Is "AI" The Next "Blockchain"?

You can boost your share price by putting trendy buzzwords in press releases.

Meme stocks are stocks that are hyped heavily on the Internet, to the point where their share price makes no sense whatsoever  Young people - mostly young men - get duped into buying shares in these companies and are exhorted to "hold on" and "never sell" even as the share price tanks.  It becomes a form of social media, where the participants log on every day to swap stories, talk to each other in buzzwords, and call each other "apes" or other appellations.

Even when they lose huge amounts of money (usually by purchasing stock options at the urging of their peers) they seek out recognition and endorsement from their peers by posting pictures of their rapidly declining portfolios - often in the negative region, when options are involved.   In some cases, we are talking about six-figure sums, or more.  Oh, well, all in a day's fun

Of course, anyone with half a brain could figure out that the entire thing is being orchestrated by someone or a group of someones, to manipulate share prices.  Thinly-traded stocks are very vulnerable to sudden spikes in share price, as even a small increase in demand causes a huge increase in share price, as there are few shares for sale.

The old penny-stock scam is a case in point.  Most penny-stock companies are small businesses where family members own most shares and few are for sale. The con artist buys a few shares for pennies apiece and then hypes the stock using an e-mail blast to a million recipients.  Even if only one in a thousand buys the stock, the price can jump from mere pennies to dollars - showing that the predicted rise was as foretold in the e-mail blast!   But of course, nothing about the company actually changed.  The only change was a sudden and artificial increase in demand for shares.

The con artist then cashes out and the share price plummets back to pennies.  Those who bought for dollars lose 90% or more of their "investment."  But since each "investor" lost only a few hundred dollars, well, they just chalk it up to bad luck and move on.

This was all illegal when I was a lad, as was gambling in general.  Today, anything goes and the stock market is now a casino.  This will not end well - it never does  When the scam collapses, a lot of little people will get hurt and not just those who chose to gamble.  Crashes like this take down whole markets.  When over-inflated real estate collapsed in 2008, it brought down the whole real estate market - and the bond market and the stock market.

Sadly, surveys seem to indicate that the next generation of 20-something males is falling for the same old gags, this time dressed up as online casinos or sports betting or "prediction markets" - the last being a sure sign of compulsive gambling.  Of course, it is pathetically easy to rig these sort of bets, particularly when the betting parlor is based offshore.  Sports betting, I suspect, will result in some sort of game-fixing scandal in a matter of months (if not already).

Meme stocks are just another aspect of this - penny stock scams gone wild.  Companies such as Game Stop, which is a thing, just not "the next big thing!" saw its share price skyrocket for no reason at all, other than people on r/wallstreetbets or r/superstonk started buying and holding shares.  There is a reason why the operators of these schemes exhort their "apes" to HOLD the stock.   If no one is selling, the share price will spike.

The net result was that the share price spiked and fell for no apparent business reason.  An old-school brick-and-mortar business seemed like an odd thing to speculate on.  But then weird things started to happen.  Management of the company saw this happening and wanted in on the deal.  They talked about issuing new stock, but as I understand it, that fizzled.  Then they announced they were getting into crypto and blockchain and the share price spiked - for a time.  Put buzzwords in your press release and the share price will go up.

Recently, a similar thing happened with AI. An organic sneaker company whose "Market Cap" was at one time over two billion dollars, sold off all its IP to an overseas firm for a few million bucks.  The company had flown high, then crashed.  The next day, they announced they were going to get into AI - as if you could just dabble in this after selling sneakers.  The share price soared 600% and then tanked 30% the next day.  Still a nice gain for whoever was holding shares at the moment.

Of course, AI is a thing, just as GameStop was a thing.  But getting into AI requires more than a few million in investments.   Data centers are not cheap - on the order of billions of dollars, not mere millions.  And they are getting harder to build, as communities rail against increased utility and water bills.   Each data center uses enough resources to supply a small city of 100,000 people.  Famously, Iran targeted such data centers in the Middle East - where energy is cheap but water scarce.  They are a very vulnerable "soft target" to be sure.

To me, anyway, the idea that a niche sneaker company can just chuck it all and go all-in on AI for a lousy $25M seems laughable - and a sign the end times are nigh.  You can just say shit like this, watch your share price spike, and cash out your stock options the next day and no one says squat.  Well, maybe a few analysts cautiously remark that it seems implausible, but most are afraid of getting sued and perhaps there is an unspoken agreement among them not to rock the boat - lest all our 401(k)'s tank at once.

