The Last Lecture

On September 18th, 2007 Randy Pausch delivered a unique lecture. For years Carnegie Mellon had a series of lectures titled "The Last Lecture" where professors spoke as if it were their last lecture about their personal and professional journeys. In the case of Randy it was indeed his last lecture. Diagnosed the previous summer with pancreatic cancer he had just a few months ahead to live. Instead of lamenting and feeling defeated he dedicated his last months to enjoy life and his family. The father of three small children (Dylan 6, Logan 3, and Chloe 18 months) and married to Jai for eight years, his lecture and book are statement for them and we, as audience, have the privilege to learn from it.

Professionally, Randy Pausch was a computer scientist from Brown University, PhD and Professor from Carnegie Mellon, pioneer in virtual reality and Walt Disney Imagineer, above all an educator.

His lecture "Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" became an instant hit (as of today more than 18 million views in YouTube). After this lecture Pausch wrote the book with more details about his story. The Last Lecture is an autobiography full of inspiring lessons. 

Preparing the lecture Randy struggle with what made him unique. After playing with ideas and memories he conclude that he achieved all his childhood dreams, therefore the title.

The book is broadly divided in three sections. First he shares his childhood dreams and how they were achieved. The lessons are of passion, perseverance, faith and hard work. The second part is a series of anecdotes that give the reader an idea of who Randy Pausch was; an optimist, hard working nerd, passionate about whatever he was involved in (learning, teaching, working, in his marriage, parenting, etc). The last part relates to his values and beliefs. Randy appreciated the community and helping others to achieve their own dreams, family, generosity in general, hard work, frugality, team work, truthfulness, industriousness, and more. 

Randy passed away just 10 months after his "Last Lecture" but his inspiration will remain for many years later.

From USA Today Obituary

Randy Pausch (Oct. 23, 1960 - July 25, 2008)

My rating 4 stars.

A Brief History of Entrepreneurship

Joe Carlen book is History the way I wish I had in school. Instead of the disconnected list of events "A brief history of entrepreneurship" is a dynamic summary of human history since the first civilizations in Mesopotamia until the next frontier out of our planet, from the eyes of entrepreneurs and those pushing out the boundaries of the then current world.

"The transformation from rural agrarian to urban commerce took place during the Uruk period of Sumerian history, an era that began about 3,500 years ago."

The narrative of the book allows the reader to identify the birth of institutions we take for granted today. From the division of labor, the non-zero sum trade, financial instruments to fund explorations, the early corporation and merchant societies, accounting control, fiat money, etc. 

The book is mainly descriptive and not normative about entrepreneurship but it is easy to identify historic patterns. Carlen's sources make the book credible and a good reference to understand the systemic differences of motives and results. In periods like the early Sumerians and Phoenicians dominated more by City-States that had high commercial interaction progress excelled. In contrast periods with strong centralized governments like Romans and Medieval times the entrepreneurial spirit was limited to cronyism and corruption. No wonder why in the first kind entrepreneurs and merchants were in high esteem, while in the later were the lowest of the classes.

Chapter 4, An Enterprising Faith, is quite interesting under the light of the current geopolitical events. It describes the emergence and advancement of the Arab world in the VII century. Unified under Muhammad the Arabs expansion covered the Middle East, North Africa/Spain and parts of Central Asia. Despite it was a military conquest it was driven by mercantile concerns. The Muslim world was a remarkable pollinator. It expanded and advanced Greek scientific knowledge, made mathematical contributions like algebra, expansion of use of writing paper from China, silk, cotton, wool textiles from different regions, or African Coffee.

The Brief history has a space for Sumerians, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Chinese, Mongols, Western Europeans and their Imperial expansion to America, Africa, India and Asia, and the Colonist. Before the Industrial Revolution most of the benefits of the entrepreneurial spirit were limited to the regions that were thriving and not globally. The last part starts with the Industrial Revolution. Carlen misses the role of ideas in the change of pace of progress, something that Deirdre McCloskey brilliantly explains. Nonetheless he points out:

"However, prior to the Industrial Revolution, innovation in the form of disciplined scientific inquiry rarely intersected directly with the world of entrepreneurship. The original Industrial Revolution, that is, the one that occurred in Britain and peaked during the seventy-year period of 1760-1830, is when those worlds coalesced in unprecedented ways."

Carlen covers the modern era with short biographies of business tycoons from Abraham Darby (1678-1717) to today pioneers of the last frontier like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson. Including people like James Watt, Thomas Edison, the wrongly called Robber Barrons (check Andrew Bernstein's "The Capitalist Manifesto"), entrepreneurs in different parts of the world (China, Latin America, Africa, or Russia), the information revolution with Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and more.

