On treatment of the elderly in Hong Kong

It is no joke nor a laughing matter on how the elderly citizens of Hong Kong are treated. If you have the opportunity to follow and receive updates from Jennifer Ngo of the South China Morning Post, it will certainly keep your perspectives in check on what the government should be doing in supporting your final years.

How would you feel if one or both of your grandparents were living in a retirement home that kept them “naked or half-dressed on an open-air podium for up to 90 minutes before staff took them to shower?” I think that for those who have had a privileged upbringing should begin to recognize those ‘less well off’ and find it within themselves to, at the very least, discuss it with peers.

In light of the accumulated surplus the Hong Kong SAR Government has amassed, I am not sure what sort of rainy day intervention they are intending to allocate the funds towards. Any outcry of FX intervention would be moot at best as the surplus would not be sufficient in any serious circumstance.

You can find a copy of the government’s consolidated estimates here (PDF), a summary of the government revenue, i.e. rent, here (PDF), summary of the government expenditure (estimates) here (PDF), and Head 170 (social welfare department) here. I believe it is important to support individuals who report on social inequality the opportunity to weigh in on policy making. However, as with LegCo in Hong Kong, our policies seem to be discussed by individuals such as Carrie “horse shit hair” Lam.

The following is a copy-and-paste from the SCMP (due to the paywall):

“Elderly people in a nursing home at the centre of a storm over its poor treatment of residents face an uncertain future after the Social Welfare Department said it would not renew its licence when it expired tomorrow.

The decision follows reports this week that residents of the Cambridge Nursing Home in Tai Po were left naked or halfdressed on an openair podium for up to 90 minutes before staff took them to shower. 

The department said in a statement yesterday that notice had been served to the home that its renewal application would be refused. It had a week to appeal. 

The institution houses around 50 tenants on its third floor and 50 on the first floor. The second floor is currently under renovation. 

Although the contract for the second and third floor expires tomorrow, it will remain valid until the department makes a formal decision. 

Ms Lo, whose 90 year old mother has been living at the home for three years, paying over HK$10,000 a month, complained of being left in the dark.

“[Another elderly person’s relative] asked about the licence expiry, but no one gave a reply. No one told us anything,” said Lo. “I hope the Social Welfare Department will make some arrangements.”

But she did not believe it would be hard to find another place nearby. She said her mother was mobile and could care for herself. She and her two sisters take turns visiting her.

Ho Waiming, whose 83 year old father lives on the first floor, said she was appalled at the treatment of the elderly. 

“It’s not acceptable,” she said. “But actually, I do know that private homes for the elderly are like this the quality isn’t too good. Unfortunately, my family really can no longer care for my father.”

A man surnamed Wong, who had made a HK$2,000 down payment to secure a place for his father, returned to the home yesterday for a refund.

“I was not notified that their licence was expiring. When I heard the news today, I decided to come over here,” he said. “I think [what happened] was quite atrocious.”

A department spokesman said it would not tolerate abuse of the elderly.

Social workers had started contacting affected residents and their relatives and were setting up a help desk. The department said there was an abundance of places in private homes for the elderly in Tai Po to provide residential care for all affected residents.

Cambridge Nursing Home, which runs 18 homes for the elderly, expressed regret for the incident in an advert published in several Chinese-language
newspapers yesterday. The group said it regretted the inconvenience
and damage caused to residents and their families.

“There is no way the institution can shirk responsibility for the incident. The institution promises it will continue to enhance management and improve services,” the group said. It added that the incident was an “individual”
case. 

Calls to the institution were cut off and messages left at the owner’s company were not returned.

Secretary for Security Lai Tungkwok said yesterday that police were investigating.“

On Ballers, an upcoming HBO series

Our most advanced economies facilitate the lifestyle of media consumption, whether it be print media (newspapers, magazines), television, movies, video games, or even the Internet.

I have begun to genuinely appreciate the creativity and foresight that a lot of these media producers and directors have been pushing forth. Among the TV shows, it is obvious that television series’ from HBO of Time Warner (NSYE: TWX) are leading the pack. Below is a trailer for their upcoming show called ‘Ballers’:

On the other side of the ‘pond’, we’ve got AMC, Channel 4 and Kudos releasing “Humans,” a TV series that depicts a parallel present which integrates synthetic robots into the lives of their host: a family. It is based on the Swedish drama “Real Humans.”

