This has been tried before. IIRC debasement of money goes back at least to 1,000 B.C.E. Few have pulled it off successfully.
This creates money which if in excess for demand of money causes inflation. There is a casual link between demand for money and GNP.
The second reason is that the international bond market fears it will be paid with worthless currency in the future. The country’s currency is devalued. Interest rates on new debt go up. Bondholders demand payment is a sound currency. Etc.
Generally the long run consequences are worse than the immediate gain. You can take a look at what Argentina’s government has been doing for the past 30 years for a full spectrum of choices and results. This is why, generally speaking, a independent central bank handles money creation instead of the politicians – they are tempted by the short term gain.
There will always be a black market as long as government tries to regulate commerce.
There is a illegal trade in unstamped / untaxed cigarettes. For money of course.
There is a illegal trade in unpasteurized whole milk (and the associated chesses.). Not sure why anybody would be against pasteurization but a few are.
Not quite sure where you are going with this. It is not the physicals that I am concerned about, it’s the engineering.
I have some knowledge of the installation of wind turbines in the Midwest. There were a lot of issues. The engineers factored in the top wind speed but did not factor in that it was gusty. Lots of burnt out generators, stripped gears, and cracked blades. It took a few years to work out the kinks.
I know little about this particular install but I am willing to bet that getting the electricity off of the floating platform to mainland is going to be tricky. Salt water has its own batch of issues. I am not saying it can’t be economically done. Just that small scale testing will give the experience to figure out if it should scale.
What was the output of the first demonstration nuclear power plant? Probably not that much.
Remember, this project is to evaluate the prospects first, generate power second. I am sure there are going to be many problems until they get the kinks work out. Only after offshore floating power plants have proven to work (which is a big maybe) will they crank up the assembly line and start churning these puppies out.
That is not exactly what I was trying to say. To oversimplify:
In one corner think about times where investments lead to high productivity growth and where funds to invest is scare. It is easy to make money. That is not now – we are in the other corner.
Due to overcapacity built during the boom years there is a overhang of excess capital. So new investments have to compete with older, paid for assets. Due to a savings glut we still have money pouring into investments.
On to your point specifically, I am going to have to disagree primarily because the ability to time the market highs and lows has such a dismal history. The ability of people (from individual investors to professional portfolio managers to economist) to judge where the market is poor. In fact there is a slight negative correlation between future expectations and market performance.
So where does this leave us? We cold invest in stocks with a modest to low upside and potential downside risk. We could invest in cash and bonds. Here we have no to low upside. We also face inflation risk and the potential to miss the start of any stock boom. Historically a invested diversified index (low fee) portfolio will beat out the market timers.
But there is one better option. And it kind of involves what you mean by diversification. I am going to assume that there are only 2 types of investments, stocks and bonds.(You could then dig into stocks and break them up into large cap vs small cap, industry, domestic vs emerging market, etc.)
Figure out your objectives. This will give you your required return. Figure out your risks and how much risk you can take. Figure out the expected return of stocks and bonds and the correlation. (Normal bell curve statistics is easy and mostly works, but when it fails it fails big time. Monte Carlo is better.) Allocate between stocks and bonds.
Then each year do the same thing but rebalanced your portfolio using one of these strategies constant-mix strategies buy and hold Constant-Proportion Portfolio Insurance (which, despite it's name does not contain any insurance products) Some do better in up markets, some protect you better in down markets.
It is an open question but yes, I do think it will be via ISP. Right now the only way you can get 4k movies is via digital download. Now it is still the early days so only a little weight there.
Bandwidth is an issue and you have to start loading the thing in advance. Reminds of the early days of the internet. Who knows but maybe 4k is the killer application that will get everybody to buy fiber. I don’t know anybody who has had cap issues with the physical land line ISP but I am dealing with a small sample size.
But in a war between ISPs and a new media format (I have heard suggestions that a hard drive format might be I n the works) I am going to guess digital downloads.
The independent books that I know have a small edges going for them.
There is new market for “shopping / entertainment“. You go to the store to be entertained and you pay via a purchase. Kind of like renting office space at the coffee shop for the price of a cup of coffee. Most of these shops tend to be narrowly focused, have a deep catalog of hard to fine / out of print stuff (which is sold via Amazon), have lots of events (singings, clubs, etc.) and sell a lot of stuff other than books.
