Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Star Wars economy vs Star Trek economy

When Star Wars episode 7 was released, I had a minor epiphany regarding the way the economy worked compared to the Star Trek economy.

In the Star Trek economy, productivity and advanced technology have increased so much that basic human needs are satisfied for everyone. People can replicate food and basic items at effectively no cost. There is at best a small gap in relative wealth. Work has become relatively scarce so people compete for the few jobs available.

In the Star Wars economy, productivity and advanced technology have increased a lot, but wealth is distributed so unevenly that large segments of population, like the protagonist Rey, must scavenge to earn food rations. Wealth is concentrated in a small elite and within governments. Evil maniacs in government spend their wealth on titanic military projects and weapon systems. Corruption, crime, and avarice are endemic at all levels of society. Pirates and gangs thrive. Innocent people are slaughtered on a large scale. It works very much like the real economy.

The stark contrast of the Star Wars and Star Trek economies seemed worthy of a mention.

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Twitter Fritter v.8

Twitter, as a business, continues to disappoint, which is not disappointing to me since I have called them out on their stock vomit fraud from the beginning. Twitter loves to spend money extravagantly, but they can't figure out how to make money. The only way they can fund their glittering unicorn lifestyle is to continue to issue millions of shares of stock at decreasing prices. Is this a long term business model?

Let's look at some juicy numbers starting with GAAP net earnings since they went public. For the most recent quarter, another $132 million LOSS.



Some fundamentals:
1/8/2013 - twitter IPO stock price $41.65
1/3/2014 - twitter high stock price $69.00
1/13/2016 - twitter closing stock price $18.69

Twitter stock change from IPO price: -55%
Twitter stock change from high: -72%

Dividend: 0.00
EPS: -0.86

All this financial rot is hard to find on their glossy web site, but they are proud to have offices in 35 international cities! See, you need all those offices to send small messages and photos around. Duh. How do they stay in business burning cash with a flamethrower? Easy, issue more worthless stock!! Eyeballing, it looks like they issued about 35 million new shares in 2015. Anyone want some hot dotcom stock? Twitter will sell it you!! HaHaHAHAhaHa.