The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens

No doubt, this book is a worldly famous self-help book. The author, Sean Covey , was influenced by his father Stephen Covey, the author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and made it simpler especially for teens. Personally I am highly positively influenced by it. If I hold it to read again, I am not sure if I can stop. Just a little exaggeration, though! And this is why you see this review.

Knowing what is right is difficult. However, urging or forcing ourselves to do the right thing is ways more difficult. Part I of this book is about knowing what is right. So what is right then? To develop yourself, although you sometimes deny it, you know that you are the driver, the main driver, of your life. Thus, be responsible for your life. If you disagree to this, you can stop reading this review and burn the book down (except you bought its e-book version). 

This is book is divided into 4 main parts. Because the flow of his book is superb, I will have to just review it accordingly.

Then, part II is about forming the habits. Again, it begins with perceptions. He calls it paradigms. You have to form a habit of thinking that you can do. Define your goals and its possibility.   Prioritize what is more important and do it in that order. 

Part I and II are about yourself. Make them habits for yourself, the habits that after repetitions no longer burdens but what you like doing. Part III is about dealing with other people. There is only one truth. Christianity refers this as the Golden Rule. Other people have good intentions like us as well. They find it difficult to raise themselves up as well. They misunderstand, sometimes do bad deeds intentionally like us as well. Thus, to grow is to grow together. That is how we should think and do. 

Part IV is about doing it as a habit. Repetitive, is it not?  You keep thinking positively, do it till it becomes a habit, do it with others, do it together, and then your life would be effective. 

Do you see what the most special point of this book is? There is a high chance that you got it. There are too numerous books on self-help. Another one you might hear about or read is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I read this one as well but I must admit that it does not influence me much or at all. I am sorry to its fan, and I know there are a lot! Of course the latter offers enormous number of good theories. The reason for its low rating being that it does not show me HOW to make those good theories applicable or how to force oneself to apply the theories. As I previously said above, people can know what the right thing to do is easily, but it is hard for them to do the right thing. For instance, people tend to know that reading is good for them, but they just do not read. Because the 7 Habits could do this, I give it the crown, which effectively means my rating for it is 5/5.

Author: Sean Covey
Publisher: Touchstone, newest edition (May 27, 2014)

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New Ideas from Dead Economists

I fully concur with Einstein that smart people can make difficult topic easy to understand for laymen. In this sense, Todd Buchholz is a smart economist. His being a smart and insightful economist is clearly manifested in this book.

Who can and should read this book.

This is book is for those who have finished Introduction to Economics or just know or heard about the demand and supply theory. Laymen can also capture his ideas but not without contemplation. It is not more difficult than economic topics you have read in various newspaper or magazine. 

Students nowadays may take the theory of free trade for granted. Decades ago, it was a highly debatable subject. Hundreds of years ago, most people were against it. Lets not look too far away. During World War I and II, why superpowers spent tremendous amount of money and lives to invade other countries for natural resources and markets, the things that can be accessed easily today through free trades? This is a prime example of the new idea left behind by many dead economists who were philosophically alone in their time.

The encouragement of multi-corporation, international trades, WTO, World Bank, IMF, ADB you name it, are no more accomplishments than those of economists. Stimulus package, Quantitative Easing especially in the United States, Three-Arrow Policies of Shinzo Abe, Japanese Prime Minister, and one currency in EU are those of economists, although those ideas are against each other. Perhaps these differences in policies interest students of economics more if you try to know which school of thought you are in.

If you happen to have curiosities or questions similar to these, this book would be best for you.

A bit of the book

It explains theories, findings, imperfections etc. of the economists in the past as well as today. Ideas are very powerful, more powerful than ones can perceive. As Keynes put it at the end of his most famous book The General Theory:

“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.”

The Conundrum 

This book presents you many theories in economics. Nevertheless, theories conflict in every disciplines. There are opposing schools of thoughts. Nobel Prize in Economics committee, for instance, tend to give the Prize to opposing recipients in the topic they deal with. In this book, the author does not or cannot opine what school of thought is right or explains the world more correctly. For those who need an answer to biggest debate in economics, Keynesianism vs. Non-Keynesianism, this book is not sufficient. ( I would suggest The Clash of the Century).

The book will make you more curious about economics, although my rating is only 4/5. Why not give it a try...

Author: Todd G. Buchholz, with foreword by Martin Feldstein.
Publisher: Plume, newest edition (April 6, 2007)

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Cha Ret Khmer (Khmer Characteristics)

Summary

It is a rather well-known book by a nationalistic politician name Bun Chan Mol (ប៊ុណ្ណ ចន្ទម៉ុល) who spent his life serving Cambodia under many regimes and at the same time observed the atrocity of committed by Cambodians, the Khmer race, under those many regimes. He witnessed cruel tortures, lawless killings, social ills, and observed many incorrigible deeds that leaders and the led made during his life. Thus, in his conclusion, he said the Khmer race are brutal and violent. The future of Cambodia is doomed and his hope for a better Cambodia is dim. 

