Market Outlook 2015-2045 - Men Vs. Machines [View article]
> Why would humans want to create androids when we can > become better humans?
Because androids will be cheaper, won't complain when you treat them like garbage, and will be able to be manufactured in days or even hours as opposed to ~18 years.
Your corporate overlords consider your humanity a weakness. :-)
Market Outlook 2015-2045 - Men Vs. Machines [View article]
> The question, as usual, is "what's the long-term solution?"
This requires culture change. And that is very likely to be ugly (and violent) before it happens in earnest, if it happens at all.
There is no law that can be passed and no technology that can be developed that can by itself convince people that we can all do better working cooperatively rather than competitively.
There is no management practice and no financial engineering that can stop people from believing (justifiably or otherwise) that they deserve a bigger piece of the pie than someone else.
We have this culture that everyone should "earn their keep", and this is all well and good...until there isn't enough viable earning to go around.
At some point we need to realize that we're all in this together and we need to operate in a way that can work (responsibly) for everyone.
There have been fictional depictions of such societies (i.e., Star Trek), but it has never been achieved in practice.
Either that, or we need to accept the realistic consequences of not realizing this. Far more likely than the utopian vision of the future is the distopian view (i.e., Mad Max), which we have very real examples of even today in certain parts of the world.
Market Outlook 2015-2045 - Men Vs. Machines [View article]
> why would any reasonable human being not prefer to pursue > more worthwhile endeavors such as this--or numerous other > examples--with the vast resources of their minds instead of > flipping burgers or answering phone calls for the rest of their > lives, if given the choice?
But the overwhelming majority are not given this choice due to inequality of opportunity.
What's more, even if such opportunity (and equivalent motivation, etc) did exist, there simply doesn't currently seem to be a viable capitalism-based market that could successfully employ 7 billion (or even 330 million) brilliant scientists, engineers, and mathematicians.
At some point we, as national and eventually global society, need to realize that as our basic needs and wants become more and more efficiently provided, not everyone "needs" to "work", and we need to figure out what to do with that new imbalance.
Maybe we let the non-working people just die? Implement population growth controls? (I do not recommend this.)
Maybe we let a few work and share all the rewards equally? Give those working folks a bit of bonus, like a hearty handshake? (I do not recommend this either.)
Something in between? (I do recommend this.)
I can't find the comment, but Phil mused a while back that, metaphorically speaking, one day technology might be such that basically one guy pressing one button will do all the necessary work in the world -- and what then? Does that one guy get all the wealth? Do we all take turns being that one guy?
Certainly, we want everyone to add value to the world to "earn their keep", but if we define value by money, then at any given moment there's only so much of it, and if most of it is being hoarded by a privileged few who had a lot more opportunities than everyone else, what do we do with the rest?
This kind of transition is only accelerating, people need to start thinking about this stuff at the societal level.
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
> I guess you missed the one about the lady in Calfornia county who > is getting a $400,000+ pension.
Is it wise to make overall policy decisions based on a few outliers?
Outliers should certainly be dealt with appropriately (via upper limits, for example), but to pretend that they are the bulk of the real problem, is clearly a crime against mathematics.
While fears of widespread defaults in the municipal bond (MUB) market (perpetuated in December of 2010 by Meredith Whitney) have so far proven overblown, Moody's says a disturbing trend seems to be developing. Although only five defaults were recorded in 2012, that's more than four times the average yearly rate logged from 1970 to 2007. Perhaps the most notable thing about last year's five defaults: three of them were general government defaults as opposed to defaults on bonds tied to specific projects. The historical average for general government muni defaults: 1 every 4.3 years. [View news story]
Perhaps Meredith Whitney was simply a few years early?
While I don't expect a catastrophic avalanche of muni defaults, I do expect the ranks of bankrupt cities to swell in the coming years.
Various probable interventions make the timing hard to predict, but it is likely that many more will default over the next decade or so.
