rkbabang

I agree that it will be a long time, if ever, before this happens in the most rural areas. It will happen in the densest cities first and move out from there. I think the major population centers (the two coasts almost completely and around the major interior cities) will look like he suggests within the next 20-30 years. There is just no way to profitably run a ride sharing service without a certain population density to support it. I'm not sure what that density is exactly and I suspect that the required density will decrease over time, but it may never be profitable in the most rural areas. Also, just thinking out loud here, this will increase the price of regular human driven automobiles since there will no longer be an economy of scale. Most vehicles will be autonomous, so many manufacturers will stop making human driven vehicles altogether leaving it as a niche product for the few who continue to make them. This will further increase the cost of living in rural areas, which will further the wealth divide and increase the migration to the population centers over time which will exacerbate all these effects in a virtuous/vicious cycle (depending on your point of view).

I agree that it will be a long time, if ever, before this happens in the most rural areas. It will happen in the densest cities first and move out from there. I think the major population centers (the two coasts almost completely and around the major interior cities) will look like he suggests within the next 20-30 years. There is just no way to profitably run a ride sharing service without a certain population density to support it. I'm not sure what that density is exactly and I suspect that the required density will decrease over time, but it may never be profitable in the most rural areas.

It depends on the company. Here's two examples: The largest market cap company I own is AAPL and it would not be possible to go back and read every word of every filing on the SEC website for Apple. This would take a very long time to say the least. The smallest company I own is SYTE and I have read every filing since I've invested and read everything for a number of years back before investing. I always read the annual reports and I try to read a lot of the quarterly financials for all of the companies I own every quarter, but I don't always find the time. I ignore a lot of the other types of filings like insider trades and such especially for the large cap companies.

Autonomous driving, unlike break-even fusion power, is already possible today. The only thing standing in its way now is implementation, costs, and regulations. It isn't like fusion in the 1950's, it is already much further along than fusion still is in 2017.

ayup! http://lmgtfy.com/?q=what+is+an+mmo I remember back before they were "Massive" playing a text based MUD. hack & slash MUD! Absolutely. I remember us MUDers would take over a whole computer lab for the night at school. Basically a room with a bunch of DEC workstations w/ huge 20" monochrome monitors. I never graduated to the graphical MMOs, probably because I graduated and got a job, got married, etc, and got back to the single player game. Was offshore a lot & didn't have internet (lucky 2 find a phone.) Clubbed a lot on time off & gave up online (played stuff like Squad Leader face 2 face) Came back into gaming with a PS2 & Red Faction + FIFA 03, 04 & 05 No time for games any more unless you consider finance a game. The last console I played much was the Atari 2600, although I have played games with my 17yr old son on his PS4 (he kicks my ass all over the place regardless of the game). Interesting. If I ever have some time to kill I'll have to give it a try.

ayup! http://lmgtfy.com/?q=what+is+an+mmo I remember back before they were "Massive" playing a text based MUD. hack & slash MUD! Absolutely. I remember us MUDers would take over a whole computer lab for the night at school. Basically a room with a bunch of DEC workstations w/ huge 20" monochrome monitors. I never graduated to the graphical MMOs, probably because I graduated and got a job, got married, etc, and got back to the single player game.

ayup! http://lmgtfy.com/?q=what+is+an+mmo I remember back before they were "Massive" playing a text based MUD.

Yes. They were hacked (some people think it was an inside job). Holding a balance on an exchange for longer than it takes to make your trades is a bad idea even today. Transfer in, make your trade, and transfer back out. Today this can be done in minutes. Back then with the wire transfers to get $US in/out it was a longer process, but your bitcoin could still be transferred in or out quickly.

