Liberty

Onboard view from the recent pad abort test. 0 to 100 MPH in 1.2 seconds.

Have you guys read Iain M. Banks' early sci-fi stuff? I remember enjoying them quite a bit. Some highlights: Consider Phlebas Player of Games Use of Weapons

I'm not Scott, but here are a few tips: if you're having trouble with something like this, I would recommend training up to it; start with something small, and build up your confidence with small successes. Say 'no' to a small thing first, or reclaim some easier part of your life, then move on to what really gives you trouble. Also, make sure you explain some of your reasoning to people, they can be understanding when things don't seem to come out of nowhere. Also, just for your general well being, learn to stop caring too much about what other people think ( http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/06/taming-mammoth-let-peoples-opinions-run-life.html ). Hope that helps :)

Thanks. I used to read a lot of fiction, but now I pretty much only read non-fiction. I need to free up more time to be able to do both :)

I've only read Cryptonomicon, but liked it quite a bit. Which would you recommend next?

And you can look at how TDG performed during those, including the biggest hits to RPM (revenue-passenger-miles) in recent memory, 2001 and 2008-2009.

In my "to read" pile. Looking forward to it :)

TDG, because of all the proprietary sole-source aftermarket content they have. A good proxy for that is just to look at the margins of the 3 companies you list. TDG has made a bunch of acquisitions that have depressed its EBITDA margins a bit recently, but on a steady state they would be in the mid to high 40s. If they didn't have a moat, those margins would no doubt get eroded by competition.

Solar will crush all fossil fuels eventually, just a question of when. Removing all subsidies on all sides would help it, but hard to do that retroactively, so I'm in favor of helping solar a while longer. http://costofsolar.com/management/uploads/2013/06/price-of-solar-power-drop-graph.jpg

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/18/fossil-fuel-companies-getting-10m-a-minute-in-subsidies-says-imf

Except Denmark and Germany have highest electricity prices in the world. Several times higher then the US. This hurts the poor. So it is much more expensive, while not being that much greener. I didn't say that renewables were cheaper right now, but they'll soon be, and prices are more complex than that. Fossil fuels get lots of direct and indirect subsidies that are paid by taxpayers even if they don't show up on the electricity bill. There's no doubt which way things are going, and you can't get to the endpoint without starting first with the higher cost and transitional period.

Whoever said that utilities are scared and trying to shoot down their new competition had it right. On some days, countries like Denmark and Germany can be almost entirely powered by wind and solar, something that not so long ago the scaremongers said was impossible and the grid couldn't handle. Sure the grid was designed for centralized power. But we can change the grid. We'd still be in horse carriages if we couldn't move forward once in a while...

Thanks for the reminder, that book has been on my to-read list for a while but I still haven't got to it. I'll bump it up :)

Sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good. I'd rather have many extra gigawatts of solar power that are less efficient per unit than not have those and wait around for utilities to pick up the slack. All those extra panels and systems are helping drive us down the price curve through higher volume and everyone will benefit.

http://brooklyninvestor.blogspot.com/2015/05/market-valuation-scatter-plot.html

Exactly. And if someone could reliably forecast currency moves, they wouldn't be sharing their secret sauce in the media, they'd be leveraging up 50x and buying as much as they can.

Every generation says this about its teenagers. But that's a different point from what the article is making. It's not a "get off my lawn" statement to say that those who came of age during the great post-war boom had it easier on average, and lived through more ebulient times than those who did during the great depression and WWII. How that affects the expectations of those who come after is the question. But of course every generation forgets what it's like to be a teenager and complains about kids. That'll never change :D

http://brooklyninvestor.blogspot.ca/2015/05/the-missing-manual-berkshire-hathaway.html

Maybe a "shallow C+" grade fells worse to me than it does to you :) I saw it differently. To me the article is not about the impossibility of doing special things or succeeding. The way they use "you are not special", and imply that you are not "the protagonist of the world's story" means "good things you want won't happen to you just by being you, you have to work for them, it'll require some patience". Hence the graphics showing the expectations of good things happening right from the start. I don't see it as a contradiction, because the article is not about "you have to lower your expectations and aim low", just about "you have to calibrate your expectations and realize that these things don't just happen on their own" and "it's not because your parents had it better than their parents that you'll automatically have it better than yours". I don't really think the article was really about the wannabe rock star syndrome "I want to play guitar and be paid millions but it's not happening waaah waah". I saw it as a more down to earth "I want a nice house and nice things and a fulfilling career right out of the gate". I thought their example of social media was quite on point, but I guess it depends who you follow. I don't really use facebook, but I follow a lot of people (use it as a kind of inbox if they want to direct message me), and a lot of what I see are photos from trips, new cars, weddings, big houses, people having fun, people at sports events and concerts, etc. It's a bit similar to how earlier TV had an impact on people by showing them a life they don't have (notice how every cop in movies lives in a mansion?). I don't think people will explicitly complain about that, but it certainly doesn't help expectations to have this filter that distorts things and shows us an infinite number of people having a good time when our brains have evolved to be in a small tribe and compute social status relatively.

