RichardGibbons
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Posts posted by RichardGibbons
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15 minutes ago, Parsad said:
In my case, I look after my mother. If something happens to me, I need things to be simple for my mother to take over with my brother's help. Having different loans in different places would be a pain for him as executor and the transition needs to be simple for my assets to go to my Mom, nephew and niece.
So almost everything is in non-taxable accounts, one corporate account and I have a simple small mortgage...no other debt, no complex tax strategies, no offshore accounts, no foreign property, etc. Boring but effective! Cheers!
This is quite interesting to me, because I'm starting to consider death-related things, but haven't thought about it from this perspective (more from the simplistic "let's reduce probate fees" perspective.)
It does make me wonder if I should have a theoretical incremental return hurdle to clear when thinking about adding complexity.
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30 minutes ago, james22 said:
Only those adaptations that aided our ancestor's survival and reproduction were passed on.
FWIW, this is a misunderstanding of evolution. Lots of stuff gets passed on that didn't aid our ancestor's survival and reproduction. All something needs to be passed on is to not be catastrophic before reproduction.
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2 hours ago, Eldad said:
None of them fought Nazis to save Jews. Any saving of Jews was completely coincidental to killing Nazis.
I think this is the key point for why Jews would say that.
Canada and the USA turning away refugee ships is pretty telling. And it's pretty telling that, when asked how many Jews would be allowed into Canada, the response was, "None is too many."
With things like that, how could one not believe that the western world largely abandoned European Jews to genocide? -
3 hours ago, Parsad said:
The West...Britain, France, United States, Germany. There's enough spilt blood by most countries, so any self-righteous stance is demeaning to any real debate. Cheers!
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.
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14 hours ago, Parsad said:
When you've committed genocide 3-4 times...you've pretty much written the playbook...doesn't matter what era! Cheers!
Who in particular are you referring to here?
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4 hours ago, Parsad said:
I don't agree with most of Luca's views on China...but let's not get too self-righteous. The West has perpetrated far more atrocities in its short history than China has done in 5,000 years!
Cheers!
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.
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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.
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That makes sense. Thx, thepupil.
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9 hours ago, blakehampton said:
GDP growth has averaged around 2% over the last 10-20 years and 3% preceding that. I think 2% is a good average for growth going forward.
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.
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4 hours ago, Sweet said:
You’re clearly pushing an agenda on this board.
Yeah, I think everyone paying attention knows this because of the large percentage of completely nonsensical arguments on this topic.
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4 hours ago, Viking said:
I remember doing performance reviews with staff. I would have them review themselves on their own. I would prepare their review on my own. And then we would get together and compare notes. Most of my staff disliked this format.
Why? I learned over time that most people do not have the ability to jump out of their own skin and evaluate themselves in an unbiased way. And they also don’t actually have a plan when it comes to their career.
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.
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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. -
18 hours ago, Luca said:
It doesn't matter what "horrific" things China is doing.
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.
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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.
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2 hours ago, dwy000 said:
Im still confused. What are we trying to accomplish with random comparisons looking backward?
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.
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3 hours ago, This2ShallPass said:
What you have unintentionally done LC (and other regulars) is give some fuel to the troll fire. Someone comes in throwing wild ass ideas and accusations, normal people offer a sane explanation and before you know it's an actual debate and the cockamamie bs they threw out is worthy of a discussion. It happens so often, even in our politics, won't name any names
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.
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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.
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6 hours ago, Viking said:
Supply: lumber production will continue to decline in BC. Yes, it will continue to increase in the US South. Higher imports of lumber from Europe could be a risk; something to monitor. But an increase in new housing starts might start to tighten the market. It will depend on how much new home starts increase as rates start to come down.
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.
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3 hours ago, Sweet said:
I also don’t tell people the stocks I actively own. My insights are that interesting, but more importantly it allows me to be detached from the stock. I can pull the chord on that sucker anytime I want and don’t have to defend that decision.
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.
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The Byzantine Generals problem was first described in a paper in 1982, and was certainly discussed in undergrad level computer science classes during the early 1990s. So, it seems pretty odd to say that it's "a pretty obvious idea" when you have hundreds of thousands of computer scientists exposed to the idea and thinking about it over the course of decades, yet nobody implemented a practical solution for over 25 years.
