economic survival – The Frustrated CFO

Why Do I Stay Subscribed to Quora Digest?

The truth is I have no idea why I receive Quora Digest emails. I don't recall subscribing to the feed. Of course, nowadays one can passively "accept" electronic deliveries of bullshit by failing to unclick some hidden option box. I am certain, however, that I'm not registered on Quora website. I wouldn't.

Quora, as in plural of Quorum – in the same way as Data is plural of Datum. It is basically a blogging hub masked as a Q&A platform: one registered person posts a question and all other registered contributors are invited to answer. Strictly speaking, this unrestricted invitation to participate clashes with the name, which refers to "select groups." Maybe the founders confused it with fora (the Latin plural of forum). I don't know and I don't care: The whole concept reminds me of Coffee Talk with Linda Richman, when Mike Myers would get "all verklempt" and invite us to talk amongst ourselves by providing a discussion topic.

Moreover, many things about Quora simply creep me out. For instance, Quora's T&C state that contributors retain the copyright to their content. Well, it's great that they threw that in, however, the enforcement appears to be highly problematic. Questions posted to the site are open for editing by everyone. This includes official editors and all registered users. Users can also submit unlimited number of suggestions for editing the responses. Therefore, the possibilities for modifications of the original material are endless. The apparent absence of a solution for the copyright sharing basically nullifies the notion of IP protection.

It's weird that the site demands its users to register with their real names instead of handles and go through email verification. It's not that I think people should hide, but they must remember that Quoara automatically releases users' names to the search engines. We don't know whether the site gets some sort of fees in return, but it wouldn't surprise me if they do. Just like it wouldn't surprise me if they intend to sell the subscribers' lists to other marketers as well. But these are just my speculations. In the absence of a clear mission statement, that's the only thing one can do – guess.

In reality, the fact that Adam D'Angelo (CEO) doesn't seem to be interested in generating revenues makes me very suspicious of his actual intentions and motivations. It seems only logical to suggest that they are spying on the contributors, studying their interests, behavioral patterns, and tastes in preparation for eventual commercialization of the site. Or is it something even more sinister? How the hell did they get a $900 million third-round valuation? What sort of potential revenue this number is based on?

As I said, it's creepy. I don't even open Quora Digest emails. But I'm not unsubscribing either – because of the subject line, which always shows the top question of the day. I don't want to give up the opportunity to glance at it. Most of the time, what I see reeks of laziness. I mean, we live in the Internet age – go on Wikipedia or just google this banal crap! But once in a while some amazing shit pops up.

The other day I read: "How can you maximize your happiness in life?" Wow! Is this person for real? 60,000 antelopes just died in Kazakhstan for unknown reason and half of Europe is covered in water and mud, but this human is not only happy, he wants to bring the bliss to the next level! Even crazier, he expects to receive constructive instructions from his fellow Quora members?! Well, good luck with that!

Actually, it's not this kind of oddities that keep me looking. I am more interested in patterns and trends. For instance, recently I've noticed an increase in frequency of the questions concerning material self-sufficiency and economic survival. Well, it's surprising that people on Quora don't talk about their inability to support themselves all the time. I'm guessing that most of them consider bringing it up under their real names in front of the strangers embarrassing. Nevertheless, the number of such queries is apparently spiking.

Below are three questions I found to be most typical; with my brief comments (remember: I'm not subscribed, so I don't know the answers that followed; I can only provide my own):

1. "What kind of salary guarantees comfortable living in NYC?" What a terribly formulated question! It should've come with a separate note explaining what "comfortable" means to the inquirer. Cause, what's comfortable to a person fresh out of Idaho who has never spent more than $100 on a pair of shoes and considers a $350 Michael Kors bag a chic statement may mean financial misery to someone with a different background.

For the sake of argument, let's assume that the questioner is single and actually meant comfortable, but not extravagant, i.e. a good one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan with no roommates; year-round pleasant climate control; full range of cable and streaming entertainments; cell and land phones; a car kept in a garage; designer coffee in a favorite shop; going out for drinks at least once a week; eat out twice a week; cooking with high quality ingredients; good cheese, wine, and fruit in the fridge; mid-range ($800-$1500) outfits; 2-3 new pairs of $500 shoes a year; one new $2000-$3000 bag a year, at least one annual vacation; a play and a concert once in a while. And the answer is – $250K annual salary should do it, assuming the drinking is actually limited to once a week.

And you thought that those who made $250K a year are rich?! Not in this town, baby!

