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"]