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A House Rises
The Journal of the Lion & the Wolf
Our Family Mark
Notes – Complete Family Wealth
"Our family has always been rich, and we've sometimes had money."
It's easy for people to focus on money as the most important or most obvious sign of wealth for an individual or family. But because families are multi-generational enterprises, they require several other forms of wealth to be developed and grown over time to sustain or enhance financial wealth; more importantly, even without significant financial wealth, a family that builds the other four forms of capital will feel quite "rich" regardless, as the quote at the top of these notes suggest.
Therefore, to consider complete family wealth, there are really five forms of capital, four qualitative and one quantitative:
Qualitative capital
Quantitative capital
Exploring family wealth
Wealth preservation is a dynamic process. Each generation of the family must adopt a wealth-creating mindset. Any family whose complete wealth is simply maintaining value rather than growing is either in or in danger of entering into a state of decay or entropy. (The biological truism of "You're either growing, or dying" applied to the family wealth.)
An important principle of human capital is the connection between meaningful work and an individual's sense of self-worth, a concept explored deeply in the child development theories of Maria Montessori. There is a difference between well-paid, highly-compensated or financially remunerative work and MEANINGFUL work. The former may or may not build human capital while supplying financial resources to the individual or family, but the latter most definitely is necessary for an individual to fully exercise and express their self through a positive impact on the world around them. Healthy families are characterized by all able-bodied, adult members having some kind of meaningful work that they apply themselves to, whether it is in the family business enterprise or outside of it. And one thing a wealthy family can do for its members is to support each person finding and achieving meaningful work.
Thinking of intellectual capital, families are able to leverage the experience and know-how of other members when they provide a means for the collection and dissemination of the accumulated knowledge of family members. Much of this happens over time in an informal sense via family story-telling, a series of parables and life lessons the family has gained through trial and experience. But it can also happen formally through mentoring, tutoring or developing a "Wisdom Book" within the family, where the most important proprietary knowledge and know-how is gathered and documented in one place.
Becoming myopically focused on financial capital is risky for families because it's unlikely that most family members can make equal financial contributions, particularly with regard to a founding, risk-taking/entrepreneur generation that created the family's financial capital initially. Defining success in financial terms can create a sense of not being good enough. This leads to a lack of motivation and ultimately becomes a problem for the family's long-term financial stability. Long-term success depends upon helping family members talk productively about money with each other.
Many families develop budgets for administering the preservation and growth of their financial capital. But if complete wealth is about four other forms of capital that are not financial in nature, wouldn't it be an interesting exercise to develop a budget for the preservation and growth of non-financial family capital? If you had a budget and could compare spending across capital categories, what would that comparison say about the relative importance of the five forms of capital in your family's life?
The family enterprise
Families who flourish over time understand themselves as families of affinity. A family of affinity does not limit its sense of identity to blood or genetic lineage. It sees itself as linked by a common mission and sense of "differentness" from other people who don't share affinities for the family values.
Based upon extensive research and experience, there appear to be seven key aspects to long-term flourishing for family enterprises (ie, the business and the family as an enterprise):
Early on the fundamental intention is set to build a great family, not just a great business
These families articulate and share their core values amongst themselves and with others, through example, education and discussion
These families respect and encourage individual differences and encourage and support each member in achieving their unique dreams
They keep their collective focus on their strengths, even when facing challenges
They share history with story-telling that is told and re-told through the generations, creating a reputation and tradition for each person to live up to and contribute to
Parents see themselves as teachers AND learners
These families understand the importance of individual stages of development and integrate that into their understanding of parenting
The Three Circle Model
The three main parts of any family enterprise are family, owners and management. Family is the family of affinity. Owners include all those who own title to family capital. Management can include the managers of family-controlled businesses but also advisors and administrators of the larger family enterprise.
Each circle has its own priority. For family, the priority is inclusion. For owners, it is preservation. For managers it is performance. Trouble arises when when circle dominates the others in terms of priority. That being said, for long-term success, the family circle should be larger than the other two, not smaller, in terms of importance and priority of resources and effort.
The ownership circle is about taking ownership in the sense of taking responsibility. Passive ownership leads to paternalism. Managing risk is a complex discipline that all owners must undertake. It's important that all family owners, whether they're actively involved in a family business or not, learn how to manage risk to avoid becoming paralyzed by overestimating risk to avoid making mistakes.
Family owners must possess a basic understanding of systems theory, leadership science, the process of leadership transitions and methods for assessing the health of the enterprise and the performance of management. Family owners must communicate with each other and truly listen to each other, to develop their dreams for the enterprise as it evolves beyond the dream of the founder or creator generation.
A family enterprise faces just a few, critical transitions to manage in each generation, and no short-term transactions are likely to make a comparable difference in the enterprises's success or failure. Thus, it is key to develop an understanding of what is truly critical as far as the strategy of the enterprise and what is merely ancillary or operational in nature. Family owners' prime responsibility is to keep their focus, with a beginner's mind, on the strategic level and not succumb to tactical thinking appropriate to short-term problems. The strategic question is not just how to preserve the family's complete wealth but how to grow it.
Time should be measured by the generation. Short-term for a family is 20 years, intermediate-term is 50 years and long-term is 100 years or more. Abandoning a process too soon, because it seems too hard, is the most common reason that endeavors fail. Successful families over the long-term must decide to continue the process of strategically developing the family's complete wealth literally for all generations to come.
It takes courage to plant a tree that takes 150 years to mature, like the Copper Beech Tree. No one who does so will ever see it full grown. Does that mean they're not worth planting?
A Summary of Principles
Summarizing some of the information above, here are 6 key principles of growing complete family wealth:
Preservation of complete family wealth is a question of human behavior– what does each family member choose to do, in relation to the family, and why?
The most fundamental assets of a family are not its financial resources but its individual members and their health and capabilities.
The complete wealth of a family includes the human, intellectual, social and spiritual capitals of its members. The family's financial capital is a tool to support the growth of its human, intellectual, social and spiritual capitals.
To preserve its complete wealth successfully, a family must form a social compact amongst its members that reflects its shared values, and each generation must reaffirm and readopt that social compact.
To preserve its complete wealth successfully, a family must agree to create a system of representative governance through which it actively practices its values. Each generation must reaffirm its participation in that system of governance.
The mission of family governance must be the enhancement of the pursuit of happiness of each individual family member. This pursuit will enhance the whole family and further the long-term preservation of the family's complete wealth.
The Rising Generation
If you are a member of the rising generation in a family, you hold the keys to the family's true wealth.
Individuation occurs over time through a multi-stage life development process:
Infant, trust vs. mistrust
Toddler, autonomy vs. shame and doubt
Preschooler, initiative vs. guilty
School-Age Child, industry vs. inferiority
Adolescent, identity vs. role confusion
Young Adult, intimacy vs. isolation
Middle-Age Adult, generativity vs. stagnation
Older Adult, integrity vs. despair
The real cause of entitlement is failure of the rising generation to individuate. The core of entitlement is failing to see yourself as a capable, independent person.
Rising is a life's work.
The Four Cs:
Control, vs. powerlessness
Commitment, vs. alienation
Challenge, vs. threat
Community, vs. isolation
Every true gift carries spirit. True gifts promote the growth and freedom of both giver and recipient. Transfers lack spirit and tend to breed resentment in both parties. That spirit of the gift requires communication to give it voice.
Trustees and Beneficiaries
The combination of the trust wave (generation skipping) and this feeling of burdensomeness accelerates families' entropy, dissolving their human and financial capital with great speed. The factors behind this decline are emotional and relational, not legal or financial. The response must be similar.
Trust creators find ways to make sure that the trust documents reflect the spirit of their gifts. These may include writing a letter of wishes to the trustee, including a preface to the trust, composing an "ethical will" to accompany the trust, or writing a personal summary or other precatory language. It may mean something as simple as thinking seriously about the name of the trust, rather than simply affixing a family name along with some legalese.
The ultimate purpose of a trust is to make distributions to the beneficiary. If there is any way by which trusts are going to become blessings rather than burdens, it is going to be through a thoughtful and proactive distribution function. It must be the primary intention from the beginning of the trust.
The human trustscape achieves "control without ownership."
There are three types of friends:
Friends of utility
Friends of pleasure
Friends of virtue
What law and custom truly shape is character, the character of individuals and family.
Meaningful work involves serving something larger than yourself through the application of your signature strengths and virtues. Doing meaningful work requires identifying your signature strengths and virtues.
Play might just be the most serious thing in human life.
The Family Executive Summary
The most important activity to begin with is reflection: intentions, culture and the development of your family enterprise. Reflection requires some sort of translation to result in action.
Every family that succeeds over multiple generations makes some use of family meetings.
Family Stories and Rituals
A family that hopes to preserve its complete family wealth over time must learn to keep its stories alive. That is the only way the family itself will continue.
