its the same...

Well hello.

Its been a while and there are so many updates. But you don’t really care about my updates do you. I don’t – that’s more important. I think I have lost the art of writing a blog. Its difficult. I remember how I used to write. It would be a random thought or an experience that would set me off and I would keep that in my mind when I reach the computer – dying to write about the experience.

Without that little germ of a thought its pretty pointless to write anything. I could just ramble on and bore the readers on the fact that I want to write – but I cant , blah blah blah.

There  are a lot of interesting experiences that have happened to me  or us that I could write about. Some profound and some that I find erudite. So there is the Corona lockdown that I could talk about, how I feel, how the world is; and within that there ae schisms in society around communal lines. A lot of my friends/ acquaintances are so polarised in their hatred of Muslims that I find it quite amusing at best and disgusting at the least.

But more important than that is the fact that we are in a 21 day lock down and I really read on how we will get the economy going after that. I see a huge pain. Huge. I am not sure if I will have a job or the salary that I get currently in three months. The pains are real, the economy is screwed, and companies will go through a really tight squeeze. I don’t think we have ever seen a squeeze this large and I don’t anticipate going through it without significant pain. Land (goods and services), labour, capital, are all under severe stress and a major realignment of resources is going to happen. I don’t know which companies or industries will come back form this stronger.

Small businesses even though unleveraged depend on daily cash flow for salaries and a month out without receivables is an impossible thing to recover from. Keynes spoke about the economic cycle and that it must always be oiled and any stoppage must be kickstarted by government spending. But this is crazy. We are seeing forces of economic activity being stopped in totality for an extended period of time. Our politicians don’t know what’s going to hit them when we start. Cash (and gold) will remain good. I see stress on everything else.

But that, however erudite is not what I learnt this week. I learnt something more. Something very profound. I learned that human behaviour is same and that by and large the ups and downs that we go through in life remain same from generation to generation. It will take many many years and inter galactic events to change these emotions a human goes through.

Jispa is 17 (almost 18) and I keep telling her that she is not much different from what we were as kids. We too believed that our parents don’t understand us and that we suffocate in their thoughts and actions. We are independent smart and young kids. We believe that we can change the world, but the damn world – its conspiring to stop us. What are these thoughts. The same thing repeated after 27 years. Same shit.

I am sure my dad went through teenage pangs himself as I did and so will my child and those that follow her. My dad did not talk about his childhood much and his teen years. I know that he was a good boy and studied well but then he didn’t study too good in engineering and hepicked up smoking and drinking as well. What I must say that before I was born for sure he gave up on smoking and somewhere soon after – he gave up drinking. I have a vague memory of opening the fridge as a 5 years old to see green beer cans. But not much memory of that soon after.

But he did speak a lot about office and the politics he faced. That was universal. The pyramid was there then and it is there now. People dragging people up, and down, mentors made, enemies made, jealousy seen and back biting / stabbing rampant. People are the same. I was telling Jispa that the world hasn’t changed too much.

 The way it comes out maybe different, but the broad strokes are the same. I see other kids, kids under me, my friends. They are also going through similar trials. It’s the same over the years. No matter what it is you are going through, you can bet on it that something similar happened to someone before. Its remarkably the same, whether its relationships, struggle, work, friends or whatever. It’s the bloody same thing repeated.

Sometimes when Jasmine asks me about work when she overhears something, I don’t respond. The answers are always too complicated. But occasionally I explain the game. When Jispa hears it, she is flabbergasted. She told us “thank god, I am not going to be like you, stuck in a job that requires you to do/ think all this.” I laughed.

Of course, you will face the same issues no matter what job you do. She wants to be in medicine/ sports science / physiotherapy or something. I told her – what do you think. People are different there. They are all the same everywhere. I told her that in some colleges where I used to teach, the other professors didn’t like me. I was not even the faculty, I was just the visiting guy but they still hated me because I taught well and I got 80% plus attendance. Jealously is everywhere.

Doctors have their own issues as well. So does whichever profession you can think of. Even freaking NGOs have enough problems and fights. NGOs do good work but internally they are people after all. You should see some of the jerks I have interacted with. In all professions.

You will see them everywhere. The problems you face are universal. When you have a relationship – you will face universal issues. Even relationships go through their cycle. I have the luxury of having so many friends younger ot me talking about their lives. Same things.

