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As wind and solar become ubiquitous, the value of hydropower goes up. Hydropower is becoming the ultimate clean energy, as it is flexible and easily dispatchable.Hydropower is concentrated in certain geographies (China, Brazil, Canada) and is almost entirely developed by State-Owned Utilities that can stomach and support the very long construction time. Bost costs and value should be measured in decades, not in years.Unfortunately, Climate Change is impacting the reliability of hydro; we have recently witnessed  a succession of dry years and wet years, which have created stresses in the American West, Brazil and China… So, how to make the best of it? How to optimize this valuable resource?That is the life's mission of Janice Goodenough, CEO of HYDROGRID. With a master's degree in Applied Mathematics and over 15 years of experience in the hydropower sector, Janice Goodenough is a dedicated advocate for leveraging the complete potential of hydropower amidst the evolving energy landscape. HYDROGRID Insight is an integrated water management & production planning platform for proactive hydro teams, providing comprehensive, predictive capabilities such as plant monitoring, predictive production planning, optimal trading, as well as constraint and maintenance management under a single hood.We love hydro, but they need to stop snoozing. Wake up!  We thank AMUNDI for supporting the show Transcripts   https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/redefining-energy--3170008    

Johan Norberg's work revolves primarily around economic and intellictual history and attempting to learn lessons from past financial systems. In this episode of Faster, Please! — The Podcast, Johan takes us through his version of capitalism, giving an especially interesting perspective on the economic system of his home country. Johan is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of several books. His latest is The Capitalist Manifesto: In Defense of Global Capitalism, available now. In This Episode* “Capitalism” and its meanings (0:55)* The state of contemporary capitalism (2:34)* Coordination in capitalism (7:59)* The cyclical nature of economic systems (13:54)* Swedish capitalism  (16:56)* The case for capitalism (21:48)Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversationJames Pethokoukis: Let's begin with a little definitional work here. Capitalist Manifesto: “Capitalist” is a word people assign a variety of meanings to. What is the capitalism that you're talking about here?Johan Norberg: Yeah, it's not a great word. Quite often it's misunderstood; people think it's all about capital. It's not. We can have capital in many different economic systems. To me, free-market capitalism is about a decentralized economic system with private property where decisions are made locally, decentralized, not command and control, and the prices and wages and things are set in voluntary negotiations rather than top-down.The economist Deirdre McCloskey hates the word "capitalism." She prefers "innovism" or "trade-tested progress." Should we insist on using a different word to describe the world's dominant socio-economic system?Deirdre McCloskey is right. Capitalism is a bad word. I would much prefer “innovism” or something like that. But I've realized that in order to communicate with people, I'd better use some of the words that they are using. And I've realized that we're stuck with the word “capitalism” and the whole concept of capitalism, and if we don't fill it with meaning, those of us who like free markets and free trade, I've realized that somebody else is going to fill it with meaning, and in that case, we are losing the debate. Go to where the sinners are. That's my take.Twenty years ago, it seemed like markets had won. Capitalism was changing the world and bringing people out of poverty. President Clinton declared "the era of big government is over." China was opening its economy. What happened? Why did you feel the need to write this book in this moment?That's exactly why I wrote this book, because nowadays it seems like nobody likes free markets and free trade anymore. I've realized that, in the US, and that should be a place where people appreciate some of this, fewer people believe in capitalism than believe in ghosts nowadays. And there's this lack among politicians and governments everywhere in belief in global capitalism. There's this whole, repatriate stuff, subsidize specific businesses and sectors back home, rather than having global supply chains. So that's why I wrote this.I think this is all based on a complete misunderstanding of what has happened in the world in the past 20 years. It's not that markets have failed. On the contrary, despite the fact that we've had 20 rough years with financial crises and wars and the Great Pandemic and stuff like that, and yet we've seen, when you look at objective indicators of human living standards, more progress than ever before over these 20 years. When it comes to the reduction in poverty, more than 130,000 people lifted out of extreme poverty every day over the past 20 years. We've seen an increase in global GDP per capita of roughly a third. We've reduced child mortality by almost half, which means that four million fewer children died last year than in 2002. And this is because entrepreneurs and innovators, they keep innovating ourselves out of problems all the time — if we give them some freedom to do that. And that's what I'm worried about: that they'll have less freedom in the future if we do not keep on pounding and keep on explaining this.Those are some pretty impressive statistics. But people don't seem to notice. We keep hearing the same narrative of "late-stage, failed capitalism.” Why is that?I think the financial crisis is a very important part of this. If some capitalists do bad stuff, people lose faith in capitalism and I think we saw this in the US but also around the world. There's this sense that perhaps we shouldn't imitate what America is doing if these are the consequences. And I don't think that the financial crisis was a result of unleashed market forces. And I even wrote a book on this a couple of years back, Financial Fiasco. I think there were massive regulatory failures and central banks and ministers of finance trying to make capitalism very safe by implementing a very homogenous structure on everybody, telling everybody to go into the same way, searching for the same AAA-rated securities and stuff like that. And if everybody behaves in the same way, if that fails, there's massive disaster. We need decentralization partly to minimize risks like that. But — doesn't matter, we don't have to go into history. I think this partly explains why we're in this lack of trust in capitalism right now.But also other things. People, when they're afraid of the world, they tend to retreat. They don't want to explore. They don't want to innovate. It triggers their fight-or-flight mechanism and sometimes the societal fight-or-flight mechanism. You want to hide behind walls and tariff barriers and strong, big governments that protect you, and that is a misunderstanding of how we get out of crises. And this is what I think we've learned from these past 20 years. Yes, lots of bad stuff happened. It makes us afraid. It triggers some sort of evolutionary tendency to get away from openness and learning and discovery processes and instead we want just one instant solution to all the problems.But what we're learning is, how did we get out of the pandemic? We did it by having thousands of entrepreneurs constantly finding new ways to rebuild supply chains and find replacements for the resources they couldn't get. And innovators who were looking for new treatments and coming up with a vaccine in a record period of time. It didn't take a thousand years as it usually does, coming up with a vaccine against polio, but more like three months. But try to tell that to our reptilian brains. When we're fearful, we want one simple solution. And as H.L. Mencken once put it, there is always a solution to every problem: it is “neat, plausible, and wrong.” And it's so dangerous because it involves replacing all that discovery, all that learning and wisdom of millions with just the preferences of a few people at the top.Let me read a brief tweet by the right-wing populist writer, Sohrab Ahmari: “We are entering a new age of industrial war. The ‘California ideology,' neoliberalism, Reagan-Clintonism — whatever you want to call it, it's kaput. We're going to see close coordination between state, enterprise, labor. It took security threats to bring us here. I'll take it.” Why won't you take it?That's a scary prospect to me. There is a reason why he's talking about this Silicon Valley thing, because that worked splendidly, and one of the reasons it succeeded was that the outcomes weren't decided in advance by any kind of command-and-control thing. It was, as some criticized it in the ‘70s, it looks more like the Wild West, allowing entrepreneurs and innovators to experiment with crazy ideas, even in garages. And that's the way to … if you want to explore all possible avenues and ideas, we have to let everybody go out and look for it. I think the reason why Sohrab Ahmari is wrong is that he thinks that there is one solution to all the problems we face. Perhaps there is, but I don't know one and he doesn't know it. We have to allow more eyeballs to look at the problems and more brains to go out thinking hard about these things, and that involves not starting geopolitical divisions and nationalist temptations, but it involves having lots of people in other places helping us to find the solutions in a division of labor where we learn from what they're doing.Why has America been so successful so far? When people say that it's failing, this American, this Washington consensus thing, please keep in mind that just 15 years ago, the American economy was slightly smaller than the European one. Now it's almost a third bigger. It's not entirely broken, but some of the fixes might break it, I'm afraid, if we continue doing things like this. Why is it successful? Well, look at different areas. Look at AI. Why is America so successful? We thought that China would come up with it. Well, one reason is that the Chinese have to teach machines not just what to say, but also what not to say, but also the fact that America is learning from others. More than half of America's top AI experts have education or background in other countries and almost a third come from China. So if we want to win against China and everybody else, we also have to allow lots of Chinese to do the work for us.This notion of close coordination between state and business and labor, where does that work well? Is there a model? Is there an example of that kind of formula working elsewhere?A leading European economist just published a book called, I think it's some 50 of them, called Questioning the Entrepreneurial State, where they