Author: Vivek Srinivasan

  • Taxing the rich | Learning by Proxy

    Learning by Proxy is a weekly newsletter that covers things happening around the world, along with some context that helps you understand it better. This is the 64rd edition of the newsletter. The rich companies, especially in tech have been getting away with paying little to nothing in taxes for several years now. Those days…

  • Crypto Policy | Learning by Proxy

    Learning by Proxy is a weekly newsletter that covers things happening around the world, along with some context that helps you understand it better. This is the 63rd edition of the newsletter. The story of money is one that has been poorly presented and even poorly understood. A few months ago, I had written a…

  • Thoughtless Education

    When I joined engineering, I thought that I would learn how to make things. I would learn how to engineer! Create that which never existed. My first year in engineering was spent relearning what I had already learnt over the past two years. More equations, formulae and ZERO application. As the years progressed, a depressing…

  • Small Oil | Learning by Proxy

    Small Oil | Learning by Proxy

    Learning by Proxy is a weekly newsletter that covers things happening around the world, along with some context that helps you understand it better. This is the 62nd edition of the newsletter. The bigger any industry has grown, the more they have been able to influence policy to have it their way. But what can…

  • How I lost 10 Kgs in 5 Months

    The Outcome My journey started on the 26th of December 2020. Why not 1st Jan? Because almost no resolution taken on the 1st reaches fruition in my experience. Also as Kabir said… Kaal Kare So Aaj Kar, Aaj Kare So ab; Pal Mein Pralaya Hoyegi, Bahuri Karoge Kab (Instead of tomorrow do today, instead of…

  • Carbon Markets | Learning by Proxy

    Learning by Proxy is a weekly newsletter that covers things happening around the world, along with some context that helps you understand it better. This is the 61st edition of the newsletter. I am going to try to take something insanely complicated and make it as simple as possible. I hope to get some distance…

  • Poverty Line

    Two years ago, I read a book by Hans Rosling called Factfulness. It professes to show how the world is a lot better today than it has ever been. Bill Gates heavily recommended this book. 🙄 Hans takes a lot of trouble to find data that shows that the world is getting better every moment…

  • Dark Patterns | Learning by Proxy

    To the entrepreneurs reading this, please do not use this as a checklist of things you need to put into your products. For the rest of you beware and avoid such products and site that use these techniques to make you behave in ways you would not otherwise. Dark Patterns Capitalism has always been about…

  • Looking Forward

    You can drive a car looking at the rearview mirror, the outcome would not be one that you are going to be pleased with.  We all lose things in life. Often at that moment, it seems like the hardest thing to go through. You might fail an exam; you may sink your business; you may…

  • Learning by Proxy | Insult to Injury

    Information is power and the first company to discover how to leverage this was Google. But even Google not went as far as Facebook did with leveraging information. Now, as the degree of targeting becomes obvious, there is one expose after the other that is coming forward. Cambridge Analytica exposed Facebook, but not in a…