The General Strike (2012) by P. Almodóvar

7 years ago I was given a collection of  9 silent films as a birthday present. One of them is called "Stachka" (trans. Strike) and was made 87 years ago, in 1925,  by Sergei M. Eisenstein.

The film shows a strike in a russian factory in 1903 and their fatale end.

I ask myself if any spanish film director is planning to make a new film about the spanish general strike of 2012...

Can you imagine Mr. Toxo and Mr. Méndez in an Almodóvar film?

A world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.

At the end of the WWI, Europe was plunged into a wave of pesimism and a faith crisis. By that time, a new cultural and intelectual movement had resurged: the regenerating humanism.
Nowadays, I feel the same. We, almost one century after the WWI, feel the same. We see a world of greed, a world with lack of humanism. And without humanism, mankind will be lost.

The following words came from the film The Great Dictator, from the final speech.

"Greed has poisoned men's souls; has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge as made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in man; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all. [...]

[...] Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill their promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness."

...A world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness. Nice words. =)

Here comes the sun

There's been 22 days since my last post in the blog. Springtime holidays, as I like to call it. A time to breath deep, put the ideas in order and start with a new mood the next season.
Unfortunatly for me, but fortunatly for the blog, I'm back, sat down on my chair and  starting to write again.

Enjoy the spring time!

Size and productivity

I want to share with you this interesting graph about regulations in employment market and the disadvantages it carries when talking about productivity and economies of scale.
How can we be more productive while dealing with national regulations regarding to company's size?

Why are Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain in trouble? Well, as you can see, there are some reasons appart from public debt. The atomisation of the market in these countries is literally killing them.
In the third graph we can see that the added value per employee is twice in big companies than in small ones.
This is not just due to economies of scale, but to the whole system.
As you can see, the regulation in France, as it happens in other countries, makes specially difficult to have companies with more than 50 employees. This fact, joined to the structural atomisation of PIGS's market, makes almost imposible to an average company to compete and paints in dark Europe's future.

The new 'Beer Gates'

I was reading today's newspaper and... what a surprise! My friend Eduardo Sacristán leads the cover page of Diario Información and therefore, I cannot do less than write this small article in order to let you know what he has done.

Eduardo Sacristán started his own beer company (Cerveza Artesana Sacristán) a few months ago and now it's a complete success! As Google founders' Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Sacristán started his company in a family garage where he produces monthly 900 liters of premium high quality beer 'Amber Ale'.

Hard to believe, but true. I had the opportunity of tasting the beer months ago, when it was just an idea and If I were asked to put money to support the excentric idea of founding a new beer company I would have said 'no' but fortunatly someone did.

Congratulations, my friend!

Living in America

Ellis Island, 1909.

As you probably remember, The Godfather II starts with the early day of young Vito Corleone in Sicily and his move to America. It was the year 1909 and like him, thousands of Europeans moved to the United States of America seeking for the american dream.

The American Dream, as they like to call it, is the reflection of a capitalist society, where everybody, no matter where you come from, can become rich. But the dream is over. We are now in the XXI century and as it happened in all the previous changes of century, the leading empire declines and a new one arises. It's time for China.

How long are they going to try to sell us the idea of the American Dream? Shall we start to think about the Chinese dream?