Blockchain was a thing, but it never really turned out to be as big a thing as people claimed it would be.  Crypto has hosted an innumerable number of scams and rug-pulls.  Some "coins" are still around and used still, for nefarious things, like money-laundering and illegal trafficking in drugs and people.  But as an "investment" it has never proven stable - although we little people are being exhorted to add it to our portfolio, mostly by sketchy financial sites (read: any financial site that suggest you buy crypto or provides a means of doing so) or even "legitimate" investment houses and banks.  It never took off at a currency, even after more than a decade.  And as an "investment" it only makes sense if you can time the market and buy low and sell high - which is nearly impossible to do, unless you are the one pulling the strings.

Blockchain really never found much other uses.  I read online, a discourse from some IT types who put blockchain into their company's financial networks ("fintech" I guess?) but noted it was little more than a hood ornament on a car - a part of the car, but not a necessary part of it.  They noted that the entire blockchain portion of their system could fail and no one would notice the difference, while the reverse was not true - the system could not operate on blockchain alone. I suspect that if the blockchain portion does fail, or undergoes maintenance and is taken offline for repair, no one will ever get around to fixing it.  Days, weeks, and months will go by and eventually it will be forgotten.

Similarly, AI is an interesting tool, but not a necessary one.  And often it is an intrusive one.  Want to search Google?  The first thing you have to do is bypass the AI response and go to "web" for real search results (but search results far shittier than five years ago).  AI is just a hindrance to real search results - it just keeps barfing up the same obvious answers and fails to dig deep into hard data.

But it is the buzzword of the day, so everyone wants to get in on it.  It gets mentioned in press releases and annual reports.  Investors want to see the company doing the latest-and-greatest thing, even if it is wildly unprofitable.  They give out AI for free to consumers, hoping we get hooked on it. Whether consumers are willing to pay subscription fees down the road for AI, remains to be seen.  And given the staggering cost of AI data centers, even subscription fees are not enough. ChatGTP makes millions in subscription fees from customers but costs billions to operate.  That's off by a factor of a thousand.

We'll see where this goes, of course.  And I doubt it will go away entirely.  But on the other hand, the fact that "AI" is being used to hype up stock prices tells me a bubble isn't that far from bursting.

Signs... of the Times

There are signs things are changing...

We saw this sign above while driving through Kentucky.  I didn't stop to take a photo, but I did find a copy online, as well as articles about it.  Are people turning away from Trump?  Or as his term winds down, maybe there is less demand for Trump merch.   I also noted a lack of Trump yard signs and flags, in Kentucky, Tennesee, Georgia, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Pennsylvania.

In Leheighton, PA, there used to be a big Trump billboard in front of this guy's house, right as you crossed the bridge, at the stoplight.  It was there for years - since before Trump's first term.  Today?  No more - replaced with a small sign promoting the county fair.  You just don't see Trump signs anymore - no flags flying from pickup trucks, no red hats, either.  The landfills must be full of the stuff!

Then again, the quality of Trump merch was so poor that the few Trump flags and signs you see are faded and tattered.  Maybe it all just composted like so much other bullshit.

But there are other, less hopeful signs out there, and I am not sure whether I am imagining them or not.  Every merchant I have ever done business with, seems to be SPAMming me with discount offers - coming across as nervous and desperate.  Campgrounds once full to capacity on holiday weekends are offering last-minute discounts to fill empty spaces.  And car dealer lots are overflowing with row upon row of unsold pickup trucks and SUVs.

Woody Folsom, in Western Georgia, has Ford, GMC, Ram, Dodge, and Jeep dealerships (and ag equipment and who knows what else?).  All are full of big, gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs - a far cry from the COVID days, when he had only four or five of each, on each lot.  Meanwhile, Ford exhorts me to buy a new $100,000 "Super duty" pickup, which is just not happening.

Did someone throw a switch?  What happened?  Before, the dealers acted like they were doing you a favor by selling you a truck.  Now, they advertise over $10,000 off on a new SUV.  Are people finally running out of money - and credit?

McDonald's replaced its CEO after disappointing revenue and earnings.  People are buying convenience foods less and less.  One wag argues online that the hamburger patties at Mickey-D's are thinner than the pickles.  Are they resorting to shrinkflation?

