rkbabang

This is an important point. Whenever someone's incentives are in direct contradiction to your own, you should not trust that person with anything which you value. It doesn't matter one wit if he is a good and decent person, everyone will do what is in their own best interest. Any system or arrangement where someone else needs to go against his own best interest for you to benefit, will not work well for you. Whenever I look at something that isn't working, whether it be a system (such as a government) or a professional arrangement (such as with a financial adviser) I ask myself what the incentives are for each person involved. Usually the problem can be seen clearly from that point of view. If the incentive are perverse in someway (i.e. requiring someone to do what isn't in his best interest to do) than the system or relationship can never be made to work.

I agree completely, only it could be 10-25 years from now. Absolute worst case disaster scenario: the US Fed-gov nationalizes it and uses it. It would make Orwell's vision seem optimistic.

Texas family journeyed to New Hampshire using only bitcoin "Bleish and her husband, John Bush, drove from San Marcos, Texas, between Austin and San Antonio, to Lancaster, in New Hampshire’s Great North Woods, for the Porcupine Freedom Festival, an annual campsite gathering of the Free State Project. They packed 2-year-old Aliana and 16-month-old Bill into the minivan and traveled almost the entire 4,400-mile journey spending only bitcoin for everything from hotel rooms to snacks...." "They found one restaurant in Washington, D.C., and one in New York that accepted bitcoin directly, and participated in a pilot program at a Holiday Inn in Brooklyn. In all three cases, though, the employee cashing out their bill had to call a supervisor for help. “It’s been a learning experience for us, to know that even if they say they accept bitcoin, they’re still learning,” Bleish said..."

Racoons with machine guns sounds awesome, even better than .

One topic that is conspicuously missing is: "What are you holding today?"

13 and 14 at least have a different answers. All the others are either "no" or "none". How about 17. What's your favorite WEB quote? 18. How many Berkshire products do you use regularly? 19. When will BRK-A hit $X/share? And of course? 20. Who will be the next WEB?

It does seem better today. Thanks.

Bitcoin :)

Hi Sanjeev, I don't know if it's just me, but the last few days this site has been loading really slow using my Firefox (v. 30.0) browser and every few pageviews it is locking up the browser entirely until I kill the window. I tried using Chrome to view the site and have no issues at all, the pages all load quickly and never freeze up. Firefox appears to be behaving normally with other websites. I'm just going to use Chrome for the time being.

Here's a good essay on the topic: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014_full.html?print#.U63OsrG7Mwc I am sorry, it is an essay, the person can write well but I don't think the article is good. It makes for sensationalist headlines, especially the word pitchforks. I think we have riots and pitchforks when a huge segment of society is disenfranchised or have no hope (I am thinking blacks in the 50s and 60s). Or if blacks feel Rodney King wasn't given justice. I cannot imagine people rioting because their family has one car instead of 3. the great issues of our world in the next 20yrs will likely be a lot of things we cannot foresee, in the 70's virtually no one could forsee the fall of communism, no one could foresee 9/11 the article reminds me of Kyle Bass, saying (with obvious facts) that Japan will be torn apart, well the only thing torn apart is his Japan trade.... I bet against Kyle Bass (holding Japanese stocks) and I would bet if I could against the article thesis Riots, probably not, but any politicians want to enact any additional tax cut is probably asking for political suicide in the current climate. In my base line case, I think we will see more regulations and higher taxes. One way to alleviate this somewhat while producing economic growth at the same time would be to lower taxes on the middle class and small business. Think about it. What does it help a small business owner or a family of 4 living on $75K/year if some rich CEO pays more in taxes? Of course since the middle class and small business pay the majority of the taxes (simply because of their greater numbers) this will never happen.

Straight from the horse's... I mean, the Pirate's mouth: http://ragnarisapirate.blogspot.com/2014/06/starting-activism-at-sitestar-syte.html

This is the first I've heard of secret menu items, but they have always had the undocumented "short" drink size. With a "tall" latte you need to order a double or else it is pretty much all milk. But you have always been able to order a "short" latte which is cheaper and comes in a smaller cup giving a single shot latte a higher espresso to milk ratio (which of course can be increased further by ordering a "short double latte"). Not sure why the short size has never been on the menu even though it has always been available.

I would expect no less from an online personality test, but for ballpark results it is accurate and consistent enough. If your mood swings that wildly however you might want to try this one. http://psychcentral.com/quizzes/bipolarquiz.htm :)

From: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp INTJ Introvert(89%) iNtuitive(88%) Thinking(88%) Judging(11%) I wonder what the average Aspergers Quotient is here. Mine is on the high side 34 according to this: http://aspergerstest.net/aq-test/

I'm an IC design engineer full time for the last 18 years, investing is more of a hobby. +1 to much of what is already written above. Math, analysis, problem solving, money, ... what's not to like? There is also a control and trust aspect to it. Many engineers, myself included, do not like to pay others to do things which we can do ourselves. There is a very large DIY streak in most engineers. I also have never really felt comfortable with letting others manage my money, which led me to learn as much on the subject as I could, which reenforced my desire to do it myself.

SCTY, like TSLA, trades with an extremely large Musk-premium. This is why I think he is crazy not to take SpaceX public. It wouldn't need to earn a penny to trade at a ridiculous valuation. He could issue tons of shares and dump a ton of money into R&D.