Overall the "A Brief History of Entrepreneurship" is a good reference of how entrepreneurship and human progress go hand in hand. A window of the conditions that allow these ever present minds shine and make all our lives better.

My rating 4 stars.

The Frankenstein Candidate

Vinay Kolhatkar novel is set in a near future by the US elections of 2020. A multimillionaire, Frank Kenneth Stein, who decides to fund his own presidential campaign breaking with the traditional parties. Quite the opposite of a Donald Trump who has the money but not the brains, Stein has clear and consistent ideas, thus many time conflicting.

With a complex plot full of obscure characters the novel unfolds the worst crises in history due to the games politicians play. A game that they can't stop without burning themselves and therefor are willing to do whatever to keep the wheel spinning.

The democratic presidential candidate, Olivia Allen is facing as rival the Republican Vice-President Quentin Kirby but soon realizes who the real enemy is.

Olivia Allen is a iconic character; beautiful, successful professionally and socially. It is easy to identify with her honest will to improve the system. Her optimism about working hard and fix what needs to be fixed is appealing. It is easy to feel empathy for her struggle between facing these life challenges and saving her personal life. As many of us, she realizes that the task is paramount because it goes against the stakeholders of the system. Olivia's philosophical transformation is encouraging, a hope that if people decide to think and not just hope the system may change.

The Frankenstein Candidate is a work of fiction but also a believable future. If the political system doesn't overhauls itself, which is very improbable, the size of the next crisis can be unthinkable. With the size of national and local debts, the level of monetary emission, the choking regulatory framework, and the irrational obsession with climate change, the future of a world is not shinny. Can the system be changed from within or the chances are nil leaving the only hope on a third contender with clear ideas and the pockets to compete. 

Frank Stein campaigns around the ten commandment of government; "honesty, forbearance, temperance, respect, integrity, kinship, courage, justice, dignity and humanity". This could be a model to measure how good or bad is a proposal since most of the politician promises fail on several of them. Overall these commandments are just traits of humanity.

Nice novel for the times. Now that we have elections in different parts of the world and many are about choosing the least bad.

My rating 4 stars

Omnipotent Government

Ludwin Von Mises wrote Omnipotent Government in 1944 at the last days of WWII. Mises describes the philosophical grounds of the Nazi movement. A book rich in history background and a though provoking plan for the future.

In the first part Mises explains the German Liberalism during the middle of the XIX when the ideas of the classical Liberalism were partially adopted in Germany. According to Mises:

"At about the middle of the nineteenth century those Germans interested in political issues were united in their adherence to liberalism. Yet the German nation did not succeed in shaking off the yoke of absolutism and in establishing democracy and parliamentary government."

Mises explains the history of Germany from the late XVIII to the early XX with a different point of view from the dominant Socialist Historians. Overall he shows how and why a powerful-educated German society fell into Nazism.

"The questions to be answered are not: Why did the bankers and the rich entrepreneurs and capitalists desert liberalism? Why did the professors, the doctors, and the lawyers not erect barricades? We must rather ask: Why did the German nation return to the Reichstag members who did not abolish absolutism? Why was the army, formed for a great part of men who voted the socialist or the Catholic ticket, unconditionally loyal to its commanders? Why could the antiliberal parties, foremost among them the Social Democrats, collect many millions of votes while the groups which remained faithful to the principles of liberalism lost more and more popular support? Why did the millions of socialist voters who indulged in revolutionary babble acquiesce in the rule of princes and courts?"

For Mises the German Liberals were unable to protect the principles and ideas that help them succeed. They saw Socialism and Nazism as temporary setbacks and never recognize the deep roots of Etatism. Soon Etatism armed with a strong military evolved into nationalism.

"As soon as liberalism reached Germany and Italy the problem of the extent of the state and its boundaries was raised. It solution seemed easy. The nation is the community of all people speaking the same language; the state's frontiers should coincide with the linguistic demarcations."

"The principle of nationality is an outcome of the interpretation which people in Central and Eastern Europe, who never fully grasped the meaning of liberal ideas, gave to the principle of self-determination. It is a distortion, not a perfection, of liberal thought."

The nationalism originally define as unity of language evolved  to unity of race. The idea that Germany was the strongest among European nations contrasted with the defeat after WWI and the unacceptable conditions of the Versailles Treaty. It fueled the legend of "the stab in the back" followed by the total failure of the Weimar Republic setting the conditions to the advent of Nazism. The party sold itself as the enemy of the communist to the liberals and as saver of the poor from the bourgeois. But overall a saver of the German Nationalism, nationalism now defined by race with a common enemy, Jews.