Maybe.  There seem to be signs.  Despite the rapid rise in housing prices, I hear from multiple people in my recent travels that sales are cooling off and in some markets, getting difficult.  Rising interest rates are obviously not helping.  But are there other factors?

Data from the government, once the standard of financial reporting, is now being tweaked to fit political narratives and is no longer trustworthy.  And it isn't just finances - our Secretary of HHS is under-reporting measles deaths, apparently on a regular basis.  And let's not forget the war dead - even if the administration would like to.

So it is hard to tell from "official" channels whether the economy is going like gangbusters or about to crater.  I see signs, but I am not sure whether they mean anything.

Yet.

Why Humanoid Robots Make No Sense At All

If my scan rate at UPS was this slow, I would have been fired.

A recent video online shows a humanoid robot sorting packages, mostly just flipping them label side up so they can be scanned.  It was painful to watch because the conveyor was slowed down to at least half normal speed and the "robot" was horrifically inefficient at its job.

Irony Alert:  Before I could play the linked video above, it asked me to "sign in to prove you're not a bot."   Rules for me, but not for thee, I guess.

Warehouse robots exist, but they don't look like ersatz humans.  Rather, they are machines optimized for handling, sorting, and stacking packages and retreiving and packing goods.  They look nothing like the "row-bots" of science fiction because doing so would be pointless.  Why give a package sorting robot legs and a torso and a head and human-like arms, when history has shown that human anatomy is ill-suited to repetitive motions.  Do you want these robots to have tendon and joint problems?  Backaches and arthritis?

But seriously, a humanoid robot might have some specialized uses, particularly when interfacing directly with humans, but for other purposes, it makes no sense.  Imagine an automated car wash that, instead of having rotating brushes and spray wands, had dozens of humanoid robots sloshing around in the suds, hand-wiping your car.   Maybe there is a kernel of an idea there, but why would you give them legs to walk around with, when stationary or wheeled robots would make more sense.  And why make them look like humans?

I suppose the idea of a "general purpose" humanoid robot might make some sense.  It could mow your lawn, wax your car, and then shake up a martini for you at five o'clock.  That seems to be a common fantasy with robot fans - that "Jeeves" the family robot will mix up that martini and light your cigar (and empty the ashtray) while you sit in your smoking jacket in the den and listen to Jazz music.

But as history has shown, it is a lot more effective to make a number of domestic robots, each specialized to a purpose.  Having a humanoid robot operate a vacuum cleaner is an expensive waste of machinery.  Having an automated vacuum cleaner makes more sense, as does an automated lawn mower.

With regard to the latter, such things exist, but never became popular.  I recall a few years back seeing a display at Lowe's of a robotic lawn mower.  The display was broken.  A neighbor actually bought one and I guess it worked for a while.  One day I saw them out on the lawn, looking at the inert machine and then poking it with a stick.  It sat there, motionless, for about a week and then disappeared never to be seen again.  It never pays to be an early adapter.

The problem with the automated lawn mower is obvious - suppose your pet is run over by it?  Or maybe a crawling infant?  The liability is huge and no matter how many sensors you put on it, it may be likely to fail.  For that reason, most automated lawn mowers used string trimmers, not whirling blades, so little junior won't be sliced to death, just slowly whipped to oblivion.  But I digress.

Another problem with humanoid robots is the power they require.  Humans are a fascinating machine - converting calories of food into energy every day for nearly a century before they wear out.  It is just a shame it takes 25 years or so to program their neural networks, and often that goes horribly wrong.

Companies like Boston Dynamics like to show off their robots dancing to music and doing amazing flips and stunts.  In most cases, they are tethered to a power cord, or in some cases, an IC engine powered electrical generator.  The actual ambient sound is rarely shown, as instead of music, you would hear the scream of a lawn mower engine or the sound of electrical or hydraulic actuators.  Lithium-Ion batteries are one solution, but of course add weight to the design and have a limited capacity.  I suspect many of these short videos are short because that is the extent of the battery life.

While Boston Dynamics claims that their robots are for sale, at the present time they are limited to enterprise customers and there is little or no word as to how many have been sold or are in use.  Have you seen one being used? Let me know.

