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The Scandal of Financial Nihilism

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Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism

#71

Post by glogla »

xyzelement wrote: post #60
glogla wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such an evil thing to say. You got lucky. Telling people who were not that its their own fault for not trying is just such horrible thing to say. How can people have so little empathy, I will never understand.

If you tried and failed, I have respect. If you didn't bother "because it's impossible" (nihilism) then I have zero sympathy.

I succeeded - I have a condo, summer house and drive a damned Jaguar. I just have empathy with people who don't, because they weren't lucky, like me.

I'm not going to go tell people "do it! go buy more lottery tickets! don't give up! you will get there eventually" because I won the lottery.

Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism

#72

Post by speed_spread »

mordae wrote: post #31
TheFattestNinja wrote: post #16

The post is kind of all over the place, more like an internal reflection than a normal message to others, but it does resonate with me on one point specifically: I am an "official" millennial, born 1989. One thing I have noticed (in an anectodical, personal and subjective way) is that my age bracket, especially those I would consider higher on an intelligence/success curve, appear to be so much more closet-nihilist t…

Hahaha, perhaps we are all waiting for the shit to actually get real for a change. After decades of being squeezed out from all relevant games. Come on, make zombies... Or something.

Zombies, as in stupid resilient slow moving half-dead aggressive humanoids operating in loosely coordinated herds? I think we created those... with social networks.

Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism

#73

Post by Sholmesy »

csomar wrote: post #10

The WallStreet Bets, NFT and Crypto ecosystem is very niche. It's also very self-reinforcing because the internet made these people find their counterpart. The reality for most people is still very much different. I'd say zero-interest rates and negative interest rates had more of an effect on people than crypto or risky stock bets. The system was kinda getting by until western politicians went over-board during the…

> The WallStreet Bets, NFT and Crypto ecosystem is very niche

/r/wallstreetbets has 13.5 million subscribers.

Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism

#74

Post by xyzelement »

glogla wrote: post #71
xyzelement wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you tried and failed, I have respect. If you didn't bother "because it's impossible" (nihilism) then I have zero sympathy.

I succeeded - I have a condo, summer house and drive a damned Jaguar. I just have empathy with people who don't, because they weren't lucky, like me. I'm not going to go tell people "do it! go buy more lottery tickets! don't give up! you will get there eventually" because I won the lottery.

Would you tell people "acquire valuable skills, seek to sell them to quality employers or start your own business delivering tangible value"?

Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism

#75

Post by somedude895 »

JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #28
TheFattestNinja wrote: post #16

The post is kind of all over the place, more like an internal reflection than a normal message to others, but it does resonate with me on one point specifically: I am an "official" millennial, born 1989. One thing I have noticed (in an anectodical, personal and subjective way) is that my age bracket, especially those I would consider higher on an intelligence/success curve, appear to be so much more closet-nihilist t…

"we saw our beloved parents struggle in old age with health and finance", This would vary from country to country but absolutely isn't the case in the UK. Most millennial's parents didn't have their income crippled by rent (with little chance of buying) and student loans (tuition fees only came in in the late 90s), and lived most their lives with a public health service that wasn't being aggressively gutted. If anyth…

> We were told all these bailouts and austerity and artificially low interest rates were the way to solve things and while stock markets bounced back it never felt like a genuine recovery.

Maybe it's because I'm not in the US, but do people actually feel this way?

Sure, the GFC was a big deal at the time, but as a millennial, who grew up upper-middle-class and is now in his mid-thirties, I don't feel it has impacted me much at all.

Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism

#76

Post by pookha »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #41
TheFattestNinja wrote: post #16

The post is kind of all over the place, more like an internal reflection than a normal message to others, but it does resonate with me on one point specifically: I am an "official" millennial, born 1989. One thing I have noticed (in an anectodical, personal and subjective way) is that my age bracket, especially those I would consider higher on an intelligence/success curve, appear to be so much more closet-nihilist t…

Most millennial parents are not even in old age yet and are statistically more affluent than they are. I don’t think your analysis is correct. Plus my own experience as someone born in 1989 doesn’t really mesh with yours. Most of my friends are both what I would call more frugal and more down to earth than their parents were because they had to live through multiple economic crashes. There is little nihilism but peop…

Back in the 70's and 80's people were pretty frugal. The average person was experienced with Lay-away, balancing checkbooks and not a lot of people had credit (high interest rates). What you're witnessing now are just older people that have a lifetime of work accrued and are just trying to enjoy what they have while they can. You'll probably do the same... But in no way shape or form are millennial's in a worse place than people were in the late 70's early 80's. I'd argue thins are considerably better thanks to the wide availability of tech jobs.

Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism

#77

Post by revolvingocelot »

glogla wrote: post #57
xyzelement wrote: post #51

The funny/sad thing about this nihilism is that it's self fulfilling. You don't try and you don't get good outcomes. Meanwhile - life is working very well for people who don't think this way. Like, every house that comes up on the market is immediately snatched up by some 30/40 year old who is buying a home for his growing family. Somehow these guys figured out how to get consistently paid. Meanwhile you can be cryin…

This is such an evil thing to say. You got lucky. Telling people who were not that its their own fault for not trying is just such horrible thing to say. How can people have so little empathy, I will never understand.

Hey, it could just be a troll! Or someone with nonhuman morality! Consider the dubious truthiness of "every house that comes up on the market is immediately snatched up by some 30/40 year old who is buying a home for his growing family", but then consider that the corporate person "Blackrock, Inc." is indeed 35 years old.

Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism

#78

Post by college_physics »

ajmurmann wrote: post #64
college_physics wrote: post #63

Financial nihilism is a subset and derives from economic nihilism. The latter is basically the entirely agnostic stance of classical economic thinking that aims to decouple from the troublesome subjectivity of morality. Infamously, a lethal war adds to economic activity as people are busy building and selling weapons of destruction, thereby adding to GDP. But financial nihilism is far more potent than its parent beca…

"Ultimately economic nihilism itself is a subset and derives from moral nihilism, discounting the notion that society is held together by moral values and unspoken contracts." Is this what moral nihilism says? I was under the impression that moral nihilism states that there are no objective or inherent moral values and rules which doesn't imply that society might need agreement on a subset of (made up) moral values t…

> there are no objective or inherent moral values and rules

as a philosophical system this might be so (and I fully agree moral values are made up and fairly arbitrary) but like so many philosophical debates this is to some extend counting angels on a pin's tip.

the moral nihilism I am refering to is the practical lived experience / choices of many individuals which are actually not completely devoid of any morality, just discounting some historically prevalent patterns, in particular those that might constrain an individual's actions

going back to logical coherence, I would think already the term "society" implies some agreement? Practical moral nihilists get out of this loop by arguing that "There is no such thing as society" :-)

Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism

#79

Post by nerdponx »

college_physics wrote: post #63

Financial nihilism is a subset and derives from economic nihilism. The latter is basically the entirely agnostic stance of classical economic thinking that aims to decouple from the troublesome subjectivity of morality. Infamously, a lethal war adds to economic activity as people are busy building and selling weapons of destruction, thereby adding to GDP. But financial nihilism is far more potent than its parent beca…

> Infamously, a lethal war adds to economic activity as people are busy building and selling weapons of destruction, thereby adding to GDP.

I don't think it's a given that a lethal war adds real value when you incorporate the opportunity cost of not having the war. It's been argued that WWII is what ended the Great Depression, but I think that's partly due to the somewhat unique economic circumstances at the time, and due the enormous reallocations of resources and scientific discoveries that occurred.

I'd be deeply, deeply skeptical of any argument that any major wars before or since have been net-positive in creating real economic value for humanity. I think even (and perhaps especially) the most dogged Austrian-school free-market economists would agree with this position.

Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism

#80

Post by college_physics »

RandomLensman wrote: post #70
college_physics wrote: post #63

Financial nihilism is a subset and derives from economic nihilism. The latter is basically the entirely agnostic stance of classical economic thinking that aims to decouple from the troublesome subjectivity of morality. Infamously, a lethal war adds to economic activity as people are busy building and selling weapons of destruction, thereby adding to GDP. But financial nihilism is far more potent than its parent beca…

Adam Smith has morality baked into his works pretty solidly. Not sure I would see that decoupling as classic economic thinking.

Agree... I think I would put Adam Smith in the paleoclassical bucket as distinct from the neoclassical one.
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