APG12

Does anyone have an idea of what it would cost to create another WhatsApp? In my experience, apps are usually worth $1-5 a user. How can you start monetizing a product that someone else can come along and replicate for little cost? That's the beauty of the tech industry- low capital intensity. Management said explicitly that monetizing the service is not going to be a priority. Has anyone else noticed that "thinking long-term" has become a euphemism for, "it's OK that we aren't making any money and don't have a clear plan to do so"? Think Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, SnapChat, Tesla. All we have to do, we're told, is think long-term. Well I've been thinkin and I don't like what I'm concluding.

It already has this feature, I think. The search bar seems to be focused on whatever page you're on. So if you're in the SHLD thread the search bar is limited to that. If you're in the Investment Ideas board the search function includes the whole board.

This is the same thing that's said about every short seller. When I short a company I believe to be fraudulent I don't think to myself, 'I can't wait until all of the workers get fired and lose their source of income.' What I hope for is the market to recognize the facts of reality. Every day that it doesn't is a day that capital is misallocated. I imagine the same is true of Mr. Bass. Do you really think he's sitting there thinking, 'I hope that millions of people lose their jobs and are starving in the street'? Unless he's psychotic, I doubt it. When the market does not reflect economic reality, that is categorically bad. Assuming the Japanese economy is on the brink of collapse (I don't have an opinion), think of all of the capital invested every day on the assumption that it is not going to collapse. Keeping a charade going isn't good for anyone if you're thinking beyond the immediate moment.

Have you read his autobiography? It's fantastic!

jay21, someone posted some industry primers on these a while back. you should be able to find them. if not let me know and I'll send them to you If I remember correctly, the telecom primers in that collection were pretty old. This book was informative: http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Guide-Telecommunications-Guides-Prentice-ebook/dp/B008HHE3C4/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1392057335&sr=1-1&keywords=telecommunications

I highly doubt this is why they included AMZN, but imagine running a company where the owners don't care if you actually make any money. In retailing that seems to me to be a pretty large advantage.

Nordion (NDZ) has an extremely solid moat.

I'm not sure what he's implying but I think the relevant principle is that there should not be educational/professional groups that exclude certain members based upon non-fundamental factors (like your skin color for example). So if a man could get some educational value from attending the SWS seminar/gathering, it's wrong to exclude him because he has skin dangling between his legs. There is no fact of life that says because you're a man your life was easy and full of opportunity. These kinds of groups have no concern with individual circumstances. They imply that all members of the collective known as 'men' must necessarily have an upper hand in life. In fact, when I was in high school there was a girl's only after-school club (something about women in leadership) that would bring in speakers that I was interested in hearing. I wasn't allowed to be a member because in the school's eyes my genitals apparently afforded me the same opportunities automatically. In any event, it's not so much of a knock against Ms. Cool- who should be praised for her tremendous accomplishments. It's just a mistake that is prevalent in our culture because people don't think in principles.

Did anyone else find it kind of funny that WYN was also one of Abby Cohen's top 5 equity picks?

Maybe he meant that you could take a two hour nap every day and use the remaining hour to clone his portfolio in your own account. ;D

Greenbackd has several informative articles on this subject: http://greenbackd.com/2013/03/25/warren-buffett-and-john-hussman-on-the-stock-market/

You can raise crickets in a box in your apartment. Don't need green pastures for protein :D +1 but eww. :o

Hmmm, I don't think I'm being very clear trying to explain this. I've thought about it a lot so let me try to answer your questions and explain. There's a finite amount of oil on earth- I don't think anyone can debate that! Earth itself is finite. I'm sure you could do the math and say well, after X billion people there will be nowhere left to stand. I mean, now we're entering the realm of absurdity but it is definitely true because the earth is finite. I'm not saying that one day far in the future all of the oil will have been burnt. That's not to say we won't figure out a way to reclaim material back out of the atmosphere- who knows this is all science fiction and conjecture. What I'm saying is observe what's going on and draw an induction. In the days of the cavemen they probably worried that one day we'll run out of trees for fire wood. Eventually man figured out how to extract energy from coal. And then people get worried- we're going to run out of coal one day and it's going to be a disaster! Man discovers oil. Okay, that's just for now. One day we're going to run out of oil! Man improves exploration and extraction techniques and it turns out we have way more oil than anyone thought 30-40 years ago. Okay that works now but one day we're going to run out of all fossil fuels! Man creates nuclear power. Oh alright that should last some time but one day we're going to run out of Uranium and THEN WHAT?? I really don't know. I don't have an answer (if I did I'd be rich rich rich). Practical solar seems possible. But what happens when we run out of silicon!! Do you see where I'm going with this? There's a philosophic principle here which is: Nature is finite but man's capacity to rearrange it for his benefit is infinite. And that idea ties in with the idea that wealth is created BY man. This second idea you can draw from your own experiences. Those two ideas allow you to see that the famines under Mao and other 'population problems' are not a result of excess population but rather systems of government that do not allow the populations to be free to create wealth. In ajc's post he talks about controlling the population until supply catches up with demand. Where does he/she think supply comes from? It comes from the population. Anyways, I hope that clarified things. Probably not but I gave it my best shot lol. Edit: Woops, sorry I missed your question on food. It's really the same as energy though. How many hundreds of years have economists been predicting peak food. You've got the Ehrlichs in the 70s saying, well there is only X amount of arable land so if the population keeps growing at Y % a year then everyones going to starve by 1990!! Instead it's 2013 an everyone is fat haha. That should at least be an indication that there is something very wrong with the way the Ehrlichs are thinking about the world. And I don't think it's right to conclude therefore that population and technology are in some kind of race and if population wins then we're doomed. Technology is a product of population and our completely ridiculous growth in human wealth since the age of enlightenment (you've seen the hockey stick chart?) is proof that our ability to create wealth FAR outstrips any population growth we experience. Again, this is because wealth is created by the population (assuming it's free).

