eldavido

48 ms·

391.
by eldavido 8y ago
Oh believe me, they are HIGHLY visible everywhere it counts: local committee meetings, elections, city hall, etc. You just don't see them because "visible" to us here means posting on HN or Medium or Twitter. There's jus
392.
by eldavido 8y ago
There's a popular meme that it makes an area more desirable, therefore increasing property prices. And there's probably some truth to that. What this fails to consider is that, if a bunch of people are moving to an area, they have
393.
by eldavido 8y ago
My wife's grandmother is a CA NIMBY. Prop 13 and all. She just wants things to continue how they are. Paying taxes on her 1970s property value, living in the same place, etc. I'm pro-YIMBY but I can't say I don't see the
394.
by eldavido 8y ago
So I just bought a house (condo actually) in Oakland and I have to agree. There's a huge class of people who aren't particularly impressive, hard-working, or otherwise "deserving" in my admittedly-morally-loaded-sense of
395.
by eldavido 8y ago
I'll check this out, thanks for posting.
396.
by eldavido 8y ago
I generally agree with the article's main thrusts (city living is more "efficient", better/more sustainable infrastructure), but this is a very one-sided view. Sure, cities are more "efficient". They're al
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by eldavido 8y ago
I think you hit it on the head. Buy it, rent it out, wipe all your taxable profit (or at least most of it) with depreciation, and then 1031 your way into higher and higher places. You'll have zero basis on xx million of real estate if
398.
by eldavido 8y ago
I think this is a really fair and balanced way of looking at it. The key political question could perhaps be stated as, how do you balance the median vs. the mean? A society which focuses on maximum efficiency will almost certainly have hig
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by eldavido 8y ago
This isn't my opinion, it's more like "business physics". Any company without network effects is going to have escalating acquisition costs as they have to convince more highly indifferent users/customers to come on
400.
by eldavido 8y ago
I have a slightly different take on this. While I agree with the general idea that there are more ways than wages to earn wealth, I think the advice is more general: focus on ownership. Figure out how to buy or create an asset and work on i
401.
by eldavido 8y ago
Dude seriously what the hell are you talking about? Almost anyone who gets employee-level equity in a standard DE C corp will receive such a small piece that the voting rights are largely irrelevant. I was a sub-1% shareholder in a recent M
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by eldavido 8y ago
Zero network effects, escalating acquisition costs as the space gets more saturated, and few other potential acquirers. Having said that, this isn't a bad outcome by any stretch so congrats to them.
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by eldavido 8y ago
Interesting that many states have laws mandating this for auto care. I'm hoping we reach consensus soon that healthcare isn't somehow "special". It's just an industry, with incumbent interests, fighting to earn as m
404.
by eldavido 8y ago
This analysis ignores the secondary effects of the mere ability to shop around. Right now, for many insurance plans, consumers of care are 100% price insensitive. If even, say, 5% of a market starts to take their business elsewhere out of
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by eldavido 9y ago
First Republic really isn't any different than Wells Fargo. They talk a big game about personal service but it's the same bullshit. (Speaking from firsthand experience of moving from WF to FRB.) You'll talk to a different per
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by eldavido 9y ago
Having survived a few startup disasters, I also resisted the imposition of process. Looking back, I think it was a mistake.
407.
by eldavido 9y ago
I think about this a lot. And I don't think it transfers at all. Software is a design business. You win by building the thing people want and selling a lot of it. The hard problem is identifying a real need and getting whatever it is t
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by eldavido 9y ago
This is a fantastic book. It's essentially a summary of the author (Daniel Kahneman's) academic career, worth reading because he's one of the founders of "behavioral economics" - the idea that economic-decision maki
409.
by eldavido 9y ago
This isn't how I see it at all. In my view, there's a price that correctly prices in all information that's knowable. Note that each individual may have his own version of this price, which is why buying and selling takes pla
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by eldavido 9y ago
Is there published research on this? I'd like to read it, if so. Intuitively it feels like you're right but it's not what I've seen.
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by eldavido 9y ago
It's interesting how the market never just drops though. I was talking about this with my family over the weekend. There always has to be some precipitating event, e.g. if you think Tesla is wildly overvalued, it gets adjusted as the r
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by eldavido 9y ago
This is such an awesome comment. I just wanted to say, thank you for posting this.
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by eldavido 9y ago
This might sound a little mean, and I don't mean it to be this way, but this is a really naive viewpoint. Look at any profession -- accounting for instance -- and they have all sorts of stuff like this. As an example, there's a co
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by eldavido 9y ago
Having read the Mueller report, I'm not ready to jump quite that far yet. But I do know it's certainly changed my view of what's possible, from Russia messing with the US election being "total conspiracy level stuff&quot
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Ray Dalio on populism, the phenomenon overtaking politics today [pdf](bridgewater.com)
2 points by eldavido 9y ago|0 comments
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by eldavido 9y ago
I don't see it man. I think this was the most democratic election in US history, where the people finally got what they really wanted - a blustering populist without a shred of actual policy experience. I mean, come on - the wall, tari
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by eldavido 9y ago
As a US centrist, I care about the social safety net. But I also care about efficiency. I have no love for a janitor making 200k/year. I don't care what the laws are, that's a broken system someone has figured out how to game
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by eldavido 9y ago
Pensions are ok as long as they're (a) fully funded and (b) managed well. Politics makes both hard. (a) because it's much easier to promise benefits without fully contributing the present value of future liabilities. Ask the avera
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by eldavido 9y ago
I wouldn't be so sure. Let's see what happens in the mayoral election. If London Breed gets elected, I take that as a signal that the city wants something different. Politics in the Bay Area has changed noticeably in the 7 years I
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by eldavido 9y ago
Hi fellow Chicagoan (now live in Oakland). Thanks for the polite and civil response. Let's teach these Californians how to have a respectful across-the-aisle dialog ;) It's funny, I'm on an HOA board and spent the entire day

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