Meanwhile, other more plebeian robots are already out on the streets - quite literally.  No doubt you've seen the food delivery robots on some city streets.  But again, they are not humanoid, but small boxes on wheels.  A humanoid delivery robot could do things like climb stairs and get around obstacles better, but the energy required would no doubt limit their range and the cost would be prohibitive.  Boxes on wheels are cheap - and get the job done.

And of course, robot taxis are a thing, at least on a trial basis in some cities - with mixed results.  When error-prone humans run over a small child, we chalk that up to the cost of doing business - and the driver gets a slap on the wrist.  If you want to get away with killing someone, use your car.  Ask Bruce Caitlyn Jenner.  She got away with it!

Sam's Club and Walmart have a floor cleaning robot that seems to work "OK" - although it has a seat and manual controls.  Not only does it wash floors, but it also takes inventory with a side-mounted scanner.  Again, it is on wheels,  not legs.   No one seriously suggested using a humanoid robot with a mop-and-bucket - it would make no sense whatsoever.

Getting back to UPS and other shipping companies, when I worked there as a nascent Teamster in the 1980s, we were basically human robots.  Bar codes were a thing of the future, and boxes came down a chute in pre-sort where four or five guys would sort each package by zip code.  These guys had the entire zip code structure of the greater Syracuse area memorized and I could not keep up at all.  I lasted a day in pre-sort.

The solution wasn't robots to "read" hand-written addresses and sort by zip code, but to put standardized labels and bar codes on each package.  Back in 1986, few had home computers and printers.  Today everyone does, and if they don't, the local UPS store will print the label for you.  Automation didn't mean creating mechanical men to mimic manual human labor, but to automate the process instead.

So bar codes are read by lasers and mechanical flaps divert packages to different conveyor belts - a much more efficient and cost-effective process than having humanoid robots pick up packages and look at them.  Humanoid robots are not an advancement, but a step backwards.

Similarly, when I worked at Domino's, we took orders over the phone and then hand-addressed each box of pizza using carbon-copy strips.  One went to the line cook to make the pizza (and make a record of the transaction), while two went on the box.  The driver would tear off the pink copy upon delivery.  It was a primitive system, but it worked.  I told my boss there that someday a computer would print out these labels and he laughed at me.  At the time, I had to deal with his shitty handwriting, which almost got me mugged.

Now, I suppose you could use a humanoid robot to pick up the receiver on a landline phone and take orders and write them down on slips of paper, but that would be dumb.  Instead of automating human actions, they automated the process.  Customers order online using an app and the pizzas are made after the labels were printed automatically.  Addresses can be verified (and customers tracked for loyalty rewards) and phone numbers confirmed through automated call-backs.  Automating the process makes much more sense than using a humanoid robot to mimic what was done before by humans.

In warfare, the same is true.  Much has been made of humanoid "soldiers" replacing men in the field. A bipedal robot can walk through ditches and climb over fences.  But what we are seeing in Ukraine is that flying robots (actually, remote controlled drones) are far more effective, efficient, and less costly than some clanking monstrosity from Boston Dynamics.  Seaborne and landborne drones also exist, the latter tending to be of the wheeled variety.

The idea of autonomous mechanical warriors, however, should give everyone pause.  Some drones are deemed "semi-autonomous" in that they can continue their mission even if cut off from their operator by jamming signals.  Even these are controversial, as without a human-in-the-loop, it would be all-too-easy to bomb a school or create a friendly fire situation.

But again, with drones, the idea of a walking humanoid fighting drone seems dead in the water, at least for now.  Masses of cheap and lightweight drones - often "suicide drones" - makes more sense than an expensive walking-talking doll.

Perhaps I am wrong about this, and instead, in a decade's time, my personal robot will clear the dishes after cooking my meal, mow the lawn and drive my car.  I kind of doubt it, only because I can't afford such nonsense.  I also wonder whether humanoid robots are really solving a problem that exists - is it really cost-effective to replace low-wage jobs with robots?  Or are we just chasing a tech dream?'

Already we are seeing incidents where "AI" ends up being more costly than replacing human workers.  And as a "tool" it seems highly flawed.  At least from a consumer standpoint, it is of limited use - and if you rely on AI answers to basic questions, you may end up in trouble.

For example, our van has a problem in that the switch or sensor that detects whether the sliding door is open, isn't working.  Not only doesn't the dome light come on (grammar?) but the "auto relock" feature kicks in, if you unlock the van with the remote and open the sliding door.  The system detects if a door has been opened after unlocking.  If no detection occurs within 30 seconds, it assumed you hit the button in error and re-locks the van.  Since the sliding door sensor is broken, it doesn't detect this as an opening and re-locks the van.  No big deal, unless you set the keys on the counter and then re-shut the door.  Congratulations, you just locked the keys in the van!

