rkbabang

Inventing something entirely new that no one wants or is willing to buy does not make you great. Creating a product that millions (billions?) of people want and are willing to buy does make you great. Sorry. That is why patents and copyrights shouldn't exist. Having an idea isn't even close to being all that is needed for a successful product. Ideas are a dime/dozen. The ability to take an idea and execute in a way that changes the world is a rare talent that few possess. I put "Apple stole other companies ideas" in the same category as "Led Zeppelin stole the riffs for all of their popular songs from others". It doesn't matter. They took something that sucked and nobody wanted and made it great.

It's October now. Time for an updated Poll.

If the poll was Gates, Jobs, Musk, Bezos, I would have a hard time deciding. The other names don't belong on the same list.

Yep. I've been saying from the beginning that while either result will be a disaster, a Trump presidency will be far more amusing.

I agree with all of that. The only thing the cattle futures incident shows about Hillary is that she either thinks that she is above the law or that she is a hypocrite. Neither of those would be the case if she was on record saying that insider trading laws were immoral and should be repealed. But I guarantee you that if she is elected the federal government will continue to prosecute people for insider trading and she will never utter word one on the issue. The other thing that is ticking me off lately is the people who are making an issue of Trump supposedly not obeying the Cuba trade embargo. I'm no fan of Trump, but if these allegations are true they are heroic and laudable not immoral and deplorable. Trade benefits both sides and any law, rule, or regulation which interferes with trade between anyone anywhere is immoral as it hurts everyone involved. In this case, even though it was an economic negative for the US as well, it hurt the people of Cuba more than the people of the US. Which is why it was done. To the extent that anyone ignores the immoral rule and trades anyway that is a heroic act.

A person's place of birth should not matter, but the Constitution is difficult to change. No need to change the constitution. The wikipedia page summarizes it well: "The U.S. Constitution uses but does not define the phrase "natural born Citizen", and various opinions have been offered over time regarding its precise meaning." Nothing in the constitution says that you must be born in the US on US soil. A common language interpretation would be that if you are a US citizen from birth then you can be president.

I'm a "natural born Citizen" of the US and I don't get it either. The constitution says "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President" Why is someone who is born outside of the US definitely not a "natural born Citizen" of the US? As long as one of your parents is a US Citizen doesn't that make you a "natural born Citizen" regardless of your place of birth? Obama's mother was born in Kansas, that should be the end of the whole issue.

In this election cycle, media opinions like these only further embolden Trump supporters. Exactly. Here is a good story on the backfire effect ( http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/ ) And that is with facts. If people dig in and hold to their beliefs even more strongly after hearing opposing facts, I would think the effect would be even larger after hearing opposing opinion. I've never understood newspaper endorsements anyway. Aren't these news publications supposed to at least try to give the appearance of impartiality (as impossible as that is to achieve in the real world)?

It's amazing what politics does to people's minds. Had Trump never run for president there would absolutely be no one voting for him in this poll with this list of choices. Hillary should have been listed, I bet someone would have voted for her over Bezos and Musk as well. Politics really is mass delusionment, it takes over your brain and shuts down its reasoning capabilities.

Funny, I just realized that Trump is speaking in the town I live in right now. This is the live feed:

That's awesome for him. You could say the same about Biglari, it looks like fun to live like that. None of that means I want him touching my money. By that standard Buffet should have retired 40 years ago and put Hugh Hefner in charge.

I'm more intrigued by the 3 people who have so far voted yes. I'd love to hear the reasoning why they think Trump would make an excellent capital allocator when put in charge of something as large as Berkshire.

I would sell immediately if Trump or Hillary were made CEO. That has nothing to do with the election though. Trump would likely start using the cash to build skyscrapers all over the place with his name on it. And Hillary, who knows what she would do? She has made her fortune in the public sector with no indication that she has any useful skills in the real world whatsoever.

I dunno - As an independent who dislikes both proportionately, this seems like a pretty level-headed analysis of the debate with the exception of his comments about her looking unhealthy. I didn't see that, but he was also on that train long before her coughing fits and unconscious episodes so maybe he really does see more than I do in that regard. At least enough for me to not write him off as crazy for suggesting it. That doesn't mean his outcome will come to fruition, but I understand his argument. Clinton definitely seemed more composed and more prepared, and said things of greater substance. We all knew she would and it hasn't mattered the whole election cycle up to this point. I don't necessarily know why that will suddenly start mattering now. Trump's biggest flaws has been the question "do you really want his finger on the nuke button?" and his "racist" image among minorities. At least one of those was addressed in his performance at the debate while Hillary only told us what we already knew about her. Trump's starting from a lower base and his improvements are easier from here so it's easy to see him gaining in image and support even while "losing" debates on traditional metrics. Trump lost by any objective measure, but if Americans were objective in how we measured these candidates neither one of them would be in the position they're in. If we ignore that metric, which most Americans seem too, Trump probably gained more than Hillary did from his performance, which is all the Dilbert guy is saying. Having not seen the debates I find it interesting listening to people's reaction to them. Conservatives are completely sure that Trump won even though he was too nice to Hillary and Hillary was lying through her teeth about everything. On the other hand liberals are completely sure that Hillary won because she was composed while Trump sounded like an babbling idiot. I'm pretty sure the debate could have been held in Chinese without subtitles and those reactions would be the same on both sides. It really does get old to watch and listen to the whole predictable performance with everyone happily playing their assigned roles in the drama. In most cases in American politics both sides are correct in their assessment of the opposing side.

