus that the banker takes his interest and Jack his profit. This is what Iris was referring to as a fool’s wager when she said that bankers plundered value from the future, or when Costa had once claimed that capitalism, like science fiction, trades in future assets using fictitious currency. It is in their nature that the wealthier bankers become by creating money, the more money they tend to create. The danger of such a system, of course, is that the banks end up typing into existence sums of money vastly larger than the market value of the goods and services created as a result of Jack, Jill, Bob and Kate’s endeavours. At the point when the bankers have collectively created money sums greater than the resulting values, the present can no longer repay the future for the money it borrowed from it. The moment Jack, Jill, Bob and Kate get a whiff of this, they may demand their bank balances in cash, sensing that the total value on the bankers’ database is lower than the actual value of their customers’ assets. ‘At that point, a bank run sets in,’ Eva would tell her students, ‘and that’s when the system comes crashing down.
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Yanis Varoufakis (Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present)
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The decision process in large public or private organizations is often driven by strategic goals or value of investments to its stakeholders while making the organization stronger and sustainable.
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Shyam Varan Nath (Industrial Digital Transformation: Accelerate digital transformation with business optimization, AI, and Industry 4.0)
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Information is an advantage. Many people think they have to have unique information that no one else can get, but often it is simply that you may know what the information means while others do not. The information may also be readily accessible, but others did not bother to ask and you did. Channel checks are also driven by the specific expectations and concerns stated in the investment thesis. This all takes time and effort, but is the best path to a repeatable and sustainable outperformance.
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Evan L. Jones (Active Investing in the Age of Disruption)
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there will be a significant reallocation of capital.” BlackRock, he said, will “place sustainability at the center of our investment approach” and will require companies to “disclose climate-related risks.” When BlackRock—$7.5 trillion under management—speaks, companies listen. One example of the “reallocation of capital” is the growth in “green bonds.” These provide financing for infrastructure related to renewables and infrastructure. From $50 billion issued in 2015, the total reached $257 billion in 2019.
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Daniel Yergin (The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations)
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Pursuing a strategy in which it has explicitly told investors that it will sacrifice some margin to sustain strong growth, it doubles down on investments made to create a compelling result
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Rita Gunther McGrath (The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business)
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Our relationship was sustained by a deliberate process of mutual orientalization: we exaggerated differences, saw each other through a veil of appealing clichés and outdated cultural paradigms. (...) Milosh reflexively, unthinkingly did what I find hardest: he accepted reality with ease and grace. He committed to and invested in his real life without fantasizing about the one he ought to be living.
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Bea Setton (Berlin)
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Your Trusted Source for High-Quality GC Sheets in Dindigul
When it comes to sourcing top-notch GC sheets in Dindigul, one name stands out prominently - Shree Sivabalaaji Steels. Renowned for its commitment to quality and excellence, this company has established itself as a reliable supplier of galvanized corrugated (GC) sheets, catering to various industries and construction needs.
At Shree Sivabalaaji Steels, quality is the cornerstone of their operations. They understand the significance of using superior-grade materials for construction and industrial purposes. GC sheets offered by the company are manufactured using advanced technology, ensuring durability, strength, and resistance to environmental factors. This ensures that the sheets maintain their integrity over time, even in harsh conditions.
Variety is another feather in Shree Sivabalaaji Steels' cap. The company provides a wide range of GC sheet options to meet the diverse needs of its customers. Whether you require sheets of different thicknesses, sizes, or coatings, they have it all. This extensive selection empowers customers to choose the perfect GC sheets that align with their project requirements.
One of the factors that set Shree Sivabalaaji Steels apart is their unwavering commitment to customer satisfaction. Their team of experienced professionals is always ready to assist clients in selecting the right type of GC sheets based on their specific needs. Whether it's for roofing, wall cladding, or any other application, customers can rely on their expertise to make informed decisions.
Time efficiency and punctuality are the driving forces behind Shree Sivabalaaji Steels' operations. They understand that in the construction industry, timely delivery is of the essence. The company has implemented streamlined processes to ensure that customers receive their GC sheet orders on schedule, minimizing project delays and interruptions.
Environmental consciousness is a key aspect of Shree Sivabalaaji Steels' philosophy. They recognize their responsibility towards sustainable practices and offer GC sheets that are manufactured using eco-friendly processes. This not only reflects their commitment to the environment but also resonates with customers who prioritize green building materials.
Competitive pricing is yet another advantage that customers enjoy when partnering with Shree Sivabalaaji Steels. Despite offering high-quality GC sheets, the company maintains a pricing strategy that remains accessible and competitive. This affordability, coupled with the quality of their products, makes them a preferred choice among contractors, builders, and industries.
In conclusion, for those seeking top-grade GC sheets in Dindigul, Shree Sivabalaaji Steels emerges as a reliable and customer-centric option. With their focus on quality, variety, expertise, punctuality, sustainability, and affordability, they have rightfully earned their reputation as a go-to supplier for GC sheets in the region. When you choose Shree Sivabalaaji Steels, you're not just purchasing construction materials; you're investing in a partnership that prioritizes your project's success.
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shree sivabalaaji steels
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Investing in the overall growth and well-being of the employees is the most sustainable investment for any company.
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Enamul Haque
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Balancing the needs of human societies with the preservation of freshwater ecosystems requires a paradigm shift towards more sustainable water use. This involves reevaluating the environmental impact of large-scale water extraction projects, promoting water conservation practices, and investing in alternative water sources to alleviate pressure on natural habitats.
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Shivanshu K. Srivastava
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Have you ever read management interviews that claim they aren’t innovative, don’t have the best business leaders, aren’t “leveraging” technology, aren’t customer focused, don’t treat their employees well, don’t listen to shareholders, make bad capital allocations, and ignore the value of making “sustainable” investments? I haven’t.
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Pulak Prasad (What I Learned About Investing from Darwin)
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When you pour more into the river of desires than your reservoir of dedication can sustain, you risk flooding the fields of your potential.
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Linsey Mills (Currency of Conversations: The Talk You've Been Waiting For About Money)
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At the personal level, we need to invest in our own health and well-being, as well as in our abilities, if we are to contribute competently to the cause. More than that, we also need to continually remind ourselves of the importance of suffering, in healthy and sustainable ways, as our minds otherwise tend to creep back into the homeostatic equilibrium they evolved to be caught up in relatively petty thoughts and pursuits.
We might here find inspiration in ancient traditions, such as Buddhism, in which practices aimed to remind us of the reality and importance of suffering have been cultivated over millennia. Such practices include "loving-kindness meditation" and "compassion meditation", in which one wishes others happiness and relief from suffering. Research suggests that these meditation practices not only increase compassionate responses to suffering, but that they also help to increase life satisfaction and reduce depressive symptoms for the practitioner, as well as to foster better coping mechanisms and increased positive affect in the face of suffering.
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Magnus Vinding (Suffering-Focused Ethics: Defense and Implications)
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For anyone looking to successfully learn how to invest in shares, they must also include a plan for creating and sustaining long-term profitability. This is a crucial stage, which is overlooked by many, and is how those who are profitable investors get the job done. We educate our clients, so they can enjoy long terms success in markets, enabling them to truly build wealth, based on a consistent process, that has comprehensive professional risk management, allowing our clients the opportunity to enjoy peace of mind and profitability.
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auinvestmenteducation
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A good deal of theorizing about the importance of private property rights concerns what is called the tragedy of the commons. Grazing fields in traditional English villages were collectively owned by the village’s inhabitants; since no one could be excluded from access to these fields, whose resources were depletable, they were overused and made worthless. The solution to the risk of depletion was to turn the commons into private property, whose owners would then have a strong incentive to invest in its upkeep and exploit its resources on a long-term, sustainable basis. In an influential article, Garrett Hardin argued that the tragedy of the commons exists with respect to many global resources, such as clean air, fisheries, and the like, and that in the absence of private ownership or strong regulation they would be overexploited and made useless.3 In
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Francis Fukuyama (The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution)
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To play at the highest level and to generate greater consistency or better returns from trading and investing, having a mentor or coach is an essential resource for any elite traders. In fact, the same could be said for most areas of life. If you want success, coaching is a proven way to get there more quickly, enjoy greater consistency and most importantly keep you at that level by creating and sustaining lasting change.
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Andrew Baxter
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MAPLE RIDGE CONCRETE AND PAVING
Maple Ridge Concrete & Paving has spent many years refining our concrete and paving services, and we are now delighted to offer our services to residential properties. We have helped many clients in the installation of their brand new paved surfaces such as driveways, patios, and parking lots, as well as professionally restoring varying levels of damaged areas. We have worked with a broad range of customers and strive to provide the best quality services to each and every one of them.
You can rely on us to provide you with stunning, durable, and well-fashioned paved areas- as a reputable paving company serving the Greater Vancouver and Fraser Valley region. We value our clients above all else, so please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or concerns, whether before, during, or after our service. Concrete Driveways A concrete driveway is one of the most cost-effective ways to restore or remodel your driveway. If installed by our concrete contractors, utilizing a range of texture, color, and artificial finish choices, a concrete patio or driveway can add beauty and elegance to your home. Asphalt Driveways Asphalt is the quickest material for paving your driveway since it dries quickly and can often be used the next day with the help of a professional paving contractor.
It's also made up of recycled materials, thus, it's an eco - friendly option. Factors to Consider in a Driveway Choosing whether to use concrete or choosing an asphalt driveway is determined by your preferences and circumstances including: energy efficiency, cost savings, or avoiding costly maintenance. Examine these variables before planning a new driveway to decide which one is most suitable for you. Cost and Long-Term Investment Look at the long-term investment along with the installation price to know which one is suited to park your vehicles. Consider each material's long-term investment as well as the installation cost to determine which one can enhance the curb appeal of your property while also providing the additional space you require. You should work with a reputable concrete installer who knows how to professionally build a driveway if you want it to outlast. Aesthetic and Design A new driveway can improve your home's aesthetic appeal while also complementing your design options. The design of your driveway will be influenced by the color and architectural style of your property. Examine your house from the exterior to see which colors, styles, and features would best complement the overall concept of your living area. If you're planning to sell your property in the future, consider what prospective buyers want in a driveway and incorporate that into the design, and let concrete contractors like us handle all the work for you.
