谋定后动

In 1811, stocking weavers in Nottingham, England, stormed factories and smashed machinery with iron hammers. The machines had taken away their livelihoods, and this group later became known collectively as Luddites. The workers were not mistaken about the facts; indeed, manual weaving positions were disappearing. However, smashing machines could not stop the progress of machinery. Over the next twenty years, the number of weavers continued to decline, while Britain's cotton textile output actually multiplied several times over: one worker operating a machine could now replace dozens of people, causing the cost and price of cloth to plummet. Orders from all over the world flooded into Britain. Jobs were vanishing, yet output and profits were surging—these two phenomena appeared simultaneously for the first time in history...

In 1992, the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges listed a strange type of stock: B-shares. The same company, with identical equity and dividends, had two different prices. A-shares were denominated in RMB and sold only to domestic investors; B-shares were priced in US dollars or HKD and sold exclusively to foreign investors. Two groups of buyers, separated by a wall of foreign exchange controls, bought independently. The result was: same shares, same rights, but B-shares traded at a long-term discount of 30% to 50% compared to A-shares. This wasn't because the companies were worse; it was simply because the pool of money able to buy B-shares did not interoperate with the pool able to buy A-shares. This discount persisted for nearly ten years...

On July 24, 1987, exactly 39 years ago this week, the first convoy escorted by the US Navy's "Operation Earnest Will" entered the Persian Gulf. The Kuwaiti super tanker "Bridgeport," flying the Stars and Stripes, struck an Iranian mine under the tight protection of three warships. The ship did not sink, but the next scene was recorded in naval history: the three escort warships quickly changed formation and moved behind the tanker. Because a 400,000-ton tanker is more resistant to explosions than warships, the escorted vessel ended up clearing the path for its escorts. An old-fashioned mine costing only a few thousand dollars forced the world's number one navy to change its formation in public...