Analysis

Social scientists would immediately disagree with the author. There is no such as thing as racial characteristics. No American were born to love freedom. America would not be born without the ideas of how to build a country disseminated from Britain, and Britain from earlier uncountable heroes/heroines and countries from Roman Empire, Greece and the Enlightenment. You name it.

In this sense, my rating for it is 3/5.

Those who read this book should not feel pessimistic about the Khmer race and/or the future of Cambodia even if they see its dooming situation today, but should instead continue reading other books such as Why Nations Fail, From Dictatorship to Democracy and Free to Choose, to begin with.

The Conundrum

Did I say there is no such thing as racial characteristics? What you eat determine your behaviors and genes as well. Some food, for example, can make you particularly sluggish. So would Sushi makes Japanese race particularly something? Would this change the pyramid of Maslow's human needs?

Final Say

Putting his accomplishment, sacrifice and knowledge aside, he deserved our respect as a Cambodian patriot. One should be reminded as well that being a patriot is not enough, instead far from enough. The knowledge, how to build the country, how to administer a government, how to infiltrate the concept of citizenship among our people etc. are more important.

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Why Nations Fail

You may wonder why Cambodia, among other poor countries, fail to develop. Why we are poor and other are rich? You have answers, of course. You may point to the fact that we had wars, thus no human capital i.e. no knowledgeable persons who know how to develop the country. Some would point to the fact that we are born lazy, i.e. our culture does not induce hard working like Vietnamese culture or Japanese culture. Of course, very few would point to the fact that Cambodia does not have natural resource as we have too many including the sea. So what make us poor? Some would argue that we do not have a good leader. How to have a good leader then? Can another good leaders come and continue to be good after a good leader is dead of old age? In this book, Daron Acemoglu & James Robinson deal comprehensively with these theories. 

Summary

A country fails to grow not because it does not have natural resources. Case study, Japan. 

A country fails to develop not because of culture. Case study South Korea versus North Korea. 

A country does not grow not because of the lack of human capital. Knowledge can be bought these days. Case study, Japan and other countries (Cambodia as well before the France took over the country) bought Western technology and knowledge and even fought with the West like Japan did against Russia. 

A country fails because it does not have an inclusive institution. Rather, it has extractive institution. That is it has a system where growth, or wealth,  is extracted to a group of people from another group of people. A typical example is when a country has a government which taxes their citizens (of course every government lives by money from tax) and provide no or little service in return. The government does not protect the property rights of its citizens, for instance. 

Conundrums

Theories in this book are mostly in direct contrast to those in The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. If you want to dig deeper into this debate, the latter is a good start. In economics, Acemoglu along with other prominent economists such as Douglas North are categorized as institutional economists. They tend to favor institutions as a cause of growths.

In this book, by emphasizing that institutions, i.e. the systems, make a country rich or poor, the authors do know shed lights on how those systems can be made. If you were the United States who imposed system on Japan after WWII, this book is best for you, except you cannot be one. This book is also best for policy makers of aid organizations such as Jica, USAID, AusAid etc. For politicians, especially opposition politicians in a dictatorship countries this book only brings hopelessness. I suggest another book From Dictatorship to Democracy.

I hope you would read the book, republished in 2012, after this review. My rating is 5/5.

Authors: Daron Acemoglu, James Robinson.
Publisher: Crown Business; 1 edition (March 20, 2012)

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That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen

When you study a subject for so long, whether it is mathematics, physics, economics, psychology, you tend to lose tract with the reality you see every day. Among many pieces of works of Frederic Bastiat, this piece of work is so brilliant that I can say it allows people who are new to economics to understand the principle of economics firmly.

Economists today use the expression Opportunity Cost to express the cost of time that you may spend on something else. For example, you may say going to a free conference is free but actually it is not because the opportunity cost is that you can do something else and you lose the opportunity to do so when you choose to go to the conference. Thus, it is not free. The author Henry Hazlitt of Economics in One Lesson wrote his worldly famous book basing on this simple concept, very simple that some Nobel laureates in economics tend to miss. 

I can say NO economist would disagree with this concept. Actually no one would (tell me if you meet one!) It is self-evident to say that ones must consider both seen and unseen consequences. Seen ones are easy to see because it is seen (hint: tautology is there). The unseen may be less focused. Economists take pride in themselves to focus on the unseen in results of any policy.

The example of this simple concept draws in plenty of disagreements. For instance, the example of Broken Window. Keynesian would consider it as an opportunity to create jobs, but Bastiat did not. From small to big interventions, I believe you would find this essay very fun to read, and it may change your way of seeing the world.

My rating for this book is 4.5/5.

The Conundrum

Economists divide time into two: short-run and long-run. Some economists agree with Bastiat as a long-run model in economics but disagree with it in the short-run model. For instance, in the short-run where prices are not responding to changes in supply and/or demand, the Broken Window concept is useful to push for economic growth. Thus, governments need to initiate spending on even seemingly useless projects.

The Foundation for Economics Education, for instance, reserves its rights and publish it for free to the public. What is not free, the opportunity cost (quick application!), is your time to read it.

Author: M. Frederic Bastiat.
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (August 7, 2013) [this one is not free even in financial terms!]

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