And no, there is no way to turn off auto re-lock.  :(

Anyway, Google AI keeps cheerfully informing me that a 2015 Mercedes Sprinter 3500 high-top has a simple plunger switch "on the B-pillar" and it costs only $4.95 on eBay.  No, it does not.  Mercedes chose instead to put a switch on the door latches (all doors) including the sliding door.  It is a PITA to get at and guess what?  It costs a lot more than $4.95!

I've tried rephrasing the question (the "prompt" I guess) many times, with the same result.  The information provided is clearly wrong, every time.  And sadly, this seems to be true of many technical questions, regarding cars, computers, or whatever.  AI merely skims the surface and provides the most facile responses.  Did you try unplugging it and then plugging it back in?  Gee, thanks, Sanjay!

I guess I take some comfort in this - that our robot overlords are as clueless as we are (indeed, we "trained" them, no?). In the future, there will be robot counterparts of all the inept and clueless people in the world, including robot Karens and robot BMW drivers who refuse to use turn signals.

Or, God forbid, Robo-Trump.  Maybe we are already there - after all, he died of rabies!

Why The Richest Man In The World Isn't (Do The Numbers!)

SpaceX stock has sagged a bit since its early peak, but that's not why Musk isn't a trillionaire.

Market cap, as I have noted time and time again, is just eye-candy bullshit.  Financial news sources want to generate clicks and capture eyeballs - as all modern "journalists" today want to do.  Our whole information infrastructure today has been corrupted by fast cash and special interests.  In our world of high-tech and "information economy," belief in UFOs, flat earth, moon landing denial, anti-vaxxing, etc. ad nauseam, is at an all-time high.  Hold on tight, AI is going to make it much worse!

Sadly, few have the capacity to do anything more than a superficial analysis.  Take this recent article online - a bit of schadenfreude click-bait for Musk-haters, claiming that people are "losing money" on the SpaceX IPO because it has dropped to "only" 30% over its IPO price.  Most folks didn't lose money, though.

Buried in the article are a number of comments which should be the 100-point type headline:

A further decline in SpaceX shares reduced CEO Elon Musk’s net worth by $67.8 billion to about $1.2 trillion, according to Forbes’ estimates. His fortune hit a record high above $1.4 trillion amid SpaceX’s three-day winning streak, and Musk still ranks well above Google cofounder Larry Page ($300.8 billion) as the richest person in the world.

Morningstar analysts lowered its fair value estimate for SpaceX to $62 from $63, citing a “sizable dilution” of SpaceX shares following the Cursor deal, noting a best-case scenario would price shares at $169 should its AI revenue improve.

It’s a cooling from the record-setting demand since its debut: Investors purchased $369.8 million in SpaceX shares over its first three sessions, accounting for more than quadruple the funds poured into Nvidia ($88.2 million) over the same period, according to a Vanda Research note on Wednesday.

Wait. What?   We are talking about Billions of dollars - Trillions even, and the amount sold to the public was a paltry $369 million?  A little more than a third of a billion?  No, that can't be right.  They actually raised $85.7 billion, which is a lot of money, but represents only 4.7% of the stock of the company.

As I noted time and time again, the purpose of an old-fashioned IPO was to raise capital to build factories and fund a business.  A modern IPO, however, is structured to sell off a pitiful fraction of the company in order to create a market for the company stock so that founders can cash-out and make real money.  This is particularly true in the tech field, where founders want to run for the exit before everyone discovers that the "tech" is just bullshit.

There are 13.5 billion shares of SpaceX outstanding, according to Google AI (consider the source!) and Musk holds about 6 billion shares.  The IPO sold about 639 million shares at the IPO or about 4.7% of the outstanding shares, which is typical of a modern cash-out IPO.  If that was not enough, these new shares have only one vote each, while Musk's shares have 10 votes each.  He clearly is not worried about any potential proxy fight down the road.

So why isn't Musk a trillionaire?  Again, "market cap" is nonsense.  It is just a number generated by basic math - the number of outstanding shares multiplied by the latest share price (the price the "last sucker in" paid for his paltry investment).  It is "wealth on paper" not in real life, with only one or two real exceptions.