Of course everyone’s life is different but the underlying issues are very same. People are finally governed by emotions and life cycles. Life cycles depend on hormones, wisdom, experiences and interactions. These don’t change and hence life doesn’t change. Welcome kid. Your life is going to be as F&^ked as mine. Just differently.

What of course changes is how you react to them and how you handle them. I have had some good teachers. Some (few) who have taken the trouble to teach me and some who I have learnt like Eklavya form Dronacharya. I think I can’t solve how life treats me, I solve how I can treat life. How I look at it as game to be played.

Coming to which, I have now a new found love for gaming. When I was younger, I couldn’t afford games. And Jasmine never let me play computer games, though she is now hooked onto cell phone games. And I never forgave her really for this. But I have an enviable collection of games to be played and it gives the greatest joy to play them. Its post surgery rehab for me right now (second knee). And I look forward to the time that I hope I will have for – badminton, gym, running and games.

I don’t want too much more in life. And once Jispa is suitably settled down, that’s the limitation of my ambition. Professional and personal. A chance to play ata game worth playing. So help me God. GOD? Wtf I am atheist. But I still say God with a lot of love and reverence. Doesn’t make sense, nah?

It’s a topic for another day. Love you all.

a lemon and a peach market

No matter how bad the mood, the greatest joy I have found is in enjoying the company of your family. It was good that the last few months of my previous employment was a bit of a tough one. I used the time and the experience to grow smarter and tougher. I find it easier to deal with less catastrophic issues.

I have had some rough times in my career and many of them were earlier on in my life. These helped me prepare for a lot of shit that seemed to have followed. Of course it follows in different ways. Sometimes, there is boss trouble, sometimes there is peer trouble, sometimes, unrelated colleague trouble and sometimes employee trouble. Trouble doesn’t come with a standard tag or a name. You learn to deal with it and you learn about the vagaries of life while dealing with it. One of my reactions over a period of time is to simply buckle down and try and build a cocoon around yourself. Talking about it doesn’t really help. Hence sometimes I look at people talking about it to others and taking advice, making me wonder, if this was really helpful. Once in a while taking advice is good but more than that is to my view not healthy.

Over a period of time, I have realized that sitting, chatting and discussing with other people on various issues is a good thing. But consistently talking about your problems and looking for advice is practically useless. The old adage is that people say that you shouldn’t leave so much within yourself. It’s not good. Well – that’s a yes and a no. I think in life I have learnt to just simply contain a lot of the anguish and pain within myself. It served me well. Opening up did really do me good. I like the way men (archetype) are friends with each other (sounding sexist). We chat, we discuss and we move on. We simply don’t dwell too much on emotional issues. There are 100 different versions of this and counter versions, but I am discussing the archetype. Ok – forget the disclaimers. I am talking about the thing that when screwed, probably a response that allows you to just box it mentally and manage your other life well, possibly works best. In managing your other life, the time spent with your loved ones is something you cherish the most.

I love the way Jasmine fights with me these days. Or should I say – I love the way she responds when I fight with he these days. Whatever – it’s fun. I shout, she gets angry and in 30 seconds we are back, smiling at each other. It’s not personal. We fight and we just get back. No egos, no making up with each other – just the quiet confidence that we love each other more than what the fight is all about. That’s the only way we can manage to get through all the stuff that we are managing to do these days. Jispa’s swimming, the new house that we are planning about moving to, all the decor and the arrangements. It’s not possible to do all this and not fight. And it’s not possible to have good memories if we fight and sulk. Right now it’s going great and we are doing just fine on how we are doing up the house. Enough fights and enough fun times and a lot work trying to visualize all the work.

Coming back. I was in a horrendous mood since yesterday evening thanks to some crappy work I was seeing at work. But I liked the way I simply put my head down, slept through and when I woke up I decided to spend time with Jispa and jasmine at the dining table and take effort to smile and chat with them. There – I felt much better and I realized what real truth in life is.

Coming to which – Jispa is a real joker. She loves what she calls the ‘papa’ smell. Every time I wake up from sleep and I hug her she gets papa smell from my t shirt. So she makes it a point to sniff me when I wake her up. One day, out of the blue in the morning, I woke up removed my t shirt and threw it on her face and went for bath. After some time when she woke up she loved the fact that the t shirt was on her. Her words “I was dreaming that I was in a meadow and smelling flowers and the flowers were smelling of ‘papa smell’.” Hah! Jasmine didn’t know where to look. She rolled her eyes and was wondering to her self – these two are crazy.

