Here's What Would Happen If You Asked Ayn Rand To Loan You Money

Here's an interesting letter son. You know AYn rand and have been reading her books regularly. Interestingly, just yesterday I had a long conversation with one of my girls at work. She's Russian and she brought some fascinating perspectives on how a person raised in an ex communist country sees objectivism. She's all for it. But I got the impression that it's a bit too tilted to individuality. 

Second point. Lending. It's an interesting social behaviour son. Do you know that my record on lending is absolutely disgusting? Ive never managed to get any money back which I've lent. Ever. Curious eh? I'm supposed to be a banker and review lending and all that but I'm pathetic. I don't regret the lending. Or even the non return of the money. But I do regret that the relationship I had with the people who borrowed from me suffered. Always. So all I can advice is that never lend any money. Help them in non monetary ways. That's better. Another truism is that son, gratitude is the shortest lived human emotion. So what do you do? 

You don't expect anything son. No expectations, no complaints, no explanations. As much as you can. You'll be happy. I've donated or given money to many people. And that makes me happier than lending. I value the relationship more than lending. 

But as you can see, I tend to disagree with Ayn rand here. 

Love

Baba

Here's What Would Happen If You Asked Ayn Rand To Loan You Money
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In 1949, a 17-year-old girl named Connie Papurt wanted to buy a dress but needed $25. So she did what a lot of young women in her situation would do: asked a relative if she could borrow the money. The relative? Her aunt, author and economic philosopher Ayn Rand.
Papurt is the daughter of Agnes Papurt, sister of Rand’s husband, Frank O’Connor. The Toast spotted this letter from Rand to her niece in the book Letters of Ayn Rand, and has shared it for our reading pleasure. Naturally, Rand couldn’t resist answer a request for a loan with a dissertation on fiscal responsibility. While there is some sensible stuff in here (and hey, at least she admits that Connie doesn’t have to agree with her personal philosophy), most communications with teenage girls don’t turn into a miniature version of Atlas Shrugged, paired with threats of viewing them as embezzlers. I suppose, though, young Connie knew — or at least should have known — what she was in for when she made the request:

May 22, 1949
Dear Connie:
You are very young, so I don’t know whether you realize the seriousness of your action in writing to me for money. Since I don’t know you at all, I am going to put you to a test.
If you really want to borrow $25 from me, I will take a chance on finding out what kind of person you are. You want to borrow the money until your graduation. I will do better than that. I will make it easier for you to repay the debt, but on condition that you understand and accept it as a strict and serious business deal. Before you borrow it, I want you to think it over very carefully.

Decoding leadership: What really matters

Kannu

Hope you had a great time at your spring ball. We are anxiously waiting to see your photographs in your tuxedo all dressed up. I made chicken stir fry yesterday and I was missing feeding you. Lol. That sounds like I'm an emperor penguin feeding his chick while his mate is off foraging for her meals. But you did cuddle into my lap like a penguin chick does :) 

Anyway. Talking about leadership. Difficult decision son. And I've seen more papers and advice about leadership than I've seen leaders. I've had great leaders. I've had crap leaders. I've been an ok leader and have had serious leadership issues myself as well. It's a tough one. You have to have different leadership skills at different times with different people for different tasks. 

Besides the below, I would say that the first thing is that you shouldn't be an asshole. In so many banks, I've seen leaders become assholes. Just because they have the power. Be nice to start with son. And then other elements come in. 

Another thing is to talk. Leaders talk. And communicate. And communicate. Written. Spoken. All the time. Keep banging on about it. 

Anyway. Looking forward to the photos son. 

