My favourite travel startup is Adioso.com because they focus on simply finding you the cheapest flight whether you are looking to go somewhere specific or just anywhere international. Direct and to the point, no pointless social features.
I read something once that said you should do as many deals as possible.
In theory, whenever you do a deal (a good deal), you are getting something you want and so is the other party. So the more deals you do, the more progress you are making towards things that you want and hopefully only giving up things you are happy to give up.
I have to say I haven't done as many deals as I would like.
Part of doing deals seems to be having the imagination and experience to think about what is possible simply as habit, rather than just accepting the standard way that people do things by default. It's a hard habit to learn.
Nice one. For me the big takeaway from all of this has definitely been that when things get too complex, all sorts of things that we rely on for the system to function properly stop working.
In particular, the hiding of risk removes a lot of the correcting mechanisms from the system.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb's argument that we should ban complex financial instruments and keep things very simple and close to those primitives makes a lot of sense to me.
Whether it's in anyway practical or not, I have no idea.
Right, so they didn't really understand the risks involved.
It's not like thousands of people woke up one morning and independently, by coincidence, decided to default on their homes.
It's a long complex causal chain, with snow-balling effects and the like, that very few people had an appreciation for because the instruments involved were very complex and there were too many layers involved.
This lead to a very non-linear system where it was impossible to have visibility over the whole thing.
> It's a long complex causal chain, with snow-balling effects and the like, that very few people had an appreciation for because the instruments involved were very complex and there were too many layers involved.
You write that like it's unusual. It's not - it's how life works.
> This lead to a very non-linear system where it was impossible to have visibility over the whole thing.
Of course it's impossible. Complete visibility is the exception, not the rule.
If you want safe and visibility, buy T-bills.
If you want more return, you have to play against someone who thinks that you're incorrect and is willing to pay if they're wrong.
> I suspect that doesn't describe what most of the participants in the game
This case involves folks who wanted to make billion dollar bets on the housing market. It involves folks who had personal attention from Goldman Sachs. (In other words, we're not talking a Schwab IRA with a $10k balance.)
If these folks can't be held responsible for their investment decisions, who can?
> Which means regulation, ratings and market forces that are intended to stop things getting out of hand might function somewhat better.
You're assuming that complexity was relevant even though there wasn't even a correlation.
Note that no one is forcing folks to do complicated deals. Moreover, simple deals are available.
I trash Warren Buffet fairly often, but he's correct when he says that you shouldn't invest in something that you don't understand. Folks who violate that rule should lose their money.
Actually, there were people warning about it. Peter Schiff was one of many.
Housing prices doubled in many areas, far outstripping any increase in the rent they could earn.
And, probably the most powerful indicator of all, people went out of their way to make sure others were holding the bag on a supposedly safe investment. They did not believe it was safe either.
As someone who, like you, is trying to figure out the right thing to do in Melbourne, it's hard to say isn't it. On the one hand things seem so ridiculous in terms of debt. On the other hand we have strong population growth and demand here it seems. Although, I have no idea what our growing population is doing for jobs.
Because, things are very centralized here, the options for buying are getting further and further out and the public transport systems doesn't look like it's going to be upgraded to match any time soon.
Inner city apartments are currently pretty small and expensive too, which hopefully changes with some more supply.
Wish I had a crystal ball on this one. All that said, Melbourne still rocks :)
I assume the situation in Melbourne is similar. Here is just crazy. The two bedroom apartment I rented a few years ago for $450/w is now $700/w. A one bedroom apartment in any decent location is now minimum $400/w and probably more like $500.
Rent has gone up 50% in the last 3 or 4 years and seems like it's going to keep going. To comfortably rent a decent 1-bedroom apartment, ie to keep your rent around 30% of net income, you now need to earn $100k. Will it be $150k in 3 years? I'm not sure I will be making that much!
Maybe I should move to Brisbane, which is like Sydney 5 years ago ..
Aside from the censorship issues (I know which end of that spectrum Senator Conroy sits and I can't imagine him moving), I cannot believe they are going ahead with a plan that they have been told repeatedly will fail.
From the tv debate held here a while back, it all seems to be based on the ridiculous agrument that we have to try something...anything...for the children's sake.
No, you really don't have to try things we know will fail. That's just pure idiocy.
Joel, on a slight tangent...we've been seeing all sorts of Jeff and Joel bashing posts lately, which personally I don't get why people get so worked up.
If I had to take a guess though, it would be that as you guys get more and more successful there's a fear that you will succeed in creating the number one method in the world for getting a programming job and it will end up discriminating against people who don't answer questions on StackOverflow or fit your model of a programmer.
That somehow you guys end up being the gatekeepers for defining what a good programmer is and how they get hired.
That's crazy fantasy extrapolation, almost too absurd to address, but I will anyway since you asked :)
There are 1492 CVs on StackOverflow right now, and maybe 9,000,000 programmers in the world. Even if we're monumentally successful we're still going to be only a tiny fraction of the hiring of programmers that goes on in the world... a TINY fraction.
I should also add that in the bizarre scenario that StackOverflow actually became a common way of getting programming jobs, it would be a metric ton better than the current system of Monster and Dice and emailing around Word resumes which are scanned in by stupid software that looks at keywords.
I think this post is on the money. You have to bear in mind that right now the "gatekeepers" you're referring to are mostly completely non-technical HR people who might as well be using an Ouija board for all their proclivity finding good programmers. One can argue the merits and demerits of judging someone based on their Stack Overflow participation, but it can't be worse than the current reality.
