Jurgis

Part time work is one possible solution. I'd love to work 75% part time (funny thing, I might even put in >75% hours). Companies in USA do not like this though. Maybe this will change. I don't think "part time" solves hollowing out of some professions due to automatization. I.e. a segment of people having not enough education to work in remaining sectors (e.g. truck drivers if driverless trucks displace them). We will see if we can come up with good solution for this.

Completely agree.

I am happy that you have this vision of future. I'd like to believe this will be the case too. There's a small wrinkle in the fact that supporting 80-90% unemployed people is not something that a lot people can accept. ;)

This thread is a great example how we as civilization are totally unprepared for coming machine age where 80%+ of people will be unemployed. Something to think about. Or not.

You and a bunch of others keep talking about sacrifice. Of course, you only think about the business owners / management. "Oh my god, instead of firing people, I have to think how to structure my business so that I might not need to fire them. Such a huge sacrifice. It might blow my brain. Oh my god, I might not get my bonus, I might not be in the three comma club." Perhaps you should think about the fact that by firing people you are telling them to sacrifice their livelihood for your profits and bonuses. Nah, they are not sacrificing anything, they should just expect it. Only the business owners can talk about self sacrifice. News flash: "sacrifice" is a red herring word. It is not about sacrifice. It is about spending some time to think about all parties involved. It is actually something that's not about communism or statism. It's actually something that is taught in the best management practices. Ah, but who listens to those. They are for schmucks, not the enlightened economists with flashy MBAs.

There's nothing to get. The board is populated by 0.1% of smartest people who only take the point of view of the business owner or investor and who can easily find other jobs even if they have to find a new job. How many of the posters above experienced being kicked out of the job and having very limited chances to find a new one in foreseeable future while having to feed their family. How many lived hand to mouth? So, yes, there's nothing to get that I have sympathy for the workers and not for business owners or managers who are in the position of power and use it as they see fit. I hope that at least some people will think about what I say and perhaps next time they may try to find other solutions rather than the easy one. And I write only because of that hope. Take care

Ah yes. So you screwed up and you solve this by making others suffer. Great example how the employer-employee relationship is "equal". Lolz. The fact that you don't see other solutions except the easy one does not mean others can't. So you taking out Munger trump card? OK, I'll beat you with Buffett who does not close underperforming businesses and fire people from them. That's one of the reasons I invest in BRK. So there.

OT: Yes, I do that too. It's a convenient way to pay extra taxes to my state. BTW, I think that everyone who pays taxes should get lottery tickets as reward. Would make the system so much more attractive.

You guys have really weird definitions of win-win situations. I hope I never have to do a deal with youse. ;) :P And, no, I disagree. If you hired 1000 employees, you should have looked into the future and planned for it. So the fact that you suddenly don't need 900, speaks poorly of you. Even though you conveniently exercise your power and fire them.

Since Tesla produces cars with doors that open both like that and like that, I assume you sold your shares? It's not an investment. It's a support for Elon. ;) Peace.

OT. Sure your degree means something. You just have to choose your area of study well. Computer science degree from almost any OK'ish university will give you $70K+ salary on graduation. And, no, studying at home instead won't give the same results for average student. We are not talking about Zuckerbergs and Wozniaks here.

I prefer companies that figure out how to use their workforce for growth and improvement of the company instead of taking an axe and acting as if that's some kind of smart move. Great leadership and management is not about firing a bunch of employees because a part of business is "inefficient". Great leadership is finding a way to transform that part of the business while engaging and retraining employees for the benefit of employees, customers and shareholders.

Great article by Economist (as expected). +1

+1000. OK, I'm gonna spam this here too: I just love this clip... and it's so applicable to multiple threads recently... :-X I don't invest in car companies that produce cars with doors that open like that.... or like that either... ;)

IBTL:

What's the benefit to keeping the warrants? Edit: I am aware that if you keep them, they are convertible into shares as per thread 1st post (convertible into .5 shares with a payment of $5.75). So if you keep them, you are levered investing in the shares at that point. Is that what you consider the benefit or is there more?

