贝志诚: 人类民主的起源之三——历史上那些暴民们

http://beizhicheng.blog.caixin.cn/archives/29584

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话说在美国革命之前，曾经有过一个著名的历史事件“波士顿惨案”；事情的大致过程网上很容易查到，我就不累述了。在我细读美国史的时候，有些细节让我觉得 很有趣，例如当民众开始朝英军扔裹着石块的雪球时，有人让儿童站到前面，并对英军士兵挑衅说“开枪啊，有种开枪啊”，后来看见英军还是不开枪干脆从儿童背 后扔出个铁锹。据说此人叫亨利诺克斯，后来是华盛顿麾下的第一任战争部长，现在美国的黄金听说就藏在以他名字命名的诺克斯堡里。随后英军被迫开枪，打死了 五个人，波士顿民情大哗，英军面对地方法庭的审判时没有人敢于辩护，只有后来的国父约翰亚当斯接了这个案子。

我们接着从这看到人类历史上真正的民主共和国为什么在美国建立，还是对手比较文明啊。英国驻军吃了这种亏仍然按照管辖权把驻军交给地方法庭审判，而约翰亚 当斯替英军成功辩护脱罪之后不妨碍最终成为美国总统，当然这是另一个故事了。在亚当斯替英军辩护的过程中，重点集中在英军是不是已经受到致命的威胁才开枪 的，要说那时的美国人还是挺虔诚的，对着圣经发誓后大部分人要不说记不清了，要不诚实地说的确是北美百姓先扔了石头、铁锹、棍棒等砸的英军头破血流才开枪 的。这时候只有一个哥们勇敢地跳出来做伪证，他说他听见英军军官先下令开枪的，还活灵活现的指出了是具体哪个士兵开的第一枪，谁开的第二枪等等，这人编的 太离谱最终没被采纳。他就是银匠里维尔，五年后英军准备袭击北美大陆民兵的军火库的时候，就是他孤身骑马通知沿途的城镇“英国人来了”，莱克星敦的枪声由 此打响，至今你在美国的各种革命圣地仍能见到他的纪念像。

看到了吧，这就是人民。当我的很多朋友总在为当前社会变革里一点点暴民倾向或者不理智成分感到忧心重重时，我就会给他们讲这个故事，告诉他们我们人类就是 这样的，有些毛病是避免不了的。但是是什么让美国独立战争几乎成为世界上唯一成功的革命呢？我特别推荐朋友看《美国立宪会议纪要》，在这本详细记述了美国 的国父们如何制定宪法的书里，你可以看到在认同人民主权的前提下，他们每天会议的一大部分内容就是在忧心忡忡的设计方案，避免人民的暴民倾向发作，他们设 计方案钳制多数人的暴政、设计方案防止大州压迫小州、设计方案防止人民一时冲动不知设定出什么新奇的法律来，总之你在会议里看不到对民主自由的歌颂，而满 眼都是如何避免民主的弊端的讨论。

是的，民主从来就不是个优秀的制度，他只是所有制度中缺点最少的制度。尤其在我们看到过那么多其他制度引发的悲剧之后，不管我们如何不情愿，如何担心，我 们也只能承认也许民主国家不会成为成功国家，但没有一个专制国家会是成功国家。（不要拿新加坡反驳我，那不是个国家，那是个公司）。

也许有人会问我们不可以限制这些民主中不好的因素吗？事实是，民主国家的历史演进本来就是民众间不同集团利益的重新分割和伦理道德的互相冲撞革新。这一过 程中的群众运动不可能不包含一定程度的违法冲撞行为。正如我们为了保卫言论自由就要忍受很多令人不快的、错误的言论一样，民主国家的社会前进也需要容忍社 会团体的一定程度的冲撞行为，否则不能完成伦理道德观念的更新和利益的重整。当年美国工会的崛起脱离不了和黑社会千丝万缕的关系（至今矿业工会和码头工人 工会还是如此），马丁路德金的非暴力运动也充满了静坐在依当地法律执行种族隔离政策的白人餐厅让人无法正常营业这类的行为。

