Snap Out of It: GoPro or Go Home

Most software is fungible these days. Snap (NYSE: SNAP) has called itself a "camera company," which is clumsy shorthand for its goal of becoming a premier consumer hardware company. While Snap has successfully created exciting marketing events with its filters and is well-situated to promote blockbuster movies, this expertise alone cannot justify its current valuation. Following Larry Ellison's unrelated comments many years ago about "going back to the future," hardware is becoming sexy again because software features are easily replicated.

My main concerns are 1) Snap's main user base is between 10 and 29 years old; and 2) GoPro (NASDAQ: GPRO) is already the premier camera company.

With respect to 1), this group lacks high levels of disposable income and isn't known for brand loyalty, indicating hardware margins or profit may be stressed. As for 2), if Snap plans on avoiding competition with GoPro by focusing on teenagers and younger adults with cheaper products, Polaroid and vintage cameras have already been done. Spectacles is not revolutionary, unless you count flashing lights as a remarkable innovation over Google Glass. How does Snap plan on differentiating itself long-term?

Unlike Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), Snap cannot displace existing software and hardware companies, which have entrenched users and their own "sticky" ecosystems. Furthermore, how many different ecosystems will consumers tolerate before they become frustrated? A quick online search shows several apps capable of adding both filters and special effects to pictures, such as BeFunky.com. In short, Snap lacks a "wide moat" from a technological standpoint and needs to quickly capitalize on its accomplishment of being first to market and capturing younger users.

Being first to market can be a long-lasting advantage in the consumer market. Success begets success as retailers provide more prominent shelf space to faster-selling products, leading to relationships between suppliers, advertisers, and manufacturers that are hard to displace. If a consumer company is first to market, competitors often end up vying for second place, fighting over shelf and virtual space that hasn't already been allocated to the market leader. Older readers might remember that Gameboy was first to market and maintained its leadership position in the videogame industry, even though Sega later produced a much better product. In fact, Nintendo continues to ride the success of the Gameboy today, while Sega sputtered with its Dreamcast console, becoming the Reebok to Nintendo's Nike.

How can Snap ride the wave of its younger user base and its "first to market" unique filters? One interesting scenario would be for Snap to partner with existing hardware companies like Fitbit (NYSE: FIT) and GoPro. More specifically, Snap could leverage the retail relationships smaller hardware companies have already built and offer access to its software and user base--for a fee, of course--as a way for smaller hardware companies to combat Apple and Samsung. Trying to displace Fitbit and GoPro shelf space in existing retail establishments doesn't make much sense--there's only so much shelf space to go around--and Snap doesn't have enough hardware products to open its own stores yet. If Snap tries to go against Apple, Google, and Samsung alone, it risks becoming exactly like Fitbit and GoPro, i.e., hardware companies desperately trying to hang onto to existing customers as larger companies copy their products and force the smaller companies to spend more dollars on each additional user, delaying profitability and making it harder to maintain margins.

One potential scenario involves GoPro CEO Nick Woodman pledging his own net worth as collateral and taking GoPro private, with the understanding that Snap would be a long-term partner and GoPro would design its products to be compatible primarily on Snap's software platforms. With either Snap or a consortium of equity funds buying a 49% stake in GoPro, Woodman could direct GoPro into new areas, diversifying his own user base and continuing to spend dollars on marketing and retail relationships rather than software engineers. (Note: most of GoPro's open technical careers are currently in Romania and the Philippines for software-related positions.)

Once software costs are minimized, GoPro could quickly move into new areas such as 1) food delivery by drone; and 2) tourism/travel.

Right now, Walmart (NYSE: WMT) is attempting to solve the "food desert" problem in inner cities, which tend to have cheap fast food and not enough healthy food. Using drones and online grocery ordering could revolutionize healthy eating in inner cities or isolated areas like First Nation lands. GoPro could offer to work with Walmart, Costco, and Target in delivering fresh food to consumers--a low margin business, but one that could serve as indirect advertising for its drones and other hardware products and a way to gain feel-good content.

Users, especially younger users, are tired of meaningless news and will quickly warm up to a software platform bringing them creative and positive content, such as tourism videos. GoPro CEO Woodman originally wanted to create content through an entertainment channel, but it wasn't profitable to do so, or he would have done it. As a private company in a cooperative setting, and with Snap handling the software, GoPro could focus on content development and capturing more users outside of Snap's existing demographic. Snap would broaden its demographic reach and save money and time leveraging GoPro's existing retail channels, and GoPro would maintain its financial strength by avoiding the costs of building and maintaining a competitive software platform.

Netflix once advertised with Amazon in its early days when it was trying to build its brand, and Jeff Bezos put a stop to it as soon as he found out about it, but GoPro and Snap don't compete directly with each other or larger food retailers, airlines, or travel agencies, making it easier to build relationships.