As we have seen in Luther and other British series, watch the above Humans trailer until the end.

On the Charter-Time Warner Cable merger: after earlier bids by both Charter and Comcast, the merger was announced on May 26th, 2015. This was after the FCC raised concerns that a Comcast-TWX merger would lead to an anti-competitive environment. This brief point should give the Chinese a reason to boost transparency about the marketplace which exists inside China, which is also starting to eat up the marketplace in the rest of the world.

Transparency leads to legitimacy, something that the CCP is arguably striving to maintain, especially as the 26th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square is coming up on June 4th, 2015. On the FCC’s website, you can find the ‘Transaction Quick Links’ tab, which has M&A, Major Transaction Decisions, Archived Transactions, Process Overview, FAQ, and a contact for the FCC Transaction Team. For the proposed Comcast-TWX merger, the FCC makes public the timeclock of the case, an overview of the merger case, and others.

As Howard Homonoff puts it in his May 29th column, “There are several reasons why a wave of media mergers and acquisitions are now in the offing (beyond the need for more banking industry revenues to offset the string of mortgage crisis-related fines).” If you skip past the silly ‘name game’, he points out three reasons:

1. “Conventional wisdom would suggest that the U.S. media market is heavily concentrated,” however, Homonoff points out that “the U.S. still has a long way to go to match the levels of media concentration in other parts of the world.” But does Homonoff insinuate that a concentrated media industry is good?
2. His second point slightly contradicts his first point by stating, “Audience fragmentation is accelerating – We are decades into the explosion of viewer choices in television as we moved from three (then four) broadcast networks to hundreds of cable networks, and years into the proliferation of digital video platforms, from video on demand to YouTube to an increasingly diverse array of over-the-top video providers from Netflix to Amazon Prime to DISH Network’s Sling TV to HBO Now.” Although a bit of a mouthful, Homonoff is right in saying that there has been an increase in the diverse array of media consumption, but does this justify the concentration of TV media companies?
3. Homonoff states that “the “middle” [of the media industry] is an increasingly precarious place to be in the media world, especially among cable networks.“

However, a quick look at the 2014 annual report (PDF) of TWX gives me a bit of anxiety that the resulting merger will lower the quality of HBO shows henceforth. As we are indeed in a ‘recessionary’ period, it seems advertising budgets have taken a hit, or there are more lucrative forms of advertising rather than through TV.

Where is the advertising expenditure alternatively being spent? Perhaps the ‘TrueView’ ads by Google’s YouTube might have been a culprit. However, many sources have claimed that the revenue contributions from YouTube only just break-even its cost, as their 2014 annual report states, “Content acquisition costs primarily related to payments to certain content providers from whom we license their video and other content for distribution on YouTube and Google Play (We share most of the fees these sales generate with content providers or pay a fixed fee to these content providers).”

It seems that Google wants you to access http://www.YouTube.com directly and not through paid-click ads. As a Business Insider (a BS media outlet) article states, “That’s why the company has poured big bucks into helping its original content creators, like Michelle Phan, Bethany Moto, and Epic Rap Battles of History, build their followings and create better videos.” While this investment pay-off? The WSJ supports the rhetoric that YouTube generates around 6% (in-line with the projections in the image below) of overall revenues, but admits that the bottom line is that it was “roughly break-even.”

Although Google’s annual report does not directly disclose YouTube’s revenue and cost of revenue, Forbes seem to believe eMarketer in their analysis that YouTube does generate positive cash, but then again, there is a reason why you chose to study ‘marketing’ instead of something worth actually learning at university.

Nevertheless… it seems TWX may need some slim-fit, Rimowa carrying, consultants or even better, a person with real knowledge and a degree in engineering psychology, to help out with their much needed advertising revenues. The TimeWarner upcoming AGM on June 19th (webast link) may give you a better insight to what’s up(coming) for the company during its MD&A.

Comments on finishing university and in the (endless) pursuit of “what’s next”

In today’s society, there is an undying and unwavering desire for everyone to step over each other in their pursuit to get ‘ahead.” This has been a feature I have observed having lived in several international financial centers, and I believe, this is also one of the greatest flaw in the manner by which citizens live their lives.

So this poses a question, should we provide ourselves with intrinsic or extrinsic motivation?