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3D !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm1CvO1IQxY&feature=player_embedded

6 killer apps that made the west ahead - now shifting to east

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/11/niall-ferguson-china-masters-the-killer-apps/

6 killer apps that made the west ahead - now shifting to east
1 competition
2 advance of science
3 private property right (rule of law is shifting to rule of lawyers in the US)
4 advance of medicine that doubles life expectancy
5 consumer society
6 work ethics in capitalism

On #3, rule of law is shifting to rule of lawyers in the US. Mean time, China is missing this one!

Nice take on the market's reaction to the EUropean plan

http://www.johnmauldin.com/frontlinethoughts/european-summit-a-plan-with-no-details

Let's Just Change the Rules

I've always had a soft spot for Bunker Hunt. Yes, I know, he was a voracious manipulator who tried (and did) corner the silver market back in 1980, but boys will be boys. Maybe it's a fellow-Texan thing. He went bankrupt because they changed the rules on him. Lesson for all of us: Never assumes the rules are what you think they are just because they are written down, if someone else can change them. You can only push so far and then the peasants revolt.

And that is the final thing that happened at the summit. The banks "voluntarily" took a 50% haircut. Voluntary in that Merkel, Sarkozy, et al. told them that the alternative was a 100% haircut. "That's the offer, guys. Take it or leave it." Cue the theme from The Godfather.

And because the write-off was voluntary, there would be no triggering of credit default swaps clauses. Because if it's voluntary it's not a default – capiche?

And that smooth move, dear reader, triggered a rather significant unintended consequence, which resulted in the market "melt-up." Let me see if I can walk you through this rather bizarre world of derivative exposure without exposing too much of my own ignorance.

Let's say you bought credit default swaps on a certain bank's debt (let's use JPMorgan, but it could be any bank) because you think that Morgan is exposed to too much credit default swap risk. Just in case. Now, if (say) Goldman sold you the CDS, they could and would in turn hedge their risk by shorting some quantity of Morgan stock, or perhaps if the risk was sizeable enough, the S&P as a whole. It would depend on what their risk models suggested.

But as of yesterday, the risk evaporated: there would be no CDS event. So why buy CDS? Time to cover. And then the shorts get covered.

Further, the risk to financials was cut by a large, somewhat murky amount. But it was definitely cut, so buy some risk assets. Which puts any long/short hedge fund in a squeeze, especially those with an anti-financial-sector bias. But because of the nature of the hedge, the whole market moves. It involves rather arcane concepts that traders call delta and gamma. (Remember that the recent rogue traders had been at delta trading desks?) Guys at those desks can calculate that risk in a nanosecond. You and I take a day just to wrap our head around the concepts.

And it just cascades. The high-frequency-trading algo computers notice the movement and jump in, followed quickly by momentum traders, and the market melts up. Because a significant risk was removed. But not without cost.

Let's go back to where I noted that Italian interest rates are rising even as the ECB is supposedly buying. What gives? It is clearly the lack of private buyers, and a lot of selling. Because now you can't hedge your sovereign debt. If you ever need that insurance, they will just change the rules on you, so why take the risk?

Destroying the credit default swap market will make it harder to sell sovereign debt, not easier. Those "shorts" were not the cause of Greek financial problems; the Greeks did it all to themselves. As did the Portuguese, and on and on. Now admittedly, rising CDS spreads called attention to the problem, much as rising rates did in eras long past. And that did annoy politicians. And clearly, banks that had exposure to that market got the "fix" in to make their problems go away.

(OK, this is just my conjecture; but I have speculated before – with reason – that a major writer of sovereign CDS were German Landesbanks. Think Merkel didn't have that report? As did Sarkozy, on French exposure? It was a very high-stakes poker game they were playing this week. But one side of the table could rewrite the rules.)

