rkbabang

Scott Adams this morning: "The election is over." He was talking about her health back in December that was long before anyone else as far as I know. http://blog.dilbert.com/post/150284922631/checking-my-predictions-about-clintons-health

According to Scott Adams it has. http://blog.dilbert.com/post/150264994381/the-race-for-president-is-probably-over

I think that just goes without saying. By the way when I posted the link to the Penn Jillette interview here http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/if-american-who-will-you-vote-for/msg273773/#msg273773 and said that his analysis was correct, I was implicitly saying that Trump is a moron. If you listen to the interview he basically states (in so many words) that Trump is a stupid moron and Hilary is an evil and dangerous war monger and lier.

I'll tell you what. Say what you want about Scott Adams, but he has been 100% correct about how this campaign would turn out so far. He was saying that Trump was going to win the nomination and then the presidency (and his reasoning was spot on. HINT: he doesn't support Trump) way back in August of 2015 when almost everyone thought even his run for the nomination was a joke. He was also talking about Hillary's health long before even the Republican press. It is almost like someone gave him an advance copy of how this whole election show was going to play out.

To me, it's not funny to expose an innocent child to an infectious disease. Nice try. If you can't respond to the message, attack the messenger. Is it not worth it to die knowing you've met Hillary? Hillary must think so anyway.

This election is great. Future generations will have to read about the decline and fall of the US in their history books, but we will all get to live through it and witness it first hand. May you live in interesting times.

I guess the Washington Post is now reporting conspiracy theories as if they are facts? https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/11/hillary-clintons-health-just-became-a-real-issue-in-the-presidential-campaign/

While I tend to agree with you, I also tend to cut people some slack online. The friends you are talking about you probably know in person. It is much easier to get angry at text on a screen than it is to get angry at an actual human being standing in front of you. This is the same reason that if a person almost bumps into you while you are both walking you tend to be very nice and even laugh about it, but someone cuts you off in traffic you get pissed (or many people do anyway). It is much easier to get angry at an automobile than a live person standing in front of you.

Regulations (all regulations) are always created to benefit the corporations who own the politicians. This is how the system works. Liberals have never understood this and for all their anti-corporatist talk, they are the biggest pushers of corporatist/crony-capitalist policies. The liberal mind can be summed up as follows: Intentions matter more than results. Actually helping the sick and the poor doesn't matter at all as long as you intended to help them. Pushing policies that create a corporatist/crony-capitalist oligarchy is ok as long as you intended the opposite. Socialists of all stripes never learned where the road paved with good intentions leads. Yes...some regulations are required, but complicated rules do help large companies. See the pitch for TNET in VIC. https://www.valueinvestorsclub.com/idea/TRINET_GROUP_INC/137466 "Obamacare and other government involvement in US healthcare increase the complexity and bureaucracy of the system. Newly instituted penalties makes mistakes costly when rules are not followed. All of the above means more business for TNET. Over the last three years the numbers of worksite employees (industry jargon for employees under TNET’s care) it serves grew in the mid-teens." The regulations that are "required" (which is debatable, but may be true) should be specifically debated and voted on by congress, one at a time and passed into law and signed by the president. Just like congress gave up its power to declare war to the president, congress has given up its power to regulate to unconstitutional (IMHO) regulatory agencies which publish regulations by the 100s of thousands, are answerable to no one, and are completely in bed with large businesses at the direct expense of small business, would be entrepreneurs, and consumers.

Regulations (all regulations) are always created to benefit the corporations who own the politicians. This is how the system works. Liberals have never understood this and for all their anti-corporatist talk, they are the biggest pushers of corporatist/crony-capitalist policies. The liberal mind can be summed up as follows: Intentions matter more than results. Actually helping the sick and the poor doesn't matter at all as long as you intended to help them. Pushing policies that create a corporatist/crony-capitalist oligarchy is ok as long as you intended the opposite. Socialists of all stripes never learned where the road paved with good intentions leads.

Just one comment on the "Trump would do X" and "Hillary would do Y" type arguments. They are not running for dictator. What you mean is that they would sign those bills if congress chose to pass them and put them on their desk. It is a good think most of the time that the president can't do what they want to. The exception to this is the military, because congress has forfeited its power to declare war to the president and that has been a disaster.

But how about Angela Merkel's disastrous refugee policies that changed the lives of so many German people? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Year%27s_Eve_sexual_assaults_in_Germany 1200 women were raped publicly on the street. Their lives were forever changed. And this is just one incident. Smaller crimes happen almost everyday in Germany now. Yes, the Bush/Obama war on terror has been a horrendous nightmare in so many ways.