With Jispa I have a pact going – she allows me to kiss her nose and I allow her to bite my arm. It’s an irrevocable pact. Now we have another pact that I engineered. I throw my t-shirt on her in the morning and allows me to give a kiss on her ear lobe twice a day. Her only condition is that I don’t do a slurp kiss. Hahaha. I engineered this one and in the morning I was explain to her – that thanks to this understanding a lot of benefits happened. First – she gets the t-shirt every day, second, I get to kiss her properly and not just sneak one on her ears while I am hugging her, third, I am forced to give a proper one – the one that she doesn’t really mind and fourth – it’s a sanity situation where I am constrained to two a day. All benefit when a trading pact happens. It benefits the whole ecosystem.

Today morning I was reading about The Market for Lemons. Here the economist Akerlof argues that in the market for used cars, there exist asymmetrical information. The buyer doesn’t know about the car quality but the seller does (which is the lemon and which the peach is). Over period of time, thanks to a trust deficit, the average price of the car being bought by the buyer will gravitate towards the middle, the average of the peach or the lemon. This will drive the peaches out of the market and then you are left with only lemons. This drives all the buyers out.

 An interesting quote from the paper: “The cost of dishonesty, therefore, lies not only in the amount by which the purchaser is cheated; the cost also must include the loss incurred from driving legitimate business out of existence”

The book I was reading spoke about how this paper is important in understanding that asymmetrical information is important in driving business out. With internet and apps and the platforms that it has mushroomed – people are able to rate each other and information can be democratized. This is the example of Uber allowing both the passenger and the driver to rate each other and similarly the case in AirBnB. It allows everyone to participate and the world becomes a more vibrant space. Trip advisor allowed the smaller hotels with exceptional service and no marketing budgets to beat the big hotels on ROI and occupancy rate. Information thus democratized forces people to improve their service or the lunch will move from the big stupid seller to the smart nimble seller on the basis of interactions that have been positive.

I have seen this thing in action. As Trip advisor and other review sites mushroomed the world became such a smaller place, such an accessible place, such a beautiful place. When I was in SFO I realized that to get anywhere to anywhere you just need Uber. This is a huge thing. Earlier you would wonder before takinga taxi in a new place – is cheating you, or taking you on the longer route or anything. Here all that friction is just taken care of. One other thing about uber – I have written about this in the past – is that in Mumbai it has caused a lot of congestion. I reaslie that it is in part thanks to the laws of the land. Here an average car owner cannot just switch on to become an Uber driver. He has to have a commercial registration and a yellow number plate. In US you can simply turn on the Uber app (some pre verification) and boom – you are an executive by day and an Uber driver on the way home. This is the ultimate Uber dream. Your car is idle and parked for 90% of the time. With Uber – you can simply sweat the asset through the day. Laws here stop that and hence the congestion. If you transform the laws, possibly you will have Uber and less congestion. That’s the great thing.

So it’s interesting, how Uber is relevant and the innovation has potential to really decongest the city. The ultimate Uber holy grail – Pooled, autonomous, electric vehicles. Now  that’s crazy. That’s serious transportation solutions. It uses existing infrastructure to provide a solution that promises to work and get the hassle off the commute. And without government spending.

That’s the power of innovation, freethinking and the ability to do business with minimal government regulation. That’s the case for regulation to reduce. And that’s the reason or trade. Trade allows rules to be formed that work well for all parties. Jispa gets my used t shirt and I get her ear lobe. Win win and everyone loses if the contract is broken. Speaking of which – distributed ledgers…. Some other day…

Dream Swim

50 mtr backstroke gold, followed by 100 and 200 mtr silvers at the state meet and hence winning the right to represent Maharashtra as a campion at the Nationals; while being at the youngest in the age group spanning three years. It some real proud achievement for Jispa and for us as her parents.

Being a swim parent is a full time job and even more so for Jasmine. Take them to the pool, to the doctor, to the physio, get them food, sleep everything. It’s a crazy schedule that needs to be managed to the tee. As a father, I have to pull my weight, by getting up in the morning and taking her to the pool and then on weekends helping around with Jasmine at the swim events. And especially removing time for Jispa if she needs help in her studies. The mother is a crazy full time job with the menu and everything else. Today as I stand, I can’t believe how it can be done without Jasmine being at home full time. So, when a colleague was talking about how he wants his daughter to do well in sports, I tried to explain the enormity of the whole thing to him. It’s not easy to bring up a sports kid in Mumbai for now.

