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Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

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Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#351

Post by int_19h »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #284
int_19h wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The root of the problem is the idea that you must be productively employed. It's a fallacy, and everything else that follows from it (like this notion that optimizations are bad because they result in fewer skilled jobs) are wrong for the same reasons. Unfortunately, it's a fallacy with very strong social support. Including, ironically, these very people who are hurt most by it.

It might be a fallacy for you or I but there are some people who really struggle without the structure of a job in their lives.

There seems to be an implicit assumption here that a job is the only way to give life structure. What is the evidence for that?

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#352

Post by vertex-four »

morgante wrote: post #350
vertex-four wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's less the availability of credit cards (they're highly available in a good many countries), it's more the assertion that if you're not using a credit card every day, there's something wrong with you. It's the fact that if you're not using a credit card in everyday purchases, you're losing the rewards and so essentially paying more for everything you buy - you're structurally punished for not participating. Debit…

People regularly assert that credit cards are factored into the cost of goods, but I posit that's mostly untrue. The cost of most things, especially "luxury" goods like restaurants, is set by the price the market will bear—not the cost of providing that good. Anecdotally, it's certainly not cheaper that equivalent goods and services are cheaper in Europe despite the lower credit card usage.

It's very common for supermarkets in the UK, for example, to compete on margins on common food - not necessarily packaged/prepared food, but definitely the basics, fruit/vegetables/bread/milk/flour/eggs/etc. People have little loyalty to a specific supermarket and often have 2-3 within reasonable distance, so there's a very strong pressure to keep down the cost on these items - they're pretty much the proverbial widgets. The lower the cost to sell an item, the lower the supermarket can charge. Some supermarkets take technical losses every year, with most having falling profits every year.

This sort of thing affects poor people more than it affects people who are eligible for a credit card with a good rewards program in the first place. I'm sure you really don't care that your potatoes are 2-3% higher in price than they otherwise would be.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#353

Post by kuschku »

morgante wrote: post #349
kuschku wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit cards always have a cost. You get 1.5% to 2% of your money back in rewards for a 3% fee. In Europe, fees are limited to far below that, and the European debit cards are limited to below 1% in fees. You don't get rewards from credit cards in that situation. In fact, credit cards always end up losing you money. Credit cards are the tragedy of the commons - if no one used them, everyone would profit. But as long…

> With a credit card, you pay with a simple number that anyone can just steal, and if you don't take care, you're fucked. You seem to deeply understand credit cards. There is practically no risk to using them. As a consumer, your fraud liability is zero and entirely shifted to the merchant. Of course you should pay off the bill every month. I never pay interest, rewards more than cover any fees I pay (I average 4-5%…

> As a consumer, your fraud liability is zero and entirely shifted to the merchant.

If you have one with chip+PIN, as all in Europe, 100% of liability is with the customer.

So you have to check the statement every month, go through a lengthy process to appeal false charges, and end up not getting your money back either. Especially as you have to deal with your bank to get the money back instead of the CC company here, and the bank has a far easier process for reversing debit transfers than CC bills.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#354

Post by morgante »

kuschku wrote: post #353
morgante wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With a credit card, you pay with a simple number that anyone can just steal, and if you don't take care, you're fucked. You seem to deeply understand credit cards. There is practically no risk to using them. As a consumer, your fraud liability is zero and entirely shifted to the merchant. Of course you should pay off the bill every month. I never pay interest, rewards more than cover any fees I pay (I average 4-5%…

> As a consumer, your fraud liability is zero and entirely shifted to the merchant. If you have one with chip+PIN, as all in Europe, 100% of liability is with the customer. So you have to check the statement every month, go through a lengthy process to appeal false charges, and end up not getting your money back either. Especially as you have to deal with your bank to get the money back instead of the CC company here…

> If you have one with chip+PIN, as all in Europe, 100% of liability is with the customer.

Thankfully I don't have chip and pin, yet another reason I actually vastly prefer the American system to European.

You seem to just be providing examples of why the European system is worse for consumers, not proving in any way why it's better.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#355

Post by kuschku »

morgante wrote: post #354
kuschku wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a consumer, your fraud liability is zero and entirely shifted to the merchant. If you have one with chip+PIN, as all in Europe, 100% of liability is with the customer. So you have to check the statement every month, go through a lengthy process to appeal false charges, and end up not getting your money back either. Especially as you have to deal with your bank to get the money back instead of the CC company here…

> If you have one with chip+PIN, as all in Europe, 100% of liability is with the customer. Thankfully I don't have chip and pin, yet another reason I actually vastly prefer the American system to European. You seem to just be providing examples of why the European system is worse for consumers, not proving in any way why it's better.