evaluate this whole idea that we would have this close coordination between governments and businesses, and what they say is that the history of it, at least in Europe but they look around the world as well, is that it's usually a full employment program for lobbyists and for attorneys who just reformulate everything that businesses would usually do as something that fits with this new industrial policy thing. If it was successful, you would look up stuff on the internet by using Quaero, because that's the close coordination stuff in Europe with the European and German and French governments heavily funded a “European Google.” The whole idea was that we will own the digital future by heavily subsidizing this one project. It doesn't work, because you lose some of the trial and error, you lose some of the mechanisms whereby we understand what's a success and what's not.It's okay to fail. Industrial policies fail all the time, but so does big tech. Entrepreneurial capitalism as well. But the great thing with free markets and not having the governments investing heavily in one particular model is that you replace this trial-and-error, constant experimentation and feedback and adaptation that comes when you work on markets and you're risking your own resources. Once you do that by having the government picking a winner, then, when you lose out, you spend more money on these projects instead. And you lose this learning process whereby we're constantly channeling capital and labor to more successful ones. What people would tell you is that China is the most successful place where we've had this…Yes, there seems to be a cyclical component to this belief. I mean, I'm old enough to have seen the version where Japan had figured it out. That didn't turn out so well. And then I think you have people who looked at China. If you have a natural inclination to like the idea of central planning and you eschew the kind of natural chaos of capitalism, you could point to China So that's why I wonder if this is a passing phase, because China doesn't seem like they're able to pull it off either.Yeah, but that'll keep on moving, then, and find another example where it seems to be working. Because it's always easy to find out in retrospect that something seemed to be working. And if the government is involved somewhere, they try to give it credit. But until recently, I think 49 American states tried to spend heavily to create a biotech cluster in their own state to attract businesses from other states. And if one of them succeeded, people would've said, “Look, this is because of this top-down government intervention,” but probably not, right?And it's the same thing with China. Yes, China has been tremendously successful for 30 years, but in which sectors? In the sectors that the government didn't plan for it, in places where we saw grassroots capitalism, farmers secretly privatizing their land, starting village enterprises. And then, and only then, did the Communist Party see that, “This seems to be more successful than what we've been doing recently, so allow them to continue to experiment,” experiment in export processing and stuff like that. But they wanted to keep it elsewhere so that it wouldn't spread throughout the rest of the economy. But it was so successful that it did. That's what succeeded: when people experimented. Entrepreneurs were allowed to innovate. What was it that failed? The large, state-owned enterprises. They were less productive. They were wasting cheap credit and ruining, destroying resources over the years. And once the government gets involved, there's plenty of research into this, they find less productive businesses and they become even less productive if they get access to this cheap credit and cheap land. And I think people are coming around to that now as they're seeing that China has many problems, some of them related to demography, as well. But they would need innovation, strange new business ideas, crazy people in garages coming up with new ideas. That's exactly the thing that top-down governments don't really like, and what they've been doing over the past few years is just destroying tech businesses, [education] businesses, and the gaming industry in China because authoritarians aren't good at spotting where the true potential lies.I wonder if you could clear up a question that confuses many Americans. Do you come from, and are you currently living in, a capitalist country?Yes, I am.We don't know. We're not sure. We're very confused about Sweden.Yes, I know, and that's because lots of perceptions, just like the ideas, are stuck in the 1970s. Sweden had a brief period of some 20 years when we really experimented with socialist ideas, but this was also the moment — the only moment in modern economic history — when Sweden lagged behind other countries. So up until the early 1970s, we had a very limited government, low taxes, free markets, and free trade — that made us rich. It made us so rich in Sweden that we thought that we could experiment with these ideas. Just stop thinking about how to create wealth, just spend it, redistribute it. And that resulted in an awful 20, 25 years when companies like Ikea and Tetra Pak and the greatest entrepreneurs, they just left Sweden because it wasn't possible to do business in Sweden.This is what people still remember: the 1970s. We did all these things: doubled the size of the government, jacking up taxes and so on. At the same time, it looked like a fairly successful place, it's a rich place. But it's like that old joke: How do you end up with a small fortune? Well, you start with a large fortune and then you waste most of it. And that's what we did. This is actually why, since that terrible economic financial crisis that we had in the early 1990s, Sweden has once again liberalized markets quite drastically compared to other places, and we're now back to a system which many Americans would actually think of as more free market in many ways than the US system.As you know, people think of Sweden and Scandinavia more generally as big government with a giant welfare [system], cradle-to-grave welfare, all the welfare you would ever want. So in what ways is Sweden maybe more market friendly than the United States, and perhaps some ways which would greatly surprise many Americans as well as Bernie Sanders?Yeah, I'm trying to tell the Bernie Sanders of the world that if they want to be like Sweden, they would have to do plenty of things. They would have to become more free trade-oriented in many ways. They would have to reform social security, partially privatize it with individual accounts, they would have to introduce a national school voucher system so private schools get the same funding as the public ones. They would actually have to lower taxes in many ways on the rich, and they would have to abolish taxes on property wealth inheritance and lower the corporate tax, and instead put most of the tax burdens on low- and middle-income households, because that's the dirty little secret of the Swedish welfare state. We learned in the 1970s that if you want to have a big universal welfare state that's very generous, in that case, everybody is going to have to pay for it.You have to redistribute over people's life cycle, rather than trying to get the rich to pay for it all, because we realized that the rich are too few and the economy is too dependent on them. So if we are trying to get them to pay for it all, they will flee Sweden, they will move to other places, leave their resources elsewhere, and we won't get the new businesses, the new successful ones that we all depend upon. So for 30 years, we didn't create a single net job in the private sector, the ‘70s, ‘80s, and the ‘90s. So instead, you have to move towards more taxing consumption, 25 percent value-added tax, and making sure that the poor and middle income households pay the bulk of income taxes. So, counterintuitively — and this is something that people really don't get—Sweden has a much less-progressive tax system than the United States does, less-progressive tax system than almost any other rich country because we've learned that the poor are loyal taxpayers. They don't move, they don't dodge taxes, and they don't have tax attorneys.What is the quick pitch for capitalism? If you're on an airplane next to someone who's heard a lot about inequality and wage stagnation and losing to the Chinese, how do you make the case for market capitalism?It's much, much better than you think, but it could be even better. It is much better because we can see, look at the long-term indicators and the data, and perhaps this is where I lose my fellow passenger. But wage stagnation was a phenomenon in the ‘70s and ‘80s, partly because we had to rebuild the economy because it was at risk of becoming much less competitive and we were about to lose jobs everywhere. Once we did that, from the ‘90s and onwards, we've had a tremendous increase in wages, and we can measure this in wages and total compensation and increase in 60 percent. I'd say if you look at the best indicators, but even more interesting is what can you do with those resources? And then you see that all those amenities and goods and technologies that we all considered luxuries in the ‘70 and ‘80s, we're getting close to 100 percent possession in American households.The poor people who fall below the poverty line in the US now own more amenities like that — washing machines, television sets, dryers, clothes washers, and of course cell phones and computers — than the rich did in 1970. That tells you something. If you look around the world, we've actually had the best era ever when it comes to poverty reduction, and we've even, since the turn of the millennium, reduced global inequality for the first time since the Industrial Revolution. So it's much better than the headlines. If you look at the trend lines, they're much better. Yeah, tell me about that. Give me a little of that “could be even better.” Give me a little flavor of that.Yeah. I think that we've lost — you know this and you just wrote a book on this — we've entered a period where we've thought that things cannot be better. We've tried to protect old business models and old ways of doing things, and often in a low interest rate environment, I think protected many businesses that should have been put out of their misery so that capital and labor could go to the new sectors, to the frontiers of the economy. We are seeing some of that happening now with everything from mRNA technology to the new space race to AI, but we're in a mindset and a regulatory situation where we don't want to experiment with the new weird stuff. But we have to do that because that's the only way where we'll get the new goods and services and jobs in the future. So here's to the crazy ones, as Steve Jobs would put it. And in that case, we can't be too protective of our old, safe ways of doing things. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fasterplease.substack.com/subscribe