No, it's not. There are places (some European countries) where through government regulation it is close to that. There are industries where employees can make huge demands on employers due to shortage of qualified work (high tech). But in most places and industries the business holds the upper hand. No, there seems to be a misunderstanding here. The options aren't, hurt yourself for others or hurt others for yourself. Where does a person who trades fit in? A win-win DOES help others and doesn't come at the expense of either party. That is the proper way to engage in human relationships- neither party sacrificing for the other. Again, having a bunch of people sacrificing themselves for you isn't a path to happiness. Do you think criminals sit down and say, 'I'm going to live 80 years, what's the best way to live a full, happy life? I know, I'll lie cheat and steal.'? No, the correct way is to trade with others to the benefit of both parties. I agree that win-win is the way to go. I suspect that your win-win is very different from my win-win as evidenced by your examples of employer laying off employees being a win-win.

Ah, it's just like the personal relationship. In feudal times. Now I get it. You are the rich husband, your wife has no rights. You think she's not getting any younger, so you kick her out of the house without a cent. It's fine for her to be upset, but it's not fine to claim a right to your love and chain you to her. Obviously once you kick her out of your house without a cent, she will do just fine. ::) Let's stop pretending that business-employee relationship is a relationship of equals. It's not. Unless you are Bill Gross. And even then you have to sue for your $300M bonus. :P even if that happiness is predicated on the suffering of others? :o The end goal of morality for an individual is to achieve flourishing and happiness by bettering this planet and helping others to achieve that.

Oh the certainty of the greater good. How wonderful. Perhaps you should talk to these individual workers directly and explain to them how their job loss is for greater good. I am sure they will appreciate your concern and explanation. Right. Money is the most important thing in the world.

I never said that "manufacturing a mass produced electric car that people will actually want to buy and use is an easy task". :) We only talked about complexity. Getting all the right parts, innovating the parts you want to innovate and then assembling everything is still very tough. Tougher still since assembling is not available as outsourced service right now.

It doesn't have to be. General opinion is that it's harder to outperform in non-concentrated portfolio, so you might as well give up and index. Also running non-concentrated portfolio takes more time, so that's another thing to consider vs. just indexing. But yeah, there are people here and elsewhere with non concentrated portfolios. I will claim again that by now BRK (including op cos) is not concentrated. MKL is not concentrated. Tweedy Browne. Harder to find hugely outperforming known small investors who are not concentrated.

I disagree there is an order of magnitude more complexity in an electric car than there is in a smartphone. The design of the touch screen dashboard alone is probably similar to smartphone-complexity. That leave the motors, motor control systems, battery, battery charging/protection systems, breaking systems, drive by wire systems, any autonomous features or driver assist features, and on and on... Most of what you listed are not complex at all if you go with the current state of the art. If you want to innovate on them and surpass the best existing systems 20-50%, then they are complex or possibly even not achievable, but in general they are not. And they are actually provided by the car part manufacturers. No car manufacturer (apart from Tesla) makes their own batteries or brakes (I'm not sure even Tesla makes their own brakes). So that part of outsourcing is easy - if you don't want to innovate. Apart from autonomous driving, everything you mentioned can be outsourced. I'll give you that a car probably has 10 smartphones in it. But that's not really qualitative complexity. In fact on the opposite side of the argument, Chinese make cars just fine. So it's not a rocket science. ;)

Right, the issue is not complexity per ce, it's the lack of outsourcing infrastructure for car manufacturing vs. phone/watch manufacturing.

They might be newb/careless/stupid fraudsters who forgot to change shipping address.

Why is BRK an exception? Now and then, I keep finding nugets in Charlie's Almanack and one of them was a quote from Buffett talking about how everyone else is taking his words as facts where Charlie wouldn't. I think it's hard to concentrate into one idea because no one knows all the risks including BRK. Who knows maybe one day, after Buffett left, they did an Exxon or something. Like others said, BRK is an exception right now because it is "a diversified collection of businesses" plus it has somewhat diversified portfolio as its investment holdings. Theoretically Jain and maybe GenRe could blow up the company by really bad underwriting on supercats. So I would not put 100% into BRK either. But if I was forced to concentrate, BRK would be natural choice for up to 20-50% of portfolio.