Eco-Friendliness To feel confident in your investment, consider creating an eco-friendly driveway to encourage a healthier environment. Lower energy consumption, use of renewable resources, dedication to enhancing or sustaining the local water quality, and manufacturing that produces fewer carbon emissions are just some characteristics to look for when determining whether a material is environmentally friendly and sustainable. Our concrete and cement contractors at Maple Ridge Concrete and Paving can help you choose eco-friendly materials for your driveways.
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Maple Ridge COncrete and Paving
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The mature man knows you can never build a mighty, beautiful edifice if you always abandon the structure when it’s only one story tall. He knows any worthy endeavor requires sustained effort, long-term investment. Because he’s able to switch from the unsustainable excitement of choosing and conquering, to the durable satisfaction of maintaining and building, that which he starts, he sees through.
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Brett McKay (The 33 Marks of Maturity)
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Everything about the investment process is a series of trade-offs. Investing itself is delaying current consumption for future consumption. You can either try to maximize your chances of getting rich or minimize your chances of missing out on your goals and becoming poor. You have to be willing to accept periodic large losses to earn higher long-term returns. Or you have to save a lot more money to accept lower returns and decrease your chances of short-term losses. You have to be able to sleep at night, but also be able to sustain your living standards throughout retirement. You have to worry about certain spending needs in the near-term but also your spending needs many decades out. Decisions, decisions.
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Ben Carlson (A Wealth of Common Sense: Why Simplicity Trumps Complexity in Any Investment Plan (Bloomberg))
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Dolphin Investor is a person who invests in Sustainable Innovations, believing in collaboration, trust and transparency, to create and empower meritocratic organisations, developing a better world for this and generations to come.
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Miguel Reynolds Brandao (The Sustainable Organisation - a paradigm for a fairer society: Think about sustainability in an age of technological progress and rising inequality)
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We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.
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Influential Individuals (Bill Gates: The Life, Lessons & Rules For Success)
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In general, the successful entrants accepted the capabilities of hydraulics technology in the 1940s and 1950s as a given and cultivated new market applications in which the technology, as it existed, could create value. And as a general rule, the established firms saw the situation the other way around: They took the market’s needs as the given. They consequently sought to adapt or improve the technology in ways that would allow them to market the new technology to their existing customers as a sustaining improvement. The established firms steadfastly focused their innovative investments on their customers. Subsequent chapters will show that this strategic choice is present in most instances of disruptive innovation. Consistently, established firms attempt to push the technology into their established markets, while the successful entrants find a new market that values the technology.
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Clayton M. Christensen (The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail)
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The key to investing is not how much an industry will affect society or even how much it will grow, but rather its ability to make and sustain profits.
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Burton G. Malkiel (A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing)
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Which company is best for using construction Project work?
The Shree Siva Balaaji Steels project is a significant endeavor that encompasses the establishment and operation of a modern and advanced steel manufacturing facility. This project represents a fusion of innovation, cutting-edge technology, and industrial expertise, aimed at delivering high-quality steel products to meet the growing demands of various sectors.
Key Features:
State-of-the-Art Manufacturing Plant: The project involves the construction and operation of a state-of-the-art manufacturing plant equipped with the latest machinery, automation systems, and environmentally friendly processes. This allows for efficient production and reduced environmental impact.
Diverse Product Range: Shree Siva Balaaji Steels aims to offer a diverse range of steel products to cater to different industries such as construction, automotive, infrastructure, and manufacturing. This versatility enables the company to meet the varying needs of clients and partners.
Quality Assurance: A cornerstone of the project is its commitment to delivering high-quality steel products. The facility adheres to strict quality control measures and follows international standards to ensure that the end products are durable, reliable, and meet or exceed industry specifications.
Sustainability Focus: The project places a strong emphasis on sustainability and environmentally conscious practices. Energy-efficient processes, recycling initiatives, and waste reduction strategies are integrated into the manufacturing process to minimize the ecological footprint.
Employment Opportunities: Shree Siva Balaaji Steels contributes to local economies by creating employment opportunities across various skill levels, from skilled labor to technical experts. This helps stimulate economic growth in the region surrounding the manufacturing facility.
Collaboration and Partnerships: The project fosters collaborations with suppliers, distributors, and clients, establishing strong relationships within the steel industry. This network facilitates efficient supply chain management and enables the company to provide tailored solutions to its customers.
Innovation and Research: The project invests in research and development to constantly improve manufacturing processes, product quality, and the development of new steel products. This dedication to innovation positions the company at the forefront of the steel industry.
Community Engagement: Shree Siva Balaaji Steels is committed to engaging with local communities and implementing corporate social responsibility initiatives. These efforts include supporting education, healthcare, and other community-centric projects, fostering goodwill and positive impact.
Vision:
The Shree Siva Balaaji Steels project envisions becoming a leading name in the steel manufacturing sector, renowned for its exceptional quality, technological innovation, and sustainability practices. By adhering to its core values of integrity, excellence, and environmental responsibility, the project strives to contribute positively to the industry and the communities it operates within.
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shree sivabalaaji steels
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To take any return that I might derive from my investment in the life of another, and to immediately invest that return back into that life is to turn an investment from a mere contribution that sustains a life, to an act of selfless humanity that transforms a life.
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Craig D. Lounsbrough
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So much focus in investing is on what people can do right now, this year, maybe next year. “What are the best returns I can earn?” seems like such an intuitive question to ask. But like evolution, that’s not where the magic happens. If you understand the math behind compounding you realize the most important question is not “How can I earn the highest returns?” It’s “What are the best returns I can sustain for the longest period of time?” Little changes compounded for a long time create extraordinary changes. Same as ever.
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Morgan Housel (Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes)
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Gareth Joyce, Proterra’s president and former chief sustainability officer for Delta Airlines, believes that we need a new currency for carbon removal credits. The ideal system would reward investments in future tech solutions and at the same time keep money flowing into the nature-based approaches used today.
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John Doerr (Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now)
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Contact sustained with other people’s paranoias, which are multifarious and lie hidden behind the most tranquil personalities, work on us without our noticing, and if you don’t watch out, you can end up investing your energy in silly arguments with people who devote their lives to irresponsible conjectures.
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Juan Gabriel Vásquez (The Shape of the Ruins)
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Some have called for “degrowth”, a movement that embraces zero or even negative GDP growth that is gaining some traction (at least in the richest countries). As the critique of economic growth moves to centre stage, consumerism’s financial and cultural dominance in public and private life will be overhauled.[42] This is made obvious in consumer-driven degrowth activism in some niche segments – like advocating for less meat or fewer flights. By triggering a period of enforced degrowth, the pandemic has spurred renewed interest in this movement that wants to reverse the pace of economic growth, leading more than 1,100 experts from around the world to release a manifesto in May 2020 putting forward a degrowth strategy to tackle the economic and human crisis caused by COVID-19.[43] Their open letter calls for the adoption of a democratically “planned yet adaptive, sustainable, and equitable downscaling of the economy, leading to a future where we can live better with less”. However, beware of the pursuit of degrowth proving as directionless as the pursuit of growth! The most forward-looking countries and their governments will instead prioritize a more inclusive and sustainable approach to managing and measuring their economies, one that also drives job growth, improvements in living standards and safeguards the planet. The technology to do more with less already exists.[44] There is no fundamental trade-off between economic, social and environmental factors if we adopt this more holistic and longer-term approach to defining progress and incentivizing investment in green and social frontier markets.
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Klaus Schwab (COVID-19: The Great Reset)
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The definition of codependent is pretty serious. Some call it love, but that’s what I call dangerously in love. That is not healthy for the long haul. It can drive you insane if your existence depends on your partner’s existence. That’s why it is imperative that you fix yourself first. Do the work to learn, heal, forgive, and grow. Heal from the pain of your past. Heal from the abuse, abandonment, hurt, and pain. Gain new knowledge, and grow from those past experiences. Hire a therapist and life coach if you need professional insight and assistance in your process of healing. Make the investment in yourself, and get the help you need. It’s very dangerous to depend on another human being for validation.
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Tony A. Gaskins Jr. (Make It Work: 22 Time-Tested, Real-Life Lessons for Sustaining a Healthy, Happy Relationship)
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The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage. The products or services that have wide, sustainable moats around them are the ones that deliver rewards to investors.84 Because Buffett generally invests in low-tech companies like See’s Candies or Coca-Cola, the moat he refers to is often a strong brand or a unique business model. For software products with network effects, a strong moat means something different: how much effort, time, and capital does it take to replicate a product’s features and its network? In the modern era, cloning software features is usually not the hard part—replicating the complete functionality of a Slack or Airbnb might take time, but it is tractable. It’s the difficulty of cloning their network that makes these types of products highly defensible. I’ll use an example to think through the competitive moat. Let’s start from first principles, with an example of Airbnb trying to launch in a new city with no competitors in sight. As the early Airbnb team described, the Cold Start Problem lies in the difficulty of launching a new city to a Tipping Point of over 300 listings with 100 reviews. This requires real effort, because the minimum network size is quite large—contrasted to many other network types like communication apps, which might only require two or three people to get started. But once Airbnb has reached Escape Velocity in a market, the Cold Start Problem creates the defense against new entrants.
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Andrew Chen (The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects)
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What we needed instead was sustained investment in broad capabilities that could counter a range of similar dangers—not specific countermeasures, but general approaches to designing and developing drugs and vaccines that could be employed against an array of adjacent risks.
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Scott Gottlieb (Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic)
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After BlackRock created its Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, the firm quietly secured its status as the main financial administrator of the economic stimulus package during the COVID-19 pandemic, effectively playing the role of the government—and probably made a pretty penny for doing it. In January 2020, pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca announced to much fanfare at (of course) the World Economic Forum in Davos a new investment commitment of $1 billion over ten years into environmental sustainability initiatives to fight climate change.
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Vivek Ramaswamy (Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam)
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After BlackRock created its Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, the firm quietly secured its status as the main financial administrator of the economic stimulus package during the COVID-19 pandemic, effectively playing the role of the government—and probably made a pretty penny for doing it. In January 2020, pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca announced to much fanfare at (of course) the World Economic Forum in Davos a new investment commitment of $1 billion over ten years into environmental sustainability initiatives to fight climate change. Just a couple of months later, it received a $1.2 billion grant—not a loan, but a grant—from US taxpayers to subsidize its development of for-profit vaccines.
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Vivek Ramaswamy (Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam)
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The intellectual property system has the potential to foster innovations related to sustainable development, provided that such intellectual property is supported by adequate investment.
