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It's not victim shaming to say, "You shouldn't invest more than you can afford to lose." You can say that and still feel bad about the tragedies that are playi

It's not victim shaming to say, "You shouldn't invest more than you can afford to lose." You can say that and still feel bad about the tragedies that are playing out around you. I know someone who pulled all of his money out of the stock markets right as it was bottoming in 2009. The guy is not capable of making investment decisions. He's the kind of guy who falls for scams, quickly buys into conspiracy theories, etc. I'm not being condescending. It's just an honest assessment. I really don't know what we're supposed to do as a society for folks like him, though. At the very least, I think public schools should have a mandatory financial literacy course that gives an overview of how to run your finances, and maybe a brief foray into things like iSeries bonds, etc. Extra points if it covers bubbles and busts and the psychology behind them, etc. Having read a few books on the subject, it was obvious we were in a bubble in the past few years. Literally all of the tropes I heard after the 2000 bubble were happening, from sports bars playing CNBC to random folks like a plumber boasting about trading Doge coin.

majormajor 4y ago
It's victim shaming to say that and not push for the behavior of people who, for instance, told reporters that Luna was doomed while happily making money off people using his platform to buy it to be criminalized and shamed: From https://www.bitcoininsider.org/article/165364/sam-bankman-fried-explains-why-ust-crash-was-predictable https://www.bitcoininsider.org/article/165364/sam-bankman-fr... sourcing a Bloomberg interview that itself seems to be paywalled: ----- One of the most interesting phenomenon happening right now is the rise of Luna and UST. Luna has this Treasury Reserve consisting of a lot of Bitcoin, which seems a little dicey, but some people say any idea of an algorithmically-backed stablecoin is a perpetual motion machine – it’s only a matter of time before it fails. Do you believe there can be a truly decentralized stablecoin? What do you make of these projects? SBF: I do have some sympathy to the perpetual motion machine crowd here. They can serve some useful purposes, but if you do zoom out, right, and you say, this is a stablecoin, backed by volatile assets, what’s gonna happen in a big market move. Right? Like, you know how this plays out. ----- Is there a word better than "despicable" for believing that at least some things in the ecosystem are a scam but still profiting off helping people get scammed by those things? Why would you just feel bad about the tragedies and not also furious at these people happily making money off of the tragedies?
- astrange 4y ago
  > Is there a word better than "despicable" for believing that at least some things in the ecosystem are a scam but still profiting off helping people get scammed by those things? Well, he’s the richest ethical altruist out there, so it appears that’s the word for it.
  - majormajor 4y ago
    Is that newspeak for "I know how to use your money better than you or the government"?
superchroma 4y ago
Laughing or making snide comments at people who aren't intelligent enough to realize that they've made an error is, at its rosiest, just bad sportsmanship. I do have sympathy for these people, and it is a failing of our education systems that people are not mentally well equipped enough to avoid gambling everything on poorly disguised scams.
deleted 4y ago
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olliej 4y ago
It is victim blaming. They put their retirement savings into “insured” accounts with “guaranteed” reasonable returns. You say they should have known it was scams, but if they were scams why was the news filled with tales of the success of crypto, and tech sites and “influencers” all aggressively pushing crypto. If these were scams then why wasn’t the news filled with them being shut down? No these are people who, as far as they understood, were simply storing their savings in a “high” interest rate savings account. They weren’t throwing money around on coin base, or following micro trends. They were doing the right thing, and trying to limit the amount of value their savings were losing to inflation. Remember the account values of many of these services were reported as still belonging to them. What happened was one morning they woke up to find out that the balance they were seeing was a lie as the companies had sold off their assets, and lost all their money, without their permission, and was refusing to let them withdraw it. Then some asshole like you comes along and says that it’s their fault.

majormajor 4y ago

It's victim shaming to say that and not push for the behavior of people who, for instance, told reporters that Luna was doomed while happily making money off people using his platform to buy it to be criminalized and shamed: From https://www.bitcoininsider.org/article/165364/sam-bankman-fried-explains-why-ust-crash-was-predictable https://www.bitcoininsider.org/article/165364/sam-bankman-fr... sourcing a Bloomberg interview that itself seems to be paywalled: ----- One of the most interesting phenomenon happening right now is the rise of Luna and UST. Luna has this Treasury Reserve consisting of a lot of Bitcoin, which seems a little dicey, but some people say any idea of an algorithmically-backed stablecoin is a perpetual motion machine – it’s only a matter of time before it fails. Do you believe there can be a truly decentralized stablecoin? What do you make of these projects? SBF: I do have some sympathy to the perpetual motion machine crowd here. They can serve some useful purposes, but if you do zoom out, right, and you say, this is a stablecoin, backed by volatile assets, what’s gonna happen in a big market move. Right? Like, you know how this plays out. ----- Is there a word better than "despicable" for believing that at least some things in the ecosystem are a scam but still profiting off helping people get scammed by those things? Why would you just feel bad about the tragedies and not also furious at these people happily making money off of the tragedies?

astrange 4y ago
> Is there a word better than "despicable" for believing that at least some things in the ecosystem are a scam but still profiting off helping people get scammed by those things? Well, he’s the richest ethical altruist out there, so it appears that’s the word for it.
- majormajor 4y ago
  Is that newspeak for "I know how to use your money better than you or the government"?

superchroma 4y ago

Laughing or making snide comments at people who aren't intelligent enough to realize that they've made an error is, at its rosiest, just bad sportsmanship. I do have sympathy for these people, and it is a failing of our education systems that people are not mentally well equipped enough to avoid gambling everything on poorly disguised scams.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

olliej 4y ago

It is victim blaming. They put their retirement savings into “insured” accounts with “guaranteed” reasonable returns. You say they should have known it was scams, but if they were scams why was the news filled with tales of the success of crypto, and tech sites and “influencers” all aggressively pushing crypto. If these were scams then why wasn’t the news filled with them being shut down? No these are people who, as far as they understood, were simply storing their savings in a “high” interest rate savings account. They weren’t throwing money around on coin base, or following micro trends. They were doing the right thing, and trying to limit the amount of value their savings were losing to inflation. Remember the account values of many of these services were reported as still belonging to them. What happened was one morning they woke up to find out that the balance they were seeing was a lie as the companies had sold off their assets, and lost all their money, without their permission, and was refusing to let them withdraw it. Then some asshole like you comes along and says that it’s their fault.