Once Snap demonstrates it can be a reliable partner, it can branch out to other consumer companies like Fitbit and discuss partnerships or demand a premium to reach its users in more substantive ways. For example, if Snap receives a movie licensing deal, it would normally create filters and receive payment for its marketing. However, in a longer-term partnership where its platform is used as a conduit to attract self-made content--such as mini-movies--it could become the purveyor of cool.

Right now, YouTube and other larger companies focus on all types of users to gain the most advertising dollars possible, but in doing so, fail to differentiate themselves. People sometimes go on YouTube to search for music and random videos, but they don't look forward to opening its app every day because Google relies on algos rather than curated content guaranteed to "wow" users. If Snap and GoPro create a mutually beneficial relationship establishing themselves as content curators and conduits for creativity, they can attract other companies experiencing difficulty breaking through the usual Apple, Google, and Facebook channels.

Snap's 12% drop on March 6, 2017 shortly after its IPO indicates it needs to think outside the box. In the hardware world, Apple and Samsung already dominate. Smaller companies like Snap need to figure out a coordinated way to take on the established behemoths or end up bleeding cash trying to avoid becoming fads. Meanwhile, GoPro CEO Woodman needs to do something soon. In 2015, he ordered a 180-foot yacht, to be delivered in 2017. It won't look good to be in a custom-made yacht while his shareholders suffer. Unless Woodman does something soon, his yacht might end up being called "French Revolution" or "Marie Antoinette." Will GoPro and Snap work together, or will they try to displace Apple and Samsung, two companies with marketing budgets larger than most companies' market capitalizations? Shareholders of Snap and GoPro should hope their CEOs make the right choice.

Bonus: the kind of partnership I envision is similar to the way Disney runs international resorts, i.e., a hybrid licensing and royalty model. Basically, Snap could license its software and platform to GoPro (and other smaller hardware companies like Fitbit) and also negotiate royalties based on revenues to incentivize a true partnership.  In the first few years, the licensing fees would be smaller and the royalty percentages higher, but as both companies learn each other's channels and execute more efficiently, the licensing fees could increase while royalty percentages to Snap decrease. More here on the overall model. 

Update on March 8, 2017: great comment from another website: "I like your Nintendo vs. Sega analogy but you compared apples to oranges. Gameboy was a portable handheld. Dreamcast was a console system. A better comparison would be how Sega's 16GB Genesis was better than Ninendo's 8bit NES system or how their full color GameGear portable was better than Ninendo's black and white, dinky Gameboy. But like VHS and Beta, Nintendo won out." 

Vaclav Havel on the Intellectual

Vaclav Havel, a political prisoner in the Czech Republic who later became its first President, is not studied enough.  His life is amazing, and his thoughts even more relevant today as many "developed" societies replace spiritual beliefs with consumerism.

Here are his thoughts on the role of the intellectual, from Disturbing the Peace (1990), copyright Paul Wilson, paperback (First Vintage Books edition, April 1991), pp. 161:

Here is another excerpt, on faith (pp. 190):

In an age where ideas are recycled and claimed as new, Havel continues to be even more original with the passage of time. 

The Canadian Dream: Nav Bhatia

I scored a picture with Canadian philanthropist and Toronto Raptors superfan Nav Bhatia! He jokingly covered my Wizards shirt in a pro-Raptors gesture before this shot.  Mr. Bhatia is the personification of Canada's inclusiveness.  Born in India, he left and earned a degree from a California university, but found success only after a Canadian-Chinese manager at a car dealership took a chance on him.  Now arguably the most admired self-made businessman in Canada, he spends six figures annually on Raptors tickets, donating many of them to underprivileged children.

Technology Isn't the Problem

I'm tired of people blaming technology for America's problems.  Apple, Amazon, and Facebook have grown rapidly, lessening America's dependence on oil prices and oil discoveries for economic growth.  Without technology, we wouldn't be talking about driverless cars, disease eradication, or personalized medical advances.  Just when we are close to implementing the Jetsons lifestyle (sans jetpacks), we screw it up by turning on each other.

I'm particularly troubled by pundits and regular people picking on "millennials," branding the latest college grads as lazy or self-entitled. If you spend close to 100K on a piece of paper, it's perfectly reasonable to think it should lead to a decent-paying job in the absence of a recession.  Let's try to agree on at least a few principles so we're not always speaking past each other:

1.  An economy based on consumer spending--especially on unnecessary items--needs more and more consumers, so if population isn't growing steadily, especially among middle and upper classes, then you have two choices: 1) increase legal immigration; or 2) make it easier for your businesses to sell abroad, especially to countries with growing populations (i.e., the probable rationale behind President Obama's "pivot to Asia").

