Internet & the emerging banking crisis

With a $10 billion+ sale on single's day for Alibaba.com & even Flipkart clocking a billion $ sale on mega sale days, which geniuses are building malls? Have no utility beyond movies & restaurants. The day Chinese became the factory of world, including clothing along with digitalisation of western populace, malls were doomed. Who wants to pay inflated prices for brands when poor IP law implementation allows same Chinese manufacturer to churn out clones for 1/5th price to consumers.

If you take the point that public investment in infra follows GDP boom and not vice versa, then it's bad news for all the ghost towns and public infra like airports that China has built up. They will not spur economic growth and unless there is some other form of stimulus that spurs growth then this infrastructure will be sitting there for a long time before it gets utilised. One example that I keep on citing for India is Noida toll road. It started in 2002 ( If i remember correctly) has not turned operationally profitable till date. 

Similar case can be built for Bandra-Worli Sea link. There are simply not enough car commuters to pay fee & thus enabling return on investment for this project.

The problem with public infrastructure is very similar to your car. Its starts to depreciate in value from Day 1. Since all of this infra was built with public money, the loans are not being serviced or there is an increased interest component, which means there's no money for the upkeep of the infra.

Politicians often prefer dams, interstate highways and bullet trains that make the news, critics add, rather than schools, hospitals and smaller projects that may be more economically productive.

India is now pushing high-speed rail between urban centres,Which may have returns but putting 4 lane roads doesn’t do much for villagers. They really need a one-lane road only that can be maintained & livelihood sustained. Economics is really simple. If you have no money and you want to build a house, pretending that you do have money still won't allow you to build a house. That's because you need actual capital to buy material and labor. Pretend money won't work otherwise every third world will get first world infrastructure just by pretending. 

Now you can pretend and fool an external money source but that won't last long because monied people and nations don't get to be rich by being stupid. Look at Argentina. No one lends to them anymore. Now you can look around & see how struggling malls, unsold housing stock & then look at bank balance sheets with roughly 11lac crores as CDR & NPA. This is almost 25% of total lending amount of India's banking system.

Infact the success of ecommerce in china indicates mega malls of unsustainable size might struggle even more in future. malls can only serve a certain radius be it 50km or 100km. ecommerce can serve the whole country from a dozen warehouses in low cost locations but near highways/airports/railways for logistics.

The internet has become a critical element of China’s economic progress in the past five years, accounting for seven per cent of the world’s second largest economy’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2014, a percentage point higher than the US, state-run Global Times reported, citing a report issued by China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC).

China has exceeded the US to become the world’s largest online retail market, it said as the online retail transactions reached 2.79 billion yuan (USD 439 million) in 2014, one of the key economic achievements of China’s Internet development during the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-15).

However, according to US journal Statista, US online sales last years accounted to about USD 290 billion.

In 2014, the number of online shoppers climbed to 361 million, representing 55.7 per cent of the nation’s shoppers.

Online shopping represents 20 per cent of all consumer demand, the report said. For the first time mobile phones have become the most commonly-used platform to access the internet, followed by computers. Some 594 million people in China can access to the Internet through mobile phones. In India the same number is around 350 million & almost 65% access through mobile phones.

And when it's pointed out that the total e-commerce $ value in China was just 8.3 per cent in 2013 and projected to be just 12 per cent in 2015, you turn that around to see how US/Indian/Chinese malls are doing bad!! 

Are baba or shall I say Alibaba!! 

If Love is the answer, could you please rephrase the question?

Ever since I have been writing nothing has fascinated me more than human relationships & why not? relationships based on love make for an interesting read even though why love happens itself has been dissected thoroughly by medical sciences. Brain must be most fantastic organ of all.. works 24X7 from the time you are born till you fall in love..

La Rochefoucauld said "True love is like seeing ghosts we all talk about it, but few of us have ever seen one" & at this ripe old age 40, I do concur. Being a behaviour addict, i just see so many of known/unknown people in agony, rarely happy for a longer duration. We are remnants of an age wherein we got into marriage or relationship with not much expectations except for companionship & raising a family together. Times have indeed changed!

I see lot of young women who complaint of not being able to find love but constantly going out with the same man who more often than not, picks them from office/home and tabs too. Gives gifts on birthdays, throws parties but is kept hanging like a cur waiting for something sweet while 'They' are looking for someone to love. Lot of man are no different in their behaviour. 

Jack Nicholson once said, “Almost everybody's happy to be a fool for love."