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Kalyan C. Kankanala (Fun IP, Fundamentals of Intellectual Property)
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How can someone say they are passionate about fighting climate change and then do something that reduced the overall investment in the company doing the most?” he asked me a few days after Gates’s visit. “It’s pure hypocrisy. Why make money on the failure of a sustainable energy car company?
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Walter Isaacson (Elon Musk)
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Suraj solar and allied industries,
Wework galaxy, 43,
Residency Road,
Bangalore-560025.
Mobile number : +91 808 850 7979
With the worldwide shift towards feasible energy sources, the sunlight based charger producing industry in Bangalore has seen critical development and advancement lately. As a conspicuous player in this market, SuneaseSolar has arisen as a main producer, offering state of the art advancements and answers for satisfy the rising need for environmentally friendly power arrangements. This article investigates the scene of solar panel manufacturers in Bangalore , digs into the vital elements and advances given by SuneaseSolar, and features the maintainability advantages of sunlight powered chargers. Moreover, it grandstands the upsides of picking SuneaseSolar for sunlight based charger arrangements, presents client tributes, and talks about future patterns and advancements molding the Bangalore sun powered charger market.
1. An Overview of solar panel manufacturers in Bangalore, also known as India's Silicon Valley, is also making a name for itself in the solar energy industry. The city's energetic tech culture and obligation to maintainability have made ready for a developing sun powered charger fabricating industry.
Significance of Sun powered chargers in India's Energy Scene
Sun powered chargers assume an essential part in India's shift towards sustainable power sources. With its plentiful daylight, India can possibly outfit sunlight based power for an enormous scope, decreasing reliance on non-renewable energy sources and moderating environmental change.
2. Outline of SuneaseSolar as a Main Maker
Organization Foundation and History
SuneaseSolar has arisen as an unmistakable player in Bangalore's sun powered charger fabricating scene. With an emphasis on development and quality, the organization has gained notoriety for conveying dependable and productive sunlight based arrangements.
Scope of Sunlight powered charger Items Advertised
SuneaseSolar offers a different scope of sunlight based charger items custom-made to meet different energy needs. From private roof frameworks to enormous scope business establishments, they take special care of a wide range of clients.
3. Key Highlights and Innovations Presented by SuneaseSolar
High level Sunlight powered charger Plans and Materials
SuneaseSolar values utilizing state of the art plans and materials to upgrade the proficiency and solidness of their sun powered chargers. By remaining on the ball, they guarantee clients get first class items that go the distance.
Metrics for Efficiency and Performance When it comes to solar panels, efficiency is absolutely necessary. SuneaseSolar focuses on execution measurements to ensure ideal energy creation and cost reserve funds for their clients. With a sharp spotlight on result and dependability, they endeavor to expand the advantages of sun oriented power.
4. Maintainability and Ecological Effect of Sunlight based chargers
Job of Sun powered Energy in Lessening Carbon Impression
Sun powered energy assumes a urgent part in bringing down fossil fuel byproducts and battling environmental change. By bridling the force of the sun, sun powered chargers offer a perfect and manageable option in contrast to conventional energy sources, adding to a greener future.
Reusing and Removal Practices for Sunlight powered chargers
To address worries about the finish of-life pattern of sunlight powered chargers, SuneaseSolar carries out reusing and removal practices to limit natural effect. By advancing dependable waste administration, they guarantee that sun powered energy stays a genuinely economical answer for the long run.
5. Cost-Effectiveness and Return on Investment of SuneaseSolar's Solar Panel Solutions When it comes to solar panel manufacturers in Bangalore, SuneaseSolar shines brightly like a diamond.
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solar panel manufacturers in Bangalore
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As generative AI becomes a core component of products, processes, and services, use case development shifts from a tactical step to a strategic capability. Organizations must invest in framing use cases rooted in customer needs, ethical principles and pragmatic execution. Only then can generative AI be leveraged for sustainable shared value.
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I. Almeida (Introduction to Large Language Models for Business Leaders: Responsible AI Strategy Beyond Fear and Hype)
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Sustainability financing (SusFin) isn't just an investment; it's a down payment on a planet where profit and purpose are inextricably linked, ensuring that prosperity is shared, not plundered.
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Vikrmn: CA Vikram Verma (Responsible Financing)
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In the toolbox of sustainable financing, models and mechanisms are the instruments that build bridges from investment to impact.
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Vikrmn: CA Vikram Verma (Responsible Financing)
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regularly chose to suffer in the wrestling room because I knew the results. Of course, I suffered most for the things I loved deeply. But, excellence also requires us to invest in things we may not deeply love. It’s just more sustainable when we love what we pursue.
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Tom Ryan (Chosen Suffering: Becoming Elite In Life And Leadership)
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In less than 20 years, the ESG/DEI movement has grown from a corporate social responsibility initiative launched by the UN into a global phenomenon representing more than $30 trillion in assets under management. It basically hands over social and political responsibility to oligarchs, corporatists, and financial assets management firms like Ernst & Young and BlackRock, which invest in the future equality and sustainability goals of what they hope will become a global society, with homogenized virtues, ethics, goals, and initiatives.
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Jennifer Bilek (Transsexual Transgender Transhuman: Dispatches from The 11th Hour)
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Can one unearth above-average fund managers, who can consistently or over time beat the market? Once again, the academic research is gloomy for the investment industry. Using the database first started by Jim Lorie’s Center for Research in Security Prices, S&P Dow Jones Indices publishes a semiannual “persistence scorecard” on how often top-performing fund managers keep excelling. The results are grim reading, with less than 3 percent of top-performing equity funds remaining in the top after five years. In fact, being a top performer is more likely to presage a slump than a sustained run.18 As a result, as Fernando’s defenestration highlighted, the hurdle to retain the faith of investors keeps getting higher, even for fund managers who do well.* In the 1990s, the top six deciles of US equities-focused mutual funds enjoyed investor inflows, according to Morgan Stanley.19 In the first decade of the new millennium, only the top three deciles did so, and in the 2010–20 period, only the top 10 percent of funds have managed to avoid outflows, and gathered assets at a far slower pace than they would have in the past.
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Robin Wigglesworth (Trillions: How a Band of Wall Street Renegades Invented the Index Fund and Changed Finance Forever)
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As protection against financial illusion or insanity, memory is far better than laws...For protecting people from the cupidity of others and their own, history is highly utilitarian. It sustains memory, and memory serves the same purpose as the SEC, and on the record is far more effective
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John Kenneth Galbraith
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a much more interesting question is, can growth be achieved in a way that is not just sustainable, but regenerative?
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Katherine Collins (The Nature of Investing: Resilient Investment Strategies through Biomimicry)
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Entrepreneurs continually demonstrate that faith and imagination are the most important capital goods in a changing economy, and that wealth is a product less of money than of the mind to create, produce, invest, and, in the often-repeated expression of Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter, to creatively destroy (to shut down businesses that are not working).
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Barry Asmus (The Poverty of Nations: A Sustainable Solution)
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As a social business, Grameen Danone follows the basic principle that it must be self-sustaining, and the owners must remain committed to never take any dividend beyond the return of the original amount they invested.
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Muhammad Yunus (Building Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism That Serves Humanity's Most Pressing Needs)
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innovator’s dilemma: Should we invest to protect the least profitable end of our business, so that we can retain our least loyal, most price-sensitive customers? Or should we invest to strengthen our position in the most profitable tiers of our business, with customers who reward us with premium prices for better products?
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Clayton M. Christensen (The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth (Creating and Sustainability Successful Growth))
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GoPro is essentially a lifestyle company more than a camera company. It relies on early adopters to live up to its marketing promises, at least enough to convince the larger market of nonextreme consumers that it’s possible that we too could “be a hero” and “go Pro.” Their exploits make GoPro seem an opportune investment for the once-a-year vacation surfer who wants to ensure that the evidence of their own occasional daring will stand out. It’s a consumer-aggrandizing ad approach perfected by the likes of Mountain Dew and Monster Energy. Only in GoPro’s case, the product actually creates the marketing materials. But for GoPro to sustain its meteoric rise, the company cannot remain relegated to extreme sports for long. To continue to grow the company will have to try to expand the meaning of heroism. The cameras won’t stay on surfboards and mountain bikes for long. The company is already featuring family footage, concerts, and more on YouTube, pushing its lenses into the everyday. The founder has filmed the birth of his baby with a GoPro strapped to his head.
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Anonymous
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During NASA’s first fifty years the agency’s accomplishments were admired globally. Democratic and Republican leaders were generally bipartisan on the future of American spaceflight. The blueprint for the twenty-first century called for sustaining the International Space Station and its fifteen-nation partnership until at least 2020, and for building the space shuttle’s heavy-lift rocket and deep spacecraft successor to enable astronauts to fly beyond the friendly confines of low earth orbit for the first time since Apollo. That deep space ship would fly them again around the moon, then farther out to our solar system’s LaGrange points, and then deeper into space for rendezvous with asteroids and comets, learning how to deal with radiation and other deep space hazards before reaching for Mars or landings on Saturn’s moons. It was the clearest, most reasonable and best cost-achievable goal that NASA had been given since President John F. Kennedy’s historic decision to land astronauts on the lunar surface. Then Barack Obama was elected president. The promising new chief executive gave NASA short shrift, turning the agency’s future over to middle-level bureaucrats with no dreams or vision, bent on slashing existing human spaceflight plans that had their genesis in the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush White Houses. From the starting gate, Mr. Obama’s uncaring space team rolled the dice. First they set up a presidential commission designed to find without question we couldn’t afford the already-established spaceflight plans. Thirty to sixty thousand highly skilled jobs went on the chopping block with space towns coast to coast facing 12 percent unemployment. $9.4 billion already spent on heavy-lift rockets and deep space ships was unashamedly flushed down America’s toilet. The fifty-year dream of new frontiers was replaced with the shortsighted obligations of party politics. As 2011 dawned, NASA, one of America’s great science agencies, was effectively defunct. While Congress has so far prohibited the total cancellation of the space agency’s plans to once again fly astronauts beyond low earth orbit, Obama space operatives have systematically used bureaucratic tricks to slow roll them to a crawl. Congress holds the purse strings and spent most of 2010 saying, “Wait just a minute.” Thousands of highly skilled jobs across the economic spectrum have been lost while hundreds of billions in “stimulus” have been spent. As of this writing only Congress can stop the NASA killing. Florida’s senior U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, a Democrat, a former spaceflyer himself, is leading the fight to keep Obama space advisors from walking away from fifty years of national investment, from throwing the final spade of dirt on the memory of some of America’s most admired heroes. Congressional committees have heard from expert after expert that Mr. Obama’s proposal would be devastating. Placing America’s future in space in the hands of the Russians and inexperienced commercial operatives is foolhardy. Space legend John Glenn, a retired Democratic Senator from Ohio, told president Obama that “Retiring the space shuttles before the country has another space ship is folly. It could leave Americans stranded on the International Space Station with only a Russian spacecraft, if working, to get them off.” And Neil Armstrong testified before the Senate’s Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee that “With regard to President Obama’s 2010 plan, I have yet to find a person in NASA, the Defense Department, the Air Force, the National Academies, industry, or academia that had any knowledge of the plan prior to its announcement. Rumors abound that neither the NASA Administrator nor the President’s Science and Technology Advisor were knowledgeable about the plan. Lack of review normally guarantees that there will be overlooked requirements and unwelcome consequences. How could such a chain of events happen?