2. "At Facebook and Google, why are many new CS graduates offered 120K+ with a 30-120K signing bonus while those with a few years experience are offered a baseline salary with no bonus?" Well, the direct answer to this question is simple: Computer Science, in a sense, is like Medicine and Pharmacology – they continuously undergo major changes and developments. I mean, double-entry bookkeeping was created 600 years ago and it will remain fundamental as long as accounting records will be needed on this planet. On the other hand, today's standard surgical techniques were experimental only 5 years ago. It happens even faster in high-tech where innovations occur pretty much on a monthly basis.

While doctors never stop studying and researching, most (not all) computer engineers and programmers are not as motivated to stay on top of the game. Those in training are taught the most up-to-date techniques and methods; they are subjected to the most recent trends. And that's what Facebooks and Googles want – the newest and the freshest; in order to keep ahead of the rat race. So, it's not about whether you graduated this year or five years ago – it's the set of skills you put on your resume. Veteran coders who can match the knacks with 22-year-olds can demand pretty much the same level of compensation.

But what interests me the most in this inquiry is its fiscal aspect. There is no way the $120K/year new hires of Facebook and Google will be able to enjoy the comforts similar to those listed in point 1. These companies operate largely in San Francisco Bay area, which, according to my observations of exactly 2 years ago, is even less affordable than NYC. Of course, high-tech nerds of both sexes go to work in khakis and polo shirts and don't carry Prada bags to the office. On the other hand, they buy more electronic devices than any other human and their coffee is far more expensive. So, some corners will need to be cut.

Obviously their lower-compensated older co-workers have even harder time (hence, the exasperation and the bitterness). Let's hope that they are smart enough to share expenses with their partners/spouses and don't plan on having any kids.

3. "I'm unemployed, broke, balding, living with my parents, about to turn 30, friendless, depressed, and miserable. How can I possibly turn it around?"

Ah, and here we come to the reality of the vast majority. This boy probably forgot to mention that he has a degree(s) in Liberal Arts and no practical skills. The horde of young people in similar situations is ever-expanding. They are so far removed from the idea of "comfortable" living that a $120K salary seems just as fantastic to them as a $3 million book advance or a $20 million per movie compensation package.

They were brought up on the illusion that in this Land of Opportunities they have the freedom of pursuing their interests in humanities and, "as long as they work hard," their "rightful" place in the economic system is guaranteed. They failed to realize that this clinically dead ideal has been kept on life support by the tuition-hungry education institutions for years. They probably still don't know that the economic system in question has been deformed and became unrecognizable, just like the sociopolitical structures, environmental conditions, and human relationships.

I can just imagine the answers elicited by this question. They probably fell into two categories: the ones from the peers ("Dude, you are totally fucked!" or "I hear you, bro!") and the ones from the middle-aged politically correct deniers of reality ("It's okay, things will get better" or "There is nothing wrong with being bold").

As for me, only a few years ago I would've still tried to be motivational and push my entrepreneurial agenda, urging this person to crystallize his aptitudes into a small business idea and work hard on making it happen for himself. I used to say that if misplaced children of my peers went into landscaping, housekeeping, and maintenance businesses, it would've solved both the employment and the immigration problems in one sweep. But now we operate under the most severe government interference in the small-business matters (minimum wages, Obamacare tolls, US Treasury restrictions on borrowing, etc.) and the number of illegal immigrants became unmanageable. So, giving such an advice would be adding insult to injury. All I can say is – you are totally fucked, dude!

“Civilized” Overpopulation and Epidural

Some time ago, I posted here a video quote of the Gates Foundations' family-planning message. I mean, you say "family planning" and I will acknowledge your efforts, no matter how feeble, superficial, and confusedly motivated. Yet, it's important for me to clarify that my own position on family planning is a bit stronger and much wider than those of the philanthropists behind the cute video. Essentially, the title I chose for the animated citation intended to hint on my personal focus - after all, I did use words like "Key to Economic and Social Survival."

You see, the majority of charitable efforts and government aids are focused on the prevention of unwanted births and directed at either the "third-world" countries or our own domestic lower-income classes. This is because the predominant idea behind these undertakings, granted too radical for Catholics and the conservative right, is still incredibly human-centric and terribly inadequate with respect to the ecological and other planetary concerns.

It is basically limited to one straightforward notion that those who cannot afford to provide multiple children with sufficient sustenance, housing, clothing, education, and information technology shouldn't have them (the children). So, disadvantaged people in poor countries and counties should stop reproducing (and they should, no question about it!), so that the emissaries of the bleeding rich hearts would stop sending to their bosses the unpleasant images of starving, sick, infested, and dying children. Meanwhile, nobody is paying attention to the violent overpopulation crimes committed against our precious Earth not in some far away land but in so-called centers of "civilization."

