Business

It’s interesting, especially after reading investing history, to live through a period of “irrational exuberance”.  I’ve been investing throughout the dot-com boom, the subprime meltdown, and the continued Canadian real estate bubble.  One enthusiasm, which seems to be limping towards an end, is the wild enthusiasm for dividends. What Is A Dividend? Equities – stock […]

There have been numerous posts about Sean Cooper’s feat a few years back of paying off his quarter-million-dollar mortgage in 3 years.  While this may or may not be interesting to people by itself, I think it’s a concrete example of a more abstract concept, namely delaying consumption. Everyone has the option between using resources they have in the present […]

Eliminating the middleman is never as simple as it sounds. ‘Bout 50% of the human race is middlemen, and they don’t take kindly to being eliminated. Malcolm Reynolds (Firefly) Doing business through an intermediary, a middleman, evokes strong feelings in people.  Most are passionately for it or against it.  In spite of these charged feelings, few people […]

I heard about “Never Split the Difference:  Negotiating As If Your Life Depends On It” by Chris Voss when he did a Reddit AMA. Chris Voss was the FBI’s lead international kidnapping negotiator and having the possibility of people dying when he didn’t do a good job motivated him to improve his negotiation skills.  The FBI historically tried […]

The Beijing Olympics are set to begin on Friday, July 26, 2024. For every Olympic game, there is a fight by cities and countries around the world to host it.  The cities promise extensive municipal improvements along with the construction of appropriate facilities for the various events. Why Would Anyone WANT To Host The Olympics? The […]

A Reddit user asked an interesting question about an analytical method for calculating opportunity cost in a car transaction he made.  I felt like the commenters kind of blew it with their suggestions, often only offering “rules of thumb” or general principles in a situation that was quite tractable. What is Opportunity Cost? Opportunity cost is […]

One of the big, abstract, philosophical debates is which is more valuable, the inspiration or the execution?  Is Google a two-trillion-dollar company because of the clever PageRank algorithm the founders came up with or because of the wise business decisions they’ve been making since?  Was Harry Potter a global phenomenon because J.K. Rowling thought of […]

A while back, water started coming through the ceiling of one of my rental properties.  I talked to a handy friend and he said I needed my roof repaired as there’s nothing else in the attic that could be creating water (no pipes or anything).  I called a number of roofers and asked them to come […]

I’ve been interested in retention:  why employees stay with or leave an organization.  There’s been a recent focus on Silicon Valley misogyny, with Susan Fowler’s poignant blog post leading to shakeups at Uber.  A cynic might suggest that the people being fired are a public relation’s sacrifice and that the company has an inherent problem going all the way to […]