wachtwoord

That's because the non-rich are voting for them out of greed. NOT because equality is better for the rich. This is what I hate about socialists so much. They aren't just thieves. They pretend to have the moral high ground as well. Why are the rich better off to have money they'll never use? Money is power, more money is more power. Why do you people have the right to decide whether or not the rich deserve to have their wealth? If you want to steal, steal, but get off your damn high horse.

That's because the non-rich are voting for them out of greed. NOT because equality is better for the rich. This is what I hate about socialists so much. They aren't just thieves. They pretend to have the moral high ground as well.

No. Inequality causes envy. The reason one would want to reduce inequality is because life is better for everyone, even the rich, with more equality. And, if inequality gets too high, the poor sometimes rise up and kill the rich. Thus, there's value in discussing how to design the world optimally to reduce the horrible outcomes resulting from bad luck. That say, since you are a libertarian, you're going to have a really hard time contributing something useful a conversation that isn't based around your "might makes right" ideology. Lol lol more equality is better for the rich. Did I read that right? :o If you truly believe that. Stop advocating for the government to make things more equal. The rich will do so themselves. After all, it's in their own best interest ::)

Luck plays a large role in individual cases sure. But over large enough data sets, skill will be the most important factor by far. Therefore the system of paying CEOs more is fair in the sense that if you have the most skill you also have the highest chance of being rewarded for it.

Whiny is an odd word to describe people who protest having their property stolen. Pfizer employees/investors don't have any obligation to give away their time and effort for free. People are not slaves to one another. Pfizer already provides the world with incredibly valuable products. Is that not enough? Apart from being unjust, a tariff on non-locally produced Pfizer products would raise the price of medicine. That is bad for the customer, bad for Pfizer, and bad for the economy in general. Well any form of government overhead, including 'regular' taxes is bad for the economy ;) Anyway, any form of protectionism is vile and counter productive in the long term. It will just artificially shelter 'local' business so the quality of these will deteriorate.

I don't believe anything you "have to" do 40 hours a week is a dream. Certainly there's a lot of difference in the kind of job but the mere fact you need to sacrifice such a large part of your life not doing whatever you feel like doing at a particular time is a huge restriction of my liberty (and therefore quality of life). This is why dream state is financial independance. This doesn't mean I'd do a job I hate for many many years to get there. It's basically an optimization function where you try to minimize the undesirability of the things you need to do. Having a job that's interesting and you don't hate is important, but I don't see how I would ever love a job. Btw: I don't have the illusion, desire or feel the obligation to have a long term impact in the world as a whole. I'll continue try to make things as good as I can for myself and those close to me and will be quite satisfied if I achieve that long term.

Isnt there a lot of risk with borrow availability and borrow rates?

You're not dragging the forum into anything. You're merely stating facts.

When people don't have food or a job that's poverty. Inequality is difference. Warren Buffett and the millionaire next door are massively unequal but neither are poor. Americans probably enjoy the highest standard of living in world history, and while poverty can still be a problem, the existence of differences between people is not. If someone who should know better (like a public intellectual) is making the false equivocation between poverty and inequality, they are using a trick on you. They are counting on you having only a fuzzy understanding of what they're saying. I'm just repeating myself now but if two people are swimming poorly and one starts swimming well, the insane growth of the swimming gap is not a problem. It's indicative of progress. Do you think China got more or less equal as millions of people lifted themselves out of poverty? That pay structure you bring up is just a risk that some companies are willing to take. It doesn't always work out, but it is fair in that everyone involved has voluntarily consented to the arrangement. A CEO's job is incredibly important and so companies are willing to pay big bucks/take risks to get a rock star. $12.4 million in total average comp on a $45 billion average EV company does not seem out of line with the value they're responsible for. If they increase the EV 1%, or $450 million, but are only paid $12.4mm, how is this fair? Well, it's fair because that's the agreement they agreed to. They are free to leave. If you don't like the CEO compensation, vote against it or sell your shares. That's the arrangement you agreed to when you obtained title to the shares. Again, perhaps I'm dense but I fail to see why the huge increase in the gap is justified. I'd imagine CEOs here are working just as many hours and just as hard as those in other countries and as the CEOs who came before. Why is it justified if a CEO fails, they get a huge payout? If the average work fails...well, better suck it up and find something else? Because the market offers it to them? To be honest I don't think they should have the golden parachutes they have but I don't own enough shares to make a difference. They deserve whatever the market offers them. Also looking at the number of hours worked is incredibly naive. If I can add more value to a company than another employee adds in a year my hourly wage should be larger than his yearly wage. Sadly the world still rewards knowledge workers by the hour, causing people to add a lot less value (you're not going to be rewarded for it anyway, why work hard?).

I would elect an actual turd over Hilary so yes, that includes Trump. Hilary fits my definition of true evil.

There are other forms of collateral than a house.

