Wholesale coffee prices are cratering in large part due to Vietnam’s major growth as a coffee producer. This is creating profound hardships for many small scale coffee growers in Central American and Africa. The resulting economic problems may lead to a surge in people trying to get into the US and renewed instability in many regions of the world dependent on coffee. All this information is contained in this article but boy do you have to wade through a lot of crap to extract it.
A lot of times, hypocrisy is the only tribute that humans can make to virtue so I guess we should not talk trash about it.Justin Trudeau—Illegitimate Premier?
I would put more focus on the idea that increasingly the State’s only commonly accepted justification for existing rests on ever increasing material befits. It is a short jump from there to think that if I am doing poorly, the state is no longer legitimate.Protesters Are United by Something Other Than Politics
More amusing and sly then the headline suggests. I think it strongly overstates its case though and in general it does not seem like it is written by someone who is deeply familiar with the past: How single men and women are making politics more extreme
The funny thing about the below is that it seems that the free runners really thought they had a chance (I say runners because it was group the gave the legion the challenge even though they only sent one runner to represent). At first I thought it was a publicity stunt from the legion but as best I can tell it was a real challenge from the free runners and one that they would go on to repeat in a more tedious context. Not speaking the language and not having spend a lot of time chasing down leads, I am sure that I could be wrong. On the other paw, I guess you have to say the free runner in this case did pretty well considering how the odds were stacked against him.
1. It is stories like the above that lead to socialism, communism, and other associated ideas having continued support in spite of their bad track record.
2. It is common for people who are good at something to think that they can therefore lead or manage a project that encompasses things that they are good at. But often, leadership skills don’t come with other strong skills. In particular, my own experience would lead me to believe that strongly artistic people are rarely good managers. A lot of Mr. Kern’s bad decisions as laid out in the above video strike me as a classic example of an artistic person let off the leash with no oversight. Computer gaming history is filled with similar stories of developers who were an integral part of strong teams but absolutely failed on their own in such spectacular fashion as to make you wonder if they were ever truly good at anything. In my judgement, the common thread in those tails of self-destruction is giving an artistic person a pot full of money with no controls.
3. It is common for people to exaggerate the evil nature of poor leaders and forgive the evil deeds of good leaders. That is to say the failure of leadership skill is often attributed to moral failings while successful leaders are forgiven moral lapses because they get things done. We all have moral failings and I am sure that Mr. Kern has more then his fair share. But I think a lot of what is laid out above is rooted above all else in lack of managerial talent and not some particularly black heart compared to other people in the same industry.
4. It is common for people to point out someone’s hypocrisy or other moral failings as if they demonstrate that that person does not have good points or sincerely held beliefs. A classic case of this is the attempts to delegitimize everything Winston Churchill did because he was a supporter of imperialism. In this case, nothing in the above video really has anything to do with Mark Kern’s points about China or the current management of Blizzard except to warn against turning Mr. Kern into some kind of hero.That is always a good warning to have, but no one should go in the opposite direction and think it demonstrates more then it does.
5. A broader hypocrisy of the west in general is the focus of things seen on TV instead of any kind of tangible yardsticks. For example, what has been done over the years in Tibet have been and continue to be far worse then anything currently going on in Hong Kong. And yet, Tibet has not developed into nearly as big of an issue as Hong Kong is becoming.
6. That said, I think it is truly alarming how determined China is to use its economic clout to regulate what is being said in other countries. It is one thing to control your own country’s internet. It is another thing to try to control what everyone else is saying all over the world. And that does seem to be what China is seeking to do. Imagine the outrage if the American government worked as hard as China has been working to get sport’s people fired for being critical of US policy.