For example, if a company is severely undervalued and someone wants to buy it, they may make a takeover bid and offer the shareholders an attractive buy-out price above the trading price for their shares.  For example, many years ago, I bought a small number of shares in Winn-Dixie, the grocery chain.  Shortly thereafter, there was a takeover bid of $2 a share more than I paid and in a matter of a few weeks, I made a thousand dollars.  Whoop-ee!  In that case, the "market cap" of the company actually represented a number slightly less than it's actual value.

But in most other cases, market cap is meaningless, particularly with tech companies that are trading at 100 or 200 times their earnings (EPS).   Tech companies also - like SpaceX - have huge blocks of shares held by a few prominent investors or founders.  If those folks started selling off their shares to generate cash, the share price would drop precipitously, for two reasons.  First, the market could not absorb the sheer volume of sales - more supply than demand, and thus the price would plummet.  Second, even if these principals sold off shares in small lots (so as not to depress the price too much) people would notice this and wonder why the founders are bailing out on their own company.

Real wealth doesn't exist on paper, but in cold hard cash, or at least cash equivalents.  If Musk held a trillion dollars in a diversified portfolio of real estate, stocks and bonds, commodities, and the like, he would be a trillionaire, as he could liquidate any one of these assets (or combinations of each) without tanking their market value.  But when your entire portfolio (or a substantial part of it) is tied up in closely held speculative tech stocks, your net worth is just that - speculation.  He cannot cash-out of these positions, simply because he owns too large a share of too few companies.  That, and the "market cap" of those companies is far and above the actual value of the companies themselves.

The "last sucker in" share price only represents what some small retail investor, likely ill-informed and mostly gambling, paid for his share.  I am sure a number of buyers of the SpaceX IPO - like many before it - bought a small amount of stock (a few grand at most) on the thought that they could then flip this after the stock "pops" out of the gate - as it appeared to do, dropping off after peaking shortly after the IPO dropped.  This share valuation does not represent an actual valuation by the market of the underlying value of the company, anymore than financially stressed consumers, paying $15 for doordash delivery of $15 of fast-food means that fast food is now worth $30. It just means the little guy is often uninformed and driven by emotion, not logic.

Of course, it could all go the other way, provided that SpaceX stops losing money and starts making a shit-ton of it, instead.  Given the current state of the AI business, the recent Anthropic disaster, and the public's general distaste and distrust of AI, it seems that the entire industry is over-valued, over-hyped, and long due for consolidation.  And the ultimate winner might be.... the Chinese, who are far ahead of the US, far less stressed by regulations, and offering AI products today for 1/60th the token price of American AI companies.   In other words, even if AI is a "thing" it likely will end up a "thing" made in China, like so much of everything else (including electric cars!).

Another way to look at Market Cap in situations like this is to ask, "where did all the money come from?" and the answer is, it didn't come from anywhere because it didn't exist to begin with.  No one plunked down two trillion dollars in the SpaceX IPO, but rather only 4.7% of that amount - the amount of money people actually paid hard cash for shares.  The rest is "wealth on paper" which is speculation, not actual wealth.  When the real estate market crashed in 2008, some idiots actually posted online, "where did all the money go?" as the real estate and stock markets lost billions, if not trillions of dollars.  What was lost was not cash money in circulation, but the idea of what these things were worth.

My house has doubled in value since I bought it, but while this might be added to my "net worth" it doesn't amount to actual wealth until I sell it.  And who knows?  Maybe we are on the verge of another speculative housing bubble or interest rates, or insurance, or property taxes, or just demographics, may tank the value.   After all, I live on a retirement island of boomers, who are dropping like flies, going into assisted living, or moving back home to be close to their children.  Will the next generation be in a position to buy these vacation homes (and RVs and motorcycles, and hobby cars)?  Bear in mind, the next generation is smaller than the boomer set.  Throw in a hurricane, a property tax spike, and a general recession, and, well, today's market valuation means nothing.