Which got me thinking. If in the future we see more and more, the rise of the double income household and the working mother and as a consequence will we have the breakdown of this support system that gives rise to children who can perform at a higher level? I had this thought for exactly two seconds. TWO FREAKING SECONDS. That’s it. I can’t not have these stupid thoughts. There is no choice to that. But what is in my control is how I react back to my own thoughts. Any stupid conservative guy will bemoan the death of the family and that the future of children would be lost and hence they would put stupid rigid controls in place. Get the mother to stay at home. Ensure that the greatness of the family tradition is maintained by ensuring status quo. In exactly two seconds (I am so proud of myself) I laughed. Of course not. There is no way that argument holds. At the first level itself, no one should tell the parent on how to raise their children (unless there is some serious abuse). But then, let’s keep that argument aside. At first, the argument looks tenable right now as I see it. Yes. You require a stay at home mother to really help in bringing up a child that aspires to do well in sports as well as studies. The ecosystem outside does not really help foster all round development without the active total involvement of one full time parent. But then saying no to the choice of the mother to work and be productive and to do what she wants is also not there. A working woman can add so much productivity to the nation’s workplace. What will happen is that women WILL join the work force, they will have children and they will have aspirations of them. They will want them to succeed and do more. At this time, they will be ready to spend more for them as they earn much more as a family. At that time, the ecosystem will automatically develop to allow for all the support required. This is the classic case of demand finding supply for itself over a period of time. In the short run, there will turmoil and pain but slowly more and more will be trained in the skills that are in demand and the market will emerge.

This is the simple belief in the markets being able to best allocate its resources by itself to things that bets suit it. Hence in fact we must allow all men and women equally to make their choices and not choose for them. The collective power of the market has to be believed in. This will free people to make their choices and push towards what they want.

Sometimes the government must step in if the private players fail to understand the power of a public good. Things that will help the society at large but is largely unnoticed or is commercially unviable. But then that’s it. The society must learn never to say no and never to put artificial barriers to choice. A barrier to choice in many ways a barrier to progress and is something that we must understand as a society.

Coming back to raising a kid, and that too a sports kid, is a very tough thing to do. You have to focus on sports but at the same time you have to keep an eye on studies. Nutrition is another big thing as well. Now as Jispa grows and turns 15 this year. She will have to learn to pull her own weight at home. I have been after her to now pull some. So far I think both Jasmine and me have protected her from the drudgeries of household work. We never made her party to the work to be done around home. As a kids growing up, I have washed vessels when the maid was not there. Every evening the servant would wash the vessels and leave them to dry. As kids, we had turns to dry every vessel and keep them in place in the evening. We had to make our own beds and also had turns to wipe the table. We had to clean the grains, peel fruit and everything else around the house. It wasn’t tough at all but it was boring and no fun. Jasmine and I have tried not to pass it on to Jispa. We have done the work ourselves. We hardly give Jispa any work compared to the stuff we did as kids. And it’s not just that we have an army of servants who do it. It just that we realise that as a kid most of this is boring. Also to be fair, Jispa with her swimming schedule and her studies never had the time to do much more. But now her exams are over and her vacations are on. She has plenty of time and she must now learn to contribute. I give her the table to clean, I ask her to help me while I help Jasmine in the kitchen etc. I think she needs to learn some basic life skills and house work. Jasmine’s view on this is similar and she has smaller asks. All she needs is for Jispa to finish her own work. Pick up her things, eat her foods, pack her own bags, keep away her stuff etc. Just do your own work and that itself is good enough. Jispa is a fine kid though. She understands but she can get exasperating when she has momentarily lapses of madness.

It’s been an awesome achievement on her part. To be a state level gold medalist and to manage studies and to read and everything else. I think we as parents are in danger of being heavy pushy mad parents. We think we are not. We try not to be. We try and achieve what we can and we try and push where we think its absolutely necessary but we are as always, ever in danger of breaching the tipping point.

But hell, let’s not take away from some real awesome glory that our young one has achieved. It’s a bloody gold at the State meet to qualify for the nationals. A bloody freaking gold. That’s something. It’s one the proudest moment for us as swim parents and as parents in general. Jispa is not a natural swimmer, she has worked hard to reach here and done tons of rigorous practice. Jasmine has devoted the last seven years towards this. It’s a big one. This is something that I say with pride and I look up to. It’s an amazing achievement. I am going to cherish this one for a long time to come. State level gold medalist. Wow.

