his point is not that sanctions or good or bad, but rather that the people doing the sanctioning were elected by the people. Albright was appointed by a president who won in a democratic referendum and was confirmed by senators who too were elected by the people in their respective states. There is accountability there. If you don’t like the leaders you can vote them out and replace them with new leaders. The American republic is by no means a perfect system, but it has a lot more accountability built into it than allowing private entities to control whether or not a foreign entity is sanctioned. Moving to a system where unelected billionaires have control of sanctioning powers with no accountability to the people is less desirable and offers less accountability
War crimes committed by democratically elected officials are still war crimes. I don’t see a compelling argument in giving Bush and Blair total control to decide the economic fate of nations who didn’t elect them is justifiable. Crypto is partly about separating money from state so democratically elected governments such as Canada cannot unilaterally delete people from the banking system without due process.
My original argument stands. The author’s primary argument is that crypto is bad for authoritarians/statists as it allows the subverting of state power. He is not wrong on that point, but he is viewing the issue from a one-sided perspective and his arguments are tired.
YC is a monopoly in the same way that Coca Cola is a Monopoly. And if you’ve ever been to a Taco Bell, Pizza Hut or KFC you’ll know exactly how much they are not.
“ But what we can tell you is his portfolio is up nearly 20% since he started trading in June”
It’s a catchy headline but very misleading. Buffett has done a good job outperforming the market for the past like 50 years (idk the exact number but something like that. He reads through tons and tons of financial disclosures to understand how businesses operate and find businesses that are undervalued by the market, then snatches them up. It requires a lot of reading, learning and an incredible amount of patience and self control.
It’s a bit unfair to compare woth a hamster or monkeys and dart boards or anything like that. Yes the random picking of stocks or crypto’s or whatever can beat a lot of asset managers that don’t really know what they’re doing, but Buffett is different and has a track record to prove it
Partly, but I think it’s also about hope and wanting to feel a part of contributing towards progress. Some people want to be a part of something greater then themselves (cults, startups, nonprofits, teams of all sorts, whatever), which is about identity, but also nuanced.
I think the helping with progress rationale is probably part of purchase decision, as well as the product feel and performance itself, but there is also the fancy tech coolness aspect. It seems to be viewed in a similar way to Apple products. There are lots of positives with products from both companies but they also seem to be viewed almost like fancy tech jewelry.
What people identify with is usually pretty complex as far as their actual identity goes. They may choose fairly weird things, but if you ask them the meaning and their own identity attached to it is usually much larger than say ... an energy drink. But that thing fits into it, so there they are with energy drink stickers all over their vehicle.
I have a sticker for a local university on my car (just one...), I didn't even go there but what it means to me is the experiences I have when I do. That's much more than a logo.
You are spot on. I actually built TweetSpacer because there are lot of existing players in the market.
I've spent 2.5 years building "original" products that never made me any money.
So I decided to try something totally different this time, I decided to go into an existing market and just put my spin on it and produce a product with good build quality.
I figure the market for social media automation tools is monopolistic and so I think that if I make a good product, talk to customers and carve out a niche I could have a small business.
It may not work. It could blow up in my face. But so far it's the first thing I've made that's generated any revenue. Not much yet, but it's better than the $0 I was stuck at for so long.
I used to loathe the idea of making something that's already out there, but I kept thinking about pepsi. Why does pepsi exist? I still don't know why. I like coke. But I think it's ok to have multiple proudcts that achieve a similar task. There's lots of dimensions you can compete on.
I think you misunderstand his investment philosophy.
He's a budding value investor and his role model is Warren Buffett which means he's buying undervalued stocks that have good fundamentals.
One of the companies he says he bought is Samsung. And while there may be a correction in the future, it's self evident that Samsung is a legit company with strong fundamentals.
Also he said in the article that he's investing long term:
“Rather than short-term focused day trading, I want to keep my investment for 10 to 20 years with a long-term perspective, hopefully to maximize my returns.”
Value investors and students of Warren Buffett know that part of investing this way means you need the equanimity and tenacity to weather any short term volatility.
Warren would tell him to stay away from Samsung. Not that it’s particularly overpriced, just that the kids portfolio size opens up enormous markets where far higher return investments lurk.
When WEB started, he worked the pink sheets and small cais because he could, he was only managing a few million at the start.
He seldom went into mid or large CEOs because they tend to be much more efficiently priced. You can see the results of his narrowing pool of opportunities as his portfolio grew over the decades. He has learned more and gotten better over time, yet his 40% returns in the 50s and 60s melt into the 25% returns of the 70s/80s, and thence to 15% returns in the 2000s.
Work at it kid, turn over every rock and read a dozen financial reports a day, and don’t settle for less than 100% annualized while your portfolio is under $1M.
I seem to recall having read a very recent (couple years?) interview with him, where he was asked if value still worked nowadays. He said that if he only had 1 million to invest, he could still do 50% a year.
Well, the issue is that after the bubble pops he will have to wait 20 years anyway to reach today's value. I fail to see how Samsung stock is undervalued.
This is said by people in a self congratulatory way, who parrot bad advice as some deep truth, but even the most cursory glance at any long term market data shows with zero doubt that you are dead wrong, not only regarding many markets around the world, but also American markets
In July 1929 it peaked around 380. That level would not be reached again in nominal terms until the mid 50s. But there was also a lot of inflation in the 40's, so not only were you losing money, that money was losing value. So you lost in nominal terms and got devastated in real terms over 25 years.
Now let's look at Sep of 65. The dow is at 980. It won't recover that level until 83. Again including the inflation of the 70's. Stocks got destroyed in real terms over that 18 year period.
And many many stock markets around the world have uglier periods than that. Also many forecasters expect the 2020's to have some of the worst equity returns in modern history.
