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There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

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Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#351

Post by throwaway_4253 »

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…

Just for clarity, how are you defining "Wealth" here? I tend to think of knowledge and skills as a form of Wealth, but it's reasonable for that to be debated; especially if all you're measuring is relative positions in a commodities market.

Either way, I think it's possible to argue that the US did generate Wealth in WW2, in the sense that it developed new technologies and knowledge that were eventually shared worldwide (I'm thinking mass production of materials like plastics, antibiotics, better research on nutrition, etc, statistical engineering techniques which eventually helped build up the Japanese auto industry), and that it trained a large portion of its population via the G.I. Bill and women working in factories, etc.

(None of this is to belittle all the damage done by the bombs, etc, and the US did have a massive advantage in non having it's production capacity wrecked like Europe, Russia and Japan. The broken window fallacy is a real thing)

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#353

Post by Invictus0 »

jpdus wrote: post #162
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…

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…

> They buy these assets b/c its risk-free return on the backs of tenants who need a place to live.

Where were you in 2008?

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#354

Post by Invictus0 »

w0de0 wrote: post #195
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…

> Our job in life is to engage in value creation. That's grim! It's not my job in life.

Value doesn't have to be money. You can be nice to someone and that adds value to the world and counts as value creation. If all you do is suck value out of the world then I would argue you are a bad human being.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#355

Post by splithalf »

“for many of us, money is only experienced through our phones”

I’m calling bullshit. Where we live, the air we breathe, who we know, all we see and experience in our culture is mediated by how much money we have. Money defines our existence.

What the author is noticing is a change in our attitude towards risk. After the past year people have hit the saturation point for fear.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#356

Post by throwaway_4253 »

calvano915 wrote: post #28
AlexandrB wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't something feel wrong about the post 2008 "boom"? Theoretically the economy is doing great but you have constant social upheaval, a generation where many are still living with their parents, and the need for constant central bank stimulus in the form of cheap credit. I sometimes wonder if we've managed to mask the real state of the economy by pumping the metrics to make it look like it's fine.

> I sometimes wonder if we've managed to mask the real state of the economy by pumping the metrics to make it look like it's fine. This concept extrapolates widely in our personal and professional lives. The internet and cell phones were probably the biggest real pieces of innovation in my lifetime (mid thirties). Everything else is just fluffed up rehashes of relics or in very early stages of something radically new…

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss medicine; we all just witnessed mRNA paying off its research tab, so it would seem.

CRISPR is at the beginning of its journey, but monoclonal antibodies are practically miraculous to people with a lot of autoimmune conditions. I have one which almost certainly would have blinded me 30 years ago. Today I can get an (admittedly enormously expensive, we still have progress to make there) IV infusion every couple of months which has practically no side effects and effectively forces the disease into remission. This drug (Remicade) wasn't around when I was born, and I'm only 39.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#357

Post by paulgb »

anonporridge wrote: post #286
paulgb wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazingly, some people are complaining about index funds. It’s a pretty fringe position, but it comes up frequently enough that “should index funds be illegal?” is one of the recurring headings of Matt Levine’s newsletter. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/the-autopi...

Index funds being illegal just means they're illegal for the poor and middle class. Any person with sufficient wealth could construct a personal index fund manually by buying the individual stocks. You would probably need millions to make this a worthwhile exercise. Somewhat related, I really want to see someone offer some kind of customizable index fund. Let me start with a base index, and then exclude or include co…

> I really want to see someone offer some kind of customizable index fund

You and me both! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25552346

(Also, to your point, as someone commented on that thread this does already exist if you have enough money)

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#359

Post by anonporridge »

paulgb wrote: post #357
anonporridge wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Index funds being illegal just means they're illegal for the poor and middle class. Any person with sufficient wealth could construct a personal index fund manually by buying the individual stocks. You would probably need millions to make this a worthwhile exercise. Somewhat related, I really want to see someone offer some kind of customizable index fund. Let me start with a base index, and then exclude or include co…

> I really want to see someone offer some kind of customizable index fund You and me both! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25552346 (Also, to your point, as someone commented on that thread this does already exist if you have enough money)

Hmm. It looks like Wealthfront offers direct indexing for reasonably small account sizes. But it's not clear from this description if they actually allow customizing stock picks. Could be worth investigating. Their fees might also make it unattractive.

https://support.wealthfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/211005023-...

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#360

Post by mariojv »

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'm not deep into the cryptocurrency world at all, but a good friend of mine is really into it and has given me a bit of Nano. Transactions are settled nearly instantly on a mobile device, and it relies more on a "proof of stake" than proof of work style system: https://docs.nano.org/whitepaper/english/

I really don't understand how it can be secure and haven't tried to read more into it due to skepticism about cryptocurrency generally, but are non proof of work schemes more viable?

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