Now, I know I am greatly oversimplifying the CDS situation. Even so, a great deal of the volatility of recent times can be laid at the feet of the CDS market, because it is so opaque. There is no way to prove or disprove my speculations, because there is no source that can really plumb the true depths of the situation. And that is the problem.

I am not against CDS. We need more of them. But they should all be moved to a very transparent exchange. If I buy an S&P derivative (or gold or oil or orange juice), I know that my counterparty risk is the exchange. I don't have to hedge counterparty risk. The exchange tells whoever is on the other side of the trade that they need to put up more money, as the trade warrants. Or tells me if the trade goes against me.

The banks lobbied to keep CDS "over the counter." The commissions are huge that way. If they are on an exchange the commissions are small. This was a huge failure of Dodd-Frank. And we all pay for it in ways that no one really sees. As the Bastiat quote at the beginning said, there is what you see and what you don't see.

Equity markets are supposed to help companies raise capital for business purposes, not be casinos. Investors want to and should be able to buy and sell stocks with a long view to the future. And increasingly there is the feeling that this is not the case. When I talk to institutional investors and managers, it is clear that they are very frustrated.

I am not arguing against hedge funds here. There is a need for short sellers in a true market. But that selling should be transparent. In a regulated exchange, you can see the amount of short interest. Everyone knows the rules. But without an exchange, things happen for reasons that are not apparent. An event like the Eurozone summit changes an obscure rule with some vague clauses about triggering a credit event – and the market reacts. This time it was a melt-up. Next time it could be a meltdown, as it was in 2008.

CDS markets should be moved to an open regulated exchange. And while we are at it, high-frequency trading should be stemmed. This could be done easily by requiring all bids or offers to last for at least one second, instead of a few microseconds. You make the offer, you have to honor it for a whole second. What a concept. That would not hurt liquidity, but it would cut into the profits of the exchanges (especially the NYSE) – but I thought these were public markets and not the playground of the privileged few.

How to get a real education

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704101604576247143383496656.html

如何获得真正的教育？
SCOTT ADAMS

我明白为何美国顶尖的学生要去学习物理、化学、数学和古典文学。这群聪明的孩子将会是未来的教授、科学家、思想家和工程师，他们将推动人类文明向前。但我们为什么要让只能拿到等级B的学生也从头到尾和他们坐在同一个教室里呢？这就像试着训练你的猫为你报税——浪费时间和金钱。去教等级B的学生一些有用的技能岂不是更有意义，比如说创业？

技能组合。在创业课程的过程中，你第一件应当学到的事就是如何让你自己变得有价值。让任何一个普通的学生都能在某一个特定领域里发展出国际级水准的技能是不太可能的，但学着如何将几件不同的事情做的相当好还是比较容易的。

朝前失败。如果你去冒险，你可能应该这样，你就能发现你自己在90%的情况下都会失败。而诀窍在于，当你做失败时能有所收获，并用这种经验来获取对今后有用的技能。我在银行的第一份工作失败了，我在电话公司的第二份工作也失败了。但你会惊讶的是，我从这些工作生涯中学到了多少技能，这些技能能应用到几乎任何领域，包括漫画。学生们应该学会失败是一种过程，而不是一种阻碍。

采取行动。在我大学生活的最后一年，我询问我的导师，我应该如何去追求、实现自己成为一个银行家的目标。他告诉我去了解在银行业里哪里发生最新变革，就去哪里。于是我这样做了。银行业不适合我，但这个建议任然有用：去有活力刺激的地方。而距离是你的敌人。

吸引运气。你无法直接控制好运，但是你可以用一种让幸运更容易发现你的方式来管理你的事业。为了成功，首先你必须去做一些事情。而如果这些不起作用，这可能在90%的情况下都如此，再去做别的事情。幸运会找到实干家的。日报的读者们会发现这一点显而易见，而对十几岁的青少年并不明显。

