RichardGibbons

None of these countries has committed genocide in my lifetime. I haven't committed genocide. Nobody I voted for committed genocide. So I'm baffled by how you seem to believe that I'm hypocritical in condemning genocide. My best guess is that you you are viewing all human interactions through identity politics, evaluating people not as individuals, but only on their group identity. And you're implying that people are guilty in perpetuity based on the crimes committed by their countries of origins generations ago. I think it's a huge mistake to view the world this way, because it encourages lots of bad things, including genocide. That said, I think your position that "anyone of European ancestry can't condemn genocide" isn't based on reason. And you think I'm hypocritical for being someone of European ancestry who is willing to speak out against genocide. So I think we've kind of exhausted the discussion.

Who in particular are you referring to here?

Ah yes, the familiar "you committed genocide 100 years ago, so it's cool if I commit genocide now" argument. This is happening today, on our watch, not our grandparents'. I think if you care about people, you probably shouldn't suggest someone's behind in the number of atrocities, and so should therefore get a hall pass on committing genocide.

I mean, even the Luca's "China's raising everyone up rather than just helping rich people" argument doesn't actually align with reality. Pretty well every democratic country on earth has a lower Gini coefficient than China. My guess is what he thinks of as evidence is actually propaganda, and he's ignoring the actual outcomes of the last 150 years of authoritarianism and communism. It's pretty amazing to me that managed economies have been tried since Marx, and not one has even had close to the astounding beneficial results that arise from liberal free-market economies. And even more amazing that many people are so eager to completely ignore that evidence in favor of a story.

That makes sense. Thx, thepupil.

Not disagreeing strenuously with your argument, but is there a reason to believe that the companies in the stock market ought to grow at roughly the same rate as GDP? Like, I imagine a tiny percentage of failing businesses are publicly-traded. And I imagine that higher-growth businesses are more likely to be public (because they can get better valuations), and that businesses that have better competitive advantages are more likely to be public (because they will likely leverage those advantages to grow bigger, and most big companies are public.) I just wonder if you're effectively saying that the average high school student's mark is 70%, so we should expect people who have incomes over $300K/year to have averaged 70% in high school.

Yeah, I think everyone paying attention knows this because of the large percentage of completely nonsensical arguments on this topic.

I think you're misunderstanding what's happening here. Your goal for the performance review was likely to evaluate them in an unbiased way and incentivize their future performance. Their goal was likely to use the performance review to improve their personal outcomes.

Yeah, I've wondered about this too, and don't have a good answer. The best I've come up with is that there's stuff that increases measured inflation when interest rates go up. (e.g. in Canada, if mortgage rates go up, it increases the rate of inflation.) I wonder if there's enough stuff like that in the measurement that people can be quite confident inflation will fall over the next six months if the Fed stands pat or lowers rates.

Yes, it does. There's a reason why chips are still going to countries like the UK, Canada, France, Netherlands, and Sweden. It matters whether a country is a democracy abiding by the rules-based order, human rights, and the rule of law.

Yep. I've been reading Chip War, and the book makes a pretty good case that a contributing factor to USSR falling behind the world and losing the Cold War was simply that they couldn't match the free world in semiconductors in large part because they couldn't get access to cutting-edge manufacturing equipment. It's a pretty good outcome, I think, as long as the CCP keeps doing horrific things, but I feel bad that the Chinese people get screwed as a result.

My interpretation of this whole thread is that it's about entertainment. So, I imagine almost every comment, including this one, is intended to entertain the writer or the potential audience.

Yeah, I mean SongDonkey's argument is among the worse I've seen on this board in the decades I've been reading it. In 1973, Buffett stopped an acquisition of Wesco, only to acquire their own majority stake two years later. The SEC investigated, and fined Blue Chip $115K to compensate Wesco shareholders for damages. This is obviously much worse than the alleged "inaccurate valuations" by Fairfax trumpeted by Muddy Waters. So in that case, clearly, if SongDonkey had been around in 1973, the right thing for him to do then would be to dump all Berkshire Hathaway Class A--and maybe even short those shares considering that they were trading at the lofty price of $71. Such horrific actions by Buffett completely invalidate Berkshire as a potential investment for anyone with an ounce of intelligence, because it's clearly run by a bunch of crooks and cockroaches must be everywhere! Terrible idea to try to profit by buying Berkshire Class A shares for $71 in 1973. --- Overall, this whole Muddy Waters thing makes me feel pretty good about Fairfax because it's such a nothingburger. If the best Muddy can come up with is screaming about what are clearly paper monsters, then that actually validates the investment.

One other potential wrench is the likelihood of the provincial government giving Indigenous people a veto over forestry use. This is under consultation now, and I wouldn't be surprised if it moves ahead this year. A court decision back in 2021 resulted in the same thing for parts of Alberta and northern BC. I know someone who works in forestry up there, and that decision has led to Indigenous people extorting the lumber companies. On top of that, the government is clawing back rights to privately manage forestry land to transferring those rights to First Nations tribes. As a result, the lumber companies up there have stopped harvesting on government-own land for the last couple years. So, to sensibly model BC lumber companies, I think one probably has to dramatically reduce both volume and profitability for at least five or six years. Since it's a competitive global market, I think there's a decent chance it'll kill most of BC's forestry industry. In any case, one would expect margins in BC operations to be much lower in perpetuity than the past and increased risk.

Yeah, this is generally my approach too, for the same reason. I mostly don't share unless someone asks about a specific stock, or if I want to give back to the board by throwing out something I see as a something that has an extremely good chance of being a big winner.