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There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

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Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#121

Post by Ekaros »

avidphantasm wrote: post #91
XorNot wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto is exploding because people are looking to get rich via speculation, that's it. There's a wealth of uninformed investors and they're all hearing stories about crypto millionaires and how much it went up and FOMO narratives about it. People haven't been transacting in crypto basically at all - it's not even a blip in the popular discussion about it, except as a flimsy justification for why its value is not tuli…

“People haven’t been transacting in crypto basically at all” Exactly. When I did a deep dive on crypto currency a few years ago I wondered, what can the transaction rate be for proof of work schemes. Turned out it was less than a dozen per second across an entire network. I don’t think this has changed ( https://bitcoinvisuals.com/chain-tx-day ). How many transactions does Visa alone do?

I have for years heard about pressuring merchants to accept bitcoin or what ever currency and in the end the number of daily or even monthly users was most often laughably low. Not that there isn't some that move stuff, but that isn't really too many...

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#122

Post by toss1 »

newsclues wrote: post #62
toss1 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insufficient data - supports several modeks. If you are trying to lose weight, shifting away from sugary & processed foods & meat to high-quality fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, etc. can definitely increase your grocery bill while reducing your weight in a very healthy way. Food bill may go down by going directly to farmers, but travel & fetching costs increase. Or, it could be an unhealthy shift towards more process…

Wasn’t trying to lose weight and my diet remained essentially the same other than modification due to cost (mainly less meat). I had a fixed grocery budget, and over months, I lost weight due to a caloric deficit. Literally I bought less food with the same money and the result was just over a pound a month lost .

I'm sorry to hear that you are having such difficulties; I hope things improve for you soon.

That is the data we need to confirm that you're seeing inflation. Curious where you are located that you are seeing these numbers?

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#123

Post by the_local_host »

isoskeles wrote: post #96
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Our job in life is to engage in value creation. I don't think there's any non-tautological way in which this can be simultaneously true and not an oppressive imposition by capitalism.

Even without capitalism, you have a duty to create value for the people around you, and you might expect the same of them. There are exceptions for the young, old, and infirm.

> Even without capitalism, you have a duty to create value for the people around you

I don't think this is true. This is one of these work ethic corollaries that helped build wealthy societies when productivity was proportional to people's effort. But it seems to grow more obsolete by the day.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#124

Post by slumdev »

jayd16 wrote: post #95
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #78

Financial elites have been gambling for decades. They seem to be really upset that the plebs now can also do it. When brokers did it it was OK, when algorithms did it in milliseconds (when common people can only operate with delays of hours and days, and with deterrent fees) it was OK, but now that there are platforms that allow more or less anyone to speculate, we start publishing moralistic pieces in the media and…

>Financial elites have been gambling for decades. They seem to be really upset that the plebs now can also do it. I really don't understand this sentiment, as if a professional gambler would not gladly gamble with novices...but putting that aside... I think the emphasis is more about how there's no other game in town that can compete, not that gambling is new. Interest rates are so low that there isn't a simple/safe…

> I really don't understand this sentiment, as if a professional gambler would not gladly gamble with novices...

It depends on the situation and the game. Some poker professionals don't gamble significant sums with novices because the novices are far less likely to behave in a manner that is predictable according to statistics or some other strategy.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#125

Post by nickthemagicman »

Value is already decoupled from money in the entire economy.

When inflation is 3% YOY, but wages don't increase.

If money was an indicator of value wages would track with inflation.

There's no objective measure of value anymore and most jobs are more or less bullshit jobs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#126

Post by svachalek »

diamondhandle wrote: post #26

Our job in life is to engage in value creation. When money is decoupled from value creation, your long-term bet is that it will lose its value, as value creation is what actually matters in the “real” world. This is also why “crypto” (the asset class, not technology) is so corrosive, because it makes people who have done approximately nothing to create value in society, but who’ve enjoyed a massive boost in monetary…

The whole economy feels like nonsense now. There's a massive overabundance of both capital and labor required to meet actual needs, so we keep creating ever more useless games to play with capital so that we can create more capital that the world doesn't need or actually use. In the meantime, massive portions of the population are struggling to make ends meet. I don't know where this ends but it can't be good.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#127

Post by aaroninsf »

jayd16 wrote: post #95
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #78

Financial elites have been gambling for decades. They seem to be really upset that the plebs now can also do it. When brokers did it it was OK, when algorithms did it in milliseconds (when common people can only operate with delays of hours and days, and with deterrent fees) it was OK, but now that there are platforms that allow more or less anyone to speculate, we start publishing moralistic pieces in the media and…

>Financial elites have been gambling for decades. They seem to be really upset that the plebs now can also do it. I really don't understand this sentiment, as if a professional gambler would not gladly gamble with novices...but putting that aside... I think the emphasis is more about how there's no other game in town that can compete, not that gambling is new. Interest rates are so low that there isn't a simple/safe…

You're only "stuck" if what you need is to inflate your wealth at the expense of someone losing theirs.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#128

Post by qznc »

diamondhandle wrote: post #26

Our job in life is to engage in value creation. When money is decoupled from value creation, your long-term bet is that it will lose its value, as value creation is what actually matters in the “real” world. This is also why “crypto” (the asset class, not technology) is so corrosive, because it makes people who have done approximately nothing to create value in society, but who’ve enjoyed a massive boost in monetary…

Value creation is only one part. The next question is how much of the value you create, you can capture for yourself.

Nurses create a lot of value, especially during a pandemic, but they receive only a tiny part of it. Competition can force you to give most of the value you create to your customers.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#129

Post by yks »

diamondhandle wrote: post #26

Our job in life is to engage in value creation. When money is decoupled from value creation, your long-term bet is that it will lose its value, as value creation is what actually matters in the “real” world. This is also why “crypto” (the asset class, not technology) is so corrosive, because it makes people who have done approximately nothing to create value in society, but who’ve enjoyed a massive boost in monetary…

Wealth is a human's worth under capitalism and arguing against riches of any kind while the number goes up is a philosophical attack on what we believe in as a society. At best you're looked at as an idiot, at worst you're the enemy that threatens the system. Fortunately, this too shall pass.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#130

Post by ameister14 »

jayd16 wrote: post #95
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #78

Financial elites have been gambling for decades. They seem to be really upset that the plebs now can also do it. When brokers did it it was OK, when algorithms did it in milliseconds (when common people can only operate with delays of hours and days, and with deterrent fees) it was OK, but now that there are platforms that allow more or less anyone to speculate, we start publishing moralistic pieces in the media and…

>Financial elites have been gambling for decades. They seem to be really upset that the plebs now can also do it. I really don't understand this sentiment, as if a professional gambler would not gladly gamble with novices...but putting that aside... I think the emphasis is more about how there's no other game in town that can compete, not that gambling is new. Interest rates are so low that there isn't a simple/safe…

>I really don't understand this sentiment, as if a professional gambler would not gladly gamble with novices...

There are a few cases I can think of immediately where this applies - gambling with novices in Blackjack, for example, is not ideal. They'll screw up the flow of cards and can cause your math to go haywire. The same happens with Hold-em or Omaha Poker - you want people to have enough skill to play the game properly, but if you're looking to fleece them not enough skill to play the game well.

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