Yesterday I called Wells Fargo in an attempt to make some progress on one of my goals for the year.
I explained to the customer service rep that our house was “severely underwater”, and that I wanted to find out what my options were.
She asked if I’d filed a Damage/Loss of Value claim.
I replied no, and asked what that was.
Turns out, she thought “underwater” meant we were suffering from flood damage.
If only.
Tags: california
I’ll be honest. I didn’t get more than a few chapters into Robert Wright’s Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny. Sorry Chris.
It’s not that it wasn’t interesting or insightful. It was both. But it was also 400 pages of dense academic prose and it wasn’t really working out for me as bedtime reading before it came due at the library.
Wright argues that over time, human society trends toward more complexity and more interdependence. As our collective brain expands, life for everyone improves. We play nonzero sum games, over and over and over again, and everyone is better off because of it.
The logic makes sense. If you depend on your neighbor for meat and he depends on you for grain, you’re less likely to attack each other. Fast forward a few thousand years, if we depend on China for iPhones and they depend on us for jobs, we’re less likely to attack each other.
Wright’s LONG term, BIG picture view makes the petty discourse that dominates our politics seem silly.
Are we on a predestined path to global peace and prosperity? I don’t know… I didn’t make it to the end.
On the plane back from China, I killed a couple hours with Start Something That Matters by Blake Mycoskie, the founder of TOMS Shoes. It caught my attention with the entrepreneurial angle and clinched the deal with the shoe connection.
TOMS, Shoes for a Better Tomorrow, is a remarkable brand. Everyone knows TOMS and everyone loves TOMS. If you’re not familiar with their story, they give a pair of shoes away for every pair they sell.
Did you know they’ve only been around since 2006? It’s hard to believe, but I think illustrates the strength of a powerful story.
As a charity, TOMS is terribly inefficient. Other organizations help far more people for far less money. But that’s the beauty of TOMS — it’s not a charity.
It’s a for-profit company with a do-good story.
And it’s a good reminder that economic growth has lifted more people out of poverty than every charity, welfare program and NGO combined. Non-profits have their place, but the profit-seeking companies typically generate more innovative solutions to the problems of the worlds poor (as argued in Capitalism at the Crossroads).
The book is a quick and interesting read, especially if you’re interested in how TOMS got started. It’s inspirational in that it makes you wonder what other businesses the “one-for-one” model could be applied to.
Tags: shoes
The Great Wall was even cooler than expected (and it was expected to be awesome), because in the late afternoon, we had the whole place to ourselves.
With the setting sun and the rolling hills, it was pretty magical.
Despite the vast length of the wall, it’s track record as a defensive monument was spotty. Apparently some traitorous (or just scared) guard opened the gate for Genghis Khan.
Well worth the trip.
Did You Know?
The Great Wall is not “the only man-made structure visible from space.” (Consider the fact that any two-lane highway is wider.) But if you zoom in far enough on Google Earth, you can see it.
Tags: china
