Merry Christmas

久违的在周五下午有空能写点博客了,因为三个月的工作在今天也告一段落了。去年的圣诞在上海度过,今年的圣诞则和上海的工作做了告别。一年过去了,也是时候自省和总结一番了。这一年,我自己和世界都变化了太多,又可以说是没什么变化。毕竟透过现象看本质,而本质是很难改变的。在年终总结之前,先写一下简单的一篇短文吧。

工作的日常

很久没写东西了,今天只是趁闲把此时的想法记录一下,以供自己未来参考。如果有些词不达意的地方,还请各位读者谅解。先分享一首歌给大家吧。

YouTube, 你们懂的

最近在思考两个人的故事,暂且称他们A和B吧。其实如果是熟悉我的人应该猜的出来我说的是谁了。

A是我关注了两年多的游戏主播,不是一个很大的主播,大概有几万粉丝。A今年25岁,做Up主和主播大概有五年了吧。A最早是打L4D2,即求生之路2这款游戏的,水平相当高。A在2015-2018年打过多次国际赛,属于国内顶尖的半职业选手了。退役后基本就是上传一些求生解说视频,点击量大概也就几万吧。这样的点击量每月激励计划收入不过千元,实在是难以为继。2020年签约了B站成为职业主播,收入有了不小的提升,但也就是勉强糊口的水平。2020年底A的父亲去世了,作为家里的顶梁柱,A每天直播七八个小时外加剪视频,其身心的疲惫在他每天的直播里可以清晰的感触到。

A的三观很正,工作也努力,其游戏水平也可以看出来A是很聪明的人。但是A的生活不说多困难,至少也是挣扎的。

B,是一位29岁的程序员,从支付宝去了字节跳动,目前在日本享受人生,开宾利炒股票研究Bitcoin和Web3。B还曾经因为褒扬东京奥运会的开幕式,被微博网友群嘲。到这里似乎说的有些明显了,有关注新闻的人大概已经猜到B的名字了。

但我这里不是要褒扬或贬损A、B中的任何一个人,我只是想讨论一种现象。

A、B的原生家庭相似,都是工薪家庭,大学也未有多大的本质性差别。我也可以说,他们的聪明程度应该是不相上下的,毕竟学习好的人很多,而电竞的专业选手真的不算多。问题就在于他们选择的赛道不同。电子竞技可以算是苦力活,想变强只有训练和研究战术,而互联网行业哪怕只要挑对了公司,按部就班的工作,四五年就财富自由了。选择,运气可能比实力更加重要的道理又一次被证明了。从这点上,也不难理解一些高回报行业的人气了,毕竟连穆斯林见到拜占庭的东正教牧首金币都眉开眼笑,现代的人见到绿纸,哪还管什么爱好理想。

互联网的魔力就在于点石成金的期望。信贷系统的发展起源于中世纪晚期的荷兰,而这套系统的本质就在于花未来的钱。传统行业哪怕发展再迅速,一年20%的增长已经是让人望其项背了,而互联网行业1000%的增速只是家常便饭而已。2008年金融危机之后,美联储凭空印了几万亿美元的现金给投资者,而拥有这种性质的互联网行业一下成了热钱最大的目的地。无数的财富神话就此诞生。从Facebook到Amazon,再到阿里巴巴和字节跳动,凭借着全速开动的印钞机和不断昂首向上的股市,无数Coder的人生轨迹改变了。

所以,依靠互联网创造价值来消化印钞机的产能合适吗?

太阳王路易十四时期(Louis XIV,1643-1715)的三次战争——波兰王位继承战争、奥地利王位继承战争、英法七年战争耗资20亿里弗尔,以至于路易十四临死前告诫继承人路易十五(Louis XV):“尽量和邻国保持和平,我太喜欢战争了,不要在此和奢侈上效仿我。”他留给路易十五高达26亿里弗尔的财政负担。路易十六(Louis XVI)时,一场美国独立战争又花去20亿里弗尔,相当于1788年法国财政预算收入5.03亿里弗尔的4倍。而独立后的美国掉头就与英国和好,法国一无所获。1788年3月,政府的财政预算报告显示,当年财政收入为5.03亿里弗尔,支出6.29亿里弗尔,赤字1.26亿里弗尔。其中国债偿付支出高达3.18亿里弗尔,占财政收入的63.2%,占财政支出的50.6%。

1889年,当路易十六为挽救崩溃的财政,召开已经停摆175年的三级会议,等待路易十六的是法国民众忍无可忍的怒火——法国大革命。

Tiktok和快手在南美和巴西市场的大战,也不过如此吧。

那么当互联网公司赢得了战争之后,比如Facebook已经做到了EPS 3美元了,他们能创造新的价值吗?

