subjectHarold

That isn't how most people work.

Would you rather be the worst lover in the world but everyone think you are the best? Or the best lover in the world but everyone think you are the worst?

For most people, work is their identity, it is status, it is the ability to abuse underlings terribly with no consequences. Constructing your self-image this way leads to, imo, a great deal of emotional vulnerability. If I leave my job, what will other people think? I am not the boss anymore. I am just another normal person.

And btw, if you feel that you are doing whatever you are doing until you reach $X in the bank. Then that is the same.

The point of the article is that you can be happy working a shitty job for no money. But you have to understand what makes you happy, what is fulfilling to you, etc. Although it is true that some jobs/working environments are just shitty.

Scroll to bottom. I don't know where the stuff like ROA/ROE is coming from but prices are from IEX. They make last price and actually their whole order book publicly available.

Maybe I am missing something...but what is this? Why would I use this? Where is the screening stuff?

This looks well-designed. The only thing that occurred from my, admittedly brief, navigation is the price/percent change on the stock page. These two parts shouldn't be the same font-size. It makes it harder to scan.

"If a guy brings me his code, and it has mistakes, it brings insane pleasure from how smart I feel ... And if you tell me that you haven’t had this feeling ever, then you’re lying."

Wrong on so many levels. Taking pleasure from someone else's mistakes is a sign that something is wrong with you. That is all. The only thing that is exceptional is that this industry has a high tolerance for this behaviour.

It also sounds like this guy is destroying value. If you are such a poor manager that you try to get rid of someone rather than bringing them up then you are a net negative. Again, I have come across this in other industries: the manager will go before the junior. No question. Writing bad code is nothing compared to the impact on culture of one bad apple.

Other responses are sceptical but this really works. I used to keep my AI locked up in a cage, never let it sleep, constant training...but I came to senses. I now have a small paddock in my back yard, I keep all my AI there, this is AI like nature intended, grass-fed AI, organic AI, the best kind of AI, no additives, no adulterants, my AI is the best kind of AI, number one AI, all-time highs AI, and the liberal media...forget about it...they don't want to talk about how good our AI is, never been better, huge hands AI, my AI Uncle went to Harvard Business School, Wharton and I remember he told me: "Always treat your AI like you would want your AI to be treated"...great advice, it really works AI.

I agree. As I have said elsewhere, US spending is also unusually bad. But I have seen nothing to suggest that the tax-hike crew have any good ideas about spending either. Their idea seems to be "let's just be Denmark", this is exceptionally dumb ("you can't be like Denmark" is the first lesson in most comparative policy analysis courses).

And the issue with progressive systems is that all other things aren't equal. Great, something works in theory...no-one cares. If you are analysing policy, it isn't economics, no-one cares about theory...all that matters are results. Progressive tax systems don't work.

The idea of upward and downward redistribution also sounds like something beloved of theoreticians. Something is only upward or downward re distributive after the fact. The US needs to find its own path (as an example: the idea of a "single payer" health system is just preposterous).

If you make the tax system substantially less progressive, as in Sweden or other often mentioned examples, I think it is quite possible to reach a sustainable level.

I partly agree though in that US spending really makes no sense. Other countries that raise more revenue are generally quite targeted in their spending, the US govt is not...at all. It makes no sense to say that the solution to bad spending is to generate more revenue...but it is also not particularly clear that there is any desire to think about how to spend more effectively, outside of slashing everything.

Btw, just generally this reflects how far the US is behind when it comes to intellectual discussions on policy. Most (but not all) discussions about these topics in the US take intellectual force from anti-scientific dogma. Elsewhere, politics has become an evidence-based study of the merit of policies. The former approach just isn't sustainable, the level of poverty in the US is quite shocking (to this outsider's perspective).

http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/PSZ2017.pdf - my reply was sufficient, you are just having trouble because it doesn't match with whatever you conclusion you jumped to without data.

That is fair, I didn't explain that. But it is fairly simple: progressive tax systems don't reduce inequality. The US already has one of the most progressive tax systems in the world? Is it working? The US is one of the most unequal countries in the world. Look at other similar systems, are they working? Also, no...they are also amongst the most unequal in the world.