None of the above means you have to support illegal immigration.  It just means if you want a wall, you have to ask yourself whether you'd rather spend x billion on the massive number of police and federal employees required to maintain and patrol it rather than spending x billion on more healthcare subsidies, lower college tuition, stronger Social Security, etc.

I suppose such a choice depends on whether you believe illegal immigrants bring crime with them, which is contingent on what you see.  Do you live in a city where they work in restaurants keeping your discretionary food prices low, or do you see them loitering outside, up to no good or engaging in what you believe to be drug sales?

In any case, you cannot possibly be against legal immigration because it is undisputed America has a low population density outside its fifteen to twenty largest cities, which is why its highway and public transportation systems are such a mess. (Too much space begets sprawl.)  All this means we either have to figure out a way for native-born women to have at least two kids, especially higher-earning college educated women, or we need to attract law-abiding immigrants into mid-sized and smaller cities.  As an American, you cannot be against the aforementioned statement if you have both logic and facts--and that's without even discussing how entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare work.

2.  Why aren't more American women having at least two kids, especially college-educated women?  About 65% of American women have at least two kids, but only 30% have at least two kids by the time they're 29 years old. (Fertility issues also exist in Europe.) 

In addition, about 20% of native-born American women never have kids, and about 30% to 42% of women with at least a bachelor's degree never have kids. Interestingly, 80% of women without a bachelor's degree have at least one child in their lifetimes.  Basically, less education in developed countries means more kids, and more education means fewer kids.

The reason college-educated women are having fewer kids than lesser educated women is obvious--college takes a long time, is expensive, saddles many women (and their partners or spouses with debt) and doesn't guarantee a middle-class job.  Why would anyone favor a system where more ambitious women have fewer opportunities to raise the next generation of citizens?  And yet, here we are.  It's not just lawyers who need grad degrees now--even social workers in many large cities need master's degrees to be competitive. (By the way, what logical relationship does sitting in a classroom and studying macro-social issues have with working in a hospital and dealing with people one-on-one every day?)

Evidence shows college now helps student loan creditors--which include the federal government--more than graduates in terms of practical or job-related skills.  Yet, we keep demanding more of our taxes go to K-12 and university systems without any incentives linked to increased employment or some system of checks and balances imposing discipline on admissions counselors (such as partial refunds of tuition if a grad is unemployed 6 months after graduation).  Americans now owe $1.19 trillion as a result of student loans.  Don't voters know that "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"?

(Bonus: “I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing.” -- Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones.)

[Update on November 2017: a counterargument is here, but notice that the data used concerns families making over 500,000 USD annually and/or women with graduate degrees, i.e., outliers.) 

3.  When your profit and investment structure incentivize short-term goals, why would you expect long-term success?  Having about 25% of innovation, especially in tech and biomedical sectors, backed by venture capital guarantees anti-trust problems because profit, not competition or lasting change, is the primary goal.  (VCs back "more than a quarter of the total government, academic, and private U.S. R&D spending of $454 billion.")

Throw in quarterly rather than annual earnings or semi-annual reporting requirements, and you have a recipe for disaster.  Need more sales?  No problem--increase the discount, cannibalizing future sales, or borrow money to hire commission-based workers you'll let go the second they're not profitable.  When debt is so readily accessible and a significant percentage of creditors or founders focused on short-term gains, then the private sector becomes a feast-or-famine circuit for large companies to pounce upon.  There's no one left except for military R&D--which lacks fiscal checks and balances--to take a long term view.  The lessons are simple: public companies must be incentivized to reduce, not increase non-R&D-allocated debt; accounting rules must become stricter and globally consistent (I rue the day "pro forma" earnings gained any sort of credibility); and reporting earnings must be reduced from quarterly to at least mid-annually. 

4. Promoting long-term romantic relationships requires job stability, but not in ways that promote factions.  Most Americans don't understand the following principle: the more groups able to negotiate terms separate from everyone else means some costs must fall on persons not able to access the group rate and therefore disadvantaged. Such a dynamic harms the individual and incentivizes factions and a fractured society as some people care more about their "in-group" than the public trust or the individual.

Such faction-building--which inevitably facilitates corruption by reducing accountability and then trust--is particularly problematic within America's government unions.  Such unions have used their insider knowledge of complex hiring and political procedures to negotiate separate and unequal compensatory and disciplinary terms exclusively for their members, but without any direct benefit to the taxpaying public.  In doing so, they--and other fiefdom operators--have made America into a complex web of laws favoring only certain connected groups, causing dissension and the mainstream media's suppression of politically unfavorable facts.  Such suppression--rather than honest, thoughtful dialogue--inspires rebellion in any free person, leading to oppositional forces--such as Fox News's political pundits (excepting the wise Judge Andrew Napolitano) and Breitbart--that increase rather than heal growing divisions. Viewers forgive the divisive bombast because pablum and condescension are not features, and the material taps into a visceral belief that honesty and integrity no longer lead to success.  The outrage is really because fiefdoms promote system-gaming, but the complexity of how this occurs is difficult to get across in any kind of 30-minute dialogue, so we are left attacking factions receiving different benefits from the general public rather than the system itself.

