Monsanto is the largest seed company in the world, however they only have about a 20% market share.
The idea that they decide 'the steady march towards monoculture' or have a huge impact on the entire world population is preposterous tin-foil mad hattery.
The Pentagon budget is roughly 700T. Given 250 working days per year they need to spend about 3B a day. So at the end of the month they tend to spend a bit more to catch up. $5B is just BAU (Business As Usual).
Belarus is a European country that has a really nasty government that has basically continued in the Soviet era style despite the fall of the Soviet Union. Some call it the last dictatorship in Europe.
The Belarusians are already up for the Nobel Peace Prize and have won the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Award.
This sort of thing is in the general class of cognitive biases. Another example of this class is the Dunning Kruger effect.
Cognitive biases have a large negative effect on the financial performance of the general public. In particular if you want to be a successful investor it's very important to be aware of this issue.
Daniel Kahneman (a psychologist) won the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics because of his pioneering work in the field of Behavioral Economics.
Sorry, but that doesn't work. Shareholders put up the capital needed to enable the formation of the company in the first place. It is these people who are taking the bulk of the risk in the formation of a company. Unless companies return as much as possible to these risk takers they won't be interested in supplying capital again; in fact they may not even have any capital any more.
You think you have a problem with job formation now? Wait until your supply of capital dries up.
I agree with the article in Salon. Autism spectrum disorder is an overused diagnosis.
HOWEVER that does not mean it's not a real phenomena. I have a son who was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. There are several clear differences between him and my other children (who are bright geeky types) including a near eidetic memory and slowness processing spoken language. You might not notice it in a casual context, but it becomes pretty apparent over time.
I am still pissed off at Slashdot publishing this summary in this manner. This shit of a lawyer is still engaging in adverse profiling and contributing to a body of ideas that has no justification.
The British Medical Research Council is not some Koch funded faux science organization. This group has supported or hosted over 50 Nobel Laureates in science and medicine including names like Fleming and Crick and Watson.
There is NO mechanism that accounts for the reports of these affects at the extremely low levels reported, and as the above article notes, efforts to reproduce these studies by national labs (not industry supported labs) are very often unsuccessful.
I really want to slam Slashdot for publishing this story with the reference to autism in it. That is no different from pointing out any other unrelated personal characteristic like race or national origin as part of a news story about a person.
It is disgusting profiling and really does not belong in a reasonable news story.
There a lot of serious problems with doing risk assessment for endocrine disruptors.
The first is that there is no known mechanism for most of the effects reported in the literature. Without this mechanism a real science based approach is impossible.
The second issue (and a general problem for that matter) is that many of the studies reported turn out not to be reproducible.
The following articles give some insight into this, relative to BPA which has been (possibly without justification a cause celebre):
Market circuit breakers have been around since 1989. They are much older than HFT.
As far as markets sorting themselves out, if they didn't you could make a bundle on just trading simple public information.
Hint: You can't. By the time you become aware of this information, it's been arbitraged away.
The fact is that most investing is done by active fund managers who believe markets are not efficient. How do they do? Exactly the same as simple mechanical index funds but at higher cost.
This is why the mad scramble in HFT operations to cheat and get information first.
In the centrally planned economy there is far less wealth overall and the concentration depends on authoritarian control rather than competitive merit.
The last 15 (or 30) years have been remarkable for a lack of centrally planned economies. Basically they collapsed or their leaders became more open, and were replaced by market economies.
Effective allocation of capital is absolutely critical to an efficient economy. It is a sine qua non of free societies.
It is why centrally planned economies don't work in competition with market economies. Look what happened to China when they released some the the reins vs. Mao's 5 year plans.
Why do you think the credit collapse had such a dire effect on the world economy 5 years ago?
Labor and creativity are important too, but they don't turn into meaningful economic activity without capital.
Investment is fundamentally important and always will be.
There is no evidence of that. All the really big stock price events occurred in the past. Like the 22% one day drop in 1987. In fact it's likely HFT reduces large spikes because the arbitrage occurs much more quickly.
And also just so you know, investors don't try to time markets. They hold for long periods of time so these fluctuations don't matter.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm in a police state Lavabit would have never existed in the first place.
We are in one of those times where the US government is over-reaching their powers under the Constitution. It isn't the first time.
Time to wake up folks. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
Monsanto is the largest seed company in the world, however they only have about a 20% market share.
The idea that they decide 'the steady march towards monoculture' or have a huge impact on the entire world population is preposterous tin-foil mad hattery.
That's unlikely since Monsanto's corn seed market share has never been more than 40%.
> Why do we have a routine business sales article
Because somebody submitted it, and Slashdot caters to the Monsanto Derangement Syndrome crowd.
I doubt it. Monsanto is about 200 in the Fortune 500 list.
Good sized, but not likely to be ruling the US.
The Pentagon budget is roughly 700T. Given 250 working days per year they need to spend about 3B a day. So at the end of the month they tend to spend a bit more to catch up. $5B is just BAU (Business As Usual).