More broadly, this is totally out of step with what is happening everywhere else in the world. The US is still trying to catchup even after Trump's tax cut, the issue is that US has a tax system that is from the 1950s when capital movements between nations were essentially banned. That kind of works for the US as the dominant world power but it is becoming more unsustainable as time goes on.

Great, try new things...but what is being proposed isn't a new idea. It is more of the same. The US system is already the most progressive, it already doesn't work, and the idea is to go even further. The new idea, which is being vigorously rejected, is to just do something that actually works. Crazy, right? You don't need to believe in crazy conspiracy theories, you don't need to re-invent taxation...just do the stuff that works.

I have given up with the long answers. The US had a marginal rate this high before: wrong, this doesn't reflect tax paid which, for the top 1%, is only down slightly since mid-1960s (and not worth anywhere close to what the US needs).

Other countries do this successfully: wrong, other countries are far less progressive than the US with many more paying top rates. The lazy "we can be Sweden" thinking also indicates a fairly weak understanding of political theory.

Assuming no reductions in revenue, the only solution is raising taxes substantially on the wealthy below 1%. Simple.

The reason that extracurriculars are valuable is because they are worth doing in and of themselves. You play an instrument because you enjoy it and to give enjoyment to others...not because it will get you into college. By devaluing those experiences, you achieve the banality that you appear to fear so much. In fact, it is really quite tragic that you think that way. Life is to be enjoyed, you can do things as ends in themselves, for their own sake...not because Harvard thinks it is important. Do you make friends based on their extracurricular activities? Do you have to check with Harvard to see if a certain kind of music is enjoyable? It is a ludicrous and quite empty way to look at life.

Yep, I agree. The reason we have this problem at all is because, at least in our part of the world, education isn't well-funded. I think we should still have a lottery system but yes, other stuff will produce better results.

I also think that all the volunteering and whatever should be cut from applications. Who gives a fuck if you played the oboe for ten years? Does that really matter? The point of music is enjoyment, the point of volunteering is to serve other people. I had a friend who was forced to play the saxaphone until university and it was tragic: he wouldn't talk about it, he only played to pass exams, he took no joy from it...like great but if you are being forced to do this then who cares? It has become another way to discriminate...and it isn't that much fun if you are a kid.

...really, the quality of education at Eton is better than a school in inner London where you are in a class with 35 other people, 90% of whom don't speak English? That information surprises me...what insights.

The point is that:

1. The gap is very large. Those schools are only graduating a few thousand compared to hundreds of thousands students in state schools. Even if you compare with institutions that receive a huge number of applications from private schools (e.g. Edinburgh, Durham), the effect is disproportionate.

2. We need to make use of people who have the most ability. It is foolish in the extreme to suppose that going to Eton or having the right parents makes you a capable adult. You say the admissions process isn't biased...but we are optimising for whether you attended Eton. Speak to someone who didn't attend Eton or similar, and ask them if you think that is fair.

Btw, I went to a private school and went to a good university (that takes from private schools to a very high degree), and worked as an equity analyst (so meeting C-level execs and fund managers who mostly went to Oxbridge) your views are just generally very very wrong. These people are not capable or unusually smart. They just grew up in a safe environment with class sizes of less than 30 people. And UK management teams are, comparatively, very weak because there is no real meritocracy here. Sure, there are some good managers but this is basically certain in a large enough sample. And if someone has come up the hard way, they are usually a much safer bet. It is kind of crazy that you have picked one of the most busted, unmeritocratic societies in the world...and tried to show how it is actually fair...

The problem isn't that we miss out on some specific genius. The real issue with our system is that we have "Feynmans" working as waiters and driving taxis (and some other countries don't have that system and are maximising their talent).

It is interesting to critique this idea for introducing chance. Pitch this idea to a poor person, pitch this idea to a rich person...that is your answer. It is hard to understand if you grew up with opportunity but for poor people this randomness represents a tremendous improvement. From a system that is designed to crush them, to one in which everyone has the same chance.

