Tuesday, October 27, 2015

You can't "outgame" a crappy foundation

Johnny just posted a link to a great video that discusses the "fetishization around entrepreneurship in Africa", which deserves a wider audience. You may now think that this topic doesn't concern you at all, but the parallels to dating are strikingly obvious. Without wanting to go off a tangent, on an abstract level the issue is unjustified enthusiasm --- you can be as euphoric as you want, and think your "can do" attitude will get you anywhere, but it won't if you lack the means. If you've been following what's going on with the ongoing invasion of Europe by economic migrants ("gimmegrants'), and how deluded countries like Sweden and Germany deal with it, you'll be able to draw further parallels.

Here's the video, followed by what I think is the main quote.


“I’m concerned about what I see is the fetishization around entrepreneurship in Africa. It’s almost like it’s the next new liberal thing. Like, don’t worry that there’s no power because hey, you’re going to do solar and innovate around that. Your schools suck, but hey there’s this new model of schooling. Your roads are terrible, but hey, Uber works in Nairobi and that’s innovation.

During the Greek bail out, no one was telling young Greek people to go and be entrepreneurs. (...) I feel that there’s a sense that oh, resilience and you know, innovate around things—it’s distracting us from dealing with fundamental problems that we cannot develop.

Thursday, October 1, 2015

The Open Thread: October 2015

Since I get a relatively high number of comments that are tangential to the articles, I'd like to try to move those parts of the conversation to the monthly 'Open Thread'.

In short, it you think anything you're going to write is "off topic" to the current post, but still related to pickup, women, gender politics and other topics I discuss on this blog, then please leave a comment to the most recent Open Thread, such like this one. Just post below.

Thank you.