Gambling is great, as long as I win.
There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble
211–220 of 409 posts
Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble
#212Financial 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…
Who are you supposed to lend your money to? Companies are saving more money, they ended up becoming net lenders. That's why inflation is low. Ironically, low inflation also makes the problem worse, because companies can save even more with low inflation. The threat of being forced to invest the money is gone.
Ironically (yes I am repeating myself), low interest rates also increase the savings rate of companies because it is just a windfall profit for many of them. Consumers get loans with bad conditions so they don't borrow and even if they did, incomes are stagnating, so betting on a raise in the future may seem foolish.
The answer is to increase the total investment rate via infrastructure bills or to just inflate excess corporate savings away with stimulus checks. Inflation will allow the Fed to raise interest rates, which will cut into the corporate savings rate and after that point everything will return back to normal.
Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble
#213Our 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…
What you call "corrosive" (appreciation of non-value-creating assets) is 1:1 applicable to Real Estate. Compared to the appreciation of worldwide real estate, the market value of crypto is only a drop in the ocean. And countless people got unbelievable rich due to rising prices and "crowding-out" in cities without creating any value for society at all (in the opposite, making life harder for everybody struggling to k…
California has statewide politics that prevent the housing problem from being solved, so people move to the next state, which they don't like because California has nice weather.
Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble
#214Financial 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…
No one is that bothered when the elites lose their money gambling. It's more of an issue when people who are hard up do.
Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
I never liked having true novices, especially in tournaments or when I was running multiple tables at once - it was easier to make notes of play style and predict when people knew how to play at a basic level. Sure, I'm more likely to beat the person that is going all in with a 2 5 off suit but bad beats are incredibly annoying. Over time, in a sit and go situation I'd beat that player, but online and in tournament p…
Sure, playing correctly against a maniac, novice, or otherwise unpredictable player can be more difficult and have higher variance, but it's also as lucrative as it gets if you know what you're doing. All the strong players I've known would be elated to play against people like that.
When someone is playing randomly (as some very newbie players might), it's a little difficult to directly exploit, but more of a patience game. It's only a matter of time until you stack them.
When someone just consistently plays bad, that's the ideal situation.
Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, totally wrong, it’s the exact opposite. Novices and only novices think “you can’t beat bad players cause they’re unpredictable!” Even your more moderate point you’d rather not have them in the game is totally wrong. In reality, every professional player loves players who do terrible, random things. Variance might go up, but variance is going to be annoying either way. Other players doing dumb things is where your…
Like in chess for example - a kind of player who has more trouble with extreme novices than people their own level is someone who knows how the game “should” be played, but doesn’t actually have the skill to go off-book themselves or punish mistakes when an opponent deviates. An actually strong player won’t have that problem.
Except that chess is a perfect information game, but poker is not. Which means it's possible to tell if your opponent made a mistake in chess, but it might not be in poker.
Disclaimer: chess novice, don't know anything about poker.
Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
2% of the world's wealth is tied up in crypto (and it's growing quickly). If it does implode, that'll make The Great Financial Crisis look like blip. At this point, I can't imagine financial regulators doing anything to stop it.
What will actually happen if the crypto coins collapse in price? What tangible effects will there be? Very few people's salaries are paid in crypto, crypto isn't backing people's mortgages, and outside of the rare (and newsworthy) cases, people are not investing extreme amounts of money into crypto that they cannot possibly afford to lose. I have a hard time imagining what actual tangible disasters will happen if cry…
No real damage (except to those holding it) unless enough people have bought crypto with borrowed money. That's where it can cause damage to the overall economy.
Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And nobody so far managed to explain convincingly, in which ways investments in (existing, residential, not for self-use) real estate creates any value. Shelter is literally third on the list of human needs after water and food. Make something desirable and people will leave their previous (possibly decent) place behind to move in. I'm not sure how anyone can say real estate doesn't create value just because they a…
In densely populated areas, the value of real estate has very little to do with what's built on the property, and everything to do with the land it is build on. GPs point is that owning land is not creating value. It is, however, very profitable.
You either have a sufficiently large land value tax or let the government rent out land instead of selling it.
In both cases the land would become a liability that you constantly have to take care of instead of being an "investment".
Productive work like building on top of land should be rewarded, waiting for a train station to be built in your neighborhood is not productive work that should be rewarded.
Pretty much every economist thinks that the work reward relationship should be as tight as possible. However, most of them don't think of anything other than cutting taxes and strangely enough they insist on being able to take advantage of negative externalities (CO2 or illegal waste disposal in general).
Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble
#219Financial 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…
> 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
What, you think that "low-frequency" brokers weren't upset about the rise of HFT, and didn't try to push back/kill HFT in the crib?
Of course they did; HFT was classic "disruption" for their industry. You just didn't see that disruption happening, because an inside-baseball conflict between two groups of very rich businesspeople doesn't achieve anything by roping the public into the discussion. The public's opinion wouldn't have one shred of determination over which side won that conflict, so why bother spending money on mass-media propaganda? Mass-media propaganda won't do a thing to sway the rich businesspeople on the other side of the table.
The moralistic Op-Eds are happening now because one side of the current conflict is the public. And so the rich people on the other side now have great interest in swaying public opinion.
Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, totally wrong, it’s the exact opposite. Novices and only novices think “you can’t beat bad players cause they’re unpredictable!” Even your more moderate point you’d rather not have them in the game is totally wrong. In reality, every professional player loves players who do terrible, random things. Variance might go up, but variance is going to be annoying either way. Other players doing dumb things is where your…
Like in chess for example - a kind of player who has more trouble with extreme novices than people their own level is someone who knows how the game “should” be played, but doesn’t actually have the skill to go off-book themselves or punish mistakes when an opponent deviates. An actually strong player won’t have that problem.
In chess, really no one has problems beating extreme novice. You just take their pieces as they leave them hanging and that is it.