I may start using Facebook again

It has been a long time since the last time I spent much time on Facebook daily. It is true that many people use Facebook to update and spread the news, and sharing really good stuffs. Sadly, they only account for a few percent. The rest was not that inspirational. To me, Facebook was some kind of a stage where lonely souls expressed their feelings in order to attract attention from others. However, recently, there have been two “innovations” coming from Facebook that may change how we use Facebook and perhaps, the whole Internet world.

I will talk about the first innovation, also the more important one. It was the idea to collect fee when you send a message to an inbox of a complete stranger. The fee varies among $1 to $100 and depends on many factors such as how close you and the receiver are linked or how famous that person is. It may take up to $100 if you want to send Mark Zuckerberg a message. That idea seems stupid because no one would pay such a lot of money to send a message to another person while they can do it for free with e-mail? Facebook must be in very desperate need of money then. It is true that Facebook is facing some problems at the moment. However, such problems are not big enough for them to risk their reputation for a little money. If we look closely and carefully at the idea again, you may find it may shape how we use Internet and even get rid of e-mail. Normally, our e-mail receives mails from our friends, or the people we know, and from complete stranger, mostly advertising companies. The current Internet world has led to a fact that we may get tens of mails every day and most of them are annoyingly undesirable. Those unwanted mails usually come in bulk and are called “spam”. With the advance of technology nowadays, we have made great effort to reduce the spam. However, such move is never good enough. We still sometimes receive e-mails luring us into using some medicine and more badly, sometimes we have to check the whole spam box because we are afraid we may miss some important one. Here comes the solution: Facebook. Facebook’s new idea restricts people from spamning other people inbox. If you are not on the friend list of a particular person, you have to pay to send him a message. And unless it is some kind of important business, no one will pay to do that. That makes those advertising companies no longer able to send thousands of e-mails simultaneously. We are free from the fear of spam. However, not only do users benefit from that idea but Facebook also does. First, the money. Then, the users. If people want to send message with no charge, they have to get other people to use Facebook and be on their friend list. After months of slow growth, Facebook has finally found a new way to get users and to get their users more connected. Now that more people will recognize the new power of Facebook message, it will ring a bell to other companies. Currently, we are using Gtalk for chatting, iMessage for SMS, Skype for Video call, Gmail and Hotmail for mail. Now we have Facebook messenger which can do all these tasks. And the most crazy part is that not only is Facebook Messenger free but it also is better. I believe, in the not so far future when people get used to idea of using Facebook for everything, Facebook phone will appear and it may be the end of other companies.

Though the idea of collecting fee seems big and promising, it has not come to reality yet. There is another innovation from Facebook recently and it is very near to us now. I want to introduce to you the new search engine of Facebook: Graph Search. Again, Facebook would look stupid if it wants to compete with Google and, perhaps Bing, in the search battle field. Google has become a verb already. However, Facebook does stand a good chance of winning this game, at least among their users. Normally, we use Google to ask THE WORLD about everything. Now we can use Facebook to ask OUR FRIENDS AND THE WORLD about everything. It changes the way how you put those key words into the search field. With Facebook, you may ask and figure out “restaurants liked by friends living in my hometown” or “books read by friends who works at a bank”. It is true that you can still ask Google for such things. However, the answers may not be as satisfied as Facebook’s. So how are your Facebook’s answers different and event better than Google’s? It is because the Facebook’s answers come from your friends who are somehow not so different from you. In other words, the answer is personal. It aims directly at you. If the idea comes into practice, and it will do, it will make all the “Like” and “Checking” make sense because Facebook’s new search engine works according to that. That is one of many moves move from Facebook to make everything connected. There have been relationship pages and now the graph search. Now I can easily find photos of me and my girlfriend. More interestingly, if Facebook cannot show the result, it will show Bing’s links. It will make Facebook search not so different from Google because Bing is already a big competitor in the game. The only concern will be the privacy. But Facebook has already updated a new privacy policy to help user control their content better. I have to say that I am really looking forward to experiencing the Graph Search. And I believe most of us will spend some hours searching for weird things such as “friends like Justin Bieber and Nicky Minaj”.

