rkbabang

Exactly. The error people are making above with defining what the returns "must be" is mistaking the S&P500 (or some other index) for the economy as a whole. When you are investing in any subset of the economy (every index is a subset, in fact all the publicly traded companies put together are only a subset of the economy) then your returns can and will be different from the economy as a whole in one direction or the other.

From the introduction: "Autonomous systems have the potential to create tremendous benefits for humanity (Diamandis & Kotler, 2012) but they may also cause harm by acting in ways not anticipated by their designers." I'm just as worried about autonomous systems acting in ways in accordance with the goals of their designers as I am about the above problem. There are policing and military applications for swarms of deadly killer AI bots that are the stuff of horror movies. Some of these applications don't even require human level intelligence and are based on insect models. These types of things are already under development and will be deployed long before human+ level AI is a reality. For a good fictional account of this type of thing read: "Kill Decision" by Daniel Suarez.

In 2008 investing in banks was risky, where in 2012 it was a no-brainer. Right now, investing in oil seems risky.

Low oil prices are good for the economy as a whole, but very bad for certain sectors. It doesn't look to me as if oil prices are going anywhere but down for a while. Oil production is still accelerating and tankers are already being used to store oil off the market as storage space is running out. Oil Supply Accelerating - Saudi Arabia Delivering On Its Promise? Weekly Petroleum Status Report - DOE/EIA-0208(2015-04) Distribution Category UC-98 - Data for Week Ended: January 23, 2015

The way I do it is buy a cheap car and drive it for a long time. My current cars are: a 2007 Hyundai Elantra, purchased new in 2007 for about $15K, it now has about 150K miles and I plan on driving it at least another 5 years. And a 2006 Toyota Sequoia Limited, purchased used in 2011 for $24K. I've only put less than 20K miles on this in almost 4 years of ownership and I plan on keeping it for a long time (10years+). My last Toyota that this one replaced was a 1996 4Runner that I bought in 2000 and drove until 2011.

I think the answer is that he has. I don't want to take anything away from what Gates has accomplished. To say that he's been successful is quite an understatement. But he bought DOS, copied the Mac, created a video game system, ... Sure he has been more successfull than anyone else doing these things, but I'll quote Liberty from his previous post on this topic: If Bill Gates had been hit by a truck in the mid 80's we might not have Windows or the Xbox, but we would still have personal computers with graphical user interfaces and video game systems today. He hasn't used his money nor his genius to create something that no one else would have even thought to try for decades.

I've owned a small HOTR position for a long time. I'm still waiting for them to get their act together, but all they do is further dilute the stock again and again. I've seen no attempt to get costs under control or to grow organically. I've been holding and waiting, but I'm not sure if I will participate in the up-coming rights offering. I'm thinking about starting a position. It's trading slightly below book value. They are finally growing the top line and they finally inked out positive EBITDA at their restaurants. But who knows. This year is going to be a critical year for them. If they can get profitable by 2016, I think good things could happen. I'm just worried about managements' growth-at-any-cost tendencies. I've been patient so far, I'm going to hold for a few more years and see what happens. This could be a good entry point right now if things work out well. My cost basis is around $3.

I've owned a small HOTR position for a long time. I'm still waiting for them to get their act together, but all they do is further dilute the stock again and again. I've seen no attempt to get costs under control or to grow organically. I've been holding and waiting, but I'm not sure if I will participate in the up-coming rights offering.

Coinbase Raises $75M from DFJ Growth, USAA, NYSE, and More

And don't forget any electric car manufacturer can take advantage of the $7500 per car subsidy, yet there was nothing like the Tesla Roadster and Model S before Tesla, nothing since Tesla, and nothing I've heard about coming down the pike from any other auto manufacturer. Companies who have been making cars for 10's or even 100+ years seem to be unable to produce a comparable product, both now and in the foreseeable future. And they all could take advantage of the $7500/vehicle subsidy.

I think the impact will be more on your future consumption rather than the deficits that has accumulated in the past. As an example, look at the impact of the plunging rouble on Russia consumers. The prices of imported products have risen significantly while incomes have not. I mean, like its micro-participants but on a macro level, a country can't continue to consume beyond its own productive capacity without sacrificing some consumption in the future. Sure, companies and people trade, but that doesn't change anything. As an example, A sells widgets to B and demands payment in fiat currency. If A doesn't believe that A can redeem fiat currency for anything, A may demand payment in gold from B. While B has an infinite supply of fiat currency, B will have a limited amount of gold. How will B continue to consume widgets as before? Got you. Well, maybe B should be buying gold now while he can?