On Episode 1306… the boys break down the $50K lawsuit against Disney over their violent water-slide, and MUCH More. Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:02:35) The Great Wall of China: So many generations of hate! (00:05:09) Join us this Friday at 9PM EST: patreon.com/hardfactor (00:06:25) Jason Biggs ruined Pat's weekend (00:10:15) ‘Toy Story Funday Football' NFL broadcast has social media ‘Buzz'-ing (00:11:50) LETSS GOOOO!

Scholz in China: So abhängig ist deutsche Wirtschaft von China - "Weiter so" reicht nicht: Zwischenbilanz deutsche Klimaziele für 2030 - Twitter unter Musk: Zwischen Massenentlassungen und Hassrede? - Sauna in der Krise - Moderation: Oliver Thoma Von Oliver Thoma.

Yes, universal!Existence unlimitedto our perception* * *In the last session we concluded the introduction to this summary of the intersection of Design Thinking and Zen by linking Buddha's Four Noble Truths to my Four Spheres of Influence and Endeavor as encountered in daily life. The semantic model shown illustrates correlations between the Four Spheres — Universal, Natural, Social, and Personal — and the Existence, Origin, Cessation, and Eightfold Path to cessation, of suffering. We will explore the connections of each in order, in the next four segments. These include: Universal Existence, Natural Origin, Social Path, and Personal Cessation, all linked to dukkha, the Buddhist term usually translated as “suffering.” As we will see, it has a broader meaning.Sometimes overlooked in considering the Four Noble Truths are Buddha's admonitions, charges, or challenges accompanying each. We are to strive to “fully understand” the existence of suffering; to abandon its origin, usually interpreted as craving; to realize its cessation, hopefully in this lifetime; and to fully follow the Noble Eightfold Path to the realization of suffering. That's a tall order.But if we take the Design thinking approach, we can regard the prospect of fully understanding the existence of suffering as just another example of fully defining the problem, albeit the most intractable and elusive of all problems, that of existence itself. The proposition that existence is a problem, or should be regarded as such, is itself subject to challenge. But most religions and philosophies characterize our existence as a human being as a kind of test, from Job's Old Testament lament, to the triumph of reasoning of the Enlightenment, and theism's personal epiphany of being reborn, as well as Zen Buddhism's potential of spiritual awakening — kensho or satori in Japanese. Of course, the usual caveat applies, that the approach to solving this problem in Zen begins and ends with experience on the cushion, or informed by that process of personal introspection. As we often emphasize in interfaith dialog with other clergy and students online, world peace can only come about through the establishment of personal peace. Zen's pop-up exam takes place in zazen, pass or fail.Another way to phrase the first Noble Truth is that Existence is of the nature of suffering. That is, dukkha may be regarded simply as inexorable change. Galaxies colliding in space is an example of Universal Existence of change. It is not personal, but a universal principle. Human beings are necessarily caught up in it, through birth, aging, sickness and death, and tend to take it very personally. This is why it is called “suffering.” But this suffering is too laden with emotional and sentimental connotations to fit the definition of a universal principle. Suffering in the Buddhist sense has a connotation of allowing, as in “Suffer the little children to come unto me,” paraphrasing a comment attributed to Christ. He is also quoted as saying that unless we become like little children, we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.So in the face of universal change, we are reduced to the state of children. Innocent, perhaps, but still responsible for adapting to reality. We find examples of human suffering in all spheres of our existence, including personal issues of aging, sickness and death, which is also characteristic of the natural sphere, where our relationship to Nature is ever-more challenging, owing partially to our success as a species in dominating the planet and diminishing the resources of life support. But most of us are inclined to identify the sources of our suffering as social in nature.These are all conjoined, as the pressures of living in modern society are certainly linked to the pressures of population. From stress on the commute to family unity at home, and comity at the office, much of our dissatisfaction with life in the fast lane stems from the fact that there are so many others queuing up in that same lane. And, of course, they are not usually as polite or considerate as you or I tend to be. In the modern idiom, they do not, or will not, stay in their lane, and out of ours.Please excuse me if you have heard this before, but I think an experiment I read about is germane. The scientists involved simply took the classic rats-in-the-maze to a new level, adding more and more rats. At a certain point of overpopulation or crowding, the rats began attacking each other. In human terms, each began to blame the others for the situation. If memory serves, it revealed a kind of proportionality between the space available and the degree of occupancy, which may reflect a natural limit to the population of any species. There is a relevant question in Taoism, from the “Tao te Ching” of Lao Tzu if memory serves, which asks the question, something like, Which is more destructive — success or failure? The very success of a species may be akin to the growth of a virus, which finally exceeds the capacity of its host to sustain, leading to the death of the host but also of the parasite.Another Taoist saying reminds us that, When the blaming begins, there is no end to the blame, or some such admonition. What we see in politics these days is largely the blame game writ large, usually on a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't basis. Increasingly, decisions regarding spending decreasing resources are taken in this no-win kind of context. Even speaking out on a given issue, no matter what position one takes, is likely to bring down hostilities upon one's head, from the cold waters of the social media. The very anonymity provided by the network fosters the tendency of many disgruntled fellow travelers to fire broadsides at every comment, no matter how reasonable or anodyne. The privacy of the original communication is often compromised, exposing the messenger to the mob, including searchable data such as the identities of their family members, along with contact and location information. Thus, the natural moan of stress and threat of living is amplified to a scream through the feedback process, like a mic and speaker facing each other. Humans are the worst enemy of humans.When we turn from our social world — as restricted to human beings — to the natural sphere, we find other social animals, such as elephants and whales, who have their own networks, and presumably some level of stress emanating from them. Much more certainly they suffer from the dire circumstances in which they live as prey to other species, primarily the encroachment of humans on their turf, and as victims of the harvesting of ivory and other private parts for such human dalliances as trivial trinkets, and supposed aphrodisiacs. Our stewardship of the creatures of the Earth has demonstrated a downward curve for most of our history, but now that we are outnumbering as well as outmaneuvering our distant cousins, many are staring into the abyss of extinction. Which is where the Natural sphere is trumped by the Universal. From the perspective of the victim of extinction, it matters little whether the end comes as the result of a meteor or comet, or the slow erosion of viable food stocks and potable water. So-called “pets” and live exhibits such as zoos are the few remaining concessions to inclusion of lowly beasts in our social circle, now that the age of horsepower has long since passed.When we look at the intersection of the Universal and the Natural, disregarding for the nonce the Social and Personal realms, we see that it is also not a respecter of persons, or dharma beings. The most awe-inspiring example may be the black hole, at least based on our current understanding of cosmic dynamics of change, dukkha on the largest scales we can envision. Whole galaxies, solar systems, stars, planets, moons and asteroids and all, provide the daily fare keeping the monster fed. We charmingly describe such processes with familiar tropes, such as that a black hole is “eating” its way through the universe, gobbling celestial bodies as we consume lesser animals and plants of the globe. A recent special on the blue whale identified them as the largest mammals to ever live on the planet — in the ocean, more exactly — as large as a Boeing 737. Yet they live on krill, one of the smallest animals on the planet. But the volume of their dining may be the closest living analogy to a black hole in the animal kingdom. Tens of thousands of tons of water in one gulp! Yet even this behemoth may be threatened with extinction, owing to the activities of the noisome human parasite.In the face of such vast scales of existence, and with the looming threat of universal and natural chickens coming home to roost, through imminent climate change, the very idea that what we call suffering is indeed universal may be disturbing, even overwhelming. And as Master Dogen reminds us in Jijuyu Zammai —Self-fulfilling Samadhi, even if we manage to divest ourselves of our ignorance, and the “whole phenomenal world becomes the Buddha's seal, and the entire sky turns into enlightenment,” even then “all this does not appear within perception, because it is unconstructedness in stillness, it is immediate realization.” So the frustration with the ungraspable nature of this truth is baked in. But we mustn't forget the micro, along with the macrocosmos. The microcosmos is also the manifestation of the universal existence of suffering, just on the other end of the scale spectrum. It recalls a line from one of our beloved Ch'an poems, Hokyo Zammai [Precious Mirror Samadhi], by Master Tozan, founder of Soto Zen in China:So minute it enters where there is no gap — so vast it transcends dimensionA hairsbreadth deviation and you are out of tuneI hear an unspoken “but” or “however” before this last bombshell — any deviation, however slight, and we are “out of tune.” Like tuning an old-fashioned analog radio dial, a little to the left or to the right, we get nothing but static. Only when we hit the frequency dead on in the middle, do we receive the transmission with clarity. If we persist in our meditation, we can hopefully penetrate beyond the Personal, Social and Natural barriers, all the way to the Universal, which is not only outside us at the furthest remove, but also inside us, at the most intimate. As Master Hakuin reminds, actually there is no “inner,” nor is there any “outer.” It is all clear, clean through. Spacetime is neither space, nor time.In the next segment we will take a look at Natural Origin, the origin of our suffering through the craving of our body, our mouth, and our mind. Stay tuned.* * *Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Kyōsaku Jon Mitchell