In the battle among the Internet giants, there is hardly any bad move. There have been rumors about Facebook going down soon. However, such scenario will not come soon in the near future. Those two new innovations will not only help Facebok go father but also may shape the Internet world again.

Kz

Jan, 2013

Collecting ATM Fee: Why so serious?

Since March 1^st, a new law which allows banks to collect fee from ATM interbank transaction will come into practice. Before the new law, banks are not able to charge their customers for transaction from their own ATM.  However, the new policy has raised many negative reactions from the public. Why do people complain about that? And are they making sense?

Lots of comments on the law express a desire to know why banks still charge fee while their money at bank account receives only a very low interest rate. They compare their current account with the deposit account which receives much higher rate and then state that they have already paid the transaction fee through the low rate of their account. It is true that the current account always have a lower interest rate than deposit accounts. But that does not mean the customers do not have to pay for the service they use. The ultimate rule in economics goes “there is no free lunch”. Since the birth of personal property, people have always looked for a safe place to hide their property. They have used boxes and anything which has a hole and a lock. They have buried money in their garden or put it in the roof top. Now, we have a better way to keep our money safe: banks. We deposit our money into our bank account and are freed from the fear that one day a theft will make us a beggar. We can withdraw our money at any moment. We do not need to carry lots of cash and instead use a small well-protected plastic card to pay for our purchasing. We can do all that due to our bank. And we still demand them to pay more money for us and supply service for free? Put ourselves in a bank’s shoes and consider whether such demand is fair. In Vietnam, however, banks still pay for our current account in order to encourage people to stop using cash. In contrast, in other developed countries, such as America, current accounts do not receive any interest rate because it is against the law. Therefore, to attract more customers, those banks provide many free services, such as ATM transactions. So, your call: Interest rate or 1,000VND [$0.05] for each occasional transaction? I am not rich man. I am kind of poor instead. But I still have to wonder what we can do with 1,000VND these days?

There are many comments about the fact that ATM system is too bad and therefore banks do not deserve to collect the fee. I myself experience some frustration when I try to withdraw money from the ATM. But to say that the whole system is too bad is not completely true. There are moments that the system does not work well due to some reason such as overloading, … There are some banks that do not have strong ATM systems. Sometimes, I passed by lots of ATM though I was in need of withdrawing money because they were not from my bank. I was afraid of being overcharged. Due to the new policy, all banks are now in one price standard. Now, there are only 2 kinds of ATMs: my bank’s ATM and others. And I can know how much I will be charged. The new policy will connect the whole system, which will make it better and therefore, deserve the payment. Moreover, fee will actually help to improve the system, at least better than when the banks do not collect it.

Perhaps people have not carefully looked at the new policy. The new policy only regulates the cap price, which means the maximum fee that a bank can charge us, not the floor price. Banks can still choose not to charge. They can apply any price in the range from 0VND to 3,000VND. If you are not satisfied with your bank’s fee policy, just turn to other banks. Of course, at first, there will hardly be any banks which have a lower fee than others. However, competition will make banks run a race to reduce their fee in order to attract more customers. Some people may not be able to change their bank because their boss uses it to pay their salary. But think again and further, why does the boss keep using the bad banks? There must be some benefits for both him and the company that they are working for.

Since I study economics and banking, sometimes I have small lesson for the new comers. Always before my lesson about banking, I asked them about their reasons to choose a bank. The answers usually were safety (in the first place), interest rate (in the second place) and convenience (in the third place). There was little concern about the ATM fee.  Now we are exaggerating the whole thing. Some people have already declared to stop using ATM and instead turn to bank service at big buildings which can take much more time. It is their choice and therefore we cannot say whether they are right or wrong to do that. However, to me, I would be very appreciated if they do that. Now that less people use the ATM, the whole system will get smoother. I will enjoy a better service and perhaps even get a job, because the demand for banking tellers is rising.

