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Save like a pessimist, invest like an optimist

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Re: Save like a pessimist, invest like an optimist

#201

Post by dredmorbius »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #159
shoo wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I claim that economic growth cannot continue indefinitely. [...] the Earth has only one mechanism for releasing heat to space, and that’s via (infrared) radiation. We understand the phenomenon perfectly well, and can predict the surface temperature of the planet as a function of how much energy the human race produces. The upshot is that at a 2.3% growth rate (conveniently chosen to represent a 10× increase every c…

The physicist says that per capita energy use has surged, but that is only true in the developing world. California's per capita consumption of electrical energy has not changed since 1975. https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nrdc.org/sites/defa...

The decoupling argument breaks down when imports are considered.

"The material footprint of nations", Thomas O. Wiedmann, Heinz Schandl, Manfred Lenzen, Daniel Moran, Sangwon Suh, James West, and Keiichiro Kanemoto

PNAS first published September 3, 2013; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1220362110

https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/08/28/1220362110

https://web.archive.org/web/20130906063246/https://newsroom....

Re: Save like a pessimist, invest like an optimist

#202

Post by darkerside »

marketgod wrote: post #189
darkerside wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. You don't make money without having a boss (or many bosses).

You can fire customers easier than quitting jobs. I fire customers daily. If you are reliant on 1 customer then it's not a business, it's a hobby. Edit: Also you can be ethical.

This is more a function of your successfulness and competence than whether you happen to have an incorporated business wrapping your daily operations.

A successful and competent employee has built relationships with colleagues, supervisors, and reports. He knows them, and they know him. He won't be asked to subjugate his principles to the company in an inappropriate way, in part because others know that he will go above and beyond within his principles to do well for the company.

For a business owner, the exact same thing, just replace colleagues et al with customers, suppliers, shareholders, and other partners.

On the other hand, a weak business and/or business owner will be very vulnerable to principle-based compromise. Out of the need to keep customers, suppliers, et al happy, he is subject to whim and every demand. Walking away from his business means the collapse of his reputation, failing his employees, and failing his family. He is no more free than your average entry level employee.

Re: Save like a pessimist, invest like an optimist

#203

Post by darkerside »

marketgod wrote: post #175
darkerside wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The owner of a business with 200k in revenue is higher status than a McKinsey employee with a 500k salary. What makes you say that?

Because one is a slave and the other is a man/woman.

Disagree, see my other posts on this thread.

Re: Save like a pessimist, invest like an optimist

#204

Post by Moodles »

sanderjd wrote: post #195
Moodles wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not nothing.

I guess this always devolves into philosophy, but yes, the future is actually unknowable.

Right, and at some point you have to choose to live your life assuming there isn't an undetectable asteroid about to wipe out all human civilization, even though you don't know the probability of it happening.

Re: Save like a pessimist, invest like an optimist

#205

Post by ericmay »

est31 wrote: post #166
zamfi wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In much of Europe and east Asia, yes! Germany and Japan in particular were bombed basically to 0...

Those two nations still had the right culture and social structure to build blooming new societies. In this context, with "culture" I don't mean political views or such, but work ethic, and things like literacy, education, etc. The German car industry wouldn't have been thinkable hadn't the Germans invested a lot of research into building machines in a mass produced way, motor research, etc. Sure, the factories thems…

Sure, but that filtering out means wealth is destroyed and you have to start over. The account resets to $0.00.

Also, these events "filter out" a lot more than just "lazy elite rich people". Plenty of productive rich people and regular every day people are filtered out as well.

Re: Save like a pessimist, invest like an optimist

#206

Post by marketgod »

darkerside wrote: post #202
marketgod wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can fire customers easier than quitting jobs. I fire customers daily. If you are reliant on 1 customer then it's not a business, it's a hobby. Edit: Also you can be ethical.

This is more a function of your successfulness and competence than whether you happen to have an incorporated business wrapping your daily operations. A successful and competent employee has built relationships with colleagues, supervisors, and reports. He knows them, and they know him. He won't be asked to subjugate his principles to the company in an inappropriate way, in part because others know that he will go ab…

>He won't be asked to subjugate his principles to the company in an inappropriate way, in part because others know that he will go above and beyond within his principles to do well for the company.

I respectfully disagree. Your team may not, your direct reports won't and your management hierarchy may not, however, your business will. If you have certain principles such as support for LBGTQ+, anti-military contracts, or a conservative in tech for example, and your company signs a contract to work with another organization that doesn't care about the cause or are completely against it, what happens? I know CEO's who can't fire bad clients because they don't own their own company.

>Walking away from his business means the collapse of his reputation, failing his employees, and failing his family.

Walking away from bad business can make you so much money it's hard to imagine. I've had conversations about doing business with shady people, which resulted in me making a deal with the person who had the same experience with the other individual.

>On the other hand, a weak business and/or business owner will be very vulnerable to principle-based compromise.

Growing pains, but an employee who is competent or incompetent will face the same dilemma because of what I suggested earlier.

I call it being a slave earlier, to intentionally raise alarm. I don't know of a way to define it but you don't have to go to sleep at night thinking, well, I didn't like that decision and now I need to change my entire life or deal with it. I.e. find a new job, change my commute, change my schedule, acquaint yourself with a new environment, meet new people and so on. An owner, is doing this on a daily basis already.

