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There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

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Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#241

Post by paulpauper »

nunez wrote: post #149
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…

SPACs are the perfect example of this. Before SPACs, retail couldn't get into IPOs at anything lower than $40/share...and even that was _after_ missing the initial pop that happens once the ticker starts trading. Now that retail can get into (support) exciting companies at a MUCH lower floor ($10 for commons, $2.50 for warrants), "SPAC bad" hit pieces are a dime a dozen and some brokers (Merrill Lynch, for example) w…

except that the # of companies acquired this way is very limited

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#242

Post by pcthrowaway »

sunnyps wrote: post #216
smogcutter wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Playing poker against very novice players makes it a more volatile game. You might lose big and you might win big, but that's actually good for your EV; the beginner has no concept of bet sizing and that's where you shine. An expert playing against many intermediate player may end up winning on average 5 big blinds / hr over the course of a month. They'll certainly have losing sessions as well.

An expert playing against beginners might 'lose' 50% of the hands they get involved in still, and make a ton more money on the ones they win. It's the difference between an average of 5 big blinds / hr, and 50 big blinds / hr.

I'm not an expert by the way, I just consider myself an 'advanced beginner', who can count on making $2-4 / hr playing 1/2 no limit at the casino (based on having played maybe 200 hrs of poker in the casino). Not worth it as a way to make money, and I stopped caring enough about poker to invest the time to become better.

But you can see the entire dynamic at a table change when a loose, novice player sits down. Players no longer play against each other as much because they can count on the loose player to raise the stakes, and they're much more likely to capitalize on that.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#243

Post by pbourke »

svachalek wrote: post #126
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.

You are seeing one response in the various relief and reform proposals put forward by the Biden administration. Biden is following FDR’s blueprint of first relief then reform in response to a crisis. The refundable child tax credit alone has the potential to sharply curtail extreme poverty.

Whether it works or not is to be seen. You can look at both Biden and Trump as the end of the arc of neoliberalism that began with Reagan. The same broad moves seem to be happening in other peer nations.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#244

Post by imtringued »

tcbawo wrote: post #8

Money is stored wealth, the ability to buy goods and services in the future. The problem seems to be that we live in a time of societal upheaval. The future of stored wealth becomes cloudier and more uncertain the further you go out in time. So, what is the best place to store wealth? Will my wealth be eroded by inflation? Will the companies I invest in become obsolete by technology or market-manipulating nation stat…

Money is a debt that grants you to the right to someone else's labor, the reason you work for money is that someone else promises to work for you in exchange. It doesn't store wealth. If you do not utilize your money, then someone else doesn't work and that person's time is irreversibly lost, despite no work being performed. That is why money is losing value over time, I mean, money should be losing value over time. The "should" is just a political decision because we consider it fairer, than the inverse, letting someone become unemployed and then you ask for even more work from them because your money has appreciated.

This is why you must put your money into a bank account, because someone else out there will use that unemployed person's time to create value on behalf of you.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#245

Post by feoren »

Aunche wrote: post #237
bondarchuk wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really don't understand this sentiment, as if a professional gambler would not gladly gamble with novices... The existence of a financial elite hinges on the existence of a non-elite that actually does the work. If workers are putting 25% of their paychecks in an index fund and retire a few years earlier, instead of paying off their too-expensive car loan or something, it will be bad for the current financial eli…

> If workers are putting 25% of their paychecks in an index fund and retire a few years earlier, instead of paying off their too-expensive car loan or something, it will be bad for the current financial elite. Nobody is complaining about people placing their paychecks in index funds though. Index funds are a reasonably good proxy for the future health of the economy, so your gains from it will likely represent real g…

> Nobody is complaining about people placing their paychecks in index funds though

There was an article on the front page of Hacker News in the last couple days about how index funds were supposedly ruining the economy.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#246

Post by imtringued »

legulere wrote: post #190
cjf4 wrote: post #3

>for many of us, money is only experienced through our phones, as a number on a screen. You pay your rent with one app, you buy put options with another. The number goes up, it goes down, it lives in the little portal we hold in our hands. And decades ago it was a number written down on a little piece of paper, and before that it was little pieces of “precious” metal locked away somewhere. At least nowadays amateurs…

It's the other way around. First there was personal debt, then impersonal money. In the beginning you would just lend stuff from other people and give it back, or with consumables give something back of similar worth. Precious metal was pretty rarely used, as its main benefit is that you need almost no common trust relationship.