Ditto for SpaceX.  Right now, the market valuation is mere speculation. If it were a traditional company - making products and selling them at a profit and paying dividends - you could put a more realistic valuation on the share price.  If your company pays $5 per share in dividends every year or has retained earnings in the same amount, you can quickly and accurately calculate a target price for that stock.  But technology stocks, which often never show a profit, or if they do, have a P/E ratio in the hundreds, and rarely, if ever, pay dividends, are much harder to quantify.  The only real number is the amount the "last sucker in" paid for his one paltry share.  And given how the Internet has been used to influence people and turn the markets (and everything else) into a casino, I would not put much faith on the valuation by "the last sucker in" as his valuation is not based on any informative valuation, but emotional response.  After all, Musk owns Twitter, and I am sure he didn't use that lever to hype the share valuation of SpaceX.

Right?

Of course,  it could all go South in a hurry.  Twitter is breaking even - in good years.  And Elon pledged his stock in Tesla and SpaceX to buy Twitter - while paying a billion a year in interest.  Hope they don't call in that note! (Hmm... maybe that is why he is doing the SpaceX IPO?). Tesla is leveraged by cash incentives that Trump has cancelled, and makes more money from selling carbon credits than from cars. Since Trump promises to loosen EPA requirements, what are those carbon credits worth? The market for EVs is saturated and many manufacturers are pulling back or going bust - and the specter of cheap Chinese EVs is always on the horizon.  SpaceX traditional rockets seem to be doing well, but the "Starship" concept is proving to be unworkable, other than as a really big firework.  NASA has basically told Elon to fuck off with his proposal to fly the Starship to the moon as a lunar lander (wtf?) as the darn thing has failed to meet a number of milestones.  And the AI thing?  Well, a race you enter at the end isn't one you are likely to win.

Speaking of the Starship, I just got done reading Jame A. Michener's Space (1982) which was on my pad device (along with thousands of other books).  The idea of launching a huge-ass rocket, rendezvousing in low earth orbit to refuel, and then taking the whole kit and kaboodle to the moon and back was proposed by Von Braun and the Peenemünde gang back in the day.  It was shot down then as too impractical.  It was deemed easier for a rendezvous in lunar orbit (between the CSM and LEM) with staged rockets that would dispose of each stage (and weight) when no longer needed.

It was an interesting discussion and, according to Michener, an issue that divided the space community back then.  People were quite vehement that their way was the correct way.  The lunar docking model won out, but of course was more of a one-and-done deal.  Those proposing earth orbit rendezvous claimed it could be used to create a platform for long-term exploration of space (as illustrated in the opening sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey).  Perhaps they were right, but then again, the budget just for the Apollo missions turned out to be too much, with three later missions (18-20) scrapped due to budget concerns.  A permanent base on the moon?  Seems like a fantasy then - and now - when we can't even balance our budgets as it is.

So, Musk is chasing an age-old dream.  And in order to make Starship work, he would need to expand funding for NASA by a factor of ten.  No problem there - he has a close friend (or use to) in the White House. lol.

Catering To Our Weaknesses

This is how I feel these days, watching any form of media or visiting any website.Source.

All my banking apps and websites have "updated" recently.  Of course, the big new feature I am supposed to love and cherish is the new AI assistant!  He will tell you your bank balance and whether a payment was made!  You know, stuff you can find more easily with a click of the mouse or a swipe on the phone.  But its AI, so it's better, right?

Bank of America cheerfully announces they've "improved" the payment feature for your credit card.  Instead of hiting "make payment" you have to "initiate a transfer."  Hey, we don't want people actually paying off their credit cards now, do we?  If you do make a payment, the system acts like you ruined their day.  "But, but, your payment isn't due until July 3rd!  Are you sure you want to pay now?  Maybe buy a new pair of shoes instead!"

That tactic not working, they try another angle - "You are already signed up for autopay!  Any payment made today will surely cause catastrophe!" Or something along those lines.   The message is not very subtle - here you are, offering to pay back a loan in full and they act like it is a horrible thing to do.  And from their perspective, it is.  Banks make more money today by ruining their clients than by working with them.  In the old days, when loans were used to buy a house or start a business, when the bank profited, you profited as well.  Today, they want you to run up tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt, consumer debt, and student loan debt, and then watch you struggle for years to pay it all off - at exorbitant interest rates, of course - before you throw in the towel and declare bankruptcy.  Even then, they get their pound of flesh as you have to "work out" the debt over a number of years.

Welcome to The United States of Go Fuck Yourself.