It can certainly be played that way, but not if you want to actually ever feel sustainably happy and satisfied and fulfilled, IMO. Wait, I don't get to kill random strangers on the street and jump on their corpses for fun? What kind of game this is? ::) ......... IMO the post makes some good points, but the metaphor used in it is crappy. Single player game does not mean "it's not competitive". Single player game does not mean that you are content. Lots of single player games are competitive and do not result in happy life. Also the image of "single-player game" conjures is that nothing matters but you. Maybe the author has not played many single player games, but yeah there's tons of "get millions in gold, get the castle, get the princess, get the superhuman abilities, get the McMansions" in single player games. Which is not what the author writes about in the article and definitely not what Liberty (and others) preach in terms of family, etc. Edit: Ah, DooDilligence just posted an exact link that "single player game" metaphor conjures in my mind: http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-mental-tricks-getting-over-yourself/ . Solipsism. That's what single player game is. And that's not what author wants to say. ::) Be happy. That is what a single player game can be, but not what it has to be. You are playing a single player game, but you choose how you play. Anything you do for others, in the end, you do because it makes you happy to do so (or at least happier than whatever the alternatives are). Your game starts when you are born and ends when you die, it is single player and takes place entirely inside your head. That doesn't mean you have to be a jerk. If being nice to others makes you happy then you can choose to build your character accordingly.

Happy Bitcoin Pizza Day. That is pretty depressing. I was following bitcoin since it was far less than $1. I remember the excitement on the discussion boards when it achieved "dollar parity". The only way to aquire it was either through mining (which I never looked very closely into) or MtGox which was difficult to setup an account, they only took wire transfers or something, so I too never bought any. I watched it soar to over $1K and then back down. I finally started acquiring some at around $200-$300 per bitcoin. I also choose not to participate in the ETH ICO and didn't start acquiring it until it was between $4-$8. Oh well, such is life. At least I didn't acquire 10K bitcoins (~$22M today) and trade them for a pizza.

BH and I was going to say Blackberry, but it appears to have just gone way up in the past few months.

"One button push will produce all of the current output of 150 million Americans". And an AI will make the decision to push the button and a robot will push it.

Crime just doesn't pay... enough. 8) Even if they somehow get ahold of their $50k they caused an enormous amount of damage for very little reward. It's like a mugger who kills someone for $5 in their wallet. Luckily a 22 year old who still lives with his parents accidentally stopped the attack. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-22-year-old-stopped-global-cyberattack-ransomware-registering-domain-2017-5

There are Bitcoin mixers which can anonymize your Bitcoin, but you could be correct. I am not concerned about the short term price though. If it falls by half or more it won't be the first time nor the last. I plan to hold for a decade or more.

I was just listening to the latest Thaddeus Russell "Unregistered" podcast episode 5 an interview with Daniele Bolelli and there was a good discussion that was relevant to this topic starting at time 59:00 until almost the end. http://www.thaddeusrussell.com/podcast/2017/5/9/episode-5-daniele-bolelli I highly recommend this podcast, some great interviews so far. Also, Thaddeus Russell's book "A Renegade History of The United States" is phenomenal. I can't recommend it enough. It is the history of the US from the point of view of black slaves, prostitutes, various waves of immigrants, drug dealers, gangsters, criminals, etc... Very different from the normal history books which focus on the history of the wealthy and political classes.

+1. I don't think it is necessarily politics per se that is the problem, it is when people get rude and mean. It should be possible to discuss any topic civilly. What distinguishes politics is that it tends to bring out emotional responses, but that doesn't mean that a bunch of intelligent adults can't keep their emotions in check to have a reasonable discussion. I don't blame Sanjeev for locking many of the topics he has locked. The board is working fairly well IMHO. Things can be discussed with minimal to no moderation, but Sanjeev steps in and locks topics only when people start getting out of hand. I'd vote for no changes, except maybe people could make a conscious effort to be more civil when they post. Re-read what you write before hitting post and make sure there are no ad hominem attacks and that you are focusing completely on ideas rather than attacking the other members personally.