And good luck waiting at the chair. You’d better go to the bank early to have a good number.

Kz

Hot winter

This is the greeting season time. Normally, as seen in previous years, the center must be decorated lavishly by now. But it is not at the moment. There are decorations, but for the new year event. Big hotels fire their Santa Claus and reindeers. The only Christmas-themed thing that still thrives well this year is Christmas tree which does not cost too much. What happens? Do people no longer enjoy Christmas?

Fortunately and sadly, the answer is no. People still love Christmas. The only problem is that they cannot afford it now.

It has been a tough year.

There was a lot of hope when this year began 11 months ago. It is the year of dragon.  After year 2011 with too much inflation that dragged down people’s lives, many hoped that the economy would fly again with the dragon. It has not. In contrast, things seem worse than the last year.

It is true that in the first months of this year, there were some positive signs. VN-Index recovered and spiked. Inflation halted. Trade deficit decreased. However, it was just a matter time till the problems appeared. Together with the decrease of inflation was the GDP growth reducing. Inventory increased to 30% as VN-Index stopped going up.  Credit became more and more inaccessible since interest rate was still too high. More than 200,000 enterprises went bankrupt. Foreign Direct Investment left us. For a moment, Vietnam paused.  People had no idea what happened and what to do next.

It is difficult to find out the root of all the problems. Was it because of the financial sector? Or the real estate market? In economics, nothing stands alone. They all have links and connections to others. Banks were the victims and also the culprit. They had given too much credit to the real estate market. The estate market, on the other hand, had been valuated too high. How can people with income of just $700/month afford a $70,000 apartment? The bubble formed. Anytime a bubble formed, bad things were going to happen soon. Things might get worse since it was the housing bubble, the most valued asset in the economy. The bubble busted when hardly anyone was able to buy a house, even speculator. Banks had fueled the bubble. Now they are the victims of that bubble. Debt was not repaid. Capital flow was stuck. Bad debt rate was over 8%. Only a few constructions still run as projected. Without the demand from construction sector, cement, brick and wood companies faced great difficulty. Banks, therefore, were afraid to lend more. Ironically, people, too, were afraid to borrow. The whole economy lost its good credit. And without credit, nothing can continue. After all, the answer for all the problems is simple, and sadly, familiar: the misallocation of capital. Business is not only about making money. It is the art of allocate and connect things.

When things are good, mistakes are often ignored. People can do whatever they want as long as they do not get caught and what they do still brings profit. But now things do not look bright. People turn against each other.

In the spring of 2012, one of the biggest banks of Vietnam had problems with its share owners. Months later, a leader of a famous bank was arrested. Then, that bank’s CEO resigned. Stock market crashed, losing $5 billion. Rumors helped spread the panic. People look more closely to the recent banks’ activities, their assets and equities to know what was really going on. Finally, it came out that there were too many problems and violations. Crossed-owning, gold business, interest rate, … There was one M&A between two banks which caused the former CEO of one bank to be a normal officer. However, she was still lucky because many bankers were fired. Financial sector is now a dead field.

Government policies were issued to improve the situation. Gold is now a monopoly business. It would be idiot to judge the effect of those policies now. All the policies have its lag. It needs time to blend into the market and effect the economy in long-term. However, monopoly is never a good idea.

Though things seem dark, there is some brightness recently. People are talking about reconstructing the whole system. In the next year, the housing market may hopefully get a little warmer. Bad debt will be paid due to the preservation fund.

If we ever have a chance to read newspaper or watch TV at this time of a year, we will see or hear some predicts about the next year. However, not this time. Things have never been so unstable and unpredictable. The storm has not been over. The dragon has failed to bring Vietnam fly with it.

May God help me and my friends.

