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Any investment can fail. You spent money to bet on the price going up and won. Someone else lost. The markets aren't exclusively available to the rich. Anyone

Any investment can fail. You spent money to bet on the price going up and won. Someone else lost. The markets aren't exclusively available to the rich. Anyone can buy and sell stocks. Successful people get to live better than the poor. That is why we should do more to encourage more poor people to live better by contributing more. The economy is not zero-sum.

AstralStorm 7y ago
Second part is a lie. Tried managing stocks on your own? And having no leverage? It's not even close to competitive with hired specialists dedicated to the task. You cannot compete. It is not contributions not success that makes people live better or longer. It is ownership, diet, mental health (including low stress) access to medical care. Check out how many of successful people actually live shorter or painful lives. Your argument only works for have-nots. Economy is negative sum, unless you discount externalities. It does not break physics. Mined out and used up materials do not suddenly reappear. We just move the goalposts to have the same "positive money" outlook, keep everything from deflation. Until recently inventions (esp. energy and mining, then production efficiencies), made the economies grow. But it is not an infinite resource.
- douglaswlance 7y ago
  Managing stocks is easy. Buy winners and hold them. That's how Berkshire Hathaway earned their billions. They're not day-traders. Contribution is the surest path to financial success. The more value you can contribute and capture, the more wealth our society will reward you with. The Earth's resources are miniscule compared to the wider universe. For example, there's a near earth asteroid that we discovered that has enough platinum to turn every person on earth into a billionaire at the current prices. That's just one of tens of thousands of near earth objects. Plus, there's millions of asteroids in the asteroid belt when we exhaust those. Finally, we're already starting to mine them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining So we are not restricted by resources. Regardless, we live in an information economy that is mainly driven by credit and debt, not mining of resources.

AstralStorm 7y ago

Second part is a lie. Tried managing stocks on your own? And having no leverage? It's not even close to competitive with hired specialists dedicated to the task. You cannot compete. It is not contributions not success that makes people live better or longer. It is ownership, diet, mental health (including low stress) access to medical care. Check out how many of successful people actually live shorter or painful lives. Your argument only works for have-nots. Economy is negative sum, unless you discount externalities. It does not break physics. Mined out and used up materials do not suddenly reappear. We just move the goalposts to have the same "positive money" outlook, keep everything from deflation. Until recently inventions (esp. energy and mining, then production efficiencies), made the economies grow. But it is not an infinite resource.

douglaswlance 7y ago
Managing stocks is easy. Buy winners and hold them. That's how Berkshire Hathaway earned their billions. They're not day-traders. Contribution is the surest path to financial success. The more value you can contribute and capture, the more wealth our society will reward you with. The Earth's resources are miniscule compared to the wider universe. For example, there's a near earth asteroid that we discovered that has enough platinum to turn every person on earth into a billionaire at the current prices. That's just one of tens of thousands of near earth objects. Plus, there's millions of asteroids in the asteroid belt when we exhaust those. Finally, we're already starting to mine them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining So we are not restricted by resources. Regardless, we live in an information economy that is mainly driven by credit and debt, not mining of resources.