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Alan Shepard (Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon)
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The evidence summarized in this matrix may be of some use to venture capital investors, as a general way to frame the riskiness of proposed investments. It suggests that start-ups which propose to commercialize a breakthrough technology that is essentially sustaining in character have a far lower likelihood of success than start-ups whose vision is to use proven technology to disrupt an established industry with something that is simpler, more reliable, and more convenient.
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Clayton M. Christensen (The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail)
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There is, however, another issue pressing its way into the system that brings a new urgency to the inevitable task of reforming our grid. It turns out that transitioning America away from a reliance on fossil fuels and toward more sustainable energy solutions will be possible only with a serious reimagination of our grid. The more we invest in “green” energy, the more fragile our grid becomes. A
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Gretchen Bakke (The Grid: Electrical Infrastructure for a New Era)
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Though the reality of having a boyfriend gave Leona some validity as a woman in the sense it endorsed her ability to sustain a long term romantic relationship; the horrors and distasteful intricacies she had to endure as a result were increasingly painful and in the longer term resulted in diminishing returns with regards to the effort she'd invested and left her devoid of emotional satisfaction.
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Jill Thrussell
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Here is my recommendation for President Trump and the new Congress. Turn immediately to our glorious national institutions, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, for a report to the nation on the key areas for science and technology investments in the coming generation. Ask them to recommend an organizational strategy for a science-based scaling up of national and global R&D efforts. Call on America’s research universities to add their own brainstorming to the work of the national academies. Later in 2017, the president and Congress should then meet in a joint session of Congress to set forth a new technology vision for the nation and an R&D strategy to achieve it.
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Jeffrey D. Sachs (Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, & Sustainable)
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With higher saving and investment rates, both public and private, directed towards productive capital, the United States could overcome secular stagnation.
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Jeffrey D. Sachs (Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, & Sustainable)
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Once you realize that you have identified a passion, invest in yourself. Figure out what you need to know, what kind of experience and expertise you need to develop to do the things that you feel in your heart you will enjoy, and that will sustain you both mentally and economically.” –MARTHA STEWART
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Maci Bookout (I Wasn't Born Bulletproof: Lessons I've Learned (So You Don't Have To))
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investments in technology are also investments in people, and these investments will make our technology process more sustainable
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Nicole Forsgren (Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations)
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Value investing was once the purchase of tangible assets at levels below their market value. Value investing today is buying sustainable competitive advantages at a good price.
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John Kay (The Long and the Short of It - Finance and Investment for Normally Intelligent People Who Are Not in)
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Most Americans and Canadians (& earthlings) can save thousands annually with smarter energy choices. That's a lot of bucket list vacations, while providing far better for your own future and living a richer life today.
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Natalie Pace (The ABCs of Money)
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the United States grew in exactly the same way as Britain - by developing a sequence of successful new products, creating new markets and new industries. As one growth industry matured, essentially as its market became saturated, another growth industry emerged. Simultaneously, increases in production capability, from investment and from more productive management and processes, sustained the growth in spending and generated rising incomes
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Edward A. Hudson (Economic Growth: How it works and how it transformed the world)
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production capability increases through investment and productivity gains, allowing supply to expand to sustain the growing demand and to generate increasing net incomes. The structure of the economy keeps changing as spending patterns change, as industries move through their life cycle and as production effectiveness increases.
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Edward A. Hudson (Economic Growth: How it works and how it transformed the world)
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Enclosure gave an owner control over his land and allowed him to gain the full rewards of managing the land. This increased the scale of farming and also, by changing the incentives associated with farming, encouraged sustainable management, investment and experimentation.
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Edward A. Hudson (Economic Growth: How it works and how it transformed the world)
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Herb met client Rollin King, an entrepreneur who had been running a third-level charter airline doing short-haul routes out of Twin Beaches since 1964. By 1967, King had observed and studied the success of Pacific Southwest Airlines, which was the first large discount airline operating within California. Rollin King met with Herb Kelleher soon after at a bar, where King sketched the triangle diagram of the three-city route on the back of a cocktail napkin. After some thought, Kelleher was on board with a $10,000 investment and to provide legal services.
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Sean Iddings (Intelligent Fanatics: How Great Leaders Build Sustainable Businesses)
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Harbour-Vest’s demonstration of faith was key: faith in the Australian economy, in the thesis that buy-outs would indeed work well in Australia, and in the integrity and quality of the PE managers and the supporting infrastructure of lawyers, accountants, investment banks and lenders, all necessary to a long-term viable and sustainable PE sector.
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Bill Ferris (Inside Private Equity: Thrills, spills and lessons by the author of Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained)
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Our research and extensive interviews with executives and senior practitioners in the digital transformation process revealed that digital leaders think differently about high performance. In successful digital organizations, pushing the performance envelope, rewarding high performance, and learning how to invest in “optimal” mindsets are all critical parts needed to drive and sustain digital changes. “Overall, starting with a feeling of optimism promotes hope and overrides any other sentiments in your work. What would happen if all your employees felt different about coming to work? There would be a different buzz about the building. There would be a different outlook that would help people look forward to what’s next and what’s coming up. This optimism and hope creates an environment that inspires people to seek out their best and find levels of performance that maybe before they never thought were attainable. Starting with this whole new and different chemistry, any workplace is far better suited to achieve its goals and be its best, even in times of difficulty or adversity.” —Pete Carroll, head coach, the Super Bowl Champion Seattle Seahawks
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Michael Gale (The Digital Helix: Transforming Your Organization's DNA to Thrive in the Digital Age)
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Kita ingin ke depan ekonomi global itu more balanced, tidak terlalu banyak mismatch antara supply dengan demand. Tidak terlalu terjadi mismatch dalam international trade and investment dan sebagainya, dan more sustainable.
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Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
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Competition is fierce; survival is at stake. The need to produce today is today’s reality and represents the demands of capital, but the real mantra of success is sustainability and growth. You may be able to meet your quarterly numbers, but the real question is, are you making the necessary investment that will sustain and increase that success one, five, and ten years from now?
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Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change)
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03 If your company has the resources to sustain its own blog with educational, non-promotional content on a regular basis you should invest in authoring a blog.
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Sarah-Jane White (49 Quick Ways to Market your Business for Free)
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At the end of 2012, the yield on nominal bonds was about 2 percent. The only way that bonds could generate a 7.8 percent real return is if the consumer price index fell by nearly 6 percent per year over the next 30 years. Yet a deflation of this magnitude has never been sustained by any country in world history.
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Jeremy J. Siegel (Stocks for the Long Run: The Definitive Guide to Financial Market Returns & Long-Term Investment Strategies)
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Economic growth requires investment in things—more machines, more basic facilities like highways or broadband—and in people, who need more and better education. Knowledge needs to be acquired and extended. Some of that extension is the product of new basic science, and some of it comes from the engineering that turns science into goods and services, and from the endless tweaking and improvement of design that, over time, turned a Model-T Ford into a Toyota Camry, or my clunky personal computer of 1983 into the sleek, almost weightless, and infinitely more powerful laptop on which I am writing this book. Investment in research and development enhances the flow of innovation, but new ideas can come from anywhere; the stock of knowledge is international, not national, and new ideas disperse quickly from the places where they are created. Innovation also needs entrepreneurs and risk-taking managers to find profitable ways of turning science and engineering into new products and services. This will be difficult without the right institutions. Innovators need to be free from the risk of expropriation, functioning law courts are needed to settle disputes and protect patents, and tax rates cannot be too high. When all of these conditions come together—as they have in the United States for a century and a half—we get sustained economic growth and higher living standards.
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Angus Deaton (The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality)
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Life expectancy rose only modestly between the Neolithic era of 8500 to 3500 BC and the Victorian era of 1850 to 1900.13 An American born in the late nineteenth century had an average life expectancy of around forty-five years, with a large share never making it past their first birthdays.14 Then something remarkable happened. In countries on the frontier of economic development, human health began to improve rapidly, education levels shot up, and standards of living began to grow and grow. Within a century, life expectancies had increased by two-thirds, average years of schooling had gone from single to double digits, and the productivity of workers and the pay they took home had doubled and doubled and then doubled again. With the United States leading the way, the rich world crossed a Great Divide—a divide separating centuries of slow growth, poor health, and anemic technical progress from one of hitherto undreamed-of material comfort and seemingly limitless economic potential. For the first time, rich countries experienced economic development that was both broad and deep, reaching all major segments of society and producing not just greater material comfort but also fundamental transformations in the health and life horizons of those it touched. As the French economist Thomas Piketty points out in his magisterial study of inequality, “It was not until the twentieth century that economic growth became a tangible, unmistakable reality for everyone.”15 The mixed economy was at the heart of this success—in the United States no less than in other Western nations. Capitalism played an essential role. But capitalism was not the new entrant on the economic stage. Effective governance was. Public health measures made cities engines of innovation rather than incubators of illness.16 The meteoric expansion of public education increased not only individual opportunity but also the economic potential of entire societies. Investments in science, higher education, and defense spearheaded breakthroughs in medicine, transportation, infrastructure, and technology. Overarching rules and institutions tamed and transformed unstable financial markets and turned boom-bust cycles into more manageable ups and downs. Protections against excessive insecurity and abject destitution encouraged the forward-looking investments and social integration that sustained growth required. At every level of society, the gains in health, education, income, and capacity were breathtaking. The mixed economy was a spectacularly positive-sum bargain: It redistributed power and resources, but as its impacts broadened and diffused, virtually everyone was made massively better off.