Mises' conclusion can be read two ways. Considering the era when The Omnipotent Government was published he recognize the improbability of a liberal world, necessary to discard aggression from other countries, plus the risk of government to close their borders establishing autarkic states and starting aggression against their neighbors to eliminate its dependency. 

"But will all men rightly understand their own interests? What if they do not? This is the weak point in the liberal plea for a free world of peaceful coöperation. The realization of the liberal plan is impossible because—at least for our time—people lack the mental ability to absorb the principles of sound economics. Most men are too dull to follow complicated chains of reasoning. Liberalism failed because the intellectual capacities of the immense majority were insufficient for the task of comprehension."

But sixty years later we can read his conclusion as a kind of prophecy of how humanity is condemned to live with the risk of war supporting strong armies as long as the different flavors of etatism are not replaced by liberalism, where goods and people move freely anywhere in the world.

Is capitalism an all or nothing global condition for peace? Are global coalitions and governments the only defense to totalitarian neighbors?

This book was the subject of the 2015 Socialism Seminar organized by the Center for the Study of Capitalism at Universidad Francisco Marroquin.

My rating 4 out of 5.

Las Tribus Liberales

Las Tribus Liberales es una narrativa de María Blanco (@Godivaciones) sobre su recorrido liberal visto desde diferentes perspectivas. De una manera creativa María utiliza las figuras de la mitología griega para describir las ideas de la libertad en el mundo actual.

Como sabiamente aclara al inicio "es una perspectiva personal, hablo más de quien conozco más y de quien más me gusta a mí... Mi pretensión no es ser exhaustiva sino dar mi punto de vista honestamente y con toda humildad."

En efecto el libro es casi una conversación con la autora que descubre las bases del liberalismo, las disputas entre liberales, las críticas a los liberales, y en general las esperanza que algún día el ciudadano entienda las diferencias de la libertad individual sobre los chantajes estatistas e irracionales.

El libro se divide en cuatro partes cada una identificada con iconos de la mitología griega. La primera parte, Atenas, explica la origen histórica del liberalismo y sus diferentes variantes. Evolución tanto en el entorno puramente académico como en grupos de pensamiento y sus partidarios.

La segunda parte dedicada a Eris descubre la lucha política entre diferentes actores, muchos de ellos que toman elementos liberales a conveniencia. María critica la defensa pragmática del liberalismo porque primero que nada no tiene un fundamento de ideas sólidas que trasciendan las circunstancias del momento, y por otro lado la realidad desnuda los esfuerzos pragmáticos porque lejos de ganar terreno se ha perdido a costa de la credibilidad de las ideas.

"Están firmemente convencidos de que es mejor ceder a las políticas socialistas a cambio de aplicar alguna medida liberal. En lo que ha derivado esta idea que, en principio, puede parecer sensata, es que se ha cedido tanto a las medidas socialistas a cambio de un tímido soplo de liberalismo en algún aspecto menor, que el remedio ha sido peor que la enfermedad y el mal realizado se ha multiplicado. Por un lado no hay verdaderas medidas políticas liberales, y por otro, de tanto mentar el supuesto liberalismo, la gente de la calle lo identifica con ese híbrido burdo y dañino."

Posteriormente entra a abordar la relación de los liberales con el ciudadano. En esta parte María es crítica de las discusiones académicas, rebuscadas e insensatas. Para la gente en la calle, el debate liberal pasa a ser un espectáculo de gente rara. Para mientras se entregan a las arbitrariedades de los gobiernos.

"Esta creación de una realidad por parte de los medios tiene como resultado la formación de una masa de población conformista e incapacitada, como un niño, un menor de edad que ha de estar representado por un adulto. Así también, nuestra sociedad está tutelada por el Estado."

Finalmente María baja al reino de Hades y rebate algunas de la criticas más comunes, pero no por ello sustentadas, al liberalismo. Desde el favoritismo de los ricos, la liberación de las drogas, el trabajo infantil, y más. Una a una expone los argumentos de los críticos y presenta una defensa basada en principios, distanciada de pragmatismos que no son extraños en otros liberales. 

En resumen, el libro es una texto para la gente que está en medio de este universo caótico de las ideas; entre escuelas, autores, políticos y esperanzas. La gente al final busca vivir mejor, ojalá aportes como este logre que cada día sean más los que entiendan que solo la defensa de la libertad individual provee los medios para ello.

