economics – Page 2 – How to Value Stuff

Universal Basic Income and Inflation

Imagine if the government would decide that everybody would receive a monthly check of $4,000 as a Universal Basic Income. Now imagine that you are in need of a good plumber. How much do you think the plumber will charge:

Less than before UBI.
Same as before UBI.
More than before UBI.

If you think that the plumber will charge less than he did before UBI, you are probably overestimating the compassionate nature of plumbers. If you think a plumber would charge the same as before, you are assuming that plumber will disregard the effect of extra monthly $4,000 to their life.

My assumption would be that most plumbers are not plumbers of passion. Rather, they entered into plumbing because it paid well. The reason it pays well is because nobody aspires to be a plumber. But there is a price where the occupation of plumbing attracts enough of people to satisfy the need for plumbing.

My guess would be that many people would of alternative uses of their times when presented with Universal Basic Income. But the jobs aspire to leave behind would still need be done…just at another price.

The Joys of Compounding

On January 18, in 1963, a 32 year old Warren Buffett sent his annual letter to the limited partners of the Buffett Partnerships. The compound annul return for the limited partners that had been there from the start, five years ago, the return was 21.1%. The cumulative return for limited partners over the five years was 215.1%.

Gross of the management fees that he took as the general partner, Warren Buffett had compounded capital at 26% per year. In the letter, Buffett wanted to better educate his partners of the powers of compounding. In a section that he called “The Joy of Compounding”, he writes the following:

I have it from unreliable sources that the cost of the voyage Isabella originally underwrote for Columbus was approximately $30,000. This has been considered at least a moderately successful utilization of venture capital. Without attempting to evaluate the psychic income derived from finding a new hemisphere, it must be pointed out that even had squatter’s rights prevailed, the whole deal was not exactly another IBM. Figured very roughly, the $30,000 invested at 4% compounded annually would have amounted to something like $2,000,000,000,000 (that’s $2 trillion for those of you who are not government statisticians) by 1962. Historical apologists for the Indians of Manhattan may find refuge in similar calculations. Such fanciful geometric progressions illustrate the value of either living a long time, or compounding your money at a decent rate. I have nothing particularly helpful to say on the former point.
The following table indicates the compounded value of $100,000 at 5%, 10% and 15% for 10, 20 and 30 years. It is always startling to see how relatively small differences in rates add up to very significant sums over a period of years. That is why, even though we are shooting for more, we feel that a few percentage points advantage over the Dow is a very worthwhile achievement. It can mean a lot of dollars over a decade or two.
– Warren Buffett, 1963 Letter to Partners

Here’s the accompanying table:

Compounded Value of $100,000 at different rates and durations

All of Warren Buffett’s annual letters to partners are a treasure trove for any aspiring investor. You can find a compendium of the Buffett Partnership Letters over at CSInvesting.org.

Repugnant Markets | Alvin Roth on Trading Kidneys

A repugnant transaction is an economic term that describes an exchange between people that is generally perceived as morally or ethically wrong. These transactions fall outside of regular market mechanisms, hence the term repugnant markets. The repugnant nature of these transactions, cause these markets to be structurally inefficient.

Examples of Repugnant Markets

Organ transplants
Child surrogacy
Prostitution
Recreational drugs

Whether a market is considered socially repugnant in not a binary definition. At the same time, what people consider to be a repugnant transaction can change over time and across cultures. Some transactions that are considered repugnant, are also illegal. Some are not.

Matching Markets

When you think about markets, the first examples that come to mind will be something like stock exchanges, farmers markets or auctions. In all these examples, the transaction is impersonal. If you want to buy a stock on the New Youk Stock Exchange, you simply need to place an order through a stockbroker. In fact, anybody can place a bid.

Many markets are, however, personal. These markets are called matching markets. In order for a transaction to take place, a buyer and a seller need to be matched. A good example of this is the labour market. If you are in the labour market, you can’t simply choose a job. You need to match with an employer who is looking for someone who matches your skillset.

