Liberty

So many useful stories are not quite what we think: http://www.histoire.ens.fr/IMG/file/Coeure/David-Fox%20Potemkin%20villages.pdf

Just want to point out that the URL has changed and the transcript is now at: http://www.sequoiafund.com/assets/pdf/Transcript17.pdf

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-real-tulip-fever-180964915/

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/ceta-europe-free-trade-1.4300071

Working fine for me.

Looks like 100k Canadians affected.

A lot of the top infosec people don't have formal degrees in the field. I'm not saying that that person was competent or not, I have no more info about that than anyone else. Just saying that some fields are different from others. A neurosurgeon without a medical degree is probably a big problem, but a programmer or security person without a degree in the field, not necessarily. In some fields you need specialized equipment and access to mentorships and customers/patients to practice on and such (ie. inside an hospital), in some fields all the knowledge is out there and all you need is a computer and an internet connection.

Writeup here (sub required): https://www.scuttleblurb.com/efx-equifax/

www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2017-09-17/ray-dalio-says-he-s-ready-to-give-away-bridgewater-s-secrets

If you're not already a good insurance operator, it's probably a lot harder to get in than it might seem from the outside. Heavily regulated and very competitive industry. In other words, there's no such thing as a free lunch: You pay for that float one way or another (through hard-won expertise or through a crappy combined ratio that might not show up for years).

Yep, that's legit. Fun fact though: be careful of charts that compare US and Canadian debt/income those measures are calculated differently and the Canadian measure shows higher. Yeah, I was aware of that, but I know that many aren't and it's a common mistake. Thanks for pointing it out.

This chart seems legit, he said tentatively:

I'm starting this book. Looks interesting. A series of profiles of entrepreneurs. There's a website with more info: https://intelligentfanatics.com/project/ And I know that they've already written a second book, that isn't published yet, so it's a series. https://www.amazon.ca/Intelligent-Fanatics-Project-Sustainable-Businesses-ebook/dp/B01HLCUA7M/

It's the old "can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs". If you're never failing, you're probably not pushing hard enough, and you're probably not learning as much as you could.

Dalio has been doing the rounds lately. He's done an interview with Shane Parrish that isn't published yet afaik, and one with Tim Ferriss that is: https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/

:D

Not for nothing but that chart is bullshit. Please elaborate. They throw everything and the kitchen sink, but it's for the whole period, so it's still useful to see the trend. Yea they throw the kitchen sink to make the number seem larger. Also the way the do it basically makes sure you double count some stuff for example renovations and maintenance&repair. There's gonna be double counting there. Also they make stuff up just to add it in there. Imputed rent for all homeowners? Really? First of all that's not even part of GDP. You can't add it to something and take it as a % of GDP. I'm willing to bet that in the transfer costs they include land transfer tax and that's also not part of GDP. In addition, they include housing wealth effect. There's no way to actually calculate that and also it has nothing to do with GDP. These are just a few things that are wrong with that. There are others. The thing is that Statscan actually measures and publishes housing activity in GDP. They do it very rigorously and properly. I think it's around 10% and yes that also on the high side historically speaking. But this guy chose not to use the Statscan numbers but make his own hocus pocus doctored measure to get a larger headline number so it'll me more flashy. That really grates my ass. You're right, it's not a very good chart.

Not for nothing but that chart is bullshit. Please elaborate. They throw everything and the kitchen sink, but it's for the whole period, so it's still useful to see the trend.

2009 interview transcript: http://www.manualofideas.com/files/content/20090429malone.pdf

This unfortunately falls into the category of slogan solutions that theoretically exist but politically un-attainable. Real life is not a slogan. Will China remove all trade barriers? Tax only Apple and Google? Won't happen. Unfortunately democracy is a b.... Call it the friction in this political economy. Sometimes there's no solution other than to slow down the leap into the utopia and take a step back. I realize that. I'm talking about what I think should be aimed for, which is different from what many others believe (nationalists who believe their country/group is special because they were randomly born in it and such). Goals and slogans are different. If you don't have goals and just do whatever is politically expedient or advantageous at the moment, you just float around with the currents and rarely get anywhere.

Seems to me like the best solution for all is to remove all trade barriers everywhere, with clearly justified exceptions. Why should I pay more for something just because it comes from some other country (on top of shipping and natural expenses, etc)? Just because some imaginary line is between us? I'm closer to many US states than the Western Canadian provinces, why should I pay more for something close by in the US than something far away in Canada? Because we have different passports? One side sets up tariffs to "protect" some industry that has political clout, then the other side does the same, and now like Buffett's people standing on tip toes at a parade, everybody's in the same relative spot, except that the citizens of both countries are paying more for goods and services than they otherwise would. Seems to me like protectionism only benefits special interest groups with political clout and is bad for citizens on average. It's also useful for demagogues who want to gain power by creating a "us vs them" dynamic when in fact, strangers in my country are just as much strangers as strangers in another country. If we judge that some groups deserve to be helped, that's fine, but help them directly, rather than by indirectly adding friction in the system that reduces productivity and makes everyone poorer. It's always easier to point to the losers of trade because they tend to be more concentrated and the winners tend to be more diffuse, but the winners are way more numerous and in aggregate win a lot more. It's fine to help the losers, but it's not fine to make everybody lose just to slow down what is usually inevitable (when a country goes from 3 automakers to 20, of course the original 3 will have to reduce their output and some people will have to find new jobs, etc).

http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/overcoming-your-demons/ Good personal post by Morgan about his fight with stuttering. I have an acquaintance with a very strong stutter, and this helped get a better idea of what it must be like. But it's also about more than stuttering, of course. We all have things to overcome...

Happy birthday (a little late)!