China is home to the world's largest social media market, with over 931 million users. In this week's Serious Social episode, Katy Howell is joined by Domenica Di Lieto to discuss social media in China, taking a look at the opportunities, differences, and the trends that are being adopted in the west.

Welcome to Finance and Fury - Is ESG investing the way of the future and good for your portfolio? Within the last few years, large publicly listed companies and investment managers investment are really paying attention to what is known as an ESG score – which stands for environmental, social and governance – it is meant to be used as a determinant on the sustainability of investments – the concept of sustainability it is growing in prominence in every sector of the economy, but particularly within institutional investments and publicly listed companies   In this episode – I want to look at what is ESG, how it is determined and scored, and can following this trend and only investing in ESG companies help your bottom line when it comes to long term returns?   To take a step back – society has been moving towards greater levels of sustainability and environmentalism – with this shift – Publicly listed Companies are becoming concerned with where they fit into this – as well as investment managers wishing to purchase these companies if you are a fund manager investing in a weapons manufacturing company, is this an ethical investment based around ESG metrics? If it doesn't score well and your mandate determines that you cannot invest in low scoring companies then this would have to be excluded from your portfolio – even if the world is going to war and Raytheon is about to make a lot of money But from Raytheon's point of view – you want to be considered by professional investment managers to be an ESG company so that that institutional money can flow your way – because if you are cut off from that market, your share prices will suffer and you would be failing your duty as a board member to maximise shareholder value – i.e. providing returns to shareholders So major corporations are becoming very engaged with the parties that provide ESG scores to help not only incentives further investment in their business – but also to help determine from an outside/institutional perspective if the company is worth investing in – as public investors have shown an interest in putting their money where their values are – This has also seen the rise of many managed funds, brokerage firms, and ETF providers offering products that employ ESG criteria as the sole determinant for investment decision making – people want these products so the market is providing to meet this demand – but does following ESG scores as a criteria for an investment strategy actually work for a long term investment strategy?   What is ESG - Environmental, social, and governance criteria are a set of standards for a company's operations Environmental criteria consider how a company performs as a steward of nature - can include a company's energy use, waste and pollution, natural resource conservation, or treatment of animals criteria can also be used in evaluating any environmental risks a company might face and how the company is managing those risks - For example, there may be issues related to a company's ownership of contaminated land, or its disposal of hazardous waste and management of toxic emissions, or its compliance with government environmental regulations Social criteria examines how it manages relationships with employees, suppliers, customers and communities Does it work with suppliers that hold the same values as it claims to hold? Does the company donate a percentage of its profits to the local community or encourage employees to perform volunteer work there? Do the company's working conditions show high regard for its employees' health and safety? Are other stakeholders' interests taken into account? Governance deals with a company's leadership, executive pay, audits, internal controls, and shareholder rights. A big one I have seen is ethics of the company, board composition and transparency – does the company uses accurate and transparent accounting methods and that stockholders are given an opportunity to vote on important issues? Do they have a diverse board, or is it all old white males? Are there any conflicts of interest in their choice of board members, do they use political contributions to obtain unduly favourable treatment, or do they engage in illegal practices? ESG investing is sometimes referred to as sustainable investing, responsible investing, impact investing, or socially responsible investing – however – this is very similar to CSR - Corporate social responsibility   Based around these criteria - an ESG score is calculated – An organisation's ESG score is a numerical measure of how it is perceived to be performing on each of these criteria – Each of the Environmental, social, and governance criteria are given an individual score then it is combined into one The key word in this score is ‘perceived' - An ESG score is calculated based on how an organisation is seen to be performing – that is, how its behaviour relating to ESG issues is reported – not what it is actually doing behind closed doors Just as with the building of corporate reputation, there is a gap between reality and perception. While a business may have a strong policy around carbon emissions and waste reduction, or a system of transparent, performance-based promotion, if that information is not in the public domain, it won't impact its ESG score. Alternatively – if a business has a face value of supporting every social movement whilst enacting policy behind the scenes that is antithetical to these values, then this is not picked up in these scores - ESG scores don't necessarily reflect the internal reality of a company - as ESG scores only measure how corporate behaviours are reported and the face that they put on to the public Therefore, a reality gap exists – and poses a risk – as if you are basing investment decisions purely around an ESG score, then this not meet your investment desires if you are trying to invest in a socially responsible way Let's have a look at a few examples – when comparing the ESG risk scores Disney – they have a wonderful public perception – and own a massive chunk of media and merchandising rights – theme parks, movies with the rights to Marvel, Star Wars, media as well, like ABC in the US – they also have merchandising rights, so many toys are marketed and made – where are they made? Well, it has become apparent that it may be slave labour – through internment camps in China – So – based around the issues with the use of Chinese free labour – how would they rank? Pretty poor you would think - ESG Risk rating is Low based around the official metrics – 14.9 – Actually a lower risk than Netflix – they are given a ranking of 87% by CSRHUB – which is an ESG rating agency Another example – Tesla – Most people would consider this company as very environmentally friendly – good social governance – and is great for society at large – on a score of 0-50 – where 0 is no ESG risks, meaning it is the cleanest company on earth with the best contribution to society and lots of diversity in the board and management – where would you place Tesla – 10? 20? – well it is 31.3 – which is high risk – CSRHUB gives them 38% out of 100% But good news – BWM, or Daimler are all lower – 27.7 and 25.2 - CSRHUB gives Daimler 87% To put this in perspective – BHP has an ESG risk rating of 30.1 – with a 75% rating - so Tesla is a lot lower – even BP Oil got 64% How are these risk scores calculated? Because does it make sense that these companies rank where they do? It comes down to who is doing the scoring - Analysis companies use various calculation processes – but these scores are done at the behest of these companies – If you are a major company, you go to a rating provider, hand over all your information and they come up with a score – some of those scores I mentioned come from Sustainalytics – a subsidiary of Morningstar – one of the worlds top rating agencies - the others come from CSRHUB Due to the individual companies' methodologies – it is actually harder to determine what contributes to an individual score – as these will vary depending on which analytics they employ. Research by State Street showed only a 0.53 correlation between ESG scores for the same subjects between another provider, MSCI's ESG ratings and Subanalytics – therefore there is about a 50% relation between a score on their board, or their environmentalism – so one company that may seem to be an ESG champion on one site, may not be on another This is all due to the fact that ESG scoring is the measurement of perception rather than reality - so ESG data systems can be largely subjective and vary dependent on which company is doing the rating so how does anyone make an accurate investment decision based around these wildly varying metrics? The answer is that you really can't under their current form ESG ratings and scores are often based on voluntary company self-disclosure and partial data. The issue is that most ESG scoring systems from some companies include an analysis from publicly available print and social media content – so if a companies social media profile supports social movements domestically, whilst using slave labour abroad which is not incorporated into the metrics – this company will appear to be a higher rating on ESG than a company that doesn't participate in the same practices, but isn't as active in changing their twitter profile   How does an ESG investing approach help with portfolio returns – Looking at a few examples – Australian iShares ESG fund – Holdings, CBA, CSL, WES, MQG – but then FMG, Transurban, Newcrest, James Hardie – and Xero – so in the top 10, three are mining companies – performance wise this was only created this month – so no data Other Funds – BetaShares has an Australian Sustainability Leaders ETF – 1 year is 17.79%, 3 years is 10.80% The benchmark index of the Nasdaq Future Australian Sustainability Leaders Index – which the BetaShares fund has underperformed by 0.5% at every stage Another Australian Fund is Van Eck - 1 year is 25.02%, 3 years is 10.17% or 5 years of 7.59% In comparison – the ASX300 provided 28% over 1 year, 9.74% over 3 years and 11.2% over 5 years iShares Core MSCI World ex Australia ESG Leaders ETF – Returns of 30% over 1 year, 14% over 3 years and 14.5% over 5 years International index - 28% over 1 year, 14.8% over 3 years and 15% over 5 years There is no clear winner – The indexes have slightly outperformed in the long term Can this be a good investment for the long term – as more people start ESG investing? There could always be the issues of "Bad" companies performing very well and missing out on this – However – due to public perception – A company with a higher ESG score may start to gain more traction in regards to investment inflows – especially from financial services companies such as JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs – and ETF providers in Australia The very nature of more money flowing into highly rated ESG companies could be a long-term investment – not for the actual performance of the companies themselves in fundamental terms – but from a perspective of more money flowing into these companies and hence the prices go up Even for one of the largest investment sectors within Australia - Superannuation funds – Their mandates may limit or eliminate non-socially responsible investing We have seen the divestment from Coal within superannuation funds over the past 12 months – coal companies on the ASX are not faring well – most have seen a decline in prices over the past few years – many saw a loss in EPS recently with coal prices plummeting to $50USD a tonne in July 2020 – but it is back to all time highs at $136USD a tonne – so coal companies may actually rebound quite a bit – but this component of return may not be included in the ESG investing Brings up interesting issues – as a super fund their fiduciary duty is to provide long term returns for the sole purpose of their members retirement - choosing investment strategies based entirely on investments classified under ESG and socially responsible investing score could start to lag markets depending on the score allocated to companies Remember – score can be subjective – large companies with a good social presence and the ability to have great PR In summary – If you are going to be investing only in Large cap companies and using ESG metrics – probably nothing to be gained here – they will all have great ESG scoring based around the metrics and how companies determine these scores – Mid and Small cap companies – these may be left unloved by these types of funds – but this is where a large chunk of capital growth comes from the market – Companies at the top that have a large portion of the market shares have limited capital growth when compared to new companies coming in If you are going to invest – then invest – if you are looking for ESG – don't rely on metrics from companies providing these – decide if a company meets your ethical criteria Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you want to get in contact you can do so here: http://financeandfury.com.au/contact/ 

