What makes you is what breaks you!

'As you sow, so shall you reap' - we are very aware of this idiom.

So are we aware of 'what goes, comes around'. 

In Malayalam, they call it 'Amara nattal thomara mulakkumo?"

What is common between the above idioms, and the economic concepts of demand-supply & marginal utility, as well as the global conundrums around globalization-nationalization, and the recent corona virus?

The fundamental equation that drives everything in the world is a very simple concept of Cause&effect or action&reaction. Yes, 3rd law says every action has an equal and opposite reaction and every cause has an effect. whether we like it or not.

But how?

For example., Do we know, often its love that breaks love? The love, which is initially beautiful, causes attachment, manifests as jealousy, possessiveness and sets various expectations from each other, and these finally break the love itself. Love kills Love.

In corporate world, the young talented executives, who are hungry for success, put in a lot of passion, effort and create success. Only to end up with this success and growth manifesting into emotional baggage of ego-positioning-power, greed for better roles, titles or more money, over-confidence and strong perceptions about everything - be it market/people/customers, and hard/rigid assumptions about what creates success and so on. The same baggage stop them from succeeding or growing further and they end up being left out in between. Two founders who make a company into a big one, grow so fast that after a point they can't stand each other and they don't have space for each other. Growth kills Growth. Success kills success.

Similarly, crude producers had fun for a few decades and controlled the supply, kept the crude prices at high prices. when Wars happened, prices increased, middle east civil wars happened, prices still increased. The increase in prices, high dependence and increased crude consumption itself gradually gave way to climate change and global warming discussions: this led to cheaper sustainable energy research, movement to EVs and many such new innovations emerged that today a big chunk of the world is moving into that direction of trying to make crude oil/fossil redundant as every day passes. Today crude is at sub $30 levels. Thanks to all the initiatives + corona. It was $120+ a few years ago. Did we know that all crude dependent countries will run deficits of up to 30-40% of their GDPs at these $30 crude levels? And so will drop their currencies too. Result? anyone's guess. Crude kills crude. its a matter of time.

Another angle - Crude rally also brought a lot of quick prosperity to several countries such as Russia, Venezuela, Egypt, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Lybia, Syria, Yemen. The unexpected gains led to short term growth of these countries, but on fundamentally wrong base/foundations - Mini monarchs and religious clerics and dictators and even mercenaries emerged to control portions/clusters of power and riches powered by crude. Result? inequality, oppression., riots, enemies, civil wars. deaths, calamity, rise of caliphate and so on. Root cause: crude powered growth. Effect: now they have destroyed their oil rigs, their own refineries and they don't have money to dig their own crude. even if they have crude, No responsible country buys from them anymore. Crude killed crude? Russia is well on its way there, imho. Btw, Did you know that Libya and Venezuela have 2 governments now? so does Afghanistan.

Globalization was a fashionable concept and was heavily dependent on 'efficiency' of business by leaving jobs to experts who can deliver quality at lower cost and high quantity. Personally I always put people's motivation over business efficiency. In spirit, Globalization promoted collaboration - more FTAs, blocs emerged resulting in huge immigration, large investments, resources and several jobs moving to other countries for efficiency reasons. Over time, this led to job and investment losses in many countries that a large set of people started strongly feeling they are being taken for a ride. Result/Effect: Nationalization wave in US, India, UK-Brexit, Hungary, Italy, Brazil, Turkey and so on. Today, Some core EU countries themselves are trying to get out of the EU. Northern league, Brexit parties, the Victor orbans and the likes of AfDs are fast growing. Globalization also led to increased airline boom and travel and today, while Airbnb became a billion $ co, it also helped Mr. covid-19 virus spread like forest fire from china to NYC to Italy to Iran to Spain. We never imagined that along with million iphones, a trillion viruses can also be shipped our countries/cities. When we aspire for global markets and expansion, why cant viruses aspire too? And this nationalization instigated trade wars (US versus china, Korea vs Japan, Britain versus EU etc) and pandemic related issues made the global supply chains more vulnerable. Today everyone is re-evaluating their china dependency and even other global dependencies. Globalization kills Globalization?

Similarly china's recent power plays and their high handed approach towards other countries, their greed of debt trapping several weaker countries (read BRI and south china sea/island annexation and so on) and their treatment of their own people (Uighur, and so on) itself will kill china's superiority , their hard earned reputation for trade and other nations' trust and dependency on china. China became china for a reason. They were known for cheaper components and a reliable provider of low cost imports of various things. But the growth led them to be greedy, they violated human rights, they disrespected IP rights, they ended up disrespecting Multilateral organizations and international contracts, state controlled everything from media to technology to e-commerce and this concentrated power they gained out of this growth, is well on its way to kill the very growth and the core-USP that initially made them who they are today. 

Similarly HongKong did kill HongKong - will elaborate that in my next post.

Thus, all causes resulted into undesirable effects that kind of killed the origin of the cause itself. The Second part is the Quantum & timing aspect - The law of diminishing Marginal utility says that if you love apples, but are given too many apples in a short period for you to consume, you will end up even hating apples. It says, so long as u stop at the right point/quantum, all is well - you will continue to love apples. But if you push too much supply more than the core demand or need, then you may hate and waste apples. 

What can we learn out of these:

1) What can make you will (can) break you - so be aware of this for life. its a matter of time. what is in your hands is how long can you prolong before being killed. As in, if you want to succeed for longer, don't let past success affect your mind. But it'll kill you eventually for sure as we cant control our mind beyond a point. what makes you will break you. Be it crude or love or even your unique talent or knowledge.

2) Be WELL aware of causes and effects, enough so that we learn to observe the effects well from day 1. if there an unintended effects in the journey, identify and tweak your inputs/causes so that you can sustain more time before being killed.

3) Causes - how ever good they are, be it success or growth or love, too much (quantity) supplied in too little time (time frame), can back fire and break you even faster. Its love that makes us hate.

4) remember, Its friendship or sibling affection that later turns into jealousy. Are we ever jealous of people who we don't know? absolutely not.

5) Don't eat too many apples and bananas. you will end up hating them or they will give you a bad stomach. 

Key Takeaway : causes are noble. but control the quantum and timeframe and watch the effects carefully. Finally it will kill or die. But so will all of us. so why not?

Happy social distancing., share your views :)

-a