nsx5200

Bitcoin mining in the states is exploiting a loophole in the uniform billing of electricity in many parts of the states. In other places, where they have time-of-use (TOU), electricity price changes with the supply-demand, so it's actually worth while to shift energy usage towards the cheaper (less demand) part of the day. Many places in the States have fixed pricing that do not change, and only get adjusted periodically, allowing bitcoin miners to leverage the average of the total demand (including the portion that's outside of bitcoin mining), and essentially spread the actual electricity cost to the whole market. This allows for absurd situations like this one: "Bitcoin mines cash in on electricity — by devouring it, selling it, even turning it off — and they cause immense pollution. In many cases, the public pays a price." https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/09/business/bitcoin-mining-electricity-pollution.html Your premise that bitcoin mining runs off unwanted electricity is mostly false. If I wanted to transact on the bitcoin network, would I put up waiting for several hours until the electricity demand has died down for the transaction to go through? The answer is obviously no. To provide a near real-time network, bitcoin network must consume electricity, no matter what the aggregate electricity demand is. Even if there are spare electricity, there are better ways of utilizing it. Storing it would be the best, but plenty of stuff can utilize spare electricity like hydrogen production. Yes, there are plenty of waste in the system already, but adding in one more unnecessary waste that has no added benefit to society/human kind really doesn't help advance humanity.

Thanks. That's a great long-term view of that particular issue, even though that food safety is a long-standing issue within China. It is nevertheless a good way to view contemporary issues. I read somewhere that Charlie Munger gave a speech on China something along the lines of "China, 2000 years in the past, 2000 years into the future". Did anybody run across any of that material? TIA.

https://www.economist.com/china/2024/07/18/fury-erupts-in-china-over-a-food-safety-scandal “A great nation is rising. But it can’t even guarantee the basic safety of cooking oil,” wrote one of many outraged users on Weibo. I think that's a great summary. The race to be the lowest producer of consumer goods, world-swaying military force is not as easy as China make it out to be. The population in China are merely tools for the CCCP to advance their agenda, and if not controlled properly, can turn on the CCCP party. That's the true open-secret: people can easily be enemy for the Chinese government in the long-term. Note that previous whistleblowers to such scandals have not been praised, but have disappeared, or at least been censured, so it's likely these type of issues will continue to pop up. Like previous food scandals, its citizens are forced to devise solutions on their own. Chinese people import milk powder not because they're so prosperous, it's because they're forced to fend for themselves. Journalist have reported increased sale of home oil presses. https://www.nutraingredients-asia.com/Article/2024/04/15/major-infant-nutrition-brands-gaining-market-shares-in-china-despite-shrinking-birth-rates#:~:text=Register here.,Trending ingredients As of last December, the top five English label infant formulas in China in terms of market value share were Aptamil (44.5 per cent), a2 milk (20.6 per cent), Nestle (6.7 per cent), Mead Johnson (4.9 per cent), and Friso (4.2 per cent). In terms of China label products, Feihe took the lead at 21.4 per cent, followed by Yili (9.8 per cent), Aptamil at 7.7 per cent, Friso at 7.2 per cent, and Junlebao at seven per cent, data from Kantar Worldpanel showed.

Cost reduction have already tapered off. The big chunk happened when China got into it a couple decades ago, and lowered the panel cost significantly. It's still a slow grind to get cheaper energy, and we've got to keep an eye on this AI+bitcoin energy suckers as well. Like Charlie, I wouldn't mind if the government bans bitcoin mining. At least AI is actually useful. https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/how-has-the-price-and-efficiency-of-solar-panels-changed-over-time

In my mind, there are plenty of those type of shady actions happening in traditional retail investment space. One side of the house will promote one investment, while the other side of the house will advise, or even dump the same investment. These conflict of interest have dribble in and out of the news, even from the big 'well regarded' investment houses, and AFAIK, no real significant actions were taken against them. Why go after the big fish when the little fishes are easier to catch? The biggest problem with Left is that he didn't grow big enough not to prosecute. Too big to fail, too big to prosecute. Just like in 2008. If anything, I wouldn't mind something like what they did with the tobacco industry. Force anybody that hawks investment to have a standard disclaimer, and possibly have a softer solution like a TrustPilot/Yelp review of sorts that ranks the trustworthiness of their statements. That's just a off the cuff thinking (and I'm no Charlie), so the correct solution may take a few iterations to get right. Hard regulations like always have strange technical loopholes as well as unintended side effects, like people have mentioned above.

That along with Greenblatt's book make me think the SEC is shady and at times ineffective. I'm surprised the courts, with their emphasis on consistency, does not butt head with the SEC more often with such inconsistent enforcement actions. With the overturn of Chevron, I suspect more people will be willing to fight the SEC, and I seriously hope they win, even though it may encourage more fraudsters. Such is the price of liberty.