Just a correction, Scott Adams is not pro-Trump. He predicted that Trump will win, but that isn't the same as being pro-Trump. I predict Hillary is going to win, but I am not pro-Hillary.

Here's a good interview with Penn Jillette. His analysis of Trump and Clinton are spot on 100%. It is a long interview, but they discuss politics first. They go on to talk about his weight loss, then Bob Dylan, and other topics after that.

This is an excellent article. I think cryptocurrencies or blockchain tech in general may be something that will fall into this category someday. Maybe SpaceX's reusable rockets? Google's autonomous cars? When You Change the World and No One Notices http://www.collaborativefund.com/assets/VG.png

An Englishman, a Scotsman, an Irishman, a Welshman, a Latvian, a Turk, a German, an Indian, several Americans (including a Hawaiian and an Alaskan), an Argentinean, a Dane, an Australian, a Slovak, an Egyptian, a Japanese, a Moroccan, a Frenchman, a New Zealander, a Spaniard, a Russian, a Guatemalan, a Colombian, a Pakistani, a Malaysian, a Croatian, a Uzbek, a Cypriot, a Pole, a Lithuanian, a Chinese, a Sri Lankan, a Lebanese, a Cayman Islander, a Ugandan, a Vietnamese, a Korean, a Uruguayan, a Czech, an Icelander, a Mexican, a Finn, a Honduran, a Panamanian, an Andorran, an Israeli, a Venezuelan, an Iranian, a Fijian, a Peruvian, an Estonian, a Syrian, a Brazilian, a Portuguese, a Liechtensteiner, a Mongolian, a Hungarian, a Canadian, a Moldovan, a Haitian, a Norfolk Islander, a Macedonian, a Bolivian, a Cook Islander, a Tajikistani, a Samoan, an Armenian, an Aruban, an Albanian, a Greenlander, a Micronesian, a Virgin Islander, a Georgian, a Bahaman, a Belarusian, a Cuban, a Tongan, a Cambodian, a Canadian, a Qatari, an Azerbaijani, a Romanian, a Chilean, a Jamaican, a Filipino, a Ukrainian, a Dutchman, a Ecuadorian, a Costa Rican, a Swede, a Bulgarian, a Serb, a Swiss, a Greek, a Belgian, a Singaporean, an Italian, a Norwegian, and 2 South Africans ... ... all walk into a fine upscale restaurant. "I'm sorry," says the maître d', after scrutinizing the group. "You can't come in here without a Thai."

"live downtown", which is why this is possible for you. You can't live in the suburbs (never mind rural areas) without owning a car. Even most small cities aren't as livable for the carless as the larger ones are. If I lived and worked in a large city I wouldn't own a car either. The thing about cities is that the easier the city is to live in without owning a car the more difficult, inconvenient, and expensive it is to actually own a car if you wanted to. If you lived in Manhattan it would be incredibly inconvenient and expensive to own a vehicle, never mind 2-4 of them as most suburbanites do. This is a good indication of what will happen when car ownership becomes rare everywhere. The fewer people who own their own vehicles in an area over time the more and more inconvenient and expensive continuing to own one yourself will become. Parking lots/garages will start getting smaller or disappearing as land is developed for its best marginal use, even in the suburbs you will see large shopping centers with very little parking capacity as acres of land dedicated for parking will just be a waste of money. City streets will have more space for pickup/drop off only stopping (5 min parking only) and less for leaving your car there for a long time. Development will proceed in a direction with the assumption that people don't own their own cars and need places to park them.