Little Cyprus is bringing a dangerous new variable into the European bailout crisis, warns Dennis Gartman - the Russian mafia. "Everybody knows that the vast majority of the deposits in Cyprus are from Russia," Gartman says. "They're Russian government officials, they're Russian businessmen, it's Russian mafia – and you don't mess with the Russian mafia." He calls the eurozone demand over the weekend absolute "lunacy on the part of the European monetary authorities." [View news story]
No mafia can hold a candle to the international banking cartels -- they are the ultimate power in organized crime.
"Smartphones and tablets based on Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows operating system aren't selling very well ... we're also seeing lackluster demand for Windows-based products," says Samsung Mobile chief JK Shin. While one could argue Samsung's commitment to Android and Tizen colors Shin's views, he's far from alone (I, II) in expressing such opinions. The remarks come in a week where IDC argued Microsoft is better off ditching ARM-based Windows RT and focusing on x86-based Windows 8. (Surface sales) (previous) [View news story]
> RT won't run a full version of Office!
This is true, but the RT version of Office has far more Office-like features, and much better Office compatibility, than any Office competitor that has been implemented by third party developers for the iPad.
This is a question of ecosystems.
For better or worse, most corporate environments use MS Office. Most iPad apps that clam to be compatible...aren't, at least not for anything beyond the simplest of files.
Office is estimated to be 38% of MSFT's market cap, while Windows is less than half that (http://bit.ly/1167vbN).
Most businesses don't stay with MSFT for the OS, they stay with MSFT for the Office apps. :-)
"Smartphones and tablets based on Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows operating system aren't selling very well ... we're also seeing lackluster demand for Windows-based products," says Samsung Mobile chief JK Shin. While one could argue Samsung's commitment to Android and Tizen colors Shin's views, he's far from alone (I, II) in expressing such opinions. The remarks come in a week where IDC argued Microsoft is better off ditching ARM-based Windows RT and focusing on x86-based Windows 8. (Surface sales) (previous) [View news story]
@berylrb: No, ultrabrooks are generally just really thin laptops.
A couple models have touchscreens, and one or two might have features where they can either detach the screen or fold the keyboard backward to achieve a tablet-like look.
But in general, no. That's why they're cheaper. :-)
Why America's 20-something's aren't destined to be poor, but its 30-somethings might be: "Today’s 30-somethings are climbing out of a deep enough hole that they may never become as wealthy as the boomers unless home values rebound dramatically, and even then, many will only be getting back to even," The Atlantic's Jordan Weissmann writes. (also) [View news story]
Exactly -- the generation getting out of school and getting their first jobs (and hopefully, first investments) right at the bottom of the crash were handed *perfect* timing.
Were they particularly smarter? No.
Did they work a lot harder? No.
They also did whatever every generation did before them, except that they might be particularly lucky, instead of unlucky. (Nothing against them, by the way -- take the lucky breaks when you can get 'em!)
However, another crash is probably coming soon -- the banks aren't done screwing people yet!
Why America's 20-something's aren't destined to be poor, but its 30-somethings might be: "Today’s 30-somethings are climbing out of a deep enough hole that they may never become as wealthy as the boomers unless home values rebound dramatically, and even then, many will only be getting back to even," The Atlantic's Jordan Weissmann writes. (also) [View news story]
The sad truth is that a whole generation simply got screwed.
Most of these folks were just going about their lives, doing what every generation in modern history had done: go to school, get a job, start a family, buy a house.
This generation did not drastically change its behavior from previous generations.
What changed was the system.
Banks could now make loans without being responsible for their quality. People have always tried to borrow more than they could realistically afford, but suddenly banks started *letting* them, because they'd just sell the loan to Wall Street.
Wall Street could bundle up a bunch of trash and get a AAA rating slapped on it and then sell it to your 401(k) fund. They could sell the same crappy loans back and forth to each other, reaping higher and higher fees all the while.
Insurers could sell insurance that they could never realistically make good on. They could make Wall Street feel like they were covered even though they weren't. Worse yet, they let people insure things that they didn't own, turning a linear problem in to an exponential one.
But the typical 30-something (a mid to late 20-something before the crash) had no reasonable way to put all those pieces together. They were real people busy doing real jobs, not trading pieces of paper, not analyzing macroeconomic trends, and certainly not planning the demise of the global economy.