Some prompts for thinking about family stories:
Who is someone that played a significant role in your life? How did this person shape your life, perspectives and values?
What are some of the important lessons you have learned in your life?
Reflecting on your past, which of your accomplishments do you find the most gratifying and are you most proud of?
What has been your greatest challenge thus far? What did you learn from this experience?
Which of your stories, values and beliefs would you most like to maintain and pass on to future generations?
Many families preserve stories of failures, crises or disasters. These stories teach themes of resilience and perseverance.
Author The LionPosted on November 1, 2022 Categories books, business, family, wealthTags notesLeave a comment on Notes – Complete Family Wealth
Quotes – Taking Radical Responsibility
We must free ourselves of the hope that the sea will ever rest. We must learn to sail in high winds.
~Aristotle Onassis
Author The LionPosted on October 17, 2022 Categories philosophy, wisdomTags quotes, responsibility, sailingLeave a comment on Quotes – Taking Radical Responsibility
Quotes – It's Lonely At The Top
Most captains have trouble with their ship's people from time to time – on occasion it is a continual sullen covert war – and unless they make cronies of their first lieutenants, as some do, they have to chew it over alone. I do not wonder that so many of them grow strange or bloody-minded; or run melancholy mad, for that matter.
~Capt. Jack Aubrey, Patrick O'Brian
Author The LionPosted on May 26, 2021 Categories wisdomTags leadership, quotesLeave a comment on Quotes – It's Lonely At The Top
An Annotated Reading of Good Strategy/Bad Strategy
Strategy: discovering the critical factors in a situation and designing a way of coordinating and focusing actions to deal with those factors.
Role of leadership: identifying the biggest challenges to forward progress; devising a coherent approach to overcoming them.
A good strategy honestly acknowledges the challenges being faced and provides and approach to overcoming them.
A strategy that fails to define a variety of plausible and feasible immediate actions is missing a critical component.
Guiding policy is a signpost in reference to the diagnosis, shows the directional way forward.
Coherent actions are feasible coordinated policies, resource commitments and actions designed to carry out the guiding policy.
Can you identify what your competition is doing strategically that is valuable? From there can you devise a counter-strategic move that would increase your competitive position?
Most complex organizations spread rather than concentrate resources.
Good strategy itself is unexpected.
Having conflicting goals, dedicating resources to unconnected targets, and accommodating incompatible interests are the luxuries of the rich and powerful, but they make for bad strategy.
Good strategy requires leaders who are wiling and able to say no to a wide variety of actions and interests.
Consider the competition even when no one tells you to do it in advance.
Whenever an organization succeeds greatly, there is also, at the same time, either blocked or failed competition.
Integrated design: each part of the design is shaped and specialized to the others. The pieces are not interchangeable parts.
When analyzing and developing strategy, consider what is the "basic unit of management", such as the Wal-Mart example where the network is the basic unit of management.
The oft-forgotten cost of decentralization is lost coordination across units.
Where are you strong? How do you apply this to your competitors' weakness?
Strategy: what stands in the way of your goals?
Strategic objectives should address a specific process or accomplishment, such as halving the time it takes to respond to a customer, or getting work from several Fortune 500 corporations.
Motivation in context: The job of the leader is also to create the conditions that will make that [one last] push effective.
Discover the most promising opportunities for the business: internal, fixing bottlenecks or constraints in the way people work; external, look very closely at what is changing in your business.
Business competition is not just a battle of strength and wills; it is also a competition over insights and competencies.
To obtain higher performance, leaders must identify the critical obstacles to forward progress and then develop a coherent approach to overcoming them.
The cutting edge of any strategy is the set of strategic objectives (subgoals) it lays out.
Use the word "goal" to express overall values and desires and use the word "objective" to denote specific operational targets.
Strategize in steps: pick a "way forward" and then, as you make progress, new opportunities and challenges will present themselves.
If the leader's strategic objectives are just as difficult to accomplish as the original challenge, there has been little value added by the strategy.
1.) Define the challenge; 2.) Explain why it exists.
Bad strategy is the active avoidance of the hard work of crafting a good strategy.
The value of debating a strategic thesis: disciplined conflict calls forth stronger evidence and reasoning.
Group irrationality is a central property of democratic voting; do not make decisions by democratic consensus.
The essential difficulty in creating strategy is not logical; it is choice itself. Strategy does not eliminate scarcity.
Universal buy-in usually signals the absence of choice.
Leadership inspires and motives self-sacrifice.
Strategy is the craft of figuring out which purposes are both worth pursuing and capable of being accomplished.
Ascribing the success of Ford and Apple to a vision, shared at all levels, rather than pockets of outstanding competence mixed with luck, is a radical distortion of history.
All strategic analysis starts with the consideration of what may happen, including unwelcome events.
A good diagnosis simplifies the often overwhelming complexity of reality by identifying certain aspects of the situation as critical.
A guiding policy is an overall approach chosen to cope with or overcome the obstacles identified in the diagnosis.
Coherent actions are steps that are coordinated with one another to work together in accomplishing the guiding policy.
In business, the challenge is usually dealing with change and competition. Before naming performance goals, diagnose the specific structure of the challenge. Then select a guiding policy that builds on or creates some type of leverage or advantage. Finally, design a configuration of actions and resource allocations that implement the guiding policy.
A strategic question of first importance: "What's going on here?"
Defining the problem restricts the domain of the potential solution sets.
Diagnosis is a judgment about the meaning of facts.
Good guiding polices define a method of grappling with the situation and ruling out a vast array of possible actions.
A good guiding policy tackles the obstacles identified in the diagnosis by creating or drawing upon sources of advantage.
A guiding policy creates advantage by anticipating the actions and reactions of others, by reducing the complexity and ambiguity in the situation, by exploiting the leverage inherent in concentrating effort on a pivotal or decisive aspect of the situation, and by creating policies and actions that are coherent, each building on the other rather than cancelling one another out.
Seek simplicity for a strategic breakthrough.
Absent a good guiding policy, there is no principle of action to follow.
It is the hard craft of strategy to decide which priority shall take precedence; it requires letting go of optionality, perceived or otherwise.
Sometimes strategic solutions arrive in the form of shifting incentives to achieve cooperative goals.
A strategy coordinates action to address a specific challenge; unrelated operational actions may be good ideas but they're not, therefore, "strategic".
Strategic coordination is coherence imposed on a system by policy and design.
A powerful way to coordinate actions is by the specification of a proximate objective.
Decentralized decision-making cannot do everything. In particular, it may fail when either the costs or benefits of actions are not borne by the decentralized actors. The split may occur across organizational units or between the present and the future.
Coordinate in a few select, high leverage areas, otherwise decentralize.
Most strategic anticipation draws on the predictable "downstream" results of events that have already happened, from trends already at work, from predictable economic or social dynamics, or from the routines other agents follow that make aspects of their behavior predictable.
When there are threshold effects, it is prudent to limit objectives to those that can be affected by the resources at the strategist's disposal.
The more dynamic the situation, the poorer your foresight will be. The more uncertain and dynamic the situation, the more proximate a strategic objective must be.
To concentrate on an objective — to make it a priority — necessarily assumes that many other important things will be taken care of.
When there is a weak link, a chain is not made stronger by strengthening other links.
Resources and tight coordination are partial substitutes for each other.
Unless you can buy companies for less than they are worth, or unless you are specially positioned to add more value to the target than anyone else can, no value is created by acquisition.
Corporate leaders seek growth for many reasons. They may (erroneously) believe that administrative costs will fall with size. Also, leaders of larger firms tend to be paid more.
Healthy growth is not engineered. It normally shows up as a gain in market share that is simultaneous with a superior rate of profit.
Advantage is rooted in differences. No one has advantage in everything.
Think about where you don't have an advantage; and where you are actively disadvantaged.
Most advantages will only extend so far.
An investment or a strategic position is "interesting" when there is a way to deepen the advantages it possesses.
Standardization and efficiency are not the same as innovativeness. One must reexamine each aspect of product and process, casting aside the comfortable assumption that everyone knows what they are doing.
You can often benefit from putting corporate resources to use in other products or markets, but beware vaporous generalities such as believing that competitive strength lies in "transportation", "branded consumer products" or "management."
A brand's value comes from guaranteeing certain characteristics of the product.
One way to grab the high ground is to exploit a wave of change.
You exploit a wave of change by understanding the likely evolution of the landscape and then channeling resources and innovation toward positions that will become high ground — become valuable and defensible — as the dynamics play out.
Most industries, most of the time, are fairly stable.
Historical perspective helps you make judgments about importance and significance.
The challenge is not forecasting but understanding the past and present.
When change occurs, most people focus on the main effects; you must dig beneath this surface reality to understand the forces underlying the main effect and develop a point of view about the second-order and derivative changes that have been set into motion.
To make good bets on how a wave of change will play out you must acquire enough expertise to question the experts.