Re: Save like a pessimist, invest like an optimist

#207

Post by darkerside »

marketgod wrote: post #206
darkerside wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more a function of your successfulness and competence than whether you happen to have an incorporated business wrapping your daily operations. A successful and competent employee has built relationships with colleagues, supervisors, and reports. He knows them, and they know him. He won't be asked to subjugate his principles to the company in an inappropriate way, in part because others know that he will go ab…

>He won't be asked to subjugate his principles to the company in an inappropriate way, in part because others know that he will go above and beyond within his principles to do well for the company. I respectfully disagree. Your team may not, your direct reports won't and your management hierarchy may not, however, your business will. If you have certain principles such as support for LBGTQ+, anti-military contracts,…

> If you have certain principles such as support for LBGTQ+, anti-military contracts, or a conservative in tech for example, and your company signs a contract to work with another organization that doesn't care about the cause or are completely against it, what happens?

I guess things are changing, but historically refusing to serve customers based on political differences would be considered intolerant. You can disagree with someone without refusing them service. I don't see any ethical dilemmas in serving someone you disagree with. You are free to disagree with that principle.

For any business owner, making a decision to walk away from business on grounds of political disagreement is a huge luxury. I don't think it's commonly exercised, and for good reason, imo. This is very different from walking away from a "bad customer", one who may cost you money over the long run while sapping your soul. Empowered employees also feel capable of walking away from these customers because they understand the business so well that they see the issues coming, and they've earned to decision making respect for their choices to have weight.

> Growing pains, but an employee who is competent or incompetent will face the same dilemma because of what I suggested earlier.

This is exactly what I'm saying. The two are more similar than I think most people make them out to be. You will have differences in freedom, but those are often determined by your competence and success, more so than whether you have a business license.

The way you talk about a business owner sleeping well at night makes me wonder if you know any. Owning a business is extremely stressful. The buck stops with you, and while in theory you are free, your entire business depends on your decisions. You think it's hard to change jobs? How hard do you think it is to move on from a failed business? In a capitalist society, business owners are as much slaves as anyone else. The difference is, you take so much risk on that if you succeed, you end up making a return that does buy you a good deal of freedom. But that's not intrinsic to the business you own, and it is determined as much but what you need as what you have. It's a freedom derived from being a human being that has "enough".

Re: Save like a pessimist, invest like an optimist

#208

Post by lern_too_spel »

crisdux wrote: post #199
lern_too_spel wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in your scenario, we wouldn't expect per capita energy usage to increase faster than population growth (as the physicist claimed) because now everybody who wants climate control has it. The whole point is that per capita energy usage isn't growing exponentially in the developed world.

The point I made was regarding electricity usage in california from 1975 until now and how that comparison to the rest of the country isn't valid because it's a bias measure. In 1975 everyone who wanted climate control didn't have it, and that slowly changed to everyone being able to afford year round climate control. That drove huge growth in energy demands in most of the country. In that scenario we would certainly…

> In that scenario we would certainly expect per capita energy usage to increase faster than population growth.

But it won't continue to grow now, which is what I showed with California. You have fundamentally misunderstood my example. The physicist claimed exponential per capita energy consumption growth, but California shows that isn't happening.

Re: Save like a pessimist, invest like an optimist

#209

Post by lern_too_spel »

dredmorbius wrote: post #201
lern_too_spel wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The physicist says that per capita energy use has surged, but that is only true in the developing world. California's per capita consumption of electrical energy has not changed since 1975. https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nrdc.org/sites/defa...

The decoupling argument breaks down when imports are considered. "The material footprint of nations", Thomas O. Wiedmann, Heinz Schandl, Manfred Lenzen, Daniel Moran, Sangwon Suh, James West, and Keiichiro Kanemoto PNAS first published September 3, 2013; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1220362110 https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/08/28/1220362110 https://web.archive.org/web/20130906063246/https://newsroom....

That study shows zero growth in resource consumption instead of the negative growth observed without their methodology. This does not match the exponential growth in per capita consumption that the physicist assumes.

Re: Save like a pessimist, invest like an optimist

#210

Post by marketgod »

darkerside wrote: post #207
marketgod wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>He won't be asked to subjugate his principles to the company in an inappropriate way, in part because others know that he will go above and beyond within his principles to do well for the company. I respectfully disagree. Your team may not, your direct reports won't and your management hierarchy may not, however, your business will. If you have certain principles such as support for LBGTQ+, anti-military contracts,…

> If you have certain principles such as support for LBGTQ+, anti-military contracts, or a conservative in tech for example, and your company signs a contract to work with another organization that doesn't care about the cause or are completely against it, what happens? I guess things are changing, but historically refusing to serve customers based on political differences would be considered intolerant. You can disa…

>I guess things are changing, but historically refusing to serve customers based on political differences would be considered intolerant. You can disagree with someone without refusing them service. I don't see any ethical dilemmas in serving someone you disagree with. You are free to disagree with that principle.

Let's not separate a single example, the entire example list is as a whole, i.e. any of the situations listed are that to the person involved. Sure for you it doesn't, however, someone else will have a different opinion with respect to dealing with other political stripes. There are people who won't deal with other religions in this day and age.

>> Growing pains, but an employee who is competent or incompetent will face the same dilemma because of what I suggested earlier.

I typed this in a way it was not clear. The growing pains will heal. The competent and incompetent employees will always be slaves, their competence won't help them.

And yes, I sleep well.

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