It's highly doubtful that he had evolutionary psychology on his mind when he made this statement, but nonetheless he tapped into a fundamental human foible: When it comes to dating, mating, and relationships, it can be hard for us to see straight. While we may have few 100 thousand years between our forbearers (primitive men) & us, we continue to exhibit same behaviour with regards to dating,mating & seeking. 

This shows evolution of man.It also means that our sages were indeed truthful & brave to write, mention the trials and tribulation as a society that we went through. they have recorded the 'Yug Dharma' as it changed over the years.Greatest of the warriors & one of the most learned mind 'Pitamaha Bhishma' said the following in 'Shanti parva' .. dialogues between him and Dharmaraj Yudhsthir

न चैषां मैथुनो धर्मो बभूव भरतर्षभ
संकल्पादेवैतेषां अपत्यं उपपद्यते - 37

ततः त्रेतायुगेकाले संस्पर्शात् जायते प्रजान
ह्य भूः मैथुनो धर्मस्तेषां अपि जनाधिप - 38

द्वापरे मैथुनो धर्म प्रजानां भवन्नृपःतथा
कलियुगे राजन द्वन्द्व मापेदिरे जनाः - 39

"In satya yuga, intercourse happened as desire arose in minds of fertile men and women. There were no words for mother, father, sibling etc. In Treta Yuga, when men and women touched each other and welcomed the touch, dharma allowed them to copulate for time-being. (this is stage where concept of "favourite" mate started emerging). IN Dwapara Yuga, Men and women started cohabiting as couples but not as stable and committed pair-bonding couples. In Kali Yuga, the stable pair-bonding (what we refer to as institution of marriage) emerged."

Why is making accurate assessments so fraught with difficulty in todays romantic contexts? From an evolutionary perspective, these biases helped our ancestors achieve reproductive success in a prehistoric environment in which that was difficult to do. In a thinly populated world, there were far fewer mating opportunities in a relatively short lifetime. They were also under great threat from infectious diseases and starvation.

Our memories have stories when there were no "names" for relations. Only relation was that between a fertile man and woman. In fact here have been references to The references of free cohabitation, sibling cohabitation, offering one's "stri (woman)" to friend OR guest" (Kindly note that the word "patni" had not evolved), references towards intercourse with alive and dead animals, intercourse with wife of one's guru, cohabitation with multiple males, temporary cohabitation, contract marriage all these are mentioned in Puranas & is the history of Indic people."You can also add Shiva's Aasakti on Mohini & the chase. Subsequently the birth of Harihara.

I return to the fundamental question, what is love and where are the origins of this word? Did we actually confuse this word with what we call " आशक्ति " or lust ? 

In other words, there's a mismatch between our ancient genes and our modern lives—in our diet, and in the romantic realm. Here are four common biases when it comes to love: See what an award winning psychologist Dr Mehta had to say about man women relationships in modern times...

1. We pay too much attention to looks. According to research, physical attractiveness in the romantic realm is an advertisement of health and fitness. In the ancient world, infectious diseases were far more prevalent than they are today. Muscular men with chiseled features, and women with an optimal waist-to-hip ratio were advertisements that their offspring stood a greater chance of surviving and reproducing. Studies show that we still have an attentional bias for beauty.
2. " Women underestimate commitment. Pregnancy and lactation are costly for women, which likely encouraged their preference for mates who demonstrate clear signs of long-term commitment and the provision of resources during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Indeed, research shows that women tend to underestimate the level of commitment on the part of men. After all, it would be more costly for a woman to have sex with a man who will love her and leave her than to underestimate a man's interest and wait until a more committed partner comes along. This may explain why some women may debate for stretches of time whether the number of calls, texts, emails, and dates initiated by a suitor add up to real signs of interest and a possible long-term relationship."
3. Men overperceive sexual interest. Like their counterparts in the animal kingdom, human males invest less in reproduction and can potentially produce far more offspring in his lifetime than women. Thus it is to their reproductive benefit to have a variety of mating partners, which likely encouraged a keener ability to pick up on signals of interest on the part of women. After all, there's more to lose in underestimating sexual interest and missing out on a sexual opportunity than there is in overestimating sexual interest and losing time pursuing a woman who isn't interested. Research consistently shows that men are biased toward overestimating the degree to which a woman may be interested in him. Perhaps this explains why some guys come on too strong, or don't give up when it seems it's time.
4. We all get jealous way too easily. The green-eyed monster may not be a flattering human emotion, but has served a useful function over the course of human evolution. In women, jealousy serves to prevent their mates from providing resources for other female rivals. For men, jealousy prevents cuckoldry, i.e., investing in genetically unrelated children. The consequences for both genders would be, evolutionarily speaking, costly. Yet today, both resources and paternity certainty can be more easily accessed, and thus jealous responses can unfortunately misfire." 

