Per capita, IIRC it peaks in the 70’s. I’ve heard it proposed that it was down to leaded gasoline causing brain damage, and it’s such a weird blip I have to consider that. Obviously, from WWII backwards through depression and prohibition it was plenty nasty.

It’s not like you can buy too much of an earning stock. I’m pretty sure elasticity approaches zero quickly if someone is dumping a well-known, profitable company. It might induce some paranoia, but big investors don’t get to where they are by panicking often.

By the way, TSLA has a P/E ratio in the 60’s so it’s not exactly a great deal anyway.

Depends. Amazon doesn’t even have one; tech stocks are often driven by future potential. I wouldn’t buy a car from them though.

Nobody actually beats the market. I’m pretty sure the insanity was there all along; he just got lucky several times in a row.

If he tried to sell all his shares it would cause the stock price to collapse

Why? If the fundamentals are there, there should be a hard floor on stock prices. It would take a while for the market to absorb that much Twitter and SpaceX, but I see no reason it’s impossible. Actually, I bet Twitter’s (off-book) cap would go up if Musk was leaving.

If you’re trying to defend capitalism (whatever that means to you), keep in mind that you’re basically suggesting stocks have no actual, intrinsic value here.

Billionaires don’t actually do this, though, because liquid cash doesn’t earn.

Right now, if he were able to convert all of his $241.8B to cash, then distribute it evenly among all of the employees at all of his companies, he could give each of his 146,000 employees $1.6M.

Fun fact that this doesn’t work for every billionaire. Tech companies don’t employ very many people compared to their revenue.

If you go by by profits returned to owners as opposed to sale value it’s even more stark. Amazon still hasn’t paid out anything; it’s all been plowed straight back into expansion.

I don’t necessarily think that billionaires should be abolished,

To piss off the remaining side of the political spectrum: Why not?

Investment-wise, luck. If you had 100 billion and put it all on one risky stock, you too could fail upwards, around half the time.

Public persona-wise, he’s basically a pro media villain. He’s invited to comment and interview on things because it will always get clicks, even if they’re hate clicks.

Past returns are no guarantee of future success. How many damn times do financial people have to say this?

Given that they’ve implicitly sampled only the most successful past performers to start with, I’m going to say this is a rare case where the gambler’s fallacy works. More likely than not, his future returns will be lower.

Exactly. COBOL still gets used in legacy stuff, but at this point you’d have to be either insane or a historical re-enactor to build something new in it.

I’ve used C more than anything else, for reference.

If you want to take crazy (or mild) risks that’s your prerogative, but skydiving is probably still cheaper than this, and has nice scenery instead of tasteless white goo.

I’m guessing he means expensive to borrow. Otherwise, yeah, that wouldn’t make much sense.

I have no idea if you think we should buy less from China, or stop complaining about buying from China, but either way you’re right about the hypocrisy, or at least lack of self awareness.

It’s the zeitgeist, right? More protectionism, both for geopolitical reasons and (fake) economic reasons

I mean, of course it wouldn’t be fair to expect everyone to be migrated over yet, but at some point it’s going to be an obsolete language. Memory unsafety is a pretty nasty quirk; just one that was previously unavoidable, as far as I know.

That America starts wars for self interest is easier to defend, but honestly I’m not convinced of that, either. There was always a lot of that neocon ideology that democracy (or just capitalism) can be spread by force, and I see no reason to expect it’s just a facade. It would be hard to prove that either way, though, because once you’re an ideological actor your ideology losing means your national influence losing as well.

More relevant to the original topic, it’s fair to say that America doesn’t always start a war that would be in it’s national interest, at least. In the 90’s, they could have gone on an expansionist spree pretty easily, but they did triumphalism instead, and just kind of rested on their laurels until 9/11 (with the possible exception of Bosnia).

Y’know, there’s all these “[platform] used for [horrible deed]” headlines. It’s always weird to me, because yeah, people use Facebook for everything. I bet they wore cloths from Walmart while they did it, too! The horror!

Sadly necessary disclaimer that I don’t like social media monopolies.

You really should have put a /s on OP then, and maybe explained your actual point beneath.

“Fun” fact, before we routinely spayed and neutered animals, putting a sack of kittens or puppies in a pond was a normal chore.

It was either that, or fight starving street dogs.

Yeah, I never really felt pressured to drink by people my age. Occasionally I’ll be hanging out with older people and they’ll act like I’m lame for turning it down. That’s okay, before they know it it’ll all be prune juice, anyway.

Yes, I’ve heard the same. It’s a flavourless, hazardous form of conspicuous consumption. It’s one of those things where if someone dies from it, it’s really hard to feel sad for them.

Playground zone signs where I live often read “slow children playing”. It’s supposed to be “slow (children playing)” but I always get a kick out of reading it as “(slow children) playing”.