When Capitalism Isn't "That Capitalistic" But Socialism Still Sucks

Wikipedia Mentions Capitalism as:

"Capitalism is the economic system in which the means of production are owned by private persons, and operated for profit^[1] and where investments, distribution, income, production and pricing of goods andservices are predominantly determined through the operation of a free market^[2], rather than by central economic planning."

While Wikipedia Mentions Socialism as:

Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and the creation of anegalitarian society.

So what am i refering to?

I am refering to the recent interventions from governments, especially the US government in the functioning of markets. The US government has recently announced a bailout package of $700 billions and previously bailed out freddie and fannie bank, merill lynch,  AIG.

The point of this post is if companies are bailed out like this by governments that pride themselves as the keepers of capitalism, doesn't this bcome socialism of sorts?

USA has been pressurising, pleading, lobbying to get developing countries like India, China, Brazil and others to cut subsidies on various sectors, including oil, agriculture, banking sector. While these countries hold government control and regulations on ownership and investment in many sectors and themselves manage and run many sectors for example railways in China & India, USA and its representatives have always been unhappy with this stand.

India was about to lift up its foreign investment limit in the banking and insurance sector in 2009. And we should thank god that the current crisis has come to the forefront before that. 

But things are a little different now. US goverment will buyout troubled assets of many banks and mortgage landers freeing them of bad assets and making available some cash. But 700$ Billions isn't that much, is it?

By the way while i was researching to find out how a economic bailout can help boost economy, i came across, keynesian theory.This theory was coined by British economist John Maynard Keynes in early twentieth century somewhere around the economic depression. 

According to him, some people may have a liquidity preference which would see them rather hold money than buy new goods or services, which therefore raised the prospect that the Great Depression would not end without what he termed in the General Theory "a somewhat comprehensive socialization of investment."

In other words, a goverment intervention is required to help a economy come out of a depression. 

We don't know if this theory works or not, but we will soon find out. From what ever history i know, US came out of the last depression because of world war 2 when they got the chance to supply allied armies with military hardware.

So i am just hoping this theory will work out for them and we do not have to deal with the second option!. 

Coming back to the topic, the US government is certainly acting like a socialist state. In a freemarket, true to capitalist principles, these troubles companies should be allowed to go bankrupt. Thats how a free market functions, surivive or die. 

So do we all finally agree that its ok to be a little socialistic once in a while? George ?

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Western Man Has Stopped Evolving

According to a latest study by scientists in UK, people in the developed world have stopped evolving because they no longer have to struggle to survive.

Bah, 5 year old kids know it in this part of the world, they have been seeing George Bush long enough.

But seriously, western man still needs to struggle. For every western man, there are 11 indians, 22 chinese, 7 phillipinos, 2 pakistanis, 1 bangadeshi, 2 malaysians and 12 other random guys from random countries waiting to take his job and do it for half the cost or less.

Infact this very moment there will 10 Indians who are preparing to take the job of the scientist who did this study.

Talk about struggling to survive.

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Aren't There More GTD Blogs Out There Than Readers?

I have started to wonder lately if there are more getting things done blogs in the blogoverse(short for blog universe).

On last count Google blog search turned out 1,818,289 blog posts mentioning GTD, there is a whole bloody website by the name of GTDtimes that has many contributors writing on the same topic.

I mean isnt that getting a bit too much, if there was so much content to write about on this topic David Allen would have written 10 books by now. So what are these guys writing anyways?

Frankly it seemed to me they are all writing the same thing over and over and over again. I wish someone would tell them to stop. People are reading so much of this getting things done stuff, they dont get time to practise what they learn.


So what is this fad? Lifehacker hangover.

The popular blog style website that started writing about productivity online years ago and was probably the first ones to evanglise DavidAllens GTD method online has written about GTD and tools for long now.

There huge popularity has egged all other wannabes to think writing the stuff lifahacker writes about will get them popular. And then we end up with 1,818,289 blog posts and no readers. Its funny.


From what i could understand by reading Davids book is this

1. Take all incomplete tasks/ideas/actions outside your head and write them somewhere, anywhere paper or a word document or god frickin anywhere
2. Plan on how to complete each one of them by wriitng down next actions and keep completing them
3. Keep your bloody information documented so when you need them you can find them
4. Dont be a egoistic dog and delegate when you cant do something


GTD bloggers, please stop, find a new topic to blog. If you have no topics, Read more books. Write less. Fine?

