About spending---who buys the expensive stuff?

My father is really cheap in terms of spending on general stuff. He used to buy a whole bunch of cheap pencils thought that he took some advantages, but turned out the pencils don't write at all. Almost anything he buys will break in no more than a month because he always buy the cheapest.

"The expensive clothes and shoes and gadgets are all manufactured in the same factor with the cheap ones, it's all a difference of the distribution channel." this is his wisdom.

But seriously, there are a lot of brand stuff that are just slightly better, either it's established in the business, having better customer services, better design or took monopoly in that technology, but the price could be ten times more than a non-brand product.
I most time just go with the non-brand ones and just satisfy the basic needs, like headphones, I'd rather get a 15 Euro one than a one hundred Euro one, since I'm not living on listening to stuff.

So, question is, who buys those over priced brand product?

The average income of Italian citizens is about 25k US dollar a year, breaks down to a 2k a month, which means taking 1k monthly necessities they still have plenty to spend, you can buy an expensive computer every one or two month if you tight your belt a little bit. And that is just "average".
Think about there's a smaller group of people we call middle class, who earns some more than 2k a month, maybe 3-5k, and this group of people are those really buy all the brand products.
Economy is like many circles intersecting each other. Living on 1k Euro monthly, my father of course can't stand spending money on any big brand, he thinks they are stealing from people. But there are people who can make way more and they are more entitled to consume higher class stuff. And that's enough for the economy to run, enough for the big companies to grow even bigger.

Why we work so much? Keynes' 15-hour working week prediction

"Back in 1930, Keynes predicted that the working week would be drastically cut, to perhaps 15 hours a week, with people choosing to have far more leisure as their material needs were satisfied."
However that's so not the case of today, is it? We work from Monday to Friday still, and even more over time working, it's not rare to see in the news that some young talent worked to their death at desk. 
How come? We have achieved way greater economy size and material richness, how come we didn't realize the prediction of Keynes and still work so much that we literally work ourselves to death? 
Essentially it is because of our human nature. 
Wait... isn't human nature pursuing leisurely life? If nobody tells you to, you probably wouldn't go to work, if it's not that you have to feed your family, you probably just want to lay on sofa and watch TV all day long? 
Yes, it is true that we have the laziness in our nature. But there's another side of our nature that can easily be ignored, that is the pursuing of higher level enjoyment and mental satisfaction.
Speaking of higher level enjoyment, we surely can feed ourselves well if everybody just work 2-3 days a week to earn the necessities and never worry about other things. But it isn't what our world looks like. We feed ourselves well, then we would come up with new ideas, new goals, new ambitions, we would try new things, invent new things, create new things, all of these cost times and effort. Getting fed well is never human's main goal, we want to feed ourselves not only food, but also tastes, exoticism, superiority, luxury...  and greed drives us to create more temptation for others while we are tempted by something else, we want more money, accumulate more wealth, so we create stuff we didn't have to own. One shirt is enough to cover your body in summer, but people don't just have one shirt in their closet, that's because they have higher level of demand than just covering themselves. That demand, is the source of endless labor of human beings. One guy created something really appealing, he sets a high price, the others then must work more to get that piece of new item, and in this way our standard of living has been constantly lift higher and higher as economy grows. That's why we will NEVER reach a stage where we'll work significantly less hours than today we do as a whole.
Secondly, there's the psychological thing playing trick on us, we want to be better, not just better than where we were 100 years ago, but better than our peers, as a lawyer, I must make more money than other lawyers, a doctor, I want to be more successful than other doctors... this kind of competition is another main engine drives us working endlessly harder and harder. We are all like the rabbit with a carrot hanging in front of our face, keep chasing, but never reach it. The bigger the carrot is, the faster and more "tiredlessly" we chase after it. Rich people might choose working over enjoying leisure since their pay per hour is so high that they may even consider having some time off isn't worth it. 
And it is fun to do so, it is fun to pursue, to compete, to leave the past far behind, to explore more seeming unlikely and impossible areas. That's human nature, you can point it out, but you can't say, "it's bad", because that's what drives us forward, that's why we human are different from animals, a soul never gets enough of what he has, a soul never gets tired of pursuing.   

Greece Bailout Crowd-Funding 2nd Round!