I would drop: 1) MSFT 2) FB 3) GOOGL 4) AMZN 5) AAPL I pretty much already live without much MSFT, I have a rarely used windows machine in my office at work, but I use Linux most of the time. And I have a rarely used windows machine powered off in my basement at home, but I use my iMac most of the time. My son uses his Xbox, but I never do. I have no use for this company or its products. I go on FB daily, but I could give it up easier than the bottom 3. As for GOOGL I don't think it would negatively effect my life very much to start using Duck Duck Go for searching the internet. I could switch back from chrome to firefox. I already don't use Android. The only thing I'd miss is YouTube. I do a lot of shopping on AMZN and could you really live if you couldn't access any site hosted on AWS? I'd miss Netflix for sure. My iPhone and my iMac are my primary computing and communicating devices. I would not want to switch to using only windows/linux/android. Of these stocks the only ones I own are AAPL (since 2013) and AMZN (since late 2016). I'd like to own FB and GOOGL at the right price. I have no interest in MSFT.

+1 again SD. I think frontiers are an important part of what humanity requires for progress. Humans don't progress well in large settled groups. People get too comfortable and don't like change and worry too much about safety. Then a small subset of people take advantage of those wants/needs and seek power with promises of fulfilling them. That is when things get bogged down with rules/regulation/taxes/enforcement. Problems are created (real or imagined) solutions are proposed which create more rules and more problems and so on. This is why I am rooting for Musk's Mars plans as well as Patri Friedman's Seasteading ideas. The land mass of the planet is getting smaller (both figuratively and literally) and humanity desperately needs new frontiers.

The human condition. Almost all humans look at themselves in the mirror each morning and think "I look good" yet that's not what everyone else thinks.. this is culture agnostic I think that is more of a male condition than a human condition :) So when I look in the mirror and think I look like hell, I wonder what everyone else is thinking? :0

If you use Fidelity you can create email alerts for stocks you add to your watchlists. I was done with Yahoo when they removed their portfolio transactions feature. Stupid moves by a stupid company with stupid management.

Everyone would listen to me, because I'd put that I have earned 300% per year for 50 years! But seriously I think there would be a lot of performance inflation if this were required.

I'd agree it isn't a complete throw-away. It is a net negative, just not anywhere near -20%. Just like when the mafia keeps drugs and petty crime off the streets, that makes up for some portion of the wealth that business owners are extorted, but it is still a net negative to some extent.

Yes, it created wealth *at the top end* but it also meant a big chunk of the population were disincentivised and unproductive. If it was such a good system for creating wealth, there's a decent chance the south would have been wealthy enough to beat the north. In fact, the north's economy dramatically outperformed the south's and was a major factor in winning the war. Similarly if slavery was an effective economic system great wealth would have been created in feudal Europe; in fact, wealth creation exploded as we moved away from the feudal system. Slavery is a great system for moving wealth from the poor to the rich; it is not a great system for creating wealth, not compared to free trade. Ha! Fair. Although everything is relative: what I meant was that America didn't start with a feudal system and have to waste centuries persuading the lords to give up their serfs. The south had an aristocratic class who was land-rich, but it had little industrial capacity compared to the north. Had the civil war not happened and the south was allowed to leave, the mechanization of farming would have devastated the southern economy and done away with slavery anyway. The southern US is still poorer than the northeast and west coast to this day and the difference would have been even more pronounced had they stayed separate.

I don't know about "won" wars, but the US didn't have cities and infrastructure bombed to the ground in those wars as other countries did. The US came out with its industrial capacity largely unscathed. Most of the rest of the industrialized world had to rebuild, but the US didn't. That is quite a head start into the last half of the 20th century.

That would be my recommendation. I don't know why people feel compelled to discuss politics here - this is and investment board. Granted, politics and investment mix to some extend, but much less than generally presumed. Even Munger said, that politics don't matter much for BRK's business, I don't know why it should matter for us here. That is a little naive I think, I'm not feeling comfortable calling Munger naive, but I stand by that. He should be grateful that he lives and does business in a place where politics doesn't matter much, rather than some other parts of the world that could be mentioned. The problem is that even if you choose not to care about politics, politics can change things which can effect your business.