Don't read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Global-Catastrophic-Risks-Nick-Bostrom/dp/0199606501/ well thanks for the recommendation, im going to ignore your advice I think :D But isnt it easier to save information now? In the old days, if the local library burned down, you were screwed. But in a way it was more stable, because if the library didn't burn down you weren't screwed. In our modern world, if there is a major disaster and you have no reliable source of electricity you can't access any of the information stored on disks or other media. You really are screwed. The info still exists, but you can't get access it. Also no digital storage lasts as long or is as durable as a printed book can be. Even if there are some devices left to read the information, if we can no longer build hard-drives, Flash memory, DVD's, etc, then within a generation or two all of the information stored digitally will be lost forever.

Don't read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Global-Catastrophic-Risks-Nick-Bostrom/dp/0199606501/ I haven't read that book, but in my mind the biggest risk of a major "reset" of civilization comes, not from religion this time around, but from war. If we do major environmental damage to the planet with nukes, or kill 5 billion people with biological agents ..... game over for at least another 1000 years. All the more reason to have sustainable cities on other planets before that happens here.

Musk doesn't want to go to Mars for the money. He thinks it's good for the human civilization to eventually become multi-planetary, and Mars is #1 on the list of places where a self-sustaining base could be possible. We're not going to terraform the whole planet any time soon, but you have to start somewhere. He's mentioned it many times in interview. I suggest you have a look. yeah but good for human civilization = economic reasons. And to make it cheap and practical, we need a new technological break through. The size of things we can launch into space is limited by our shitty fuel sources we have now. And it is still somewhat risky. If something goes wrong, you are toast. It is not like the work for this new necesairy technology is not being done, as the world is hugely benefited from it if you exclude space flight. His argument is, if nobody does it, then no progress will be made. But Im not so sure about that. Did the first people from Europe to settle the new world wait until it was cheap and practical to do so, thinking "we'll just sit back and wait for some technological breakthroughs that will make it easier", or did they just go anyway and assume the risks? I give you a hint, many of them died.

Musk doesn't want to go to Mars for the money. He thinks it's good for the human civilization to eventually become multi-planetary, and Mars is #1 on the list of places where a self-sustaining base could be possible. We're not going to terraform the whole planet any time soon, but you have to start somewhere. He's mentioned it many times in interview. I suggest you have a look. Yes the economic payoff comes when the earth is struck by a very large rock, but humanity still survives on Mars. Right now we have all of our eggs in one small and vulnerable basket. Besides humanity needs a new frontier, there has always been a place to run to, a place to get away from the powers that be and start anew. There is no (habitable) place left on this planet to go. Someday there will be cheesy movies about the wild wild Mars...

Elon Musk Says Spacex on getting the first people to Mars by 2024 to 2026 ""We need to get where things are steady and predictable," Musk said. "Maybe we're close to developing the Mars vehicle, or ideally we've flown it a few times, then I think going public would make more sense.""

There has been some published papers and a lot of talk in the last 2 years about the feasability of this and even some experimental evidence. http://www.todayonline.com/daily-focus/science/nasa-developing-star-trek-warp-drive-future-space-travel http://arxiv.org/pdf/0712.1649v6.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/0906.4601.pdf

I don't think we should think in evolutionary terms, once modern man comes into the picture evolution goes out the window. Otherwise, the most successful people one can argue are those who are the dumbest as they tend to be poor and have more children in any society. There have been massive changes in our environment that evolution hasn't caught up to yet, but you shouldn't discount evolutionary explanations for our behaviors. We have evolved certain behaviors for a reason, and understanding those reasons can help you understand human behaviors. For example why do women like shopping and men don't? Could it be that shopping is more like gathering and nothing like hunting? Just because there were no shopping malls 40K years ago doesn't mean that it isn't evolution which explains the behaviors. Maybe searching for stocks to invest in is more like hunting (how many women are on this board?). Because our environment is so different from the environment we evolved in, finding evolutionary explanations can be a little like determining how a fish will act out of water, but it can still be quite useful and many times it is the only way to understand the otherwise inexplicable things people do.

It really is a testament to the productive power of capitalism. Would you rather be wealthy 50 years ago or middle class today? Psychologically, I rather be wealthy 50 years ago. I think Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs make sense from both my experience and my parents' experience. Even though I'd rather be middle class today than wealthy then, I can see why you would say that. Even though life is easier for all now than 50 years ago, back then even the middle class had all of their basic needs met. I think 50 years is right on the boundary where some will give one answer and some the other. But would you rather be wealthy 100 years ago or middle class today? How about 150 or 500? Rich or poor we are living in the safest, healthiest, wealthiest time humanity has ever known, yet so many have zero gratitude and appreciation of this fact. As I've said before envy is one of humanity's uglier traits. Not to mention some of the statistics many are using to push this "we need the government to save us from the growing income inequality problem" theory fail to take into account changes in demographics. http://www.economics21.org/research/myth-increasing-income-inequality

Buy buy buy before BRK-A is at $100,000,000,000! I sold most of my Brk.B.... because I ask myself, comon, how high can it go? Sure it'll do fine, but I don't think it can beat the market averages by much. If it can, soon it'll be the largest market cap in the world. I remember when I started investing, cisco beat the street every quarter for like 30 quarters, and I bought it at $50, 14yrs ago! I learned the hard way, don't blindly trust streaks. I know, I am like that other poster who isn't going to value investing heaven..... Just in case it wasn't clear. I was kidding. I have you beat, once upon a time (August 2000 to be precise) I bought Cisco at $66.