Jurgis

DIS is most attractive. It is also probably (have not run numbers across all companies recently) most expensive. I hold STRZA and DISCA because I thought that Malone will find a way to wring returns from them. Not happening so far. DISCA was expensive some time ago, probably no longer. STRZA has been cheap, which means I did not lose much on it. Yet.

Any other stores that permanently stopped sales of guns and ammunition? I need a list of stores to support. American obsession with guns is horrifying.

Quite a few examples are semi-monopolies that you can't escape unfortunately. I told myself that I will never get Verizon after having DSL from the nightmare street. I still don't, but that limits my choices to Comcast (which most people hate - I had OK experience with it) and RCN (which I currently have and fingers crossed, good so far). Other people are not so lucky and have to stay with semi monopoly even though it sucks. Some (most?) examples are also very personal. I've had friends who will never use Chase (bad CC experience), Bank of America (bad banking experience), etc. But these are still huge companies that many people use. I use them too and have not had any problems... Wholesale brand implosions are more rare I guess...

Pretty sure people who have lived through real communism might want to disagree with you... I have nothing to add. ;)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peterschwartz/reconceiving-the-idea-of-_b_7927220.html I don't think anyone on this thread claimed that all businessmen are evil. Actually I'll go on the record stating that I believe in moral business practices and I believe that sometimes moral business practices may even be the best for both the owners/shareholders and the employees and the customers and any other parties (like environment). However, just as we should not say that all businessmen are evil, we should not say that all businessmen are moral paragons just because they create jobs for people and drive economy. There have been numerous examples of business owners that exploited workers, produced substandard products, and engaged in other practices that harm a lot of people in the past and there are such examples right now - mostly in corrupt countries without sufficient laws and protections. Also we should not dismiss people working or volunteering for non-profits or government agencies as non-productive or not contributing to the benefit of humanity. As with the capitalists, not all of them are doing things that are positive, but there are non-profits and, yes, there are governmental organizations too who do great things. Let's evaluate both sides on the concrete results they achieve and not on some simplistic separation. Edit: regarding the article: it's a tricky subject and I think the author does not do it justice. Yes, doing things that may look selfish might be good, and even altruists have to do things for themselves or risk a burn out, but there are selfish things and selfish things... (let's open new thread if there's interest in more discussion)

Nobody's blaming capitalism. You guys are taking my posts out of context. :) I was answering to: Emphasis mine. Yes, Liberty, you are totally right. Capitalism is the best system we know. But that does not mean that "greedy capitalists" are better than people who try to help the people in poverty. Here is another self-righteous libertarian moralist: Yeah, right. Who talked about spending someone else's money? If people donate to charities like Doctors Without Borders or Seva, if they volunteer for charities, clearly they are "being popular by spending someone else's money". And actually: Right. But ask rkbabang and wachtwoord and they'll probably tell you that US and Western Europe are socialist. Cause they clearly limit the ability of greedy capitalists to do what they would want to do. There are labor laws, safety laws, environmental laws, etc. Let's ask our libertarian friends if they would keep any of these laws. So perhaps Rainforesthiker answered it the best: people vote with their feet. And they vote for capitalist societies that also have great social safety nets and limit the power of "greedy capitalists".

Where they worked voluntarily. ... as it was their only alternative to starving to death in the streets in a cold, capitalist world where they lost the genetic lottery. (No idea if this is true or not. I just like "build the sentence" games.) I'll just +1 this one. ;)

Yeah, sure. Tell this to all the people who died in the capitalist mines, factories and farmfields.

F**k Donville. Waste of time. :)

I am aware about the criticism of Mother Teresa. Your post implies that everyone who tries to be Mother Teresa is going to do the same things she is criticized for. That's very unlikely.