Let me try to explain how this dynamic can work against the individual.  Group A has lots of members and, through a broker, approaches a health care provider or insurance company and negotiates a discount or shops around for better deals.  The ability to get an excellent insurance broker is somewhat dependent on the fees paid to the broker, and broker fees can be more easily spread out over groups if paid directly, or indirectly if commissioned based on overall value.  [My friend says, "Brokers make a first year bonus form the actual insurance based on number of lives insured. If they maintain the account, they get a yearly retention bonus based on the number of lives insured. If new employees are added, they get a bonus for each new addition.] Therefore, the group rather than the individual is able to better attract the finite time of the better negotiator because the fee system tilts in the group's favor--even if the services requested are essential on an individual level.  The better the broker, the better the discount or research, but without an in-depth medical examination of every single plan member, no one really knows whether the larger size of the group helps insulate the plan or provider from excessive costs in the future.  [According to my friend, an employee census of the business is obtained by the broker and given to the rate-runner or insurance fiduciary.] The future, as always, is unpredictable, especially when individual assessments aren't done, but the group generally ends up with a better or more cost effective plan if the age ranges are comparable.  (Imperfect metrics like age and zip codes are used in the absence of individual assessments.)

In contrast, an individual who wants to buy a health insurance plan must generally choose a more costly plan because he or she is an individual and cannot demand an individual health checkup and negotiate a discount based on good health.  [My friend adds, "True, but it's like picking a single stock vs. a mutual fund with 100 stocks--more people insured spreads risk, lowering premiums by a group on a per capita basis.]  Insurance is tricky--it needs both healthy and unhealthy people to be possible.  If insurance companies were able to identify and sign up only healthy people, insurance wouldn't work--no one would insure the more costly unhealthy people, or they'd put in so many exemptions as to make coverage inadequate.  [My friend adds, "ACA depended on 'young invincibles' signing up to pay for the sicker patients but this didn't happen, which led to dramatically increased premiums.] The reason insurance works is because a healthy person today may be unhealthy tomorrow, and an unhealthy person today may be healthy in a year, and no one can predict with any certainty the future.  Key takeaway: the system is not designed to evaluate the individual, whether alone or in a group. ["The system is designed as a risk pool with ratios of healthy to sick people being the factor for solvency."]

In any case, if the projections for a group's negotiated costs turn out not to be true and more than expected, the provider can try to pass on those costs in the future, but chances are, because of their greater numbers and therefore greater revenue potential, the health care provider or insurance company will generally pass on unexpected costs to them and dispersed individuals, eventually raising premiums for everyone.  The minute you allow separate groups within systems that provide either essential services or that serve all persons, you must be an oracle when it comes to costs or try to pass those costs into the future. [My friend adds, "Not necessarily.  You use predictive analytics and population-based health models."]  The same dynamic applies to private vs. public schools, but such factions are tolerated because education, while essential, isn't geared towards the best performing students, and no one wants to argue that such students should be short-changed if they can pay voluntary and additional fees.  In the case of health care, the argument for allowing fiefdoms is much less clear because insurance requires healthy people to be part of the system, and segregating them would cause the collapse of the insurance plan.

Let's dive into another example of a fiefdom in America: local government unions.  In most major American cities, 50% to 70% of all local tax revenue is spent on "public safety" aka cops and firefighters. Many of these taxes go to pension obligations, i.e., paying gov employees who no longer work and who haven't paid into the retirement fund in sufficient amounts to sustain it without higher taxes or cutting other local programs.  As a result, not only do police officers lack full-time partners riding with them in patrol vehicles due to the increased expense in paying a six-figure pension while also generating sufficient, sustainable tax revenue to pay for an active-duty officer, but working hours are extended, leading to higher stress, which creates greater likelihood of mistakes and impatience.

What's the upshot?  America's military spending is not subject to any real audits due to the federal government's ability to borrow almost unlimited debt, and even local entities are forced to divert their taxes into strengthening a police state because by law, pension interests--at a guaranteed 7.5% ROI, regardless of GDP growth--are vested and therefore untouchable.  Instead of discussing these issues--which require nuanced, fact-based dialogue--American mainstream media leads the public into the morass of useless, emotion-based dialogue about Black Lives Matter or All Lives Matter, which will do nothing to resolve any substantive issue.  It's like Laurence Fishburne's line in Boyz in Da Hood--"They want us to kill ourselves," except in this case, they want us to be confused so we don't rock the (political) boat.

When your educational system lacks any real connection with the job market, despite receiving the lion's share of taxpayer dollars in most states; your government employees are insulated from accountability through laws and procedures they themselves helped pass; and your private sector, which drives most employment, is subject to a completely different set of employment rules from your public sector, what could possibly go wrong?