While on achievement, I read an interesting poem that talks about the achievement and how over a period of time, it probably counts for nothing. Greatness too turns to dust in long run. Hah.

Jispa – you did well. It is one of the proudest moments of my life. I guess by that logic I mustn’t have lived too much, but in your life, I lead mine. And in the end just remember the poem of Ozymandias. Look him up. It’s a very interesting story.

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land, 

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone 

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, 

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, 

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, 

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read 

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, 

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; 

And on the pedestal, these words appear: 

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; 

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! 

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay 

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare 

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

You never know which lesson will come handy.

“May you live in interesting times”. Said to be (probably apocryphal) a Chinese curse. Times of peace and tranquility and boredom are possibly best for quality of life. Life without issues, innovation, pressure is a boring lovely simple life. Hah! That is a 41 year old talking. The same thing as a 14 year old would be a life with nothing new to look forward to. How is a life, sans pressure and change worth living is it? Wouldn’t we all want to live in interesting times. Where productivity is constantly increasing and change is helping us lead more meaningful and sweetly ripe lives. Ya, I for now like to live in interesting times as things change around me, as I understand this change and get a ring side view of the changes and their impact on people and interplay of the characters. I was lucky to have been born in 1975. Which meant I was the one who entered college when liberalization started and exited when its impact was in full flow. Today I am seeing the impact of internet and mobile penetration in the country and how its changing the landscape. It an era that looks like massive change is coming and it’s going to sweep everyone off.

Many years ago, I read a book by John Nasbitt called Mindset. It was quite an interesting book and it talks about predicting the future from current news, science and trends. I don’t remember most of the book (like always) but one lesson stuck tight in the head. Most of the trends that really matter to us over the long term are hidden in the inside pages of a newspaper and never on the front page. Yes, I agree. Change happens in small increments and over a long period of time. Suddenly the tipping point comes in and it looks like a rapid sudden change. The internet first wave came in the year 2000 and I rode that wave for some time and worked in a few start-ups. I saw that internet was changing the world and that crazy things would happen, but the advent of the mobile internet and apps put the dam thing on steroids. The most interesting disruption that affected a lot of our lives was the advent of App based taxi servces, especially Uber.

Every commuter, including me hailed Uber as the solution to all issues. This was the best thing ever. In Mumbai we were victims of the taxi mafia, that had a few things to do with regulation and a few thanks to lack of competition (of course both are interconnected). You wouldn’t be able to get a taxi when you wanted and whenever you got one, he would first ask where you wanted to go and then refuse to go in that direction. The cars were in horrible condition, the government refused to allow AC to be run in the taxis. For AC taxis they gave out separate permits. These were called cool cabs. These were the ultimate jokes. These taxis only plied from the airport and were stationed near the five star hotels. They also invariably refused small fares and were typically employed by either shopping seduced NRIS or foreign nationals. The meters of these were completely rigged and would show some random price, which was up to 3 x of the real rate. The humble black and yellow taxis also tended to have rigged meters and whenever I used to take one from the airport, I would get an inflated price after which I would fight and pay only the normal fare and walk away. Taxis were so broken down that they could be considered dilapidated. You could see the road down from a few holes in the floor of the cabs. Serious. They were that bad.

On the side lines, the government had given permission to launch AC call cab services. Here you could call and book your cab in advance. These cars were decent looking and maintained and theoretically they could be flagged down anywhere on the roads. Slowly these too gravitated towards airport pickups and drops and five star hotels. You could call for a cab and book in advance only to be told later that there was no cab to be found at your appointed hour. Even at the airport one had to wait in a line before one could book the cab. It was a great step forward but it still wasn’t enough.

So, when Uber launched in Mumbai, it was a crazy dream for the commuters. Good, new cars were on the road. You could load the wallet with money and then order a car from app. You could see that the pricing was competitive and that you could get the taxi confirmed without telling him in advance where you wanted to go. You simply booked and sat. The app became so good, that you could book your car on the phone and reach your destination without ever speaking to the driver. The location was prefixed and the wallet was loaded. No need to speak to anyone. You could see your taxi in real time and it was supposedly the safe and best way to ride.