A whole world of NO! Don't steal from people better off than you because you're jealous! That's extremely petty and pathetic. Take a look at yourself :( Please don't tie the legs of the best swimmers. No one will try to be a good swimmer anymore. I'm a good example. I give about 60% because I don't think I'll be rewarded for doing more. No what you say implies that shareholders can get away with paying lower salaries. Government shouldn't stick it's ugly nose where it doesn't belong. Disagree. CEOs are types who would go for it even with less pay just because they're narcissistic and want control and power and show that they're in the lead. So they should be taxed since the demand there isn't elastic. If there is a high tax, I'm pretty sure a lot of people would still want to be a CEO.

This is basically it: http://doc.cat-v.org/economics/bar_stool_economics

A whole world of NO! Don't steal from people better off than you because you're jealous! That's extremely petty and pathetic. Take a look at yourself :( Please don't tie the legs of the best swimmers. No one will try to be a good swimmer anymore. I'm a good example. I give about 60% because I don't think I'll be rewarded for doing more.

Large social inequality is the natural state for a human society as the discrepancy between the skill level of people is also rather large. The vast majority of the population is mostly useless. If anything, with automation, that discrepancy will only increase further.

This comparison is not correct. Unlike swimming which is unlimited sum game (if you teach everyone to swim really really well, there is no limit or restrictions how well they can do apart of human capacity to swim), salaries are limited by the revenues of the businesses. Even if you taught everyone to be Buffett or Jamie Dimon or John Malone - which is admirable and I would be very happy if this happened - some people would still have to serve Big Macs, some would have to assemble cars, and some would still be CEOs. And unfortunately, even if you are trained to be Buffett, you will not get paid CEO salary while serving Big Macs. Tech startup model with options is the only model that somewhat pays low level workers big bucks. But this is not gonna happen in other industries. So the problem exists even if you trained and educated the workers as much as you can. The comparison is correct. Salaries are definitely limited by the revenues of the business at any given time. This is just a reflection of the fact that the money you make is limited by the value you create. No one is going to pay you more value than you offer to them. That's proof that value being created is finite at any given time, not that value creation is zero sum. Higher employee productivity can increase the revenue of the business (that was my point re the CEO example above). CEOs create tremendous value, and we need to get employees to a position where they too are creating tremendous value. If you also look big picture you can see that the swimming example is spot on because value creation is NOT zero sum. Now someone below the poverty line in America can afford a TV and air conditioning even though the average pay of a CEO relative to that employee may have increased (or not... I don't know and it's inconsequential) relative to a time when someone below the poverty line would have starved. How can that be if one person's salary comes at the expense of everyone else's? This is how progress occurs. Everyone learns to swim better. Concern with the gap between people is fundamentally different than concern with maximizing opportunity for people. Someone with a 'gap mentality' sees fixed revenues and a zero sum world. The CEO's success is a threat to you, and cutting down the most successful people in society is a valid method of reducing the gap. Someone with a 'maximization mentality' sees the opportunity for higher employee productivity across the company. The CEO's success is something to be celebrated. I'm not saying everyone should necessarily aspire to be a CEO specifically, but everyone should aspire to their highest level of success in whatever job they choose and aspire to practice the virtues which gets you there. Thanks for taking the effort to formulate this so eloquently. I couldn't agree more. This is the essence of it and if people are not convinced by it, nothing will convince them (either because they are unable to comprehend or because they have a drastically conflicting world view from ours).

Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed reading it.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/francescoppola/2016/07/21/a-painful-lesson-for-the-ethereum-community/#4a24c8805714

I see you paid attention in economics class and can recite the Keynsian mantra. Challenge what they try to indoctrinate you with! Look at the Keynsian teachings and you'll see it's all bullshit. There is no basis. Even Keynes recognized that. Inflation is not needed for a well functioning economy. In fact, it's detrimental.

But it's wortless? Switch the ETH over to XMR, the only remote challenger of BTC.

Without decentralization the blockchain is just an extremely expensive and inefficient database. Definitely not an improvement. It's fiat currency (completely worthless since Nixon) which is under attack here.

Why do you own ETH? It was a joke before the hard-fork, it's just pathetic now.

Aberhound and SharperDingaan, you both could not be more wrong. Bitcoin is miles ahead of any other digital currency in the only metrics that matter: decentralization and security. The only other currency which offers any sort of competitive advantage is Monero (anonimity) but its probably way to far behind to catch up. If you believe a government issued cryptocurrency will be anything but a good joke its clear you have no idea what you're talking about. Either educate yourself and profit, or don't. "If you don’t believe me or don’t get it, I don’t have time to try to convince you, sorry." - Satoshi Nakamoto, July 29, 2010

The first post by rkbabang is /thread. However, Bitcoin's best use case isn't even money. At least not for low value transfer of wealth.

Yeah I do. I'm not into junk though, the companies I own that are cheap on an assets basis are mostly of decent quality in my opinion. They're just not best of breed or anything. I try to locate small hurdles (and there is still quite some variance in quality in my portfolio).