Wha? How do you figure that? Maybe if you distributed the demand across the entire day. But that's not an accurate way to look at it. Most people need transportation at roughly the same time as most other people. Commuting to work, commuting back from work are the two main times that come to mind. How are you supposed to spread your 3 cars across 30-40 people for a morning commute? Simply doesn't make sense. Also, you're assuming that once autonomous cars hit mainstream, everyone will want to car-share. Huge assumption that I simply don't think will be the case. I think plenty of people will still want to own their own car. I also think your longevity assumptions of 600k to 1mm miles are way out of whack. I think your assumptions and the conclusion you've drawn are absolutely insane. Ya I kinda echo your thoughts. Now I haven't read all of this thread, but where did this the rationale that we will want to own less cars come from? Are you saying empty driverless cars will come pick up passengers? I am a carless person. But I will buy a car if it is driverless and economical. So me as a datapoint says that cars will increase. The fundemental change of driverless cars is it allows people to drive who cannot or don't want to drive. So it will mean more cars on the road. How can there be more cars on the road and less cars? I disagree with both of you. Do you have teenage children? My kids don't even want to drive, neither do any of their friends. My son just got his license and I practically had to force him to get it. Yes in 10 years there will still be a bunch of old people driving their own cars (you and me included), but this will diminish every year as these people die off or get too old to drive. 30 years from now there will be almost no human drivers on the road. In 30 years anyone under 50 will look at a car with a steering wheel the way millennials look at CD Walkmans today. "What the hell is that for?". bang, did you read my post carefully? I told you I am w/o a car! I am not like you and I won't be driving when I am old, I am not even driving now! I bet I hate driving as much as your son, or even worse. But driving is an orthogonal issue to ownership. I hate driving but I love being a passenger. I have a GF who drives me everyday but that may change, a driverless car is like having a woman driving me around w/o the issues and the mood swings! I ride a bike, take the train and get a ride to work everyday. If I took uber how will that work? Will all ride sharing cars be able to support my bike? It is so much better to have my own driverless car, with a dedicated compartment in the back for my bike. How do you get to your in-laws who live five hours away? Or your parents who live 2.5 hours away? In both cases there are zero trains, and a flight for a family of five is well into the thousands verses a $50 tank of gas. And it takes as long or longer with security. I don't drive much, but I do have a truck. I have a late model Tacoma that allows me to run errands as needed, and also haul things as needed. It was not very expensive so I'm alright with it mostly sitting idle. My wife drives a lot, with kids it's unavoidable. We walk them to school, but it would be impossible for them to ride a bike to soccer practice. The terrain is very hilly here, and it's a 20m car drive, maybe 45m-1hr for an adult to bike, almost impossible for a kid.. If we lived in NYC or SF or Toronto like most do on here and all family lived in a big city as well I can see how going carless is easy. You take the train, or you fly. Or maybe on the rare chance you venture outside of an urban area you Uber. In fly-over-land (Western Pennsylvania) there isn't the infrastructure to support this. There are trains and some busses, but they're only for commuting. I have no idea if my kids will want to drive. They're too small. One of them loves jeeps and off-roading vehicles, maybe he'll have a mud slinging truck. Maybe I'll be a dinosaur driving, who knows, I accept it. I just wonder how where we live would support all of these extra cars. Think of the traffic jams leaving a high school football game. You'd have a jam of cars trying to get there at the same time, then all leave to go pick other people up, then all come back at the same time and leave again. Where we're at it isn't nice four lane roads with turning lanes. It's twisty little hilly streets that can't be widened. I think the AV car revolution will hit the coastal urban areas first then take another 15-20 years to trickle throughout the rest of the country. It's probably better that way, traffic is an issue in Manhattan, it's not an issue in Paducah, KY. I'm sure you are correct about hitting the high population density regions first and the rural areas much later. It will role out in much the same way Uber has/is. I'm sure if you live in the middle of nowhere with corn fields as far as the eye can see you couldn't easily call for an Uber driver right now.

Wha? How do you figure that? Maybe if you distributed the demand across the entire day. But that's not an accurate way to look at it. Most people need transportation at roughly the same time as most other people. Commuting to work, commuting back from work are the two main times that come to mind. How are you supposed to spread your 3 cars across 30-40 people for a morning commute? Simply doesn't make sense. Also, you're assuming that once autonomous cars hit mainstream, everyone will want to car-share. Huge assumption that I simply don't think will be the case. I think plenty of people will still want to own their own car. I also think your longevity assumptions of 600k to 1mm miles are way out of whack. I think your assumptions and the conclusion you've drawn are absolutely insane. Ya I kinda echo your thoughts. Now I haven't read all of this thread, but where did this the rationale that we will want to own less cars come from? Are you saying empty driverless cars will come pick up passengers? I am a carless person. But I will buy a car if it is driverless and economical. So me as a datapoint says that cars will increase. The fundemental change of driverless cars is it allows people to drive who cannot or don't want to drive. So it will mean more cars on the road. How can there be more cars on the road and less cars? I disagree with both of you. Do you have teenage children? My kids don't even want to drive, neither do any of their friends. My son just got his license and I practically had to force him to get it. Yes in 10 years there will still be a bunch of old people driving their own cars (you and me included), but this will diminish every year as these people die off or get too old to drive. 30 years from now there will be almost no human drivers on the road. In 30 years anyone under 50 will look at a car with a steering wheel the way millennials look at CD Walkmans today. "What the hell is that for?". bang, did you read my post carefully? I told you I am w/o a car! I am not like you and I won't be driving when I am old, I am not even driving now! I bet I hate driving as much as your son, or even worse. But driving is an orthogonal issue to ownership. I hate driving but I love being a passenger. I have a GF who drives me everyday but that may change, a driverless car is like having a woman driving me around w/o the issues and the mood swings! I ride a bike, take the train and get a ride to work everyday. If I took uber how will that work? Will all ride sharing cars be able to support my bike? It is so much better to have my own driverless car, with a dedicated compartment in the back for my bike. I did somehow miss where you said you are a carless person. At first many people might buy driverless cars, but it will be so much more expensive than using the car services companies that car ownership will fall drastically over time. I'm sure there will be many different types of car services available. If you want to share rides with strangers to reduce your costs further that will be available, if you'd rather ride alone directly to your destination that will be available as well. And and many different vehicles to pick from as well: from bare-bones to luxury; from one person with no storage; all the way up to big 100+ft long triple trailer semi. If you want a one person vehicle with a bike rack, I'm sure that will be available when you need it.