战胜恐惧。我在学院选修了公开演讲课并在进入公司的期间又学了更多。这种训练对于学习如何在公共场合掩盖紧张有些许帮助。接着我参加了Dale Carnegie的课程。它改变了我的人生。Dale Carnegie的方法完全忽略了演讲的技巧，并训练你去享受对着一群人发表演讲的体验。一旦你在人群前变得放松，技巧自然就来了。多年以来，我已经给成百上千位听众做过演讲，并享受在台上的每一分钟。但这并不是在为Dale Carnegie做宣传。重点在于人们能够通过训练，用热情来代替恐惧和羞涩。每一位创业者都能用到这个技巧。

书写简洁。我参加过一个为期两天的商务写作课程，它教会我如何直截了当地写出句子并且去避免多余的词汇。简洁让想法更有力。想要例证吗？去读读Steve Jobs和Warren Buffett的东西。

学会说服。创业学的学生应该学会各种形式的说服艺术，包括心理学、销售、市场推广、谈判、统计、甚至设计。通常这些技巧散布横跨几门学科。对于创业者，将这些作为一个整体来学习是很有意义的。

这就是我的初始清单，能够很好的适合等级B的学生们的这类课程。这个清单并不全面。显然一个创业者也能从关于金融、管理以及更多的课程中受益。

记住，孩子是我们的未来，而他们中的大多数都是等级B的学生。如果这还没有让你惊觉，那你可能真该警醒下了。

—Mr. Adams ，"Dilbert."的创始者

Bankruptcies of governments have done less harm to mankind

"Bankruptcies of governments have, on the whole, done less harm to mankind than their ability to raise loans."
- R.H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, 1926

Too fat to fly

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/11/michael-lewis-201111#gotopage6


The road out of Vallejo passes directly through the office of Dr. Peter Whybrow, a British neuroscientist at U.C.L.A. with a theory about American life. He thinks the dysfunction in America’s society is a by-product of America’s success. In academic papers and a popular book, American Mania, Whybrow argues, in effect, that human beings are neurologically ill-designed to be modern Americans. The human brain evolved over hundreds of thousands of years in an environment defined by scarcity. It was not designed, at least originally, for an environment of extreme abundance. “Human beings are wandering around with brains that are fabulously limited,” he says cheerfully. “We’ve got the core of the average lizard.” Wrapped around this reptilian core, he explains, is a mammalian layer (associated with maternal concern and social interaction), and around that is wrapped a third layer, which enables feats of memory and the capacity for abstract thought. “The only problem,” he says, “is our passions are still driven by the lizard core. We are set up to acquire as much as we can of things we perceive as scarce, particularly sex, safety, and food.” Even a person on a diet who sensibly avoids coming face-to-face with a piece of chocolate cake will find it hard to control himself if the chocolate cake somehow finds him. Every pastry chef in America understands this, and now neuroscience does, too. “When faced with abundance, the brain’s ancient reward pathways are difficult to suppress,” says Whybrow. “In that moment the value of eating the chocolate cake exceeds the value of the diet. We cannot think down the road when we are faced with the chocolate cake.”

The richest society the world has ever seen has grown rich by devising better and better ways to give people what they want. The effect on the brain of lots of instant gratification is something like the effect on the right hand of cutting off the left: the more the lizard core is used the more dominant it becomes. “What we’re doing is minimizing the use of the part of the brain that lizards don’t have,” says Whybrow. “We’ve created physiological dysfunction. We have lost the ability to self-regulate, at all levels of the society. The $5 million you get paid at Goldman Sachs if you do whatever they ask you to do—that is the chocolate cake upgraded.”

The succession of financial bubbles, and the amassing of personal and public debt, Whybrow views as simply an expression of the lizard-brained way of life. A color-coded map of American personal indebtedness could be laid on top of the Centers for Disease Control’s color-coded map that illustrates the fantastic rise in rates of obesity across the United States since 1985 without disturbing the general pattern. The boom in trading activity in individual stock portfolios; the spread of legalized gambling; the rise of drug and alcohol addiction—it is all of a piece. Everywhere you turn you see Americans sacrifice their long-term interests for short-term rewards.