By the same token. The so-called trade deficit isn't necessarily a bad thing for the U.S. and in the long term it may end up that the other side got the short end of the stick. And the market will not care that you held the opposite opinion. Humility is indeed important. There are multiple ways to look at this, but in general trade always benefits both sides, that is true even if money always flows in one direction and goods in the other. The trade deficit isn't necessary a "problem". My trade deficit with my local grocery store is huge, they never buy anything from me, but I don't consider this a problem at all. I think a better analogy would to think as if you're buying from your grocery store with money that you've borrowed from the grocery store. If the grocery store believes that you could return the money with interest in the future, then it's not a problem at all. It becomes a problem when the grocery store stops believing in your ability to return the money.. But to further the analogy I also have the ability to inflate the debt away. I think what you mean is that you have the ability to print your own money to return to the grocery store. In that case, you will always have the ability to return the money that the grocery store has lent you. However, as you continue to borrow and print your money to return to the grocery store, will the grocery store continue to believe that the money that you've printed for them has value? If not, will the grocery store continue to sell to you? But who is "you", this analogy is getting a bit stretched too thin. Remember the trade deficit isn't trade between the government of the U.S. with some other government, but the aggregate of all trade between non-government entities which just happen to be located in two different countries. No one talks about a trade deficit between New York and California? Why? Because both sides benefit from the trade regardless of which direction the money/goods flow. Countries don't trade, people and companies do. It doesn't really matter if the parties are located in different cities, different states, or different countries the economics are the same. Also if the dollar collapses the purchaser still has the merchandise and the other side has worthless debt that will never be collected. A new medium of exchange will be used for trade between private parties in the U.S. and parties in other countries in the future (maybe a private currency, maybe another government currency, maybe a crypto-currency like bitcoin) and things will be bumpy for a while but life will go on. When you file bankruptcy it is your creditors who get screwed the most, likewise when a currency collapses it is the creditors who get screwed the most, not the debtors.

I agree, I called it "creativity" and "vision" above, but it is hard to describe. I you gave me a Billion dollars on the condition that I use it to change the world, I wouldn't even know where to start. (Maybe I'd give it to Musk). Whatever it is, Musk has it and most people don't.

By the same token. The so-called trade deficit isn't necessarily a bad thing for the U.S. and in the long term it may end up that the other side got the short end of the stick. And the market will not care that you held the opposite opinion. Humility is indeed important. There are multiple ways to look at this, but in general trade always benefits both sides, that is true even if money always flows in one direction and goods in the other. The trade deficit isn't necessary a "problem". My trade deficit with my local grocery store is huge, they never buy anything from me, but I don't consider this a problem at all. I think a better analogy would to think as if you're buying from your grocery store with money that you've borrowed from the grocery store. If the grocery store believes that you could return the money with interest in the future, then it's not a problem at all. It becomes a problem when the grocery store stops believing in your ability to return the money.. But to further the analogy I also have the ability to inflate the debt away.

By the same token. The so-called trade deficit isn't necessarily a bad thing for the U.S. and in the long term it may end up that the other side got the short end of the stick. And the market will not care that you held the opposite opinion. Humility is indeed important. There are multiple ways to look at this, but in general trade always benefits both sides, that is true even if money always flows in one direction and goods in the other. The trade deficit isn't necessary a "problem". My trade deficit with my local grocery store is huge, they never buy anything from me, but I don't consider this a problem at all.

The way I look at the trade deficit is that people in the U.S. have figured out a way to give people overseas our fiat paper currency and get valuable goods in return. Sounds like we are on the winning side of a scam.

What happens to nubits in the situation where the U.S. dollar goes into decline? Think about a hyper-inflation scenario? Would nubits remain tied to the dollar? If not would would happen? Why would you create a currency that is tied to one of the old currencies that you are trying to replace? If you are going to do that wouldn't it be easier to just design an online payment system that uses dollars directly? There is already PayPal.

That's why I pointed out that Musk was working on hard problems that can make a big difference, and that few others even dare to work on. There's a great quote by biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey on this: "It has always appalled me that really bright scientists almost all work in the most competitive fields, the ones in which they are making the least difference. In other words, if they were hit by a truck, the same discovery would be made by somebody else about 10 minutes later." This applies to more than science. So many smart engineers are building Candy Crush apps or working on ways to get people to click on more ads (google, facebook, etc). So many of the most brilliant mathematical minds of our era are working on creating complex derivatives and HFT algorithms on Wall Street. Sure they go where the money is, but I'd say that Musk did pretty well too and he's making a much bigger difference (making a dent in the universe, as Steve Jobs would say). The explanation for that is risk tolerance. If you have a brilliant mathematical mind you are almost certain to do well as a quant on Wall Street, but starting your own rocket company is not exactly going to be a sure thing. In fact if you are that mathematically capable you are more likely than the average person to know the difference in the odds between the two. Like I said Musk has a shit load of guts. He isn't just shooting for the Moon, he's shooting for Mars.