It broke the back of the normal black and yellow cabs. Being subsidized (read predatory pricing), the rates were awesome and people rushed to download the app. Usage went through the roof. Airport pick up and drop was a breeze. People were happy and could show the middle finger to all normal taxis. I remember going to Hyderabad a year and a half ago and being completely independent of the completely fraudulent rickshaw drivers. I roamed around in Hyderabad in a taxi at the same cost of a metered rickshaw. Of course no rickshaw would go on meter and invariably you have to haggle your way everywhere. The world had just become a little smaller.

The promise of unbridled capitalism had benefited the common man. But like all unbridled capitalism, there were consequences to be had. The party on free flow of funds had to stop sometime. The crazy demand had created crazy supply. Uber and their Indian rival Ola, went all out to woo the Indian drivers. They wanted more and more taxis on the road. Drivers at the start were making unheard figures of 90 thousand or so a month. More and more drivers came in form villages and started driving their cabs. Some smart ones, expanded their fleet. On the back of robust income streams these drivers started having robust credit scores and the credit poured in. Fueled by a small upfront investment and a seemingly unending source of business cash flow, you could become a driver owner at worst or a fleet owner at best. Adam Smith’s invisible hand started to play havoc. The demand for drivers meant that driver salaries went up. In the last two year’s I would reckon that the salary went up by 1.5X at the minimum. Slowly more and more cabs started coming on the streets. To ensure enough cars everywhere, Uber had a surge pricing system where if there was demand and not enough supply, they would increase the pricing (surge pricing) to tempt more cars to reach the areas that are underserviced. The consumers had a chance to book or wait till more cabs hit and reduce the surge in the area. This caused dissonance with the users who thought that it was unfair.

Taxis also were being pressed into service which were actually tourist taxis and were on the fine line of the law, if they could be considered as everyday call taxis.

Of course a lot of good things happened, economy wise. First of all, a large part of the business became legit. Taxi drivers were till now an all cash business. They would earn all their income in cash and possibly never ever filed a tax return. Being outside of the system, they would be ineligible for credit and therefore were forced to be on the fringes of society. Uber allowed them the opportunity to legalise their entire business model and therefore access finance and grow.

With more and more taxis hitting the street, different sets of issues started cropping up. These guys were so many in number that civic planning became chaotic. With access to cheap cabs more people started to use it to commute to work. Traffic was full of Uber cars choking the road. While the consumers demanded it, at a fundamental level, the playing field was lopsided in favour of the app cabs. They could charge free fares which the black and yellow taxis couldn’t. So, they could benefit from surge. Second - parking spots for black and yellows were designated. That’s where they could park and wait for customers. These Uber taxis could wait anywhere, and they did. They would invariably wait around the roads causing jams. An Uber waiting or wanting to search for a customer would keep moving slowly till he found his customer, fundamentally slowly down the traffic for the rest on the road.

In the middle, an Uber driver raped a girl in Delhi and the world realized that these drivers need proper verification as the alleged rapist was a known criminal on the loose. Just because you can track someone doesn’t mean you can’t be harmed from them.

The point of all this history isn’t to document this but to learn interesting lessons from this. When regulations happen they invariably choke the system and give consumers a shitty service, but when capitalism is left unchecked, equally great ills can be unleashed in the form of unintended consequences. False predatory pricing brought a lot of credit fuels cars on the road, but when the pricing stops as it nears it real value, these drivers will be held to a lower income stream and a mountain of debt. Its already started happening. Now an Uber driver will tell you that today he receives only 4 to 5 trips a day compared to the 10, 11 earlier. He hardly got any surge pricing benefits now days as you see Uber cars everywhere. Debt servicing is going to be an issue.

The government has woken up to this service and is now trying to regulate it. It is trying to put in pricing curbs and some other rules like regulating car color.

This is interesting. The swings are happening real time. The consequences of market forces coming together and partying are causing hangovers. Suddenly, you will have lesser cars in response to lesser demand thanks to increase in price. What will happen to the drivers? What will happen to these excess cars? What will happen to roads, parking and commute?

Fun things I assume. In many countries, private drivers can work their cars as Uber cars during their spare time. That is another level of complication being built into the economics of car ownership and commute.

