I would not say that. Yes, China's growth rate has fallen from 10% to 7%, but that is still higher than the West's 2%.

And yes, China is horrible misallocating resources and I reckon that when the bubble busts it will take the wind out of Alibaba's sails. But that is a argument for slower growth, not a falling stock price. (It could, you just need to build out your argument.)

As for shorting this piggy, as somebody who lived though the Dot.com crash seeing people do this first hand, I will point out that the markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. Take care.

I would take the opposite view. GM had a large number of inflexible costs. Old underutilized factories that they could not close, redundant union employees that could not fire, and a huge number of small unprofitable dealerships. The state franchise laws were so strong that the only way to fire these unprofitable customers was to dealer bankruptcy.
GM and Toyota have roughly the same market share but GM had twice as many dealers. In the 60s GM had over 50% of the market share, so it made sense to have 7 brands, and thousands of dealerships. Plus Americans were more rural and spread out. By 2010 having that many dealerships was irrational, but state franchise law limited what GM could do.

It made sense for the individual dealership to hold on – why give away a valuable franchise for nothing? And GM did not have the money to buy them out – even a marginal franchise is worth a million. But the collective actions were an anchor around GM's neck.

You could see GM moving in the right direction in 2000-2010, transforming themselves from a huge slow moving dinosaur into something for the modern age, but they just could not move fast enough.

It is not as easy as that.

First, it assumes that the two parties have relatively equal power, or at the very least that one can't bully the other. Second, it assumes the situation is static. This is rarely true after 10 years. After 20 years, normally the situation has changed so much that one party dominates and can squeeze the other party dry.

It is a bit more subtle than that. Back in the 20s there were over a dozen auto manufactures and many repair shops, so that was not an issue. The issue was one of unbalanced power. The manufactures could bully the franchisors by forcing them to buy more cars than they could sell, yank their franchise after they had built up the brand and sell it somebody else, drive up franchise fees after the initial 10 year contract was over.etc.

A free market only works when there is a free exchange between 2 parties. The laws were supposed to, and did, redress this balance of power. Of course, what was true 100 years – or even 25 years does not necessarily apply today or to Tesla. The NADA today is about defending locally entrenched business interests and the status quo.

It is to show the size of the factory. From the article, it is supposed to produce "35 GWh." worth of batteries. I assume that is per year, but they are a bit coy on that detail.

What regulations are you talking about? In America both banks and charge / merchant / debit cards fall under the same laws. Banks may be more highly regulated but then again they are doing more things. That is, they make loans, take deposits etc. But I can't think of a major difference in terms of principals on how checking is treated differently than cards. For example, the same standards, a signature, are used for both. The differences I know of are on specifics, for example extra safeguards built into checking to clear the checks.

I am missing one of your point - why does it matter that VISA is owned by bank in Europe and is private in the US? Why does that matter?

I assume that you know that VISA was a single company until 2006. At that point the US Banks cashed out by selling VISA to the public and the European bans went their own way.

Google is actually in the delivery business - see their Google Shopping Express.

But no, this is not part of their core business – this falls into one of their moonshot projects. Personally, I don't like when companies move out of their core. General Motors going into IT consulting, Apple Computers going into MP3 players, Microsoft going into MP3 players, Amazon moving away from books into cloud services. etc. Historically these ventures generate piss poor returns for the owners. Generally these things are better left to start-ups. But sometimes you have to give management the benefit of doubt.

Maybe not.

One could grow organs inside a person's body or in a tube, but there are issues about blood supply, proper growth, etc. A possible solution would be to grow human organs in animal hosts. Transgenic pigs are often cited as a possible choice. They are about the right size for many organs and their immune system should be able to be tweaked so as not to reject the foreign tissue. Of course, this approach has other technical hurdles to overcome. I am not willing to bet on what the answer will be.

Still in the realm of science fiction but we are getting closer every day.

It is not just "fun" things. Cities are more productive than rural areas. Bigger cities are more productive than smaller cities.

It is not because the more productive people move to larger cities – that variable has been controlled. Bigger cities offer economies of scale, allows deeper areas of expertise to developed, and networking effects. And if one wants to argue that in theory the internet can overcome the need for physical proximity, hard data argues otherwise. In the past 30 years, productivity and income has risen faster in larger cities than mid-tier cities.

If I had to guess it is a quasi-legal thing. People probably want some type of assurance that their message had been delivered.

I worked in a US Bank and we were still sending out telegrams in 2002. The telegram served kind of the same function as certified mail. We could confirm that the message had been received on the other end. We were conducting "urgent" business (generally business that needed a turnaround time of 1 to 3 business day) with older cliental (e-mail was not assured).

You got me on the date thing – I am showing my age.

On to your point, I would agree that we need librarians and archivist. However you are off point. The topic at hand is about lending libraries and the most efficient way to lend out books, music, movies, etc. Almost everything you point out is in the domain of research, archive, and other special collection libraries. These libraries tend not to lend stuff out. Does it matter if a library or a historical society holds these archives? I can't think of one.

Then I would suggest, and I do in fact encourage, reform of the copyright laws.

Clinging to yesterday's 19th century inefficient technology with some ill-defined nostalgia for the past is probably not the best way to ensure liberty in the 20th century. As a case in point, my library immediately deletes all borrowing history the moment a book is returned or the e-book lending period expires. Not exactly on point to what you are saying, but pointing out the type of things we should be doing. That being said, even if all libraries go DRM, there is nothing stopping you from walking into a bookstore and buying a hardback with a $20 bill.

Libraries do carry books for "financial reasons", in the sense that library space is a cost and libraries don't have unlimited money. They do try to get the most bang out of their buck to server their "customers". Libraries routinely cull their collections. Most libraries have book sales where they get rid of their excess inventory, making room for new books.

That being said, most libraries tend to take a long and deep view. What was trendy yesterday and obscure today is the stuff of historical research tomorrow. This is particularly true for research and archival libraries. That being said, digital storage of media is getting cheaper and better every day.

Not exactly true and kind of misses the point.

You say not everybody can afford Kindles? The point was to close down all of the libraries, and used the money saved to buy everybody a Kindle or some other type of e-book. If e-books and libraries were equivalent than society would win. E-books and libraries are not equivalent yet, at least the book lending portion. However, my local library does allow me to check out e-books and audiobooks via the internet so we are getting close.

Taxes could be cut, libraries could be redeployed to something more useful - like coffee shops that could be used for networking. I say the last bit half in jest. If you are interested in networking, community meetings, etc. then we should figure out the best way to delivery that. Maybe generic community centers could do better? Other people have mentioned internet access and tech support. Maybe free city wide wifi would be a better choice?

I love libraries, but let's not try to justify their existence with a bunch of ad hoc ad ons in ex post facto rationalization of logic.