Oddly the one that I am thinking about was the Amazon Bookstore specializing in woman and lesbian literature. There was a bit of a tussle between them and Amazon.com over the name and the more or less won that fight.
I am not so sure about that. If I had to guess I would say between 5 to 10 years.
Blue-ray has never taken off and DVD sales are falling. A large chunk of that is because people are switching from building their own personal DVD library to rent (i.e. NetFlix) or streaming. Renting implies a more efficient method of DVD ownership so that puts a floor under that until people switch to totally digital.
And I think that will happen when 4k TV takes off. I don’t hear anybody talking about shipping physical media for that format.
Honestly, I wouldn't trust someone born in a different country who *doesn't* have divided loyalties.
I don’t know about that. I am thinking about another Russian born writer Ann Rand. Her hatred of the USSR and Russia and love of America was pretty clear. Or maybe it would be better to say that I would trust Ann Rand to be Any Rand.
On a tad slightly more serious note, the USSR did republish a lot of his work. They claimed they were not stealing his work. He could come to Moscow at any time to pick up royalties – in non-convertible rubles.
(Besides, his robots were governed by the 3 laws of robotics. Rule #1, unless overridden by Rule #0, would have prevented the robots from killing too many people.)
I would mostly agree with you – expect for the assumption that they were given enough time.
The way I understand it (and let me know if I am wrong) the government and the private contractors came up with a schedule where the government would translate the law into regulations which would then be translated into requirements. The government was often late and the requirements were of poor quality (overly complex in some areas, vague and contradictory in others.) And then there were the revisions. It is hard to build solid foundations on shifting sand.
You can contract this with the Kentucky health care website, which I understand works. In that case Kentucky delivered simpler requirements on time.
This is a bit off tangent, but IIRC Asimov was very loosely connected with the nuclear weapons program.
Towards the end of WWII he was drafted into the army. He was going to be shipped off to Bikini Island to help with the testing protocols but was demobilized just before being sent.
That is true. But what we can do is divided large sophisticated software packages (OS or applications) into 2 categories.
“Big Bang” packages where the entire packaged is released at once. Vista and Health Care web site are two examples. These have a history of delays, cost overruns, and initial releases performing poorly. This is particularly true for government ones.
“Evolutionary” packages which come about from a lot of small incremental changes. Linux and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 are 2 examples. Issues are know so things are stable. Thing gradually get better. Lots of legacy code that lend itself to lots of legacy “features” (a.k.a. bugs).
By choosing the “big bang” method we know the kind of troubles we are going to run into. As such extra effort should have been put into delivering requirements on time so adequate testing could be done. At times this means rejecting additional features or (in the worst case) functionality.
Emotionally I know where you are coming from. I am still bitter that Apple’s Mac beat the technically superior Amiga 2000. But there does come a tipping point when the tide of history is against you.
You need to pick under the numbers a little bit. In developed markets (Europe, USA, etc.) Nokia was going down market – being displaced by Apple and Android phones. We could enter into the argument about the difference between up market phones vs. smart phones and why people like buying apps. But Nokia was losing the head to head battle with Apple, et. al.
Most of the increase in market share in smart phones was coming from 2nd tier markets which Nokia had all to itself. The 2nd tiered markets were running about 5 years behind the 1st tiered networks. Which means that Nokia would be facing the same problems in 5 years when the networks and customers upgraded.
Which brings me back to my old loved Amiga. Mac had the users so it got software written for it which increased the sales of Mac which increased the demand for software. A virtuous cycle. Once that started the Amiga was doomed.
Which brings up to apps. Apple and Android have tons. Nokia had a choice.
It could continue rolling out Symbian OS. That might have been the right answer but it is not clear it would have worked. HP Palm and BlackBerry tried their own proprietary OS and failed.
Or they could have adopted Android but there are dozens of competitors in that space. When HTC had the hot phone it shot up. When HTC didn’t have the hot phone it plunged like a rock.
Or they could enter a less competitive field like Windows. Which of course failed but then again hindsight is 20/20.
Netflix was hammering it from above with a deeper catalog and a reasonable price structure. Redbox was hammering it from below offering cheaper rentals on the new releases. That gave BB a very thin environment to live in.
In a market that is exploding having consistent revenue and profits is not a good thing. It means you are being left behind.