To glimpse the future, consider what "area of excitement" currently exist in research-oriented institutions.
Sometimes restating a general question in specific terms can help clarify confusion and drive insight.
Increases in fixed costs often force industries to consolidate.
Regulated prices are almost always arranged to subsidize some buyers at the expense of sellers. Highly regulated companies do not know their own costs. When deregulation arrives, such companies can be expected to wind down some product lines that are actually profitable and continue to invest in some products and activities that offer no real returns.
Predictable biases in forecasting often exist. In durable products, there is an initial rapid expansion of sales when the product is first offered, but after a period of time everyone who is interested has acquired one, and sales can suffer a sharp drop. After that, sales track population growth and replacement demand.
Faced with a wave of change, the standard forecast will be for a "battle of the titans" however often it is a disruptive or new entrant who ends up taking the field.
In a time of transition, the standard advice offered by consultants and other analysts will be to adopt the strategies of those competitors that are currently the largest, the most profitable, or showing the largest rates of stock price appreciation. They predict that the future winners will be, or will look like, the current apparent winners. This is naive extrapolation of trend.
We expect incumbent firms to resist a transition that threatens to undermine the complex skills and valuable positions they have accumulated over time.
Attractor state: how the industry "should" work in the light of technological forces and the structure of demand; an evolution in the direction of efficiency.
The critical distinction between an attractor state and many corporate "visions" is that the attractor state is based on overall efficiency rather than a single company's desire to capture most of the pie. In effect, ask yourself, "What will eliminate cost and margin?"
An accelerant toward this state is the demonstration effect, the impact of in-your-face evidence on buyer perceptions and behavior.
Ways to overcome organizational inertia: hiring managers from firms using better methods, acquiring a firm with superior methods, using consultants, or simply redesigning the firm's routines; it will probably be necessary to replace people and reorganize business units around new patterns of information flow.
Inertia by proxy: when streams of profit exist because of their customers' inertia. Many "disruptive" businesses grow rapidly until their example excites the incumbent's customers enough that the incumbent is forced to change their behavior to retain them, at which point the disruptor's growth stops or reverses and the incumbent arises from its slumber.
Use a hump chart to figure out at what point your cumulative gain to operating begins to trail off.
Entropy: Each quarter, each year, each decade, corporate leadership must work to maintain the coherence of the design. Without constant attention, the design decays.
If the design becomes obsolete, management's job is to create a new way of coordinating efforts so that the competitive energy is directed outward instead of inward.
Growth is the outcome of a successful strategy.
Make a list of "things to do, now" rather than "things to worry about" forces us to resolve concerns into actions.
Being strategic is being less myopic.
In estimating the likelihood of an event, even experienced professionals exhibit predictable biases.
What the kernel does is remind us that a strategy is more than a localized insight; it leads from the facts on the ground to diagnosis, thence to an overall directive, thence to action.
Shift your attention from what is being done to why it is being done.
Don't just go with your first strategic idea. Create a number of alternatives. A new alternative should flow from a reconsideration of the facts of the situation, and it should also address the weaknesses of any already developed alternatives. Try hard to "destroy" any existing alternatives, exposing their fault lines and internal contradictions.
Invoke a virtual panel of experts to judge and criticize your strategic ideas.
Good strategies are usually "corner solutions", they emphasize focus over compromise, focusing on just one aspect of the situation that's really critical.
Commit your judgments in writing to keep yourself honest and to have a record of your thought process and assumptions for later adjustment.
Choices, not products, have costs.
Author The LionPosted on April 5, 2021 Categories books, business, philosophyTags notes, review, Richard Rumelt, strategyLeave a comment on An Annotated Reading of Good Strategy/Bad Strategy
Quotes – How A Lie Betrays Itself
Falsehood always seeks to imitate the truth.
~Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges
Author The LionPosted on March 7, 2021 Categories wisdomTags lies, quotes, truthLeave a comment on Quotes – How A Lie Betrays Itself
Quotes – Success As A Foregone Conclusion
The winning side is most widely applauded when the victory is evident.
~Patrick O'Brian
Author The LionPosted on February 6, 2021 Categories wisdomTags Patrick O'Brian, success, victoryLeave a comment on Quotes – Success As A Foregone Conclusion
Quotes – From Where Revolutions Stem
Political trials are always vain formalities; for the very passions that produce the accusation also lead to the condemnation. Such is the terrible logic of revolutions.
~Alexandre Dumas, Twenty Years After
Author The LionPosted on January 19, 2021 Categories books, philosophy, political economy, wisdomTags Alexandre Dumas, quotesLeave a comment on Quotes – From Where Revolutions Stem
Notes on the Emergent eSports Industry
The eSports industry has been around for decades. Once thought of derisively as a feel-good appellation for fat nerds with repetitive-use wrist injuries hanging around in their parents' basements, the competitive aspect of video gaming is developing clout as a wildly popular, professionally organized and truly skilled arena for yet another form of human excellence. And it's beginning to attract serious athletes and serious money: Michael Jordan and the family office of David Rubenstein announced a $26M investment in aXiomatic in late 2018, and Mike Tyson announced an investment partnership with eSports organization Fade2Karma in May 2019.
With this as background, I recently attended the InvenGlobal eSports Conference 2019 at the University of California, Irvine, hoping to better understand the history, structure, trends and business and investment opportunities of this emergent and rapidly growing industry.
Keynote, Chris Hopper, RIOT Games, Head of ESports North America
The conference kicked off with an informative keynote address by Chris Hopper. Hopper is an integral part of Riot Games's League of Legends (LoL) tournament organization. LoL is the largest competitive eSports game, going from a rather modest world championship event in 2011 to last year's championship event which filled a World Cup-sized soccer stadium in South Korea with cheering spectators. The finals competition overall received over 100 million unique global viewers. Based near Los Angeles, Riot Games operates 20 global offices with over 3,000 people supporting regional LoL leagues and the global championship tournament.
One of the critical challenges for the industry according to Hopper is designing a "multi-decade game" ecosystem. The video game industry is notoriously faddish and driven by constant change in underlying computer hardware technology– each year brings upgraded computer capability which drives new design and graphical capabilities which in turn means that even a game with a solid core gameplay mechanic can be superseded by new releases that better utilize emergent technology. In Hopper's mind, creating a multi-decade franchise means that industry participants can build eSports, media, community and merchandising infrastructure around a single IP, justifying long-term investment commitment.
Another significant challenge is how to harness traditional professional sports dynamics and fandom phenomena with eSports. In this regard, LoL and other popular eSports games have borrowed a lot from the "ESPN playbook", adapting broadcast production strategies and even professional broadcasting talent from the physical sports world into the eSports broadcasting universe. This developing broadcast strategy unlocks the potential for advertising sponsorships and marketing partnerships with global corporate consumer product brands. For example, LoL partnered with Mastercard to allow fans to receive special game benefits by using a Mastercard to purchase tickets and other broadcast access to LoL events.
ESports organizers are also studying how to create a sustainable team and talent ecosystem. The institution of minimum salaries for LoL players allowed eSports athletes interested in participating as a full-time career to achieve economic security while committing to playing their favorite games for a living. As more players "go pro" and spend more hours playing games, there is also a need for applying sports medicine principles in the areas of sleep, psychology, nutrition and exercise to ensure that athletes do not suffer from burnout.
How to Embrace the Next Gen of eSports Pros
After the keynote I attended a panel about different parts of the player development infrastructure in eSports. One piece of player development revolves around creating an amateur, minor and collegiate league systems to better organize non-professional eSports. The impetus behind league development is not only to create a farm system that can train, identify and procure future professional athletes, but also to create more fans familiar with the competitive nature of eSports. Just like a person who played basketball in high school might become a fan of the NBA even if they don't play in the NBA, the belief is that creating organized systems for competing at various skill or other demographic levels with video games will lead to more people interested in spectating and following eSports competitions.
Another area getting a lot of attention in player management is professional discipline and sports medicine. Many current eSports pros are young (high school and college age) and have not held professional 9-5 careers prior to their sudden emergence into professional eSports. The novelty of this responsibility combined with the unique physical demands of eSports which lack normal sports body feedback (ie, unsustainable heart rate) but still involve fatigue and overuse can result in the phenomenon known as "burnout". Many eSports pros emerge onto the scene in a flash of blinding light and just as quickly disappear after a season or two finding the routine too hard to keep up with while living an imbalanced lifestyle.
To address this, sports medicine consultants in cooperation with eSports coaches and team managers have begun recommending specific guidelines for sustainable player development. These include things like daily playtime caps, weight training and other vigorous physical exercises outside or in purpose-built gyms, diet and nutritional standards and even mental health counseling and mindset training. As many eSports athletes are also students, some teams and organizations have taken to providing daily scholastic tutoring to support the players' intellectual development and to ensure they have a safety net should their eSports ambitions fail to develop successfully.