What happens when a society loses its ability to self-regulate, and insists on sacrificing its long-term interest for short-term rewards? How does the story end? “We could regulate ourselves if we chose to think about it,” Whybrow says. “But it does not appear that is what we are going to do.” Apart from that remote possibility, Whybrow imagines two outcomes. The first he illustrates with a true story, which might be called the parable of the pheasant. Last spring, on sabbatical from the University of Oxford, he was surprised to discover that he was able to rent an apartment inside Blenheim Palace, the Churchill family home. The previous winter at Blenheim had been harsh, and the pheasant hunters had been efficient; as a result, just a single pheasant had survived in the palace gardens. This bird had gained total control of a newly seeded field. Its intake of food, normally regulated by its environment, was now entirely unregulated: it could eat all it wanted, and it did. The pheasant grew so large that, when other birds challenged it for seed, it would simply frighten them away. The fat pheasant became a tourist attraction and even acquired a name: Henry. “Henry was the biggest pheasant anyone had ever seen,” says Whybrow. “Even after he got fat, he just ate and ate.” It didn’t take long before Henry was obese. He could still eat as much as he wanted, but he could no longer fly. Then one day he was gone: a fox ate him.

The other possible outcome was only slightly more hopeful: to hit bottom. To realize what has happened to us—because we have no other choice. “If we refuse to regulate ourselves, the only regulators are our environment,” says Whybrow, “and the way that environment deprives us.” For meaningful change to occur, in other words, we need the environment to administer the necessary level of pain.

Gloomy Sunday

... that is worth dying for!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOqiolytFw4&feature=related

獨立參選人首見當選人大 佛山維權農民勝出即遭監控

http://groups.google.com/group/yotu/browse_thread/thread/0751d7cd32fdd4b6/e2b154b6a1974588?show_docid=e2b154b6a1974588&pli=1

False notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/10/qotd-cult-of-ignorance/

Everybody is a genius

“Everybody is a genius. But, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.” ~Albert Einstein

列宁:“每当一个国家的政治、经济出现重大危机的时候，爱国主义的破旗就又散发出臭味来。”

http://fund2.eastmoney.com/news,jjry,1418008.html


列宁:“每当一个国家的政治、经济出现重大危机的时候，爱国主义的破旗就又散发出臭味来。”
陈独秀: "恶国家甚于无国家；我们爱的是国家为人民谋幸福的国家，不是人民为国家做牺牲的国家."
胡适: "争你自己的自由就是争国家的自由，争你自己的权利就是争国家的权利。因为自由平等的国家不是一群奴才建造得起来的！"
鲁迅: "把沦为异族奴隶之苦告诉国人，是很必要的，但是切莫使人得出结论：那么，我们倒不如做自己人的奴隶罢”。对于那种“不爱国人却爱国，只爱民族不爱民”的伪民族主义，这两句话应是最好的回答)。
乔治.肖伯纳: "除非你把爱国主义从人类中驱逐出去，否则你将永远不会拥有一个宁静的世界。爱国主义是一种有害的、精神错乱的白痴形式。爱国主义就是让你确信这个国家比所有其他的国家都要出色，只因为你生在这里。"
塞缪尔.约翰逊:"爱国主义是无赖最后的避难所."
禹言家:一个国家从爱国主义声中诞生,也必定在另一种爱国主义声中灭亡,思想家:爱国主义是统治者愚弄人民最大的谎言), 哲学家:鼓吹爱国主义是统治者穷途末路最无能的表现

Sherry Turkle - Alone Together

If we don't teach our children how to be alone, they will only know loneliness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtLVCpZIiNs

