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大家周六愉快！
雅琴看世界，
The View~ep65，6/26
topics ：
端午英賴蘇～再加阿中，四巨頭同台
釣魚台更名之戰2.0
“The Dragon boat Festival and politics”
and “Diaoyutai Rename Battle 2.0”
#雅琴新書，「和張雅琴開心學英文」，星期三624開始預購，謝謝大家支持。#TheViewWithCatherineChang雅琴看世界
https://youtu.be/79ZL85oDPm0
🇩🇰 這是一篇深度報導，來自歐洲現存最古老的報紙：丹麥Weekendavisen，題目是從香港抗爭運動、香港聯繫加泰羅尼亞的集會，前瞻全球大城市的「永久革命」。一篇報導訪問了世界各地大量學者，我也在其中，雖然只是每人一句，加在一起，卻有了很完整的圖像。
以下為英譯：
Protest! The demonstrations in Hong Kong were just the beginning. Now there are unrest in big cities from Baghdad to Barcelona. Perhaps the stage is set for something that could look like a permanent revolution in the world's big cities.
A world on the barricades
At the end of October, an hour after dark, a group of young protesters gathered at the Chater Garden Park in Hong Kong. Some of them wore large red and yellow flags. The talk began and the applause filled the warm evening air. There were slogans of independence, and demands of self-determination - from Spain. For the protest was in sympathy with the Catalan independence movement.
At the same time, a group of Catalan protesters staged a protest in front of the Chinese Consulate in Barcelona in favor of Hong Kong's hope for more democracy. The message was not to be mistaken: We are in the same boat. Or, as Joshua Wong, one of the leading members of the Hong Kong protest movement, told the Catalan news agency: "The people of Hong Kong and Catalonia both deserve the right to decide their own destiny."
For much of 2019, Hong Kong's streets have been ravaged by fierce protests and a growing desperation on both sides, with escalating violence and vandalism ensuing. But what, do observers ask, if Hong Kong is not just a Chinese crisis, but a warning of anger that is about to break out globally?
Each week brings new turmoil from an unexpected edge. In recent days, attention has focused on Chile. Here, more than 20 people have lost their lives in unrest, which has mainly been about unequal distribution of economic goods. Before then, the unrest has hit places as diverse as Lebanon and the Czech Republic, Bolivia and Algeria, Russia and Sudan.
With such a geographical spread, it is difficult to bring the protests to any sort of common denominator, but they all reflect a form of powerlessness so acute that traditional ways of speaking do not seem adequate.
Hardy Merriman, head of research at the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict in Washington, is not in doubt that it is a real wave of protest and that we have not seen the ending yet.
"I have been researching non-violent resistance for 17 years, and to me it is obvious that there are far more popular protest movements now than before. Often the protests have roots in the way political systems work. Elsewhere, it is about welfare and economic inequality or both. The two sets of factors are often related, ”he says.
Economic powerlessness
Hong Kong is a good example of this. The desire among the majority of Hong Kong's seven million residents to maintain an independent political identity vis-à-vis the People's Republic of China is well known, but the resentment of the streets is also fueled by a sense of economic powerlessness. Hong Kong is one of the most unequal communities in the world, and especially the uneven access to the real estate market is causing a stir.
According to Lee Chun-wing, a sociologist at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the turmoil in the city is not just facing Beijing, but also expressing a daunting showdown with the neoliberal economy, which should diminish the state's role and give the market more influence, but in its real form often ends with the brutal arbitrariness of jungle law.
'The many protests show that neoliberalism is unable to instill hope in many. And as one of the world's most neoliberal cities, Hong Kong is no exception. While the protests here are, of course, primarily political, there is no doubt that social polarization and economic inequality make many young people not afraid to participate in more radical protests and do not care whether they are accused of damage economic growth, 'he says.
The turmoil is now so extensive that it can no longer be dismissed as a coincidence. Something special and significant is happening. As UN Secretary General António Guterres put it last week, it would be wrong to stare blindly at the superficial differences between the factors that get people on the streets.
“There are also common features that are recurring across the continents and should force us to reflect and respond. It is clear that there is growing distrust between the people and the political elites and growing threats to the social contract. The world is struggling with the negative consequences of globalization and the new technologies that have led to growing inequality in individual societies, "he told reporters in New York.
Triggered by trifles
In many cases, the riots have been triggered by questions that may appear almost trivial on the surface. In Chile, there was an increase in the price of the capital's subway equivalent to 30 Danish cents, while in Lebanon there were reports of a tax on certain services on the Internet. In both places, it was just the reason why the people have been able to express a far more fundamental dissatisfaction.