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Jacob S. Hacker (American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper)
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Low-end disruption has occurred several times in retailing.16 For example, full-service department stores had a business model that enabled them to turn inventories three times per year. They needed to earn 40 percent gross margins to make money within their cost structure. They therefore earned 40 percent three times each year, for a 120 percent annual return on capital invested in inventory (ROCII). In the 1960s, discount retailers such as Wal-Mart and Kmart attacked the low end of the department stores’ market—nationally branded hard goods such as paint, hardware, kitchen utensils, toys, and sporting goods—that were so familiar in use that they could sell themselves. Customers in this tier of the market were overserved by department stores, in that they did not need well-trained floor sales-people to help them get what they needed. The discounters’ business model enabled them to make money at gross margins of about 23 percent, on average. Their stocking policies and operating processes enabled them to turn inventories more than five times annually, so that they also earned about 120 percent annual ROCII. The discounters did not accept lower levels of profitability—their business model simply earned acceptable profit through a different formula.17
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Clayton M. Christensen (The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth (Creating and Sustainability Successful Growth))
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the innovator’s dilemma: Should we invest to protect the least profitable end of our business, so that we can retain our least loyal, most price-sensitive customers? Or should we invest to strengthen our position in the most profitable tiers of our business, with customers who reward us with premium prices for better products?
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Clayton M. Christensen (The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth (Creating and Sustainability Successful Growth))
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Please accept the fact that “There is NO Free Lunch” i.e. everything has a price and nothing is available for free. If it is free, it cannot be sustained or it may have a hidden mechanism that you do not know anything about.
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Jigar Patel (NRI Investments and Taxation: A Small Guide for Big Gains)
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When the corporation’s investment capital becomes impatient for growth, good money becomes bad money because it triggers a subsequent cascade of inevitable incorrect decisions. Innovators who seek funding for the disruptive innovations that could ultimately fuel the company’s growth with a high probability of success now find that their trial balloons get shot down because they can’t get big enough fast enough. Managers of most disruptive businesses can’t credibly project that the business will become very big very fast, because new-market disruptions need to compete against nonconsumption and must follow an emergent strategy process. Compelling them to project big numbers forces them to declare a strategy that confidently crams the innovation into a large, existing, and obvious market whose size can be statistically substantiated. This means competing against consumption.
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Clayton M. Christensen (The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth (Creating and Sustainability Successful Growth))
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How can someone be considered wealthy if, for example, he is worth only $460,000? After all, he’s not a millionaire. Charles Bobbins is a forty-one-year-old fireman. His wife is a secretary. They have a combined annual income of $55,000. According to our research findings, Mr. Bobbins should have a net worth of approximately $225,500. But he is worth much more than others in his income/age category. Mr. and Mrs. Bobbins have been able to accumulate an above-average amount of net worth. Thus, they apparently know how to live on a fireman’s and secretary’s income and still save and invest a good bit. They likely have a low-consumption lifestyle. And given this lifestyle, Mr. Bobbins could sustain himself and his family for ten years without working. Within their income and age categories, the Bobbinses are wealthy. The
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Thomas J. Stanley (The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy)
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You need to define an opportunity that is disruptive relative to all the established players in the targeted market, or you should not invest in the idea.
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Clayton M. Christensen (The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth)
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We could cite many cases of companies’ similar attempts to create new-growth platforms after the core business had matured. They follow an all-too-similar pattern. When the core business approaches maturity and investors demand new growth, executives develop seemingly sensible strategies to generate it. Although they invest aggressively, their plans fail to create the needed growth fast enough; investors hammer the stock; management is sacked; and Wall Street rewards the new executive team for simply restoring the status quo ante: a profitable but low-growth core business.4
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Clayton M. Christensen (The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth (Creating and Sustainability Successful Growth))
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CEO commitment is the starting point. In India, winning requires a very different business leader—an entrepreneurial general manager rather than a salesperson and, ideally, a senior and trusted insider with credibility and influence. It requires a different organizational structure or model, where India is managed like a geographic profit center, with the ability to make important operating decisions without enormous negotiations and persuasion. It needs a willingness to make long-term investments in developing capabilities on the ground and the willingness to sustain these through the inevitable vicissitudes. Therefore, escaping the midway trap requires the commitment of the entire leadership of the company to pull multiple levers before the whole organization flips to a new high-growth trajectory.
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Ravi Venkatesan (Conquering the Chaos: Win in India, Win Everywhere)
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Traction is what separates a viable business from a really good idea. It’s what shows that your business can grow and sustain itself. It’s a way to show that a dollar invested into your business will always result in three dollars of revenue. It’s the proof that your business model isn’t based on assumptions, but on actual hard data.
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Mike Belsito (Startup Seed Funding for the Rest of Us: How to Raise $1 Million for Your Startup - Even Outside of Silicon Valley)
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When your own success shocks you, you fail to sustain it and it becomes a curse instead of a blessing. Think through issues and make considerations before you encounter the real situation. Companies invest billions in research and development, including models and simulations to increase chances of success – all in an attempt to make success deliberate for a particular project.
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Archibald Marwizi (Making Success Deliberate)
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The success of a business hinges entirely on its ability to generate cash. If a business cannot generate enough cash to grow, or at least sustain its operations, it has to save its behind by borrowing money, selling more stock, or shedding assets—none of which are good for investors.
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Joel Ponzio (F Wall Street: Joe Ponzio's No-Nonsense Approach to Value Investing For the Rest of Us)
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Westerners, not just Lincoln Steffens. It took in the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. It even took in the Soviet Union’s own leaders, such as Nikita Khrushchev, who famously boasted in a speech to Western diplomats in 1956 that “we will bury you [the West].” As late as 1977, a leading academic textbook by an English economist argued that Soviet-style economies were superior to capitalist ones in terms of economic growth, providing full employment and price stability and even in producing people with altruistic motivation. Poor old Western capitalism did better only at providing political freedom. Indeed, the most widely used university textbook in economics, written by Nobel Prize–winner Paul Samuelson, repeatedly predicted the coming economic dominance of the Soviet Union. In the 1961 edition, Samuelson predicted that Soviet national income would overtake that of the United States possibly by 1984, but probably by 1997. In the 1980 edition there was little change in the analysis, though the two dates were delayed to 2002 and 2012. Though the policies of Stalin and subsequent Soviet leaders could produce rapid economic growth, they could not do so in a sustained way. By the 1970s, economic growth had all but stopped. The most important lesson is that extractive institutions cannot generate sustained technological change for two reasons: the lack of economic incentives and resistance by the elites. In addition, once all the very inefficiently used resources had been reallocated to industry, there were few economic gains to be had by fiat. Then the Soviet system hit a roadblock, with lack of innovation and poor economic incentives preventing any further progress. The only area in which the Soviets did manage to sustain some innovation was through enormous efforts in military and aerospace technology. As a result they managed to put the first dog, Leika, and the first man, Yuri Gagarin, in space. They also left the world the AK-47 as one of their legacies. Gosplan was the supposedly all-powerful planning agency in charge of the central planning of the Soviet economy. One of the benefits of the sequence of five-year plans written and administered by Gosplan was supposed to have been the long time horizon necessary for rational investment and innovation. In reality, what got implemented in Soviet industry had little to do with the five-year plans, which were frequently revised and rewritten or simply ignored. The development of industry took place on the basis of commands by Stalin and the Politburo, who changed their minds frequently and often completely revised their previous decisions. All plans were labeled “draft” or “preliminary.” Only one copy of a plan labeled “final”—that for light industry in 1939—has ever come to light. Stalin himself said in 1937 that “only bureaucrats can think that planning work ends with the creation of the plan. The creation of the plan is just the beginning. The real direction of the plan develops only after the putting together of the plan.” Stalin wanted to maximize his discretion to reward people or groups who were politically loyal, and punish those who were not. As for Gosplan, its main role was to provide Stalin with information so he could better monitor his friends and enemies. It actually tried to avoid making decisions. If you made a decision that turned out badly, you might get shot. Better to avoid all responsibility. An example of what could happen
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Daron Acemoğlu (Why Nations Fail: FROM THE WINNERS OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty)
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The rationalization that “too much had been invested to quit” led to decisions to waste even more money. Staw and Ross have developed guidelines for avoiding such situations. The most important one is that people who are responsible for starting some project or company, and who have made public statements saying they are committed to it and it is destined to succeed, should not be involved in deciding its fate. Projects need to be structured so that separate groups make decisions about starting and stopping. This is why most banks use one group to sell loans and a different group to decide whether to pull the plug on troubled loans.
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Robert I. Sutton (Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation)
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The patterns of success and failure we see among firms faced with sustaining and disruptive technology change are a natural or systematic result of good managerial decisions. That is, in fact, why disruptive technologies confront innovators with such a dilemma. Working harder, being smarter, investing more aggressively, and listening more astutely to customers are all solutions to the problems posed by new sustaining technologies. But these paradigms of sound management are useless—even counterproductive, in many instances—when dealing with disruptive technology.
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Clayton M. Christensen (The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Management of Innovation and Change))
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Neither discretion without an investment framework nor an investment framework without discretion is sustainable.
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Anonymous
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Efforts to promote a sustainable use of natural resources are not a waste of money, but rather an investment capable of providing other economic benefits in the medium term. If we look at the larger picture, we can see that more diversified and innovative forms of production which impact less on the environment can prove very profitable.
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Pope Francis
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The need to produce today is today’s reality and represents the demands of capital, but the real mantra of success is sustainability and growth. You may be able to meet your quarterly numbers, but the real question is, are you making the necessary investment that will sustain and increase that success one, five, and ten years from now?
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Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change)
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What learning do we get for our modern-day life from the story of the Trimurti? In our lives too, we keep creating, sustaining, destroying. Take money, for example. We earn, save, spend. Brahma is the one who earns, brings in the money. Vishnu spends and invests it in the market, enabling exchange so that commerce flourishes. Shiva is someone who is not interested in money at all; his is the attitude of non-attachment, vairagya. On the other hand, Brahma’s children are so interested in money that they hoard and fight over it, which is why no one worships Brahma or his children. The one who does business with the world, is involved with it, is Vishnu, so we worship him. When we grow old and wish to get rid of our desires, we can follow Shiva’s example by renouncing money. Each of us has all these qualities, mostly Brahma’s, but we shouldn’t encourage those. We should harness Vishnu’s qualities, so that Lakshmi, money, follows us. Towards the end of our life, we should become like Shiva; renounce the material world and move on.