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alone != loneliness

http://my.tv.sohu.com/u/vw/9252868

我愿给外管局补上汇率知识课 - 徐昌生

Excellent: http://www.chinavalue.net/Blog/815629.aspx

The Geopolitics of the United States, Part 1: The Inevitable Empire

http://www.investorsinsight.com/blogs/john_mauldins_outside_the_box/archive/2011/08/25/he-geopolitics-of-the-united-states-part-1-the-inevitable-empire-source-johnmauldin-com-http-s-tt-137qf.aspx

The American geography is an impressive one. The Greater Mississippi Basin together with the Intracoastal Waterway has more kilometers of navigable internal waterways than the rest of the world combined. The American Midwest is both overlaid by this waterway, and is the world’s largest contiguous piece of farmland. The U.S. Atlantic Coast possesses more major ports than the rest of the Western Hemisphere combined. Two vast oceans insulated the United States from Asian and European powers, deserts separate the United States from Mexico to the south, while lakes and forests separate the population centers in Canada from those in the United States. The United States has capital, food surpluses and physical insulation in excess of every other country in the world by an exceedingly large margin. So like the Turks, the Americans are not important because of who they are, but because of where they live.

The specific ratio varies greatly based on technological era and local topography, but in the petroleum age in the United States, the cost of transport via water is roughly 10 to 30 times cheaper than overland. This simple fact makes countries with robust maritime transport options extremely capital-rich when compared to countries limited to land-only options. This factor is the primary reason why the major economic powers of the past half-millennia have been Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and the United States.

George Friedman: Re-Examining the Arab Spring

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110815-re-examining-arab-spring

Secrete of Success

The secret of success is to understand the point of view of others.

—Henry Ford

弥勒殿前的楹联

眼前都是有缘人，相见相亲，怎不满腔欢喜；
世上尽多难耐事，自作自受，何妨大肚包容。
大肚包容，了却人间多少事；
满腔欢喜，笑开天下古今愁。
大肚包容，忍世间难忍之事；
笑口常开，笑天下可笑之人。

Larry Page on think big

From "In the Plex"

“Even if you fail at your ambitious thing, it’s very hard to fail
completely,” he says. “That’s the thing that people don’t get.” Page
always thought about that. When people proposed a short-term
solution, Page’s instinct was to think long term. There would eventually
be a joke among Googlers that Page “went to the future and came
back to tell us about it.”

Tourist vs Traveler

The difference between travel and tourism is simple. A tourist experiences disconnected sights and sounds and enjoys them without drawing meaning. A traveler roams the earth, digests what he sees and hears, and collects them in a framework of understanding, which he both brings to his travels and deepens with travels. The former is a pleasant interlude in your life. The latter is about life itself.
— George Friedman, STRATFOR Founder & CEO

One of the best poems from an unknown author

前天
我放学回家
锅里有一碗油盐饭。

昨天
我放学回家
锅里没有一碗油盐饭。

今天
我放学回家
炒了一碗油盐饭
放在妈妈的坟前！

Woody Allen on Inspiration

http://thebrowser.com/interviews/woody-allen-on-memory?print

As I said before, I do think we live in a nightmare and I feel the same way that Blanche Dubois feels: I want magic; I don’t want reality. I want the paper lanterns hung over the bare light bulbs, like she did. And if there is any way to escape reality, I’m all for it.
Unfortunately, there isn’t any real way. You can distract yourself. You can go to baseball games and concerts and plays and have sex and get involved in all kinds of endeavours that obsess you, and you can even create problems for yourself, where they don’t exist, to avoid thinking about the bad problems. But, in the end, you’re caught. And reality inevitably disappoints you.
Elia Kazan: A Biography Elia Kazan: A Biography
Finally, let’s flash forward to Richard Schickel’s biography of Elia Kazan. Tell us about it.

