rkbabang

Yes, but raising kids is a lot of work. One could equally make the argument "surely helping people build their retirements comes with an ROI - the happiness of seeing your customers having a financially-secure retirement where they have the assets to realize their retirement dreams". Really, if you start looking at things from "intrinsic reward" incentives, then you've basically conceded rkbabang's argument anyway. You could say that many politicians govern well because of the intrinsic rewards of improving their country and the well-being of their fellow citizens, which I think rkbabang wouldn't agree with at all. Rkbabang, I think understand your position. Parenting is a counterexample that refutes your rule, so you'll pretend that you and your kids are one entity instead of modifying your world view. That said, I understand it. If you concede that parents can act against their own best interests on behalf of their kids, then it's possible that other people might sometimes act against their own best interests as well. (FWIW, I think you are mostly right that people usually act in their own best interests. I just recoil against black and white world views.) It isn't black and white, nothing ever is. There are 99.99999% of politicians and then there is Ron Paul, there are parents who give away or even kill their kids, and yes, there are probably good financial advisers who put their clients' interests before their own. But you are refusing to accept that sometimes there are general rules that apply almost universally. Also, I don't think the parenting thing was a cop out. There has not been millions of years of evolution to make human beings want to help others with their retirement savings.

Hmm, OK, here's a perverse counterexample: parenting. Raising kids take up piles of money and time, yet I think many parent/child relationships work well. I think you misunderstand what I am saying. I want to raise my kids and I equate their well being with my own (I have been wired to think such through millions of years of evolution). Now if you put me in a situation where society benefits only if I do some harm to my children, or even just put other people's kids above my own, the results will not be good (for society anyway).

I've been using Feedly. At first I didn't like it as much as Google Reader, but it has grown on me. There are some settings to make it more usable, for instance set "index" view as your startpage.

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