Interestingly, while most major competitive sports have a farm system in place that necessarily passes through a collegiate competition phase with recognized school teams and pro drafting after school, eSports lacks this. The NCAA recently decided to delay further research into developing an official support structure for eSports, so it's possible such a system never develops. This may be a unique feature of eSports in which emerging talent can go "straight to the pros". Regardless, the industry currently lacks rigorous recruitment databases and centralized, authenticated play statistics for players across time and games.
What do eSports Casters Do All Day?
With many interesting panels on offer timed simultaneously, I had trouble picking a follow-up to the eSports development panel but ended up settling on a discussion offering background to the life and career of professional eSports broadcasters. One thing I noticed about the panel was that they were all young, mostly-single men in their early thirties. Not because I was concerned with sexual diversity in the industry (a known point of controversy for social activism panderers) but because it seems that the unique demands of this career track cater to young men who do not need to support other family members.
While eSports broadcasters may only be on air, video or audio podcast, a few hours a day, they all reported spending many hours offline reviewing older video game footage for ideas and inspirations on their broadcasts, taking notes on players and competitive details and even playing the games in question themselves to understand the mechanics and gameplay possibilities to better inform their narration.
As many eSports broadcasters are current or former pro or semi-pro players themselves, another interesting phenomena was the "always on" nature of their work. After turning in an 8 or 10 hour official day, they might stay up another 2-3 hours running their personal Twitch stream, playing the game for and bantering with their personal fans. This not only builds their market value for their "daytime" career but is a source of added revenue and passion.
Most of the panelists reported that the tournament scene is currently fragmented, with numerous operators of varying skill and organizational capabilities hiring broadcasters to help cover their events. The result is a need for a dynamic personality who can go with the flow and maintain professionalism in the face of limited or uncertain information and changing broadcast schedules and needs. It's also an international scene, with many broadcasters flying all over the world in the course of a month to cover various events. Some broadcast partners with fixed or stationary league environments and infrastructures end up being the best to partner with because they also tend to have more talented production teams which leads to a better coordinated broadcast strategy for the announcer.
That being said, all broadcasters mentioned the dichotomy of knowledge gamer-broadcasters versus non-gamer producers which often creates mismatched knowledge sets and broadcast production hangups. Meanwhile, the unique nature of eSports as a "digitally native" and interactive medium and fan-base means that all broadcasters struggle with finding the right mix between providing knowledge analytics of gameplay developments and catering to the crowds incessant love for silly internet memes.
Intersection of Traditional and eSports
A panel convened with representatives from the traditional professional sports world who are establishing footholds in eSports was especially informative. There is a lot of best practice sharing going on between the industries which are, at the moment, almost entirely separate. On the one hand, eSports is adopting a lot of ideas from traditional sports in the areas of team formation and management, brand development, sponsorship and engagement strategies, fan base dynamics, broadcast production and league and tournament structure. On the other hand, eSports is characterized by being made up of young players and fans, being online and international natively, whereas traditional sports have more mature players and fan bases, are based upon regional identities and are just now trying to develop strategies for international awareness and digital marketing and support. As a result, established pro leagues like the NBA are keen to learn what they can from eSports and even make integrations where possible.
One example is the Milwaukee Bucks, which sponsor an NBA2K video game franchise online league and team. The strategic vision for these kinds of partnerships is that a physical team like the Bucks will be able to cultivate younger fans, including those outside of the normal regional Bucks fan market, who like the NBA2K video game series but might be unfamiliar with spectating and supporting the physical Milwaukee Bucks franchise.
There are also some noteworthy dissimilarities between the physical and eSports variants of each sport. When it comes to borrowing production talent from live action sports, most experienced people are used to producing one type of event for one game or sport in the course of a day. In eSports, a single tournament or event day might feature numerous types of games and teams, which places a unique demand on the time and talent of production teams to support the nuances between games and their fan bases.
Another dissimilarity is rate and severity of change in game "meta". In eSports, the "meta" or underlying rule set or programming rules of a video game can change rapidly and severly. Bug patches, new content and gameplay balance changes might be released weekly or monthly. In some cases these changes are so dramatic that previously dominant players lose their edge and new players adapt to the point of overcoming the previous pros. In live action sports, changes in rules and gameplay features happen at a glacial pace and are motivated by governing body decision-making rather than by game publisher or tournament organizers. Each respective industry has things to learn from the other here– for eSports, how to make competitive game environments stable and durable, and for live action sports, how to adopt iterative improvements to their game more quickly over time.
Cross-pollination is also occurring with regard to interaction with the fan base. Live action sports franchises purposefully cultivate the sense of "you can never get as close as you'd like" in their fans, whereas eSports fans are used to being able to engage directly with their favorite players, typically through their live Twitch feeds or message board postings.
As I listened to these examples of similarities and differences, I wondered about a technology like VR and what it promises for the eventual merging of these two industries. Besides being a small fraction of the overall video game industry, VR as of the present seems to have no real presence in the world of competitive eSports. Will there be a day where physically-fit live action athletes are competing online in VR-enabled eSports environments and having an advantage as a result?
The discussion related to the ways in which live action sports franchises are dipping their toes into eSports also led me to wonder about pro sports franchises developing eSports variants of their teams. This is already happening in limited ways (see this recent Bloomberg story on the Philadelphia Fusion) but as of right now it is not common for, say, the Boston Red Sox to also have an eSports baseball franchise. And will they also be the Boston Red Sox, or will they come up with a different team name and identity while being owned and operated by the live action team? Will an eSports franchise one day disrupt live action sports by buying out a struggling live action franchise team?
I missed a panel on the relationship between the Olympics and eSports but it's easy enough to see the opportunity for integration there as well. We're probably not too many years away from eSports, an all-weather, year-round competitive arena, taking up an event space in the physical Olympic celebrations. But where and when and what game will be the breakthrough?
One of the toughest questions for the long-term health of eSports is what is a long-term investment in the industry? The "shelf-life" of the average eSports game due to changing technology and faddish fans is 2-3 years, whereas the average career for professional athletes is ten years or more. This relative longevity means the brand value of players and teams can be developed over longer periods of time and thus support more sophisticated investment dollars and strategies.
The eSports industry is increasingly a serious business. Like the major live action sports franchises, the organization and structure of the sport is being developed to support the marketing platform business model. As much as the teams and leagues exist to develop and support the players and fans, they aim to create a valuable audience which can attract advertising and marketing sponsorship dollars. This is where the "real money" is and creating a sustainable ecosystem is key to winning the investment dollars necessary to then grab the marketing credibility. With the role of hype and fads in a technology-driven space creating short-termism, one valuable question to answer might be how one can sell "pickaxes and tents to miners" in this space. Until the industry fully matures, this might be the most lucrative, scalable and repeatable model.
Author The LionPosted on November 29, 2020 Categories business, entrepreneurship, investingTags eSportsLeave a comment on Notes on the Emergent eSports Industry
Quotes – The Heights of Criticism
Very little achievement is required in order to pity another man's shortcomings.
~George Eliot, Middlemarch
Author The LionPosted on October 30, 2020 Categories wisdomTags George Eliot, quotesLeave a comment on Quotes – The Heights of Criticism
SimState: The Myth Of Free-Market Singapore
When looking for case studies of free market societies throughout history Singapore, a polity built from scratch in 1965, is an oft-cited example of how enlightened political leadership can stand back and let the market build a prosperous community for all. But was Singapore really guided by free market thinking at the executive political level? And should the free market in Singapore get the praise (or the blame) for subsequent economic developments? In consulting the autobiography of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's first and longest-serving executive politician, an autobiography which covers the life and career of both Lee and the modern country of Singapore itself, the answer seems to carry a bit of nuance.
Chapter 1 Going It Alone
Singapore was a former British colony and military base/trading depot. It had no "hinterland" economy. It was dependent upon British military subsidies, the bases on the island costing nearly GBP$100M and losing these subsidies early on was a major fear of Lee's.
Lee's Top 3 Concerns after independence:
Get international and UN recognition
Defense against Malaysian encroachment
"how to make a living for our people"
Chapter 2 Building An Army from Scratch
Rebuilding the military was a jobs program and an opportunity to create loyal party adherents and factional interest groups. Utilized conscription to build national unity and, modeled on Israeli military, be able to field a large fighting force in a short amount of time.
One official lamented that, "The Spartan approach to life does not come about naturally in a community that lives by buying and selling." [The need for a military was to protect the political system from foreign dominance, not the commercial system.] "we were building up our defense forces to protect our fledging state."
"Those who enlisted in the SAF as a full-time career would be guaranteed hobs in the government, statutory boards, or the private sector when they left full-time service to go into the reserves."
Perceived and actual political threats from Malaysia and Indonesia and a desire to racially and ideologically unify the Singaporean citizenry and re-educate Chinese cultural norms led LKY to build SAF w/ Israeli training and partnerships with "Western democracies" for practice
Chapter 3 Britain Pulls Out
Contribution of British bases to the economy of Singapore in 1966, 20% of GDP.