If you are a company whose products are drifting away from the high-end high-margin end of the market to the low-end low-margin is a troubling sign. It could mean you company is heading towards irrelevance.
Nokia was heading the wrong direction and a big change was needed. Either Nokia was too far gone or Elop was not up to the job – probably a bit of both.
He was looking at BlackBerry. I am serious. He was one of the guys who was looking to buy the company when it was still on the market.
Oddly enough I think Scully did a decent job. Apple was in a bad spot and kept the company going. Of course when compared to the brilliant bet the company move that Steve Jobs did he comes off poorly.
Past success or failure is a poor indicator of future performance for a CEO.
Whatever challenges the CEO overcame in the past are not likely to be the challenge of the future. A new company in a new year means a whole new ball game.
As for failures, I can point to some very successful CEOs (including Steve Jobs) where they learned from their failures. For Elop you also needed to know that Nokia was a sinking ship. It would have taken somebody extraordinary to turn Nokia around.
As a side note Alan Mulally is an interesting name. Most people figured a Boeing manager could not turn around a car company around but he did.
No, it's causal. Let's walk though the numbers, assuming a 1 time 50% deflation event on cash.
Banker: Starts with 90k liabilities (i.e. customer's savings accounts), 100k assets (i.e. loans), 10k equity (Assets – liabilities = equity) Ends: 45k liabilities, 100k in assets, and 55k equity. Since cash in now worth twice as much that is a real return of 2,200%
Farmer. Starts with 100k assets (i.e. farm), 60k in liabilities, and grosses 10k a year, pays 3k in interest, so income is 7k Ends with 50k in assets, 60k in liabilities, and grosses 5k a year, pays 3k in interest, so income is 2k. So, -1000% in real returns plus a drop in income of over 50%.
Medical Doctor: For fun why don't you run though the following scenario. You have 500k in your bank account. You could invest that plus 12 years of your life to become a doctor who earns 200k a year before the deflationary event or you could run a restaurant and earn 50k right now. First, what is the better deal? Second, why should you invest in long term assets – such as education, plant, equipment, whatever – when sitting on cash offers a much higher, safer return?
Can a human brain deal with deflation without psychological trauma? I have no idea.
That's good news. Ignorance is easily fixed. If you can't find the subjects I referenced on the internet I would suggest Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow or Gladwell's Blink. There pop science books but it's a place to start.
I am, of course, referring to net numbers. I am sure if you work though the numbers you will understand but here are some examples to start you off.
Banks, which have more cash assets then cash debits, make off like a bandit.
Farmers, who have little cash assets, lots of real assets, and lots of debt, get crushed. Deflation helps entrench the ”haves” See William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold speech. It’s dated but still holds.
As for our brains getting used to deflation, look up Money Illusion, Anchoring, and Framing in Behavioral Economics, Psychology or Decision Making (a legit academic field. I was initially surprised.). Brains are geared to go forwarded. Not just human brains, but dogs, birds, rats etc. It is more cognitively difficult to go backwards so more errors are made. There have been MRI studies showing the brain has to burn more sugar to go backwards. I am not kidding or exaggerating when I say it is programed into our reptilian brain. Our brains can better handle 100% inflation then 50% deflation.
First, people would not have the same amount of money relative to each other. Wealth people (those who have cash) do better than average, indebted people (those who owe cash) do relatively worse. As a side effect, financial assets do better than real assts. You want real assets to grow to grow your economy. Inflation just does the reverse, hurting the wealth and helping the indebted. However inflation favors short term assets instead of long term assets.
Second, humans brains are just not wired that way. If I told you that you were doing a great job so I am only going to cut your pay by 45% - which in effect is a 10% raise – how would you feel? There are a lot of fun studies out there where researches trip up Harvard MBA students who should know better. Some of the studies tell the subjects the rules and how to avoid being tripped up and they still trip up the subjects. Our reptilian brain anchors to what we have and acts irrationally when it is perceived that stuff is being taken away.
Slashdot Mirror
This has been tried before. IIRC debasement of money goes back at least to 1,000 B.C.E. Few have pulled it off successfully.
This creates money which if in excess for demand of money causes inflation. There is a casual link between demand for money and GNP.
The second reason is that the international bond market fears it will be paid with worthless currency in the future. The country’s currency is devalued. Interest rates on new debt go up. Bondholders demand payment is a sound currency. Etc.