My proposed solutions?  For companies of at least 100 people and over a certain revenue threshold (adjusted for inflation), I like the idea of IBM's peer review panel. It used to be that IBM would not generally terminate a post-probationary-period employee until a peer review panel of three managers and worker representatives evaluated the facts and heard testimony from the manager and the employee. (The difficulty would be determining which "side" held the majority vote, even under a rotating power setup, or how to guarantee a cost-effective way of bringing in a truly independent third person with enough knowledge about the company.  Highly respected ex-employees who left voluntarily might be the best bets.)

Witnesses would be restricted to co-workers with personal knowledge of the employee's work and managers participating in any performance review or termination.  Testimony would be confidential--but an opinion must be published with a chance for dissents--and the number of days of the hearing could be set at a minimum of one and then increased (up to a cap) based on the number of years of the employee's tenure. The written opinion would be inadmissible in court.  The overall number of employee and company "wins-losses" must be publicly available for each location in a simple two-number chart (e.g., Due Process Outcomes: Termination Upheld = 20 in 2014, 10 in 2015; Reversed = 10 in 2014, 5 in 2015; link to opinions here, etc.).

Ideally, the turnover rate within every employer above a certain size--both governmental and private--should be publicly available for each division.  A simple chart would suffice: one row for the division (sales and marketing, engineering, etc.); one column for the number of years of employee tenure (less than one year; more than one year; more than two years, etc.).  To promote full transparency, companies relying on contractors (rather than W-2 employees) must publish the same chart but with a twist--they must show how many contractors became employees, and after how many years.  (Of all my employment-related ideas, I'm most optimistic of the ones directly above.)

What's the incentive for a business to allow such meddling in its employment processes, especially in a rapidly changing competitive landscape?  In exchange for due process, employees would agree that if they lost at the peer review stage and sued in court for any claims relating to their termination, they would be liable for the employer's attorneys' fees, capped at some reasonable amount--perhaps a percentage of the employee's annual salary at the time of termination.  Such a process would provide a way for companies to save on litigation costs as well as give their lawyers insights into the employee's credibility, while capping the downside for the employee if s/he lost in court.

One problem would be if a company wanted to do a mass layoff (say, at least 50 people at one time), indicating it wasn't intending to terminate a specific employee for performance-based reasons.  Perhaps it wanted to dedicate more resources to software rather than hardware or do something else that would increase its competitiveness and protect jobs in the rest of the company.  In such a case, each employee should receive 6 months' worth of salary or at least double the minimum wage multiplied by six months.

Current laws in California try to protect employees above 40 years old from being included in mass layoffs as pretext for removing older workers, but once again, an American law has managed to accomplish very little in preventing age discrimination while increasing the power of lawyers and the public's reliance on them.  It is far better policy to accept that if discrimination occurs, then the idea should be to provide some automatic and substantial benefit to mitigate the effects of pretext.

Government agencies could still investigate and bring claims against companies but an employee who filed such a claim--say, for termination based on racial discrimination--would waive his/her right to collect monetary damages. (European companies have a similar set-up where they appoint a management and worker representatives to a panel that hears issues of importance, but I'm unsure if such panels also hear employment disputes.)  Note that claims not related to termination would still be viable, such as sexual harassment, civil assault, invasions of privacy, etc.

Basically, post-probationary employees in businesses with 100 employees or more should have some form of due process before losing their livelihoods, which would incentivize relationship-building, and the process should be the same in the private as well as public sector to prevent faction-building.  In other words, for any entity with 100 or more employees, any legal change to the due process system would apply to both the private and public sectors.

Combine a due process system with an ESOP that cannot be leveraged or borrow against its assets (retirement assets would increase based on governmental bond rates with additional returns, if any, from some capped percentage of annual profits)--and you would create a private sector employment and retirement system not overly dependent on Wall Street. After a certain size, a credit union for your employees could continue to keep the money "in house" and revitalize Main Streets everywhere.

Another idea includes recruiters going to major city hubs and having one-on-one interviews with persons terminated 150 days or less.  Think of it as "speed dating" for job applicants.  Such interviews would be much more useful than post-termination resume building workshops, which are sometimes included in severance packages for employees.

We've covered the employment side of the "stability" equation, but we're still bound by other factors, such as marriage and child support laws.  From my own perspective, marriage under American laws becomes riskier over time, as both men and women gain more assets than can be used by a random judge to give to a less ambitious or unjustifiably greedy former spouse.  One problem is that the judge--who is paid out of the public purse--has incentives to prevent any spouse from going on welfare, thereby minimizing the government's own obligations.