LKY referred to by a British official "as good a left-wing and democratic socialist as any in this room" and "the government of Singapore… is the only democratic socialist government… in Southeast Asia" and "his housing programme… defies challenge in anything that has been done in the most advanced social democratic communities."
Later, LKY "attended a Socialist International conference in Stockholm to keep in touch with British and European socialist party leaders."
Singaporean government lost lots of money on the devaluation of the British pound, in which many of their reserves were held, and feared the departure of British troops in mainland Asia would shake investor confidence, particularly investors in Hong Kong, resulting in a desire to have an arms buildup for credible defense.
Chapter 4 Surviving Without a Hinterland
Recommendations of Dutch economist Dr. Albert Winsemius in 1965:
common market agreement with Malaysia
resumption of barter trade with Indonesia
seek favorable entry for Singapore-manufactured goods into US, UK, Australia and New Zealand
Sent trade delegation to Africa to try to drum up business but failed. Fears of unemployment since 1959 led to desire to industrialize. Formed Singapore Tourist Promotion Board to try to address unemployment.
To promote industrialization, "we protected locally assembled cars, refrigerators, air conditioners, radios, television sets and tape-recorders, in the hope that they would later be partly manufactured locally. We encouraged our own businesspeople who set up small factories to manufacture vegetable oils, cosmetics, mosquito coils, hair cream, joss paper and even mothballs!
Spent "vast sums" on infrastructure only to find the "Jurong industrial estate" mostly empty. Formed an Economic Development Board which got into JVs to recycle paper products with a businessman with no manufacturing experience, as well as ceramics without technical know-how. Also JVed with a Japanese shipbuilder but it did not prove profitable versus ship-repair, which was labor intensive.
"I was convinced our people must never have an aid-dependent mentality" yet formed the Bases Economic Conversion Department whose job was "to retrain and redeploy redundant workers, take possession of land and other assets the British were vacating, put them to the best use, and negotiate mitigatory aid." Resulted in 1968 agreement for GBP$50M aid package to be spent on British goods and services, 25% being grants and 75% being loans.
Generated S$4-5M in annual USN ship repair business for the Singaporean government. The Singaporean government formed private entities to manage shipyards which later transformed into public companies.
Sought to "leapfrog" regional economies to become trading partner with developed world (America, Europe, Japan) to attract manufacturers to export to developed countries.
Formed Development Bank of Singapore, "DBS helped finance our entrepreneurs who needed venture capital because our established banks had no experience outside trade financing and were too conservative and reluctant to lend to would-be manufacturers", ie, subsidized a top-down manufacturing-centric policy.
Keng Swee, first chairman of the Economic Development Board, "every time he drove by a school and saw hundreds of children streaming out, he felt downhearted, wondering how to find jobs for them when they left school."
"The government played a key role in attracting foreign investments; we built the infrastructure and provided well-planned industrial estates, equity participation in industries, fiscal incentives and export promotion. We established good labor relations and sound macroeconomic policies, the fundamentals that enable private enterprise to operate successfully."
Also, by end of 1970 had "issued 390 pioneer certificates giving investors tax-free status for up to five years, extended to 10 years for those issued after 1975"
"During this period, China was in the mad throes of Mao's Culturual Revolution. Most investors thought Taiwan and Hong Kong too close to China and headed for Singapore."
"By the late 1970s we had left our old problems of unemployment and lack of investments behind us. The new problem was how to improve the quality of the new investments and with it the education and skill levels of our workers."
"After several years the EDB finally convinced Rollei, the German camera manufactuer, to relocate in Singapore. High German wages had made them uncompetitive."
"We left most of the picking of winners to the MNCs that brought them to Singapore. A few, such as ship-repairing, oil-refining and petro-chemicals, and banking and finance, were picked by the EDB or Sui Sen, our minister of finance, or myself personally. Our ministry of trade and industry believed there could be breakthroughs in biotechnology, computer products, specialty chemicals and telecommunications equipment and services. When we were unsure how new research and development would turn out, we spread out bets."
"Our job was to plan the broad economic objectives and the target periods within which to achieve them."
"We did not have a group of ready-made entrepreneurs such as Hong Kong gained in the Chinese industrialists and bankers who came fleeing from Shanghai, Canton and other cities when the Communists took over. Had we waited for our traders to learn to be industrialists we would have starved."
"The government took the lead by starting new industries such as steel mills (National Iron and Steel Mills) and service industries such as a shipping line, Neptune Orient Lines (NOL), and an airline, Singapore Airlines (SIA)."
Development Bank of Singapore, Insurance Corporation of Singapore, Singapore Petroleum Company; Chartered Industries of Singapore (CIS), a mint and a factory for small ammunition. Pg 67, conversion of "successful" public monopolies into private companies.
With economic consultation from a Dutch academic, Singapore embarked on economic experimentation which involved at various times a combination of tariffs and no tariffs, tax concessions for new MNCs, extensive investment in infrastructure and at times direct government investment in "from scratch" national industries, which despite being successful and profitable were mysteriously privatized at points. The Singaporean government benefitted from political tailwinds created by economic chaos in other parts of the world, but also attracted FDI by pledging not to interfere in business affairs for those relocating to Singapore (1973 oil crisis being a good example).
Chapter 5 Creating a Financial Center
To become a world financial center, Singapore's government realized it needed to lift foreign exchange control restrictions on all currency transactions between Singapore and territories outside the sterling area.
"I had decided in 1965… that Singapore should not have a central bank that could issue currency and create money. We were determined not to allow our currency to lose its value against the strong currencies of the big nations… so we retained our currency board which issued Singapore dollars only when backed by its equivalent value in foreign exhcange. The MAS has all the powers of a central bank except the authority to issue currency notes."
Why did Singapore need its own currency if it had no plans to expand its issuance?
"We attracted international financial institutions by abolishing withholding tax on interest income earned by nonresident depositors. All Asian dollar deposits were exempted from statutory liquidity and reserve requirements."
"The foundations for our financial center were the rule of law, an independent judiciary, and a stable, competent and honest government that pursued sound macroeconomic policies, with budget surpluses almost every year. This led to a strong and stable Singapore dollar, with exchange rates that dampened imported inflation."
"To meet the competition from international banks, the MAS encouraged the four largest local banks (known as the "Big Four") to acquire and merge with the smaller local banks to become bigger and stronger."
1985 "The SES [Stock Exchange of Singapore] was closed for three days while MAS officials… worked around the clock with the Big Four banks to arrange an emergency "lifeboat" fund of S$180 million to rescue the stockbrokers."
Government of Singapore Investment Corporation formed to manage the Central Provident Fund, Singapore's pension scheme.
"For over three decades, I had supported Koh Beng Seng on restricting the access of foreign banks to the local market. Now I believed the time had come for the tough international players to force our Big Four to upgrade their services or lose market share… the MAS liberalized access to the domestic banking sector by allowing qualifying foreign full banks to open more branches and ATMs. It lifted limits on foreign ownership of local bank shares."
Singapore sought to be a global financial center, becoming a key chronological link in the chain between markets in SF, Tokyo and Zurich. Singapore went without a central bank but did establish a "monetary authority" and currency board similar to HK. Special rules and taxes were established to attract foreign financial capital, but a primary attractor was stability in an unstable region. The government managed a pension scheme and sovereign wealth fund which somehow earned above market returns with a conservative stance. The banking sector was partially deregulated and globalized after a period of productive controls.
Chapter 6 Winning Over the Unions
"I started my political life fighting for the unions as their legal adviser and negotiator."
"I owed my position as prime minister largely to the trade union movement."
"We banned all strikes in certain essential services"
Britain's withdrawal of military announcement in 1968 led to Employment Act, Industrial Relations (Amendment) Act and Trade Unions Act amendment, "These laws spelled out minimum employment conditions and placed limits on retrenchment benefits, overtime bonuses, and fringe benefits. They set out uniform provisions for rest days, public holidays, working days, annual leave, maternity leave and sick leave. They restored to management the right to hire and fire, to promote and transfer, functions the unions had encroached upon during the years of industrial strife… we made it illegal for a trade union to take strike or industrial action without a secret ballot."
1972, sets up National Wages Council "with representatives from unions, management and government"
"The NTUC [National Trade Union Council] expanded into health services, child care, a broadcasting station, a seaside resort hotel for workers called Pasir Ris Resort, and a country club, the Orchid Country Club with a golf course by Seletar reservoir. It also developed quality condimuniums its members could buy… To make them affordable, the government provided state land at nominal prices."
LKY's political career began as a union consultant and advocate. But when he came to power, he threatened unions with treason if they striked. A series of reforms were put in place which reduced union power and enhanced company/management power, but it all takes place within a system of "managed relations" where the government is a "stakeholder". For some reason, the national union organization has made conglomerated investments in semi-private for-profit businesses and co-ops aimed at worker welfare, which the government has helped subsidize.
