Liberty

I want to follow him, I really do. But I can't follow someone who posts dozens of times a day. Although this quote is pretty arrogant so maybe not following him won't be that hard. +1 I unfollowed him as well, it was getting to be too much. I never read him as arrogant. Those types of messages always sounded tongue in cheek to me. He posts a lot of RE stats and charts that I'm not finding elsewhere, so I'm quite happy to follow him. To each their own.

Yep. Ben Rabidoux has been ringing the alarm bell on those for a while. He's worth following on Twitter, he knows his stuff about Canadian RE.

Let's not forget that Tesla repaid the loan 10 years ahead of schedule: http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/22/autos/tesla-loan-repayment/ I'd be fine with electric cars and solar companies getting not help from the government if we removed all fossil fuels subsidies, direct and indirect (ie. military expenses to protect oil interests), including retroactively. I think that would be a gigantic boon to EVs and solar...

Curious where the USD-CAD ratio will be when the US raises interest rates (no idea when, but it'll be before Canada almost for sure).

I think even the "risk tolerance" and "working in the most fertile areas" aspects underplay things, though they are obviously part of the mix. Genius is often about doing things that other people simply can't do. It's making leaps and connections that wouldn't come to other people, looking at things in new ways, persevering way past the point when everybody else would have given up, etc. It's not just about having a high IQ. I'd bet that almost all the otherwise incredibly smart people out there who don't even try to think big right now, if you gave them unconditional, unlimited resources (lottery winnings, whatever) and a way to hide their failures so there's no social stigma (do your work outside of the public eye rather than publicly like Musk, so if it doesn't work, nobody knows, but if it works, you get the glory) and could make them work in the most fertile areas for big discoveries, they still wouldn't be the people who's names end up in history books. Some might, and on average their contribution to our civilization would go up no doubt about it, but I'm just trying to say that I don't think those two things are the only missing ingredients for most brilliant people to operate on the level of those rare people who change the course of history through the sheer force of their personality and talents.

That's why I pointed out that Musk was working on hard problems that can make a big difference, and that few others even dare to work on. There's a great quote by biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey on this: "It has always appalled me that really bright scientists almost all work in the most competitive fields, the ones in which they are making the least difference. In other words, if they were hit by a truck, the same discovery would be made by somebody else about 10 minutes later." This applies to more than science. So many smart engineers are building Candy Crush apps or working on ways to get people to click on more ads (google, facebook, etc). So many of the most brilliant mathematical minds of our era are working on creating complex derivatives and HFT algorithms on Wall Street. Sure they go where the money is, but I'd say that Musk did pretty well too and he's making a much bigger difference (making a dent in the universe, as Steve Jobs would say).

I think many people just can't accept that some people are just more able than others. They have to find ways to chip away at that. It also boils down to your definition of "better". I think there's a widespread adolescent tendency of focusing tunnel-vision-like on what can be measured (the best guitarist is the one who does the fastest solos, the best programmer is the one who's code routines runs fastest or have the fewest number of bugs or whatever). I used to care about that kind of stuff when I was younger too, but now I don't so much. I'll take a coder who comes up with the idea for the Google algorithm (PageRank) or the hyperlink over the coder who can do fancier math, more complex code and optimizations, and knows more languages but will never do much original or important work in a lifetime. Some people's output is just thousands of times more valuable than others, if not millions, even if pedants will call them "worse" at the mundane parts of whatever field they're in... I'm sure lots of physicists and mathematicians were better at all kinds of math than Albert Einstein or Richard Feynman were, but that's missing the point.

I disagree on a few level, but don't really feel like getting into it since it kinds of come down to how much we think we know these people (to be able to take educated guesses at their motivations, talents, etc).

Here's another possible scenario: A different cryptocurrency catches on (because of a better design, because of some event with Bitcoin, etc).

Absolutely. And even more important than that IMO is realizing that happiness and spending money are different things. Sometimes they can go together, but not nearly as often as most people believe. Only once that link is broken in your mind can you hope to one day truly have "enough".

Sure. But I'm not sure that's really a problem with Musk. He seems very aware of his limitations and of the potential for failure. In interview, he says that he actually thought the more likely outcome for SpaceX was failure, and last year in a bloomberg interview he said that the thought Tesla's stock was overvalued. His focus is always on working harder, doing better, constantly improving. Doesn't sound like one of those entrepreneurs who let success get to their heads and then think they are invincible and everything that they thouch has to turn to gold. That doesn't meant that he'll always succeed, but at least he's working on important and hard problems that can make a difference in the world and that few others dare work on (who needs one more social network of mobile app company?).