Pitamah Bhishma also said that 'Kama' is the जननी (mother) of all 'purushaasrtha'.. Let me go back to the root of it all. The root is 'Sanatan' . the word itself can be broken down to Sat -anant or as some bifurcate it as, Sat + Aa + Tan.The meaning is, 'Pursuit since Sat' . Wherin Sat can be construed as Satyug or Truth. So the continuity of civilization is the 'Dharma'

Between all this, where is love? what were you saying, can you repeat that love thing?

Viagra, religion of individualism & looming pension crisis

There has been a chorus of economists who blame everything from excessive borrowing to cheap loans to early retirement with generous pensions that triggered the greek debt crisis in the first place to the political system that allowed this to happen. Not many have looked into the causes of low saving rates in western countries i.e. US/EU. There are many Points that one must ponder over..

1. They are all liberal free enterprise systems

2. EU has some form of state ownership & spends considerably more on welfare/Doles & aging population is not earning enough to sustain the spends

3. Political pressure or oversight led to easing of norms to land to unscrupulous & low credit worthy consumers in US.

4. Banks converted this debt into securities and sold them to other banks on bond market

All these no doubt are important but obvious causes.

In case of countries like Greece/Portugal/Spain or later in UK & france, pensions have been a huge drag on state exchequer. So isn't time we look at other datapoint/factors that may have an impact on nations finances..

Its time we start looking at basic unit of economic activity - Family

There is another issue that has not gained the attention it deserved with respect to state finances. All these governments employ an army of bureaucrats to run the system & most of them retire with a lifelong, inflation indexed pension. Greece, citizens were retiring at age 45 with full pensions. Take a case of UK/France, where citizens (govt employees) retire with pension benefits & pass on the benefits to spouses post their death. UK pension shortfall for the month of August 2015 was 358 bn Pounds. Overall shortfall is around 5Tn pounds. 

Now is the tricky part comes with spread of new age religion called 'Individualism' ..

The core tenets of 'religion of individualism' as i see it responsible for wrecking the family system (smallest economic unit) are..

1. Sex for pleasure not for procreation

2. State responsibility to take care of citizens (welfare/doles)

3. Removing ethical/moral restrictions from sex outside marriage

The religion of individualism aka individual rights & femi-nazi movements has brought a situation that..

1. More and more children are being born out of wedlocks

2. High divorce rates

3. late marriages or no marriages

With the looming economic crisis, younger generation is finding it hard to find jobs & they are not leaving parents houses as they can't sustain their lifestyles. when pushed out there is another disturbing trend as this generation has lost the capacity to work hard (like their forebears). You see lot of young women marrying older man in these countries, even a country like Brazil is going through this phenomenon.

older man riding on the temporary testosterone high of viagra aka the blue pill is enjoying his sex life till late and are dumping their older spouse/partners for younger ones. Why do the young women choose to do so? Well, ageing & retired have money (lot of them) & these young women get enrolled in the pension system as beneficiary post the man's death. 

Do you see the implication? The government that was planning of an average 18-20 years of pension duration lands up paying for 40-50 years to the spouse/partner of deceased pensioner. It is wrecking the finances of brazil/UK/France.    

Take the case of India, we have around 3.1Mln central govt employees & another 18 million in state & other PSUs. Its true that majority of them may be in Group C or D category thus low paid but they do get inflation indexed pensions. With increasing life expectancy, state lands up paying pensions for longer. Luckily we have a growing population but unfortunately most are either underemployed or unemployed. 

Unless Prime minister Modi pulls a miracle of getting manufacturing (big time) in India, we are staring at abyss with huge pension bills (recurring) for military personnel or other govt employees. our 55% population (engaged in agriculture) contributes around 12-13% of GDP. It will further come down to 5% in 10 years. Its time we have to shift this large manpower to productive usage. 

What do we do the disease called individualism creeping in our society with similar western issues creeping in urban landscapes. Rising divorces (generally at older ages too), Children abandoning parents in villages or small towns & not taking care of them in old age will raise more demand for pensions or state support.

Government has a tough choice, tackle Viagra fuelled youthfulness & children's apathy towards old parents. India has just taken on roller coster of pension issues. we need reform right now before Viagra finds our retirees.