Lol. That's going to be my problem. I get carsick unless I'm in the front seat. Unless they develop some technology to eliminate inertia, I am never going to be productive in the car - driver or not ;) You can request the car with the phony steering wheel in the front so that you can pretend you're driving. :) I know someone who has control issues and won't ride in any vehicle that he isn't driving. He refuses to go on planes, busses, boats (unless he's driving), cars (unless he's driving), or trains. I wonder how he'll feel about driverless cars, I'll have to ask him sometime.

Wha? How do you figure that? Maybe if you distributed the demand across the entire day. But that's not an accurate way to look at it. Most people need transportation at roughly the same time as most other people. Commuting to work, commuting back from work are the two main times that come to mind. How are you supposed to spread your 3 cars across 30-40 people for a morning commute? Simply doesn't make sense. Also, you're assuming that once autonomous cars hit mainstream, everyone will want to car-share. Huge assumption that I simply don't think will be the case. I think plenty of people will still want to own their own car. I also think your longevity assumptions of 600k to 1mm miles are way out of whack. I think your assumptions and the conclusion you've drawn are absolutely insane. Ya I kinda echo your thoughts. Now I haven't read all of this thread, but where did this the rationale that we will want to own less cars come from? Are you saying empty driverless cars will come pick up passengers? I am a carless person. But I will buy a car if it is driverless and economical. So me as a datapoint says that cars will increase. The fundemental change of driverless cars is it allows people to drive who cannot or don't want to drive. So it will mean more cars on the road. How can there be more cars on the road and less cars? The main benefits of driverless cars are cost (don't need to pay a driver), safety (lower error rate than human), and cloud control (efficient swarm management). Progress toward these goals has already been achieved by ride-hailing services. I think that car ownership WILL decline significantly in the future. There's no reason for a vehicle to sit parked in a garage when it could be doing useful work. Let's face it - if you could satisfy your transportation needs for $5-10 per day without owning a car, why would you own one? In some cities people are already close to this, but the problem is if you want to take a road trip or drive to the airport you still need a car. It's a bit like the US road system before the interstates were built - we don't have uniform service. The cost of service is still too high for some Uber driver to be wandering out in rural Kentucky. Once vehicles are driverless, the cost may well be low enough. Exactly. The AI prediction algorithms are going to know your schedule better than you do. 90% of the time when you go to call a car (however that is done, smart phones or some wearable or glasses, etc) you are going to look out your window to see it already waiting for you. As far as luxury, I'm sure there will be different classes of car services. The rich riding in the back seat of a fancy car (or carriage) and leaving the driving to someone else is not exactly unprecedented in human history.

