Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Random. You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means. I ended up on this forum through a series of coincidences. If I really wanted to I could probably dig up thousands of people in forums and blogs with at least the same knowledge and experience in finance as you who w...

Similarly, it must mean that if you pick a random person who thinks he understands how statistics proves that beating the market is impossible then the odds are that he is wrong as well, because the fraction of people who actually understand statistical arguments is much lower than the fraction of ...

That is to say any given investor is willing to agree that there's more to it than just luck exactly up to the point/level of nuance they personally understand ... beyond that point, it's all luck as far as they and everybody else is concerned. Much like resolving a fractal and declaring any detail...

@Scrubby - No, it makes it hard to hold onto dictatorships. Not hard enough. http://thisisafrica.me/10-africas-longest-serving-leaders/. Those aren't special cases, most of the world's nations are dictatorships. It seems to me that most dictatorships in the last 100 years have ended because the dic...

Though the people may no longer provide for the state, the state may still provide for them. “What might be far more difficult is to provide people with meaning, a reason to get up in the morning,” Harari says. Come to think of it, it has been much easier for me to get up in the morning after I sto...

jacob wrote:Democracy: Pulling the trigger on a cheap gun is easy and defeats almost everyone. Offence wins. Start a revolution by handing out Ak47s to children or muskets to civilians. Whoever holds the majority wins.

Does this make Africa and the Middle East the most democratic areas in the world?

Also, regarding Costco, it should be noted that they employ far less employees than Walmart: 184,000 versus 1.1 million in the U.S. and more importantly less people per square footage per store. So which is better? A million people working at $9/hour or 200,000 working at $18/hour? Walmart's turnov...

What about the million plus workers in the U.S. that have a job because Walmart exists. Is that worth anything? If they didn't exist then their customers would have shopped elsewhere, and that would have created about the same number of jobs. Lots of shops who probably paid their employees better h...

My solution was mainly to not retire until it didn't matter. I didn't leave my job until I could easily survive if I lost 50%. When you stop having normal job income you'll probably get a lot of down years, some of them may be quite bad. I had to work longer to get there but if I didn't I would risk...

The problem with gold is that it's like oil, there will eventually be very little mineable gold left in the ground. My guess is that we are probably at "peak gold" about now. The mined reserves are estimated to anywhere between 155,244 tonnes and 2.5 million tonnes (http://www.bbc.com/news...

In my case I think it would have felt a bit like living on credit. It's unlikely that I would have kept my salary without the continuity, so I would have ended up having to work more in total.

Did wrote:As for not respecting IP, well, that's just ignorance.

The kind of ignorance that brought us Shakespeare, though.

Do a search for "power pose". It is probably not as ground breaking as the first study suggested, but it does appear to improve self-confidence.

A quick Google search seems to indicate that Sweden has several builders, and that their caravans are made for Scandinavian winters. Apparently camping in the winter is more popular than I would have thought, and with some modifications some use them in temperatures below -40C. They may not care as ...

The book "The Essays of Warren Buffett" contains all his letters to shareholders rearranged by topics. I've read it and I would recommend it.

If I suggested you pick the numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 for your lottery ticket, would you think those were as good a choice as any for your ticket? If not, why not? All the numbers have exactly the same chance of coming up after all. I wouldn't, because those are the most commonly submitted numbers....

I haven't answered because I don't fit the "not worked in more than a year" requirement and I don't want to give identifying details like specific age. I consider myself retired because I've quit my job and I'm probably never going to work again. I'm old enough that Jacob probably wouldn't...

Scrubby, the idea is not to repeat what someone else has done, but to find your own path. Obviously, you could not repeat exactly what I did as the circumstances are no longer the same today. So what do you think you are really saying when you suggest 'if you think......'? I think you've just lucke...

The discussion with OldPro is pretty much just a repetition of this one: http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcom ... #msg637952

If you think you can repeat what he says he's done in the message I've linked to with the same result then go ahead.

Ydobon wrote:So is it ok to serve turkey medium rare?

Not if you want to kill salmonella.