One Tribe

We Need to Behave Better   Mark Twain     Living in a western country, in a large city, it is easy to look around and be amazed. You look and think,  we humans are pretty clever. Look at all we've accomplished; all the inventions; all the technology. We are so smart for a bunch of hairless apes...we're so advanced. It seems we've evolved so much in our time here on spaceship Earth but I'm not so sure. Things progressed reasonably well until the onset of agriculture. Then, in many ways, human ingenuity took off while in other ways, humanity took a nosedive. At the same time as we improved intellectually, we continued doing very stupid things. I am sure that if an advanced alien species were to come for a visit, they would be impressed by some of our achievements but otherwise would consider us to be dumb as posts. They would probably gauge us to be in our teens, intellectually, as a species...at best.     When I read blog posts or editorial opinion pieces, I...

Stocks, Bonds, Assets and Debt   I never learned about investing when I was younger. My parents were young and they weren't taught anything, either. If they even thought about it, they probably figured their children would learn something in school. Not so. Even today investing is not part of public school curriculum. So for the Millennials and newer generations I will provide a crash course and a few thoughts for the future. Money - is immutable, has scarcity, is tangible, can be used as a store of value, i.e. gold, silver, land. Currency - created by governments, banks, etc. Not a store of value and only backed by your faith in the body that created it. Most people today become wealthy by receiving an inheritance, investing in land or investing in businesses. There are many ways to "make money" in real estate but the barrier to entry can be quite high. It is worth learning about so google it but I won't discuss real estate ventures here. Investing in businesses is...