S&P Global has lowered Oracle’s creditworthiness from BBB to BBB-

Aww, twinsies!

> It's very normal for someone to value a planet or other celestial body in terms of the value of the minerals or other resources on that body.

I don't think anyone has really had to value a planet yet.

(I'd assert Earth is at least as priceless as, say, the Mona Lisa.)

> Don't buy shares in his companies if you don't like their business plans or believe their assumptions. Use your own judgement, create your own models, make your own assumptions.

I have to live in this economy, unfortunately.

Yeah but my comment "This is a country that has overexpanded in infrastructure which will come home to roost sooner" is just common sense. What happened in the developed world will eventually catch up China. Every bit of 'matter' in an empire has a cost: the cost to push back entropy. Their strategy of just rushing to overbuild without thoughtful planning makes everything look wildly impressive today but tomorrow is different and this story has played out in every single country in existence before. Everything has to be maintained and that long tail is something every country deals with. What make you think China is some special animal?

>Meanwhile the US goods trade deficit is literally worse than ever, the deficit is $2 trillion dollars and the debt is consuming more and more of federal income just to maintain. The US equities market is a giant inflated balloon and no one even pretends to rationalize it anymore. Leadership in the US is now banana-republic level corrupt, in the open and shamelessly. Yeah, this is not the time to be throwing rocks.

Now you are conflating two different ideas: infrastructure vs investment. Lets address them separately. Yes the US equities market is overinflated. Meanwhile no one even wants the Chinese currency. Not even the Chinese. Obviously China can live with this because they have the large market and manufacturing prowess to fall back on but long term the fact that no one trusts them enough to invest in their country will hamper the growth. It goes back to my original idea: Maybe the US does not need to shine, it just needs to outlast China to buy time to slowly fix itself over another century. China winning the race is not a foregone conclusion.

>I mean...not only is China becoming a pretty desirable country for many of the world's residents, they could...have more children. If China decided to turn the corner and get back to maintenance levels, I 100% believe they could do it almost overnight.

What are you smoking? China is not welcoming to immigrants. China has very strict scrutiny of applications for Chinese citizenship. Unless you are married to a Chinese citizen, are a senior scientist, or make significant contributions to China, you can at most obtain a Chinese permanent residence permit, not citizenship. Looking at the most recent numbers of permanent resident it is less than 10,000 total people...in a country the size of China it might as well be a rounding error.

The time to have more children was 18 years ago. Not sure if you know but it takes 18 years to go from birth to adult. The point of having people is so they participate in the economy, they become the workers, the consumers, and the defense. A country is nothing but a bunch of people. No people: no actual country.

The crisis is locked in now: look at the population pyramid: https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/ The "peak" of their population was 2021, since then their population has consistently declined: old people dying off and not being replaced by young people or immigrants. By the 2100 unless they figure out how to grow humans in a factory they will have lost ~800 MILLION people!

Now look at the US: https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2...

As close to perfect growth as possible. No over representation of any group. The US has had this blessing in that they could cheat and attract enough people as immigrants to make up for any decline in native births. It gets even better! Not only do they get people at their prime age they didn't even have to spend the resources to raise the person for the first 18 years of their life, some other sucker country did all the work and the benefit goes to the US. They only let in as much as they need and it forms a perfect pyramid. Stable growth and stable population sizes. You can argue that maybe Trump has started to derail this but again...you cannot compare China to the US at all.

Sure but that applies to all of us with anything we disagree with. I think taxes are too high. "Blah blah do XYZ" I can just say "I have to live in this economy, unfortunately.". Ok.

Your argument is basically "in my opinion SpaceX is overvalued, therefore a lot of pump-and-dumps are going on and retail investors are buying them and losing money, therefore the economy is rigged" or something along those lines. Feel free to reframe it how you'd like but that's the gist of it. At the end of the day it's just not very coherent and I've repeatedly pointed out systematic reasons that it's wrong, I've pointed out how your valuation of any specific company is incomplete, and finally as you've tried to piece these things together you still have not made a consistent point and you've meandered around basically just complaining without really bringing anything to the table here. If SpaceX or any other company that is going to IPO is a pump-and-dump, show your work. At the end of the day it's just your opinion, and one in which most of society disagrees with.

> I don't think anyone has really had to value a planet yet.

Sure, but that doesn't mean it's not possible or that you can't actually value the resources and minerals.

> (I'd assert Earth is at least as priceless as, say, the Mona Lisa.)

I'd mostly argue the same, but what something is worth is mostly just an opinion.

It took 17 months for the 2008 crash to reach bottom.

For the dotcom, the market peaked in 2000 and reached bottom in 2002.

Timing the bottom is hard - plus emotionally nobody is keen to invest so you'd need to be contrarian too.