Liberty

Congrats, nice pick.

It happens. http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/12/24/us/25sludge2_600.JPG Coal ash spill..

You're leaving part of the story out. The problem wasn't that it was funding research. The problem was that it was bogus research, with the only purpose of creating doubt and uncertainty in the minds of people, which is basically what the tobacco industry tried to do when science first came out about the harm of cigarettes. I think scientists' problem is not that there are those who don't agree with the consensus. It's that a lot of groups (incl. media) will give as much weight if not more weight to that 1% of dissenters as to the 99% others, and then pretend "well, it's undecided, we just don't know." There's always some people who disagree about everything, including flat earthers and moon landing hoaxers and plate tectonic skeptics and such, but it doesn't make the science any less settled until one of these dissenters comes out with strong enough evidence to show that they actually are right. Until they do that, the strongest evidence wins. The reason why there are over 90% of people who agree is not because they have more friends and have winning smiles, it's because in the eyes of the other experts, their evidence is much stronger. Anyway, I'm done with this thread, I don't feel much is being accomplished anyway.

Agalio, China today has technology infinitely more advanced than when the US passed the first coal laws. http://www.takepart.com/photos/amazing-photos-show-1940s-pittsburgh-blanketed-air-pollution/the-collection Technology allows things to get cleaner, but because the costs of all this is harm are externalized and diffused, while the benefits are concentrated and polluters don't pay the price, it often takes regulation to make things happen. Just like it's started to now happen in China and happened everywhere else that got significantly cleaner. So tech is necessary, but not sufficient for a lot of progress on that front. Same with leaded gasoline. It might not have been possible to ban it from the start, but it might still be in today if it was entirely up to gasoline producers to choose, and we'd have kids with lower IQs and more aggressive behaviors... As for dumping waste, you really think that if the only thing stopping people were lawsuits that waterways and the international oceans would be as clean? How many people have you sued in your life? How many middle-class folks could afford to sue when their small lake or river got destroyed, and wouldn't companies often decide it's cheaper to pay lawyers for a few years than do the right thing? Anyway, let's drop it here, you are obviously an ideologue, the very thing you claim to be against.

You know this how? Science is not what you think it is. If someone could come up with really solid research based on sound methodology that disproved any of the current consensus, they'd probably win a nobel prize. Some of the big businesses making money on fossil fuels would definitely fund that research. But so far, all they finance doesn't hold up to scrutiny, because the facts aren't in their favor.

Do you prefer to breathe air in the post Clean Air Act US or the air in Beijing right now? Do you prefer to live somewhere where lead has been banned in gasoline, or somewhere where it hasn't? Dumping waste in rivers and the ocean, you are for or against it? How about letting fisheries self-manage, people can catch everything they want out of the ocean, from the smallest shrimp to the biggest whale, and we'll see what happens? Some environmentalists are cult-like and anti-science, but others aren't, just like in all large groups there are rational people and irrational ones. What's new? But those who oppose the current crop of rational environmentalists (a lot of them the very scientists who know most about things like our planet's climate) will one day look like those who opposed the ban on lead in gasoline or anti-smog measures..

deepValue, you're saying the equivalent of "astrophysics and cosmology isn't science! Can you prove wrong or run a control group on a star or a galaxy! I think not!" Fact is, there's a group of gasses that we know trap infrared radiation, we've seen their effects in experiments and on other planets (venus, mars). The earth's atmosphere is incredibly thin on the scale of our planet and we've been burning billions of tons of carbon that were buried in the planet's crust for decades. It doesn't take a genius to realize that this massive chemical experiment will have an impact. Well, we've been documenting that impact in dozens of ways for a long time. The whole argument of "how much of that science is funded by government?" is ridiculous; who's going to do that research if not NASA and NOAA and universities? Scientists funded by Exxon? Volunteer PHDs who will self-finance satellites and core drilling in the arctic? Are you also not relying on any of the other government-funded science? Because that's a lot that I bet you rely on every day.

Global warming can actually lead to more snow because there's more evaporation over oceans (snow = precipitation, not cold. As long as you're below freezing, more precipitation = more snow even if things are warmer than usual). Let's also not forget that global warming is GLOBAL, so looking at regional weather doesn't tell you much (ie. colder than usual over north-america this winter, but record heat in Alaska, russia, etc). Here's more global data: http://climatecrocks.com/2014/01/29/new-video-if-theres-global-warming-why-is-it-so-cold/ http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2013/12 http://qz.com/106814/if-youre-under-the-age-of-28-youve-never-experienced-a-month-of-below-average-global-temperature/

I don't think this was posted here (sorry if it had): http://www.charlierose.com/watch/60318162

Thank you, that was great!