Isn't that a macro fund, though? Kind of like Dalio's fund. Different approach. He mostly buys asset classes rather than businesses, afaik.

Very good, thanks for sharing your perspective. In between reading the MMM archives I've read a few of the about pages and foundation posts at ERE and so far I like it. Interesting that the guy was a nuclear astrophysicist, obviously quite smart and erudite.

Are you planning to retire early, or are you just using the tips/philosophy to reduce your expenses? Who here has actually done it (retired early)? Any advice, curveball, etc?

Your friends appear to be hipsters or trying to elevate their social status by looking down on someone that everybody else thinks has high social status, or something like that. Musk worked directly on Zip2 and Paypal, very complex projects (especially for their time). He then became head designer of rockets for SpaceX while running the business side (teaching himself rocketry), while running Tesla and also doing engineering and design work there, for a long time inspecting every single car off the assembly line and financing the company himself (check out the documentary Revenge of the Electric car to see how close they came to failure and how Musk basically kept the company going through sheer strenght of will), meanwhile having the idea that became SolarCity (a company that was created by his cousins, of which he's chairman). Oh, and on his free time, he designed the HyperLoop and released the plans in the public domain and says he has a design for a vertical-landing-and-takeoff electric plane. And he's in early 40s. Some people are good at finding good people and motivating them (Steve Jobs was more like that, though he was also deeply involed), but Musk is definitely up to his neck in the engineering stuff and knows his stuff. Listen to any interviews where someone asks a simple question and he goes off in the weeds on some rocket engine details, or check out his twitter discussions with John Carmack (another programming genius who now builds rockets) about rocket minutia.. Yeah, nothing to be impressed with there...

Have you checked out ERE (Early Retirement Extreme) as well? Next on my list (including the book). What are your thoughts on both MMM and ERE? Are you following the plan (either, both?). Do you prefer one over the other? So far it's mostly stuff I had read years ago in some of the old school versions of this philosophy (Your Money or Your Life, Tightwad Gazette, Simple Dollar, etc), but it's good to refresh the ol' memory and it does provide extra motivation (kind of like reading on value investing, even if the principles don't change).

I've been reading the Mr Money Mustache blog archives from the beginning and I think it could interest some people here (those interested in early retirement, or in tips on how to reduce their expenses). http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/

Nice chart of the past 150 years of oil prices in constant dollars. Gives some perspective:

Yes, thank you for sharing your hard-earned lessons with us Cardboard, I really appreciate it. I made some notes for each of your points in my investment journal, and hopefully rereading it someday will help keep me out of trouble when things have been going too well for a while and I become less careful.

Wild guess: Sanjeev :)

Thanks for giving me your answer to that question.

Ah!... But that would have been impolite and presumptuous! Far from me! I know, that's why I said I thought the phrasing was problematic, and I ignored it the first time. I figured it wasn't what you meant, but then you specifically asked about it so I explained :) I know I said we should drop this, but there's one of the many things that I said that I'm really curious to hear your opinion on. What do you think of this: "If Buffett or Watsa or Munger or Klarman was running single-digit millions, do you think they'd be fully invested [if they saw enough things that met their criteria] or do you think they'd hold cash based on market-timing/macro factors?" Cheers!

I know! That's why I have written: ;) Gio I saw that, I just thought it was kind of a condescending phrasing, as if all I needed to do was read it again, because I didn't understand it the first time, and then I'd of course agree with you... ;)

Anyway, this is redundant, we've already said all this before. Let's drop it.

On the contrary: if you read again “Margin of Safety”, you'll find out that to Klarman the true opportunity cost is suffered by those who don’t have buying power when a great investment opportunity comes around. Because, if the market declines, the value of their whole portfolio will most probably follow suit. Instead, the opportunity cost suffered by those who hold cash is there for everyone to see: 9 years of compounding at 16%, instead of 9 years of compounding at 20% (just a numerical example of course!). Gio I've read margin of safety. What I'm telling you is that if you see good buying opportunities that meet all your criteria now you probably shouldn't hold cash. There might be better buying opportunities later (there can always be), but I'd rather spend years in good investments that create value, and then maybe have to sell cheap things to buy even cheaper things, or buy on margin, then spend potentially productive years sitting on dust gathering cash while I'm seeing opportunities that meet all my criteria. You can very well say that you're not seeing enough things that meet your criteria, and that's fine, but what's the point of having these criteria if you don't buy when you see things that meet them? You can be a market crash fetishist if you want, but that's market timing and that's not how I want to operate because I don't think I can do it. If it works for you, fine.