Kaushal "Ken" Majmudar on investing process vs. outcome

Most investors who are fooled by randomness focus too much on outcome (i.e. historical experience grounded in statistics) and too little on process.  By focusing on outcome over process, you tend to become overactive, undisciplined and a follower – looking and finding short-term patterns to which you attribute often false significance.  You constantly attempt to move to greener pastures but rarely arrive at your destination or stay to enjoy your surroundings.  In investing as in life, most people overestimate what can be accomplished in one year and vastly underestimate what can be accomplished in ten years.

~ Kaushal "Ken" Majmudar, founder of Ridgewood Investments, 2005 Annual Letter to Clients, March 7,  2006

Ludwig von Mises on Santa Claus economics

At the bottom of the interventionist argument there is always the idea that the government or the state is an entity outside and above the social process of production, that it owns something which is not derived from taxing its subjects, and that it can spend this mythical something for definite purposes.  This is the Santa Claus fable raised by Lord Keynes to the dignity of an economic doctrine and enthusiastically endorsed by all those who expect personal advantage from government spending. 

~ Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, p. 744

Anonymous employee on Disney's woke culture

I’ve been here for 35 years, and I only have a few years left before I can retire.  I’m trying to keep my sanity, but it’s very difficult.

~ anonymous employee, "Longtime Disney Cast Member Speaks Out: ‘We Are Ashamed to Work for This Company’," The Epoch Times, April 8, 2022

Ludwig von Mises on the paradox of "planning"

We may admit that in its initial period a socialist regime could to some extent rely upon the experience of the preceding age of capitalism.  But what is to be done later, as conditions change more and more?  Of what use could the prices of 1900 be for the director in 1949?  And what use can the director in 1980 derive from the knowledge of the prices of 1949?

The paradox of "planning" is that is cannot plan, because of the absence of economic calculation.  What is called a planned economy is no economy at all.  It is just a system of groping about in the dark.  There is no question of a rational choice of means for the best possible attainment of the ultimate ends sought.  What is called conscious planning is precisely the elimination of conscious purposive action.

~ Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, pp. 700-701

Alexis de Tocqueville on history

When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.

~ Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Book Four, Chapter VIII

Ludwig von Mises on socialism

Socialism cannot be realized because it is beyond human power to establish it as a social system.  The choice is between capitalism and chaos.  The man who chooses between drinking a glass of milk and a glass of a solution of potassium cyanide does not choose between two beverages; he chooses between life and death.  A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society.  Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.  To stress this point is the task of economics as it is the task of biology and chemistry to teach that potassium cyanide is not a nutriment but a deadly poison. 

~ Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, p. 680

@tweettruth2me on feminism, LGBTQ, BLM and victimology

The feminist movement destroyed women and femininity.  Did you really believe the LGBTQ and the BLM movements weren’t going to do the same to it’s followers?  It’s a trap.  It’s always a trap.  Stop taking the victim bait.

~ @tweettruth2me, tweet, April 1, 2022