Thanks for posting, WhoIsWarren. It does indeed raise many of the questions that have been raised here in the VRX thread, though I don't think it really answers them or provide a smoking gun. About rising interest rates and the impact on acquisitions; I'd be curious to look at other businesses that have been successful at building value via acquisitions, and what they did when interest rates were higher (teledyne? capital cities?). I'm not sure exactly sure how their tactics changed (just lower leverage, higher hurdle rate, more equity raised?), but it seems like it didn't affect their overall strategy too much. I think smart management should be able to adapt. The question is more, are you sure management is as smart as you think? When they come out with stats like "70% of acquisitions destroy value", it reminds me of when people talk about overall market valuations. It's interesting, but if you're not buying an index, it might not tell you too much about the specific businesses you're looking at. Likewise, that 70% figure for the whole market doesn't matter if you invest in a specific business that can create value via acquisitions 75% of the time or whatever.

Honest question: In the specific case of Ametek, are you sure you aren't looking at operational leverage boosting the GMs? Or maybe them making acquisitions in higher margin areas? I'm not super familiar with Ametek, but I've looked at similar types of conglomerates that had rising margins and that's what was happening.

I saw him mention it on Twitter recently. Definitely on my list too!

Speaking of Dalio, I rewatched his 'How the Economic Machine Works' video yesterday. He makes it seem so easy to understand. For those who haven't seen it: http://www.economicprinciples.org/

Did I miss something? Where did he go? Did he get a job at Apple and he can't tell anyone?

It probably helped Walton that they built the company from the ground up with a culture of low-costs, with basically no legacy problems, at a time when most of the competition was still high-cost and high-margins. Sears is in a more difficult position. They are starting from a high-cost business with lots of legacy issues (including the company's culture), and their competition has embraced low-costs and efficiency decades ago. Not saying they can't do it, but the starting point seems quite different. I'm not very familiar with the history of retailing, especially outside North-America. Did any of these other successful retailers start with a big legacy business and turn it around, or were they all built from the ground up?

Read that one a few years ago and liked it quite a bit (I recently read The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, another great biography). Quite a bit better than Isaacson's Steve Jobs biography (probably because it was rushed, and because Isaacson doesn't really get technology and design). I have his Einstein biography on my shelf, but haven't read that one yet.

Thank you!

I quite like that idea. I find it very rational and appealing. In the real world, though, it would probably be shut down because of the optics. You'd have the local news and Jay Leno doing a bit about the CSU unit dusting around where the garden gnome was stolen. Maybe some very charismatic official could sell it well enough to the public ahead of implementation to preempt that, and then it could be possible to do with taxpayers' full back backing because they understand that this could save more money than it costs (studies showing that would certainly help sell the point). Anyway, that was a good daydream. Thanks Omlsted! :)

Thanks FiveSigma. I had seen similar things about the future roadmap. Another piece of the puzzle is dropping entirely the analog signal (something that Charter is working on), freeing up tons of bandwidth. It's actually impressive to see how much bandwidth analog signal is using -- there's a Charter presentation that has a graph.

Netflix is not available in most of Europe (only UK and scandinavia, afaik), and I don't think streaming is as popular as in North-America. Once it is, it might change things. There's a huge difference in average data consumption between someone who streams HD content for hours each day and someone who doesn't, especially when everybody streams at the same time (evening peak hours). Cablecos will use more and more fiber too, but they don't have to bring it to people's homes, just to various hubs. The last mile can be coax, which Malone is confident should be able to go to gigabit speeds cost-effectively.

Oh I'm sorry, I was lacking some context. When you said "look at what they're doing with netflix" and mentioned competition, I didn't realize you were talking about the net neutrality stuff, I thought you were just talking about how cablecos are cooperating to try to compete against them (and other national players like DTV). That does kind of suck, but I guess it's a sign that the current model of unlimited download isn't sustainable. It might have worked back when most people just did a bit of email and web, but now that streaming HD movies is mainstream, it probably doesn't. Malone has been saying for a while that he thinks the industry will switch to a different model where heavier users pay more than light users (which is how it is in most other things). That might solve the problem without needing to secretly throttle and do other things that customers dislike. The cable industry certainly doesn't always seem to provide great service and transparency, though I think their rising prices are mostly due to rising content costs (which they have to pass to their customers). Some operators seem pretty good, while others seem pretty terrible (same applies to airlines, restaurant chains, retailers, etc).

I don't see it as scummy. They just don't overlap geographically. It's the nature of cable; the economics wouldn't work if you had a bunch of companies wiring up the same town, running wires in parallel. So they can't pretend to compete with each other if they aren't operating in the same places. Might as well try to work together when it makes sense. There's plenty of competition with cable from telecos, satellite, and netflix & other streamers, as well as lots of arm-wrestling with content owners. All these have national scale, so by cooperating on some things, cablecos are basically working their way up to a level playing field.

You'll be waiting forever for that paper. We know how radio waves work, we've been using them for a looong time before wifi came around.

I think it depends on your model. If you're selling the same stuff as everybody else the same way, it'll be very hard to have higher margins than average over sustained periods. In that game, Amazon will eventually win because of their scale and focus on operations. But if you can have exclusive products that people want and a different, more effective way to sell and build customer relationships, you can have pretty good sustainable margins. I'm thinking of QVC here. Not 100% internet retailer, but its video + web model is closer to that than traditional brick & mortor. http://oraclefromomaha.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/linta-7.png (and unlike the big department stores, that's with prices that are competitive with Amazon)