Wha? How do you figure that? Maybe if you distributed the demand across the entire day. But that's not an accurate way to look at it. Most people need transportation at roughly the same time as most other people. Commuting to work, commuting back from work are the two main times that come to mind. How are you supposed to spread your 3 cars across 30-40 people for a morning commute? Simply doesn't make sense. Also, you're assuming that once autonomous cars hit mainstream, everyone will want to car-share. Huge assumption that I simply don't think will be the case. I think plenty of people will still want to own their own car. I also think your longevity assumptions of 600k to 1mm miles are way out of whack. I think your assumptions and the conclusion you've drawn are absolutely insane. Ya I kinda echo your thoughts. Now I haven't read all of this thread, but where did this the rationale that we will want to own less cars come from? Are you saying empty driverless cars will come pick up passengers? I am a carless person. But I will buy a car if it is driverless and economical. So me as a datapoint says that cars will increase. The fundemental change of driverless cars is it allows people to drive who cannot or don't want to drive. So it will mean more cars on the road. How can there be more cars on the road and less cars? I disagree with both of you. Do you have teenage children? My kids don't even want to drive, neither do any of their friends. My son just got his license and I practically had to force him to get it. Yes in 10 years there will still be a bunch of old people driving their own cars (you and me included), but this will diminish every year as these people die off or get too old to drive. 30 years from now there will be almost no human drivers on the road. In 30 years anyone under 50 will look at a car with a steering wheel the way millennials look at CD Walkmans today. "What the hell is that for?".

What's the difference in the reasoning between: "The polls are validating that approach", so the majority must be right AND Market efficient hypothesis: The stock price always reflect all fundamentals. If you think the stock is undervalued or overvalued, you must be wrong. The market must be right. So why are you on this value investing board? :) +1 The market in the short term is a voting machine and in the long term a weighing machine. Unfortunately the democratic process is always a voting machine and works as well as you would expect.

Hmm, I'm somewhat in the camp that the number of cars produced won't likely go down much. Very very optimistically (or pessimistically?) to 1/2 of current. I see proportionally more smaller cars - almost nobody needs four-seater taxi - but I don't see why you think the production will drop so much. Can you walk through your thinking and numbers? My thinking follows the discussion on FCAU thread (I think): The number of miles driven is unlikely to go down (I still have to do all my driving legs even if I call self-driving-Uber). It might even go up if cars have to drive empty to pick next person and if people switch from busses to self-driving-Uber. Assuming number-of-miles-driven doesn't go down, it doesn't matter that person does not buy a car. The car wears out from being driven. So replacement cycle based on miles driven won't change (much). There is some replacement from cars being old but not driven much, but that's likely what 10-20% of replacement? So OK, let's go all the way and say 50% of replacement gone. That's where we get to 1/2 of current. Maybe you can argue that electric/automatic cars don't wear out at 200K miles driven, but I'm not sure that's true... Anyway, I don't see cars going to 1/10 even in wildly optimistic (pessimistic?) scenarios. :) I'm not talking about possibility that something else replaces the car concept way long term. I think fleet owners will take better care of their fleets than private owners do, and will be much more concerned about the longevity of the vehicles they purchase than private owners now are (look how many people are still buying GM vehicles ;)). Also if most are electric cars with less maintenance required and better built for the requirements of the industrial fleets, I don't think it would be a stretch for a vehicle to last 600K-1M miles on average (through multiple battery replacements). The entire market will change drastically when vehicles are a business to business product and no longer a consumer item. Tractor trailers regularly last in excess of 1M miles today. Also I think you overestimate the number of vehicles required on the road at any given time. Take my house, I have 3 vehicles (my son drives now as well) and they are sitting parked for the vast majority of the time 95+% I'd estimate. You could serve the needs of 30-40 people with the 3 vehicles that just serve my family. You are also correct about the average size. You will still need to call up a truck once in awhile to carry something large or a 5 seater to go out with the family, but the vast majority of the time a car only has 1 occupant and no passengers. Most cars on the road will resemble Smart cars rather than Range Rovers or F150s. I might be a little optimistic with 1/10 or 1/100, I don't know, but I think 1/2 is way too pessimistic unless we somehow experience greater population growth than expected or autonomous cars cause people to travel a lot more. This is something I hadn't thought about, but it could be the case. Autonomous cars represent a much more efficient use of resources, so they will be quite a bit cheaper to utilize than owning your own vehicle is today. Also there will be no age restrictions or reaction time requirements. You may just pack your 10 year old in a car to grandma's house while you take a different car somewhere else. Or you may send a car to pick up grandma who is 93 and wouldn't be able to drive herself. A lower income family of 6 could all get in 6 different cars at the same time where now they would be lucky to afford one vehicle. The market will be very different from what it is now, I'm not sure we can know exactly what it will look like, but I think all and all there will be much fewer cars needed than now.

"disruptive technologies move very quickly" They do and this will apply to automated vehicles as well as electric vehicles (maybe more so, since automation isn't limited by battery technology). Fully autonomous vehicles will reduce the number of cars on the road by a huge amount. I'd predict a factor of 10 at first then by a factor of 100+. 90M cars/year could be 9M/year in the mid-term and 900K in the long-term.