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Devdutt Pattanaik (Devlok with Devdutt Pattanaik)
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Note how small stocks have had higher returns than larger stocks, but that they also have higher risks. In both the Great Depression and the 1970s bear market, small-stocks sustained higher losses than large stocks. In addition, the small stock advantage is extremely tenuous—it’s less than a percent-and-a-half per year, and there have been periods of more than 30 years when large stocks have bested small stocks. For these reasons, the small-stock advantage is controversial.
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William J. Bernstein (The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio)
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Motivation is the by-product of desire. Desire and motivation can’t be separated. They are always at the same level. True motivation can’t be cranked up any higher than the level of desire. To best understand how desire increases, and motivation along with it, you must learn more about the three levels of motivation. Level Three: Commitment Level Two: Goal Identification Level One: Compliance The lowest level (Level One) is compliance, which is essentially doing something because you were told to do it. There isn’t much motivation or personal desire involved. Character is not built at the compliance level. The next higher level (Level Two) is identification with the goal. Identification gives the individual a feeling of investment in the goal and produces increased desire and motivation. The highest level of motivation (Level Three) is commitment. There is no greater motivation than when someone feels the goal is truly their own. “Because I said so” is all the management ability needed to get somebody to Level One. Simply order the person around as if they can’t think or reason for themselves and have no special ability or investment in getting the job done other than to avoid being fired. To help people reach Level Two, you must clearly and simply communicate the benefits of achieving the goal. Include them in why the job needs to be done and how it’s in their best interest for all to do it well. When there is something to gain, people invest more. Many a company turnaround has started at this level. To reach Level Three, a person needs to understand why they’re uniquely suited for the task. Show that person how his or her strengths (not yours) can be used to help achieve their part of the goal. Not only will they feel that there’s a personal benefit for a job well done, but more important, they’ll bring a part of themselves to the job. Nobody in your organization will be able to sustain a level of motivation higher than you have as the leader. If a person rises above the leader’s level of motivation, they have to leave you and go somewhere else. Therefore, it behooves you to internalize the goals of your organization and build everyone else up to your level of commitment. I’ve heard it described as “organizing energies around a goal.” What a responsibility! What a challenge! What a growth opportunity!
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Danny Cox (Leadership When the Heat's On)
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There is one problem, however, at least for alternative experiments of the American variety (and possibly some European as well), namely that we have no clear litmus test to determine which models are truly steady-state (non-expansionist) and which are business as usual hiding under “green wigs.” This latter trend is known as “greenwashing,” in which the language is hip and the bottom line remains profit. Thomas Friedman and Al Gore are major (and wealthy) players in this category, perpetuating the notion of “green corporations.” Other examples include a 2012 conference on “Sustainable Investing,” sponsored by Deepak Chopra, among others, which had as its slogans “Make Money and Make a Difference” and “Capitalism for a Democratic Society.” All of this is the attempt to have one’s cake and eat it too (or simply eat someone else’s cake); there is no real interest in disconnecting from growth, and it is growth that is the core of the problem. As Professor Magnuson tells us, while traveling around the U.S. to interview varous alternative businesses and experiments, he discovered that many of them were shams—capitalist wolves in green clothing.
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Morris Berman (Neurotic Beauty: An Outsider Looks At Japan)
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The focus of innovations and investments need to shift from slogging innovations like phone and, drone type innovations to solve real problems that are killing the inhabitants of the planet.
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Saurabh Gupta Earth5R
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For most investors, the hardest part is not figuring out the optimal investment policy; it is staying committed to sound investment policy through bull and bear markets and maintaining what Disraeli called “constancy to purpose.” Sustaining a long-term focus at market highs or market lows is notoriously difficult. At either kind of market extreme, emotions are strongest when current market action appears most demanding of change and the apparent “facts” seem most compelling. Being
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Charles D. Ellis (Winning the Loser's Game: Timeless Strategies for Successful Investing)
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WHAT IS IT?
The one-firm firm approach is not simply a loose term to describe a "culture." It refers to a set of concrete management practices consciously chosen to maximize the trust and loyalty that members of the firm feel both to the institution and to each other.
In 1985, the elements of the one-firm firm approach were given as:
•Highly selective recruitment
•A "grow your own" people strategy as opposed to heavy use of laterals, growing only as fast as people could be devel-1 oped and assimilated
•Intensive use of training as a socialization process
•Rejection of a "star system" and related individualistic behavior
•Avoidance of mergers, in order to sustain the collaborative culture
A set of concrete management practices consciously chosen to maximize the trust and loyalty that members of the firm feel both to the institution and to each other.
• Selective choice of services and markets, so as to win through significant investments in focused areas rather than many small initiatives
•Active outplacement and alumni management, so that those who leave remain loyal to the firm
•Compensation based mostly on group performance, not individual performance
•High investments in research and development
•Extensive intra-firm communication, with broad use of consensus-building approaches
The one-firm firm approach is similar in many ways to the U. S. Marine Corps (in which Jack Walker served). Both are designed to achieve the highest levels of internal collaboration and encourage mutual commitment to pursuing ambitious goals.
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David H. Maister (Strategy and the Fat Smoker; Doing What's Obvious But Not Easy)
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While there are certainly variants of the abstract capitalist model, one persistent and typical tendency is to assess the planet as either storehouse (of needed resource inputs, including energy resources) and/or sink (for waste products of all kinds, due in large measure to a continually sought novelty, and the concomitant obsolescence of the old). As a consequence of this orientation, nature, as both inherent worth and utilitarian guarantor of sustainable life, must be subjected to the ruthless calculus of costs and benefits. In such evaluations anything that fails to maximize profits or minimize losses must be discounted, ideally to a value of zero. In combination with an intensifying focus on shorter and shorter time frames for a maximum return on investment, a competition-driven imperative to externalize all costs that do not contribute to the bottom line has produced the by-now exhaustive litany of environmental woes, including the climate catastrophe that now threatens life on the planet as we have known it.
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Noam Chomsky (Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance)
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The twin threats of deforestation and fire prompted the private and public sectors to act. Large firms like Weyerhaeuser began fire prevention programs and invested in sustainable yield research.
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David J Jepsen (Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History)
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The twin threats of deforestation and fire prompted the private and public sectors to act. Large firms like Weyerhaeuser began fire prevention programs and invested in sustainable yield research. The federal government instituted measures to conserve the nation's forests in 1891 with passage of the Forest Reserves Act. Under the leadership of President Grover Cleveland and later President Theodore Roosevelt, the federal government set aside 12.5 million acres in forest reserves in Washington, more than 25% of its total land mass.
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David J Jepsen (Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History)
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Any version of the widely discussed Green New Deal project must include these priorities:
1. Greenhouse gas emissions reductions will at least achieve the targets set in 2018 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, namely a 45 percent reduction in global emissions by 2030 and the attainment of net zero emissions by 2050.
2. Investments to dramatically raise energy efficiency standards and equally dramatically expand the supply of solar, wind, and other clean renewable energy sources will form the leading edge of the transition to a green economy in all regions of the world.
3. The green economy will not expose workers in the fossil fuel industry and other vulnerable groups to the plague of joblessness and the anxieties of economic insecurity.
4. Economic growth must proceed along a sustainable and egalitarian path, such that climate stabilization is unified with the equally important goals of expanding job opportunities and raising mass living standards for working people and the poor throughout the world.
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C.J. Polychroniou (The Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet)
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In our campaign, as in contests around the country, the changing landscape of who is running and who is voting does not change the basics of how to win. The formula for winning is clear: (1) reject the myths of who votes and why, (2) make early and sustained investment in outreach to an expanded voter pool, and (3) recruit and support candidates who demonstrate authentic and consistent beliefs. Together, this approach will improve performance, build on the dramatic support of 2018, and yield electoral successes for 2020 and beyond.
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Stacey Abrams (Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America)
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Mazzucato observes that public funding drove both the IT revolution and other fields such as bio- and nano-technologies and today’s green technologies.50 Each of these has involved both supply-side and demandside policies, in which new markets as well as new products have been created and public investment has ‘crowded in’ private. By setting societal missions, and using their own resources to co-invest with long-term capital, governments can do far more than ‘level the playing field’, as the orthodox view would allow. They can help tilt the playing field towards the achievement of publicly chosen goals. Just as the creation of the welfare state in the postwar period, and the information technology revolution in the decades around the turn of the century, unleashed new waves of economic growth and widened prosperity, so new missions today have the potential to catalyse new innovation and investment.
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Michael Jacobs (Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth (Political Quarterly Monograph Series))
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the creation of economic value is a collective process. Businesses do not create wealth on their own. No business today can operate without the fundamental services provided by the state: schools and higher education institutions, health and social care services, housing provision, social security, policing and defence, the core infrastructures of transport, energy, water and waste systems. These services, the level of resources allocated to them and the type of investments made in them, are crucial to the productivity of private enterprises. The private sector does not ‘create wealth’ while taxpayer-funded public services ‘consume’ it. The state does not simply ‘regulate’ private economic activity. Rather, economic output is co-produced by the interaction of public and private actors—and both are shaped by, and in turn help to shape, wider social and environmental conditions.
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Michael Jacobs (Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth (Political Quarterly Monograph Series))
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the creation of expectations about future growth is a crucial role for government, and not just during downturns. It is why mission-oriented innovation policy—bringing Keynes and Schumpeter together—has such an important role to play in driving stronger economic performance. Indeed, Keynes argued that the ‘socialisation of investment’—which, as Mazzucato suggests, could include the public sector acting as investor and equity-holder—would provide more stability to the investment function and hence to growth.53 It is because public expenditure is critical to the co-production of the conditions for growth, as Kelton highlights, that the austerity policies which have reduced it in the period since the financial crash have proved so futile, increasing rather than diminishing the ratio of debt to GDP. And as Wray and Nersisyan emphasise, the endogenous nature of money created by ‘keystrokes’ in the banking system gives governments far greater scope to use fiscal policy in support of economic growth than the orthodox approach allows.