Market Outlook 2015-2045 - Men Vs. Machines [View article]
> become better humans?
Because androids will be cheaper, won't complain when you treat them like garbage, and will be able to be manufactured in days or even hours as opposed to ~18 years.
Your corporate overlords consider your humanity a weakness. :-)
Market Outlook 2015-2045 - Men Vs. Machines [View article]
Market Outlook 2015-2045 - Men Vs. Machines [View article]
This requires culture change. And that is very likely to be ugly (and violent) before it happens in earnest, if it happens at all.
There is no law that can be passed and no technology that can be developed that can by itself convince people that we can all do better working cooperatively rather than competitively.
There is no management practice and no financial engineering that can stop people from believing (justifiably or otherwise) that they deserve a bigger piece of the pie than someone else.
We have this culture that everyone should "earn their keep", and this is all well and good...until there isn't enough viable earning to go around.
At some point we need to realize that we're all in this together and we need to operate in a way that can work (responsibly) for everyone.
There have been fictional depictions of such societies (i.e., Star Trek), but it has never been achieved in practice.
Either that, or we need to accept the realistic consequences of not realizing this. Far more likely than the utopian vision of the future is the distopian view (i.e., Mad Max), which we have very real examples of even today in certain parts of the world.
Market Outlook 2015-2045 - Men Vs. Machines [View article]
Continuing to allow the rich to fleece the rest only accelerates the problem, so slowing it down isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Market Outlook 2015-2045 - Men Vs. Machines [View article]
> more worthwhile endeavors such as this--or numerous other
> examples--with the vast resources of their minds instead of
> flipping burgers or answering phone calls for the rest of their
> lives, if given the choice?
But the overwhelming majority are not given this choice due to inequality of opportunity.
What's more, even if such opportunity (and equivalent motivation, etc) did exist, there simply doesn't currently seem to be a viable capitalism-based market that could successfully employ 7 billion (or even 330 million) brilliant scientists, engineers, and mathematicians.
At some point we, as national and eventually global society, need to realize that as our basic needs and wants become more and more efficiently provided, not everyone "needs" to "work", and we need to figure out what to do with that new imbalance.
Maybe we let the non-working people just die? Implement population growth controls? (I do not recommend this.)
Maybe we let a few work and share all the rewards equally? Give those working folks a bit of bonus, like a hearty handshake? (I do not recommend this either.)
Something in between? (I do recommend this.)
I can't find the comment, but Phil mused a while back that, metaphorically speaking, one day technology might be such that basically one guy pressing one button will do all the necessary work in the world -- and what then? Does that one guy get all the wealth? Do we all take turns being that one guy?
Certainly, we want everyone to add value to the world to "earn their keep", but if we define value by money, then at any given moment there's only so much of it, and if most of it is being hoarded by a privileged few who had a lot more opportunities than everyone else, what do we do with the rest?
This kind of transition is only accelerating, people need to start thinking about this stuff at the societal level.
Market Outlook 2015-2045 - Men Vs. Machines [View article]
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
> is getting a $400,000+ pension.
Is it wise to make overall policy decisions based on a few outliers?
Outliers should certainly be dealt with appropriately (via upper limits, for example), but to pretend that they are the bulk of the real problem, is clearly a crime against mathematics.
While fears of widespread defaults in the municipal bond (MUB) market (perpetuated in December of 2010 by Meredith Whitney) have so far proven overblown, Moody's says a disturbing trend seems to be developing. Although only five defaults were recorded in 2012, that's more than four times the average yearly rate logged from 1970 to 2007. Perhaps the most notable thing about last year's five defaults: three of them were general government defaults as opposed to defaults on bonds tied to specific projects. The historical average for general government muni defaults: 1 every 4.3 years. [View news story]
While I don't expect a catastrophic avalanche of muni defaults, I do expect the ranks of bankrupt cities to swell in the coming years.
Various probable interventions make the timing hard to predict, but it is likely that many more will default over the next decade or so.
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
Incorrect.