No logical person with assets would get married under these circumstances, where there is no upside and extensive downside.  Such a system discriminates against lower-earning and middle class persons by making marriage the resort of the ultra-rich--who can afford lawyers who draft airtight prenups and update them as laws change every year--or the cult of sameness, where people from similar backgrounds are incentivized to marry or couple together, increasing class and educational segregation rather than encouraging people to focus on personal qualities like integrity, patience, and resilience.  When the laws of a nation expressly discourage an emphasis on personal honor and render a life's savings contingent on the discretion of random government employees, contempt for such a society cannot be far behind. It is no wonder that in such a system, even the elites believe that government should be a mere referee rather than a more active participant in enforcing predictability and financial stability.

5.  If we cannot agree on the general principles above, there is no point in discussing anything of substance.  European and other countries may have issues with immigration and escalating social welfare costs, too, but they continue to make their political structure work for them by using the majority of their tax dollars to implement essential programs for all residents. Thus far, European countries, for the most part, are not set up structurally to encourage specific factions for purposes of siphoning substantial tax dollars from the public purse for benefits that apply only to a small number of politically-connected residents.

Like Americans, Europeans have ample and complex laws, and they, too, have problems with segregation and upward mobility, but continue to show ample common sense, such as Sweden's linkage of old age pension benefits to annual GDP.  In Sweden, public retiree benefits are adjusted annually according to changes in prices--which means benefits can be reduced if overall GDP declines. Other retiree benefits are based on an annual index of trends in average wages (including social insurance benefits); an annuity factor depending on average life expectancy at the time of retirement for the appropriate age cohort (based on the most recent 5-year average of unisex life expectancy projections); and the expected increase of average wages in future years.  Under such a system, sustainability is the goal, which minimizes the need for emotion-based drivel.  To have a discussion means knowing your metrics and data, and because everyone is on the same system, "good data" becomes incentivized.

Meanwhile, in America, retiree benefits are assigned an arbitrary increase--never a reduction--every year called COLA, which is manipulated by political parties depending on the need to fund other programs.  Over time, politicians exhaust arbitrary means of manipulating existing metrics, which forces them to start excluding persons from the programs or to make it more difficult to apply for the same level of benefits.

Welcome to America in the year 2017: factions galore, and a political system designed to either become a police state or to collapse eventually because of demographic headwinds or through laws that increase segregation and lead to less accountability. In just ten or fifteen years, my optimism has gone missing, much like America's institutional integrity.  Why?  It's becoming apparent America's current laws and debt restrict the primary engine that made it so successful--the ability to absorb immigrants, even uneducated ones, and assimilate their children in ways that benefit everyone. At least I can say, at the age of 39, I've already lived through the highest of the high--a national budget surplus and the dot com boom in Silicon Valley--and the lowest of the low--9/11, the 2008-2009 financial crisis, and the aftermath.  Since it appears I've lived in exactly the right place at the right times to see the highs and lows, I wonder what my future holds.  To paraphrase W.H. Auden,

When the future comes, will it come without warning
Just as I'm picking my nose?
Will it knock on my door in the morning,
Or tread in the bus on my toes?
Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about my future. 

© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2017) 

Toronto, Canada: Diversity and Chill

Indigo bookstore in Eaton Centre/Mall

Dundas Square

Hockey Hall of Fame

Ryerson University Student Centre

If diversity, walkability, and integration are your top desires, then Toronto is your destination.

Want a donut? Try Tim Horton's or Von's.  Tim Horton's is Canada's version of Starbucks, but with more food options. Von's is more specialty and expensive, but where else can you get a Homer Simpson donut? Canadians are divided about Tim Horton's coffee, but everyone seems to have an opinion. Try the dark roast, regular (one cream, one sugar), and the latte. McDonald's continues to make the best black coffee, followed by Dunkin' Donuts and Tim Horton's, but I was surprised how much I liked Tim Horton's plain non-fat latte and how much I disliked all its other "specialty" espresso drinks. (My dream latte was too sweet, whereas the mocha was too watery.)

Toronto is a walkable city except in its harshest winter months, December and January.  I visited in mid-February and wanted to slap the many people who claimed it was too cold (Dear Americans: if the sun is out, it's not that cold, even if there's ice on the ground. Put on a beanie, gloves, and a Canada Goose or thick Columbia Sportswear brand coat, and you're good to go. I brought waterproof Bogs shoes and only wore them two of my eighteen days). The "touristy" subway station is Union, and from there, you can head in any direction to see the sights.

Public transportation is decent but woefully inconsistent. Some stations need physical mini-tokens, while others will accept certain cards but not others. Toronto's transportation system is nowhere near the modernity of Taiwan's, Singapore's, or Japan's, but it's serviceable. Upgrades are sorely needed; as of today, Bangkok's trains are more consistent to use. Another tip: Toronto's subways require you to know which direction you're going (North, South, East, or West), and you should determine the next station on your way to increase your chances of not getting lost. Unlike most other systems, some of the signs--when they exist--point you to the next station rather than the last one on the line.