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/greek-crowdfund#/story

so, the first call failed, of course, a goal of 1.6 billion Euro, simply impossible to achieve by crowdfunding, now second round is open, this time the campaign starter set a goal of only 1 million, meant to recollect the refund just got returned to every donor.

#Greecebailout #crowdfunding

so far 157 thousand Euro is raised again, with 8 days left it's not too hard to reach the goal this time however personally it's frustrating to see the first one fail, the goal was too big to be reached, yet now there might just be more frustrated people, feeling powerless in front of the huge number of 1 billion Euro. Also, more people are possibly attracted to this campaign, so, let's see how this will end up.

update on 14th July 2015, I got the 5€ refund.

Fast track -- pay to jump the queue | What money can't buy

In many places it is now possible to pay to skip the suffer of waiting in a long line, when you are in restaurant at a busy night, give some handsome tips and you get a table immediately. Some airports publicly offer fast track through security check, as long as you are willing to pay more. In amusement park, theatre, tourist attractions, wherever you can think of that will be a queue.
Is it morally corrosive? Has market brought it too far that these practices may undermine the idea of equality? Here is what I think:
We make money by investing our time and energy, every penny represents some effort we paid in the past, so that we can purchase goods or services that may reduce our effort in the future. Paying for a fast track is pretty much like a service helps you to spare some energy by paying what you earned, not so unfair, right? I'm not rich, I'm one of those supposedly should complain about the rich people who pay to jump the queue, but I'd actually think, by waiting in the queue I spare some money that they paid for the time saved. All depends on how much you think your time is worthy, especially your time at the very moment, like if you are in emergency, I bet you'd love to pay to get past the security line earlier as well, even if you have always being a sparing person.
Let me know what do you think of fast track? Would you get upset facing some people jumping the queue by giving up more cash? Or would you be one of the people prefer to pay rather than wait? Let me know in the comment.

I'm reading the book what money can't buy

Advantages and disadvantages of Crowdfunding |kickstarter| business startup

Advantages

1.Open a new source of funding, get money quickly without upfront fee and get things done especially when you struggle to get support from conventional big institutions and banks.
2.A successful campaign may attract big investors' attention and lead to even larger amount of funding

Non-financial benefits

1. Profile: gain a lot of attention from public, a compelling project can rise a producer's profile and increase its reputation especially if they succeed.
2.Audience engagement: the project initiator can create a forum in which he can communicate with the audiences. Your investors can often become your most loyal customers through the financing process
3.Feedback: offering the pre-release access to the content, or the possibility to use the beta-version gives the project initiator a good market feedback or we can say it's a good way to test the public reaction.
4.Crowdfunding is great for niche ideas that wouldn’t otherwise have access to a receptive audience or funds

Impact on society
1.good ideas, designs will come directly to the audience, skip distributors and retailers, increase consumer surplus and provider surplus.
2.created a place for dreamers to really make things come true. Isn't that awesome?
everyone has some dreams, fantasy, some of them might just be the next genius idea that could potentially change people's life, with crowdfunding, we won't be worried that these ideas would just die away.

Disadvantages

1.Small dollar amounts. If your crowd funding campaign is successful you will raise small amounts of money from a large number of funders. But for a small business, that's the problem. Instead of raising significant levels of capital from targeted investors the dollar amounts are much smaller. The most successful crowd funding projects don't come close to generating the kind of funds you need to really get your business off the ground.

On top of that, platforms will charge commission.

2.Ignores business models. One of the advantages of pitching your startup to traditional investors is that you gain important insights about your business model. Crowd funding enthusiasts usually lack the expertise and capacity to provide meaningful feedback about your business model. In fact, the limitations involved with listing your request on a crowd funding website make it impossible to adequately describe your company's business structure to prospects.

3.No long-term viability. It's one thing to use crowd funding as a vehicle for resourcing a one-time project or special event. If your company wants to fund a small study about the impact of cell phone technology on frogs in the Amazon, crowd funding is definitely the way to go. But as a long-term funding strategy it's just not a viable for the ongoing resource needs of a small business.

4.Risk of exposure. Crowd funding seems innocent enough. But it's possible that it could expose your business to risks you didn't anticipate. For starters, crowd funding requires you to expose project details on the Internet, potentially giving your competitors inside information about your business. Some people who have tons of money may copy your idea and get things done before you do. In certain situations crowd funding can even expose your company to securities violations. Be careful to protect your Copyright, Patent etc.

5.All or NOTHING: If you don’t reach your funding target, any finance that has been pledged will usually be returned to your investors and you will receive nothing and you may also suffer from reputation damage from a failure of funding

6.Donor exhaustion: if the same network of suppliers is used many times, it will eventually stop giving the necessary support

7.Public fear of abuse: concerns among supports that without a regulatory framework there's the likelihood of an abuse and incorrect use of the funds. This is often happened with something not so tangible such as charity funding.

8. Getting the rewards and returning wrong may cause too much give away to investors.

Some examples of crowdfunding

Charity crowdfunding through the influence of celebrities
Tyler Oakley announcement https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X09MYZaizjk
prizeo: http://www.prizeo.com/prizes/tyler-oakley/private-hangout/default?utm_source=tylersocialmedia&utm_medium=posts&utm_campaign=tyleroakley&utm_content=tyler

Where you turn your wild dreams into reality
GMM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cUff7FjkOs
https://www.kickstarter.com/
https://www.indiegogo.com/
http://www.gofundme.com/

Support and engage with the creators you love
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=589929&rf=589929&ty=2
https://www.patreon.com/

*identify the difference between kickstarter, indiegogo and gofundme
*what shortage does crowdfunding has and about some controversy

Fastest way to make money (and to lose money)| trading Contract for Difference on Plus500

This is the fastest, easiest, laziest way you can make a lot of money in some minutes... or... you may lose a lot of money.
Plus500 is a online trading platform allows you to trade contract for difference (CFD). In order to know how to make this easy money, we need to have a look at CFD first.

What is CFD?
Contract for difference is a tradable instrument that mirrors the movements of the underlying assets.
CFDs were originally developed in the early 1990s in London as a type of equity swap that was traded on margin. They were initially used by hedge funds and institutional traders to hedge cost-effectively their exposure to stocks on the London Stock Exchange, mainly because they required only a small margin and because no physical shares changed hands avoided the UK tax of stamp duty.  But soon people realized that the real advantage of this trading instrument is not the exemption from tax but its high leverage.

Wait a minute, what's leverage? Well, basically leverage helps you to play big game with small money, you put $30 in the game, you may gain the control of $3,000 value contracts (contracts, not stocks, if you bought CFD, you don't own the stock or whatever the underlying assets, you are playing a different game).  You maybe envy those people who trade thousands and thousands of dollars on market everyday? You maybe believe that you can do better than those who throwing big money in the market but you don't have enough capital to enter the game? Well then CFD is your game. With a little money, you gain the enter ticket to the real big game.

But, as always, there's a but, it's also extra risky! With high leverage you may lose multiple times more than you normally could, it may actually be more dangerous than gambling, so be extra cautious!

I learned about plus500 and CFD from a friend, and since then I've been playing the demo as if it's a "gambling" game. I've been having a lot of fun so far, now I just wanna share with you some of my experience in trading virtual money in demo so that you have an idea about the game.

First rule of CFD is, you should always and only play short run! How to define "short run" depends on how much money you put in and what kind of assets you are playing with. For me I almost only trade NASDAQ index. The index as a whole has more fluctuation and therefore it offers you more opportunities to speculate. Buy/short, and then sit upright, use all your energy to stare at the screen, because the earning/loss may double in any second. You can't play "buy and hold" strategy like normal stock trading, because even the stock is meant to grow, a small fluctuation in the half way of the climbing may already wipe you out of the game, quick as that.

I've been through many many times "game over", once the loss exceeds the deposit in your account, the game will be reset, and you'll get $20.000 virtual money to play from scratch. Once I had a really long rally, I kept earning for almost a month during a "trading competition" with a friend, and it went pretty well, I made at least 1k almost everyday, and eventually I was defeated by my greed. I thought I was "too big to fall" and got a little cocky in the game, also, when you started losing money you always tell yourself "it's just a little fluctuation, soon it will turn around", well, in most cases yes, you can make quick money by speculating between waves, but just sometimes the market seems go only one way up or one way down, if you bet on the wrong side then you were doomed.

Betting on small individual stocks really challenges my patience, because they tend to move more subtly, like 4.1 to 4.2 instead of 4345.35 to 4355.94 in NASDAQ. If there's not enough movement you may just get "trapped" and guess what, if you hold a contract overnight, you are charged for extra commission! That's why I don't do individual stocks, but my friend always bet on penny stocks, guess different people have different strategy for them.

About commission, does Plus500 charge any commission? Nope. But actually when you make a transaction, the commission is already included, for instance, you bought at price of 100, now it went up to 101, but your account shows that you are still a bit away from breaking even the loss, it's because there's commission, you need to be able to go through one step further to maybe 102, then your account is balanced, then 103, you start making money. That's why if you put very small money in individual stocks, you probably always lose money.

Recently I just restarted trading after quite a long pause, I've been trading from scratch with $20.000 fake money since 6th April, till now it's just a week, I've already tripled my deposit:

*this image above is a trading I made this morning.

*this image above shows part of  my history record since April 6, almost only earning. so far made a total profit of 38K, now I have over $66.600 in my account as shown in the image. 

Alright, that's my story with Plus500. Have a try, it's a lot of fun in the demo, but be careful if you really decide to trade real money.

I did an experiment, just while I'm writing this article, I put $28 randomly in NASDAQ and now I'm losing $20 after approximately 30 minutes. 

for more information on CFD and Plus500 you can google them, wiki and investopedia them. For more articles subscribe to my blog, save my page in your browser folder. Here is the next article about plus500 trading: http://rogerthatyang.blogspot.it/2015/04/stock-fast-report-cfd-on-plus-500.html. 

Where will the Vessel go? Vessel.com rivals YouTube | What is Vessel?

On January 21, 2015 the Vessel was launched.

I learned about Vessel on YouTube, already a lot of YouTubers are collaborating with Vessel to put their content on Vessel ahead of the schedule on YouTube, which means you can watch your favorite YouTubers' latest video one to three days ahead of other people before it comes out on YouTube if you are a member of Vessel. This new video streaming website will charge viewers $2.99 a month for their early access feature. But don't walk away yet, first year is free, go have a try!

Vessel is determined to rival with YouTube, but to my view it's really difficult. For the content creators Vessel offers much more favorable revenue conditions compare to YouTube, which is a big incentive for more creators to join.
"On Vessel, your superfans get exclusive, early access in a premium environment. During the early access period, you get 60% of subscription dollars and 70% of advertising dollars.
We estimate that videos will earn approximately $50 per 1,000 views while in early access. This is up to 20x more per view than creators earn from free web distribution."
However apparently the only benefit for the viewers is that they can access the videos earlier, which to some/most people doesn't matter that much. Also, imagine if Vessel grew big enough one day, it has to have its own original shows coming up, by then the "early access" advantage seems to be offset by itself.
 
The early access feature is probably just a early stage strategy to compete with YouTube, it must offer more than just early access to really succeed. After all, YouTube is free to watch all the time.

Personal experience is, the website design is pretty nice and simple, and so far I haven't seen any advertisement on it although there's supposed to be.
Actually another thought came to my mind all in sudden this morning, I wonder if Vessel is blocked in China yet?? As many people already know that most western social network and media websites are totally blocked in China by the so called "internet great wall", therefore people in China don't have the privilege to see what's happening on the world(outside China), and the rest of the world also don't have a good chance to see what's happening in China. If Vessel is available in China, hey, I'm sure I'm in!  That could be a competing point for Vessel to beat YouTube, who can open the door of China first?As Chinese, I'm very excited about it.

Since my Youtube partnership is suspended, there's no reason that I don't try out Vessel, actually while writing this blog, I've already submitted my application to become a Vessel creator. Let's see what will happen!

Just want to add another 2 points, first, I can already image once the Vessel started charging subscription fee (when the free trial finally expired), some people will definitely rip off videos from Vessel and post on youtube in advance! Second, are fans supposed to talk about the content put online in advance publicly or not? Considering it may be spoiling other people's viewing experience.

www.vessel.com

Riding a rocket?This plane is able to take you anywhere in the world within 4 hours

Just saw an article about this new engine that British aerospace firm Reaction Engines Limited is working on. They claim the new type of engine will be powering the plane to fly ... literally like a rocket! 4 hours you can fly to anywhere on the surface of earth, hm, that would save a lot of time for travellers and they don't have to suffer from being squeezed in the tiny seat space for 11 hours when they fly between Europe and Asia or wherever. People don't have to stay in line for toilet on the plane, they don't have to worry about the food on plane, 4 hours and you can sit in restaurant having a relaxing meal. But it would be some less fun, thinking of how much less movies you could watch in 4 hours compare with 11 hours.

Anyway, how is it possible to fly that fast? I'm trying to figure out. Apparently the secret is the cooling system:

"The engine system is called SABRE, and it relies on a device called the precooler - technology that cools down the air entering the engineer system by more than 1,000 degrees Celsius in .01 seconds. That corresponds to an unheard-of cooling rate of 400 megawatts, and will allow the plane to “breathe” oxygen.

This means that the engine system will be able to run at a much higher power than is currently possible."

Overheating is always a problem for any kind of engine, no matter in cars or aircraft... well, especially for aircraft. Overheating can lead to engine seize and damage, imagine if you design a rocket without cooling system, once it takes off, the engine is gonna burn itself first, and the whole aircraft would be like a firework show instead of transportation tool. My understanding is, it's not that modern engines can't reach a high speed like 4 hours go to the other side of the earth, but rather it's because the cooling system doesn't allow people to fly that fast. So here you go, SABRE engine, give you a super cool summer, you travel with that you also get served with some popsicles made by that engine.  

My popsicle is SABRE brand, aircraft engine coolant flavor, what about yours?

oh right, forgot to say, the first test flight is projected to be in 2019!

check out the article: http://snip.ly/tuIQ#http://www.sciencealert.com/this-plane-will-be-able-to-fly-anywhere-in-the-world-within-4-hours

and the video: 

About electric cars |Chevy Volt, BMWi8, Tesla and sustainable development

In 2014 Norway is the country which has highest electric car sales share proportion, electric car sales take 13.84% of all new cars sold. But overall in a global perspective, electric cars including those hybrid electric cars haven't grabbed a meaningful share yet, it's still a teeny tiny baby.
What do you think of electric cars?
I love it, if I could buy a car, I'd definitely get a electric one. It's the future, sooner or later we all are going to replace our fossil fuel car with electric cars.
Which brand would you choose?
I suppose when the time comes when I were able to buy a car, it'd be like pretty much every major car company already developed a electric model. But so far, well I don't know much about automotive industry, didn't pay much attention through out these years but recently I read two books about General Motor and Toyota and following these leads I searched and learned something about cars.
When people talk about electric car first brand comes to mind of course is Tesla, it's focused on that one thing and it's doing great I think. But I know more about Chevrolet Volt, the half electric half fuel auto. Volt first came out as a concept car designed by GM on 2007's North American International Auto show, it immediately caught people's eyes because it had very futuristic exterior design, you look at the car model you know it's electric, it's different. But when the car really put into production it turned out look totally different, just like an ordinary car, actually it's based on the Chevrolet Cruze's model. So many people were very disappointed by that time, because you know GM showed people "hey, look at this cool car, this is what you are gonna get soon", it raised people's appetite but delivered a different thing. But you can't do anything about it, because during developing GM found out that the futuristic exterior design made the car literally performed like a brick in the wind tunnel test, that means it got huge air resistance once it reaches certain speed(when the test team got the test result they thought they put the car into tunnel backwards lol). It's gonna significantly drag down the performance of the car, that's why they abandoned the original fantasy-ish design and came back to ordinary appearance.
I just still wonder, can't they just design something both look really cool and also doesn't get too much wind resistance? I found a car that looks really amazing, BMW i8, if I had money I would definitely buy this one, it's simply amazing, show you the picture here. totally badass. $130.000 to $300.000 baby depends on what region and what features you add on the car. On the other hand Chevy Volt is just around 40.000 dollars. You see the difference. Well Volt is not ugly, it's just when you compare it with BMW i8, you feel it obviously shorter, they are at different levels. It's very obvious if you look at their interiors, you can check some car review videos on YouTube, you see it yourself.
Well I wish I knew something about Tesla, but I don't, and I'm gonna go to research later after this episode. It's fascinating to see these cars, and compare, watch people driving them on videos, it's a cool thing that I've never laid my eyes on before.
Anyway, come back to the topic of electric cars, let's put aside how cool they are, let's think about it, are they really environmentally friendly, are they really green?
Because I saw an advertisement of BMW i3 some days ago, it says "drive BMW i3 electric car, you can save the world" something like that, I was like, how can you claim that driving a electric car could save the world? If you really want to save the world, don't drive a car, go on foot, ride a bicycle or something, take public transportation means. It's pretty funny to hear a car company saying driving their cars can save the world, to me at least I feel this way. You manufacture the car, during the process you already caused pollution and damage to the environment, and also electricity is not coming from nothing, it's mainly from fossil fuel. You consume electricity you actually are consuming fossil fuel, just in another way, which is cleaner for the users and cities of course, that's a benefit, but the pollution is still there. This leads to another thought, that is fossil energy is still the main energy we consume, not much electricity are from solar energy, wind energy or tide something. But I believe we are at the beginning of a transition stage, we are going to shift the weight onto renewable energy sooner or later, so it's good thing to have BMW i3, I don't know why I made so much fuss about it when I just saw the ad, I would definitely support a electric car, it's just the words in the ad make me butt hurt a little bit haha. Anyway, I think in the future solar and wind energy are going to be the main energy we consume. I mean, the earth is a big place, it has huge surface, and we can even create multiple surface even if there wasn't even surface, right? everything's possible in human's hands. We can extend our solar panel to the sky, to outerspace. All the energy we consume today, all the fossil energy, they were originally solar energy, even wind energy, they all come from the sun, they were stored on earth, it's like a deposit of earth bank account, we can't just sit here and spend all the deposit. We have to bring home new income in order to achieve a sustainable development. That's why we need to develop a efficient way to get energy income. So much solar energy come onto earth constantly every day, every single second, all we need to do is to collect them, like plants vs zombies, click the little sun, plant more sun flower... just kidding. but you get the idea.

Volt concept 2007

real volt

BMW i8

BMW i8

BMW i3

Tesla Model s

I'm back, I just watched a documentary on Tesla Motor, it's just so fascinating! I love it! Tesla Model s, offers you perfectly instant response whenever you wanna it to take off or brake. And you can drive the car with only one pedal! If you loose the acceleration pedal it automatically brakes and put the generated energy right back into the battery thus extend the range. This is just amazing! Also there's only automatic transmission, one gear from taking off to top speed, you don't need to bother to shift. This would be a huge selling point for people like me who has trouble to learn driving traditional manual shift car. Till today I still don't have a driver license, I can drive a car but it's always a huge torture and stress for me to shift, it gets me nervous, as if one step goes wrong I could break the car. Probably that's why I avoid going to drive school. Hopefully in the future driving experience would be totally different, I can tell one day car driving will be much simplified or even entirely automatized.(Mercedes is working on it, it's happening)  Maybe one day I own a car that I don't need to drive and I'd never ever have a driver license in my life, maybe.

Some other facts:

In China, there are a lot of electric car, fully electric but not so serious car made by local small companies to provide urban citizens another way to commute. This kind of car is simple, ugly, slow, short range and un-safe, it's not required to have a car plate or driver license to drive that car, you can imagine how messy it could be. Nice try tho, hope government could provide proper regulation and support in this kind of grassroot venture. 

Many people in China modify their car into natural gas and petroleum hybrid powered in order to save fuel cost. My father did that and it works very well, it's a whole industry, the natural gas supply. 

About Tesla

This company didn't hurry to make profit, instead, their first goal was to create a legit electric sports car to compete with conventional fuel sports cars and proved to the world that electricity powered cars can be equally even better at performance and range. And only then the company started thinking about mass production and profit.

This is very distinct from traditional automotive business management approach, because first, it's a new high-tech company which pursues more innovation or revolution than just offering another nice car. From this point of view, Tesla is a innovator and that's their duty to take the risk at the beginning. Second, it has enough capital.

A old grandpa-like classic car company would never do things like that because of the whole bunch of bureaucracy in the management structure, and the board which only focus on the profit. 

Alright that's it for today's RogerThat, see you in next episode.

listening to my blog in this video here

Let's read: Car guys vs Bean counters -Bob Lutz

"The battle for the soul of American Business"


very insightful book, described in detail how was General Motor run  over the years during the author's tenure as vice president at GM. He pointed out all the problems he saw, both internal and external, all the factors eventually led to the bankruptcy during the infamous global financial crisis. The author discussed the management issues in GM and gave very insightful arguments against current rigid management style (corporate culture). Anyway, absolutely an excellent book to learn about car industry especially in terms of American automotive industry. Only problem is in the last chapter, the conclusion chapter, the author came out with some conclusion that are rather "backward" and short-sighted in my opinion.
Highly recommended!