Repugnant Transactions

In a matching market, price is not the only mechanism. For a matching market to be repugnant, it means that other people feel that it should not be allowed to engage in the desired transaction.

Alvin Ross, the economist who coined the phrase, formulated the concept of repugnant transactions when studying kidney transplants. It is against the law almost anywhere in the world, to buy and sell kidneys for transplantation. Yet there is a black market for kidneys, which means that there are instances where individuals are willing to transact in kidneys, while people, in general, feel that it is immoral to do so.

Alvin Roth on Repugnant Markets and Forbidden Transactions

In the following lecture, Nobel laureate Alvin E. Roth will investigate the nature of and reasons for repugnance with its implications for the design of markets. Why is it forbidden to sell and buy organs? Why is the exchange of kidneys that leads to many successful transplants allowed in some countries such as the US, but not in others like Germany? Which markets or transactions we allow, affects the choices that people have?

Watch the lecture and learn more:

Also on How to Value Stuff

10 Ways to Profit by being Less Logical than Anybody Else

Here at How to Value Stuff, we are all great admirers of Rory Sutherland. Rory is the head Ogilvy Advertising – founded by David Ogilvy, another man we greatly admire. David wrote a legendary book on marketing and sales, called Ogilvy on Advertising – and one of the most influential advertising professionals in the world today.

Rory has a fascinating view of how we perceive the value of the products and services we enjoy. In 2019, Rory published a book called Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense, which was a follow up on a book he published the year before, Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life.

Here are 10 rules you can adopt which will help you profit by being less logical than everybody else:

1. The Opposite of a Good Idea can be another Good Idea

Nobody can blame you for getting at a single right answer regardless of the materials you used to get there. Conventional logic uses the idea of a single right answer. This is mostly needed where your job is in the line and you need to make everything right.

When it comes to driving at a single right answer, no subjectivity is involved in decision making and what you decide is what you deem right.

2. Don’t Design for Average

Solving a problem with an average person in mind is very difficult. Some models in conventional logic require you to solve a problem for people in aggregate. This can make problems very difficult to solve.

Do not limit yourself to the average person and focus on the fringes. That way, it is easy to find things that will be adopted by extreme consumers. They can then be ploughed back in the mainstream.

3. It Doesn’t Pay to be Logical if Everybody Else is being Logical

Being logical in business will get you to the same place just like everybody else. In business strategy, it does not pay to be logical because being logical will get you to the same place where your competitors are going. In business, you need to be differentiating yourself away from your competitors.

Find out what your competitors are logically wrong about. If you find out what is wrong with their model, you are in a position to exploit it. Adopt contrarian thinking.

4. Our Attention affects Our Experience

The nature of our attention affects the nature of our experience. Quality is relative. The perception of quality is determined by the difference between expectations and experience. It is more difficult to change how a person experiences something than the expectation of that experience.

Rory gives an example of one of the best hotels he has stayed in. The hotel had previously been a prison or a police station. Everything from the bed and bathroom to the TV and wall hangings was very spartan nature.

Under most circumstances, you normally would have experienced this as a lack of quality. But the hotel was in East Berlin and the experience came across as authentic East Berlin. It fit the circumstances. It met what you would have expected from an authentic East Berlin hotel.

5. If there were a Logical Answer We would have found it Already

If a problem becomes persistent even after discussing it with every person who can relate to it, it means you are giving it a logical explanation. There is a solution somewhere to be found through conventional linear rationality approach.

Exposing everything to logic and the problem persists, it indicates that logic is not the answer to that problem. Gather some courage and test less rational solutions. Context is a marketing superweapon.

6. The problem with Logic is it Kills off Magic

Logic and magic cannot coexist. There is no magic where logic is involved. The rules of logic demand that there can be no magic.

Logic requires that you change your product instead of improving the perception of the product in order to enhance the customer experience. This confines you into doing exclusively objective things because you think that people perceive the world objectively.