Things that will get you the best seat in the “jia”: 1. Saying “I love Yao Ming!” 2. Saying “I love Chinese food!” 3. Saying “I love China” So, for those who don't know of giant basketball players, or who haven't yet ventured out into the “hairy crab” food section, in this podcast we'll make sure you know how to confess your love for the P.R.C. in Mandarin Chinese. Episode link: https://www.chinesepod.com/0221

Things that will get you the best seat in the “jia”: 1. Saying “I love Yao Ming!” 2. Saying “I love Chinese food!” 3. Saying “I love China” So, for those who don’t know of giant basketball players, or who haven’t yet ventured out into the “hairy crab” food section, in this podcast we’ll make sure you know how to confess your love for the P.R.C. in Mandarin Chinese. Episode link: https://www.chinesepod.com/0221

Welcome! Good morning, everybody. WTAG experienced some issues which prevented me from joining Jim on Tuesday.  But this morning he reached out and had me on. Jim and I discussed The Internet of Things and why Businesses must be careful when they are attaching all these cool gadgets to their networks.  Then we got into the WordPress Vulnerability that is hitting business websites hard.  Then Jim asked about Apps and China. Here we go with Jim. For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com ---  Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig Peterson (2): [00:00:00] So you ask yourself, how can this app be free? Really? Whoever developed it had to put hundreds or thousands of hours into developing that app, how could they possibly afford for it to be free?  I had a bit of a surprise this morning. This is Craig Peterson. Craig Peterson (2): [00:00:15] I got a text from Mr. Jim Polito asking if I could come on today because their board was so messed up on Tuesday, they couldn't get me on. But he really wanted me on this week. So that was fun. We freewheeled today. Although normally we stick with the topics that I have sent him that I also include in the newsletter. We go into deep dive on my radio show on the weekend. And of course, those are podcasts as well, but it was fun. I was a little bit of a different thing today. So here we go with Mr. Jim Polito. No week would be complete without a visit from our good friend and tech talk guru. Craig Peterson. Missed him on Tuesday. Jim Polito: [00:00:53] Can't wrap up the week without a visit from the man. Good morning, Craig. Craig Peterson (2): [00:00:58] Hey, Good morning. I want to correct the thing that Fake Bernie said this morning and that is Connecticut river is entirely a New Hampshire. Vermont doesn't even have a border on the river, let alone the ocean. Jim Polito: [00:01:14] I thought they had.  Craig Peterson (2): [00:01:15] Did you realize that? Jim Polito: [00:01:15] No. No. So the state line is on the other side of the river. Craig Peterson (2): [00:01:21] It is. It came from years ago. It was an order in council signed by King George, the third back in 1764 because remember Vermont was part of New Hampshire. And then yeah, New York, in fact, we've even got ski Hills that tried to re-annex themselves a few years ago to New Hampshire, tired of all of the taxes and everything. But, yeah, so what had happened is that New York said, No No Vermont is ours. Then so King George says, okay, I'm going to settle this. So he established the border between New Hampshire and Vermont. It could be the Western bank of the Connecticut River and then the US Supreme court in 1933, upheld that. So normally when you go across a bridge, I don't know if you've noticed, but usually in the middle it says, you're now doomed during the state of, whatever it might be, where Joe Biden might be from this week. But, when you're going from, Vermont, New Hampshire to Vermont, you don't see the sign until you hit the ground on the Vermont side. Jim Polito: [00:02:22] Hey, you're right. I was Chesterfield New Hampshire over the weekend and I went and did the bridge there. There's the old bridge right next to the new one. And cause they never knocked down the old one. You're right, you get over the bridge, you come to the rotary, but there's the sign before you get into the rotary. Welcome to Vermont. Craig Peterson (2): [00:02:42] Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I don't know if that's like the only one, but it's really weird. A little bit of history actually knew. How's that for strange? Jim Polito: [00:02:50] No, that's why you're the man. And, and King George, the third, how do you like that coming up with the idea? No, it's on the banks of Connecticut. Back in those days, The Connecticut River used to flood and break its banks. Oh, the Vermont border was a moving target. all right. I want to talk about some of the stuff that you,  gave us today, but what is top of mind for Craig Peterson right now? By this top of the most brilliant man in tech wake up on Thursday morning, which is not typical for him. What does he wake up and say, but that other people won't understand by the way? Craig Peterson (2): [00:03:29] Oh, okay. details. so yeah, the big thing, and I'm going to talk about this on my show on Saturday here, but the big thing that has to do with the internet of things, hardware, again. Now we're talking about all of these lights that we have that may be voice-activated, and now it's everything. If you're a business, I can't tell you how many businesses I've walked into that have. These hick vision cameras on the wall, security cameras. They've got automatically lights that come on when entering rooms, et cetera. So there is a little bit of a study that was just conducted and they found that about 85% of the devices that were tested could and be completely 100% hacked. It's called complete root access on these devices. This is a real problem because we're making these IoT devices, the internet of things. They've got to be small. They have to be cheap. At least we want them to be cheap. So what they do is just cost reduce cost reduce, cost reduce, and what you end up with is a little computer. It has to be a computer inside that can talk to, of course, your wi-fi in order to send its messages. And they just leave out all concepts of security, frankly. They come pre-configured with default usernames and passwords. These things come also with the ability to be completely hacked because they cannot get updates, so many of them. They never get re flashed. In fact, this particular investigation showed that they could be completely re-flashed by hackers. So we're surrounding ourselves with all of this wonderful equipment, all of this really cool stuff. At the same time, we're exposing ourselves and we're exposing our businesses to some of the worst hacks that have ever been going on, and frankly, that's a huge problem. I'm going to talk about that one this weekend. And similar to that, I gotta bring up one more thing while I'm on my soapbox. And that is, we know we're supposed to update our computers, right? And so you go ahead and you update windows, you're reluctant to do it. Cause is it going to break. What's going to happen. If you're on a Mac, it just happens for you automatically and it's extremely rare that anything breaks or an iPhone. Android, of course, you got the problems and trying to do updates. The biggest problem we're finding right now is that people think that they have turned on automatic updates and they're safe. Without thinking about the dozens of other apps or programs that they have on their computer that need to be updated. To a business 99% of the time they say, yeah, we're 99% patched up. we're fine. But then you dig into it at all, then you find out, they haven't updated