是可以的,代价就是Be evil。ARPU和MAU,亦即每用户平均收入和月活用户数,是互联网公司的命脉。所以,越能吸引用户的内容,低俗,暴力,政治言论,越被平台所推崇。

上一个注重ARPU和MAU的是东印度公司,产品叫Opium。

所以正如英国皇家海军把军舰开进长江口保卫东印度公司的权利一样,美国商务部用美元和SWIFT系统保卫美国互联网和科技公司的权利。有意思的是,百年前的鸦片和今天互联网产品,主要生产者都是印度人和中国人。

当然,消费者变成了全世界的人民。

回到A与B的例子上,A在这个过程中,大概是云南被迫种鸦片的农民,而B则是香港的东印度公司买办。作为投资银行的职员,我会毫不犹豫的加仓科技股,但作为人,我觉得这个体制是美丽新世界的开始。

当然,智人作为一个种族,Homo Sapiens, 从走出东非的那一刻起,除了互相残杀,就是给别的种族带来灭绝。哪怕是美丽新世界,也是智人历史上最文明和进步的时代了。并且,历史的进程一旦开始,如同认知革命和农业革命,以及工业革命那样,就无法回头了。哪怕我们觉得以前的日子更好(很多人其实并不觉得,因为没有真正体验比较过),在这条单行道上,我们也只能一路向前。

我也只好希望,A能过的好点,而B和B的公司,能不忘初心牢记使命吧。

Wish us all good.

及び、メリクリスマス。

2019 Article: A Hard Transformation toward Inclusive System: China

Deng Xiaoping is one of the greatest reformers in Chinese History. With more than two decades of planned economy and some mistakes in the political and economic policy, the economy of China nearly collapsed. In 1977, Deng decided to reform the economic system of China. From then on, the GDP and HDI of China skyrocketed for almost 40 years. Within this process, we gladly say that the system of China’s economy is moving towards inclusive, but there are some obstacles in this way and a lot of reasons shaped China’s system today. I want to express these from three aspects: good signs, bad signs, and comparison toward other countries.

Firstly, that’s talk about the better part. For the last 40 years, China made a lot of effort in transforming its political and economic system. For economic part, the idea of private property was introduced to China to replace communism, and the guarantee of private property is more and more reliable. The reform actually started with the reform in the countryside, where the peasants got their own land. The property right for city residents was also making progress. For example, the government can easily take residents’ land or houses with little compensation back to the 1990s, and the protest often ended up with casualty.  Now, the standard of compensation has been lifted up to a price higher than the market price, and no action will be performed unless officials have the consent of the owner of the property. The monopoly of the government industries was weakened: the department of oil, electricity, rail and postal service was abolished and replaced with several corporations. The stock of those corporations can be traded in the stock market, and there is some competition between those companies. Generally speaking, with the development of private economy and the open of different fields of economy towards western countries, China’s economic system made huge progress in the last 40 years, mainly in the protection of private property and the contracts. In the political system, there are also some improvements. Firstly, the government’s right was limited, and for the first time, people have the right to know about the government decision and express their own ideas. For example, in 2015, by protesting and strong opposing toward government, the citizen of Xiamen forced the government to change the location of a chemistry factory. The independent anti-corruption has a positive impact on the bureaucracy system. Compared to the economic system, the political system did change, but it is far from enough.

There are always problems with reform. The impact of the pre-socialism country is still inflecting China now. In fact, there are still a lot of relics of the extractive system in China now. Economically, the domination of government-funded corporations is still unshakeable. Almost all financial institution is public banks, and key industries, including transportation, mining, insurance, real estate, energy, and tobacco, are all controlled or partly controlled by the government. Also, in the developing area, the contract, especially those with governments, are not well protected. The competition system is still not reformed. Also, the most serious problem is that some of these public corporations still serve those upper classes with privilege, maybe political or economical, acting as their tool to extract people. Some of the officials gained millions of dollars from the public he was supposed to be responsible for, and all those people can only accept the fact. The development of private corporations is still managed by the government, and the restrictions sometimes prevent innovation from happening. Also, the transformation of the political system not very smooth. After the Tiananmen Protest in 1989, the CCP slowed down its political system reform, focusing on the economy. Until today, China is still an authoritarianism country with limited freedom of speech and democratic election. The whole political system, in its innermost, is still serving the elites. To sum up, we can say that China is in the balance right now.  The momentum of moving forward , by the unstoppable change from extractive economic system to inclusive system because of the wake up of the people, is balanced by the power from an extractive political system controlled by the elites in the government. Gladly we saw that the power of the extractive system is decaying, but it is still extremely powerful. In the process of moving toward an inclusive system, China had a hard time, and the future is still covered by dark. If China can make a smooth transformation towards inclusive political and economic systems, the Chinese economic miracle may continue.

Finally, since there is an axis about the location of China’s system in the world, I would like to explain the reason I put it there. China must have a relatively inclusive economic system to get the second-largest economy in the world, and the highly developed industries proved that. The technology development of China lead by innovation is rapid, and the open field of the Chinese economy is wider. For example, Tesla signed a contract with the Shanghai government to build one of its largest factories in Shanghai. Actually, China’s economic system is ranked pretty high. However, the political system is not that inclusive, which slows down China a lot. Consider both of these aspects, since China is moving toward the inclusive system, we can put China above South America, Africa, most of Asia, and behind the EU, Japan, the US, Canada, and other western counties. I think somewhere between Russia and South Korea will be a suitable place. China, like my hometown, is facing a great challenge right now. It has done a lot, but that’s not enough. In today’s China, the key to moving forward is determined by whether it can move forward to the inclusive system. 

本篇内容写于2019年,是于UCLA研究Development economics中的一点发现。个人习作,不代表任何观点。