You're 55, making $400k a year as a HVAC Repair Company, and while you love the business and your kids are in expensive colleges (not taking over the business) you are offered $8MM to sell. Instant retirement. A buy out isn't the same as selling out because people live off of cash and not principal.
At the end of the day it comes down to how much money your principles are worth. People are commenting about dentists and doctors being bought out. Those strike me as the kind of people that can afford retirement without also contributing to the worsening of society.
The bill is written 'do good, stop bad stuff by establishing a committee or group to make sure fund good stuff, bad stuff doesn't happen' then the law passes and lobbyists write the details that fund the programs that tax the people that generate the income for companies that donate to the politicians that sell their votes to the lobbyists and interest groups.
California politicians start with the end goal "maintain power, secure revolt, obtain capital, deny failure".
It goes beyond lying to your face. They will be convincingly genuine, heartfelt, while finding a way to extract as much as possible for themselves, by extension their party, by extension the 'government' and do absolutely anything to keep the illusion that you have a choice, a vote, and a voice.
I lived here my whole life. These politicians are evil. Lie, cheat, and steal - deny if caught, punish if provoked.
I have been encouraging people to think about agentic coding in the same way.
Let agents do the reading and writing and inspections. Human does the thinking.
Asking an agent that is looking at a firearm specification schematic "what is wrong with this?" and the response is "this thing contains an explosion and can kill". Human "that's the function" when the human should be asking "based upon the materials used, are the fault tolerances sufficient to maintain structural integrity".
GME also beat the S&P 500 over the past 10 years. Is this evidence that Ryan Cohen is a business genius?
Tesla has been a meme stock for about five years now, maybe more. Its valuation correlates with Musk's abilities as a showman and media figure, not a businessman.
> GME also beat the S&P 500 over the past 10 years. Is this evidence that Ryan Cohen is a business genius?
GME did not beat the S&P500 over the past 10 years, and it is just the evidence of you needing to verify your claims before making them.
Over the past 5 years[0]: S&P500 up by 77%, GME down by 50%.
Over the past 10 years: S&P500 up by 260%, GME up by 207%.
GME performance in the past 10 years doesn't indicate that Ryan Cohen is a business genius. It indicates that he runs a company that has been underperforming the market for at least the past decade.
GME Jan 1, 2016: $7.09, $5.49 adjusted (accounting for dividend disbursements)
GME Jan 1, 2026: $20.09
266% or 365% return depending on how you count dividends. 365% for GME vs. 306% for S&P 500 over the same period (also using adjusted for dividend numbers).
For the previous 10 years, dividends reinvested, GME returned 14.59% per year, SP500 did 15.376% per year. Considering the much, much higher risk of owning a single stock, the risk adjusted return of SP500 is much higher than GME.
I'd argue that Tesla's stock price is more about con artist acumen than business acumen.
TSLA currently has a P/E of ~375. That's extremely overvalued. There's no possible objective reason for TSLA to have such an extreme ratio. Even if you think Robotaxi is going to be a massive success, it would have to completely devour Lyft, Uber, and traditional taxi services all combined to even get half way to justifying that P/E, and considering the already major distrust in Tesla's FSD, I just don't see that happening.
The math doesn't math. People buy TSLA because they want to be part of Elon's cult, not because of anything to do with Tesla as a company.
So you are personally invested in this and openly admit to it. And yet expect me to take a discussion with you seriously?
Normally the way this works, is you excuse yourself away from a debate for being too financially involved in the situation, knowing that your financial bias is too overwhelming.
But started this by pointing out Elon Musks weakness in the field of AI, and the best anyone seems to have come up so far is that Elon Musk has more money so it doesn't matter. It's not quite the flex that the Musk fanboys think it is.
The simplest solution would have been to ya know, point at an Elon Musk AI win. And Dojo, xAI, Grok are all relative failures in these respects.
Bad actor at plaid gets access to X accounts. Then sells data? Does unauthorized transfers? Create political or religious dossier on every account?
I assume my balance would be returned if someone hacked but what if they wrote checks with signatures which is fraud and that's different. My understanding is no. Fraud doesn't return the balance.
I have my money in 3 accounts. Most I lose is 33% of my total wealth.
The alternative that illegals in the area use are gold and cash and those ladies get mugged and robbed constantly because others know they stash their valuables on their neck and under their bed.
Without a bank the options are limited. Everything is online. Swiss accounts are toast. Crypto has similar problems as gold. Storage and protection is complicated.
I'm inclined to build an LLC type asset and insure the liquidity or something.
All my info can be purchased or captured through my phone or mail and that is enough info to write a check or take out a loan of $50k in my name.
I am not sure the laws and banks protect me in the event someone successfully claims to be me. I wouldn't mind mandatory in person wet signatures for anything over $1k-5k or >5% of my account
You got two 'village' responses which I fully disagree with because a dozen reasons. The village is not going to help you change diapers, feed the children, or do anything except have the children play together.
I do not find parenting that difficult because I parent differently.
The alternative: Teach them to entertain themselves. They clean up their own messes. I have the kiddos do tasks with me. Babies are easy enough, toddlers need limited stuff to do as it is all about novelty. Kids 5+ can learn to entertain themselves with their talents, siblings, neighbors.
Historically, the village 100% changed diaper, feed your children, nursed and generally helped out. Aunts, cousins, parents, friends all pitched in in the community to care for children.
Historically, what you speak of is an idealized and generalized image. What village are you talking about? Where? When? What was the socioeconomic status of the family? Etc.
In reality it would vary whole lot, not just in terms of time and place in a general sense, but also for individual families. If you had many relatives nearby, perhaps, but in some cases you might not, or you might actually have to be taking care of not just your children but also your parents-in-law who are disabled and your aunt who is mentally unstable partially due to her own husband and children dying in the famine a couple years back.
And maybe you are also poor so you need to work land that isn't even your own, in addition to your own (maybe rented) plot, and you are socially shunned on top of that and your neighbors sure as hell aren't going to help out with your own children. But at least you only have two kids now since two died and you managed to give another away to live his whole life in a monastery.
I think kids and their free labor were the biggest wealth generating asset for the poor and as such wouldn't be given away except in the most extreme circumstances.
People make up history out of romanticized ideas of it all too much. Aunts, friends, cousins and parents had all own children and housework to care for. And the young couple was expected to provide more then they took in terms of help.
I have been to many places, in different cultures, and countries. Outside of blood relationships and church, I have not seen a villager change a diaper for another without compensation.
I think it’s worth considering that these things are not binary and we’re all different in goals and approaches.
Personally, we ended up living where my wife grew up and about an half hour from my fold, and were really social in the community. For my kids, that meant lots of cousins for the kids and a pretty rich social life for us. Lots of little league and community events. Folks didn’t change the diapers, but they had our backs in a thousand ways.
My sister and her husband live in a mega city a few hundred miles away. They are doing great, but they are doing it on their own. I think it’s harder on their kids in some ways, but they are doing fine.
IMO, “the village” is a better way to live and brings a lot to the table. But there’s no one answer.
> The village is not going to help you change diapers, feed the children, or do anything except have the children play together.
The (literal) village did all of these things for my grandparents when they were raising my parents. Everyone’s kids were almost everyone else’s kids, fed by whoever, whenever. Few, if any vehicles to worry about, so lots of groups of kids wandering about after the initial toddler stage.
I’m not even sure the premise is correct, what other complaint is socially acceptable wrt kids than “im tired” its just what one says when parenting is feeling like a drag. Honesty when the kids are laughing and everything is going smoothly, no one is “tired”
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