12 years ago my place of residence, a Manhattan high-rise, was famous for having more pets than children. Today, the building is flooded with infants, toddlers, preschoolers, preteens, and teenagers. Only after midnight you can pass through the lobby without stumbling into well-off pro-choice parents with the broods of two, three, even four children.

Practically every single business owner I ever worked with has three children (I swear!). How about the democratic billionaire couple that cares so much about the family planning in underdeveloped countries, i.e. Bill and Melinda Gates? How many children do they have? You guessed it - three! And their philanthropic cohort Warren Buffett? Also three! It's some sort of a magic fucking number! And the funny thing is, they probably think that they are doing right by the Planet – they can afford a whole school of children, but they limited themselves to "just three!"

So, now let me tell you what I think. It is my firm believe that in the current state of ecological deterioration, unstoppable depletion of natural and fiscal resources, exponential mental and emotional degeneration of an average human, complete disappearance of merit principles, and overwhelming crumbling of social liberties - it is nothing short of a crime for anybody (and I mean, ANYBODY) to have more than one child!

This is simple arithmetic, folks: Why the hell my one child must share air with these endless triple offsprings? Use your imagination for a second and replace those triples and duos with ones – how much air, food, resources, personal attention, and devotion would we have per each individual child then? I don't know about you, but this mental picture seems like a much healthier and somewhat less doomed present and future to me.

I cannot even begin to describe how angry these fucking people with multiple children make me, regardless of who they are – those with sufficient household wealth and those who keep popping them out because our federal and state governments throw our taxes at them (the more dependents, the higher the welfare payments); those who claim that they do it for God and those who "cement their marriages" using babies as cinder blocks.

And, of course, I always fumed at fertility doctors endlessly pollinating multiple eggs with abundant sperm to ensure successful fertilization, thus exponentially increasing the probability of twin, triple, and even quadruple births. But, as it turns out, the doctors, who take upon themselves the appalling task of correcting Nature and giving children to people who were meant to have none, are not the worst of medical offenders against our Planet.

The whims of my life spared me from being exposed to child-bearing and births for the past 20 years. As a result, I was sheltered from the macabre reality of what I can only call a large-scale bolstering of "civilized" overpopulation. Until the last year that is, when one of my subordinates got pregnant for the first time.

We are fairly close and she frequently asks for my advice on matters outside of our professional relationship. So, in the last trimester she approached me with the following: "My doctor asked me if I wanted Epidural." "Why?" I asked innocently, "You are not having a C-section." She shrugged her shoulders, "Well, they give it to everyone who doesn't want the pain now. And they've been doing it for years. But I've read it's not good for the baby."

What???!!! They give it to everyone? Even to healthy young women who are built to go through natural labor without any complications? No wonder these people think nothing of having one child after another. Why not? But do they ever dwell on a pretty obvious concept that there might be a reason why Mother Nature intended for the birth of a child to be a labor of pain and love? And don't even get me started on what all these drug-induced and anesthetic-aided infant extractions (you cannot seriously call them labors at this point) do to these newborn humans.

Obviously, these parents don't care much about the future of their children. And it's not shocking to me that the drug-pushing doctors and their sponsors, i.e. big pharma, don't care about the survival of their own descendants either. It should be, but it's not. The opportunism has become the blinding principle of everyone's existence and it always prevails – all they care about is their bank accounts' balances today! As they say in French, Apres Moi, le deluge (After me comes the flood)!

And here is another angle. The conveyor birthing and ballooning families are among the main causes for the perpetually increasing health insurance rates. Do you realize that in addition to the terrible effect they have on the global environment and economics, these multi-child families are basic larcenists? Daily they steal hard-earned money from single individuals and one-child parents who are forced to pay exorbitant premiums inflated by these thieves.

I thought that I would never align my interests with those of any big public organization, but in the fight for our Planet's survival any allies count, even those who take the right actions for the wrong reasons. In their unyielding pursuit of stock "value" inflation, health insurers do whatever they can to assist those who want to stay childless or keep their families small: a vasectomy is covered 100%, so is a once a year abortion performed by a network provider. Obviously, in the long run these procedures are far more economical than prenatal care, birth, child healthcare, etc., etc.

Thus, inadvertently, the insurance companies actually contribute to the fight against overpopulation. But they can do more! How about they stop covering the goddamn epidural administered to absolutely healthy women? The last I've heard, each shot costs about $2,000. So, c'mon HMO, let them feel it, both in their pockets and, as Nature intended, in their birth canals. Maybe this will make at least some of them to stop at #1.

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