Nick Stevens |❤️| towards a better future

Making business better - Helping people to build and grow profitable business that makes the world a better place. House and Disco lover.

[Nick Stevens |❤️| towards a better future @Clogish]

"Intention not Reinvention" - Most companies think doing good means reinventing everything. It doesn't. We already know how to build great businesses. The only thing wrong with most of them is their intention. 🧵

[Nick Stevens |❤️| towards a better future @Clogish]

The Netherlands is by value the second-largest agricultural exporter in the world. For a country with 18m people, that's a lot of "overcapacity". Presumably NL govt won't approve of this anti-China policy... right? right?

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

It always astonishes me how there is virtually ZERO public debate - or even public awareness - in Europe about the decisions that will most shape ordinary people's lives.

These days, the EU is drafting a new anti-China legal framework where - quite literally - the more affordable and competitive Chinese products are, the more illegal they'd become.

You'd think EU citizens would want to be informed about such things - as it couldn't be more consequential for their prosperity.

Yet I bet virtually no EU citizen is even aware of it, beyond a vague sense that there is some sort of trade dispute going on.

So what's going on exactly? It all centers around a new legal instrument the EU is drafting called the "overcapacity instrument" (https://t.co/mNpCMudYyS).

First of all, the very notion of "overcapacity" is pretty ridiculous to begin with, especially the way it's being defined by the EU, as it basically means being competitive enough to export.

By this definition of "overcapacity," pretty much every European industry that's ever run a trade surplus - German cars, French wine, Italian fashion - has been guilty of "overcapacity."

I'm not even exaggerating: if you read this study by the EU Parliament on "Industrial overcapacities, with a focus on China" (https://t.co/TcwEBoL8mD), they define "overcapacity" as building more capacity than your domestic market can absorb. So the moment you build capacity to export abroad, you're in "overcapacity."

Utterly ridiculous.

And what this "overcapacity instrument" is about is creating a permanent legal mechanism for the EU to block Chinese competition across whole sectors of the economy, if they happen to be in "overcapacity."

In effect, this means that if China is competitive globally in a given sector in such a way that it exports a lot, that's proof of overcapacity, and legally it'd mean that the entire sector can be restricted from the EU market.

Which means it really, factually, is a legal framework where the more affordable and competitive your products are, the more illegal they become.

Which is a CRAZY economic concept! 🤦‍♂️

Please note that it's different from the anti-subsidy legal instrument, which the EU has already put in place in 2023 (the "Foreign Subsidies Regulation": https://t.co/SvPKFyN0zo).

This "overcapacity instrument" would be above and beyond this: it wouldn't even matter if a particular sector was subsidized by the Chinese government or not, the mere fact of its competitiveness in exports would be grounds for restrictions in the EU.

It doesn't take a genius to understand how badly this could impact everyday people: this is European consumers being forced to pay more for worse products by law, so that uncompetitive European firms don't have to improve.

Politicians frame it as avoiding a "China shock 2.0" but really this is choosing an even steeper self-inflicted decline than is already the case, where EU citizens would subsidize mediocre EU companies that would have even less pressure to catch up. It's a hidden tax: subsidies for uncompetitive firms paid by consumers instead of governments, which in turn makes them less incentivized to become competitive.

The first "China shock" did de-industrialize Europe somewhat, but at least it made things cheaper for European consumers. If this becomes Europe's response to a second "China shock" not only it'd make everything more expensive but it'd do nothing for EU industry: you don't become competitive by banning the competition...

Look at China itself: the way it industrialized was NOT by banning Western firms but on the contrary by welcoming them strategically and learning from them. You learn to compete by... competing, duh!

What I find most shocking in all of this isn't even the policy itself - you can make arguments for and against protectionism, and reasonable people can disagree.

What's shocking is that virtually no European media outlet is explaining any of this to the public. This is unarguably one of the single most consequential economic decisions the EU will make this decade, affecting the price of everything, and it's being drafted in near-total silence.

No newspaper is running the headline "EU plans to make Chinese goods illegal if they're too affordable" - even though that's essentially what's happening.

But that's what you call a "democracy" with "freedom of expression" these days apparently...

[Nick Stevens |❤️| towards a better future @Clogish]

@culturaltutor and we all know how that works out...

[Nick Stevens |❤️| towards a better future @Clogish]

@mykola Specs all the way down (and back up again). I see that, although, knowing that users rarely understand that what they think they want, is rarely what they need, it makes me a little nervous.

[Nick Stevens |❤️| towards a better future @Clogish]

@mykola and thanks!

[Nick Stevens |❤️| towards a better future @Clogish]

@mykola I think it makes sense. Certainly the need. Just trying to wrap my head around what it looks like when true.

[Nick Stevens |❤️| towards a better future @Clogish]

@ungatedlife What could you write about that feels just safe enough to publish?