And it isn't just BoA, but other banks as well.  Capital One has similar roadblocks to payment - reminding you that payment isn't due yet and hey, you're already in autopay anyway, so why bother?  We took out a bridge loan with BMO - the Bank of Montreal.  What a shitshow that bank is.   They have offices all over the place and no one seems to know what is going on.  They lost the title to the van and then accused us of having it.  I had no luck trying to call anyone, but finally got someone in Dallas (I think) who knocked some heads together in Idaho (?) and figured it out.

I sent in a big payment to reduce the balance on the account and they sat on the check for a month before cashing it.  There is no way to make a "principal reduction" payment online.  If you pay online, they just assume you are prepaying for the next ten installments (!!).   Gotta get those interest payments, right?  Worse yet, on two occasions, I sent in payments (to the correct "principal reduction" address) with the "principal reduction" box checked off and written on the check, only to discover that, once again, they applied the amount to future installments.  Bastards.

The comic above summarizes how I feel about America these days.  Watch any streaming service with ads and you will be bombarded with pleas to play online casinos - everyone is making money this way, why not you?  Gamble! Gamble! Gamble!  Are there really that many gamblers in America?  How many casinos can our country support?  How can the economy survive if everyone is gambling themselves into the poorhouse, particularly those who are already poor?

The Supreme Court decided that in the name of "freedom" we should be allowed to gamble on sports - or just about anything from a coin toss to whether it will rain tomorrow.  Of course, it quickly became apparent why sports betting was illegal to begin with - it is a trivial matter to fix sporting events by bribing players or blackmailing them.  And of course, when players bet on their own games, what's not to like?

You might as well bet on professional wrestling - where the outcomes are predetermined.  Oh, wait, apparently you can - the height of idiocy!

The messages in these ads are clear - they want to normalize gambling as a fun activity that ordinary people engage in, and not some life-destroying monstrosity that can bankrupt you and cause you to lose your family and everything else you hold dear.  The upside?  Occasionally they let you win - just enough to keep the addiction strong and the dopamine flowing.

Yes, dopamine.  I recounted before how a drug tested to cure Parkinson's caused some users to gamble compulsively.  We like to think we are in control of our destiny, but we really are just a bag of chemicals.  Funny, too, that at the Mayo clinic, they asked me whether I was gambling or made any major purchases lately.   I didn't tell them about the Mercedes van.

But seriously, it seems that more than ever before, our society is catering to our weaknesses.  Advertisers want you to order out for food using Doordash or Uber Eats - financial transactions that make no sense whatsoever.  $15 fee to deliver $15 of food?  Stupid! Or how about our neighbor at the condo in Virginia ordering one donut delivered, from a donut shop across the street from our condo?

We are weak, to be sure, but trying to be strong is what makes our lives better.  It takes willpower to get your finances into shape - and keeping them there.  The things that are good for you are hard to do, while the things that destroy us are as easy as falling off a log.

It is akin to the casino we visited in Vegas, some 20-30 years ago now.  A conveyor belt whisked us from "the strip" right into the heart of the casino.  After some time, we tried to leave, and could not find the exit.  We asked one of those beefy-looking guys in a suit who was wearing an electronic earpiece.  "You see that next room? Go in there and then the room beyond, and beyond that, two other rooms.  On the last room, on the left side, behind the large potted plant, is the exit, behind a curtain.  Good Luck!"

No wonder so many die in casino fires - they are roach motels.

Time was - in my lifetime - that Vegas was the only place where gambling was legal.  Now there is a casino of one sort or another within 30 minutes of your home - or on your phone.   It is easier than ever to ruin yourself.  Or ruin yourself at the ultimate casino - the stock market - where speculative stocks trade at hundreds of times their earnings, and stocks are hyped online and CEOs treated like celebrities.

And of course, there is good old fashioned predatory lending - something that also didn't exist when I was young, as consumers could stiff the banks by declaring bankruptcy.

Of course, you could argue - and I do - that one can avoid all these financial traps by being smart.  You can avoid gambling debt by not gambling.  You can avoid credit card debt by not spending on stupid things like delivery food and $5 $10 coffee drinks, and by paying off your credit card balance once a month.  If that requires too much discipline, use a debit card or pay cash - I see many people do, and there is no shame in it, only virtue.

But alas, not everyone has that level of self-control, and even those that do, rarely have it all the time.  We all fail at life from time to time - no one is perfect.  And when you fall, the banks and casinos won't be there to cushion the blow, but rather kick you in the nuts and steal your wallet.

We no longer, as a society, look out for one another.