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Listening for EmotionAt the fourth level we listen for any emotions and or identity issues that may be driving their argument.  These emotions or issues may (unlikely) or may not (most assuredly) make sense to us but at this level we recognize their significance to the other side as they talk about what is important to them. Listening for Their Point of ViewOne level beyond that is where we listen for what their argument, phrase, or statement says about who they are in world.  What does it symbolize or represent to them?  This is where we filter their emotion and logic through a prism of empathy. It is where we should be as negotiators. Getting beyond the cursory level of understanding to a deeper appreciation of their world view.  If we do not understand their world view, we do not really understand them.  If we do not understand them, we will never influence them.  It it is difficult to maintain this level of listening every waking moment of everyday but we need to be ready and willing to get here when the situation dictates.

Source: Did You Know There Are 5 Levels of Listening?

Indeed, Caplan has done us a service by compelling us to pay attention to a number of distressing facts: U.S. adults who have gone through our public schooling system are astonishingly ignorant of basic civics, history and science. Millions of people who start college will never finish. And the payoff for schooling is primarily about how many hours we have sat in classrooms rather than how much we have actually learned. Tick the boxes, get your degree and employers will smile on you, regardless of whether you gained any real skills and knowledge along the way.But Caplan’s instrumental, bottom-line solutions of practical subject matter and financial austerity certainly won’t help. Indeed, there is a twisted logic at play when we use dismal average student outcomes to justify the call for public divestment from education. When the most vulnerable students fail to thrive in inferior schools, we attribute their sub-par performance to their own inferiority. To tell these students they need fewer credentials in the name of social efficiency is a gross injustice.Surely, schools should be in the business of opening rather than closing doors.

Source: We Don’t Need No Education? | Boston Review

What could be the TFP of the Philippines???

First, the dominant reason for slow growth has been what economists label slow “total factor productivity” (TFP) growth. That is, the problem has not primarily been a shortage of capital and labor inputs into production, but rather slow growth in output, given inputs. After growing at about 1 ¾ percent per year between 1996 and 2004, the TFP growth rate has dropped by half since 2005.While TFP has fallen off rapidly, there is no basis for supposing that levels of labor input or capital are less than one would expect given the magnitude of the Great Financial Crisis. In fact, labor force participation rates in 2016 lined up closely with Federal Reserve researchers’ 2006 predictions. This suggests the lack of importance of the various factors adduced by the CEA’s report.

Source: No, “Obamasclerosis” wasnt a real problem for the economy | Larry Summers

The Disruption Antidote This analysis applies to Facebook and Google, two of the other companies in that chart, more than you might expect. While the two companies’ revenues are based on advertising, the attractiveness to advertisers rests on consumers using both services. Both, though, are disadvantaged to an extent because their means of making money operate orthogonally to a great user experience; both are protected by the fact would-be competitors inevitably have the same business model. That is why, fo

Source: Divine Discontent: Disruption’s Antidote – Stratechery by Ben Thompson

The business model follows from these fundamental differences: a platform provider has no room for ads, because the primary function of a platform is provide a stage for the applications that users actually need to shine. Aggregators, on the other hand, particularly Google and Facebook, deal in information, and ads are simply another type of information. Moreover, because the critical point of differentiation for aggregators is the number of users on their platform, advertising is the only possible business

Source: Tech’s Two Philosophies – Stratechery by Ben Thompson