The point here is simple. There are two sides of the coin. If the government interferes then it’s an issue; if it lets the private enterprise go unchecked, the issues are of another scale. This is not simply a government versus non-government issue. It is an issue of intervention. Any intervention, big or small has consequences, intended or unintended. Things move crazy after a small change in initial condition. I think it’s called the chaos theory. Here large changes in final outcome can be attributed to small changes in initial conditions. We argue and argue on so many small and big issues. We seem to understand all the issues and then we give our opinions on it. Life has taught me that issues are not straightforward. They have choices and choices and thenthe decision tree rapidly multiplies and assumptions start taking over. SO much so that after a point guessing is worse than tossing a coin.

All of what is happening at Uber is simple and possibly one could have explained it, with the benefit of hindsight. But it’s almost impossible to figure it as foresight. We get lost in the waves of optimism around us. All will be well. We argue (me included) that private enterprise is good and must be free. Sure – it must be free’er’ than where it is today but it cannot simply be unchecked. Then the problem is who is to check it? The authority in any case doesn’t understand it. None of us – including the authority or the entrepreneur knows the game more than two steps ahead. In such a scenario, how can you plan so far in advance. And when you do plan in advance, you will invariably start glossing over small details that will make significant impacts over a period of time.

When the Uber frenzy was happening and drivers were earning 90k a month and above, I too felt like getting into the bandwagon. Whats wrong with this? One car costs around six hundred thousand. That’s at best 8 months for profit to keep rolling in. And people like me have good credit history and with a good balance sheet, I can leverage and expand like crazy. It’s a story that too good to be true. I knew one thing – if anything is true good to be true – it isn’t.  there is always something up. If there is free money then there will be a flock of vultures making a cacophony attracting other vultures. Soon enough there won’t be any meat left for any of the vultures. There can’t be free money for long. Especially if it is capitalist money. Government money can be free for much longer. Corruption, lethargy and smoke can ensure you have a sweet spot for a longtime to come. But definitely not open market money. It comes with risk. For me the biggest risk was simple – government. Here I knew that the government would get involved and at worst – ban it all and at best – regulate it to a jam. It cannot grow thus for long. I never reached the free money fallacy on this deal in advance. I never got there. I think I too was swayed by it all.

This is the fun bit when you live in interesting times. You see economics 1.0 being played out over your life. It is the greatest lesson that you can learn. Free! You just have to look around and make mental models of what’s happening.  Life has enough to teach you. That’s why it’s amazing to have a conversation with an older experienced person who is able to retain his /her memory and give you the benefit of their life. Simple stories make a huge learning experience. My favorite one is how one friend running a premium saree shop explained that the Ahmedabad airport opening up reduced his sales in Mumbai as the gujju NRI’s simply took the direct flight there and skipped Mumbai altogether.

Parenting is also complex. Here only time will tell how much of a effect does chaos theory have on the child. Small decisions like schooling, neighborhood, choice of sport, movies etc have an impact on the child as it grows into an adult. Who knows what the consequences are. That’s why parents who like to have a greater control over their child’s future will sweat hard over agonizingly simple decisions. Long term decisions with limited data. A simple act of choosing our child’s play dates can have different consequences than what we can imagine. Yet we have no choice but to choose.

It’s the classical Keynesian versus Hayekian model for economics. Should I or the government interfere or should it be free to grow. Left free, over a period of time, the people find amazing things to do and innovate. But in the long run, we are all dead. And the actions affect us or the people we love. Can we but not interfere and try and guide it to the place we want it to sit. Can we simply just sit back and say – lets see where it goes. If it gets too ugly, I can always get in. It’s not so simple. Like in the Uber case – you don’t know how ugly is ugly. Suppose Uber folds shop world over, my assumption is that an app based taxi concept will remain. Someone else will come in but the demand may not be that much. What happens to all the taxis drivers. All the credit guys who put in the money. How do they make good? It takes a few taxi drivers to commit harakiri – a strike (which we have seen), violent protests, immolation and suicide. What gives then? Who is to answer. The commuter enjoyed his ride in an AC cab for cheap. The irritating black and yellow cab driver got shown his place, and the driver too enjoyed higher wages and a chance to be the boss himself. When the party is over, the hangover hurts.

Jispa is growing up now. Its good fun. She is close to us, we enjoy hugging her and we like her close. We like that thanks to our protection (read the alst post) she remained safe and happy – ok – not happy completely but atleast no real bad things happened. But then what are the long term consequences. I don’t know. Plus, I have only one kid. I can’t even learn and improve on this. What to do.

That’s why I like economics. At the base level its simple. And it helps understand life. I wish Jispa reads a lot of my books and a million more of hers as well. You never know which lesson will come handy.