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'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns
141–150 of 177 posts
Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
They wouldn't have gotten a fair price otherwise.
Sure they would. Fair isn't some objective measure, it's what the market decides. If multiple market participants see that one player is trying to corner the market, raising their price is fair. It can equally be argued that those swampland owners bought the land in the first place because they had a vision that it could one day host a unique commercial enterprise. If your business strategy depends on deceiving peopl…
> It can equally be argued that those swampland owners bought the land in the first place because they had a vision that it could one day host a unique commercial enterprise.
Heh. On swampland? The amount of money you need to do anything with it is just huge. They bought the land for exactly what others were willing to sell it for. Nothing more, nothing less. If they thought it was worth more, they would have held out for more.
Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the US (but not necessarily other jurisdictions), insider trading laws are not there to protect the broader market, but to protect other shareholders. There is no assumption that you can’t trade on knowledge unavailable to the rest of the market just not information that should be available to other shareholders but isn’t. It’s not about a working market it’s about preventing you from stealing from other people. L…
Lots of economists are clearly wrong, as mutually excluding statements cannot be simultaneously true. To find out which side is which, you can employ simple logic. If you sustain a profitable information imbalance, you prevent the market from reaching a more efficient state. You steal from everybody else that way. And incur opportunity costs that will dwarf any profits made. Not necessarily on a short-term personal l…
The whole premise of price discovery is that participants in the market profit from information imbalances. The profit motive is the incentive for people to expend effort to generate and then, through price signals, disseminate information.
Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns
#144Setting aside the national security question, more broadly it's pretty insane that the USA lets companies hide who owns/controls them. When you decide to hang out your shingle and profit at the expense of the general public, I would say the general public has a genuine right to know who you are. Reminds me of how Disney used aliases and codenames and shell companies and secretive ownership structures to buy up all th…
> it's pretty insane that the USA lets companies hide who owns/controls them
1. Anonymous LLCs and Trusts are how many people protect their privacy. Not just Disney, but regular people. The only things "insane" here are those who want to strip away that option.
2. If you break the law, your anonymity can and will be stripped. There are processes for this.
3. There is a zero percent chance that the NSA doesn't have access to these records, if "national security" is a concern.
Are there any other concerns, other than your stanch belief that your nose has an absolute God-given right to be in everyone else's business?
Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns
#145> The attorney representing Flannery Associates sent a letter to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, one of several agencies investigating the matter, issuing a formal response.
> "No foreign person or group holds any significant interest or substantial control over Flannery, either now or at the time of any land purchase made by Flannery," the letter said.
"Person or group" doesn't include "government". This also doesn't mean the (supposedly domestic) owners won't lease the land to a foreign entity. Also, note the word "significant." And, "foreign" compared to what? If the owners are, say, Chinese, "no foreign" means no NON-Chinese.
Not trying to stoke paranoia, but just showing how statements like this are open to interpretation and should be taken with a grain of salt.
Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
They wouldn't have gotten a fair price otherwise.
Sure they would. Fair isn't some objective measure, it's what the market decides. If multiple market participants see that one player is trying to corner the market, raising their price is fair. It can equally be argued that those swampland owners bought the land in the first place because they had a vision that it could one day host a unique commercial enterprise. If your business strategy depends on deceiving peopl…
As if any negotiating business isn’t “deceitful”.
You’re basically arguing for discrimination to be legal.
Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
who is the ‘you’ in your question?
I mean jurisdictions that ban use of what could be considered "green" technology
Ah, well they do that because of dependence on or influence of some key politician or industry in my experience.
A county where all the jobs are based on Coal mining better have a pretty good and realistic plan (and good leadership) if they want to try to move away from Coal after all. And those are expensive and hard to find, even if it’s possible.
Easier to ban other options and hope it works out. Not that it usually does, but it’s the natural reaction in many cases. Denial is a natural protective response.
Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lawyers aren't allowed to identify their clients if the identities of their clients are unknown. It's part of attorney-client privilege. Skadden has made use of in the past to hide their work for Putin affiliates. It's the reason that Skadden is the largest firm by revenue despite the lackluster quality of their work. (For an example of how bad Skadden is at the practice of law, see the clusterfuck that is the Twitte…
You’re confusing privilege with confidentiality. From YKW, and squares with my very foggy recollection from PR. — Sure, I'll outline some key differences and similarities between privilege and confidentiality in the context of legal practice, specifically regarding client identification. *Privilege* 1. Privilege is a legal concept that protects certain communications between an attorney and their client from being di…
Yeah, I actually meant confidentiality. I typed that out too quickly and never came back to update the comment.
Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns
#149Setting aside the national security question, more broadly it's pretty insane that the USA lets companies hide who owns/controls them. When you decide to hang out your shingle and profit at the expense of the general public, I would say the general public has a genuine right to know who you are. Reminds me of how Disney used aliases and codenames and shell companies and secretive ownership structures to buy up all th…
I am also an advocate for transparency of ownership of companies, but that Disney example seems like more of a case against transparency than for it? Why should Disney be price gouged in that circumstance?
If a company, not just Disney, is buying large swaths of land specifically to develop it, that makes the land more valuable.
If a company is going to great lengths to trick sellers into thinking it’s not being bought up for development, that’s deceit and a de facto admission you know the land is more valuable because of the comps you are engaging in
Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing circular. It's just a definition. I think consent and honesty make something Fair. Nobody has refuted this and The only other counter argument I've seen is that full disclosure would mean the seller gets more money. What is getting more money have to do with fair.?
You're taking the very much not-universally-shared position that concealing something you know would make a big difference counts as "honest". [EDIT] I retract the "circular" claim—you're right that it's not that, it's the definitions of "lying" and "honest" that are making the difference.
I think you succinctly summed up the Crux of it. The kind of begs the question of what information is relevant. When I apply for a job, I certainly don't tell the recruiter the minimum salary I would accept. When I negotiate for a house, I don't tell them my maximum theoretical offer. These information asymmetries obviously benefit me at their expense.
When I buy a 20 cent bolt for my car, I don't tell them that it's worth $20,000 to me because my car won't run without it