Nothing to see here, just move along.
It's three Belarusian political prisoners.
Belarus is a European country that has a really nasty government that has basically continued in the Soviet era style despite the fall of the Soviet Union. Some call it the last dictatorship in Europe.
The Belarusians are already up for the Nobel Peace Prize and have won the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Award.
This sort of thing is in the general class of cognitive biases. Another example of this class is the Dunning Kruger effect.
Cognitive biases have a large negative effect on the financial performance of the general public. In particular if you want to be a successful investor it's very important to be aware of this issue.
Daniel Kahneman (a psychologist) won the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics because of his pioneering work in the field of Behavioral Economics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman
Go ask Saddam Hussein about that.
Recently anyway.
Nah. There are plenty of qualified candidates. Sometimes they even get elected. Like this guy.
Ultimately the real problem is the most of the electorate isn't capable of determining who is qualified and who isn't. This allows the incompetent in.
Sorry, but that doesn't work. Shareholders put up the capital needed to enable the formation of the company in the first place. It is these people who are taking the bulk of the risk in the formation of a company. Unless companies return as much as possible to these risk takers they won't be interested in supplying capital again; in fact they may not even have any capital any more.
You think you have a problem with job formation now? Wait until your supply of capital dries up.
Glyphosate has been off patent for while. The Chinese produce most of it and there are trade cases based on dumping it on export markets now.
I was looking for a reason to lay in a supply of scotch. I already have the generator and transfer switch.
Arberg here we come!
I agree with the article in Salon. Autism spectrum disorder is an overused diagnosis.
HOWEVER that does not mean it's not a real phenomena. I have a son who was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. There are several clear differences between him and my other children (who are bright geeky types) including a near eidetic memory and slowness processing spoken language. You might not notice it in a casual context, but it becomes pretty apparent over time.
I am still pissed off at Slashdot publishing this summary in this manner. This shit of a lawyer is still engaging in adverse profiling and contributing to a body of ideas that has no justification.
There is NOT a clear scientific consensus at all.
For example:
http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/content/114/1/1.full
and:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21438738
The British Medical Research Council is not some Koch funded faux science organization. This group has supported or hosted over 50 Nobel Laureates in science and medicine including names like Fleming and Crick and Watson.
There is NO mechanism that accounts for the reports of these affects at the extremely low levels reported, and as the above article notes, efforts to reproduce these studies by national labs (not industry supported labs) are very often unsuccessful.
I really want to slam Slashdot for publishing this story with the reference to autism in it. That is no different from pointing out any other unrelated personal characteristic like race or national origin as part of a news story about a person.
It is disgusting profiling and really does not belong in a reasonable news story.
There a lot of serious problems with doing risk assessment for endocrine disruptors.
The first is that there is no known mechanism for most of the effects reported in the literature. Without this mechanism a real science based approach is impossible.
The second issue (and a general problem for that matter) is that many of the studies reported turn out not to be reproducible.
The following articles give some insight into this, relative to BPA which has been (possibly without justification a cause celebre):
http://munews.missouri.edu/news-releases/2013/0102-previous-studies-on-toxic-effects-of-bpa-couldn%E2%80%99t-be-reproduced-says-mu-research-team/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21438738
Market circuit breakers have been around since 1989. They are much older than HFT.
As far as markets sorting themselves out, if they didn't you could make a bundle on just trading simple public information.
Hint: You can't. By the time you become aware of this information, it's been arbitraged away.
The fact is that most investing is done by active fund managers who believe markets are not efficient. How do they do? Exactly the same as simple mechanical index funds but at higher cost.
This is why the mad scramble in HFT operations to cheat and get information first.
In the centrally planned economy there is far less wealth overall and the concentration depends on authoritarian control rather than competitive merit.
The last 15 (or 30) years have been remarkable for a lack of centrally planned economies. Basically they collapsed or their leaders became more open, and were replaced by market economies.
Nah. The weak efficient market hypothesis works pretty well when predicting market returns.
Once you understand Behavioral Economics it's still a pretty rational market at the end of the day.
Why isn't sandboxing applets the responsibility of the browser?
That has nothing to do with the market and everything to do with the fact that the US is a consumer driven society.
Selling pet food brings an immediate, strong and much more certain return on capital than developing a new technology.
Effective allocation of capital is absolutely critical to an efficient economy. It is a sine qua non of free societies.
It is why centrally planned economies don't work in competition with market economies. Look what happened to China when they released some the the reins vs. Mao's 5 year plans.
Why do you think the credit collapse had such a dire effect on the world economy 5 years ago?
Labor and creativity are important too, but they don't turn into meaningful economic activity without capital.
Investment is fundamentally important and always will be.
There is no evidence of that. All the really big stock price events occurred in the past. Like the 22% one day drop in 1987. In fact it's likely HFT reduces large spikes because the arbitrage occurs much more quickly.
And also just so you know, investors don't try to time markets. They hold for long periods of time so these fluctuations don't matter.