Kz

in the last days of 2012. seven months before his graduation.

Hunters and Pickers

Have you ever wondered why women usually appear in joke about traffic accident while men are more frequent drivers? Normally, women are considered as traffic disaster. They are said to have a bad sense of space. But is it true? And from where did such concept origin?

Since the dawn of mankind of history, we had divided the labor force into two groups: hunters and pickers. Hunters were the ones going far, chasing and killing animals. In contrast, pickers stayed close to the tribe, picking fruit from trees and taking care of the younger generation. While picking fruit demanded little afford, running after a deer and throwing pikes required much energy. Therefore, in order to improve the productivity of the whole community, men were responsible for hunting and women took the job as a picker. Since then, this division has led to a biological gap between men and women.

To understand how the gap had appeared, it is necessary to look at the job of each sex.

As mentioned above, hunters’ task was to killing the animal and bringing it back to the tribe. Simple as it may sound, such task has been the main motivation for the evolution of all creatures since the appearance of the first cell. To hunt an animal required the hunter to patiently wait for his prey’s mistake, to run after and away from the animal for many miles, and to observe the target from a long distance. The closer the hunter got to the prey, the greater the chance that he would be recognized was. Recall the moment we want to see something clearer, what do we do? We squint. And so did the hunters. They had to squint to make the vision better. They might not see things around them, but they had to see the prey as far as possible. The longer their vision was, the better. Moreover, being a hunter does not only require a good vision, but also a good sense of space. Normally, hunters had to travel a long distance to find the food. Therefore, without a good sense of space which could help him to determine the direction, he would not have been able to find his way home. Women did not go that far from the tribe, they did not need to obtain such ability.

However, all the things above belong to the past. Do they still hold true in this modern day when we no longer have to hunt or pick? The answer is “yes”, such things still exist, at least for now. Here comes the evolution machine. Men with better visibility would have more food and therefore, stand a better chance to help him and his tribe to survive, and spread his advantage to the next generation. Though after years of civilization, hunting is no longer so necessary or popular, one’s ability is genetically coded and will not be gone easily. Moreover, other tasks have appeared and required the ability of a hunter. 4000 years ago, it was the need of throwing a spike precisely. 3900 years later, it was the standard for soldiers to use gun from a very far distance. Nowadays, in transport, it is the ability to see a burden approaching and determine the direction. Due to their ancestors’ reputation as hunters, men still hold responsibility for such task and therefore, the ability to sense the space and look as far as possible has never been unused or lost.

Women, as pickers, in the other hand, did not need a long vision. However, as they stayed at home protecting their child, they needed something else. The advantage in women’s eyes over men’ is its ability to have a wider vision. They had to notice every movement in their surroundings. The wild animals could jump out at any moment and from everywhere. That is why women often criticize her spouse for looking too directly at a different girl. We men have to do this, because we do not have such a wide vision as yours.

Kz

A hunter

Just and fair

Let me ask you a question.

What is your reaction when you know about someone being bullied?

Keep it in your mind.

Would your answer change when I give you more information about the bullied? What if the bullied is a real nerdy asshole who we all hate in high school? Would it change how you look into the situation?

Let me tell you one thing. The one who bullies does not care much about his target. He does not care whether the bullied-to-be is a nerd, a nice guy or a bad guy. The only common thing among the bullied is their physical and emotional weakness in relative with others.

The same thing happens when we read about women got raped. If she is a normal woman, we feel sorry. If she is a teen, wearing mini skirt, flirting with boys all around and acting slutty, we would think different. Some of us may think that she deserves that. Again, rapist hardly cares. He locks his victims at the moment he sees them.

Why do we keep thinking like that? Why do we feel less sorry if the victims are not good persons?

It is because we do not want to be like them.