In a broad sense, there are two situations where a population is rebelling, says Paul Almeida, who teaches sociology at the University of California, Merced. The first is when more opportunities suddenly open up and conditions get better. People are getting hungry for more and trying to pressure their politicians to give even more concessions.
“But then there is also the mobilization that takes place when people get worse. That seems to be the overall theme of the current protests, even in Hong Kong. People are concerned about various kinds of threats they face. It may be the threat of inferior economic conditions, or it may be a more political threat of erosion of rights. But the question is why it is happening right now. That's the 10,000-kroner issue, ”says Almeida.
Almeida, who has just published the book Social Movements: The Structure of Social Mobilization, even gives a possible answer. A growing authoritarian, anti-democratic flow has spread across the continents and united rulers in all countries, and among others it is the one that has now triggered a reaction in the peoples.
“There is a tendency for more use of force by the state power. If we look at the death toll in Latin America, they are high considering that the countries are democracies. This kind of violence is not usually expected in democratic regimes in connection with protests. It is an interesting trend and may be related to the authoritarian flow that is underway worldwide. It's worth watching, 'he says.
The authoritarian wave
Politologists Anna Lürhmann and Staffan Lindberg from the University of Gothenburg describe in a paper published earlier this year a "third autocratic wave." Unlike previous waves, for example, in the years before World War II, when democracy was beaten under great external drama , the new wave is characterized by creeping. It happens little by little - in countries like Turkey, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Hungary and Russia - at such a slow pace that you barely notice it.
Even old-fashioned autocrats nowadays understand the language of democracy - the only acceptable lingua franca in politics - and so the popular reaction does not happen very often when it becomes clear at once that the electoral process itself is not sufficient to secure democratic conditions. Against this backdrop, Kenneth Chan, a politician at Hong Kong Baptist University, sees the recent worldwide wave of unrest as an expression of the legitimacy crisis of the democratic regimes.
“People have become more likely to take the initiative and take part in direct actions because they feel that they have not made the changes they had hoped for through the elections. In fact, the leaders elected by the peoples are perceived as undermining the institutional guarantees of citizens' security, freedom, welfare and rights. As a result, over the past decade, we have seen more democracies reduced to semi-democracies, hybrid regimes and authoritarian regimes, ”he says.
"Therefore, we should also not be surprised by the new wave of resistance from the people. On the surface, the spark may be a relatively innocent or inconsiderate decision by the leadership, but people's anger quickly turns to what they see as the cause of the democratic deroute, that is, an arrogant and selfish leadership, a weakened democratic control, a dysfunctional civil society. who are no longer able to speak on behalf of the people. ”The world is changing. Anthony Ince, a cardiff at Cardiff University who has researched urban urban unrest, sees the uprisings as the culmination of long-term nagging discontent and an almost revolutionary situation where new can arise.
"The wider context is that the dominant world order - the global neoliberalism that has dominated since the 1980s - is under pressure from a number of sides, creating both uncertainty and at the same time the possibility of change. People may feel that we are in a period of uncertainty, confusion, anxiety, but perhaps also hope, ”he says.
Learning from each other.
Apart from mutual assurances of solidarity the protest movements in between, there does not appear to be any kind of coordination. But it may not be necessary either. In a time of social media, learning from each other's practices is easy, says Simon Shen, a University of Hong Kong political scientist.
“They learn from each other at the tactical level. Protesters in Hong Kong have seen what happened in Ukraine through YouTube, and now protesters in Catalonia and Lebanon are taking lessons from Hong Kong. It's reminiscent of 1968, when baby boomers around the globe were inspired by an alternative ideology to break down rigid hierarchies, 'he says.
But just as the protest movements can learn from each other, the same goes for their opponents. According to Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth, Russia has been particularly active in trying to establish cooperation with other authoritarian regimes, which feel threatened by riots in the style of the "color revolutions" on the periphery of the old Soviet empire at the turn of the century.
"It has resulted in joint efforts between Russian, Chinese, Iranian, Venezuelan, Belarusian, Syrian and other national authorities to develop, systematize and report on techniques and practices that have proved useful in trying to contain such threats," writes Chenoweth in an article in the journal Global Responsibility to Protect.
Max Fisher and Amanda Taub, commentators at the New York Times, point to the social media as a double-edged sword. Not only are Twitter and Facebook powerful weapons in the hands of tech-savvy autocrats. They are also of questionable value to the protesting grass roots. With WhatsApp and other new technologies, it is possible to mobilize large numbers of interested and almost-interested participants in collective action. But they quickly fall apart again.