Yeah this is true, people didn't necessarily "barter" back in the day. Traders and merchants probably did because they wanted immediate payment, but within a trustworthy community you simply record or memorize what you did and demand the other side to pay you back in the future.

An oversimplified hunter and gatherer society would just let the hunters give meat to the gatherers, assuming that they will one day be paid back with gathered vegetables or fruit.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#247

Post by prewett »

rubicon33 wrote: post #209
throwaway98797 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redine yourself as a problem solver vs. just a tool box. “I’m a master generlized problem solving machine, how can I be of service?”

Yes, well, I can't help but look around at people who have chosen to specialize and see how much quicker they climb into leadership roles, and getting to work on mission critical features. If you're the jack of all trades guy, you'll always be asked to cleanup, or take care of small feature requests. When the company needs the big guns for a mission critical feature, you will never be called. This is an important poi…

How diverse are the experiences you are generalizing from? Companies are different, so you'll need to sample from lots of different ones. You can also try talking to your manager about what your career goals are and what needs to change to get there. It sounds like you might just need to be in a team / company where your skills and matches the mission critical features, so you could look for transfer opportunities. Or if you don't care about the "leadership" route, you can opt out and try contracting / consulting. Every client wants a different set of experiences, so jack-of-all-trades is more likely to hit on multiple skills.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#248

Post by lazerpants »

hpoe wrote: post #110
ac29 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US printed and spent tons of money during World War 2, and the postwar period was one of, if not the largest economic expansions in its modern history.

I see this argument come up a lot, I'd like to point out 2 points. 1) Wealth wasn't created during WW2, almost all of the increased production went to things like bombs and tanks and bullets, these things don't provide a real increase in quality of life this is one of the main points in 1984, people need to be kept busy, but Quality of Life can't increase. 2) The postwar boom was largely a result of everyone except A…

Plus it was an unprecedented investment in labor. An entire generation of young men were either killed or maimed, or they received job training and the offer of a free college degree. Suddenly you have an exceedingly employable workforce. And, on top of that, employing women became acceptable too, all creating a situation in which supply expanded massively.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#249

Post by imtringued »

shusson wrote: post #206
LargeWu wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loans would be one of the classic value creating activities, because they allow others to use otherwise idle capital to produce something new. Currency exchange is fuzzier. If the exchange is happening to facilitate commerce, then sure, I would consider that value creation. If it's happening simply in order to support speculation in a different currency, then no, it's not value creating. And it's pretty clear from th…

> Loans would be one of the classic value creating activities, because they allow others to use otherwise idle capital to produce something new. Only if people use loans to produce something valuable. Most people I know take loans for houses, which afaik does not produce any direct value to society.

You're right, the hope is that people build new houses, but that ship has sailed a long time ago.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#250

Post by scarmig »

ksdale wrote: post #238
Aunche wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If workers are putting 25% of their paychecks in an index fund and retire a few years earlier, instead of paying off their too-expensive car loan or something, it will be bad for the current financial elite. Nobody is complaining about people placing their paychecks in index funds though. Index funds are a reasonably good proxy for the future health of the economy, so your gains from it will likely represent real g…

Index funds go up because more people want to buy them than sell them, cryptocurrencies go up because more people want to buy them than sell them. Index funds happen to represent ownership of productive assets, but the assets don't really care who owns them, your investment in an index fund doesn't increase the number of productive assets in the world, likewise with cryptocurrency.

> our investment in an index fund doesn't increase the number of productive assets in the world

Not directly, but it creates an incentive landscape that encourages the formation of more capital, basically making the potential payoff of starting a company larger and more likely.

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