Toronto also has buses, which are an easy way to see parts of the city you might not otherwise walk.  One of my buses took me past a small harbor, and I saw a few boats and clean water. You can get a weekly pass for buses and trains, but it's only good from a specific Monday to the next Monday, so be careful of the timing of your purchase--or get a Presto Card/Pass and load up as needed. Toronto's public transportation system is a mess, but it works once you get used to its quirks. (Update: Surprisingly, Montreal has a better subway system than Toronto.)

The most common spots on a savvy tourist's checklist are the Space Needle and surrounding downtown area; Aga Khan Museum; Greektown; St. Lawrence Market (come hungry); Hockey Hall of Fame; Chinatown (not a must-see, but still fun); Kensington Market (a must-see); and Dundas Square.  The Distillery is trendy, but I didn't like it--it's just a bunch of hipster shops with modern art thrown around old industrial architecture. (I was tempted to say, "You're trying too hard, Canada," but most Canadians are too damn polite to ever justify casting aspersions in public.)

My favorite spots were Queen St. (indie shops and interesting architecture), Kensington Market (very diverse and colorful), Dundas Square (similar to NYC's Times Square, but with a more relaxed vibe), Niagara Falls, and the extended Greektown area (food and coffee).  Bloor St. West at the Dufferin subway station also has lots of indie shops. And I especially enjoyed sending a letter, old-style, with a quill at Toronto's first post office.

Two hours driving outside of Toronto is Niagara Falls, one of the most interesting sights you'll ever see.  I spent hours walking around the area, which extends quite far and over a small bridge that no one else but runners seem to use.  Nearby the waterfall, just sucking in the chilled air is a pleasure--it cleared up my lungs immediately, and I kept craving more.  You can walk around near the USA/Canada border if you're into super-touristy stores--your kids will like it, but you probably won't.

The beautiful Niagara Falls

I'll attend my first Toronto Raptors game on March 1, and I hope to see Serge Ibaka play.  Lowry is 30; DeRozan is 27; Carroll is 30; and Ibaka is 27. The nucleus for a future championship is there. For 2017, the team will probably experiment with different combinations to see which players adapt best to the other four, though the best strategy might be to change the fifth player as soon as his defensive intensity diminishes.

Speaking of defense, it's Carroll's bread-and-butter--he comes out of the Mizzou trapping school--but he can score, too, and I'm worried Ibaka and Carroll will take a long time to figure out their offensive roles.  Good coaching will be key. The pick and roll should be used, because Ibaka can hit the short-range jumper consistently. P.J. Tucker is a recent pick-up whose defensive skills can give Carroll bench-time as needed.  (Interestingly, Toronto drafted Tucker out of the University of Texas at Austin in 2006 and later waived him.)

I'll end as a fictional white ACC (the American college conference, not the Air Canada Centre) coach: "You want to play with the four best players in the East? I need defense, son. The second anyone slacks off, the next man enters until we see which one of ya'll best resembles Dennis Rodman or Bruce Bowen. Let's get a championship for Canada, eh?"

© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2017)

Update on February 27, 2017: Kyle Lowry will undergo surgery on his hand and will be out for the regular season.

Update on February 28, 2017: if you're looking for a nice nature walk or a place to take your dog, check out High Park--right outside the subway station by the same name.

Update on June 2017: other travel recaps are HERE (various) and HERE (Cuba).

Update on February 2018: the Raptors didn't seem to be able to utilize Tucker and Carroll effectively and traded them. They continue to have a very young team and are second place in the Eastern Conference. 

Chris Rock is Baaaaaaack!

Someone tell F. Scott Fitzgerald to STFU because Chris Rock is having a second act better than his first, and I didn't think it was possible to top Never Scared (2004).  Last I heard, Rock was married, bored, and out of the limelight.  Turns out he's divorced after a costly custodial dispute and ready to roll--even on Tinder's dating app under his real name.

I doubled over in laughter so many times, I can't remember most of the jokes. You might argue George Carlin also had a second act and got better, but his first act wasn't very funny. To go from being one of the funniest and edgiest comedians in America to even funnier over a decade later is incredible. Richard Pryor burned out. Eddie Murphy started making really bad movies. I don't know what happened to Carlos Mencia. Russell Peters might still be around ten years from now, but he won't ever be edgy. Here are a few takeaways from Rock's new tour, "Total Blackout."

1.  Rock has always had a realism and common sense to his material no one else could manage.  Some of it obviously comes from being a unathletic African-American growing up among different races, including the ill-advised school busing programs meant to reduce segregation.  And yet, Rock, even in his 50s, manages to be edgy and real.

