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There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

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Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#311

Post by m3ta4a »

solosoyokaze wrote: post #295
groone wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a universal rule as if you don't do that, you are part of the problem and are creating a drag on the society, reducing the value for everyone to use and enjoy. Your argument sounds like You want to see the society to fail and collapse.

It's not universal. I'd rather see someone "freeload" in a system of wild wealth inequality than further enrich those who already have runaway gains via the power law. In fact, I'd say it's quite an ethical position to take. Put another way, I'll worry about a million people not "adding value" when there ceases to exist individuals who have captured enough wealth to support a million people. The latter is the real pr…

Exactly, thank you. I struggled for the right words but you captured my sentiment perfectly. I think the perspective that we have a "duty to contribute" might be a valid one in a philosophical sense, but I resent being told as by a parent scolding their child that I have some duty or other.

I have no such thing. I am debt free and live the way I want. I live alone. I have no children or spouse to support. I owe nothing to anybody. I don't owe anyone an explanation. Maybe the opposing views come from people who believe they do, but in no way is it universal.

Your point from the perspective of wealth inequality is more elegant. In my case I am wealthy enough to support roughly one person: me.

If I want or need more resources, I have levers I can pull to obtain them. But don't tell me I have a "duty" to add value to the economy.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#312

Post by m3ta4a »

groone wrote: post #201
m3ta4a wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In no world where there is a "duty" to provide value am I going to be found happily providing value. In this world, in my experience, your statement is simply false. If I happen to provide some form of value it is from my choosing to, not to satisfy the demands of some formless "duty".

If you are not creating value that means you are consuming value created by others. The total value created for everyone to enjoy shrinks. Society just cannot sustain itself without people who create more value than they consume. Who is going to create all the value consumed by rent seekers, financial engineers, thieves, scammers, corrupt or bloated government? People who create and provide more value than they consu…

When capitalism ceases to encourage food expiring in a landfill rather than feed the homeless, I suppose.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#313

Post by prewett »

RugnirViking wrote: post #178
toss1 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True And also much of the 'stuff' is here, or converted to services. 25 yrs ago, approx no one had 55"+ tvs, internet connection was a minority, and media eas collections of CDs/Videotapes. Now 'net connections are near-universal, and it is all streaming. Cell phones were just beginning & expensive, now everyone has a powerful computer in their pocket. We don't have two houses, but the ones we have are worth twice as…

Those things became cheaper to produce because of technological advancement, largely developed by people who did not benefit from this rise in production. They do not represent wealth in any meaningful sense. Wealth is economic power, and 55" TVs dont help you start a buisness or pay a downpayment for a mortgage. Internet connection may once have served as some measure of economic power, but its no coincidence that t…

> Wealth is economic power

That's too limited a definition. For instance, living in a beautiful, well-designed city full of beautiful art is a form of wealth, but none of that is economic power. And what good is money ultimately, anyway, if not to buy goods and services that you want?

Those cell phones have voice navigation that will get you unlost practically anywhere on the planet. That would have been sci-fi fifty years ago. Give one to your kid and you don't have to worry about them being lost or not being able to get help.

Those cell phones (+ internet) will let you buy almost anything on the planet and have it shipped to your door usually within days, all without you leaving the house. Two hundred years ago you could not have done that even with servants, and since servants are unaffordable these days, it saves us the time spent driving around looking for the item. (I bought a wok ring last week; I could have driven an hour in traffic, or I just bought another item I needed and had it shipped "for free", and saved myself at least an hour.)

When I started programming, writing Windows programs took ages because if the Petzold book didn't have an example and/or the MS documentation was somewhat vague on some points, you just had to try it out. I spent days writing a screensaver for personal use, because I forgot I needed to zero out the struct, and it crashed NT, and it took me five or ten minutes to reboot, reload VS, and try again. Now I have a decent chance of finding things like that on StackOverflow, or at least posting it and coming back the next to find comments by complete strangers informing me of my silly error. (Being a young programmer without SO was a double-whammy...)

And in China and Africa people absolutely do use their cell phones to run their businesses. Even in the West we wanted more instant access: the movie "Sabrina" shows the wealthy executive making a business deal in the car with a portable phone, which was completely fantasy in 1954.

Cell phones and internet absolutely have made us wealthier. Even the 55" TV is a form of wealth: you can practically have your own private theater now, and thanks to the Internet, you can watch any one of the thousands of movies you want, instead of only the 12 most recent ones on offer at the cinema.

> [Falling homeownership amoung young implies wealth transfer to elderly]

Insufficient data to make that conclusion. It might be true, but you haven't examined any confounding variables. A counterexample: my parents own a house but I do not. It's not because I am not as wealthy as my parents (age-adjusted), it is because I am optimizing for flexibility and also because rent has been cheaper for me than owning. How many young people do not own a home because they want to live in an cool/hip/fun/whatever expensive location, while their parents are fine somewhere cheaper? How many people want to be digital nomads?