You lost 90 minutes of your life that you can never get back. I didn't do that to myself. I figured if Hillary passed out or Trump said a racial slur, or it came to blows, etc, I could see the lowlights the next day on youtube.

It depends what you buy I guess. I regularly pay $6/doz eggs from a local farm where I know the chickens are outdoors all day running in the grass. I pay more than $10 lb for grass fed beef, etc. I don't think I'd eat a 8-cent egg from WalMart and the fact that prices of that factory farmed crap are dropping is probably an indication of the demand for such. I agree about Whole Foods, when we go there it is to pick up 1 or 2 things we can't find elsewhere. Anything that is also found at other stores is much cheaper at the other stores. You rarely see someone there with a carriage filled with stuff the way you do at other grocery stores, and they don't even have large carriages. I think they must survive on their prepared food sections, because you always see a ton of people eating there at the tables they have (inside and outside).

Yea, this is not right. No one is saying that insurance companies won't be able to build in margins but they won't be very big. Since insurance is (mostly) a commodity product and there are (fairly) low barriers to entry insurance cos don't have much pricing power. Basically the pricing is driven by the costs. Mainly claims, sales, fraud, and admin. And no, the consumer is not willing to pay up for insurance. The consumer wants the lowest possible price for insurance. I'm also not sure how motivated the insurance companies are to make make this big investment in technology for sensors, etc. If the tech improves pricing efficiency then the consumer gains/ looses by more predictive accuracy of risk but it does not increase the profitability of the pool for the underwriter so there's not much incentive to spend the money. In addition if the current models are pretty good at predicting risk (I think they are) and there is marginal improvement in pricing accuracy -say 5-10% increase in accuracy - the cost of tech won't be worth it for underwriters. I think these things happen gradually over time, and it could be that the customers buy the sensors not the insurance companies. Insurance company provides a potential for up to $S discount for buying and using sensor X, more and more people take up the offer. Then the same for sensor Y and Z and so on. You can see this in the driving sensors that you can have installed on your car. Obviously good drivers will do this, but also some bad drivers may opt to do this and start driving more cautiously for an immediate effect on their rates that would otherwise have taken years of incident free driving to come down. It can not only observe behavior, but change it. Health sensors may be next.

Insurance companies have had hundreds of years to get this right for large group of people. I think the difference is that the sensors will for the first time allow insurance companies to get it right for the individual. Which is moving away from spreading the risk and no longer allowing those who engage in risky behavior to free load on those who do not. Obviously my statement about following it to its logical conclusion is not going to happen in real life, because prediction will never be 100% accurate. But the better insurance companies get at predicting your risk as an individual, the more your individual rates will reflect that risk and the closer you get to that ideal case I mentioned. You can think of insurance rates based on perfect knowledge as a target the way the market approaches the evenly rotating economy. i.e. it never gets there and real world changes in peoples' actions and mother natures' whims move the target continuously. Obviously the better sensors and real time AI predicts every individuals actual risk, the closer the rates will get to that target before it moves. The difference from the past is the focus on each individual in the calculations rather than on large groups.

As prediction models get better, insurance rates will go way down for those least likely to make a claim and way up for those most likely. Followed to its logical conclusion as prediction gets better and better eventually insurance prices will be approximately the same as the expected costs to you if you did not have insurance. People will only be able to insure against things that are completely random and/or very rare.

I can't imagine turning on the TV and listening to that for 4-8 years, but then again I can say the same about Trump. The sad part is that if the Democrats had even a halfway decent candidate that person would be 50pts ahead. And the same could be said about the Republicans against Hillary. Both parties pretty much ran the only candidates who could possibly have a chance of losing to the other.

Find out what he's going to build that huge wall out of and invest in that. And if Hilary wins of course we will all die in a nuclear war, so just sell everything and enjoy what time you have left.