flash. Oh, they haven't updated their web browsers. Oh, they've got all of these plugins, these extensions on the web browser that are known to be major security hazards. So my whole message this weekend and this morning are, Yes, you've got to patch up and right now. Over 350,000 websites out there that are hosted, that are run on WordPress, which is most business websites have a critical flaw, critical, and we've seen before where ISIS goes ahead and they hack one of our websites, Jim, and then they have uploaded videos of the beheading of Americans and American soldiers onto and attacks against the soldiers to onto our business website. Then they share that with all of their friends and it's unbeknownst to you sometimes. They just hide it and they're using it for touch and go places. The bad guys are using it for child pornography. They're using them for attacking other websites. They are putting in skimmers, just like ATM skimmers that we've seen before, right into the website checkout pages. So that's my big thing today and I'm going to be talking about it more on Saturday. It's terrible. Jim Polito: [00:07:47] We're talking with Craig Peterson, our good friend, our tech talk guru, and some of the concerns, Craig, I'm going to call an audible. I have the list of stuff that you brought to us, but something came up personally for me yesterday. I wanted to do a reverse image lookup. I wanted to find the origin of a picture. And, there's a lot of different ways you can do that. But one of the ways that your smartphone will steer you toward is getting an app to do that, and of course, I'm on Apple. Here's my question. I started looking at all the PR of course, I don't want to pay for it. I want a free app. And I started looking at all the free apps available to do a reverse image lookup. Now, for those of you who don't know, here's a reverse image. Look up. you take a picture that you have, you put it into an app and the app tells you the other places on the internet that they can find it. So I, I did that, but I'm looking at all these apps. Then for some reason popped up on my phone who created the app and there were, and this isn't certainly a racist thing, but there was a lot of what appears here to me to be Chinese names. I said, okay, this could be someone in the United States, who's from China. Or could these all be Chinese apps from China? So my question was how good of a cop is Apple when it comes to allowing its apps in the Apple app store. Cause I thought to myself, wait a minute. If Apple is offering it's gotta be safe. Am I being naive? Craig Peterson (2): [00:09:32] No, you are not a few things that come out over the last few weeks. One is there is a library that a lot of application developers are using that tracks you and your data and the application developers are paid for it. So you ask yourself, how can this app be free? Really? Whoever developed it had to put hundreds or thousands of hours into developing that app. How could they possibly afford for it to be free? So the big problem over the last few weeks was, Oh my gosh, there's this the library that app developers are using for Apple and for Android that they're getting paid to include in their app and Apple wasn't noticing it. Then there's another problem app and requires apps to be signed on your Mac as well as your iPhone and there are ways around that. It was also found out that Apple had, this is just the last week, approved some malware to run on Mac. Now this is unbeknownst to Apple and we have to step back a little bit, and look this isn't just Apple this is Google as well. Although Apple historically has done a better job. But in both cases on the app store from Apple and the Google play store, they use software to scan the apps, to look for potential malicious stuff. They've done an okay job over the years. That's part of the reason Apple gets 30% of any proceeds from apps that are on there. Jim Polito: [00:11:07] Yeah Craig Peterson (2): [00:11:07] You brought up China. China has been flooding both app stores. Then, of course, socialist government over there wanting to get our information because once your socialist, you've squashed most, if not all innovation. So the only way you can grow is to steal it from other people that aren't socialist. Jim Polito: [00:11:27] It's true.  it's true. Craig Peterson (2): [00:11:28] Yeah, absolutely true. And so they've been very, It's strong or, front line thinking here on getting apps into the app stores that can leak data. Because again, they just need a little bit of data from this app. Maybe a little bit of data from that app. Get your contacts from this app, pull them all together. And now they've got a very good picture of you. Who do you work for? Where do you live? What kind of data might you have access to? Then they're using that to go spearfishing. So to answer your question, Apple does a, quite good job of vetting the apps. Google does a good job on betting the apps. But there are many ways to obscure the code and frankly, Yeah. Having written all articles over the years and worked on a lot of different people's code, I can tell you that obfuscation seems to be the middle of the name of every programmer are known to demand, where are it's impossible to try and figure out what they're doing sometimes takes a while. So I can't blame Apple and Google for letting some of that, this stuff into the store, but they're pretty careful about it, but this thing twice, Why is the app free? Why is the app cheap? What else are they getting out of me? Jim Polito: [00:12:43] Let me just ask you a quick question and then, Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Craig Peterson (2): [00:12:47] No, I was going to say when it comes to reverse image this is a great tip for everybody that's listening. If you are in the dating realm or your kids or grandkids or whatever it might be, or out there dating. Google regular Google search has an image search on it. One of the best things you can do is take that photo that you found on the dating site and run it through the Google reverse image search and see if it's a stock photo or if it's just someone else. Because so many of our seniors as well, they're not dating, but they're, the reaching out, some of them are lonely and you've got to make sure that this person is legit. And what Jim did with the reverse image search, just use Google. It is a wonderful idea Jim Polito: [00:13:32] See, learn from my mistakes. Excellent. Phil, I have since deleted the app, but who knows, there's probably code somewhere in my phone right now, from the Chinese and, and they know I'm friendly with you. So I'm  I'm the enemy. How can folks get in touch with you? Craig Peterson (2): [00:13:50] Why don't you check out my website? I've got a new one going up here either this weekend or next week at Craig peterson.com. You can get my newsletter. You can get all of the articles and background that I talked about here on Saturdays at 11.  You can also of course digging a little bit more. Ask me questions, all of that. Just Craigpeterson.com. Jim Polito: [00:14:13] Craig. Thank you. 11 o'clock Saturday. Be listening. Thank you, sir, for doing the extra duty this week and we'll catch up with you next week. Craig Peterson (2): [00:14:22] All right. Take care. It was fun. Jim Polito: [00:14:24] It was fun. Hey, when we return a very important thing you want to back the blue, I'll tell you how it's my final word. You're listening to the Jim Polito show your safe space. Craig Peterson (2): [00:14:35] And safe it was. Take care, everybody. We'll be back this weekend. Bye-bye. ---  More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

