My View On American Politics

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
81

[quote]Aleksandr wrote:
If you have billions invested in oil companies, and someone comes up with a viable alternative to petrochemical energy (cheap, abundant, renewable, clean), the stock price is going to fall, [/quote]

That’s not how the stock market works. Stock prices do not fall just because someone invents a competing product.

[quote]Aleksandr wrote:
and you are going to lose money.[/quote]

And a stock can bounce. So the way to get the stock price up is to adapt and compete. Wall Street will always ask can this or that company change with the market and grow. Business is fluid, that which does not change will die.

[quote]Aleksandr wrote:
You can adapt all you want, but the money that you lost when the stock fell is gone. It really doesn’t matter HOW you earned the money, because when it’s gone, it’s gone.[/quote]

This isn’t how investing and the stock market works. Stocks fluctuate, and adapting with the consumer market to be competitive is common. For example Jack Welch turned GE around when they produced different products and services. The stock went down and then rose since the company had great fundamentals. Before DoubleClick was sold, they changed gears to sell marketing services and became a leader. You make it sound as if a company can only make one product and when competition arises with a better product, the management team couldn’t turn things around and compete. So when you ask what would I do if it was my billions on the line, I do what any fundamentally sound company with strong leadership would do, and that’s adapt.

82

[quote]vroom wrote:
Lift, didn’t you know this was a democracy. The majority is always right and can do anything it wants… that’s what a democracy is, remember?

This concept of being concerned about the wants and desires of others must be some liberal bleeding heart bullshit fed to you by the media.
[/quote]
Wants and desires…that’s for the hedonistic republican horde to concern themselves with. All I care about is the gov’t not runing amuck and thinking it has free reign to take away my “civil” liberties in the name of safety and justice.

The reps can do, say, think what they want as long as it doesn’t affect me. And that isn’t liberal, bleeding heart bullshit.

83

[quote]IagoMB wrote:
Aleksandr wrote:
If you have billions invested in oil companies, and someone comes up with a viable alternative to petrochemical energy (cheap, abundant, renewable, clean), the stock price is going to fall,

That’s not how the stock market works. Stock prices do not fall just because someone invents a competing product.

Aleksandr wrote:
and you are going to lose money.

And a stock can bounce. So the way to get the stock price up is to adapt and compete. Wall Street will always ask can this or that company change with the market and grow. Business is fluid, that which does not change will die.

Aleksandr wrote:
You can adapt all you want, but the money that you lost when the stock fell is gone. It really doesn’t matter HOW you earned the money, because when it’s gone, it’s gone.

This isn’t how investing and the stock market works. Stocks fluctuate, and adapting with the consumer market to be competitive is common. For example Jack Welch turned GE around when they produced different products and services. The stock went down and then rose since the company had great fundamentals. Before DoubleClick was sold, they changed gears to sell marketing services and became a leader. You make it sound as if a company can only make one product and when competition arises with a better product, the management team couldn’t turn things around and compete. So when you ask what would I do if it was my billions on the line, I do what any fundamentally sound company with strong leadership would do, and that’s adapt.[/quote]

Let’s play “imagination”. Imagine you have invested every dollar you could scrape up, borrow, steal, whatever, and put it all into oil companies. A week later, you hear that this magical new fuel source has been invented, and oil is no longer needed for energy. Do you:

a) throw up every time you try to speak

b) have confidence that the CEO of the various companies will somehow pull through and adapt.

c) kill yourself

If you answered b, you are either lying, or you don’t play “imagination” honestly, you cheater.

84

[quote]Aleksandr wrote:

Let’s play “imagination”. Imagine you have invested every dollar you could scrape up, borrow, steal, whatever, and put it all into oil companies. A week later, you hear that this magical new fuel source has been invented, and oil is no longer needed for energy. Do you:

a) throw up every time you try to speak

b) have confidence that the CEO of the various companies will somehow pull through and adapt.

c) kill yourself

If you answered b, you are either lying, or you don’t play “imagination” honestly, you cheater.[/quote]

Now wait a sec. This is completely different. Everything you’ve been writing has been about company owners and what they would do with their billions. This example is from the perspective of an individual investor, not a business owner.

Furthermore the example is unrealistic in many points. It sounds as if the investor is unsavvy, in which case buyer beware, since the stock market is usually a very bad place for unsavvy investors. The investor in this example put his money in only one industry sector, which can be done but it’s a really bad move. Publicly traded companies have quarterly and yearly meetings that are open to all stock holders, in which they have to justify what they do and explain how they do it.

Also, if they are unscrupulous and sell off their stock, all investors will know within a day since the laws where changed after the stupidity at Enron. So your example is not about business, but investing. And to answer, as an investor I would not have gotten myself into a situation like this. It is far too risky.

So are we switching to investing or do we want to stay with business?

85

[quote]Aleksandr wrote:
Let’s play “imagination”. Imagine you have invested every dollar you could scrape up, borrow, steal, whatever, and put it all into oil companies. A week later, you hear that this magical new fuel source has been invented, and oil is no longer needed for energy. Do you:

a) throw up every time you try to speak

b) have confidence that the CEO of the various companies will somehow pull through and adapt.

c) kill yourself

If you answered b, you are either lying, or you don’t play “imagination” honestly, you cheater.
[/quote]
…or d) Take it in the ass like every investor who has made a bad decision since the beginning of free enterprise

isn’t that just how capitalism works? As a private citizen with no interest group out for my protection why should I care about someone or group who makes a bad mistake and misinvests his or her money?

86

I’m not sure, but I think billionaires generally don’t accept getting f’d in the a very often. If it were me, I hope I wouldn’t do anything unethical, but you can never be sure what you would do.

Iago, you seem not to understand the concept of a corporation. The individual investors ARE the owners. I would personally go with option a.

