Well sir, as we debate, your points and their expression become clearer to me, and I appreciate you taking time to do that.
I, too, am against paying for the mistakes of others, but realize that we are a society, and as such the mistakes of some are often spread out to be borne by the many.
I just don't want to be hasty in changing the rules without thinking through all of the consequences, not only those outcomes I hope to achieve....history is littered with well-intentioned but disastrous legislation....Prohibition comes to mind as an extreme case.
You gave the 71% figure, and I did not check it's veracity....I am only stating that my investment money is placed to optimally work for me....if I want a nice safe return, I'll get a CD....if I had invested in those 71% wonderful companies that you alluded to, I would have earned less last year than if I had the money in a CD, so why would I want to put my money there?....These wonderful companies may have earnings, but if they are losing market share to the internet-efficient companies, then either they must get more technologically efficient(my point in a previous post) or those earnings will disappear.
It is appealing to lump all technology companies together but like most things, there are good and bad tech companies and good and bad business models and good and bad investors.
I confess that I have a jaundiced eye when looking at a company and seeing a loss instead of a profit....it takes a powerful argument to offset that negative and few companies today can provide that argument sufficiently to sway me to their corner....by the way, no I am not an investor in AMZN, but they did help me understand the internet business model a bit.
I do think there are many companies that momentum money is flowing into that will exact a heavy toll on the last ones holding their stock....but I also believe there is a revolution going on that is changing the face of interaction in all its aspects....person-to-person; business-to-business; person-to-business; person-to-government; person-to-professionals; etc....it is an awesome time and there really are a lot of companies with business models that will effectively capture huge amounts of profitable business from this evolution....which ones....there is the issue for all investors! |