7. A Good Guess which stands up to Empirical Observation is still Science

You should not let methodological purity restrict your capability of coming up with multiple solutions. It is good to allow solutions that come in randomly rather than being restricted to explainable solutions. The latter will hold you captive and will monopolize your progress.

8. Test Counterintuitive Things because Nobody Else will

Since you do not want to put your source of livelihood on the line, create a space in your business where you can test things that do not make sense. This will be an advantage to win over your competitor because your experiment will land you in a lucrative business idea that will make you outdo your competitors.

9. Don’t Solve Problems using only Rationality

Solving problems using only rationality is like playing golf using only one club. Using rationality as the only way of solving a problem will get your solution based on a very narrow path.

Solving problems by using only rationality will generate solutions that restrict themselves to a very narrow definition of human motivation and how they think, act and decide.

10. Dare to be Trivial

Sometimes big problems do not require huge intervention. On the contrary, a small thing can have an enormous effect. You do not have to do things in the correct order simply because it is the way they should be done. Small changes, such as alternating the order of options or changing relative scales, can yield an order of magnitude in results.

Cryptocurrency Mining has to be Profitable

In essence, a cryptocurrency is nothing but a transaction system, a means of exchange. You can argue (as you can with all currencies) that it is also a store of value, but the only reason to store value is the intent to exchange it for something else at a later date.

Every transaction system has a settlement system. For all digital currencies, the settlement cannot be physical. The main problem with the previous versions of digital currencies has always been that digital things can be copied. Cryptocurrencies solved this with distributed ledger and the mining process.

The Mining Process is the Settlement System

In a Proof of Work cryptocurrency, transactions are facilitated through the mining process. So, in the case of proof of work cryptos, such as Bitcoin and Dash, there has to be a mining process. For there to be a mining process, the mining has to be profitable over the long term.

Think of it this way: If I can buy a Bitcoin for less than the cost of mining a Bitcoin, why would I mine Bitcoin? But if the miners would stop mining Bitcoin and rather buy Bitcoin, there would be no Bitcoin.

But That’s not how it Works…

The Proof of Work system is beautiful in that way because it adapts over time. If the price of Cryptocurrency falls below the cost of mining, fewer people will mine, which means that the total Hashrate will drop. When the Hashrate drops, the difficulty rate drops, which means that the likelihood of winning the block reward goes up.

This mechanism means that over the long run, a functioning cryptocurrency should provide proper incentives to the miners, that is mining yields.

The Dash Example

Dash is a Proof of Work cryptocurrency. The Dash development community has been very focused on payments and on building applications for Dash to become an alternative option to payments. Although Dash seems to be gaining traction on many levels, the price of the currency has fallen drastically over the last 6 months.

For Dash miners, this means that mining Dash has become unprofitable. In April 2019, one could buy a Dash mining contract from Genesis Mining that would have a current yield (current daily mining output/cost of a day of mining) of close to 100%.

Currently, you can buy a 12 month Dash mining contract that will cost you $0.27 a day per 30,000 mh/s. The output, however, based on the current Dash to USD exchange rate will be about $0.19.

So as a potential Dash investor, what does this mean? One of two things needs to happen. Either Dash miners need to leave the mining pool to make mining more profitable or the value of Dash needs to go up and above the cost of mining.

More Thoughts on Crypto

Want to collect interest on your crypto? Sign up for a Blockfi account with this link and receive a $10 bonus in Bitcoin when you fund your account.

Growth Hacker vs Growth Samurai

A growth hacker is a person that is great at identifying and executing tactics that will optimize a sales funnel. They can:

Find opportunities that drive traffic to their product
Generate leads by incentivising their customer to share personal information or show buying intent.
Convert leads to sales

A growth hacker is very tactical and will do wonders in a startup.

A Growth Samurai is a person that can grow an operation beyond the startup phase. A Growth Samurai can perform the tactical functions of a growth hacker but has the adeptness to go beyond the startup phase and manage a growing enterprise.