I’m a great compartmentaliser. I always feel one has nothing to do with the other. You can watch Triumph of the Will – it’s a magnificent work of art – and you can still hate Leni Riefenstahl because she was a Nazi. You can listen to Wagner’s music – it’s magnificent, and he was a terrible person.
The same thing is true here. I’m not saying Kazan was a terrible person. Those issues were extremely complex and the easiest thing to do was just to remove yourself and self-righteously make criticisms. Some of those criticisms might be very justified when you argue them out, I don’t know. That’s a different argument.
But the films that he did, the plays that he did – his creative work was wonderful. Whatever you think of Kazan politically, it has nothing to do with the fact that the guy was a great director.

The power of word

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wgi0t2ap-us&feature=player_embedded

Change your word
Change your world

Spike Milligan quotes

Money can't buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.

Money couldn't buy friends, but you got a better class of enemy.

My Father had a profound influence on me. He was a lunatic.

我们这些自谓是精英的人所有的、缺的和可以身体力行的

http://blog.wenxuecity.com/blogview.php?date=201104&postID=17322

Thoughts on education

Source: http://blog.wenxuecity.com/blogview.php?date=201102&postID=18629

This is very well said! I have nothing more to add:

“一个人如果从来没有感受过仁爱光辉的沐浴，从来没有走进一个丰富而美好的真理世界，从来没有一个令他/她激动不已、百读不厌的读物，从来没有苦苦地思索过一个人生问题，从来没有一个让他/她乐此不疲、废寝忘食的活动领域，从来没有过一次刻骨铭心的经历和体验，从来没有对自然界的多样与和谐产生过深深的敬畏，从来没有对人类创造的灿烂文化发出过由衷的赞叹……………那么，他/她就没有受过真正良好的教育。”

上面这段话引自于菲利普 B . 泽里库

杨奎松：毛泽东与蒋介石的比较研究

source http://news.163.com/09/0629/03/5CUPPN9K00013FM5_2.html

在另一方面，毛泽东与蒋介石的不同之处，也会极大地影响到两个人的成长和成功。比如，在性格方面，毛泽东是很外向的，而蒋介石则比较拘谨。这影响到他们对事物的判断和想像力不能不有很大的区别。蒋介石自己生活规律，作风严谨，对部下要求也反映出他特别注意细节。比如一些台湾朋友讲述他们早年在台湾当兵时的经历，都会提到蒋介石如何关心厕所的问题。这是因为蒋介石一来视察，长官就会要求士兵赶紧把厕所打扫干净，而且蒋走之前大家都不能上厕所，因为蒋介石的视察，总是要去厕所检查卫生。（笑声）蒋介石太注重小节，使得他事无巨细都要亲自去管，这不能不影响到他的政治决断力和军事指挥的能力，其魄力和想像力受到明显的局限。

毛泽东与蒋介石之间的成败，军事指挥上的优劣具有很大意义。照理说毛泽东没有学过一天军事，而蒋介石到底还算是学军事出身。但是，蒋介石考虑军事问题时，战略上的考虑却十分欠缺。他关注的往往是一些细节。蒋介石一辈子有过无数次讲演，但50岁之前讲得最多的就要算是对士兵和军官的讲演了。而蒋介石讲演当中经常会提到的内容，大都是如何整饬军容军纪。反映到军事指挥上，他经常关注的也是一些明显应该是由那些团长营长去关心的问题。蒋介石当然也打过胜仗，但在有魄力、有丰富想像力的毛泽东面前，他必败无疑。因为蒋介石打的胜仗，更多的靠的还是政治谋略，而多半并不是军事指挥在战略上的优长。为什么他能打败冯玉祥这样一些军阀势力，却很难打败日本人和共产党呢？这是因为蒋介石在与冯玉祥等地方实力派打仗时，常常会采用这样的办法：即用金钱买通对手手下的军官，给他们封官许愿，搞分化瓦解。这样，蒋介石的军队还没有打过来，地方实力派阵线内部首先就乱了套。而对日本人或共产党人，这些招数就不灵了。再加上蒋介石一辈子都喜欢越级指挥，从当年对红军的围剿，到后来解放战争时期的三大战役，蒋几乎从来都没有改变过这种事无巨细一插到底的坏毛病。许多国民党的将军在回忆录里都批评过蒋介石的这种作法。只不过，蒋在围剿红军时可以越级指挥到团一级，而后来军队多了，大了，蒋的越级指挥就指挥到师一级了。看看蒋介石指挥军事的电报，我们甚至会发觉，他连部队行军时应当怎样走路，怎样露营，怎样防空，怎样布哨，都要管。这多半和蒋介石所受的军事教育层级太低有关。不少战役就是由于蒋介石不顾国防部、军令部的总体作战计划和战略部署，越过上一级指挥机关，直接指挥到前方部队去，从而使得所有的部署都泡了汤了。