I literally just posted this: Human capital is better educated than ever and can be allocated globally for practically no cost. Technology advances every day. Materials are cheaper to mine, products are cheaper to build and distribute, than ever before. Why should interest rates be high? I'm pretty much theorizing a few reasons why interest rates should be low. I'm pretty sure this directly addresses the discussion. Before that I was taking issue with your observations on inflation, economic activity, etc., which I disagree with. I have no idea as to why certain parties would lend at negative rates. Maybe they're foolish. Maybe they're brilliant. Like Don mentioned earlier, if you're willing to, I'll take you up on it. To the first point, I was making an argument about the US during a certain period of time. Not Japan, not Greece. I put out my theory, it's a theory. Feel free to disagree. To your second point, frankly I have no idea what you're getting at. I'm saying low cost of capital across the value chain (raw materials, productivity gains, cheap transportation, cheap human capital), in real terms, translates into low interest rates. Why individual retirees make asset allocation decisions is completely up to them...Maybe they're lazy and would rather spend the time sunning vs. chasing marginal returns. LC, it's late and I've had a long day and replied to this thread a few time. I can't review everything and I think either you or me have make a mistake. if it was me I apologize. This discussion started with Don's assertion that rates are too low. The stuff about Greece and Japan and retirees was in response to Investor20. On the other stuff I would agree with you until you contradict yourself. You say: Human capital is better educated than ever and can be allocated globally for practically no cost. Technology advances every day. Materials are cheaper to mine, products are cheaper to build and distribute, than ever before. Why should interest rates be high? Yes that is true. Technology advances, but not at a tremendous pace, faster than before. And human capital in indeed cheap. And you are right. Interest rates should be low in this environment. But human capital is cheap because there is slack in the labor market. Which is a sign of an economy below full employment. If we were approaching full employment we would see the inflation rate moving up, which we don't. But you also said the economy is doing great which doesn't jive with the data we have. To summarize what I've said in previous posts: The economy is doing ok, not stellar and things are improving gradually. Rates are not artificially low, they were probably a bit high in the past but now they're maybe somewhere around where they should be (no one really knows what they should be). There is still significant slack but things are on the right track. The US managed the downturn better than most other countries. Most of the credit goes to the Bernake Fed which while woefully unequipped to deal with the situation did everything it could when others were sitting on their hands. I understand the technology argument for lowish interest rates, also people are living longer than ever before which should lengthen time preferences and lower prevailing rates. But I still can't wrap my head around rates <= to 0%. Why would anyone lend rather than hoard at 0%, never mind below 0%? Even your example of Berkshire strikes me as unreasonable, you can guard a warehouse full of money (a lot of money) a lot cheaper than lending it out at -0.05% interest, especially if it is in the tens or hundreds of $Bs. And for lower amounts of money simple vaults would work just fine. You could diversify into metals or low/no expected return, but safe, investments. I can't see anyone choosing lending over hoarding (or other options) at negative interest. Why would you buy a negative interest bond? Only if you thought there would be a bigger fool who would pay you more for it later, which doesn't seem very likely to me if rates are already negative to start with.

I don't see why you would find it so nonsensical. In a situation when people are over levered and have a desire to delever they prefer savings (pay down debt) to goods. This is turns depresses the demand for credit which drives down interest rates and yes if that desire to delever is widespread enough and strong enough it can make the price negative. Also keep in mind that for the people who delever the interest rate is positive because they're paying down debt they've accumulated years ago at higher rates so effectively they're getting a pretty good deal. The theoretical reason why interest rates can't go below zero is that is that you can keep physical cash which pays zero, but physical cash does have carry costs that makes the minimum price for cash below zero how much below we don't know for sure yet. As you can see that's all market driven supply and demand no government. So can you let me borrow $1M at a -5% APR for 30 years or would 50 years be more preferable? Actually if you'd prefer I would be willing to promise to not pay you back and keep accepting your interest payments to me indefinitely.

Even Warren Buffett is confused about about zero interest rates! “You can read Adam Smith, you can read [John Maynard] Keynes, you can read anybody and you can’t find a word to my knowledge on prolonged zero interest rates—that is a phenomenon nobody dreamed would ever happen,” Buffett told CNBC" “That doesn’t mean I think it’s the end of the world when it ends, but I don’t think anybody knows exactly what the full implications” of negative rates will be, he said. “I hope to live long enough to find out,” Buffett said. Even Warren Buffett is confused by negative interest rates http://www.marketwatch.com/story/even-warren-buffett-is-confused-by-negative-interest-rates-2016-04-29 How can Warren Buffett or any one else can know what zero interest rates mean? They are lowest in 5,000 years not just in US, but all of 5,000 years of civilization! Interest Rates Are The Lowest They've Been In 5,000 Years: Bank Of America http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/06/20/interest-rates-negative-yields-debt-supernova_n_10532462.html 0% interest means people have no time preference for money or goods. Negative interest litterally means that people prefer money and goods later rather than sooner and are willing to pay more the longer you keep it from them. It is nonsensical and could never be found in a free market without government force and manipulations.

Interesting that Johnson has more newspaper endorsements than Trump. New Hampshire's largest newspaper just endorsed Johnson on the front page. The first time they've endorsed a non-Republican in over 100 years. http://www.unionleader.com/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/post-politics/wp/2016/09/14/gary-johnson-nets-third-newspaper-endorsement-this-time-in-new-hampshire/