Brigitte Theile im Gespräch mit Audi Arzt Murat Kulaksiz: So gut sind die vier Ringe vorbereitet auf das Virus – Schluss mit den Mythen: So schützen Audianer sich und andere – Tipps vom Kollegen in China: So klappt’s auch mit der Quarantäne im Fall der Fälle. Informationen zum offiziellen Kraftstoffverbrauch und den offiziellen, spezifischen CO2-Emissionen neuer Personenkraftwagen können dem "Leitfaden über den Kraftstoffverbrauch, die CO2-Emissionen und den Stromverbrauch neuer Personenkraftwagen" entnommen werden, der an allen Verkaufsstellen unentgeltlich erhältlich ist und bei der DAT Deutsche Automobil Treuhand GmbH, Hellmuth-Hirth-Str. 1, 73760 Ostfildern-Scharnhausen (www.dat.de).

Shaun Rein is the founder and managing director of the China Market Research Group (CMR), a globally prominent strategic market intelligence firm focused on China. He works with boards, billionaires, heads of state, CEOs and senior executives of Fortune 500 and leading Chinese companies, private equity firms, SMEs and hedge funds, to develop their China growth, political and investment strategies. Rein wrote international best-sellers The War for China’s Wallet: Profiting from the New World Order, The End of Cheap China and The End of Copycat China. Rein is regularly featured in The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. His op-eds have appeared in The New York Times. He frequently appears on CNN, BBC, MarketPlace, CNBC, Bloomberg, PBS and MSNBC. Rein formerly taught executive education classes for London Business School and was a weekly columnist for CNBC and Forbes. He also wrote a column for Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Rein is one of the world’s most sought after keynote speakers for his focus on innovation, consumer trends and the economy in China. His speaking engagement clients have included: Estée Lauder, Adidas, HSBC, AXA, Credit Suisse, Baker McKenzie, Blackrock, Baillie Gifford, KPMG, Macquarie Bank, Nomura, Baird, Deloitte, CLSA, Solvay, Sodexo, and Nestle. Apart from China and Hong Kong, he has spoken in economies such as South Africa, Australia, the US, the UK, Canada, Singapore, Thailand, Mexico, Vietnam, Japan, and South Korea.   “I had the students but it was very difficult for me to actually turn a profit. The difficulty in human resources in China has become a central theme of my business and most businesses that we’ve worked with over the past two decades. Mine started with the difficulty of hiring foreign talent, but actually the lack of top Chinese talent and the inability to retain good talent has been a major problem for me in my company China market research group ever since we started in 2005.” Shaun Rein   Support our sponsor   Today’s episode is sponsored by the Women Building Wealth membership group, the complete proven step-by-step course to guide women from novice to competent investor. To learn more, visit: WomenBuildingWealth.net.   Worst investment ever In around 2001, while Shaun was a 23-year-old a graduate student at Harvard University, he was putting some thought to the big question: “What am I going to do with my career?” What he did know was he never wanted to go the corporate route and work somewhere like McKinsey or Goldman Sachs, even though most of his classmates were headed in that direction. Instead, he had been interested in entrepreneurship ever since he had run an event-organizing company in Canada while he was a student at McGill University. The company managed 3,000-head dance parties, populated mostly by pre-legal-drinking-age (21) Americans that he bussed up to Montreal, where the legal drinking age is 18. At the time, he was living in Tianjin, China, going to and from there and Cambridge, Massachusetts. He realized there was a great opportunity for teaching English because “Chinese love America”, and they wanted to learn English. Budding idea to start English learning center in China So he decided to set up an English language learning center for 5-15 year olds and teens in China. The center’s focus was on speaking, because a lot of local children could already read and write well, but he and his team wanted them to learn correct American-accented English. So he returned to Tianjin, found Chinese partners, and set the company up with the unique selling point that every teacher would be a current or former Harvard student or teacher. Center opens with a bang but various snags emerge He opened the company and to big celebration. Classes started and people were very excited to have Harvard students or Harvard graduates coming to Tianjin. Within day one, the center had registered more than 300 students. It was a really exciting time but quite soon the enterprise was not to go quite as planned. There were small problems. There were big problems. On opening day, the police came in and said: “We’ll protect you. We want protection money.” Shaun declined so the police rapidly closed down the center. Hard to entice Harvard types to Tianjin On opening day, they had to find new office space, which they did on the campus of Tianjin Normal University. They made a deal to use classrooms and the police could not bother them. So that was one of the “small” problems, the “regulatory” issues with the police. Then they had the bigger problems. Even though the Chinese students wanted to learn from Harvard graduates, Harvard graduates were not too fussed about living in Tianjin. At the turn of the millennium, the enormous port city was polluted and not very amenable. Expensive to set up and maintain Rental costs, even for the time, were quite high in China, especially to fit out a learning center than met the style demands of the parents of the little emperors and empresses. They really wanted to have the nicest classrooms, the best teachers, and the best of everything, which added already the climbing costs. Suffice to say, Shaun made a profit of around 50,000 RMB (less than US$10,000 over the three years the center was operating. He was living in a US$150-dollar-a-month apartment, and could not even pay for his plane ticket to return home. It was a very difficult time. Key test is to fund and retain foreign or Chinese talent He had the students but it was very difficult for him to turn a profit, and the difficulty with human resources in China became a central theme for Shaun. Most businesses he has worked with over the past nearly 20 years started with problems the difficulty of hiring foreign talent. Now the lack of top Chinese talent and the inability to retain them has been a major problem for Shaun and China Market Research Group ever he started the company it in 2005.   “But you’re definitely going to find as a foreign company a very uneven an unfair playing field. So I think the issues I had in my failure two decades ago, are going to be the same issues that companies face today.” Shaun Rein   Some lessons Supply chain is a key issue Many people underestimate the importance of getting raw materials or the inputs for your product or service. In his case, it was Harvard graduates. Infrastructure too is underestimated China has continued to dominate the global economy in the past decade and will continue that due to its incredible infrastructure. China protectionism - true for local and US companies Trump and a lot of people criticize China for being protectionist and unfair to foreign companies but that is only a part of the story. But there’s too much protectionism for state-owned enterprises, such as the Bank of China or China Telecom. So it is an uneven playing field for both foreign and private Chinese companies. It’s very difficult to be a private Chinese company if you are small or medium-sized and lack high-level connections because the government will over-regulate, which stifles innovation. If your company is successful, the government or a state-owned enterprise will take it away.   Actionable advice Get a good team together They can be Chinese or foreign people. What matters is that they are loyal, knowledgeable, and know how to conduct business in China, how to navigate the local market. “You can’t parachute a Chinese-born citizen who has been living in the US for 20 years in to China to run an operation.” China 20 years ago is very different from China today The first thing is to get top talent that understand how to navigate the local Chinese market. President Xi is trying to change the culture of business and politics in China and he is doing so but it will be difficult. But businesses will not be asked for bribes now in China as you would have been 20 years ago.   No. 1 goal for next the 12 months To be a billionaire To make US$250,000 dollars for a single keynote speech. He’s at about US$50,000 now, but he really wants to match Bill Clinton’s rate To get another book or documentary released To produce a five-episode series on Netflix or a similar channel to help Western businessmen and visitors to better understand China   Parting words Yeah, you just can't win unless you know how to lose. So losing is not losing long term if you take the right attitude. But failures are the stepping stones to success.     You can also check out Andrew’s books How to Start Building Your Wealth Investing in the Stock Market My Worst Investment Ever 9 Valuation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them Transform Your Business with Dr. Deming’s 14 Points  Connect with Shaun Rein LinkedIn Twitter Website Email Connect with Andrew Stotz astotz.com  LinkedIn Facebook  Instagram Twitter  YouTube My Worst Investment Ever Podcast    Further reading mentioned Shaun Rein (2018) The War for China’s Wallet: Profiting from New World Order Shaun Rein (2014) The End of Copycat China: The Rise of Creativity, Innovation, and Individualism in Asia Shaun Rein (2012) The End of Cheap China: Economic and Cultural Trends that Will Disrupt the World      