Generally the long run consequences are worse than the immediate gain. You can take a look at what Argentina’s government has been doing for the past 30 years for a full spectrum of choices and results. This is why, generally speaking, a independent central bank handles money creation instead of the politicians – they are tempted by the short term gain.
There will always be a black market as long as government tries to regulate commerce.
There is a illegal trade in unstamped / untaxed cigarettes. For money of course.
There is a illegal trade in unpasteurized whole milk (and the associated chesses.). Not sure why anybody would be against pasteurization but a few are.
Not quite sure where you are going with this. It is not the physicals that I am concerned about, it’s the engineering.
I have some knowledge of the installation of wind turbines in the Midwest. There were a lot of issues. The engineers factored in the top wind speed but did not factor in that it was gusty. Lots of burnt out generators, stripped gears, and cracked blades. It took a few years to work out the kinks.
I know little about this particular install but I am willing to bet that getting the electricity off of the floating platform to mainland is going to be tricky. Salt water has its own batch of issues. I am not saying it can’t be economically done. Just that small scale testing will give the experience to figure out if it should scale.
What was the output of the first demonstration nuclear power plant? Probably not that much.
Remember, this project is to evaluate the prospects first, generate power second. I am sure there are going to be many problems until they get the kinks work out. Only after offshore floating power plants have proven to work (which is a big maybe) will they crank up the assembly line and start churning these puppies out.
Nice video but it is a bit on the long side.
That is not exactly what I was trying to say. To oversimplify:
In one corner think about times where investments lead to high productivity growth and where funds to invest is scare. It is easy to make money. That is not now – we are in the other corner.
Due to overcapacity built during the boom years there is a overhang of excess capital. So new investments have to compete with older, paid for assets. Due to a savings glut we still have money pouring into investments.
On to your point specifically, I am going to have to disagree primarily because the ability to time the market highs and lows has such a dismal history. The ability of people (from individual investors to professional portfolio managers to economist) to judge where the market is poor. In fact there is a slight negative correlation between future expectations and market performance.
So where does this leave us? We cold invest in stocks with a modest to low upside and potential downside risk. We could invest in cash and bonds. Here we have no to low upside. We also face inflation risk and the potential to miss the start of any stock boom. Historically a invested diversified index (low fee) portfolio will beat out the market timers.
But there is one better option. And it kind of involves what you mean by diversification. I am going to assume that there are only 2 types of investments, stocks and bonds.(You could then dig into stocks and break them up into large cap vs small cap, industry, domestic vs emerging market, etc.)
Figure out your objectives. This will give you your required return.
Figure out your risks and how much risk you can take.
Figure out the expected return of stocks and bonds and the correlation. (Normal bell curve statistics is easy and mostly works, but when it fails it fails big time. Monte Carlo is better.)
Allocate between stocks and bonds.
Then each year do the same thing but rebalanced your portfolio using one of these strategies
constant-mix strategies
buy and hold
Constant-Proportion Portfolio Insurance (which, despite it's name does not contain any insurance products)
Some do better in up markets, some protect you better in down markets.
This is very boring but it works very well.
Mod parent up.
Money in generally defined as
medium of exchange
store of value
unit of account.
As such it kind of passes the first test, but volatility kills bitcoin use for the other 2 requirements.
The healthy part of BN, Nook & College bookstores, has been hived off to Microsoft.
The physical stores are doing less well. Last I heard the online bookstore was being run by Amazon but that was a few years ago.
It is an open question but yes, I do think it will be via ISP. Right now the only way you can get 4k movies is via digital download. Now it is still the early days so only a little weight there.
Bandwidth is an issue and you have to start loading the thing in advance. Reminds of the early days of the internet. Who knows but maybe 4k is the killer application that will get everybody to buy fiber. I don’t know anybody who has had cap issues with the physical land line ISP but I am dealing with a small sample size.
But in a war between ISPs and a new media format (I have heard suggestions that a hard drive format might be I n the works) I am going to guess digital downloads.
The independent books that I know have a small edges going for them.
There is new market for “shopping / entertainment“. You go to the store to be entertained and you pay via a purchase. Kind of like renting office space at the coffee shop for the price of a cup of coffee. Most of these shops tend to be narrowly focused, have a deep catalog of hard to fine / out of print stuff (which is sold via Amazon), have lots of events (singings, clubs, etc.) and sell a lot of stuff other than books.