Windows 8 is currently selling at approximately the same rate as Windows 7, which was MSFT's best selling OS ever:
http://tnw.co/13gquiK
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
Perhaps the phrase you're searching for is "quality over quantity"? :-)
Little Cyprus is bringing a dangerous new variable into the European bailout crisis, warns Dennis Gartman - the Russian mafia. "Everybody knows that the vast majority of the deposits in Cyprus are from Russia," Gartman says. "They're Russian government officials, they're Russian businessmen, it's Russian mafia – and you don't mess with the Russian mafia." He calls the eurozone demand over the weekend absolute "lunacy on the part of the European monetary authorities." [View news story]
"Smartphones and tablets based on Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows operating system aren't selling very well ... we're also seeing lackluster demand for Windows-based products," says Samsung Mobile chief JK Shin. While one could argue Samsung's commitment to Android and Tizen colors Shin's views, he's far from alone (I, II) in expressing such opinions. The remarks come in a week where IDC argued Microsoft is better off ditching ARM-based Windows RT and focusing on x86-based Windows 8. (Surface sales) (previous) [View news story]
This is true, but the RT version of Office has far more Office-like features, and much better Office compatibility, than any Office competitor that has been implemented by third party developers for the iPad.
This is a question of ecosystems.
For better or worse, most corporate environments use MS Office. Most iPad apps that clam to be compatible...aren't, at least not for anything beyond the simplest of files.
Office is estimated to be 38% of MSFT's market cap, while Windows is less than half that (http://bit.ly/1167vbN).
Most businesses don't stay with MSFT for the OS, they stay with MSFT for the Office apps. :-)
"Smartphones and tablets based on Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows operating system aren't selling very well ... we're also seeing lackluster demand for Windows-based products," says Samsung Mobile chief JK Shin. While one could argue Samsung's commitment to Android and Tizen colors Shin's views, he's far from alone (I, II) in expressing such opinions. The remarks come in a week where IDC argued Microsoft is better off ditching ARM-based Windows RT and focusing on x86-based Windows 8. (Surface sales) (previous) [View news story]
A couple models have touchscreens, and one or two might have features where they can either detach the screen or fold the keyboard backward to achieve a tablet-like look.
But in general, no. That's why they're cheaper. :-)
Why America's 20-something's aren't destined to be poor, but its 30-somethings might be: "Today’s 30-somethings are climbing out of a deep enough hole that they may never become as wealthy as the boomers unless home values rebound dramatically, and even then, many will only be getting back to even," The Atlantic's Jordan Weissmann writes. (also) [View news story]
Were they particularly smarter? No.
Did they work a lot harder? No.
They also did whatever every generation did before them, except that they might be particularly lucky, instead of unlucky. (Nothing against them, by the way -- take the lucky breaks when you can get 'em!)
However, another crash is probably coming soon -- the banks aren't done screwing people yet!
Why America's 20-something's aren't destined to be poor, but its 30-somethings might be: "Today’s 30-somethings are climbing out of a deep enough hole that they may never become as wealthy as the boomers unless home values rebound dramatically, and even then, many will only be getting back to even," The Atlantic's Jordan Weissmann writes. (also) [View news story]
Most of these folks were just going about their lives, doing what every generation in modern history had done: go to school, get a job, start a family, buy a house.
This generation did not drastically change its behavior from previous generations.
What changed was the system.
Banks could now make loans without being responsible for their quality. People have always tried to borrow more than they could realistically afford, but suddenly banks started *letting* them, because they'd just sell the loan to Wall Street.
Wall Street could bundle up a bunch of trash and get a AAA rating slapped on it and then sell it to your 401(k) fund. They could sell the same crappy loans back and forth to each other, reaping higher and higher fees all the while.
Insurers could sell insurance that they could never realistically make good on. They could make Wall Street feel like they were covered even though they weren't. Worse yet, they let people insure things that they didn't own, turning a linear problem in to an exponential one.
But the typical 30-something (a mid to late 20-something before the crash) had no reasonable way to put all those pieces together. They were real people busy doing real jobs, not trading pieces of paper, not analyzing macroeconomic trends, and certainly not planning the demise of the global economy.
They just...got screwed.