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#314

Post by [deleted] »

Animats wrote: post #193

The NFT thing is interesting. Some things to note: - It's inherent in NFTs that they are thinly traded. If each thing is unique, there is no overall market price. Price quotes are anecdotal. There are "indexes" which list prices for transactions, but that doesn't mean you can sell at that price. - Liquidity is very limited. This works like collectables. Try to unload a million dollars worth of Beanie Babies. It may p…

[deleted]

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#315

Post by clpm4j »

solosoyokaze wrote: post #297
alert0 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing cryptocurrency to real estate is laughable. With real estate you have either a place to live, reducing a real world expense (rent), or an income producing property. No matter how much you dress up cryptocurrencies as stocks, by using terms like market cap, you are not buying a share of an income producing asset. You're speculating on a digital collectible. You can speculate on real estate and stocks, but yo…

They compared it to the appreciation of real estate, which is wildly divorced from real value. Real-estate prices in say, the Bay Area are driven by legislation and speculation. Not actual value. The move to remote works accelerates the discrepancy.

Isn't the value of a house what someone is willing to pay for it? There are still a lot of people buying homes in the Bay Area to live in. There are just a lot of rich people in the area, so they're willing to pay the price that the market is setting.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#316

Post by stainforth »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #306
solosoyokaze wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their formula was being wealthy enough to float above war, upheaval, regime change and so on. If they were wealthy enough, they probably triggered some of that and capitalized on war profiteering.

I don't like this comment, but I can't put my finger on why exactly. I think it's the drive-by, reflexive assignment of guilt, while knowing nothing of the circumstances. This strikes me as the opposite of thinking. What you said might be true, it might not, what have you added to the world?

The gold, land, art reference 2 posts above yours almost certainly refers to the Rothschilds, so I don't know why solosoyokaze is being downvoted as the Rothschilds most definitely funded wars to their own profit.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#317

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #228
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Median household income is up to $69k now. In 1980, it was $17k. Wages are up 3.7x since 1980. REAL median household income is up 32% [1]. And this is with labor force participation absolutely plummeting [2]. Less people are working, and yet households are bringing in 32% more. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART

That isn't really meaningful on its own, is it? I'm sure the parent comment actually meant in the context of how it income has increased in relation to cost of living (though they didn't indicate that explicitly) eg, https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/101314/what-does-cu...

The Fed's REAL income measures this.

It doesn't capture that debt markets - things like housing, cars, and tuition - have gone up. This is because the debt service payments haven't gone up, because they've lowered the interest rate and made it cheaper for people to pay for those things with debt (like most people do).

So, sure, if you live in a world where debt doesn't exist, and all you care about is purchasing homes in cash - then the Fed's measure doesn't work for you.

For everyone else, it does.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#318

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

> In an era defined by slow growth and flatlined productivity (if not outright economic stagnation) and marked by widening inequality and underemployment, “money” feels at once deadly serious and stupidly silly. Seen from this viewpoint, the pandemic economy isn’t an anomaly but a heightened version of one possible future: a world where money is abundant but safe long-term investments are rare and where “getting rich quick” is less an American pathology and more the best bet for a stable life — assuming you think such a thing is possible with ecological catastrophe looming. If you’re supposed to buy stocks as a bet on the future condition of a business, why would you buy stock in a brick-and-mortar retail video-game chain unless you didn’t really believe in any future at all? How different is the stock market from betting on soccer? What’s the point of investing safely when Elon Musk can create and destroy millions of dollars of value with a couple of tweets?

This paragraph with its doom and gloom seems apt in that it leaves out the aggregate stock market. In parallel with this, there’s a story of passive investment which is booming. Why take risks when you can put your money in here and just watch it go up reliably? The cynic in me contrasts those stories by looking at the doom and gloom one and pinpointing the line “safe long-term investments are rare” and rolling my eyes, wondering: if a safe broad market index gaining 10% per year for a few generations now isn’t enough, what is? Is it just not rich enough or quick enough? The curmudgeon on me really comes out now. I love the article, but not the “woe is us” aspect.

(I especially loved the description of MMT as Keynesian economics as told by Morpheus)

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#319

Post by nybble41 »

noxer wrote: post #175
jayd16 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

The simple/safe/reliable 10% was a fluke that should never exist. Profit and risk must be in balance. If it isn't it should attracts more and more people until the balance is reached. Making it hard for people to join to keep it unbalanced is what happened and its slowly going away now.

> Profit and risk must be in balance.

Risk is one factor, but not the only one. The main factor in low-risk investment returns is time preference. In essence: People are willing to pay rent (interest) in exchange for access to money now rather than later. Those with savings can earn a profit by renting out their accumulated savings even in a risk-free scenario where return of principle is 100% guaranteed.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#320

Post by [deleted] »

jariel wrote: post #308
jasode wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Crypto is exploding because people are looking to get rich via speculation, that's it. No, that isn't just it. Like other assets, there can be multiple narratives that explain cryptocurrencies rising prices. Yes, pure speculation is one of them. But another reason for some is deliberately shifting wealth from an asset ($USD, euro, bolivar, etc) they believe is deteriorating . E.g. a multi-billionaire like Ray Dalio…

XorNot is essentically correct. Crypto is a 'get rich quick' speculative behaviour, driven by multiple narratives as you say, but those are effectively just narratives used to validate the participation. Amway's 'narrative' was that you could 'help' your neighbours by selling them cleaning products. But really it was a pyramid scheme. There are some questions around the Fed and monetary dilution etc, but BTC is not t…

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