MIDD. I've owned this (sometimes a large position, sometimes a small one like now) since about 2004. The CEO Selim Bassoul knows how to grow a company through acquisitions and actually do it right. Reducing costs, incorporating new technologies, and adding value each time. My only regret is that I should never have sold a single share.

Man, complaining on a ski lift... Yes, and yet there is a much greater percentage of the population today that is wealthy enough to get on a ski lift to complain than there was in 1970.

It isn't surprising that the richest people on Earth are richer than a large percentage of the population, when even the poorest human being on earth is richer than the bottom 37%. Yes the poorest individual human being on Earth has a higher net worth than the bottom 37% of the people on Earth. Why? Because the bottom 37% of the people on Earth have a negative net worth which is much further negative than the poorest individual's net-worth. The Wealth inequality numbers that are thrown around are very misleading. The poorest people on the planet are not in Africa, rather they are in the U.S., because that is where you find the people with the largest negative net worth. Living in a stone age culture in Papua New Guinea and having a net worth around zero, puts you pretty high up the scale, even though the "poorest" people are living in the U.S. sitting in their heated housing, on their comfortable couch, playing xbox on their flatscreen TVs, munching on pizza and drinking beer. Yes 80 billionaires have wealth of bottom 48% but even the poorest person has the wealth of the bottom 37%

I think many people just can't accept that some people are just more able than others. They have to find ways to chip away at that. It also boils down to your definition of "better". I think there's a widespread adolescent tendency of focusing tunnel-vision-like on what can be measured (the best guitarist is the one who does the fastest solos, the best programmer is the one who's code routines runs fastest or have the fewest number of bugs or whatever). I used to care about that kind of stuff when I was younger too, but now I don't so much. I'll take a coder who comes up with the idea for the Google algorithm (PageRank) or the hyperlink over the coder who can do fancier math, more complex code and optimizations, and knows more languages but will never do much original or important work in a lifetime. Some people's output is just thousands of times more valuable than others, if not millions, even if pedants will call them "worse" at the mundane parts of whatever field they're in... I'm sure lots of physicists and mathematicians were better at all kinds of math than Albert Einstein or Richard Feynman were, but that's missing the point. +1 I couldn't agree more. For whatever the reason is, Musk is doing more for humanity than all of the engineers in the world who are enviously bitching that Musk isn't very smart combined. There is a creative aspect to doing important, beneficial, and successful things as well. Musk not only has sufficient intelligence to be as successful as he's been, but he also has vision, creativity, relentlessness, business acumen, and a shit load of guts. In my 19 years as an engineer, I've known absolutely brilliant people who have none of those other qualities which Musk has. I've had many arguments with fellow engineers, who are much smarter than I am, who always want to do things the hard way simply because they can, who want to add unnecessary features that no customer will ever need or use and will add to the cost, time, and complexity of the product, simply because it's possible to do, etc. There are so many brilliant people in one narrow area of knowledge who have not a lick of common sense what-so-ever and who do ridiculous things. I have very little respect for anyone who would belittle the intelligence of someone like Musk. Why would you make such a fool of yourself? Envy really is an ugly thing.

If Bitcoin becomes the dominant technology for transferring money, why would holding the instrument make you fantastically wealthy? It's like what Buffett said comparing Bitcoin to checks. Checks were a great way to transfer money as well. Does that mean you should buy checks in the hope they will appreciate in value? If bitcoin is only used as a western union to transfer between other currencies* then you are correct. And maybe that is the mid-way case that I have forgotten, where bitcoin has some value, but not very much more than today. But if people move away from government money and start using bitcoin as a currency, i.e. they get paid in it, save it, stocks are traded in it, oil is traded in it, all other commodities are traded in it, etc ... the value of a single bitcoin will have to be many orders of magnitude what it is today. Why? Because bitcoin can not be deluded or inflated. There will only ever be about 21 million bitcoins. If this is the main currency used on planet Earth 25 years from now, what will the world's GDP be at that time? Maybe 1 micro-bitcoin will be about equal to what $1 is today, or maybe it will be some number of nano-bitcoins. I'm talking about a world where government issued money has failed and no longer exists, because people lost trust in governments to issue currency and have migrated to bitcoin exclusively. Even if bitcoin shares the entire world's economy with 2 or 3 other competing crypto-currencies it will still be worth many times what it is today. *edit to add this link: Bitcoin Will Fix Remittances With Or Without The Western Unions Of The World

Google Nears Major Investment in SpaceX to Bolster Satellites "one person familiar with them said Google has agreed to value SpaceX north of $10 billion and that the size of the total round, which includes other investors, is very large."

Here's another possible scenario: A different cryptocurrency catches on (because of a better design, because of some event with Bitcoin, etc). That fits into the $0 scenario of my theory. If some other cryptocurrency catches on, bitcoin will be worthless.