He laments America's apathy to mass shootings but owns a gun himself.  He chastises police shootings against African-Americans while explaining his own interest in the issue: "Yeah, I'm famous, but only from 3 feet away.  Until then..."

One of his best skits involves him imitating the mother of an affluent white child shot by police.  I'm not going to spoil it for you, but I, too, demand justice for Chad. #justiceforchad

One suggestion, if I may: to make the skit airtight, use the word, "unarmed," as in, "unarmed black kids."  Statistics show that unarmed black kids are far more likely to be shot by police than unarmed white kids, but without the qualifier, the data is more murky.

2.  I love Chris Rock's comedy so much because he hits the nail on the head on economic issues.  Growing up poor--at least for some kids--forces some understanding of economics. (Rock dropped out of school in the 10th grade and washed dishes for a while.)  His joke about buying bullets on layaway is still hilarious years later, and he once again tells an economic truth when he remarks, "Prices are the new racism."  He even makes the skit perfect by including white people towards the end.  Once again, I won't spoil the bit for you, but I hope he adds a line about college tuition.  My California-based law school--part of a Jesuit institution--now charges 55,000 USD a year in tuition.  I won't even bother looking up enrollment stats when it comes to African-American enrollment except to say I'm willing to bet Georgia and Texas--both conservative states--do a better job educating African-Americans than liberal California in 2017.

3.  Rock is actually pro-good-police if you're listening hard enough.  He did the famous skit, "How Not to Get your A** Kicked by the Police" and makes an interesting point when he says, "The average starting pay for police officers in America is too low--30,000 dollars a year... You get what you pay for."

I agree, and it's one reason I'm against government pensions with ROIs above Treasury rates or highly rated corporate bond rates.  When you set a guaranteed rate of return on pensions unrelated to any actual investment returns, you automatically back-end compensation. In other words, you shove to the future taxpayer money that could be used to pay higher entry salaries now.  Worse, you force government reliance on Wall Street and the Federal Reserve to meet specific and consistent investment benchmarks through investments that must be volatile and risky to meet the rate of return a political body can decree as "normal" only because of its power to raise taxes and borrow money. If you're an advanced reader, you can also figure out such a pension at a guaranteed ROI forces governments to become de facto insurance companies capable of predicting life expectancies of their own employees even after such employees are off the payroll. (More on this issue HERE.)

4.  Rihanna, why you gotta do my man Chris Rock like that?

5.  Rock, like fellow comedian Christopher Titus, was dragged through the American family court system and emerged understanding it's not designed to do much except drain money from litigants.  American lawyers and judges are so out of touch with most people, the day will come when people actually do kill the lawyers--or just refuse to elect politicians who are lawyers. I can see why Mao's revolution (aka Cultural Revolution) happened. When the elites are this far out of touch, consequences are sure to occur at some point, unless bread, circuses, and propaganda get really, really good.

6.  Some of Rock's comedy seemed to go over the heads of the Canadian audience. The "foreign" audience laughed the most at the in-law jokes but stayed oddly muted at his hilarious references to Keyser Soze and the Crips.  I just asked two Canadians sitting next to me if they knew what "Crips" meant. One person had no idea, and the other person--who'd visited the States--mentioned it could mean both a derogatory reference to the disabled ("crips") as well as a gang.  She's originally from South Africa.  Toronto is amazing when it comes to diversity.

I wish Rock the best life has to offer.  True American geniuses--especially the kind who can make your throat hoarse from laughing too much--are one of a kind these days. 

© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2017)

Bonus: in case it matters to you, Rock slept with a Destiny's Child member during his marriage and made sure to say it was not Beyonce. 

Book Review: Dan Gable's A Wrestling Life (2015)

I never thought of coaching this way because I had so many beginners; furthermore, even the best youth players had weaknesses they could improve upon. Looking back, if I had more time, it would make perfect sense to try to create techniques or exercises that would maximize a player's existing strengths.

I enjoyed Dan Gable's book.  It's a short, interesting read--I didn't know Gable was a high school swimming champion, or that a neighbor murdered his older sister in her family home.  At the same time, I wish he'd explained why he chosen to coach at the University of Iowa rather than his alma mater, Iowa State.  I also wish he'd given his thoughts on Cael Sanderson as well as Olympic coaching techniques and strategies.  He hints there will be more books, so perhaps Gable fans need only be patient.

Bonus: like me, Gable appreciates Asics' contributions to the sport.  Asics supported wrestling long before Nike or other apparel companies paid much attention to it.  When I was wrestling in high school, almost everyone had Asics gear--not just the shoes, but the kneepads, headgear, etc.  Today, Japan produces the best women's wrestling in the world.  Check out Risako Kawai and Kaori Icho.  As Hobbes from Calvin & Hobbes would say, "Hubba hubba."

Bonus: Charity Nebbe interviewed Dan Gable in 2016 and in 2017. More HERE (2016) and HERE (2017).