毛泽东与蒋介石则恰恰相反。毛是个诗人，喜欢哲学，这影响到他具有很强的浪漫主义气质，不喜欢去管什么具体的细微末节，只喜欢海阔天空。他会见尼克松、基辛格时，一上来就明白讲，我不谈具体的问题，只谈哲学。（笑声）具体的问题让周恩来和基辛格去讨论。这其实很反映他的性格。1945年，毛泽东到重庆与蒋介石谈判，他把自己1936年写的一首《沁园春•雪》送给了柳亚子，后来登在了重庆的报纸上，很是引人注目。蒋介石知道后非常生气，他不会写诗词，但还是曾要下面的人组织些文人墨客写些更高雅的诗词，以便把毛泽东的词比下去。结果，国民党人硬是没有写出一首能够赶得上毛泽东的想象力的诗词。这件小事很能反映毛与蒋之间的差距。

毛泽东是诗人，但同时也是农民。这在军事上就构成了毛泽东的重要特点。那就是，他一方面相当注重保存实力，另一方面又注重战略，往往会有超人的想像力和魄力，不墨守陈规，敢于冒险，不怕打烂坛坛罐罐。在早年共产党的军事实力弱小时，毛泽东注重保存实力的一面表现得较为突出。结果在俄国人和那些百分之百的布尔什维克的眼里，毛泽东明显地是右倾保守的代表，因为他在军事上绝对不赞同共产国际所强调的 “进攻路线”。如何保存实力？毛泽东的策略就是要能跑。他的十六字诀，中心思想就是一个字：“跑”。（笑声）抗日战争期间，面对强敌日本，毛泽东也还是坚持这样一种策略。他不仅顶住了来自党内的和莫斯科的非议，而且也顶住了来自国民党的压力，始终坚持他的游击战方针，使共产党的军队在敌后得到了前所未有的迅猛发展，为后来战胜蒋介石国民党打下了坚实的基础。包括在毛泽东晚年，即我们上面讲过的珍宝岛事件之后，他的这一思想也再度表现了出来。当时为什么下决心要调整与美国的关系，不惜与美国妥协？就是因为毛泽东清楚地看出，中国当时没有力量与苏联单独对抗，必须拉上一个个帮手，这样苏联就不敢打我们了。阿尔巴尼亚党批评中国右倾，毛泽东不管那一套，还理直气壮地说：我就是右倾机会主义，你能把我怎么样？（笑声）

Politics is the art of achieving power and prestige without merit

Source:

http://www.andykessler.com/andy_kessler/2011/02/brett-owens-contrary-investor-interview.html

http://www.andykessler.com/andy_kessler/2011/02/brett-owens-contrary-investor-interview.html

On Pessimism

"A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks."
— Oscar Wilde

“A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties”
-- Harry S. Truman.

"If I regarded my life from the point of view of the pessimist, I should be undone. I should seek in vain for the light that does not visit my eyes and the music that does not ring in my ears. I should beg night and day and never be satisfied. I should sit apart in awful solitude, a prey to fear and despair. But since I consider it a duty to myself and to others to be happy, I escape a misery worse than any physical deprivation."
-- Hellen Keller