Oddly the one that I am thinking about was the Amazon Bookstore specializing in woman and lesbian literature. There was a bit of a tussle between them and Amazon.com over the name and the more or less won that fight.
I am not so sure about that. If I had to guess I would say between 5 to 10 years.
Blue-ray has never taken off and DVD sales are falling. A large chunk of that is because people are switching from building their own personal DVD library to rent (i.e. NetFlix) or streaming. Renting implies a more efficient method of DVD ownership so that puts a floor under that until people switch to totally digital.
And I think that will happen when 4k TV takes off. I don’t hear anybody talking about shipping physical media for that format.
Honestly, I wouldn't trust someone born in a different country who *doesn't* have divided loyalties.
I don’t know about that. I am thinking about another Russian born writer Ann Rand. Her hatred of the USSR and Russia and love of America was pretty clear. Or maybe it would be better to say that I would trust Ann Rand to be Any Rand.
On a tad slightly more serious note, the USSR did republish a lot of his work. They claimed they were not stealing his work. He could come to Moscow at any time to pick up royalties – in non-convertible rubles.
(Besides, his robots were governed by the 3 laws of robotics. Rule #1, unless overridden by Rule #0, would have prevented the robots from killing too many people.)
I would mostly agree with you – expect for the assumption that they were given enough time.
The way I understand it (and let me know if I am wrong) the government and the private contractors came up with a schedule where the government would translate the law into regulations which would then be translated into requirements. The government was often late and the requirements were of poor quality (overly complex in some areas, vague and contradictory in others.) And then there were the revisions. It is hard to build solid foundations on shifting sand.
You can contract this with the Kentucky health care website, which I understand works. In that case Kentucky delivered simpler requirements on time.
This is a bit off tangent, but IIRC Asimov was very loosely connected with the nuclear weapons program.
Towards the end of WWII he was drafted into the army. He was going to be shipped off to Bikini Island to help with the testing protocols but was demobilized just before being sent.
That is true. But what we can do is divided large sophisticated software packages (OS or applications) into 2 categories.
“Big Bang” packages where the entire packaged is released at once. Vista and Health Care web site are two examples. These have a history of delays, cost overruns, and initial releases performing poorly. This is particularly true for government ones.
“Evolutionary” packages which come about from a lot of small incremental changes. Linux and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 are 2 examples. Issues are know so things are stable. Thing gradually get better. Lots of legacy code that lend itself to lots of legacy “features” (a.k.a. bugs).
By choosing the “big bang” method we know the kind of troubles we are going to run into. As such extra effort should have been put into delivering requirements on time so adequate testing could be done. At times this means rejecting additional features or (in the worst case) functionality.
Emotionally I know where you are coming from. I am still bitter that Apple’s Mac beat the technically superior Amiga 2000. But there does come a tipping point when the tide of history is against you.
You need to pick under the numbers a little bit. In developed markets (Europe, USA, etc.) Nokia was going down market – being displaced by Apple and Android phones. We could enter into the argument about the difference between up market phones vs. smart phones and why people like buying apps. But Nokia was losing the head to head battle with Apple, et. al.
Most of the increase in market share in smart phones was coming from 2nd tier markets which Nokia had all to itself. The 2nd tiered markets were running about 5 years behind the 1st tiered networks. Which means that Nokia would be facing the same problems in 5 years when the networks and customers upgraded.
Which brings me back to my old loved Amiga. Mac had the users so it got software written for it which increased the sales of Mac which increased the demand for software. A virtuous cycle. Once that started the Amiga was doomed.
Which brings up to apps. Apple and Android have tons. Nokia had a choice.
It could continue rolling out Symbian OS. That might have been the right answer but it is not clear it would have worked. HP Palm and BlackBerry tried their own proprietary OS and failed.
Or they could have adopted Android but there are dozens of competitors in that space. When HTC had the hot phone it shot up. When HTC didn’t have the hot phone it plunged like a rock.
Or they could enter a less competitive field like Windows. Which of course failed but then again hindsight is 20/20.
IP is not the reason why BB died.
Netflix was hammering it from above with a deeper catalog and a reasonable price structure. Redbox was hammering it from below offering cheaper rentals on the new releases. That gave BB a very thin environment to live in.
