Should we do investment?

Investment is a way to make money. In the past, we did not have any stock market, but investment still existed. Trading is also an investment. So whenever you put your money into a business, you are investing. But now, investment is commonly referring to trading in the financial market like stock market and foreign exchange market. As the world have been developed into a financial world, investment is very common. From the richest businessman in the world to the old lady living next to you are doing investment. However, since many people have lost much of their money in the market, especially during financial crisis, it makes many people afraid of investing. So should we still do investment? For me, I will. And I am going to convince you to join me in the market.

It is true that many people always lose money in the financial market. Even if they sometimes earn money, they will not be able to get any money from the market at the end. Some people had tried investing but lost much money and left the market, while some people heard about their friends’ experience and learnt the lesson not to try investing. So it is reasonable that people refuse to put money in such an unsafe place.

Nevertheless, all these are because many people do not really understand what investment is. In fact, they are not doing investment but gambling. They do not know what they are investing; they just follow others or observe the trend. There is no doubt about losing money by using such strategy. Investing in the financial market is mainly putting money in different firms. We should pay some effort to learn about the business you are investing. We should also notice all the news about the market and the entire economy. Investing is not only by luck, but by studying them. These are what we suppose to do with investment.

If people really know how to invest, they will probably not lose money all the time. By studying your investment and with your experience, you will know why this stock drops and why that stock rises, thus you can make the best response but not just wait there. I cannot guarantee that you can surely earn money, but at least you will learn how to minimize the loss and maximize the profit.

I know there will always be some risks in investing. You cannot determine everything, accidents always happen! So I think it is better not to put all of your money in the market. I will prefer you to invest only your spare money minus some reserve for your future needs, which means even if you lose all your money in the market, you can still live normally for one to two years. Otherwise, if a catastrophic financial crisis happens, you will suddenly lose a relatively large amount of money. And if you even lose your job at the same time because of the poor economy, you will have difficulties and feel hard to live with no income. It is a really bad situation which no one wants to experience.

I know there are some people who are not good at investing or studying them. I will not recommend you to invest a lot, but you can still invest some in some riskless financial assets. It is far better than just put money into the banks, since the interest rate is extremely low which is nearly zero. We should anyway do some investment to compensate inflation and to prepare for our future lives. Thus I strongly advise you to do investment, but in a smart way.

Big Brother Is Watching You

National security is always a very important issue in a country, as you may lose part of or even the whole country if you do not pay attention on it. Especially after the 911 accident, all countries on the earth learnt the lesson and had put more attention on their national security to prevent another disastrous terrorist attack. In order to maintain the security, freedom is to be sacrificed. Governments have to keep eyes on everyone and everywhere. For example, they have to install CCTVs at many important places; they have to check our bodies and our belongings when we go to some area. We lose part of our freedom but we get the safety as an exchange. Is it good or bad about these actions?

On one side, the new security measures are protecting our lives, just like what the army and police are doing normally. They can keep us safe by keeping us away from terrorists. We can live safely and do not have to worry about any danger will come to us.

On the other side, those new security measures take away our freedom. Freedom is one of the rights we should have as a human. No one should have the power to take it away from us. There are many examples like whenever some laws which against our freedom are introduced by governments or councilors, many associations and parties will stand up and speak out loud to fight against the corresponding laws.

In my opinion, it is more good than bad in this issue. For those who disagree, I want to ask you what the governments can do to protect us while keeping the freedom for us. At least those famous politicians and government officials cannot answer it. So I can say freedom and safety cannot exist together in this case, and it becomes a dichotomy. Here comes a question: what should we choose between freedom and safety? I think the answer would be obvious. Assuming that we are not radical liberalists, we should surely choose safety. Our lives should be the first thing that we have to consider, because we can do nothing and have nothing without our lives. Moreover, the peace brought by the security measures is also very important to us. You can imagine if you have everything but without peace in your heart, it would be rather worse than the case if you have nothing but with peace. So I think peace is more important than anything including freedom. Thus, I agree to sacrifice our freedom to exchange for our valuable lives and irreplaceable peace.

Grades

In Hong Kong, children receive grades starting from kindergarten; that means they receive grades since their very first year of study. Grades are given to them when they do not really understand what they are doing. You can imagine that comparison among them will be made by their teachers and parents. And their parents will tell their children to work hard to get a better result in order to beat other pupils. Comparing to the education system in most European countries, you may think it is not a good atmosphere for kids to study, but that is how I grew up. As I grew up in such atmosphere, I did not know there are other kinds of education system that do not have grades in primary school before. After I knew that and I heard some people believe that it is not good for children to receive grades so early, I started to compare them in my mind. However, by my personal study experience under such atmosphere, I think grading earlier helped me to learn better. Therefore, I am going to argue for the grading of children in primary school.

I can imagine how the atmosphere is in primary schools without grades. Pupils can learn without pressure and enjoy their study lives. As a student, I would prefer it rather than receiving grades from my academic performance. The main reason is not that it is too young for us to sustain pressure but it is because we are lazy and we do not like to revise. However, you know these hidden reasons are not proper. Government should not fulfill these children’s demand as you would not cancel the homework system just because children hate to do homework. I think they are just similar. To comment it objectively, I think it is better for primary school kids to receive grades.

Without giving grades to children, they will probably study happily but also passively. I was also a pupil in primary school long time ago, so I understand how they think. If I have nothing to care about my study and at the same time I can choose to play, I would just leave my study after class and enjoy playing all the time. I will not spend time on doing homework or revising textbooks. Therefore, I think they will not take homework seriously and will not pay attention to what they learn. The reason why the result will be different from what government think is that children are too young and not so sensible. For little kids, they are not mature enough to determine their act, thus they will simply choose what favour them, but sadly it is not study.

On the contrary, children may be under pressure with their grades, but I think the pressure can be counted as an impulse or a motive force to encourage them to study harder. Someone will think competition and comparison among children are not healthy, but I can tell from my experience that these can really encourage them to pay more effort to learn and revise. After all, we can actually gain from them. It is just like a writing competition with prize and one without prize, children will probably perform better in the one with prize because they need some encouragement. But they can hardly get any encouragement if they do not receive any grade from their academic performance.

In conclusion, I think there are far more advantages than disadvantages to give grades to children in primary school. Maybe children will not like this policy as I mentioned above, but they will surely gain from it. They will know it later when they grow up like me. To let children to learn better, faster and more efficiently, I definitely support to give grades to children in primary school.