You're misinterpreting this a bit. You don't have an obligation to return an item that you find; you can always leave it where you found it. You are obligated to return the lost item only if you take it.

Informally put, the law codifies the idea that returning lost property to its owner is a favor that you can do them. But as such, the only things you can do with lost property are those that you can justify as helping the owner reclaim their property. So, for example, if you take a guy's lost phone to return it to them, you can inspect and operate the phone to identify the owner—and even call the owner using their own phone to tell them that you found it—but you can't use it to go on a 900 number phone sex orgy at the owner's expense.

Another example: you're generally forbidden to sell lost property, but there's an exception that if the property is perishable, you may sell it and later give the proceeds to the owner. Again, the reasoning is that selling the items before they spoil is in the interest of the owner, so you're doing them a favor by selling it on their behalf.

As I recall it, in California law indeed nobody is obligated to retain lost property or do anything to restore it to the owner—but the law does spell out obligations that you assume if you take the lost property. In every case you can always turn the item over to the police to rid yourself of any obligation. Also, the only way you're allowed to claim somebody else's lost property is to go through a process that involves turning it in to the police for them to hold for a specified time period before surrendering it to the finder.

There's even more detail than this in California law, for things such as lost perishable goods (you can sell them and give the proceeds to the owner) and recovery of the finder's reasonable costs (e.g., if you lose your horse and I find it, choose to house it and feed it for a week until you're reunited).

You're looking at it through the lens of survivorship bias. How do you think you'd have done if you'd invested in 1913 on the stock markets of Spain, Germany, Japan or Argentina?

No, not necessarily. You're extrapolating from the US stock market's performance in the 20th century. This is not a representative sample. Stocks may very well go down long term. Of course, if that happens, you will probably have bigger problems to worry about than "my stock index funds have been tanking for 20 years," so I suggest don't let this stop you from long term stock investing—which is meant to protect you from the risk of long-term inflation, not from long-term societal collapse.

I think I should expand on this. Back in 1902, a stock broker in the NYSE could calculate the DJIA by pencil in the back of an envelope: add the current prices of those 12 stocks up in the board and divide by 12. When it expanded to 30 stocks in the 20s it became that much harder, but you still could pay a guy to do it by hand and put up the updated values periodically up in the board. The jump to capitalization-weighted indexes with 500+ stocks was only possible with computers.

IIRC the DJIA only applies weighting to stocks that split after inclusion in the index, in order to keep the index price reflecting the actual changes in the companies.

I feel inclined to call the DJIA "retarded," but that's unfair to the people who invented it in 1896 and expanded it in the 1920s (from 12 to 30 stocks). Back in those days, it wasn't that terrible of an idea. But really, since the introduction of the S&P 500 in 1957, and total market indexes in the 1970s, there's really no point to it, and the fact that people keep reporting it is just retarded. The Wilshire is a more reasonable index—it just includes basically every US domestic stock.

Well, as somebody who bought a lot of stock between October 2008 and April 2009, I have to point out that there is a disciplined approach to doing this: (a) set up your finances so you don't have to sell during crises (live below your means; set aside an emergency cash fund; have good insurance); (b) have a well-defined asset allocation plan (e.g., 25% bonds, 75% stocks with 40% US and 35% international); (c) when one asset class falls drastically, sell off one of the others to bring the portfolio back to plan (this is called rebalancing).

That way, if stocks fall 40% and your portfolio ends up at about 35% bonds/65% stocks, you sell the extra 10% in bonds and buy stocks to restore the 25/75 target. More generally, this forces you to sell off investments that have risen to buy those that have fallen—a strategy that's made of pure win...

Actually, not this either, because the S&P was designed before index funds too, and isn't ideally suited to them. The S&P has a committee that unpredictably handpicks which stocks go into it, and when a new one enters the index, a lot of people buy them up because the S&P index funds are forced to buy it.

A better simple idea is just to buy an index fund that invests on the whole US stock market—e.g., Vanguard's Total Stock Marked Index funds. It's also more diversified—3,500+ stocks instead of just 500.

No, a market-cap weighed portfolio has the advantage that it doesn't need to be rebalanced when the prices of the stocks change.

The Dow isn't a fund. It's an index—and it's over a hundred years old, which is the reason why it's so antiquated.

...no, it's not an adjective phrase. If it was, you'd expect to be able to use it as a predicate. You can say both "a very large house" and "The house is very large." You can say "the 50-year anniversary" but not "*the anniversary is 50-year."

"50-year anniversary" is just a noun-noun compound, like "systems engineer" (where, likewise, you can't say "*That engineer is systems").

Imagine if New York hadn't been allowed to have paved roads until there was a plan in place to pave the entire Western frontier.

Well, we actually did build not just one, but two highway systems that were designed to connect the whole country from the beginning. So yeah, actually, a lot of freeways in New York were not funded until there was a plan in place to build counterparts throughout the country. (Fun facts: first state to sign a contract to build an Interstate highway: Missouri. First state to start actually building one: Kansas. First state to open a segment of one: Pennsylvania. First state to finish all of its route: Nebraska...)

I remember back in 1995 or so when a hurricane warning was issued for Hurricane Luis (Cat 5). Governor Rosselló held a live press conference on TV, and you could tell from his face that he was scared shitless.

...and what killed 1,464 people is that neither the city, nor the state, nor the feds had any freaking plan for evacuating people out of the city who couldn't do it by themselves. And that would've never happened in Puerto Rico. I mean, (a) classify the areas of the city beforehand by their vulnerability to a flood, (b) when the hurricane warning is issued, send out dudes in vans and buses to the most vulnerable places to order the residents out and take to shelters the ones who can't get out on their own.

Bullshit. I was there for Hugo and Georges. Hugo when it hit PR was a category 3, but it barely scraped the northeastern tip of the island (close to Fajardo). The Vieques and Culebra islands got hit the hardest, followed by the eastern municipalities, and the rest of the island got off easy. My street was without power for over a month afterward.

Georges was category 3 when it hit PR, too, not a 5. That did cut diagonally right through the middle of the main island. My parent's house lost a crappy zinc roof used in an extension that they should've never made to the house.

Dude, 22 years ago when Hugo hit I was without power for a whole damn month. And I lived in a middle upper class neighborhood.

When it comes to hurricanes, the guys in PR who've got their shit down are Defensa Civil—the government emergency preparedness agency.

Eh, there's no lack of poor country folks living in houses built on flood zones in PR, and they're terrified of hurricanes.

The government however is very good at going to the most dangerous flood zones and actually evacuating people. If the PR government had been in charge of New Orleans, there would have been only a few dozen deaths from Katrina...