Thinking about placing some of your hard earned Benjamins into investments in China? So have many American investors, yet lots of them don't know how much trouble they might be inadvertently be walking into. Jed Rothstein, Academy Award-nominated and Emmy Award winning director) joins us to discuss his new documentary, the China Hustle. How do people get swindled out of millions of dollars while trying to buy Chinese stocks listed on American stock exchanges? We'll hear how the game works and also show you how deceptive it is even though it was all legal.   In headlines today we hear a gut-wrenching story about how an NBA star went from a $61 million fortune to being six figures in debt. We'll also discuss a headline about buying insurance online. There are many questions people should ask when purchasing anything online, and we ask Haven Life CEO Yaron Ben-Zvi to share some tips with us. As always, he gives us lots of ideas to make sure you know what you're buying.   Plus, as always, we throw out the Haven Life line to a listener. Today Win is wondering why her tax refund check is so low. Is it because she recently paid off her student loan? Also, we answer a letter from Nate who wonders about depositing a refund from an HSA expense back into his account even though he's no longer eligible? Of course, we'll have Doug's trivia and more fun on today's show.   Thanks Lexington Law for supporting our show. For a free credit report summary and credit repair consultation go to lexingtonlaw.com/sb Thanks to MagnifyMoney.com for sponsoring Stacking Benjamins as well. MagnifyMoney.com saves users on average $450 when they compare, ditch, switch and save on credit cards, student loan refinancing, checking, savings and more. Check out MagnifyMoney.com for your savings.

This week we've got an interview for you from Philip Beck who has 38 year career at C-Level positions in SME’s and publicly-listed companies across the advertising, digital media, eCommerce, marketing, recruitment and traditional media sectors in China, Asia-Pacific, the UK and Ireland. Here is a quote I think says it all about building your business in China: So the biggest issue i find with major brand is just they just too slow and in china compared to the rest of the world What happens and in china, in a space of one year is equal to 7 years in any other market so you have to move quickly and if you don’t move quickly you just get smashed - Philip Beck Hope you enjoy this episode and don't forget to join our WeChat group. Either send a request to 'shlomof' or 'michelini'Episode Content:How did Philip end up in China? Speaking about WeChat engagement done right. What is a Wechat CRM? And what can you do with it?Is WeChat marketing & CRM fits small businesses as well?What is the thought process behind making a customer engagement campaign?How to measure your success , specifically in Wechat?What are common mistakes you see brands making, specifically in Chinese marketing / Wechat?Tips or resources to someone thinking to start their digital marketing in the Chinese market? Books, blogs, etc?Philip Beck contact details (Also on Episode Mentions section)Episode Mentions:Shlomo's talk at Casual connect Tel Aviv - Conquering the Chinese App Market – Challenges and SolutionsMike's Organises a Hong Kong business trip on November 18th, 2016Join Enterchina.co community Choach.comWhat is KOL (key opinion leaders)?Books recommendation by PhilipBillions: Selling to the New Chinese Consumer by Tom DoctoroffWhy Should Anyone Be Led by You? With a New Preface by the Authors: What It Takes to Be an Authentic Leader by Rob GoffeePhilip's Linkedin page Philip's WeChat account: Philip_beck Download and SubscribeDownload this episode: right click on this link and choose "save as"Subscribe to China Business Cast on iTunesOr check out the full list on subscription options Periscope Live broadcasting of the recordings follow @StartupNoodle (open link on mobile)

23. Ted Poley -Hands Of Love 24. Dare -Until 25. Angels Or Kings -A Harder Place 26. In faith -Does it Feel Like Love 27. China -So long 28. Richie Sambora -Church Of Desire 29. Bystander -Welcome To The Real World 30. Sharp Edges -Too Young 31. Fighter -Time OUt 32. Foreigner -Flesh Wound 33. TNT -Take Me Down 34. Santers -Lightins Gonns Strike

23. Ted Poley -Hands Of Love 24. Dare -Until 25. Angels Or Kings -A Harder Place 26. In faith -Does it Feel Like Love 27. China -So long 28. Richie Sambora -Church Of Desire 29. Bystander -Welcome To The Real World 30. Sharp Edges -Too Young 31. Fighter -Time OUt 32. Foreigner -Flesh Wound 33. TNT -Take Me Down 34. Santers -Lightins Gonns Strike

Welcome to China Business Cast episode 24! Today’s show we have Anthony Johnson, a British entrepreneur who has had a few ventures in China and a lot of experience hiring and managing staff. But before we start, let’s do a 3 second moment of silence for those in Tianjin who went through that horrible explosion disaster. The person who connected me and Anthony, Russell Smith, was just a building complex away from the explosions, he is ok, but is being evacuated like the other local residents. ...3 second pause...Ok, thanks everyone for your respect, we talk about China, and USA, and international business- but we are all humans on the same planet, let’s love and respect one another - now onto the interview! Episode Content:Tips for assembling / managing the team, keeping them happy at work, or how to train Chinese staff...Setting up an office / putting together a team on the ground in China.Russell introduced us, thanks Russ!Spent some time in Fujian province where he put together an office of staff to build a teacher placement agency. He handled the recruitment, the branding and the training etc. The office is still up and running and profitable: TEFL PandaSet up a Shaolin Kung Fu School in GuilinTons of things we can chat about - but today we’re focusing on assembling and managing a team on the ground in China, and thanks for sharing! Before we get started - Can you give us a bit of a background on how you first came to China?So the first business you did was the teacher placement agency, how did that get started?Assembling the Chinese team - how did you manage that?Finding and hiring is one thing, which is a challenge in itself, but I think the real challenge is maintaining the team and managing the staff, care to give us some tips on how the first few months went once you had the Chinese team in placeHow do you keep them happy and motivated?Any issues that came up with HR or staff?you speak Chinese pretty well, was that a factor in managing the team, did you operate mostly in Chinese?What tips can you give listeners who are at the beginning stages of opening an office in China and hiring Chinese employees?So you appeared on a Chinese Dating TV Show, Fei Cheng Wu Rao - care to give us some ideas how you got on and how it went, behind the scenes action? :)What is your current venture, care to shareThanks for sharing Anthony! How can people reach out to you and your business?Episode Mentions:Zhaopin One of Anthony's prior Businesses - http://teflpanda.com/Anthony on a Chinese dating showMike's service China Business AssistantThanks Anthony for coming on! Please reach out to him and give him a thanks if you enjoyed this show.Also - I know these shows don’t come out too often, trying to make a plan for the show - talking to some potential co-hosts or guest hosts. If you have ideas, I am open minded! Also if you are looking to hire a Chinese assistant, and need a hand, check out my service China Business Assistant .com - I have a package where I can give you some online training and qualified candidates to take your business in China to the next level, check it out at China Business Assistant .com - thanks!Til next time everyone , take careDownload and SubscribeDownload this episode: right click on this link and choose "save as"Subscribe to China Business Cast on iTunesOr check out the full list on subscription options