As a human, I'm appalled at their environmental track record but as an engineer, wow they really do so many things so well.
The relevant question isn't whether they make great products, but whether their stock is undervalued.
We in the tech world are used to "great products" -> "stock price always goes up", but in the "real world" there's no reason for that to be true. "Stock price goes up" should, from an efficient-markets PoV, reflect new information.
The "efficient-market-PoV" in this instance is simply - is an observation that 3M makes good products likely to constitute information that is not already factored into the stock price?
Base tier (and the one pretty much everybody can agree on): The expected value of the error of the market is zero. This means that the market does not always fundamentally overvalue or undervalue assets, and that, over time, it will overvalue things as often as undervalue.
(... many intermediate forms ...)
Strong efficient market hypothesis: The market price always reflects all accessible information, and every market movement is driven by new information.
The strong efficient market hypothesis is pretty evidently wrong (the existence of all the various quant funds that are generating outsize returns is strong evidence; it would also mean there are no stock bubbles. Having lived through 2 bubbles in my life, I can tell you: Bubbles exist, and there are many forces outside of new information that lead to them inflating and popping).
Full disclosure: I am the proud owner of one share of MMM.
What's the calculus there, and why proud — if you don't mind me asking?
Wow, pretty cool guy for a banker — wonder what his "catch" was!
3M's consumer products (Scotch, etc.) are also excellent. Anytime you use 3M products, you don't need to worry. I like that consistency and it brings peace to the mind. I'll pay more for it.
Japanese equivalent is Nitto: https://www.nitto.com/us/en/products/
Most companies with such a huge array of subtly different products are nowhere near so clear.
https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/bonding-and-assembly-us/resource...
[1] https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/health-and-wellness/toxic-s...
I have no idea what kind of black magic makes it possible but I’m so glad I gave them a try.
My anecdotal experience is that every time I run into some amazing 3M product, it costs $300/liter.
Nile Red recently posted this cool video of extinguishing a book with this fancy 3M liquid. Looked, yup, that's about the price.
If you wanted to experiment with fancy computer cooling, Fluorinert is also an arm and a leg in the quantities that'd be needed. It was apparently used in the Cray waterfall, but it seems after more than 30 years the stuff is still bloody expensive.
And so on.
Fluorinert is a super niche product. The price reflects that. I imagine the cost to produce it has dropped dramatically in 3 decades. 3M just make more profit from it now.
As products mature there's no reason to believe the production process and efficiency savings will always be passed on to the consumer.
I mean, that goes both ways. At that price it will always be a super niche product, and never graduate to "plain niche".
Look at the enthusiast market, there's no lack of fancy water cooling gizmos out there. They're bought by a small segment, but there's still a market for fancy gizmos to provide the best cooling for overclocked high end hardware.
And that's exactly what I'm getting at -- it's not enough to make cool stuff. The cool stuff also has to reach the people interested in using it.
If Fluorinert costs $300/litre today and you cut the price to $100/litre - that's still far too expensive to become a mainstream PC coolant. It's not like there's a proven market for mineral oil PC cooling.
Could be, if you cut the price of Fluorinert by 2/3rds, you'd just be giving a discount to your existing customers, for whom price is no object anyway.
To me this sounds more difficult to use than mineral oil, not easier.
“As perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), all Fluorinert variants have an extremely high Global Warming Potential (GWP),[1] so should be used with caution”
That page also says
“Although Fluorinert was intended to be inert, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory discovered that the liquid cooling system of their Cray-2 supercomputers decomposed during extended service, producing some highly toxic perfluoroisobutene. Catalytic scrubbers were installed to remove this contaminant.”
Perfluoroisobutene is a schedule 2 substance, in the sense of the Chemical Weapons Convention (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Schedule_2_substances_...), so it’s a substance that “can either be used as chemical weapons themselves or used in the manufacture of chemical weapons but that have small-scale applications outside of chemical warfare and so can be legitimately manufactured in small quantities”.
My personal favorite is the 3M V-Flex N95. Super comfortable, great seal, and relatively large interior volume (great breathability). It's pretty close to a perfect mask. I also gave some of these away, and they were similarly popular.
In general, Aura seemed to be liked more for smaller faces, and V-Flex for larger faces. So, nowadays, my go-to recommendations are V-Flexes and Auras.
Some of the comfort may also be the breathability, Auras have a pretty low pressure diff between the inside and outside when in use. If you want that low pressure difference in a traditional N95 style, Indiana Face Mask makes some top notch high-filtration high-breathability N95s that are similar. Both they and the Auras usually test above 99.5% filtration, the Auras usually have a little bit of a petroleum smell but if it's bad enough that it makes the mask deeply unpleasant to wear, you probably have a fake (sometimes factory rejects get resold etc.).
I mostly use behind the head but foldable ones now, the ones to TC-84A-9315 spec (H95W) are pretty good for me but my nose is a bit too pointy to fit right at the nose. They seem to work really really well for people with slightly flatter features, the little nose metal form doesn't quite hold well enough.
I imagine it still helps some, but I'm very attentive to leaks at the top because glasses. If you wear it loose enough the gaps at the top are so big it doesn't fog your glasses anymore, I go the opposite direction and fiddle with it all day long trying to get the nose piece rigid enough to stop the leak. I'm not sure which approach is more risky... touching your mask is a nono too.
I guess a good mask with leaks is better than a surgical mask maybe, dunno if it's better than a rigid mask with an exhalation port TBH though, at least if you're not exhaling strongly there are no leaks and it's good for personal protection -- and since we've as a country decided it's everyone for themselves I feel pretty okay wearing a vented rigid N95 in an environment with a bunch of unmasked people.
(I am one of those btw, I've sold what I had left early in the year and made a nice profit. Didn't get rich because you need to have money to make money, but it was a nice extra).