The idea of lotteries is not new. This problem is addressed in most solutions by weighting for factors.

The issue with the current system is that it produces the lack of diversity that you are describing because it optimises for things that only rich people have access to. If you go to a shit school, something that no child really has control over, you won't have extracurriculars, you might not have sports, there are no violins...this upper middle-class idea of "diversity" is weak and decadent.

Is that the same university that admits more from eight private schools than from 3/4 of the state school system? Yep, sounds like a fair system. Cool story bro.

Nowhere have I seen the "well that looks weird...but they probably know what they are doing" expression used more than in finance.

I have been through it myself more times than I care to mention. Everyone assumes that the other person has some knowledge they don't know about or has some secret "edge"...they never do.

Amd after ten years or so, I learned that people do weird things for one simple reason: they are fucking stupid. That is it. They won't learn from mistakes. They are overconfident. They are greedy. Intelligence doesn't matter. Money doesn't matter. Whatever, they are just incurably dumb.

And btw: organisations are never well optimised for stuff that matters. Finance is the prime example of this. If I wanted to set fire to $100bn, I would do exactly what SoftBank are doing right now.

I know that everyone here believes in technology and continuing progress into infinity. This is true in some areas, it is not true in finance.

It really doesn't. You may be able to push up the price but higher prices mean lower returns. What you are hoping for is that you will pile money in, for some unknown reason other people will panic and try to bid, and then you sell to them.

Just fyi though: I have worked in markets for about ten years...I have seen this over and over. I studied economic history...I have read about this over and over. And the subject almost never makes it out alive. Usually, this is psychological. Most people get involved with clear heads but that clarity doesn't survive the rush of the bull market/greed...they want more, they start to believe their own bullshit, they end up fully invested at the top...they get carried out of the market.

It's only an arb if your net exposure is zero. If you want an arb, look at Hansa. You can buy their trust and sell an underlying porfolio which, if you do it right, should come out to very close to zero exposure. But most CEFs aren't selling at a discount because of liquidity, they are just shit (if the manager is decent, they should buy back shares to close the discount).

And yet...his wife's granny ended up investing a couple of mil in a stock priced in the single digits that is now worth over $1500/share. Don't overthink things.

Btw: if you actually knew what happened to the share price at that time (it was probably down 90% in a year) then you wouldn't call it anything other than what it is...a good decision.

The chances of this data being accurate is close to zero. I have seen data looking at factors for major markets outside the US, and it is wildly inaccurate even as recent as the 1970s. Mainly trading costs and liquidity but delistings too.

In addition, I know someone who looked through the paid data offerings for a similar purpose. He ended up employing ten to twenty people year round to build out a proprietary dataset because it was just not accurate.

Most professional money managers aren't trying to beat the market. Distribution is way more important than performance. Trying to outperform the market is risky. Even if you have a good fund manager, they will eventually go elsewhere (if you look at most of big managers, but not all, their business model is turning a 0x employee into a 1x employee...10x employees get paid their marginal product).

The key to running an asset management business is marketing, and building assets with unsophisticated clients that won't sell (mainly retail investors/advisers). This doesn't work as well anymore but it is very weird to argue that mutual funds are meant to beat the market. That was never the pitch.

It is also fairly straightforward to outperform the market if you are a retail investor, you have a huge edge: size. You have just to look at the stuff that no-one else is looking at. I am not sure why but people have extreme amounts of difficulty with this concept.

People become investors because they want people to think they are big time, they want respect...they don't really care about performance. I remember a few years ago, when I worked in the industry, I came across a one-month 15% arb. My job at the time was to pitch ideas, and no-one was interested..."it isn't what we/I do". I cleaned out my account, sold everything, borrowed a substantial amount...99% of people won't do that. It is crazy to them...but investing is simple: look at what everyone else is doing, and don't do that because it is fucking dumb.

Also, most HFs don't have non-public information...sorry, they just don't. Some people are just genuinely better at making decisions than other people - 95% of people make the same mistake over and over, regardless of intelligence...ppl who are too smart usually do worse imo - and the most successful get around the problem of scale (a good example is Baupost: they invest in complex stuff that no-one else is trading).