Chapter 7 A Fair, Not Welfare, Society
"We believed in socialism, in fair shares for all. Later we learned that personal motivation and personal rewards were essential for a productive economy. However, because people are unequal in their abilities, if performance and rewards are determined by the marketplace, there will be a few big winners, many medium winners and a considerable number of losers. That would make for social tensions because a society's sense of fairness is offended." [set this up as the leading quote for the essay?]
"A competitive, winner-takes-all society, like colonial Hong Kong in the 1960s, would not be acceptable in Singapore. A colonial government did not have to face elections every five years; the Singapore government did. To even out the extreme results of free-market competition, we had to redistrivute the national income through subidies on things that improved the earning power of citizens, such as education. Housing and public health were also obviously desirable. But finding the correct solutions for personal medical care, pensions, or retirement benefits was not easy. We decided each matter in a pragmatic way, always mindful of possible abuse and waste. If we over-re-distributed by higher taxation, the high performers would cease to strive. Our difficulty was to strike the right balance."
CPF policies imposed a total savings rate of 50 percent of wages.
"I further amended the law to give the government the power to acquire land for public purposes at its value on a date fixed at 30 November 1973. I saw no reason why private landowners should profit from an increase in land value brought about by economic development and the infrastructure paid for with public funds."
On the development of HDB and resettling of farmers and squatters: "Compressing 30 years into a few pages makes it all appear simple and straightforward. There were enormous problems, especially in the early stages when we resettled farmers and others from almost rent-free wooden squatter huts with no water, power or modern sanitation, and therefore no utility bills, into high-rise dwellings with all these amenities but also a monthly bill to pay. It was a wrenching experience for them in personal, social and economics terms."
"As incomes increased, fewer patients chose the lower-cost wards, which had the highest government subsidies, and opted for wards with more comfort but lower subsidies. We considered but rejected a means test to determine which wards patients were entitled to use; it would have been difficult to implement. Instead we encouraed people to upgrade to the ward they could afford by making clear differences in comfort between different types of wards. It was in effect a self-administed means test." so is the market!
"Government expenditure has averaged 20 percent of GDP, compared to an average of 33 percent in the G7 economies. On the other hand, our development expenditure has consistently been much higher than that of the G7 countries."
"Our aim is to have partial or total cost recovery for goods and services provided by the state. This checks overconsumption of subsidized public services and reduces distrotions in the allocation of resources."
The Singapore government was dominated by one party, PAP, for its modern history. They very openly bought botes with their welfare programs. But they sought to make many of these programs less generous to ensure their solvency. The government forced high rates of saving on workers which it deployed to finance infrastructure spending and welfare housing. Lower tax rates compared to other developed countries helped Singapore remain competitive. LKY is very clearly NOT a fan of the free market in this chapter.
Chapter 8 The Communists Self-Destruct
On fighting Malayan National Liberation Front/communist guerrillas: "Could we have defeated them if we had allowed them habeas corpus and abjured the powers of detention without trial? I doubt it."
Singapore had two major political factions, the Communists and the PAP. After a series of political blunders and internal turmoil, the communists formally exited the electoral scene leaving the PAP to run unopposed for 30 years, allowing them long and consistent control over policy-making. They used "ends justify the means" and subverted sound legal principles to obstruct and detain communists.
Chapter 9 Straddling the Middle Ground
"while overall sentiment and mood do matter, the crucial factors are institutional and organizational networks to muster support… in our HDB new towns, there is a network that leads from the RCs to the MCs and CCCs on to the prime minister's office…"
"The PAP had countered the opposition's 'by-election' strategy with the electoral carrot that priority for upgrading of public housing in a constituency would be in accord with the strength of voter support for the PAP in that constituency."
The PAP faced no serious political opposition and turned to various patronage and vote-buying schemes to solidify support. It seems the HDB housing projects also allowed the PAP to corral supporters and have a physically defensivle political communications network. Many political opponents made claims of corruption only to be sued, sometimes into bankruptcy, by LKY. The few times his own PAP members were charged with libel, they settled out of court. LKY employes specious reasoning to defend this authoritarian legal approach on the grounds that to let the charges go unmolested would threaten his political power– he has a pure, unviolated record of ethics in a region known for corruption!
Chapter 10 Nurturing and Attracting Talent
"Traditional methods of choosing marriage partners had been ruptured by universal education: The government had to provide alternatives to the family matchmakers of old."
"I gave special income tax concessions to married women"
Stop-at-Two policy of the 1960s "Without that policy, family planning might never have brought population growth down, and we would not have solved our unemployment and schooling problems."
"Difficulties over our talent pool were aggravated when the rich Western countries changed their policies on Asian immigration… [the US] decided to accept Asian immigrants, reversing more than a century of its whites-only policy."
The Singapore government was obsessed with population management, first trying to limit births on Malthusian grounds, then trying to promote the marriage and childraising of educated parents on the grounds of skewing the IQ or "talent" pool. Many subsidies Singapore granted to educate its citizenry was "leaked" as people immigrated to other countries to pursue opportunity, partly in response to changing immigration policies elsewhere (such as the US in the 1960s). Now it has taken to liberalizing immigration for high IQ emigres, especially those with jobs, to try to increase the "talent pool."
Chapter 11 Many Tongues, One Language
LKY enforced language laws on the population in a desire to achieve social harmony and globally integrated economic progress. He encountered much popular resistance but believes these policies proved prescient given global events. It also allowed for a more homogenized culture.
Chapter 12 Keeping the Government Clean
"Human ingenuity is infinite when translating power and discretion into personal gain."
Singapore got high marks for honesty of government in a region where corruption is an ingrained part of culture. LKY attributes this cultural success to the ideological rigor, invasive investigative authority given to the anti-corruption bureaus and the willingess of government to pay high salaries to public servants to attract them away from the private sector [distortion]. But who watched the anti-corruption officers to ensure they weren't on the take? And why would this be a corruption issue if government didn't have the power over the economy? LKY again admits that the PAP bought political favors with public resources by engaging in welfare spending once in office.
Chatper 13 Greening Singapore
"Hundreds, eventually thousands, of pirate taxis clogged our streets and destroyed bus services… only after 1971, when we had created many jobs, were we able to enforce the law and reclaim the streets."
"It was immensely better that we competed to be the greenest and cleanest in Asia. I can think of many areas where competition could be harmful, even deadly."
"We phased out the rearing of over 900,000 pigs on 8,000 farms because pig waste polluted our streams."
"After we had persuaded and won over a majority, we legislated to punish the willful minority… if this is a 'nanny state', I am proud to have fostered one."
Much in the vogue in the 1970s, LKY got swept up in environmentalism and made it a major policy priority to "green" Singapore; this included building public utility infrastructure to control waste and pollution, but also involved "nudge" legislation to change or ban cultural habits deemed offensive or a nuisance. Agricultural practices were changed as were retail practices (pirate taxis, street hawkers). LKY put great emphasis on the "morale" of greening and its affect on visiting dignitaries and VIPs. There is no discussion of the cost of these programs or whether there were alternative approaches to accomplishing the stated goals: he embraced charges of "nanny statism."
Chapter 14 Managing the Media
"Our journalists are exposed to and influenced by the reporting stytles and political attitudes of the American media, always skeptical and cynical of authority. The Chinese and Malay press do not model themselves on newspapers in the West. Their cultural practice is for constructive support of policies they agree with, and criticism in measured terms when they do not."
"My early experiences in Singapore and Malaya shaped my views about the claim of the press to be the defender of truth and freedom of speech. The freedom of the press was the freedom of its owners to advance their personal and class interests."
"That was exactly what we had the right to do, to seek a mandate to deal firmly with foreign, in this case colonial, interests in the press. It was our declared policy that newspapers should not be owned by foreigners."
"I needed the media 'to reinforce, not to undermine, the cultural values and social attitudes being inculcated in our schools and universities. The mass media can create a mood in which people become keen to acquire the knowledge, skills and disciplines of advanced countries. Without these, we can never hope to raise the standards of living of our people… Freedom of the press, freedom of the news media, must be subordinated to the overriding needs of Singapore, and to the primacy of purpose of an elected government.'"
"A few years later, in 1977, we passed laws to prohibit any person or his or her nominee from holding more than 3 percent of the ordinary shares of a newspaper, and created a special category of shares called management shares. The minister had the authority to decide which shareholders would have management shares."
"We decided in 1986 to enact a law to restrict the sale or distribution of foreign publications that had engaged in the domestic politics of Singapore."
Freedom of the press is clearly not a cherished ideal in Singapore, in so far as PAP-controlled government is concerned. The law allows various forms of censorship used to control "foreign influence" of the press but there is no discussion of whether this was also used to control domestic press.