Many startup founders are very good at startups but lack the skills to transition into a strategic management role once the company outgrows them. A Growth Samurai has the strategic proficiency to manage a growing enterprise.

A Growth Samurai can:

Position an organization within a competitive landscape
Create processes for growth (as opposed to executing on growth hacking tactics)
Create a culture within an organization that incentivizes sustainable growth
Make difficult organizational decisions

All Growth Samurais are growth hackers but not all growth hackers are Growth Samurais.

Not All Growth is Created Equal

To a Growth Samurai, growth is a meaningless term unless is it preceded by an adjective. A Growth Samurai is looking for:

Organic Growth
Sustainable Growth
Profitable Growth

Organic Growth

Organic growth is the strongest indicator that you are doing something right. If traffic numbers or sales are growing disproportionally faster than your sales efforts it means that your sales efforts are getting more efficient. This can mean that you are getting positive word-of-mouth, that your marketing content is getting social engagement or being ranked on search engines or that you are retaining your customers.

Sustainable Growth

Growing sustainable means that you are growing your business without having to finance it externally. Almost all startups require funding in the early stages of the lifecycle but eventually, they will need to become sustainable and able to grow using internal resources.

Profitable Growth

The ultimate goal of any business is to create wealth. A company won’t create wealth unless it captures value. Many companies manage to create a lot of value for their customers but fail to capture the value and turn profits.

A Growth Samurai understands that growth is meaningless unless it creates value for customers and owners alike.

How do Banks Make Money?

You might think that the role of commercial banks is to accept deposits from the public and channel them into projects, where the bank can lend the money out at higher rates of return. You would be wrong.

When you hear the world deposit, you might think that the bank is storing the money for you, therefore acting as a custodian. It isn’t. When you deposit your money in the bank, in a legal sense, you are lending your money to the bank.

Money Creation

Banks, currently, are the effective creators of the money supply. They produce money. They do this by selling promissory notes, such as mortgages, car loans or business loans. Deposits are more like a by-product of the money creation process.

This is brilliantly explained by Professor Richard Werner (who happens to also be the guy who came up with the terms Quantitative Easing), in the following video:

Richard Werner: Essentially, if we want to produce something we need funding. So there is a role for banking in almost everything that happening in the economy. But what exactly is that role? Banks are being thought of as intermediaries. This is not really what is happening. They are creators of the money supply.

Interviewer: So, you are firmly of the view that banks create money out of thin air?

Richard Werner: I produced the first empirical study to prove that, in the 5,000-year history of banking. Banks are thought of as deposit-taking institutions that lend money. The legal reality is that banks don’t take deposits and banks do not lend money. So, what is a deposit? A deposit is not actually a deposit. It’s not a bailment. It’s not held in custody.

At law, the word deposit is meaningless. The law courts in various judgements have made it very clear. If you give your money to the bank, even if it is called a deposit, this money is simply a loan to the bank. So, there is no such thing as a deposit.

Banks borrow from the public. That much we have established. What about lending? Are they lending money? No, they don’t. Banks don’t lend money. At law, it’s very clear. They are in the business of purchasing securities. That’s it.

So you say: “Ok. don’t confuse me with all that legalese. I want a loan.” Fine, here is the loan contract. Here is the offer letter. And you sign. At law, it’s very clear. You have issued a security, namely a promissory note. And the bank is going to purchase that. That is what is happening.

Interviewer: Put it in laymen terms.

Richard Werner: It means that what the bank is doing is very different from what it presents to the public that it is doing. How does this fit together? You say “fine, the bank purchases my promissory note. But how do I get my money?”

The bank will say, “you will find it in your account with us.” That will be technically correct. If they say, “we will transfer it to your account,” that’s wrong. Because no money is transferred at all. From anywhere inside the bank or outside of it. Why? Because what we call a deposit is simply the bank’s record of its debt to the public. Now, it also owes you money and its record of the money it owes you is what you think you are getting as money. And that is all it is.