As a broad question, would one categorize ValueArb's cognitive error as hindsight bias, retrospective determinism, or something else?
I've certainly made that error before (believed something was "obvious" when the evidence conclusively indicates it wasn't). And I've made it surprisingly often. So I'm curious where that cognitive error fits in. -
7 hours ago, Parsad said:
That's not the sentiment at all in Canada. Race is not remotely the issue it is in the U.S. other than under the breathes of a handful of disgruntled citizens who would be bitching about something else if it wasn't race.
I agree that DEI is not the broad sentiment yet (except institutionally) and Canada's racial problems are small compared to the USA (and almost entirely related to Indigenous people.)
But the smallness of the real problems are what makes it particularly egregious that most Canadian governments' are sprinting headlong into promoting race as the primary attribute that distinguishes people. There's really no sensible way to interpret insane policies and luxury beliefs like Gladue, this, this, this, this, this, this.... There are bucket-loads of examples--deeply shameful things that our Canadian governments promote.
What's more, the negative second-order effects of deliberately implementing systemic racism and encouraging Canadians to view the world through a racist lens are likely to be severe, particularly as young people's standard of living plummets.
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11 hours ago, Parsad said:
Possibly, but they have huge advantages that my generation and previous generations of immigrant families did not. My niece and nephew will inherit significant wealth...higher education is definitely covered if they choose to go...
Yeah, and I think that to the extent to which discrimination and bias is deliberately introduced into the system, it should be on such dimensions.
For instance, if economically, you and your family are worse off, then you should get systemic advantages (though not to the extent that achievement is discouraged, as that would have the effect of pushing people down, rather than helping raise them up.) That's the whole point behind things like bursaries and progressive taxation.
The way I see it, if there's inequalities between racial groups, then that gets resolved by a larger proportion of a particular racial group able to avail themselves of those systemic advantages. And, governmental messaging on race should basically be, "At our core, people are essentially the same, and it's abhorrent discriminating based on race." (As opposed to now, where the government messaging in Canada is essentially, "Race is super-important thing that should divide us. Certain races are less competent, dangerously fragile, and kind of pathetic. And some are also evil. So, it's only sensible to be a racist.")
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31 minutes ago, Parsad said:
her family essentially dictated the fate of my family and their ancestors going back almost 225 years to India
There's some particular irony there too.
The racism inherent in British colonialism likely had many negative impacts on your ancestors. But now, because ethic Indians have among the best outcomes in North American society, DEI is implementing systemic discrimination targeting your niece and nephew as well.
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4 hours ago, Sweet said:
If you believe DEI means fairness, equal opportunities and celebrating a diverse workforce the it’s hard to execute that and mess it up.
It's quite clear at this point that DEI is the antithesis of fairness and equal opportunities. Among other things, it's racism re-branded, yet again.
It amazes me that after so many injustices, humanity just can't seem to tear itself away from the horrific idea that skin colour should dictate outcomes.
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6 hours ago, RedLion said:
It seems every socialist solution to income equality has just brought down the successful members of society, done nothing for the poor, and been the best thing ever for unproductive government workers.
I think the reason for this is the impact of incentives on growth. If you have, say, 3% growth, then over the course of 25 years, then your economy will growth by 109%, and your poor are likely to be better off by 55% if they get even half the growth of the economy.
If you punish the more intelligent, hard-working, and creative members of your society, then you disincentivize them, which impacts growth.
So, suppose you disincentivize the successful, hurting your growth by 2 percentage points, but in return are able to boost the incomes of the poorest by 20%. Then your economy grows by only 28%, and even if the wages of the poorest grow at the same rate, they still only make it to 48%.
Therefore, you basically screw over everyone, including the poor, when you create onerous regulations and taxes that impact your country's growth.
But that doesn't stop governments from doing it, I think largely because people aren't very thoughtful or proficient at math, and envy is a powerful emotion.
78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck
in General Discussion
Posted
The negative outcomes from having a "victim complex" has substantial scientific support from locus of control studies.
People with an internal locus of control have both higher savings rates and higher earnings. In contrast, people who believe that the world is largely responsible for their outcomes or that outcomes are just a matter of luck tend to have lower savings rates and earnings.