We want to believe that because those people’s behaviors are not appropriate, they deserve all the bad things happening to them. Throughout the history of mankind, we have evolved to serve one purpose: to control our life. We learn about geography to predict the next earthquake, the next volcano bursting. We study animals to have to better way to deal with those wildlife creatures. However, there still remain things that are beyond the human’s reach. We cannot tell what will happen to us when we walk out of the door. Unless we have a time machine, there will never be a way to know whether we will be bullied, raped, or murdered. The best thing we can do so far is to calculate the probability of the events which may happen to us. Therefore, we have “invented” a concept that can help ease that pain. That concept is familiar to us. That concept is called “moral”.

We all have to agree that all the religions’ premise is to teach us to behave well and be moral. They all teach us that good men rest heaven, bad men go to hell. If you do good things, good things will happen to you. If you mess up, you deserve punishment. Except for some “special” beings, we all believe in that. We want to control our life by believing that if we do not do bad things, we will not end up in bad situations. By doing good things, we ensure that our life will be happy. It sounds logical. But logical is not enough. Life is not that simple and fair. It is more complicated. Believe it or not, some bad guys are still enjoying their life without any punishment for their sins. Vice versa, some good men who devote their life to the better society are now struggling, wondering whether they are doing the right thing. Logic, moral has their limits. After all, “moral is just a fiction used by the herd of inferior human beings to hold back superior men” [Friedrich Nietzsche]

However, I am not typing these words to discourage people from doing good things and be devil. Let’s continue doing charity, just because we want to see people happy, not because of a desire to be treated fair in the next incarnation. Instead, I want to provide a different perspective. No one deserves to be bullied, raped, robbed or murdered. The only reason for our feeling that some of the victims deserve what happens to them is because we want to control our life. Life is not that simple. To make the world more fair and just, we have to make it harder for evil thrive, not just by reducing the number of its potential targets.

Kz

[special thanks to "You are not so smart"]

The endless fight

Once every four years, people around the globe save their time and keep their eyes on an event whose consequences may shape the way the world function. I am not talking about the World Cup or Europe Football Cup. I am talking about the US presidential election. America is doubtlessly the dominant force in the modern world and its leader, the US president, is one of the most powerful men on Earth. Therefore, it is worth paying attention to see who will lead the world in the next 4 years. Though there are many parties in America, the presidential election is said to be the battle between the two mains parties: GOP and Democracy party.

There is a very common belief that the Republicans support the rich while the Democrats stand for the rest, the middle income. We usually hear of the GOD’s cutting-tax-for-the-rich policy, and also listen to the Democrat’s argument against it. Bear in mind that in any particular society, the rich only accounts for a very small part in the population (Recently, they are called the “1 percent”, while the rest is regarded as, of course, the “99 percent”). It makes us wonder why in such a democracy world like American, where every vote counts the same no matter where it comes from, the Republicans try to pursue a tax policy that goes against the majority of the society. Unless they are not so insane, there must be some reasons for that.

First, though the rich only make up for only 1% in the society’s population, they hold more than 80% of the total assets. It is needless to say that they are wealthy and powerful. They are the employer, the CEO, the celebrities, the one who has great influence on others. When a movie star states that he will vote for the Republican candidate, most of his fans will follow that action. When a company has its environment influenced by the boss who is a faithful Republican, the employees may change their political perspective. Besides, it is worth noticing that the poor do not vote as much as the rich do. When you have little to lose, you do not care about who will lead you. You do not have much faith in the system. In contrast, the rich consider voting right one of their basic human right, and they want to vote because the consequence may have an impact on their wealth. That helps explain why averagely the gap between the amounts of votes for both sides are not so much wide.

Second, Republicans pursue such policy because unlike their counterparts, they are conservative, which means they believe in the market mechanism. Their moto is “Capitalism makes everyone unequally rich. Socialism makes everyone equally poor.” One of the basic rules in economics is that we have to choose between efficiency and fairness. Put it simple, if you raise tax to make the world more equal and fairer, you will, as a consequence, demotivate people to work hard because a considerable amount of their income is now taken away. The whole society suffers from years of slow growth. Vice versa, cutting tax for the rich may drain the budget for social service which can help the whole society. Though we never know which option is more preferable, we are sure that the extreme extent of both ideas only leads to disaster. Hitler, Soviet in the late 1970s and 1980s are evidence against extreme equal society while the recent economic crises are the proof for the other side. Such different perspectives and beliefs have led to different targets between Republicans and Democrats for years.