Resistencia no violenta a regímenes autoritarios de base democrática

El juez Ricardo Rojas (@rmrojas58) nos trae "Resistencia no violenta a regímenes autoritarios de base democrática", un libro oportuno ante las múltiples y crecientes manifestaciones de rechazo de los ciudadanos hacia sus gobiernos (Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, Brasil, México, Argentina, etc.) 

El juez Rojas construye sobre la tesis de Gene Sharp sobre cómo funcionan las revoluciones no violentas frente a dictaduras. Existen muchas similitudes entre regímenes netamente autoritarios (producto de dictadores, golpes de estado o guerras) y aquellos que se disfrazan por haber llegado al poder por la vía democrática.

Uno de los primeros puntos que aborda Ricardo es cuestionar la legitimidad de todo gobierno que surge de un proceso democrático.

"es importante investigar de qué se está hablando cuando se utiliza este vocablo [democracia], pues dentro de sus tantos significados se esconden formas de gobierno autoritarias."

Los gobernantes electos con aspiraciones autoritarias traicionan a sus electores y olvidan que son simples empleados. En lugar de cumplir con las funciones definidas por la ley, creen que recibieron un cheque en blanco para violar los derechos de las personas en nombre de su misma defensa. 

La democracia no es una panacea y dentro del sistema republicano juega un rol que no debe ser deificado. 

"la idea de una democracia directa, del 'Pueblo' tomando decisiones por sí mismo respecto de los asuntos públicos, es tan romántica como impracticable"

Las medidas no violentas son mecanismos para contener los abusos de los gobiernos sobre los derechos individuales y no tanto para el derrocamiento de los mismos. Es así que Ricardo sugiere prevenir que los gobernantes puedan acumular poder y llegar a abusar del mismo. Para ello nos recuerda la importancia de cuidar los principios republicanos básicos como el respeto a la constitución, la independencia de poderes, el fortalecimiento de instituciones, la libertad de prensa, la descentralización del poder, y el control electoral, entre otros.

A diferencia de muchos casos tradicionales de totalitarismo la adhesión es más compleja en los casos analizados por el juez Rojas. Por ejemplo a la oposición se le critica como opositores de la democracia y la voluntad de la mayoría. Amén de estas reacciones, la organización de sistemas de resistencia es posible aún cuando el origen del poder hayan sido elecciones.

En la última parte Ricardo abarca los requerimientos organizacionales y de planificación para que los esfuerzos no se dispersen o se esfumen producto del cansancio y el conformismo. Con una buena estrategia la aplicación de algunas de los casi 200 prácticas no violentas de resistencia de Sharp se hace de forma ordenada y con objetivos claros, lo que les da mayor fuerza y efectividad. 

Como complemento el libro del juez Rojas incluye el texto "De la dictadura a la democracia. Un sistema conceptual para la Liberación" de Gene Sharp.

Indiscutiblemente el aporte de Ricardo es relevante. Cuando la presentación del libro es censurada y acusada de promover el desorden se puede apreciar su valor. Como dijo Winston Churchill "¿Tienes enemigos? Bien. Eso significa que has defendido algo, alguna vez en tu vida."

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Unleash Your Inner Company

As times turn harder more and more people are considering starting their own businesses, Unleash Your Inner Company is a timely contribution and a required read for those serious about it.

In Unleash your Inner Company the successful entrepreneur John Chisholm (@johndchisholm) shares his experience to all those who want to be entrepreneurs as well.

John's book is easy to read, fun to follow and provides very useful training. He lays out a 10 step process to think, organize and make your ideas coherent. Beginning from the more simple but fundamental question of what you love and what you are good for, up to creating a full strategy with pricing, differentiation, escalation, financials, etc. The road map works like a blueprint, to build from the ground up, from the basics to the complex. In addition to the framework itself, John takes the reader by the hand clarifying his ideas with examples (some from his personal experience, others are made up yet very concise), suggesting exercises to put the concepts into practice, and FAQ's sections that expand each step further. At the end of each step a short recap becomes a cheat sheet of lessons learned.

In addition to his model, John introduces basic but powerful economic concepts to the entrepreneur. Sort of a reality check for the entrepreneur to be aware of non-business related challenges. Among these ideas we find the importance of institutions to create the environment for ideas to flourish, the damaging effects of centrally controlled regulations on innovation, and the ethics of entrepreneurship as a value creating endeavor.

In the last sections of the book, John adds some useful tools such as 101 accounting, and the relationship of his 10-step model and the popular Business Model Canvas.

John explains that he took the challenge of writing this book after he presented at TEDxUFM in 2011. It is a satisfaction to see an idea materialize. Bellow is an interview given during his visit to Universidad Francisco Marroquin for the event.

My rating 5 stars