And that is how the banks create the money supply. The money supply consists of 97% of bank deposits. And these are created out of nothing by banks when they lend. Because they invent fictitious customer deposits. Why? They simply restate, slightly incorrectly in accounting terms, what is an account payable liability arising from the loan contract, having purchased your promissory note, as a customer deposit.

But nobody has deposited any money.

In Defence of Inflation | Bitcoin

It is not uncommon to hear proponents of cryptocurrencies in general, and Bitcoin in particular, make a libertarian case for the future adoption of the cryptocurrency. The libertarian case would be something in the vein of governments using fiat currencies as a means to illegally tax their citizens by means of money printing. For each dollar that the Federal Reserve prints and brings into circulation, the denominator increases while the total wealth of the economy stays the same.

There are two arguments to be made against the libertarian case:

Inflation is a feature, not a bug: Before fiat currency, most national currencies were pegged with gold or silver. You could basically exchange your Dollars for a fixed amount of gold or silver. The gold anchor caused supply constraints when people were fearful. The currency became harder to come by when people were pessimistic which in turn amplified the deflationary pressures.
Most of the time, you are not long the dollar. When you get your salary transferred into your account at the beginning of the month you consume some of it and you save some of it (hopefully). If you buy a property, you no longer are holding the dollars. The property is only denominated in dollars. If more dollars come into circulation, the property will have the same value but will be worth more dollars.

What would happen if you knew that the dollars you got paid out at the beginning of the month would deflate by 20% by the end of the month? If you are a reasonable person, you would try to delay any use of your dollars until the end of the month. You would hold back on spending because your purchasing power would increase. Again, the inflation rate of the modern currency is a feature, not a bug, as it stimulates economic activity.

The deflationary structure of Bitcoin might make it a good store of value, but less so a medium of exchange.

More Thoughts on Crypto

Want to collect interest on your crypto? Sign up for a BlockFi account with this link and receive a $10 bonus in Bitcoin when you fund your account.

The Value of the Road Not Taken

In 1916 Robert Frost published his poem The Road Not Taken. It is a narrative poem, where the narrator describes a moment when he comes to a fork in the road while taking a walk through a forest. After mulling it over, the narrator decides to take the road that seems to be less travelled.

The poem is by many regarded as one of the most misunderstood poems in history. It is often quoted when expressing views of individualism and not conforming to general convention.

At the end of the poem, the narrator sighs as he tells the reader that he took the road less taken and that it made all the difference. But the sigh is left open to interpretation by Frost, as the reader does not know if the sigh is from relief or regret.

The Misinterpreted Message

“You have to be careful of that one; it’s a tricky poem — very tricky,” Frost is known to have said about the poem. The story has it that he wrote it to tease a friend of his, Edward Thomas, who often had problems with coming to a decision over choices that were offered to him. Frost describes him as a person who, “whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn’t go the other”.

An economist would tell you that the problem that Edward Thomas – just as the narrator in the poem – was battling with was the Opportunity Cost of the choices that he had.

Opportunity Cost

The Opportunity Cost of a decision basically equals the benefit of the best alternative option that you have to choose from. This means also means that the opportunity cost is dependent on the situation that you find yourself in at any given time. Furthermore, it means that your opportunity cost is not the same as my opportunity cost.

The concept of opportunity cost is well known in economics and finance, where it is relatively easier to measure the potential outcomes. The Opportunity Cost of Capital, for example, is the rate of return that could have been earned by putting the same money into a different investment with equal risk.

Mistakes of Omission

In The Road Less Taken, the narrator has two choices. Therefore, his opportunity cost is whichever road that he will not take. If he picks the wrong road, he will have made a Mistake of Omission. When asked about their biggest mistakes at the Berkshire Hathaway 2011 annual meeting, the legendary investors Warren Buffett and Charles Munger highlighted specifically about their Mistakes of Omission.

The Road Less Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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