Mod Note (Andy) - "Interesting Things" by user Adventure_Capitalist (a PE professional) is a new addition to the site that we hope to have each week. This is a newsletter that he has been sharing between friends for awhile now and we thought it would be a good addition to the site, similar to what Bonus Bananas had to offer.
@GSElevator – #1: Drinking Mountain Dew lets people know you get paid by the hour.
1. Quote Of The Week / 2. People Whose Lives Have Been Transformed By Uber / 3. Sao Paulo Is Running Out Of Water / 4. Interesting Links / 5. Joke Of The Week
1. QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Jim Chanos keeps it simple, offering interesting perspectives on Glencore:
“They were buying assets at the top of the market. Now that commodities have crashed they’re selling assets. Does that sound smart to you?”
and Tesla:
“It’s an overpriced car company. They were an innovator but others are catching up. [In September] BMW sold as many electric cars in the US. It has half the market cap of BMW which sells 2 million cars a year and only sells 50 thousand.”
2. PEOPLE WHOSE LIVES HAVE BEEN TRANSFORMED BY UBER
A peek into the lives of Indian drivers as central and state governments prepare to impose further regulations on app-based cab services.
Before Uber, Ola and other app-based cab services arrived in Indian cities, Virender Vats never imagined he would deliberately quit his job as a retail manager at a Delhi electronics store to become a driver.
But with taxi aggregator services, the money is undeniably tempting: while passengers get comfortable, air-conditioned cab services for rates as low as Rs 7 or Rs 8 per kilometre, drivers with Uber and Ola often end up with hefty monthly incomes of Rs 50,000 or even Rs 1 lakh.
“I saw young kids making three times more money than I do by working fewer hours as Uber drivers,” said Vats during the course of a ride from Connaught Place to Gurgaon. “I decided to try it for a while and did it after work for a few hours with my own car. I ended up making at least Rs 10,000 every week.”
Two months later, he knew it was time to let go of his retail job. “I love having weekends off to myself and since I can’t sleep at night, I work late hours,” he said. He had only one regret: “I just miss wearing ties to work every day, though.”
In some cases, drivers are making as much as Rs 1.2 lakh a month, in part due to the incentives such as peak-time bonus that these companies provide their drivers just to keep them on the road. Surge pricing, which kicks in during periods of high demand or in the late night, often inflates the price of the rides by a multiple of two or three times the regular fare.
Taxi aggregator services have exploded in popularity among urban, smart phone-wielding commuters. While Uber drivers seem to be enjoying honeymoon bliss, traditional taxi drivers are growing disgruntled.
“In the 30 years that I have been driving a taxi in Mumbai, I have never experienced a downturn like this,” said Bhulan, the driver of a black-and-yellow cab in Mumbai, who was on strike with most other cab drivers in the city last month. “I used to make between Rs 10,000 and 15,000 a month, but in the past two months, with that Ola grabbing all our customers, I barely make Rs 8,000.”
But Bhulan and other drivers are irked by the fact that app-based services openly operate without proper licenses. They are also baffled by the fact that Uber and Ola cabs are air-conditioned: “How on earth do they make profits if they provide an AC and charge less?”
Interestingly, many Uber and Ola drivers Scroll.in spoke to were well aware that the current boom has been subsidised by venture capital, and a few were trying to figure out just how much time they have before the wave starts to weaken. Jeetendra Ram is among the sceptics. “I don’t believe these high wages will last forever,” he said. “I have kept two cars and only one of those is attached to Ola and Uber. The other one is still doing weekly trips to hill stations. Once the money is over, these firms will come back to regular taxi rates and those without options will not have anywhere to go.”
3. SÃO PAULO IS RUNNING OUT OF WATER
The biggest city in the Western hemisphere is facing its greatest water crisis in over 80 years — and climate change is only part of the problem.
Millions of residents in São Paulo, Brazil face daily water shutoffs unless the city manages its water better. It is not only a problem of drought. The city of 20 million is plagued by failing infrastructure across the city, and it has been unable to deliver the water it does have to residents in need. Without major changes to the city’s infrastructure and planning, commentators say the crisis is bound to continue.
The crisis is generally worse in poorer districts on the outskirts of the city. These oft-neglected neighborhoods, many of which sit at higher altitudes in the hills around the city, require more water pressure to reach their tanks. And even on days when it is raining outside, the pipes in the Periferia are often dry.
On top of it all, São Paulo has now suffered two of the driest seasons on record, back-to-back. The Cantareira reservoirs, which supply water to over 9 million residents, were operating at 12% capacity in October. The water level has fallen so low that large parts of the surface of the reservoirs are dried mud.
“This is what we would call a real emergency,” said Paulo Dallari, deputy secretary for the São Paulo mayor’s office. “The reservoirs are much lower than they used to be. It is raining much lower than the average. So we might have some difficult situations in the near future.”
Dallari is now working to expand the emergency water reserves around São Paulo – especially in facilities like hospitals and schools, which he points out are particularly vulnerable in situations of extreme water shortage. Some neighborhoods and surrounding towns have fared worse than others. The outlying city of Itu saw massive protests last year – sometimes turning violent – when the city tried to cut them off from the water network entirely.
Many São Paulo residents have had daily 12-hour water cutoffs over the last year. But Dallari points out that while wealthier residents have been able to build water tanks and purchase water from private sources, the poorest residents can’t do that. Residents of the indigenous Gaurani community, who live in the Periferia town of Itakupe, complained that the little amount of water that flows to them is a milky, white colour.
In the south of the city lies the Billings reservoir, which holds 20% more water than the Cantareira. Environmentalists point out that this could be a better source of water for the city, but it is polluted. Over one million people now live by its banks, but there is no proper sewage system so waste flows into the reservoir.
The crisis facing São Paulo today might seem an unlikely one for this proud city in a nation that has been referred to as “the Saudi Arabia of water.” Brazil accounts for 12-16% of the world’s freshwater, more than any other country on the planet.
But much of this water is contained in the Amazon river and rainforests in the north. And without the proper infrastructure, the city is left unable even to harness the water sources right under its feet.
4. INTERESTING LINKS
The reasons we work [Farnam Street]; Advice for your daughter [The Blaze]; How drugs get their names [The Economist]; Alibaba – yeah right Jack [Bronte Capital]; Sweden en route to cashless economy [Quartz]; Are we at peak Apple [Seth Godin]; Chinese hackers are making a fortune [The Hacker News]; A masterclass in creative thinking [London School of Economics]; Flying over Indonesia’s fires [YouTube].
5. JOKE OF THE WEEK
