Recently I bought something called an iPhone. It drops calls so often that I no longer use it for audio conversations. It's too frustrating. And unlike my old BlackBerry days, I don't send e-mail on the iPhone because the on-screen keyboard is, as far as I can tell, an elaborate practical joke. I am, however, willing to respond to incoming text messages a long as they are in the form of yes-no questions and my answer are in the affirmative. In those cases I can simply type "k," the shorthand for OK, and I have trained my friends and family to accept L, J, O, or comma as meaning the same thing.Read the whole article. He actually has some good advice about investing. The best tip is what he ends with: "don't trust me".
The other day I was in the Apple Store, asking how to repair a defective Apple laptop, and decided, irrationally, that I needed to have Apple's new iPad. The smiling Apple employee said she would be willing to put me on a list so I could wait an indefinite amount of time to maybe someday have one. I instinctively put my wallet on my nose and started barking like a seal, thinking it might reduce the wait time, but they're so used to seeing that maneuver that it didn't help.
My point is that I hate Apple. I hate that I irrationally crave their products, I hate their emotional control over my entire family, I hate the time I waste trying to make iTunes work, I hate how they manipulate my desires, I hate their closed systems, I hate Steve Jobs's black turtlenecks, and I hate that they call their store employees Geniuses which, as far as I can tell, is actually true. My point is that I wish I had bought stock in Apple five years ago when I first started hating them. But I hate them more every day, which is a positive sign for investing, so I'll probably buy some shares.
Again, I remind you to ignore me.
I've learned the same lessons Scott Adams has learned over the years from investing, i.e. you are sheep to be shorn by the shysters. I've got 20+ years of investing and I'm basically flat for the whole period, i.e. I've still got my original dollars, but I've foregone what I could have made by putting my money into a bank account and drawing interest. I've fronted money to capitalists to make their fortunes and they've made me into a sap. They've picked my pockets. That's the joy of "capitalism".
2 comments:
RY,
I can relate to this one on many levels. I am glad no one could see me as I tried to enter a "contact" on a cell phone recently. Not pretty.
Stocks, oh well.
"I've fronted money to capitalists to make their fortunes and they've made me into a sap. They've picked my pockets. That's the joy of "capitalism"."
My feelings exactly.
Kanna: Unlike Karl Marx, I see a need for capitalism. Financial markets are a way to call up resources for large scale economic development.
The idiocy of Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions that decry usury leads to stagnant economies. I just wish the stock market were better regulated and the shysters and thieves were policed and jailed. There is something noble about people joining together to build a better world.
I favour stock markets just as I favour kiva.org which attempts to galvanize the urge to donate into something grander by letting people cooperate.
My moods are like the stock market: up and down. I don't blame the "capitalists" as much as I blame the "financial engineers" of Wall Street, the cynical manipulators who have no ethics.
The tragedy of our times is that pessimism, cynicism, and greed have taken hold. These dissolve the bonds between strangers and destroys civil society. We need more optimism, more altruism, more idealism, and more charity to build a better future.
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