Chapter 15 Conductor of an Orchestra
LKY built a national airline, but insisted it make a profit. He engaged in enormous airport building projects without explanation for why they were necessary. He used the unions to pressure foreign politicians. LKY banned jury trials in Singapore, he appointed lawyers, many friends from his school days, to many important ministries related to commerce. He regulated the housing system and enforced desegregation quotas which he knew depressed the capitalization of the housing stock and went against the ethnic groups' desires to segregate. Is this multi-cultural harmony, based on edict?
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2003/08/cult_of_personalism.html
At one point, he brags that Uganda has more female hotel managers than any other country in Africa. "We have got four managers, and another two assistant managers." This is a strange thing for the president of an entire country to worry about—but Amin seems to feel that he has to worry about it: Only if he controls everything, and only if he can keep the country in line, will Uganda prosper. Success, Amin seems to believe, is a matter of will and of heeding his good advice. People just need to work harder—women need to get up at "about 5 o'clock in the morning"—and love their leaders. If something's wrong, then, it's because a citizen has personally failed, not because the system is screwed up. Amin had no ideology. ("We are not following any policy at all," he says at one point.) Like so many Third World tyrants, he was not a fascist or a Communist. His idea of the world was purely personalistic. He was an Amin-ist.
[similar to the # of car competition between LKY and indonesian leader; also, the rejection of ideology by LKY, following his own intuition]
Author The LionPosted on October 20, 2020 Categories books, history, political economyTags Lee Kuan Yew, SingaporeLeave a comment on SimState: The Myth Of Free-Market Singapore
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Hailing from the same essence of rugged beauty as it's predecessor, while adding extra flare, comes the Durango Red guitar strap. Highly distressed red cowhide is crafted into the strap profile and tailpiece which creates an untamed stalwart canvas for musicians looking to stand out. The base and matching tailpiece are then outlined in rich red stitching. Ethos signature 3.18mm comfort-crafted padding is backed with a glove-soft, pebble grained cow lining for maximum player comfort.


text:
ACRL - Framework for Information Literacy
Media Literacy: ACRL - Framework for Information Literacy
Understanding and evaluating news. Includes issues of "fake news", bias, ethics, "alternative facts", etc
Framework - Distilled
ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education
This Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (Framework) grows out of a belief that information literacy as an educational reform movement will realize its potential only through a richer, more complex set of core ideas.
The Framework is organized into six frames, each consisting of a concept central to information literacy, a set of knowledge practices, and a set of dispositions. The six concepts that anchor the frames are presented alphabetically:
Authority Is Constructed and Contextual
Information Creation as a Process
Information Has Value
Research as Inquiry
Scholarship as Conversation
Searching as Strategic Exploration
. . . Because this Framework envisions information literacy as extending the arc of learning throughout students' academic careers and as converging with other academic and social learning goals, an expanded definition of information literacy is offered here to emphasize dynamism, flexibility, individual growth, and community learning:
Information literacy is the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning.
The Framework opens the way for librarians, faculty, and other institutional partners to redesign instruction sessions, assignments, courses, and even curricula; to connect information literacy with student success initiatives; to collaborate on pedagogical research and involve students themselves in that research; and to create wider conversations about student learning, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and the assessment of learning on local campuses and beyond.
This work by Libby Young is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
<< Previous: Exercises
Last Updated: Mar 15, 2022 5:15 PM
URL: https://libguides.furman.edu/medialiteracy

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


CLAMPIT – a design software for welding clamps in metal work – has come to a successful close after a 2-year R&D project cycle.
Elevated temperatures and external forces during welding processes often cause materials to deform and distort, rendering the material unsuitable for use. This in turn leads to increased manufacturing costs, material waste and lost time adding more burdens to European metal-working companies.
employs over 2 million people.
With the support of EU funding, the Clampit project has developed a high-end decision support system to automate clamping design calculations for SMEs in the welding business.
The system uses computer-aided design to determine the optimal distribution of clamping points and clamping forces for a given weldment configuration based on previous welding works stored in the software's knowledge base thus helping the system to learn from each weld.
Furthermore, Clampit includes a fast and efficient distortion prediction module incorporating low-stress, no-distortion technology. As a result, it cuts costs and time while increasing the performance of welding fixtures and product quality by reducing engineers' margins for error.
The two-year long Clampit project was coordinated by Ateknea Solutions Hungary with the participation of Boluda División Industrial S.I (Spain), Barida Makina Ltd. (Turkey), Nemetschek Ltd. (Bulgaria), PRVÁ ZVÁRACSKÁ (Slovakia), TWI Limited Ltd. (UK), Robotec (Slovakia) and Intern Kft. (Hungary). The project was co-funded by the European Union's Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7).


Tribal opposition continues to mount against the federal government's proposed removal of Endangered Species Act (ESA) status from the iconic Yellowstone grizzly, and the subsequent state organized trophy hunts that will result from delisting the bear.
Resistance that began with the Northern Cheyenne in Montana has now swollen to include all of the tribes in that state, plus every tribal nation in Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Nebraska, a plurality in Idaho, and some of the most influential tribes in Oklahoma, including the Cherokee and Chickasaw nations.
With the recent declarations and resolutions passed by the Navajo Nation and the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation, Arizona and Utah can now be added to the list.
"The unprecedented nature of this tribal coalition in opposition to delisting the Yellowstone grizzly bear provides testament to the enormous significance of this sacred being within our cultures," says Chairman Jason Walker of the Northwestern Band of Shoshone.
"The Navajo Nation stands in solidarity with those tribal nations in opposition to this policy," President Shelly informed FWS Director Dan Ashe. "This policy violates tribal spiritual and religious rights, and infringes upon tribal sovereignty," he said.
Prior to Euro-American contact, grizzlies populated much of the Southwest, and President Shelly touched upon the significance of the grizzly in traditional Navajo culture.
The Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation's resolution presents in detail the spiritual, cultural and historic significance of the grizzly in Shoshone culture.
In their respective pronouncements, both nations decried what all thirty-five tribes in opposition to delisting the grizzly identify as the government's failure to adhere to established consultation protocols.
In response to growing frustration that "FWS has continued to ignore some 35 official tribal Resolutions and Declarations from federally recognized Indian tribes," the eleven–nation Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council (TLC) told Secretary Jewell that it, "fully supports the proposed Tribal Consultation Summit on the Yellowstone Grizzly Bear, planned for this summer." GOAL Tribal Coalition, the organizational fulcrum of tribal opposition to delisting, introduced the summit.
"This tribal initiative is absolutely necessary to ensure that the 'meaningful tribal consultation' mandated by Executive Orders issued by both the Clinton and Obama administrations are honored by FWS," says Chairwoman Roxanne Sazue of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe (CCST). "Treaties, Congressional Acts, Secretarial Orders, and Executive Orders cannot be ignored," she emphasizes.
Following a recent federal and state interagency grizzly bear meeting, Servheen advised the media that the tribes did not present "a problem" to the government's desire to delist the grizzly.
Since 1997, in the ancestral homelands of the twenty-six Associated Tribes of Yellowstone, Servheen has authorized the killing of over 300 "problem" grizzlies. FWS currently estimates the Greater Yellowstone grizzly population at around 700 grizzlies, but the approximations have fluctuated dramatically in recent years due to different counting techniques.
All thirty-five tribal nations in the coalition contend that the Yellowstone grizzly is not recovered under the criteria of the ESA, contrary to FWS's position.
"The grizzly once inhabited most of what became the Western United States, but today, not unlike tribal people, they survive on less than 2% of their original country. With only 2% of their historic population, the grizzly bear cannot be considered a recovered species appropriate for removal from ESA protections," writes Chairman Walker.
"The grizzly bear must be considered within the context of the entirety of its historic domain pre-European contact. Many areas of biologically suitably habitat exist where the grizzly once roamed, all of them in ancestral tribal homelands where our ancestors walked, and where the grizzly should walk again," he insists.
Several former government biologists support the tribes' contention, including David Mattson, whose research as a member of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team (IGBST) was central to bringing the Yellowstone grizzly back from the brink.
"Whatever the population estimate is, the Greater Yellowstone grizzly population is not large enough to provide any meaningful buffer against deteriorating habitat conditions," he warns.
"The situation with Yellowstone grizzlies is somewhat unique in the extent to which the science has been politicized," Mattson discloses, a point the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe emphasized in its recent statement.
The Navajo Nation has appealed directly to Secretary Jewell and FWS Director Ashe to establish the suggested moratorium on delisting the grizzly.