Mod parent up – and here is my 2 cents.
In a market that is exploding having consistent revenue and profits is not a good thing. It means you are being left behind.
If you are a company whose products are drifting away from the high-end high-margin end of the market to the low-end low-margin is a troubling sign. It could mean you company is heading towards irrelevance.
Nokia was heading the wrong direction and a big change was needed. Either Nokia was too far gone or Elop was not up to the job – probably a bit of both.
BlackBerry.
He was looking at BlackBerry. I am serious. He was one of the guys who was looking to buy the company when it was still on the market.
Oddly enough I think Scully did a decent job. Apple was in a bad spot and kept the company going. Of course when compared to the brilliant bet the company move that Steve Jobs did he comes off poorly.
Past success or failure is a poor indicator of future performance for a CEO.
Whatever challenges the CEO overcame in the past are not likely to be the challenge of the future. A new company in a new year means a whole new ball game.
As for failures, I can point to some very successful CEOs (including Steve Jobs) where they learned from their failures. For Elop you also needed to know that Nokia was a sinking ship. It would have taken somebody extraordinary to turn Nokia around.
As a side note Alan Mulally is an interesting name. Most people figured a Boeing manager could not turn around a car company around but he did.
No, it's causal. Let's walk though the numbers, assuming a 1 time 50% deflation event on cash.
Banker:
Starts with 90k liabilities (i.e. customer's savings accounts), 100k assets (i.e. loans), 10k equity (Assets – liabilities = equity)
Ends: 45k liabilities, 100k in assets, and 55k equity.
Since cash in now worth twice as much that is a real return of 2,200%
Farmer.
Starts with 100k assets (i.e. farm), 60k in liabilities, and grosses 10k a year, pays 3k in interest, so income is 7k
Ends with 50k in assets, 60k in liabilities, and grosses 5k a year, pays 3k in interest, so income is 2k.
So, -1000% in real returns plus a drop in income of over 50%.
Medical Doctor: For fun why don't you run though the following scenario. You have 500k in your bank account. You could invest that plus 12 years of your life to become a doctor who earns 200k a year before the deflationary event or you could run a restaurant and earn 50k right now. First, what is the better deal? Second, why should you invest in long term assets – such as education, plant, equipment, whatever – when sitting on cash offers a much higher, safer return?
Can a human brain deal with deflation without psychological trauma? I have no idea.
That's good news. Ignorance is easily fixed. If you can't find the subjects I referenced on the internet I would suggest Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow or Gladwell's Blink. There pop science books but it's a place to start.
I am, of course, referring to net numbers. I am sure if you work though the numbers you will understand but here are some examples to start you off.
Banks, which have more cash assets then cash debits, make off like a bandit.
Farmers, who have little cash assets, lots of real assets, and lots of debt, get crushed.
Deflation helps entrench the ”haves” See William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold speech. It’s dated but still holds.
As for our brains getting used to deflation, look up Money Illusion, Anchoring, and Framing in Behavioral Economics, Psychology or Decision Making (a legit academic field. I was initially surprised.). Brains are geared to go forwarded. Not just human brains, but dogs, birds, rats etc. It is more cognitively difficult to go backwards so more errors are made. There have been MRI studies showing the brain has to burn more sugar to go backwards. I am not kidding or exaggerating when I say it is programed into our reptilian brain. Our brains can better handle 100% inflation then 50% deflation.
No, with a few very narrow exceptions. Generally you have to wait 30 days after.
I believe they have convertible bonds you could short but there would be additional technical issues and risks.
There are 2 major issues.
First, people would not have the same amount of money relative to each other. Wealth people (those who have cash) do better than average, indebted people (those who owe cash) do relatively worse. As a side effect, financial assets do better than real assts. You want real assets to grow to grow your economy. Inflation just does the reverse, hurting the wealth and helping the indebted. However inflation favors short term assets instead of long term assets.
Second, humans brains are just not wired that way. If I told you that you were doing a great job so I am only going to cut your pay by 45% - which in effect is a 10% raise – how would you feel? There are a lot of fun studies out there where researches trip up Harvard MBA students who should know better. Some of the studies tell the subjects the rules and how to avoid being tripped up and they still trip up the subjects. Our reptilian brain anchors to what we have and acts irrationally when it is perceived that stuff is being taken away.