The case for extrinsic motivation:

Marc Bain, a fashion reporter with Quartz, released an article on Quartz today about the price we pay as a materialistic society. According to the recent BAML report, “Vanity Capital: The global bull market in narcissism”, Bain says that it “put[s] a price tag on the amount we spend globally on products and services that enhance our appearance or prestige,” a price tag of approximately $4.5 trillion, amounting to approximately 5.16% of global GDP PPP. Although Bain signifies that, “just the fact that Bank of America Merrill Lynch, one of the largest banks in the US, would try to quantify the size of worldwide vanity spending indicates that this is a market worth watching,” the intrinsic motivation discussed below does not address a point highlighted by Scott Galloway, a professor at NYU Stern, who says that “the cachet that all vanity capital carries is distinctly libidinous.”

According to Bain, there has been a large push for self-help and money gurus in pushing debt ridden citizens towards “the pursuit of, and the accumulation of, attributes and accessories to augment self-confidence by enhancing one’s appearance and prestige. It is self-actualization through self-improvement and self-focus.” So are Gordon Gekko and Abraham Maslow truly wise? I think not.

The case for intrinsic motivation:

In the below video, Alan Watts, the late British philosopher, talks about the idea of ‘purposelessness’.

Alan Watts has talked at length about ziran, the idea that something exists in itself. I have extensively disagreed with the attitude of Hong Kong citizens in saying it is because it is in shying away from systemic problems of the broken oligarchy. The idea of ziran is thus somewhat different to “it is because it is,” and poses as perhaps a more purposeful idea of purposelessness.

In the below video, Bertrand Russell, another late British philosopher, shares two pieces of advice: one intellectual and one moral:

On the intellectual front, Russell asks you to be steadfast when inquiring on any ‘matter’, whether it be considering any philosophy or studying some material. Russell recommends that you should always “ask yourself only, what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out.” In my experience, this takes a form of patience and maturity to allow yourself the adequate time required to fully asses what truth lays out in front you; otherwise, “you will be diverted either by what you wish to believe or by what you think could have beneficent social effects if it were believed.” This resonates with an interpretation of what Aristotle talks about in Book I of Politics, “In this, as in other fields, we shall be able to study our subject best if we begin at the beginning and consider things in the process of growth.”

On the moral front, Russell says that, “love is wise, and hatred is foolish.” As Russell lived between 1872 to 1970, he would have witnessed the rise and fall of several institutions, nations, and intellectual thought. Yet what he saw was the onset of globalization in the form we see it today, especially on the interconnected interdependence we have with one another. Even prior to the advent of the Internet, Russell foresaw that in order for globalization to be for the ‘good’, we needed to “learn how to tolerate each other… [as] we can only live together in that way, if we are to live together and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and tolerance that is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.”

In light of the intellectual advice, a key word is truth. In my experience, being truthful and humble have been a “winning formula” for me in dealing with certain obstacles and goals that I have faced along the way. When you are faced with a problem, be open with yourself and look to what is required to solved the problem. If you cannot deal with it on your own then be open with yourself and ask for assistance or help as this will help you gather the right knowledge and learn from mistakes. In a recent sit-down I had with a recruiter, I felt it necessary to be open and honest about my intentions working at the firm. The firm presented an invaluable learning opportunity with a prestigious alumni, but more importantly, I openly said that it could help shape me into an individual that had the right ‘tools’ to tackle real world problems necessary to mend our broken system for future sustainability.

2015 Milken Institute Panel on Health Care in the Digital Age

Are you a high achiever? Skip business school and wall street. Do something with your life when you head to university, graduate with a degree in something that will let you make a contribution to society. Help change the world.

The 2015 WHCD speech was certainly NOT epic…

While last night’s speech by current US President Obama was consistent in delivering humour and laughter, it is unfortunate that President Obama has to stoop this low in order to coherently address the US citizens. By simply resorting to playing his race card yet again, President Obama does not resemble any form of leadership.

In his essay, “The Three Types of Legitimate Rule,” Weber introduces a concept of tripartite classification of authority: charismatic, traditional, and legal. While legally, President Obama is POTUS, it has becomes painstakingly obvious that President Obama truly belongs in none of these categories. The concept is also further touched up on in his essay, “Politics as a vocation,” an essay I am certain President Obama and his speech writers have read.

Full video:

Race card speech: