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tyro

@DoubleEph

18 Aug

Everyone talking about how tech startups in Nigeria should have better government relations in the face of the current regulatory onslaught are really not addressing the issues which make operating in Nigeria a major disadvantage

In how many countries will the central bank hire a former attorney general to go after a 2yr old startup that is doing a couple of million dollars in revenues and is probably not yet profitable? Why should a company like that have to worry about govt relations?

These are tiny companies. There is no guarantee at all that they will be successful or even still alive in 10yrs. But success or not, at the time you’re still trying to figure out your business model and survival, you have to deal with hostile regulators. *That* is a disadvantage

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tyro

@DoubleEph

27 Jun

I want to rant about football. No, not the beautiful game we all watch on TV. Something else I find increasingly disturbing as my kids get older. I wonder if the way the sport is structured is worsening whatever racial/class divides we have in this country.

Someone’s probably done some research on this but I’m too lazy to find it so I’ll just use anecdotes. Both my boys played in tournaments this weekend (loads of them now over the summer). Now we are getting text messages about signing up to some premier league clubs’ academies

Now, my views have been shaped by reading this some years ago so I’m not falling for that. In a competition between football and education; I will do everything within my power to ensure football loses for my kids. And it IS a competition. Constantly

Read 17 tweets

tyro

@DoubleEph

24 Jun

“In 2018 he [Xi Jinping] talked again about the Soviet party’s collapse, noting that, with just 2m members, it had defeated Hitler, but with 20m it had lost power. “Why? Because its ideals and beliefs had evaporated.” economist.com/special-report…

This special report on the CCP's centenary is really good. I'll say Xi Jinping is currently the most focused/determined/energetic major world leader. Even after a decade in office, his energy does not appear to be dimming. Some interesting excerpts...

The CCP was already very hard to get into. He has made it even harder

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tyro

@DoubleEph

3 Apr

@mrianleslie

This is very good by @mrianleslie. In particular, the paragraph that teases out the generational differences between the report’s authors and today’s activists ianleslie.substack.com/p/elite-wars

I’ll add that the report’s recommendations will be fairly popular with ethnic minorities themselves and if the govt implements some of them seriously, they will make a dent in some of the actual problems that prompted the commission in the first place

No one commission can solve all the problems that need solving. And yes, not all problems can be solved by the govt. But a simple test is to ask anyone who is very much opposed to the report to state which of the recommendations they don’t like and what they’d replace it with

Read 4 tweets

tyro

@DoubleEph

1 Apr

My lukewarm take on the government’s race report is that cultural pessimism is probably underrated the discourse around disparate outcomes among ethnic minorities.

The disparities highlighted between black Caribbean and black Africans really makes me wonder - I know it’s true now but what happens with my kids? And their kids? Britain is not a racist country (don’t bother trying to convince me otherwise, I’m not interested) but....

For all that I really like this country, I’ve made a decision to inoculate myself against the one part of British culture I absolutely cannot abide - the relentless pessimism of British people. (That and potatoes). If I spend the rest of my life here, I’m never buying into that

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tyro

@DoubleEph

6 Feb

https://twitter.com/cenbank/status/1357760892163735553

I think this will end like a situation where you ban the sale of alcohol and then armed robbery goes up because the new robbers were previously never sober enough to go out and rob people

https://twitter.com/cenbank/status/1357760892163735553

Unlike out here where crypto is mostly a fascination or a bit of fun for most people, in Nigeria it is a very real and increasingly important part of trade. People who trade with China use it to get around fx scarcity and restrictions

It’s been quietly taking away a lot of pressure on fx demand which is why it’s a bit unusual that Nigeria did not have its usual fx crisis last year, at least not in the way it got really bad in 2016

Read 6 tweets

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