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Google and Yahoo Ad Deal Delayed By A Month

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google Inc, will not be pleased by a delay in the ad deal with yahoo because of a inquiry by justic department as reported by washingtonpost

The justice department is looking at the deal to see if it will create a monopoly in the online advertising market. Not yet, it wont.

If Yahoo marries Google, it would.

Will it happen? Yes.

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FutureVision: Ni Hao, Welcome to Moon, This is year 2050 and this is Moon, Republic of China

While i was on the topic of China, i just cldn't help mention that China has had a successul mission to space. They also plan a manned mission to Moon soon and create a space station on Moon by 2020.

US & Russia both have landed on Moon previously in an attempt to outsmart each other and wasted bilions of tax payers money for no real gains. Though they did setup international space station, they did not do it on Moon, which led to the speculation that there are aliens on moon already.

Come to think of it, setting up a space station on moon, should be easier than having a space station that is orbiting like satellites right?


If China does infact setup space station on moon, will they proclaim the land on moon as theirs. Space tourism will be a great revenue maker in the time to come and surely China would want a pie out of that.

But this will be a problem for people who have already bought land on moon. Apparently there are companies that are letting people buy land on moon and even sending them certificates of ownership. Gimme a break. Actually i want to know what is the current real estate price there.

But China isn't alone. It takes more than one fool to have a race right. India is launching its own mission to space soon called chandrayaan. I know people would argue that this is a display of our technological innovation(or russias?) but i just have one thing to say. Feed all first. Still got an argument?


But this is nomore a country thing, the popular payment processing company papypal's former co founder, started a company called spaceX, which had its first successful run in space recently.

Everything is ok, i mean China wants land on moon, good, they need it. Actually we need it too. Its ironical, Canada has so much land, no people, India & China have so many people, no land. 


I just hope they dont find lot of natural resources there, specially radioactive material. If they do, two things will happen.


1. Moon will be abused to get all its natural resources.
2. Moon will becoming the dumping ground for radiactive waste.

And like we always do, we would not realise the implications of this on the enviorment till its too late.

But this is not the worse that could happen, i mean China loves cutting of access right? What if it cuts off our access to moon light?


Update: Did you know Google Inc. has moon contest of 30 Million Dollars?

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Which is the best english accent out there?

Ni hao?(chinese - how are you?)

I was listening to a oXygen tutorial here on youtube today and noticed the author was speaking in a very chinese accent(or japanese?)

Althrough i didnt understand much of it i enjoyed the accent a lot. if you havent yet taken a peep at the video, do it, its fun.

I prefer calling this accent chinglish(chinese+english). Its hilarious whenw e mix english with various accents. There is hinglish(hindi+english) which is in a league of its own. There is Inglish(Indian speaking english) which is what most Indians sound like in USA, which is again in a league of its own.

With so many verisons of english accent going around which literally make this language seem like a completely new language on its own, i wonder which accent is the most entertaining.

I wish there was a contest out there which lets net users vote for the best and most entertaining accent out there. It would be fun.

Till that time, i declare Chinglish as the best english accent out there, heck its a new language altogether better than english, china rocks.

Till later Zai Jian!(chinese - good bye)

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Don't be evil, what about being outright stupid?

Recently i have been running a Google adwords campaign and saw some silly mistakes in my account. I am kind of sure, i am not the only one who has faced this issue, i am also sure Google would compensate for this.

So what happened here is this, i have bid a maximum of 0.04$ for a keyword. So ideally each click should cost me 0.04$, but Google has charged me anything from 0.04$ to 0.06$ for each keyword.

Its easy to understand by just looking under the Current Bid, Clicks, Avg. CPC, Cost columns for all keywords in the screeshot i am presenting below.
The question is if i have bid 0.04$ for each click, and i have recieved 1 click, how can the cost of one click be 0.05$. Or am i getting my maths wrong?

I have uploaded a screenshot you can click to see in full screen below. Take a look at this screenshot here

The bigger  question is that this is not a startup company who has just started operations and facing some operational glitches, there have been billions spent on Google adwords, most by folks who are not that analytical or tech savvy to look at the data Google provides in great detail. How many millions have passed through to Google this way?

Incase i have just got something horribly wrong please let me know!

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