87

[quote]Aleksandr wrote:

Iago, you seem not to understand the concept of a corporation. The individual investors ARE the owners. I would personally go with option a.[/quote]

Your example was for an individual investor. We have been debating running a business and changing when the market changes. Stock holders do not run companies, they hold shares. CEOs and business managers run companies. You even recognize this in your example, choice B.

I’m getting confused as to which you are debating for; business owners not able to adapt to a changing market, or individual investing? I’ve already given real world examples to support my side for adaptation, but you’ve countered with investing examples, which is different.

88

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
ZEB wrote:
Tongue in cheek? Not hardly! Suppose we had such a multi-party system. You could theoretically get 20 candidates running for office. Of those 20 several could very well be far left or far right. If one of them can garner even 10% he could very well win!

Think about it.

Democracy doesn’t mean one needs a greater than 50% majority to win. Someone with 10% majority would then be forced to work with Congress and come more to the middle to be accepted by the rest of the country. The way it is now GW has a greater than 50% base (if the rest of the country hasn’t been alienated yet) and it pretty much makes him think that he has the right to ignore the rest ofthe country–which is pretty much 50% against him. [/quote]

You have missed the point!

If some wacko leftist (or rightist) gets elected with 10% of the vote he or she could rein chaos on the nation and the world. Remember the President is “Commander and Chief.”

89

this is getting stupid

http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=753625

90

[quote]Aleksandr wrote:
this is getting stupid

http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=753625[/quote]

Could you elaborate on what’s getting stupid? I thought that thread had some good article references. Does this have something to do with this thread? Are we going back to alternate fuel sources now? I’m just confused as to where you want to go. Thanks.

91

[quote]oboffill wrote:
I’m sorry that I haven’t outlined my position more thoroughly.

The reason why I am so against capitalism is not because I am grieving over not being filthy rich.

What I don’t like about capitalism is that the focus is on wealth itself. In my crazy head, I dream of a society which values REAL things which impact society. I would like to see a society which measures it’s progress by amount of good done to humanity, not GDP.

I am against wastefulness. I value science, art, beauty, love, truth. Capitalism does not value these things.

[/quote]

Sure there’s problems with capitalism. However; science, art, beauty, love, and truth are more present in capitalist countries than an non-capitalist ones. If theres somewhere that violates this, let me know

92

[quote]jsbrook wrote:
oboffill wrote:
I’m sorry that I haven’t outlined my position more thoroughly.

The reason why I am so against capitalism is not because I am grieving over not being filthy rich.

What I don’t like about capitalism is that the focus is on wealth itself. In my crazy head, I dream of a society which values REAL things which impact society. I would like to see a society which measures it’s progress by amount of good done to humanity, not GDP.

I am against wastefulness. I value science, art, beauty, love, truth. Capitalism does not value these things.

Sure there’s problems with capitalism. However; science, art, beauty, love, and truth are more present in capitalist countries than an non-capitalist ones. If theres somewhere that violates this, let me know[/quote]

Name one non-capitalist country.

93

[quote]IagoMB wrote:
Aleksandr wrote:
this is getting stupid

http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=753625

Could you elaborate on what’s getting stupid? I thought that thread had some good article references. Does this have something to do with this thread? Are we going back to alternate fuel sources now? I’m just confused as to where you want to go. Thanks.[/quote]

The current thread is getting stupid. Bottom line, sometimes businesses slow technological development.

94

[quote]Aleksandr wrote:
I’m not sure, but I think billionaires generally don’t accept getting f’d in the a very often. If it were me, I hope I wouldn’t do anything unethical, but you can never be sure what you would do.

Iago, you seem not to understand the concept of a corporation. The individual investors ARE the owners. I would personally go with option a.[/quote]

Billionaires generally have more sense than to invest all their money in one stock. If they did, they would have written a nice options portfolio over them to protect their stock from down side risk.

95

[quote]Aleksandr wrote:
jsbrook wrote:
oboffill wrote:
I’m sorry that I haven’t outlined my position more thoroughly.

The reason why I am so against capitalism is not because I am grieving over not being filthy rich.

What I don’t like about capitalism is that the focus is on wealth itself. In my crazy head, I dream of a society which values REAL things which impact society. I would like to see a society which measures it’s progress by amount of good done to humanity, not GDP.

I am against wastefulness. I value science, art, beauty, love, truth. Capitalism does not value these things.

Sure there’s problems with capitalism. However; science, art, beauty, love, and truth are more present in capitalist countries than an non-capitalist ones. If theres somewhere that violates this, let me know

Name one non-capitalist country.[/quote]

There you go. Don’t think there are any anymore.

96

[quote]Aleksandr wrote:

The current thread is getting stupid. Bottom line, sometimes businesses slow technological development.[/quote]

Not one post you made would reach that conclusion. You seem to be going on a lot of tangents. What is this related to, and could we name the topic and stick to it? Thanks.

97

[quote]jsbrook wrote:
Aleksandr wrote:
jsbrook wrote:
oboffill wrote:
I’m sorry that I haven’t outlined my position more thoroughly.

The reason why I am so against capitalism is not because I am grieving over not being filthy rich.

What I don’t like about capitalism is that the focus is on wealth itself. In my crazy head, I dream of a society which values REAL things which impact society. I would like to see a society which measures it’s progress by amount of good done to humanity, not GDP.

I am against wastefulness. I value science, art, beauty, love, truth. Capitalism does not value these things.

Sure there’s problems with capitalism. However; science, art, beauty, love, and truth are more present in capitalist countries than an non-capitalist ones. If theres somewhere that violates this, let me know

Name one non-capitalist country.

There you go. Don’t think there are any anymore.
[/quote]

China, Cuba? The government owns all property in those countries. However it doesn’t go against the first part of your statement.