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Michael Jacobs (Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth (Political Quarterly Monograph Series))
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the size and functions of the state matter profoundly to the performance of capitalist economies. In orthodox economic commentary it is frequently asserted that the role of the public sector should be minimised in order to free private enterprise from the ‘dead hand’ of regulation and the perverse impact of ‘crowding out’. In fact, successful economies have almost all had states actively committed to their development.54 This is not just about the role of the state in providing or co-investing in infrastructure (as is sometimes conceded even by those otherwise sceptical of public investment), though this is indeed important. Its role in innovation is also key, as we have seen. At the same time, the development of a skilled and adaptive labour force requires deep investment in education, training, health, childcare and social care. These functions cannot simply be outsourced or privatised—as Crouch shows, when this is done the goal of greater competition almost always degenerates into private oligopoly, where public purpose is lost, and corporate political influence increases. We need to acknowledge, rather, the interdependence of private enterprise and the public sector; of market and non-market activities.
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Michael Jacobs (Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth (Political Quarterly Monograph Series))
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Over the past thirty years the orthodox view that the maximisation of shareholder value would lead to the strongest economic performance has come to dominate business theory and practice, in the US and UK in particular.42 But for most of capitalism’s history, and in many other countries, firms have not been organised primarily as vehicles for the short-term profit maximisation of footloose shareholders and the remuneration of their senior executives. Companies in Germany, Scandinavia and Japan, for example, are structured both in company law and corporate culture as institutions accountable to a wider set of stakeholders, including their employees, with long-term production and profitability their primary mission. They are equally capitalist, but their behaviour is different. Firms with this kind of model typically invest more in innovation than their counterparts focused on short-term shareholder value maximisation; their executives are paid smaller multiples of their average employees’ salaries; they tend to retain for investment a greater share of earnings relative to the payment of dividends; and their shares are held on average for longer by their owners. And the evidence suggests that while their short-term profitability may (in some cases) be lower, over the long term they tend to generate stronger growth.43 For public policy, this makes attention to corporate ownership, governance and managerial incentive structures a crucial field for the improvement of economic performance. In short, markets are not idealised abstractions, but concrete and differentiated outcomes arising from different circumstances.
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Michael Jacobs (Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth (Political Quarterly Monograph Series))
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When both introducing and sustaining change, leadership matters. The organization needs to see that you, personally, are taking this seriously. As we rolled out HOS, I talked about its importance for our business at every opportunity. I held regular meetings to make sure we were actually implementing it and that we were getting the results—something I didn’t do for Six Sigma, and a reason it underdelivered.
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David Cote (Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term)
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It’s the habit of process change—the undertaking of numerous, sustained changes over time—that counts. So often leaders try to change a business overnight by taking a single, bold action. Process improvement is less dramatic and glamorous than that. It’s a change in mind-set and operational norms that takes months or even years to establish, and that yields incremental, accumulated gains years into the future (remember that the compounding effect of 3 percent versus 1 percent annual productivity is huge over time). Process improvement is also about yielding some of your authority as a leader and empowering others closest to the action to improve the real work, incrementally, day after day. Their insights, judgments, and decisions large and small, compounded over a period of years, move the organization forward.
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David Cote (Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term)
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With investment levels so high and already being misallocated on a massive scale, the central government might have preferred higher consumption. But China’s myriad institutional constraints, which we will discuss in more detail later in the chapter, meant that consumption could not have grown quickly enough except through a surge in household borrowing. Unsurprisingly, given what the Chinese leadership had just seen occur in the United States, there was no interest in a similar experience. That is why the government chose to focus on boosting investment. The most straightforward response to the global financial crisis was a massive boost in infrastructure and housing investment to offset the decline in foreign spending. This simultaneously magnified China’s long-standing imbalances while shifting them inward. China was able to sustain growth even as its current account surplus fell at the cost of a nearly unprecedented surge in Chinese indebtedness. Unproductive investments have failed to pay for themselves.2 The danger is that the Chinese government, having reached the limits of its ability to generate rapid growth through debt-funded investment, will once again attempt to shift the costs of its economic model to the rest of the world through trade surpluses and financial outflows. The only way to prevent this is to rebalance the Chinese economy so that household consumption is prioritized over investment. That means reversing all of the existing mechanisms transferring purchasing power from Chinese workers and retirees to companies and the government—reforms at least as dramatic and politically difficult as the reforms implemented by Deng Xiaoping beginning in 1978. Unfortunately for China, the choices of the past few decades have become politically entrenched. It is easy for an antidemocratic authoritarian regime to suppress workers’ rights and shift spending power from consumers to large companies. Stalin did it, after all. The problem is that years of state-sponsored income concentration creates a potent group of “vested interests”—Premier Li Keqiang’s preferred term—that will fiercely resist any reforms that would shift spending power back to consumers. Any successful adjustment
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Matthew C. Klein (Trade Wars Are Class Wars: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace)
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Attempting to sustain GDP growth in an economy that may actually be close to maturing can drive governments to take desperate and destructive measures. They deregulate—or rather reregulate—finance in the hope of unleashing new productive investment, but end up unleashing speculative bubbles, house price hikes and debt crises instead. They promise business that they will ‘cut red tape’, but end up dismantling legislation that was put in place to protect workers’ rights, community resources and the living world. They privatise public services—from hospitals to railways—turning public wealth into private revenue streams. They add the living world into the national accounts as ‘ecosystem services’ and ‘natural capital’, assigning it a value that looks dangerously like a price. And, despite committing to keep global warming ‘well below 2°C’, many such governments chase after the ‘cheap’ energy of tar sands and shale gas, while neglecting the transformational public investments needed for a clean-energy revolution. These policy choices are akin to throwing precious cargo off a plane that is running out of fuel, rather than admitting that it may soon be time to touch down.
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Kate Raworth (Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist)
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In Hayek’s monetary theory of the cycle the upswing is generated by monetary expansions that cause an excess of investment over volun- tary saving and a shift in the structure of production toward more time- consuming processes. This structure, created by a depressed money rate of interest, cannot be sustained. Monetary expansion, then, will not pro- duce an everlasting boom, and when the expansion eventually stops, crisis and depression follow. With regard to the sources of monetary expansion, while others like Mises put the blame on the misguided (“inflationist” or “cheap money”) attitude of the monetary authorities, Hayek pointed to the endogenous process of money creation by the banks, in particular in a sys- tem of fractional reserve banking (see, e.g., Hayek 2012a [1933a], chap. 4, vs. Mises 2006b [1928]).
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Bruce Caldwell (Hayek: A Life, 1899–1950)
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What determines your success isn’t, “What do you want to enjoy?” The relevant question is, “What pain do you want to sustain?” The path to happiness is a path full of shitheaps and shame. You have to choose something. You can’t have a pain-free life. It can’t all be roses and unicorns all the time. Pleasure is the easy question. And pretty much all of us have a similar answer. The more interesting question is the pain. What is the pain that you want to sustain? That’s the hard question that matters, the question that will actually get you somewhere. It’s the question that can change a perspective, a life. It’s what makes me, me, and you, you. It’s what defines us and separates us and ultimately brings us together. For most of my adolescence and young adulthood, I fantasized about being a musician—a rock star, in particular. Any badass guitar song I heard, I would always close my eyes and envision myself up on stage, playing it to the screams of the crowd, people absolutely losing their minds to my sweet finger-noodling glory. This fantasy could keep me occupied for hours on end. For me, it was never a question of if I’d ever be up playing in front of screaming crowds, but when. I had it all planned out. I was simply biding my time before I could invest the proper amount of energy and effort into getting out there and making my mark. First I needed to finish school. Then I needed to make some extra money to buy gear. Then I needed to find enough free time to practice. Then I had to network and plan my first project. Then . . . and then nothing.
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Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life)
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Without question the key to the success of P&G is its commitment to the development of brand equity, the brand management system that supports it, and the ongoing investment in marketing that sustains it.
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David A. Aaker (Managing Brand Equity: Capitalizing on the Value of a Brand Name)
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Today’s gentleman is yesterday’s upstart. But behind these shifting characters there is a constant presence: the financier. Investing, lending, borrowing and, more widely, the efficient administration of capital is what sustained the city at each of those periods, regardless of what was being produced and sold.
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Hernan Diaz (Trust)
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Put simply, a system is self-sustaining if it requires less and less investment of energy over time. Once it’s set in motion, maintaining it becomes easier, then easy, then eventually effortless.
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Greg McKeown (Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most)
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Empowering and investing in the pattern of humanitarian responses in Africa is a moral imperative and a strategic necessity for us all. By strengthening the capacity of African communities to respond to crises while ensuring youth inclusion, we are building more resilient societies and laying the foundation for sustainable development and progress.
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Emmanuel Apetsi
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Investment Strategy
We invest along two primary strategies: venture creation and private equity.
Venture Creation: Building sustainable companies around innovative products we acquire from life sciences companies and institutions
Private Equity: Privatizing and creating value for undervalued public pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies
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Syridex Bio
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I often thought of the importance of sustainability, and of how little we consider it in the decisions and actions we take. If we treated each moment as though it were a permanent condition, a place where we might find ourselves compelled to remain forever, how differently most of us would choose the things that moment contains! It may be that the happiest people are those who broadly adhere to this principle, who don't borrow against the moment, but instead invest it with what could acceptably continue into all moments without causing or receiving damage and destruction – but it requires a great deal of discipline and a degree of puritanical coldheartedness to live in that way.
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Rachel Cusk (Second Place)
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Let us look at the example of racism to make this clear. The contemporary white cynic will readily admit that the American public ideology of a colorblind society serves to mask the continuing presence of racism. Despite claims that the society has become colorblind, the cynic recognizes that some whites still harbor prejudice toward African Americans and that this prejudice has an adverse effect on the life chances of African Americans (as evinced by the number of African American men in jail, the disparity in income between white and African American, etc.). This recognition, however, coexists in the thinking of the cynic with a seemingly contradictory idea—that African Americans have it easier than whites today, that society has entered an era of reverse discrimination. This is why so many whites feel a visceral objection to affirmative action: it provides even more privilege to a group that already has a privileged status, a privileged relationship to enjoyment. In the racist’s view, the African American enjoys more because she/he gets more for less, has to work less for more benefits (as the policy of affirmative action seems to attest to). How can we reconcile these two seemingly contradictory attitudes? The cynic’s ability to sustain both attitudes stems from the split between her/his relationship to public ideology and to the fantasmatic underside of power. She/he doubts the official proclamations of authority, which claim to have eradicated racism, but invests her/himself in the underside of that authority, which relies on a racist fear of the Other’s enjoyment in order to function. In sustaining the investment in the underlying racist fantasy, the cynic finds support for her/his being in the big Other. But the cynic’s suspicion of public ideology allows her/him to feel as if she/he is transgressing the norms of the big Other. Thus, the cynic is able to have it both ways, attaining the security that stems from obedience and the enjoyment that transgression produces, without having to risk actually losing the support of her/his identity within the big Other. The white cynic can both feel her/himself to be righteously antiracist in her/his ability to analyze the hidden racism in American society while at the same time feeling her/himself to be a victim of reverse discrimination. Suspicion of the public law and investment in its obscene underside offers such a subject the best of both worlds.