The volatile affiliation is one of the reasons why, according to a recent survey, politically motivated protests today only succeed in reaching their targets in 30 percent of cases. A generation ago, the success rate was 70 percent. Therefore, unrest often recurs every few years, and they last longer, as Hong Kong is an example of. Perhaps the scene is set for something that might resemble a permanent revolution in the world's big cities - a kind of background noise that other residents will eventually just get used to.
"Since there is still no obvious alternative to neoliberalism, the polarization that led to the protests initially will probably continue to apply," says Lee of Hong Kong Polytechnic University. "At the same time, this means that the anger and frustration will continue to rumble in society."
[科技業的護城河]
這篇是講矽谷投資人, 是如何在一堆的新秀中, 挑選可以投資的創新公司.
裡面有提到護城河.不過有些跟"尋找投資護城河"一書提的不太一樣.
我也認為, 研究個股, 尤其是科技相關類股, 除了要看它有沒有先行者優勢(first mover advantage), 也需要注意公司有沒有自己的生態系統, 以及它在更大的生態圈/供應鏈中扮演了甚麼角色.
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(中文譯稿見此:https://36kr.com/p/5141901)
常見的護城河至少有以上六種：
技術。更好的基礎技術當然是一種護城河。在極端情況下，能夠為客戶帶來利益的新技術可以演化為一種行業標準，你也可以把它理解為一種壟斷，就像英特爾一樣。
生態系統。 YouTube 從內容生產者、分發渠道到內容的託管、保存，建立起了一整套生態系統。類似的，蘋果的 App Store 也有自己的生態。
網絡效應。社交網絡現在已經很好理解了。此外，如果某種按需服務具備了一定的流動性，並且與消費者建立了親密關係，或者是基本控制了需求或供應方其中一方，也可以算作網絡效應。
產品領導者。像 Salesforce，Workday 和 ServiceNow 這樣的雲服務提供商，搭建了一套完整的解決方案，而且創新速度夠快，產品功能完善，成為其細分行業的領導者，當然也算是一種護城河。
渠道。尤其是對於 to B 產品來說，能不能在一個企業內部流通，既是一個挑戰，也是一種優勢
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原文寫的比較仔細, 轉貼在下方: https://news.greylock.com/what-do-i-look-for-in-a-pitch-866355bddb3
We love to talk about “network effects” in Silicon Valley, but many believe that starts and end with the social, viral growth of Facebook. But network effects can build many kinds of moats that defend them against copycats and price erosion.
I don’t describe every kind of moat here (e.g., regulatory) and many great companies will have new types of moats — ones yet to be invented. No moat is absolute or permanent or I’d be out of a job! Still, having a thesis on your defensibility is essential, even at the Series A.
--Tech. We continue to believe in new and better fundamental technology as a moat — not so much patents or legal protection, but products that are hard to build well or take advantage of a fundamentally new approach. In extreme cases, a technology advantage that translates into a customer benefit can turn into a standard — an effective monopoly — as in the case of Intel. In most cases, even a great technology moat only gets you far enough to become a market leader, buying you the right to work closely with customers and enabling you to define the market.
--Ecosystem moats come in many flavors — from becoming the default hosting site for user-generated video content (YouTube), to the rapid, developer-driven free adoption of container technologies and growth of associated tooling (Docker), to the developers that now make >$20B a year through the Apple app store.
--Networks. Social networks are now pretty well-understood. Marketplaces and on-demand businesses reach a liquidity point (even a local one) and build mindshare with consumers that becomes hard to displace. Often, marketplaces have some advantaged acquisition strategy for at least one side (demand or supply) — they’ve built a community, offered a compelling new service, have organic or viral spread.
--Product leaders. In the enterprise, cloud pioneers like Salesforce, Workday and ServiceNow built complete, core workflow solutions with a new architecture. Their faster-innovating products, (at that time novel) SaaS consumption model, and dominant go-to-market machines have made them category leaders. Each is now expanding their initial moats to become platforms for other applications and workflows.
--Distribution represents a new generation of user-adopted SaaS products. End-user engagement within organizations is often a weak spot for enterprise software incumbents. Deploying software is a challenge for most organizations, and consumers who are using more software in their own lives expect better choice and usability. Simplicity and quality of design has become a moat, especially when coupled with product features that encourage adoption within an organization, or new layers of value for incremental users within an organization. Is it better for me if my team also uses a tool? What about my manager?
Capturing a unique dataset is also emerging as a moat in the age of AI-powered products. If your workflow product or MVP is useful on its own, and you can use it to collect unique data, you can then learn from that data to build a better and smarter product, improving the user experience — driving a new virtuous cycle.
price erosion 在 Pharma: Price Erosion Concerns - YouTube 的推薦與評價
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