Love you

Baba

Decoding leadership: What really matters
http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/leading_in_the_21st_century/decoding_leadership_what_really_matters
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Telling CEOs these days that leadership drives performance is a bit like saying that oxygen is necessary to breathe. Over 90 percent of CEOs are already planning to increase investment in leadership development because they see it as the single most important human-capital issue their organizations face.¹ And they’re right to do so: earlier McKinsey research has consistently shown that good leadership is a critical part of organizational health, which is an important driver of shareholder returns.²

A big, unresolved issue is what sort of leadership behavior organizations should encourage. Is leadership so contextual that it defies standard definitions or development approaches?³ Should companies now concentrate their efforts on priorities such as role modeling, making decisions quickly, defining visions, and shaping leaders who are good at adapting? Should they stress the virtues of enthusiastic communication? In the absence of any academic or practitioner consensus on the answers, leadership-development programs address an extraordinary range of issues, which may help explain why only 43 percent of CEOs are confident that their training investments will bear fruit.

Our most recent research, however, suggests that a small subset of leadership skills closely correlates with leadership success, particularly among frontline leaders. Using our own practical experience and searching the relevant academic literature, we came up with a comprehensive list of 20 distinct leadership traits. Next, we surveyed 189,000 people in 81 diverse organizations⁴ around the world to assess how frequently certain kinds of leadership behavior are applied within their organizations. Finally, we divided the sample into organizations whose leadership performance was strong (the top quartile of leadership effectiveness as measured by McKinsey’s Organizational Health Index) and those that were weak (bottom quartile).

Ships and Silver, Taxes and Tribute: A Fiscal History of Archaic Athens

So I'm hoping to start another Phd this fall at UCL son. Where this professor teaches. It's got a great history department. Completely new subject in history so let's see how that pans out. 

But funny thing happened last week. I posted something about how Israel imposed price controls on books. And with the sad and completely predicable collapse of the book industry in Israel. Great idea, to increase prices so that authors can live but basic economics son, people would switch from books to toys or games. With the result that the authors are now in a worse situation. And I said that price controls usually end up fucking up the market place like rent controls. 

One labour supporter took umbrage at it. And said that's not true. When I pointed out that we have been doing rent controls since 1915 and every time we did that, the availability of housing has gone down. And then he said, economists do not live in the real world. 

Quite a curious statement. The economic illiteracy is about as expected in this election phase but to say I'm not going to learn from history or economics is not even illiteracy but seriously gobsmacking. 

This book talks about how Athens used taxation for its wars. And that also gives you an indication why I hate wars. They raise taxes and lead to some of the most unproductive use of human capital. I'm reading about Athens 2500 years or so later and its fiscal situation and shaking my head. 

History is a vast early warning system son and as you can see from the election, our politicians and our fellow citizens do not want to learn. We are going to be in a world of hurt now. Be prepared for the government to grab more of our money. 

Love

Baba

H-Net Reviews
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Hans van Wees. Ships and Silver, Taxes and Tribute: A Fiscal History of Archaic Athens. London: I. B. Tauris, 2013. 240 pp. $90.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-78076-686-7.

Reviewed by Nikolaus Overtoom (Louisiana State University)
Published on H-War (January, 2015)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey

Institutional Power and Public Finance in Archaic Athens

Hans van Wees’s Ships and Silver, Taxes and Tribute: A Fiscal History of Archaic Athens argues that the financial and institutional advances associated with classical Athens were developments of the archaic period. The book charts the rise of institutional power in archaic Athens with a focus on public finance. Van Wees is at odds with many of the generally accepted historiographical traditions of the fiscal history of Athens. His revisionist history uses, as Paul Millett calls it, “new fiscal history.” Van Wees reconsiders literary evidence from authors, such as Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Aristotle, and supplements them with archaeological evidence. He concludes that the accounts of later authors either were biased toward making classical Athens seem more spectacular by overlooking the archaic period or were anachronistic. The scope of the work roughly ranges from the reforms of Solon in 594 BCE to the transfer of the war chest of the Delian League to Athens in 454 BCE. In seven chapters, he discusses the obstacles in studying archaic Greece, the background to public finance in archaic Greece, Athenian financial institutions, public spending, public revenue, and the media of public finance. A brief concluding chapter, a short appendix on Persian naval expansion, a sizable bibliography, and a helpful select index of passages accompany the work. Van Wees is Grote Professor of Ancient History at University College London and is the author of several works on ancient Greece.