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Todd McGowan (The End of Dissatisfaction: Jacques Lacan and the Emerging Society of Enjoyment (Psychoanalysis and Culture))
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Professor Michael Porter of Harvard Business School asserts: “Once a company achieves competitive advantage through an innovation, it can sustain it only through relentless improvement. Almost any advantage can be imitated.” He adds, “Ultimately, the only way to sustain competitive advantage is to upgrade it—to move to more sophisticated types. This is precisely what Japanese auto-makers have done. They initially penetrated foreign markets with small, inexpensive compact cars of adequate quality and competed on the basis of lower labor costs. Even while their labor-cost advantage persisted, however, the Japanese companies were upgrading. . . .
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John Mihaljevic (The Manual of Ideas: The Proven Framework for Finding the Best Value Investments)
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1)Insufficient research and knowledge:
Many beginners dive into investing without fully understanding the fundamentals or conducting thorough research. It's crucial to educate yourself about different investment options, financial markets, and investment strategies before getting started.
2)Failure to establish clear investment goals:
Investing without clear goals can lead to haphazard decision-making and poor portfolio management. Beginners should define their investment objectives, such as saving for retirement, buying a home, or funding education, and then align their investment strategy accordingly.
3)Lack of diversification:
Beginners sometimes make the mistake of investing all their money in a single investment or asset class. This lack of diversification can expose them to significant risks. It's important to spread investments across different asset classes, industries, and geographies to reduce the impact of any individual investment's performance on the overall portfolio.
4)Emotion-driven decision-making:
Emotions can often cloud investment decisions. Beginners may get swayed by market hype, fear, or short-term fluctuations, leading to impulsive buying or selling. It's essential to make investment decisions based on rational analysis and a long-term perspective rather than reacting to short-term market movements.
5)Chasing quick profits:
Beginner investors may be tempted by get-rich-quick schemes or investments promising high returns in a short period. Such investments often involve higher risks, and pursuing quick profits can lead to significant losses. It's important to have realistic return expectations and focus on long-term, sustainable investment strategies.
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Sago
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The five elements of the business model—your revenue, gross margin, operating, working capital, and investment models—contain the key to whether your idea and your planned strategy really hold water in economic terms. You will examine how the lifeblood of every business, cash—from customers, suppliers, investors, or all three—can be transformed into a potentially thriving and sustainable venture.
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John W. Mullins (Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model)
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The beauty of evidence-based discipleship is that it allows us to measure progress and make informed decisions about how best to invest our time, energy, and resources.
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Justin Ho Guo Shun (The Art and Science of Discipleship: Evidence-Based Strategies to Empowering Leaders for Sustainable Ministry)
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Research has shown that the winners in any endeavor think, feel, and act differently than those who lose. If you want to know if you have the self-discipline of a winner, try right now, starting today, to stop a habit that has challenged you in the past. If you have always wanted to be in better physical shape, try adding exercises such as running into your routine, and also take control of your salt and sugar intake. If you drink too much alcohol or coffee, try to see if for one month you can stay away from them. These are excellent tests to see if you are emotionally and intellectually strong enough or not to discipline yourself in the face of a losing trade. I am not saying that if you drink coffee or alcohol, or that if you are not a regular runner, you cannot become a successful trader, but if you make a try at these types of improvements and fail, then you should know that exercising self-control in trading will not be any easier to accomplish. Change is hard, but if you wish to be a successful trader, you need to work on changing and developing your personality at every level. Working hard at it is the only way to sustain the changes you need to make. The measure of intelligence is not in IQ tests or how to make money, but it is in the ability to change. As Oprah Winfrey, the American talk show host and philanthropist once said, the greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change their future by merely changing their attitude.
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AMS Publishing Group (Intelligent Stock Market Trading and Investment: Quick and Easy Guide to Stock Market Investment for Absolute Beginners)
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GHG emissions are not the only issue we face, this is (simply) a standardised, worldwide unit of measurement for understanding negative environmental impacts. You can invest your efforts into achieving several Sustainable Development Goals, rather than exclusively GHG emissions.
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Ines Garcia (Sustainable Happy Profit)
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Invest in having and conveying a vision worth contributing to.
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Ines Garcia (Sustainable Happy Profit)
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Managing energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance. Performance is grounded in the skillful management of energy. • Great leaders are stewards of organizational energy. They begin by effectively managing their own energy. As leaders, they must mobilize, focus, invest, channel, renew and expand the energy of others. • Full engagement is the energy state that best serves performance. • Principle 1: Full engagement requires drawing on four separate but related sources of energy: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. • Principle 2: Because energy diminishes both with overuse and with underuse, we must balance energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal. • Principle 3: To build capacity we must push beyond our normal limits, training in the same systematic way that elite athletes do. • Principle 4: Positive energy rituals—highly specific routines for managing energy—are the key to full engagement and sustained high performance. • Making change that lasts requires a three-step process: Define Purpose, Face the Truth and Take Action.
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Jim Loehr (The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal)
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Some special companies see trust as a public good (like clean air and water), and customers return the trust. One company in which I personally have a lot of faith is Timberland, the maker of outdoor clothing. I once attended a talk by Jeff Swartz, the CEO, in which he detailed many of the ways that Timberland is trying to reduce CO2 emissions, recycle, use sustainable materials, and treat its employees fairly. At the end of Jeff’s talk, another CEO asked him, “What are the returns on these investments?” Jeff answered that he has been trying to find an economic return for these actions but that he had not yet found it in the data. He further added that it would be nice if being environmentally and socially responsible was also financially rewarding but that he didn’t really feel it was necessary. He simply wanted to make sure that his company followed the moral principles he wanted his kids to live by. After hearing this, I went and bought my first pair of Timberland shoes.
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Dan Ariely (A Taste of Irrationality: Sample chapters from Predictably Irrational and Upside of Irrationality)
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The following fundamental principles are core to this standard: Strive to achieve excellence in strategic execution; Enhance transparency, responsibility, accountability, sustainability, and fairness; Balance portfolio value against overall risks; Ensure that investments in portfolio components are aligned with the organization's strategy; Obtain and maintain the sponsorship and engagement of senior management and key stakeholders; Exercise active and decisive leadership for the optimization of resource utilization; Foster a culture that embraces change and risk; and Navigate complexity to enable successful outcomes.
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Project Management Institute (The Standard for Portfolio Management)
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While you might outsource your supply chain, your logistics, or your investments, you do not outsource your responsibility for them. It's getting harder every day to externalize environmental and social costs that your business imposes on society
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Paul Polman (Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take)
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Recall that GDP, gross domestic product, the dominant metric in economics for the last century, consists of a combination of consumption, plus private investments, plus government spending, plus exports-minus-imports. Criticisms of GDP are many, as it includes destructive activities as positive economic numbers, and excludes many kinds of negative externalities, as well as issues of health, social reproduction, citizen satisfaction, and so on. Alternative measures that compensate for these deficiencies include: the Genuine Progress Indicator, which uses twenty-six different variables to determine its single index number; the UN’s Human Development Index, developed by Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq in 1990, which combines life expectancy, education levels, and gross national income per capita (later the UN introduced the inequality-adjusted HDI); the UN’s Inclusive Wealth Report, which combines manufactured capital, human capital, natural capital, adjusted by factors including carbon emissions; the Happy Planet Index, created by the New Economic Forum, which combines well-being as reported by citizens, life expectancy, and inequality of outcomes, divided by ecological footprint (by this rubric the US scores 20.1 out of 100, and comes in 108th out of 140 countries rated); the Food Sustainability Index, formulated by Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition, which uses fifty-eight metrics to measure food security, welfare, and ecological sustainability; the Ecological Footprint, as developed by the Global Footprint Network, which estimates how much land it would take to sustainably support the lifestyle of a town or country, an amount always larger by considerable margins than the political entities being evaluated, except for Cuba and a few other countries; and Bhutan’s famous Gross National Happiness, which uses thirty-three metrics to measure the titular quality in quantitative terms.
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Kim Stanley Robinson (The Ministry for the Future)
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How is it not possible for the leaders of such giant, public, dispersed-ownership conglomerate companies to take a such a bold step as well to focus on creating long-term value for shareholders and institutional investors? Many investors do not invest in companies for the short term: institutional investors, mutual funds, index funds, and many shareholders, buy and hold patiently for dividends and capital appreciation for the long term. Why, then, do corporate leaders insist that they are unable to invest for the long term due to financial market and analyst pressures? These are interesting research questions that could generate interesting empirical studies.
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Sanjay Sharma (Patient Capital: The Role of Family Firms in Sustainable Business (Organizations and the Natural Environment))
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Let’s not fall into the trap of conventions and habits and convince ourselves that the way we are consuming now is next to impossible to alter because of regulated options, economic limitations, cultural norms, accessibility, or whichever excuse we come up with. Let’s remember that just as it is momentarily the norm to mindlessly shop and consume, it could easily become the new norm not to; to radically reduce one’s consumption and to focus on the usage and aesthetic nourishment of the objects one owns and invests in. Something being the norm doesn’t mean that it is carved in stone. Norms are changeable. Not easily changeable, but nevertheless changeable. Cherishing, mending, and repairing one’s belongings could become the new normal.
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Kristine H. Harper (Anti-trend, Resilient Design and the Art of Sustainable Living)
Bruce C. Greenwald (Value Investing: From Graham to Buffett and Beyond)
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When you combine purpose, energy, and small simple steps (S3), you get sustainable motivation. And the ultimate form of motivation is the state of flow. Think about it as energy management. Creating it, investing it, and not wasting it. A clear purpose or reason gives you energy. Practices you employ will cultivate energy for your brain and the rest of your body, and small simple steps require little energy.
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Jim Kwik (Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life)