4 ms·

"And it seems like the smarter the employees, the less likely they are to actually be providing any real services to people" I would call this a negotiation th

"And it seems like the smarter the employees, the less likely they are to actually be providing any real services to people" I would call this a negotiation that they are winning. Just like startup founders win in their negotiation with employees for equity. "People generally won't use your site unless it helps them in some way." And people generally won't trade with you unless it helps them in some way. Again, how is this different?

erikpukinskis 16y ago
people generally won't trade with you unless it helps them in some way Not necessarily. People engaged in real trade set up financial institutions, but once these institutions are set up, a game is in place. That game may be beneficial overall to the businesses, but individual players aren't necessarily beneficial... even if they are participating according to the agreed upon rules. It's like cashing in a Groupon deal and then never returning to that business. The company loses money on you and they only agree to serve you because it works for them at scale. But at the micro scale you are hurting them. People who do so have every right to, but they are not contributing to the economy. They are just making a lot of money by making other peoples' lives more difficult.
- ig1 16y ago
  That's like saying someone who listens to a sales pitch and then doesn't buy the product isn't adding value to the economy.
  - Aetius 16y ago
    Ok, then, how does stealing sound? You can't really win this argument, man. No matter how you dice it, the FED is stealing from the American public to hand it over to financial institutions who then sell us back our stolen goods.
warrenwilkinson 16y ago
People are forced to trade, here is how: When the government needs a loan to cover its budget, they get it from the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve are charged to coin new money to provide the government (see wikipedia Federal Reserve, subheadings: 'Elastic Currency', 'Lender of Last Resort' & 'Central bank'). As the Federal Reserve increases the money supply, the value of the dollars in your pocket/matress/bank account go down. Since the value of currency evaporates, the only way to maintain your savings is to have it in a non-currency form. Stocks are a pretty liquid asset. This pushes people away from savings and into speculation (the stock market), where many lose their shirts.
- cynicalkane 16y ago
  Here's the non sequitur: 1) inflation makes it costly to hold money 2) inflation forces you to make stupid speculative investments and frequent trades The second doesn't follow from the first.
  - mynameishere 16y ago
    Most people buy mutual funds, which take a nice fee for doing work a dart-throwing monkey could do (no exaggeration). It would make more sense for people to buy a random sample of the S&P 500, but try telling them that.
    - vecter 16y ago
      Do you invest your money in a random sample of the S&P 500?
      - mynameishere 16y ago
        If I wanted long-term exposure to the S&P 500 then I would indeed do that. I have bought and shorted SPY (which has a fee attached) as a part of short-term pairs trades. My point is simply that for years, fund managers such John Bogle have made a big deal about the fact that an efficient market doesn't allow stock picking funds to beat the cheaper index funds, etc, etc. True enough, but the next logical step is to drop the index funds and manually reproduce their trivial work. Someday, a smart brokerage is going to offer a service to do this automatically, with cut-rate commissions. This would save people billions and billions of dollars.
chopsueyar 16y ago
So do you always view negotation as someone winning and someone losing?

erikpukinskis 16y ago

people generally won't trade with you unless it helps them in some way Not necessarily. People engaged in real trade set up financial institutions, but once these institutions are set up, a game is in place. That game may be beneficial overall to the businesses, but individual players aren't necessarily beneficial... even if they are participating according to the agreed upon rules. It's like cashing in a Groupon deal and then never returning to that business. The company loses money on you and they only agree to serve you because it works for them at scale. But at the micro scale you are hurting them. People who do so have every right to, but they are not contributing to the economy. They are just making a lot of money by making other peoples' lives more difficult.

ig1 16y ago
That's like saying someone who listens to a sales pitch and then doesn't buy the product isn't adding value to the economy.
- Aetius 16y ago
  Ok, then, how does stealing sound? You can't really win this argument, man. No matter how you dice it, the FED is stealing from the American public to hand it over to financial institutions who then sell us back our stolen goods.

warrenwilkinson 16y ago

People are forced to trade, here is how: When the government needs a loan to cover its budget, they get it from the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve are charged to coin new money to provide the government (see wikipedia Federal Reserve, subheadings: 'Elastic Currency', 'Lender of Last Resort' & 'Central bank'). As the Federal Reserve increases the money supply, the value of the dollars in your pocket/matress/bank account go down. Since the value of currency evaporates, the only way to maintain your savings is to have it in a non-currency form. Stocks are a pretty liquid asset. This pushes people away from savings and into speculation (the stock market), where many lose their shirts.

cynicalkane 16y ago
Here's the non sequitur: 1) inflation makes it costly to hold money 2) inflation forces you to make stupid speculative investments and frequent trades The second doesn't follow from the first.
- mynameishere 16y ago
  Most people buy mutual funds, which take a nice fee for doing work a dart-throwing monkey could do (no exaggeration). It would make more sense for people to buy a random sample of the S&P 500, but try telling them that.
  - vecter 16y ago
    Do you invest your money in a random sample of the S&P 500?
    - mynameishere 16y ago
      If I wanted long-term exposure to the S&P 500 then I would indeed do that. I have bought and shorted SPY (which has a fee attached) as a part of short-term pairs trades. My point is simply that for years, fund managers such John Bogle have made a big deal about the fact that an efficient market doesn't allow stock picking funds to beat the cheaper index funds, etc, etc. True enough, but the next logical step is to drop the index funds and manually reproduce their trivial work. Someday, a smart brokerage is going to offer a service to do this automatically, with cut-rate commissions. This would save people billions and billions of dollars.

chopsueyar 16y ago

So do you always view negotation as someone winning and someone losing?