Why do you think that's their premise? I dunno, it seems the most obvious explanation to not want more people on the earth. Now look at ajc's post which is dripping with the premise [emphasis mine]: Edit: Clarifying at JBird's suggestion, I think this is their premise because all communist ideologies view wealth as a quantity to be distributed. As such, a greater population means less distribution per person. Therefore the logical answer would be to limit the population. It's a misunderstanding of where wealth comes from. Material values are produced. The pie is not a static quantity of resources. Edit: Clarifying example- North America has a lot of oil. This is a finite resource that we have but it was not a resource to the Native Americans that inhabited the land before us. It was a sticky useless goo that actually made certain pieces of land uninhabitable. It was only after man applied his mind to nature that the goo became a value or a resource. And that fallacy of finite food supplies has been exploded so many times it's silly. And that Ehrlich guy still gets credit from environmentalists for that crappy book lol. Anyways, the US grew its GDP at an absurd rate in the 19th century while simultaneously welcoming millions of immigrants. If you think the US is just some resource laden land where all you had to do was pull an apple off a tree to feed your family I'm afraid you're mistaken! Read about any of the early colonies. I'm sure you could come up with some rare exceptions (like the random apple tree) but resources are only resources once man creates them. Capitalism is the system that frees man's ability to do the creating. Exercising your mind and acting on your conclusions is impossible under coercive government systems. Edit 2: To keep on with the oil example. How long have we been told about peak oil? Why haven't we hit peak oil? Because we continue to find ways to rearrange nature and create value. ie. fracking. And then critics say, well you can't keep counting on technological improvements! But again, they're not understanding where values come from.

It seems to me that the premise of the one-child policy is this idea that people are a drag on per-capita wealth because wealth is a static pie. Under capitalism, we see people as creators of value. I guess that's why they're commies.

+1 They've been getting 'Robin Hooded' (robbed) pretty good lately themselves.

Buffett said at his annual meeting that the 7.9% growth rate over the past 5 years was partially a result of Berkshire's size. So is this a myth disseminated by Buffett himself? Are you just arguing to argue now??

Sure, I definitely see your point. However, there are certain principles that apply universally to every business. For example, it's not necessary to study the impact of a tariff on a specific industry to know that it's going to have all sorts of negative consequences. This is inherent to the nature of a tariff. If congress were contemplating a tariff on auto imports, there would surely be a group of people that would demand a study into the effects. The auto market is very different from the solar panel market which is very different from the cell phone market. To a pragmatist, there would be no way of knowing the effects on a specific industry. This is why it's so important to understand and apply principles in life. Principles are man's way of dealing with complexity. So, 'you wouldn't solve problems in one industry exactly the same way as in another' is the wrong way to think about this. Apply the principles. We know that government intervention and regulations stifle people's ability to act based upon their conclusions, people's ability to innovate, and people's ability to enjoy the product of their labor. The effects in the education industry would be no different than the effects in the shoe industry. In fact, one would predict for the education industry exactly what we see.

Yeah, scholarships do seem to be one good way. It's charity but it's not a hand out as it requires something of the recipient. Buffett's idea seems completely insane to me. Education as a product is not any different than any other product. Making private schools illegal and drawing on a lottery is no different than making shoe manufacturers illegal and drawing a lottery for government shoes. What kind of shoes would you get? What kind of selection would there be? It kind of reminds me of Obamacare in that people think that insurance can be offered to 40 million more people and aggregate costs go down. As if there is something about insurance that makes it an exception to fundamental facts about reality (products have value and therefore have costs). I really respect Buffett's investment acumen but when it comes to politics he is dishonest. Remember that claim he often makes that his secretary pays more in taxes than he does? Of course, he ignores the facts that all of the companies he owns pay tax, and then he pays tax on top of that. Buffett is a genius and he certainly understands double taxation so why would he make a claim that he knows is false? The only answer I can come up with is that he's dishonest in the realm of politics. As such, I take everything he says in this area with a grain of salt. His willingness to mislead on the topic of taxation colors my opinion of everything he says about politics.

That is a good point, Jay. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/07/what-is-poverty In my opinion the source of a lot of inequality is the Federal Reserve. The money they print clearly raises the income of those in the financial sector much much much more than it does the poor.