STREET DOGS: Making decisions
Always asking, compared to what? Compared to when?" is a good way to make better decisions
It’s all a matter of perspective and, all too often, our perspective is off beam. Think the main influence on China’s thinking is its communist past? In a contribution to Alphaville, Andrew Batson makes an interesting point on how little time China has in fact spent as a communist country. "Someone who was 25 years old during the Soviet economic reforms of 1985 would have been born in 1960; assuming an average childbearing age of 25 (on the high side), their parents would have been born in 1935, well into Stalin’s rule. "They would have to go to their grandparents to find someone with any memory of how to survive in a nonplanned economy. By contrast, a Chinese person who was 25 in 1985 would have had parents who had grown up in a nonplanned economy and could pass on useful experience and family business traditions." In his book How Not To Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking, Jordan Ellenberg writes: "Which way you should go depends on where you already are." It’s good advic...
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