I don’t know about you but I have actually stopped caring about who wins their match-ups anymore.
Given the level of tennis they both play, the destination doesn’t matter anymore for me: in their case it truly is the journey.
Nadal and Federer: 2009 Australian Open
(Image: Getty Images)
When the Oracle Of Omaha speaks, the world takes notice and his OpEd piece in the New York Times is possibly a voice of sanity in this time of greed and fear.
Warren Buffett is diving headlong into U.S. equities with a strong warning to cash-hoarders:
Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn’t. They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value. Indeed, the policies that government will follow in its efforts to alleviate the current crisis will probably prove inflationary and therefore accelerate declines in the real value of cash accounts. [New York Times]
“Buy American”, he says. “I am”.
Well that’s good to hear, but the question is “Do I (and you) dare?”
Today, October 15th, is Blog Action Day: a day when thousands of bloggers around the world come together to write about a particular issue. This year, that issue is Poverty and according to site they “aim to raise awareness, initiate action and to shake the web!” I am happy to play a small role in talking about this critical issue.
And more than 3 billion people – or half the world’s population – live on less than $2.50 a day.
Apathetic Perspective?
My perspective on poverty is obviously shaped by the environment in which I was raised and when you live and grow up in a country like India where unfortunately you stare poverty in the face every single day. The Atlas Of The Real World which contains maps of the world in which countries are shown not based on actual territorial sizes, but on different criteria like number of immigrants or wealth of its citizens, presents this altogether disheartening map of Poverty:
Map Of The World where each territory shows the number of people living on US$2 a day or less.
It leads to a kind of, for want of a better word, apathy. Seeing something everyday only makes you notice it less. It’s not that you don’t care, it’s that you are overwhelmed and that feeling gradually leads to despair, despondency and finally surrender. You roll down your car windows to drop a coin into the ever-waiting begging bowls at traffic signal after signal until you end up realizing: (1) “It’s too big for me alone to handle” and (2)”There is nothing I can do about it”.
(1) might be true. You “alone” probably cannot “solve” this problem in the standard definition of the word. But, (2) is certainly not true. At least, not anymore.
Think. Then Act Locally and Globally
You have always heard to “Think Globally, Act Locally” but with the Internet on your side you can act Globally at a fraction of the cost of what it would have been just a few years back. Just a few things to consider doing today (and always):
Act Locally:
Act Globally:
These are obviously just a few things you can do but for a lot more ways you can make a difference, check out these resources:
Spread the word today by blogging or emailing your thoughts. Let’s Unite To Make Poverty History!
Peter Norvig has a fascinating calculation on his Presidential Election 2008 FAQ site that values your single, lonely, solitary vote at about $1,000,000!
In answer to his question “Is it rational to vote?”, Norvig writes:
[...]We can estimate the total monetary value by noting that the current office holder presided over a $3 trillion war and at least a $1 trillion economic meltdown. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) estimated the cost of the Bush presidency at $7.7 trillion. Let’s compromise and call it $6 trillion, and assume that the other candidate would have been revenue neutral, so the net difference of the presidential choice is $6 trillion.
The value of not voting is that you save, say, an hour of your time. If you’re an average American wage-earner, that’s about $20. In contrast, the value of voting is the probability that your vote will decide the election (1 in 6 million) times the cost difference ($6 trillion). That means the expected value of your vote is $1,000,000. What else have you ever done in your life with an expected value of a million dollars per hour? Not even Warren Buffett makes that much.
The assumption behind this calculation stems from your being in a swing state, but if you are a citizen of the United States and if you lived through the tragicomedy that was the 2000 Presidential Election, then this might not be such a far-fetched valuation after all.