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Frontiers in Genetics
Enrico Baruffini
University of Parma, Italy
University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Walther Parson
Innsbruck Medical University, Austria
Sabine Lutz-Bonengel
Freiburg University Medical Center, Germany
Opinion ARTICLE
Front. Genet., 06 June 2019 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2019.00518
A Nuclear mtDNA Concatemer (Mega-NUMT) Could Mimic Paternal Inheritance of Mitochondrial Genome
Jorune Balciuniene1* and Darius Balciunas2*
1Division of Genomic Diagnostics, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, United States
2Department of Biology, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, United States
In most animal species including humans, mitochondrial genome (mtDNA) is inherited strictly uniparentally from the mother (Ladoukakis and Zouros, 2017). Specific molecular mechanisms have been found to ensure elimination of paternal (sperm) mitochondria from early embryos in species as diverse as the nematode, the fruit fly and the mouse (Rojansky et al., 2016; Sato and Sato, 2017). The precise mechanism responsible for elimination of paternal mitochondria in humans remains to be elucidated. Nonetheless, paternal contribution of mtDNA to the fertilized egg would be negligible, as mtDNA molecules in the oocyte outnumber those in a sperm by over four orders of magnitude (Pyle et al., 2015). Earlier reports claiming paternal mtDNA contribution in humans via identification of paternal haplotype in an individual or via inference of mtDNA recombination signatures from population data are scarce and remain uncorroborated independently (Awadalla et al., 1999; Kivisild et al., 2000; Schwartz and Vissing, 2002; Taylor et al., 2003). Even extreme-depth sequencing of human trios failed to provide evidence of paternal mtDNA leakage (Pyle et al., 2015).
In a recent issue of PNAS, Luo et al. (2018) presented evidence for biparental inheritance of mtDNA in three unrelated human pedigrees. High-depth sequencing of whole mtDNA from blood was performed on 17 family members spanning three generations. Thirteen individuals displayed a high level of mtDNA heteroplasmy (ranging from 24 to 76%), indicative of the presence of two mtDNA haplotypes. To exclude the possibility of sample mix-up and/or contamination, mtDNA was re-sequenced by two different CLIA-accredited laboratories on newly obtained blood samples.
Paternal inheritance of mtDNA was observed in 4 out of 6 tested offspring of three heteroplasmic fathers (one in each pedigree). The offspring were heteroplasmic for one of the paternal haplotypes in addition to the maternally inherited mtDNA haplotype: 1 out of 2 children of II:4 in Family A, 1 out of 2 children of II:3 in Family B, and both children of II:3 in Family C. The haplotype transmitted by the heteroplasmic fathers was deduced to have come from the deceased paternal ancestor of generation I of each family. Heteroplasmic mothers were expected, by default, to transmit both haplotypes to their children, which was confirmed by sequencing children of two of the heteroplasmic mothers. All 3 children of mother III:6 in Family A were heteroplasmic, while only 1 out of 2 children of mother III:6 in Family C was tested and found to be heteroplasmic (Luo et al., 2018).
Repeated paternal transmission of mitochondria at a high level of heteroplasmy in the offspring cannot be explained by known genetic mechanisms. Luo et al. suggest the presence of an autosomal dominant mutation in a gene responsible for the elimination of paternal mitochondria. They further speculate that the same mutation would not only compromise the elimination of paternal mitochondria but also lead to selective replication of a specific paternally transmitted mtDNA haplotype across several generations.
Subsequent commentary and letter pointed out that Luo et al. have not entirely ruled out the possibility of nuclear origin of sequenced mtDNA, but did not provide a clear and testable alternative hypothesis to explain the data (Lutz-Bonengel and Parson, 2019; McWilliams and Suomalainen, 2019; Vissing, 2019). Hereby we postulate that observations of Luo et al. are consistent with presence of a multicopy mtDNA concatemer that is integrated into the nuclear genome ("Mega-NUMT") and segregates in an autosomal dominant manner regardless of its parental origin, not depending on the transmission and selective amplification of paternal mitochondria.
Our hypothesis is plausible because:
1. In each family, it is always the same mtDNA haplotype that segregates across generations and contributes to the observed mtDNA heteroplasmy. A nuclear mtDNA concatemer would be expected to segregate in an apparently autosomal dominant fashion, an inheritance pattern that is compatible with the family data presented in the study.
2. Sequencing methods used in the study do not differentiate between nuclear and mitochondrial origin of DNA templates. The DNA samples analyzed by the authors contained both mitochondrial and nuclear genomes. The long-range PCR amplification employed by the authors would successfully amplify from both genomes, resulting in sequence reads from both the mtDNA molecules as well as the postulated full length mtDNA concatemer (Figure 1).
3. Observed level of heteroplasmy is compatible with a multicopy mtDNA concatemer (Mega-NUMT). Considering 100 mtDNA copies per blood cell [average number of mtDNA in blood among control individuals ranged from 50 to 136 in different reports (Mengel-From et al., 2014; Memon et al., 2017; Svendsen et al., 2019)], 75% of apparent mtDNA heteroplasmy could be imitated by a concatemer of 300 mtDNA copies. Therefore, concatemers of 100–300 copies of mtDNA (or 1.5–6 Mb in size) would be sufficient to explain the levels of heteroplasmy observed by Luo et al. (2018).
4. Nuclear transfer of mitochondrial DNA is a well-established phenomenon in eukaryotes and is an ongoing evolutionary process. Human genome contains >700 fixed NUMTs (nuclear sequences of mitochondrial origin) with new insertions contributing to human variation (Hazkani-Covo et al., 2010; Calabrese et al., 2012; Dayama et al., 2014).
Figure 1. Amplification of mtDNA by long range PCR. (A) Amplification on a circular mitochondrial chromosome. mtDNA is shown in magenta, with the H-strand origin (OH) indicated by an arrowhead. Two long-range PCR primer pairs are shown as red and blue arrows, with corresponding amplicons in dashed red and blue lines. (B) No double-stranded amplification product would be generated from partial or single-copy NUMTs dispersed in the nuclear genome. Autosomal DNA is shown in black. Dotted lines indicate failure to amplify. (C) Amplification of full-length mtDNA sequences on a linear two-copy head-to-tail concatemer integrated into an autosome. Note that the amplicons in (A) and (C) are identical, making it impossible to differentiate between the long range PCR products obtained on a circular mitochondrial chromosome and a nuclear mtDNA concatemer.
Several additional indirect lines of evidence support our hypothesis. Instances of multimeric NUMTs have been reported previously: a partial 7.9-kb mtDNA segment of 38–76 tandem copies is present in the nuclear genomes of domestic cats (Lopez et al., 1994), while complex NUMTs patterns are common in plants (Hazkani-Covo et al., 2010). The latter is believed to be the result of the concatemerization of organelle (mitochondrial and plastid) DNA prior to nuclear integration (Richly and Leister, 2004). Moreover, catenated mtDNA structures have been reported in normal human cardiac tissue (Pohjoismäki et al., 2009), and mtDNA concatemers that were presumed to be a product of rolling circle amplification have been observed in human fibroblasts exposed to reactive oxygen species (Ling et al., 2016). These observations suggest that mtDNA concatamers do occur, and their integration into the nuclear genome is possible. While a concatemer of 100+ copies could be considered unusually large, concatemers of such size range have been observed in animal transgenesis experiments (Garrick et al., 1998; McGrail et al., 2011; Yong et al., 2015).
Our hypothesis can be readily tested using methods that differentiate between mtDNA sequences of nuclear and mitochondrial origin. One way would be to separate cytoplasmic (mitochondria-containing) and nuclear fractions prior to DNA extraction, PCR amplification and sequencing. Also, we would expect that due to differences between nuclear and mitochondrial transcription machinery the "nuclear" mtDNA haplotype would be underrepresented in total cellular RNA, as detectable by RT-PCR or RNA-Seq. Finally, a multicopy concatemer may be detectable by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) as previously reported for identification of concatemeric transgenes in mouse cells (Schubert and Schmidtke, 2010).
While the scenario we propose is hypothetical, it is not as paradigm-changing as the high-level, selective inheritance of paternal mitochondria would be. It should therefore be formally ruled out before asserting the biological and evolutionary impact of paternal inheritance of mitochondrial genome.
All authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.
We thank Dr. Sudhir Kumar and Ms. Aiste Balciunaite for critical comments on the manuscript.
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Keywords: human genetics and genomics, mitochondrial DNA, paternal inheritance, biparental inheritance, mitochondrial disease
Citation: Balciuniene J and Balciunas D (2019) A Nuclear mtDNA Concatemer (Mega-NUMT) Could Mimic Paternal Inheritance of Mitochondrial Genome. Front. Genet. 10:518. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2019.00518
Received: 03 March 2019; Accepted: 13 May 2019;
Enrico Baruffini, University of Parma, Italy
Patrick Chinnery, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Walther Parson, Innsbruck Medical University, Austria
Sabine Lutz-Bonengel, Freiburg University Medical Center, Germany
Copyright © 2019 Balciuniene and Balciunas. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Jorune Balciuniene, balciuniej@email.chop.edu; Darius Balciunas, darius@temple.edu