Didn't you know that French protesters have been chanting "We want Trump"?

On this, I used to work in investment management. Good distribution is several times more important than generating returns.

One of the most prominent managers local to me (worth $150-200m, probably one of the wealthiest people in my country) only has one senior manager, apart from that...just grads. The product is terrible but is designed for a certain market that is growing rapidly and is naturally doing very very well. This is true of all of the largest fund managers local to me: always distribution first, thinking about who is going to buy, and what they care about (i.e. US pension fund, superannuation, etc.).

Even worse, I have come across more than one manager who was clearly very +EV but either couldn't raise money or went out of business because they weren't selling the right product at the right time. Most good managers do stay in business but not all. And if you don't have good distribution, you won't survive no matter what returns you have.

Why? My current theory is that people have rigid ideas about how to make money. Profit doesn't matter: it is about validating an idea or opinion of themselves. I suspect that the VC world is no different. I know nothing about a16z apart from their "reputation": very influential, whizzy VC firm, and very safe intellectually. They are the archetype VC firm, this is what VC investing is, you can lose money but you won't lose face.

So what? We have a separate bar for alcoholics? We ban alcohol? What are you saying?

Great, I get it, you have empathy...but, ultimately, if you are an alcoholic you can't avoid people drinking alcohol and trying to avoid things generally isn't a long-term sustainable strategy

Ah, I forgot...the most welcoming environments are ones where things are banned.

Yep, and thinking that everyone is judging you is often not a rational thought (it is probably the most common thought within a general social anxiety). The other person doesn't have to disclose anything...you just say "I don't drink"...feeling like you "have" to tell someone anything is not a thing. If someone has your testicles hooked up to a car battery then consider it but no-one is forcing her to say anything, she is forcing herself.

I come from the UK, I went to uni at a time when the drinking culture was still big...I never had a problem...at uni...in a country where it is fairly normal to get destroyed every weekend. Not once, out of (probably) hundreds of times (I did study theology briefly, the only time I remember it getting weird was with devout people thinking they had found someone with similar views).

Perhaps more to the point though: assume that someone did have a huge problem with me drinking, why do I care? Someone else thinking that I have to drink seems like an irrational belief on their part. It is never about someone saying they have a problem with someone not drinking, it is about people who don't drink thinking they can read minds.

What you are saying is that everyone else should be forced to change their behaviour so that one or two people stop making themselves feel uncomfortable. As someone who has been in this position: this doesn't work. If you feel uncomfortable and drinking is banned, you will start attributing those feelings to something else.

The reason I came to that conclusion (that banning alcohol is the solution) is that, based on the beliefs in the article, banning alcohol is the only actual solution. Presumably if something else was attempted like banning people asking each other for drinks, then they would worry about people looking at their drink.

I am not sure what diversity has to do with it? As said, I don't drink but does that mean no-one else should be allowed to drink? What is the idea behind that?

Just imo: if you don't drink but have a problem with others doing so then there is something wrong with you, not with the people who drink.

And speaking from experience, the people who do have a problem with others drinking tend to be motivated by religions that conflict with accepted ideals of liberal democracy (i.e. they look down on people who drink, believe they are unclean/mad/whatever).

I think the boundary is well-defined (tech companies are not the first companies to hire people): don't drink alcohol at work, don't smoke weed at work (even if it is legal), and don't come to work drunk or high.

If it is a social event outside the work place/hours, you can drink but don't get fucked up and vomit in a pint glass. If weed is legal, you can go outside and smoke like tobacco but, again, don't get fucked up and try to hump a pot plant or something.

Simple.

I don't understand what the big deal is...we should ban alcohol at these events because some people don't like it? I don't drink, I haven't done so since my first year of uni...it has never been an issue.

Might there be a correlation between people who don't drink and being introverted/feeling excluded? This is definitely true in my case (at one time, I had social anxiety...alcohol was a crutch for me) but you just have to get over it and stop thinking that you deserve an exemption. If we make this exception, guess what...the same people are going to complain about being excluded for some other arbitrary reason.