The devil is in the details. Great business and jockey investing is based on belief that past results will continue. Risks: - The past results won't continue because business, market, something else changes. - You pay too high price for great business and your stock results are crappy even though business results continue just fine. Underpriced netnet, cigar butt investing is based mostly on belief that past results won't continue or they won't catch up with you fast. Risks: - The past results continue and stock drops even more - You pay cheap price, but not cheap enough, so even though business results change/improve, you don't get good results. Edit: Glitch investing: investing based on belief that current bad results are a glitch and will go back to good results soon. Risks: - The bad results continue - Price... again. :)

What a nice mischaracterization of someone trying to be Mother Theresa. No, it's not about "enjoying the fact that people are sick and starving so that you can feel virtuous taking care of them". It is actually about helping people who are sick and starving.

CoBF investors might trade a lot less. Value investors "by definition" do not trade "a lot less". Value investor can buy undervalued stock and sell it in 2 weeks if it appreciates above the intrinsic value. Same with netnet investors. You might as well say that growth investors "by definition" trade a lot less: they should only sell when company stops growing, no? ;)

SPE has gone nowhere for the last 5 years. Did they pay out a lot of gains? How do you measure their performance?

Like Palantir's, most of my portfolio is in tax advantaged accounts. I trade more there than in taxable account but partly because I don't buy anything that is short term in taxable accounts. If I had to have all my money in taxable accounts, I'd probably buy hold-forever positions pretty much. It's very hard to outperform if you lose 25%+ of a gain during the sale. Also I donate some appreciated taxable shares to charities avoiding taxation if I plan to sell them anyway.

There were no businesses in the town I grew up in. 8) Welcome to Soviet Russia Union, tovarishch. ;) Edit: the very interesting mental exercise would be, why the heck some shops/cafes/factories/etc. were still 10 times better than others. Clearly it was not the monetary business ownership motivation. Sometimes pure-capitalist models forget that other motivations exist and might be quite powerful. Edit 2: Ah, what the heck. The best thing was still to be a monopolist for attractive product. If you were the manager of chocolate shop that was the only one that got chocolate allocation, you were fricking rich. Just give some bribes, sell the allocation on black market, voila. Yep, there was shortage of everything including chocolate and toilet paper and your choice was either to know someone who knows someone who would sell you stuff for inflated prices or to stand in multihour long lines hoping that you get some of the allocation that was not stolen/backdoored. Moral: being monopolist pays even in Soviet Russia.

I wonder how many FAIRX holders are aware... and how they are reacting. I believe he's down to $5 billion from $8 billion last year pre-Lamberth opinion on GSEs, so my guess is that at least some of the (ex-)holders are aware. I been adding modestly to my FAIRX holdings for past few years but my patience is running out. If Fannie/Freddie work out, FAIRX would go approximately 70% up (10% 7x) assuming no other losses. So FAIRX is quite a lot Fannie/Freddie bet...

Okay. Where? I thought that you guys had the answers. Why are you asking a socialist who likes it the way it is? You've got at least five people here who agree with you. They are all probably pretty rich this being CoBF. Presumably you can find more rich and educated people who agree with you. Find some poor country that would sell you an island or something. I'll visit when you guys have that futuristic thing with robo dogs. You can even charge me admission (just don't call it a tax, no no).

I wonder how many FAIRX holders are aware... and how they are reacting.

We went through this before. It is not theft: we live in (somewhat) democracy and we vote for taxes. (Actually, I am taxed without representation and I am still very happy with the tax system in US.). The fact that you are voting against does not make it a theft. Look up the definition of democracy. I'd be very happy for you and other anarcho-whatevers to go and establish your utopia somewhere. If it was successful maybe others would follow. Or start a party and try to persuade other people to vote against taxes. Good luck. So far what I hear is just more of this:

Yes, I buy them all the time. Positive experience overall. You can always complain and get your money back. My only issues were couple books that were pre-publication reviewer copies. I got the money back and kept the book(s). This is USA though, can't speak for Canada/Europe. Edit: try to pick highest quality ("Used Like New" or whatever it is called) and highest seller star rating while keeping the low(est) price. If you go down the quality level, you may get highlights in the text, etc.

What have the taxes ever done for us?

And now we have "taxes are theft" ultraliberals on the thread. I was wondering what was missing for the last 10 pages. 8)

Drive by Buffett?

Fair enough. You are right that I might miss some gems with the way I look at stocks. C'est la vie. Thanks for the list anyway. :)