I am providing examples why the American system is worse in a European legal context.

You don't want CCs either. CCs solve security by having someone simply pay for every time a fuckup happens, instead of using cryptography to prevent them in the first place.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#356

Post by josiahpeters »

magnetic wrote: post #330
josiahpeters wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not like you're just pulling free money out of thin air by using a credit card. And it seems likely that the finance institutions behind the credit cards are offering them as a product that makes money and not as an act of goodwill. If everyone paid their credit cards off at the end of the month like they say they do, do you think credit cards would be advertised or pushed as hard as they are? The finance institu…

> i'm sure there are some people are responsible enough to never incur a finance charge from a credit card by always paying their monthly balance. I've never actually met one of those people. ...until today! Hi! I'm "magnetic" - nice to meet you! It's not as uncommon as you think: many tools allow you to not miss payments nowadays, from email/SMS/push notification reminders to automatic payments. If you have the mone…

Hi magnetic, nice to meet you! Out of curiosity, where would you say you developed your money management skills? Was it from your parents, from school, or just organically as you started taking on more responsibility as an adult?

To acknowledge your point, I was definitely the reason for the interest charges. As I mentioned in other comments in this thread: growing up my parents didn't teach me much in the way of handling money responsibly. It took me almost 10 years of being an adult before I realized that I wasn't managing my money, but it was managing me.

Before two years ago I never created a monthly budget and stuck to it. The typical month looked like me spending way too much money in the first half of the month. Which led me to constantly checking my account balance in the second half of the month. When my checking account would start to get below about $200 I would shift spending over to my credit card. Next month I usually tried to pay it off. Sometimes I didn't and even worse sometimes it would take me a few months.

Its exhausting when I look back at all of the financial drama I dealt with until recently. Mostly because I never planned how my money was going to be spent with a monthly budget, but also because I bought stuff that I didn't need and couldn't afford.

The point I was trying to make with my original comment was: More people are likely to carry a balance on their credit cards than those who pay it off on time every month. I'm fairly certain the bubble I grew up in skewed my perception that everyone carried a balance on their credit cards. I knew people who said they paid it off every month, but when I asked them to be 100% accurate with that statement, they always backpedaled. At least I know of one person "magnetic" who actually pays their bill on time every month.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#357

Post by derivagral »

gwenzek wrote: post #319
cvsh wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We're still over-emphasizing passing grades over effectively growing new American citizens... 2/3rds of state legislatures are actively hostile to basic tenets of science, let alone the government teaching "effective American citizenship". We just recently legalized malpractice for financial advisors. The rules preventing them from screwing their clients out of their retirement savings were spun as hurting consumer…

> We just recently legalized malpractice for financial advisors. Do you have reference?

Link[1] is from forbes, but you get the idea. Matt Levine mentioned it once or twice in his column a week or 3 ago.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiehopkins/2017/02/03/trump-s...

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#358

Post by [deleted] »

int_19h wrote: post #351
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be a fallacy for you or I but there are some people who really struggle without the structure of a job in their lives.

There seems to be an implicit assumption here that a job is the only way to give life structure. What is the evidence for that?

[deleted]

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#359

Post by tonyedgecombe »

int_19h wrote: post #351
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be a fallacy for you or I but there are some people who really struggle without the structure of a job in their lives.

There seems to be an implicit assumption here that a job is the only way to give life structure. What is the evidence for that?

There is no such assumption, I did preface my comment with "you or I".

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#360

Post by tonyedgecombe »

isostatic wrote: post #315
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be a fallacy for you or I but there are some people who really struggle without the structure of a job in their lives.

And there are some people who can't cope with the structure of a job. both need to be dealt with - there are always structured jobs that can be done, volunteering at a museum for example. Doesn't change the fact that if we can automate a job, espeicially if we can improve things at the same time, that's good. We used to spend 90% of our energy growing enough food for our family to eat. This is far less now, and that…

If you don't think replacing people with robots is good

You are putting lots of words in my mouth there.

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