Last but not least, the difference between Republicans and Democrats may be just an imagination. There are rich men who vote for Democratic Party as well as poor men who support Republicans. No candidates and no politicians will ever say that he will raise tax from the middle class and cut tax for the rich, or at least, not that obvious. However, if we look at their plans more carefully, we may find out what is truly behind those beautiful lines. For example, Mitt Romney this year has announced his tax plan is to reduce tax rate together with deduction. He also states that under no circumstances does he reduce the tax for the rich. But when analyze his tax rate reducing, we figure out that among many tax rates which are cut there is tax rate for capital gain. Normally, when we have our money in a bank, we are taxed from the capital gained from that. The same thing applies to bond, stocks and other investments. However, now when the tax rate for capital gained is cut down, you can earn more money from that source. Well, after all, the whole society benefits from that policy. The question is who has the most of the cake. In this situation, the rich win more than the poor. Most of the income of the middle class is spent on basic needs such as food, clothes, energy, house, but on investment on capital. Vice versa, the rich invest much money on stock, bank deposit and earns a lot. Therefore, such tax policy will have the whole society get richer but at difference paces.

Today is the election day in US. No matter who wins this time, he is going to enjoy a successful term. Not because he is good (maybe he is, hopefully), but because now it's time for a recovery. 

Vote wisely.

kz

We drink lots of beer, so what?

A recent research has showed that Vietnam is the top beer drinker in South East Asian. It illustrated that in the year 2011, Vietnam consumed nearly 2.6 billion liters of beer. Averagely, each of us drank nearly 30 liters.  Lots of people have complained we are drinking too much beer. They even blame our beer consumption for the recent economic downturn. But if beer is that bad, why don’t we ban it?

It is true that according to a research from A SINGLE company, Vietnamese last year consumed the total amount of nearly 2.6 billion liters of beer. And it is also true that Vietnam is the top drinker in the region. Even if we calculate the consumption per capita, Vietnamese is still the champion. However, if we look father than our small pot, we will find that Vietnam ranks 41th in the list of countries by beer consumption per capita of the world. Who ranks first? Czech Republic. Second? Germany. Austria is the third. Unless I am not so wrong, Germany is among the richest countries in the world and it also has the strongest economy in this difficult period. It looks like that now we have evidence for the good effect of beer. The fact is that beer has nothing to do with the ups and downs of an economy. The strongest country does not stand last in the list, and the weakest one does not top either. Therefore, it would be unwise to state that our difficult economic situation results from our drinking habit.

Imagine a scenario when everyone in the world starts to reduce drinking beer. The total consumption will be decreased. However there will always be a top consumer. No matter how much we try to be better and better, there always exist a champion and a loser. Therefore, in this case, it is not a good idea to view things from a relative perspective. Instead, we should consider the absolute number and reckon whether 2.594 billion liters of beer is too much. The population of Vietnam is around 87 million. Provided that only the population from 18 to 65 drinks beer, it would make approximately 60 million. And it is true that women drink less than men, thus, the total adjusted figure is about 50 million. Dividing the total amount of beer consumption with that number, we will have 52 liter per capita. It would make one liter a week, which means 3 bottles of beer. We have 3 meals a day, 21 meals a week. And we drink only 3 bottles a week.

Is 3 bottles of beer a week a little bit too much? It depends. But as a man in the age from 18 to 65, I myself find 3 bottles just fine. But one thing is sure and you can check it on Google: Doctors around the world recommend drinking a little beer every day because it does more good than harm.

Food for thought.

Kz