3 ms·

"I'm sorry but, you can't claim something as a loss if you never had it in the first place." That's a silly and obtuse take. By this logic you can never lose a

"I'm sorry but, you can't claim something as a loss if you never had it in the first place." That's a silly and obtuse take. By this logic you can never lose a job or source of income.

synu 4y ago
What would it mean to lose a job or source of income you never had? I’m not sure I’m following but curious what you mean.
- lkbm 4y ago
  This is obviously not the situation under discussion. The book wasn't released before he earned any money on it. He clearly states "My income dropped almost immediately", which makes it clean that he was earning money from it, and that a specific event—the piracy—coincided with a drop of "$Xk worth of sales" per month. The analogy being drawn is to losing a job and consequently losing the income you would have earned from it. You've switched from "you never had that income" to "you never had that job".
  - synu 4y ago
    Thanks! I was wondering specifically about how the logic of “you can’t claim something as a loss if you never had it in the first place” meant that you can never lose a job or source of income, but it sounds like that’s not really what they meant in the post I was replying to.
NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
No, the notion that you can lose something you never had is the silly obtuse take. It's like saying "I lost a Tesla because Elon Musk hasn't given me one." It's a pathos appeal by trying to paint the speaker as a victim to generate enough sympathy that you stop reasoning logically. Claiming to have lost money you never had is exactly as absurd when you eradicate the appeal to emotion embedded within it.
- absolutelynobo 4y ago
  It’s exactly what happens when someone who’s experienced the “biweekly paycheck lifestyle” hits it big on a non-salaried income source and expects the music to keep going forever. YouTube videos that hit ~1M views famously rarely keep up the pace beyond a week or a month. Hard to find data, but what I’ve heard is that after a year or two, looking back, most popular videos get 75-85% of their views in their first month after release. Unless you have a contract to be regularly paid $X, or constantly put out new and engaging content, you really can’t get mad when your income peaks and then nosedives.

"I'm sorry but, you can't claim something as a loss if you never had it in the first place." That's a silly and obtuse take. By this logic you can never lose a job or source of income.

synu 4y ago

What would it mean to lose a job or source of income you never had? I’m not sure I’m following but curious what you mean.

lkbm 4y ago
This is obviously not the situation under discussion. The book wasn't released before he earned any money on it. He clearly states "My income dropped almost immediately", which makes it clean that he was earning money from it, and that a specific event—the piracy—coincided with a drop of "$Xk worth of sales" per month. The analogy being drawn is to losing a job and consequently losing the income you would have earned from it. You've switched from "you never had that income" to "you never had that job".
- synu 4y ago
  Thanks! I was wondering specifically about how the logic of “you can’t claim something as a loss if you never had it in the first place” meant that you can never lose a job or source of income, but it sounds like that’s not really what they meant in the post I was replying to.

NaturalPhallacy 4y ago

No, the notion that you can lose something you never had is the silly obtuse take. It's like saying "I lost a Tesla because Elon Musk hasn't given me one." It's a pathos appeal by trying to paint the speaker as a victim to generate enough sympathy that you stop reasoning logically. Claiming to have lost money you never had is exactly as absurd when you eradicate the appeal to emotion embedded within it.

absolutelynobo 4y ago
It’s exactly what happens when someone who’s experienced the “biweekly paycheck lifestyle” hits it big on a non-salaried income source and expects the music to keep going forever. YouTube videos that hit ~1M views famously rarely keep up the pace beyond a week or a month. Hard to find data, but what I’ve heard is that after a year or two, looking back, most popular videos get 75-85% of their views in their first month after release. Unless you have a contract to be regularly paid $X, or constantly put out new and engaging content, you really can’t get mad when your income peaks and then nosedives.