[Nick Stevens |❤️| towards a better future @Clogish]

What an incredible gift to humanity @MarkRober, you're a legend. https://t.co/GLZ7Bnai7s

[Nick Stevens |❤️| towards a better future @Clogish]

hot take: none of these things are boring.

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

Be boring.

Wake up early, go for a walk, get sunlight, brew some coffee, read books, spend time with friends and family.

[Nick Stevens |❤️| towards a better future @Clogish]

This makes me so happy on so many levels. Watch the pilot and think about the world around you. Think about how you spend your time. Let's make not boring normal again.

[David Perell @david_perell]

I’m making a TV show!

Here’s why: When I was moving to New York, I told my leasing agent that I wanted a place with charm and character. She told me that if that’s what I want, I need to look for apartments built before World War II.

“So you’re saying we’ve basically built nothing with charm and character in the past 80 years?”

“That’s right.”

This is happening all over the world. The same boring and generic style has spread to the entire world. 150 years ago, new buildings in Shanghai looked nothing like the ones in Rome or Tokyo or San Francisco or Buenos Aires. The architecture of each place was as varied as the landscape itself.

And it’s not just the sameness of the modern world that has me scratching my head, but also the carelessness behind so much of what’s built these days. We boast about the triumphs of technology and how advanced we are as a civilization, but why has our built environment regressed so much? Shouldn’t we use our wealth to make our streets more charming and delightful?

There’s lots of talk about how we’ve polluted the natural world, but what about how we’ve polluted the man-made world? We’ve filled our streets with ugly railings, benches, lampposts, and clutter.

We assume these things have to be boring, but they don’t. Good design can make everything, even bins and bus stops, charming. New things can be prettier than old things. The first step is believing it’s possible.

Something has changed. We’ve taken a dramatic turn, and the majority of people prefer what we used to build to what we build today. Just look at where people take photos. In New York it’s the steps of brownstones in the West Village; in San Francisco it’s the old Victorian homes; in London there’s tourists galore in front of those iconic red phone booths which remain on the streets, even though they don’t work anymore, because they’re so nicely designed that people like having them there.

All this is what inspired me to make a TV show.

First: a pilot episode which now has 5.4 million views, 23,000 comments, and 379,000 likes. It also has 241,000 YouTube subscribers from that one video, which is just about unheard of for a new channel.

And now: a full-on, six-episode series.

But when I pitched Hollywood on the idea, they said cultural series of this sort don’t work: “The only kinds of documentaries that get funded are about sports, music, nature, or true crime.” Huh? How can that be?

People are interested in culture. The problem is most culture documentaries are terrible. They fail in one of two ways: (1) people dumb down the ideas in patronizing ways, or (2) people use so much jargon and high-falutin language that it becomes boring and inaccessible.

This is why I’m producing this work. It’ll be called The Modern World, and it’ll be a tour of art & architecture through the eyes of Sheehan Quirke, who goes by @culturaltutor.

It’s our ambition to do for the man-made world what Planet Earth did for the natural world. To use cinematic imagery and simple language in a way that everybody can understand. And to be rigorous, but not in a way that feels like school or your know-it-all friend who never stops talking.

The potential here is huge. Architecture impacts literally every person on earth. What we build shapes the moods of people and the spirit of our culture.

We’ll film in six countries (the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States) to produce six 30-minute episodes which we hope to publish on a major streaming service. We’re currently in the fundraising stage, and production begins once we’ve raised the money.

It’s our mission to help people see the world more clearly, and in turn, make the world a more charming and delightful place to live in.

[Nick Stevens |❤️| towards a better future @Clogish]

@nduwaflorent @ttunguz AI data centers in space.

[Nick Stevens |❤️| towards a better future @Clogish]

@rorysutherland Sir - have you seen https://t.co/1MgBGLVj8b

[Nick Stevens |❤️| towards a better future @Clogish]

@GerBaron Congrats!

[Nick Stevens |❤️| towards a better future @Clogish]

@valsopi High praise but quick churn suggests that these people were too far left on the adoption curve. These people aren't loyal and always keen to try the next big thing.

[Nick Stevens |❤️| towards a better future @Clogish]

@TrevorLongino Feels very odd that the side columns are grabbing attention instead of the content. Honestly wish I could hide the right column entirely.

[Nick Stevens |❤️| towards a better future @Clogish]

@danielbrottman Vision is the destination you want to reach, mission is the work to make it happen, carefree, fun, whimsy, are how you do the work.

[Nick Stevens |❤️| towards a better future @Clogish]

@majamediaco @sarahdrinkwater thought you'd appreciate this.

[Nick Stevens |❤️| towards a better future @Clogish]

@x1m_martijn Science fiction becomes science fact.

[Nick Stevens |❤️| towards a better future @Clogish]

@katiewav a small part is that sitting too close together can cause mic bleed. i.e. where each person is being captured by both mics. Hard to solve with cheap gear, so more space is a free sound quality upgrade.