Eh? How's his action different from Roaring Kitty? Or Fahmi Quadir, Greenblatt or even Elon? Doesn't that type of enforcement also run afoul of freedom of speech? I hope some court quickly slap the inconsistent enforcement behavior of SEC and US prosecutors in the face.

I'd be a bit wary with SCMP, as any independence Hong Kong had is essentially no longer, and SCMP is more or less a mouth piece for the CCP now. The way to properly evaluate that statement is to ask yourself if you would personally move to China yourself, and see where the the people are generally moving; people do not willingly move towards a worse system. To me, US immigration problem is actually a good problem to have. https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-economy-debt-borrowing-33f08b5e?mod=hp_lead_pos7 The issue with an opaque system is that you need to double-check the official figures to get a more realistic figure, whereas a more transparent system can be trusted more. The disadvantages of a top-down government are fairly well known, and with Xi in power, I suspect there's not a huge desire to push that power towards the people. Not saying the democratic/capitalistic system is perfect, but looking at the trend, China's moving further towards a top-down system, and we know how that turned out in the case of USSR. I would claim that China's huge growth in the past decades was a result from Deng's effort to push a lot of that power towards the people, which is currently being rolled back. The opaque plenum top-down meeting is where the feedback and course correction happens, so I'm looking forward to see the outcome of that. The good thing about a democratic system is that it's a system created by the people to solve the issues for the people as it's primary mission. Whereas an authoritarian system's primary mission is to keep the authority in power. Solving issues for the people works only to further its primary mission. Maybe I drank the kool-aid and am seeing through tainted lens.

I don't know about heading the right or wrong direction, but social discourse, IMHO, is a sign of a healthy democracy. Without social discourse, it's less feedback mechanism for society to improve. All those concerns are very valid points against western society, but I don't think they're solely the product of western society/value. There are stories in China where people are so distrustful of the fallen that they don't even dare try to help them (https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-34612516). Current democratic/capitalistic society is not without issues, and it'll get worse as the trend toward fully mechanization/automation becomes a reality. We'll need discourses to correct them. Exposing the issue is the first step in correcting them and I'm glad somebody took the time to list them so that they can be addressed. I think the proper way to evaluate these contemporary issues is to take a step back, and look at it from a 20+ year span, and the perspective changes significantly.

When a government needs to resort to censorship, even for something as innocuous as Youtube, to control the thinking of its people, I'd be very skeptical of what it pushes. Corruption crackdown, viewed in a different light, is a mask for the removal of political adversaries. I'm not saying that's what happened in China, but it's important to keep that in mind, as there's not enough evidence one way or another to say which one is which, from my limited point of view. Not saying that the mass media in the free world doesn't have bias leaning, but given the choice... you know what the 'correct' solution is.

That's the propaganda portion. The real power is not with people with capital, but with people with connections to the CCP party(and thus government positions). I don't have articles references on it, but I've been watching Youtube videos where children of government official describe that type of system. Government officials are essentially mini-kings over their 'area of responsibility', and senior official holds similar power over less senior officials. So the meritocracy is actually an autocracy. We've seen the result of that in their seemingly arbitrary decision to completely close and re-open to handle COVID, and not really based on a consistent transparent approach. We're currently seeing their opaque approach to addressing their current real estate issue. Maybe they do have a method to their madness that can eventually solve their issue, but it's really not transparent. Same thing with how they dealt with Qin Gang... well. Actions speaks louder than... dare I say propaganda?

At this rate, our best bet is to have our resident real estate expert get together, and we can all pool together some money to buy out a nice building. BLF have their flashlights, COBF will have our buildings.

Yet China's rich are leaving the country... https://www.newsweek.com/china-millionaires-leaving-country-1916427 With the kind of propaganda that China can push, and does push, I'm always wary to read articles that pushes only the positive of China. I find that the action of the people speaks much louder than any article/opinion. Just ask any North Korean outside of North Korea.

I think a lot of the great investors park their cash at BRK, so I've been doing that. What did you pick up with the sell?

My buy limit price got triggered, and caught some baby Berkshire.

I wasn't old/wise enough to analyze/understand it back then, but I believe that was how MCI was able to absorb so many companies before it imploded (that and it cooked its own books). Some things never change.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amur_Annexation They're realists. If Chinese government weren't in such poor relationship with the rest of the world, China would've already recovered if not negotiated the recovery of the huge land mass around Amur by now. Why muck with a few tiny islands in the southeast when they can recover more land mass, as well as 'righting past wrongs' from past unequal treaties. This probably summarize the CCP government's attitude the best https://www.voanews.com/a/ukrainian-youtuber-finds-her-ai-clone-selling-russian-goods-on-chinese-internet-/7509009.html They're like the two prisoners in the prisoner's dilemma currently in an unstable but optimal state. It's probably just a matter of time until it transitions to a more stable state (ironically, the more stable state is actual real instability for either countries).