Yes. Both of these are actually very important points. 8) Ok, so you think that if Elon Musk (and people like him) didn't have hugely high expectations and wasn't dissatisfied with reality, that we wouldn't get progress. Does that cleverly destroy the thesis of the article? Meanwhile, the actual article mentions that you should "Stay wildly ambitious" and aim to be a great success and all that. This is not an article extolling the virtues of reduced expectations and lowering the bar. All it says is that to get there you have to work hard for it and shouldn't have unrealistic expectations about being inherently special and deserving of all that as soon as you turn 22. Elon Musk works like crazy for his success and went through very thought times for long periods of time, nothing contradictory here, even though applying a general mental model to one individual isn't the most useful thing anyway. Your second point is that if we don't have expectations, we should be happy, problem solved. Easier said than done. That's not very realistic, as even buddhists monks struggle with that despite working full-time on it. I think a more useful point is to have well calibrated expectations -- most of us here are probably fairly introspective people, and our investing heroes certainly preach that practice, so it's probably not a huge problem. But most people are more 'go with the flow' and look around at what others are doing to see what they should do; I know many people my age (early 30s) who assume it's entirely normal to have a house as big as their parents, with as much luxury (vehicles, electronics, travel, evenings outs), despite their parents having had decades more to accumulate wealth and climb the career ladder. These are their expectations of what is normal for them, and that's causing a problem because they end up buying on credit and finding it hard and that makes them stressed out and unhappy, and feel its unfair that they can't get a wonderful career straight away, etc. Not everyone of course, but it's certainly something widespread. Now we can blame the availability of credit or whatever, and there are certainly multiple factors. But expectations of what they should be able to have and what it takes to get there is near the root of much of this IMO. And I think you are still upset about what I wrote. At least that's how it comes out. I wasn't upset, I just saw those as jokes, not as actual points that needed to be addressed. But now I did anyway since you asked. Will you share your views, please? You alluded to a non-shallow point of view on this, and it has made me curious.

Way to be a hipster and feed your Mammoth* by publicly putting down something that someone else liked without actually saying anything ;) * http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/06/taming-mammoth-let-peoples-opinions-run-life.html What is your non-shallow view of the issue? So you are saying that I cannot express a negative opinion on this forum without writing a dissertation? Ericopoly had two great observations about health and about generalization. I also made two points that you ignored. If you want more thoughts, ask nicely instead of writing snarky replies. Have fun with your expectations. What were your two points? That I should tell Elon Musk and that if expectations are 0 then reality is happiness (as if that was actually a real math equation)? Oh, sorry to not have addressed those. I'm not sure what there is to add. I was merely saying playfully, not in a snarky way, as per the smiley, that putting things down like you did tends to be a social status thing, as pointed out in that other article which I linked (and I assumed you were familiar with, since you are at the point of ranking articles from that site). If you have things to say on the topic, just say them, no need to be a hipster about it.

Way to be a hipster and feed your Mammoth* by publicly putting down something that someone else liked without actually saying anything ;) * http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/06/taming-mammoth-let-peoples-opinions-run-life.html What is your non-shallow view of the issue?

I don't think the article claimed to be an exhaustive list of all things that can lead to unhappiness. They also forgot to mention torture and malnutrition.. Or are you saying you are in poor health Eric? I hope not. I didn't see the article as putting down a generation, and I'm pretty sure the author is part of it (he was in college in early 2000s). To me it feels totally intuitive that we inherit a lot of expectations about what life should be like from our parents, even if not explicitly, and people who were raised by depression and WWII people probably expected life to be a lot harder and tougher than it turned out to be, and the generation that was raised by baby boomers who lived through a great increase in prosperity, social freedom, cultural expansion, technological wonders, etc, probably have significantly higher expectations which can be hard to meet. Knowing this and re-calibrating can be a way to be much happier. None of this is saying that it's bad to want to be special and happy and all that. The article explicitly says that it's great, just that you have to work for it, it doesn't just happen on its own for everyone in their early 20s.

Ostensibly, this is an article about Millennials/Gen Y'ers, but I think it contains a lot of wisdom and mental models that can be useful to everyone. See if it applies to yourself or people you know. Enjoy: http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/09/why-generation-y-yuppies-are-unhappy.html

The Visa Europe transaction is hairy. Currently owned by the European banks, they want to hand off all liabilities to Visa Inc. Similar to the US, the retailers in the European Union want to sue Visa and the banks want Visa Inc. to be liable for these charges (even if it from an earlier time). If you purchase for $20 billion, you could still be liable for another $5 to $10 billion over time. As far as China opening up, based on conversations I have had with people in the payments industry, this is mostly a rubber stamp thing for China. They want to portray themselves as being a free trade economy. However, folks in the payment industry aren't very certain that V/MA can be very profitable. Banks are going to run very hard negotiations given Union Pay's incumbent position. Having said that I am long MA/V since 2010 but at current valuations I am starting to think harder about what to do. Thanks for sharing your current thinking. You are my 'go to' person when it comes to MA/V/PCLN :)