Kids are fun. We had twins first (twins are always unexpected), and then we had another unexpected singleton. No regrets. I read some study saying that parents are always less happier with kids, but when you ask them about it, they all say it's worth it. I guess we're all just a little bit of masochist inside. Yeah, the one thing that I regret was not having enough photos of them when they were young (and I took a lot). In the future, all the little one's life will be recorded almost constantly, and the AI will pick out the interesting parts for us to look at. There is a market for that, I guarantee it.

Just curious. Why the third? Trying to understand if there's something magical about the third that you're not getting with two.

TBH, I think even at $100 lifetime is a bargain. I think Parsad is going for the bigger moat instead of more traffic, Costco style. Thumbs up.

TYSM for your insights. I'm still stuck in the conventional job mindset, and need to nudge myself to cross that threshold. At I think I have an exit plan in place... whether I take that leap of faith and execute it may be a different beast. In regards to being "righteousness", my TLDR version is that most people are steered into default decisions, and we should not fault them too much for them. IMHO, the system has a huge influence on how people behave, based on the results from the Stanford Prison Experiment. But ultimately, people have the final choice. For example, if people are born into a poor family/system with few resources to hoist them into middle class, it doesn't mean they can't work harder to better situate themselves. It does mean they almost have to work harder than most to get at to average. The same thing can be seen with food choices as well. When grocery stores are 80% filled with processed food, somebody who's trying to eat healthy must work harder to figure out what is actually healthier. We see it everywhere in life that systems pushes the mass to do certain things, and most people do them without thinking about it. It takes effort to actually figure out what is optimal for themselves.

For those that was able to 'retire early', any regrets not retiring earlier? https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/05/31/way-hermit-ken-smith-book-review/ "So what has he learned, in a lifetime alone? His opinions about his life decisions remain firm: “I’ve spent the majority of my life living outside the conventions of mainstream society, and I’ll tell you what I think is weird, and it ain’t the hermit. It’s how entire generations of people have been conned into believing that there is only one way to live, and that’s on-grid, in deepening debt, working on products you’ll probably never use, to line the pockets of people you’ll never meet, just so you might be able to get enough money together to buy a load of crap you don’t need, or, if you’re lucky, have a holiday that takes you to a place, like where I live, for a week of the happiness I feel every day.”

@Charlie, this is what started it all for me: If you like what he says, you can go find his book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12921211-search-inside-yourself I like that he explains the science and reasoning on meditation from an rational point of view and not just some feel good reason. @frommi, the lessons you described is captured in https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49814228-the-biggest-bluff. In a mostly chance game, it's easy to take away the wrong lessons just because you happen to be lucky (at least for a short while). There are a lot of interesting psychology nuggets in there as well, which I think is applicable to investing as well.

Wow. I was trying to start a new thread, and found this instead, and thought it's an appropriate place to revisit this, seeing the OP was started about a decade ago. This is essentially asking the same question, but a slightly different take: Now that you've 'made' it (however you want to define it), what would you wish you had done when you were younger in regards to making spending/savings tradeoffs? This assumes when you were younger, you had to trade off spending less to get more saving. Was it worth it 10-20-30+ years later? If you were younger, what would be worth robbing the future self to pay your current self, or the opposite, what should you have gifted your future self by depriving your current self? I'll start with some of mine: No regret: 'Splurging' on trips traveling with my wife pre-kids. So much fun. Was able to do occasional long weekend trips to Europe, and splurged on more exotic cruises that checked off so many things on the list. The small regret is probably not doing a bit more. No regret: Small splurging of time and resources on the little ones. Spend to make sure things are done right. So so worth it when they're young. Regret: Not learning about health and the forces driving it from big sugar/processed food/farm until it's harder to fight it with more exercise and better diet through higher quality but more costly food. Regret: Not discovering meditation earlier. Could've gone through a significant chunk of my life less angry, and but it does cost time. No need to spend for some fancy app/class but do need to be consistent to really make a difference. To me, this was one of the many significant life-changer for me. Once practiced past a certain point, it's bliss on tap (amongst other benefits).

This is probably apt: "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist" - John Maynard Keynes The same concept is probably relevant to the cloud/social media as well. Except the defunct economists are now the still-alive tech moguls. Nothing's terribly wrong with ignorance is bliss, as that is the default mode, but there are probably better ways.