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The wolf thing is similar. If you're poor, have one cow, and a wolf eats it, >that's your livelihood down the drain. If you have 10,000 cows then even a multi-d

The wolf thing is similar. If you're poor, have one cow, and a wolf eats it, >that's your livelihood down the drain. If you have 10,000 cows then even a multi-day onslaught from a pack of wolves as you work out the details of why your herd is shrinking is just the cost of doing business. if you have 10,000 farmers with one cow each, some number of them will lose a cow to a wolf, the same number of cows that the big rancher loses to the wolves. it's the same cost of doing business, and the devastation of a small number of individuals is made up for by the large population of 1 cow farmers who suffered no losses at all, doing thus even better than the big farmer. plus, the one cow farmers, being people and not corporations, will pitch in and help their neighbors because that bad luck could affect any of them.

hansvm 2y ago
> same cost of doing business In aggregate, sure, but people make personal decisions for personal reasons, not because of aggregates. Early in my career I had an opportunity that looked like a 92% chance (based on stats of previous people going through the program) of a nice tech job and an 8% chance of >2yrs of financial problems keeping me out of tech (1st year going into debt for a below-CoL internship type thing, 2nd year working 80+hrs/week in a decidedly non-tech job to pay off that debt, not having time to devote to portoflios and programming better). On average the program is great, but I didn't take it because an 8% chance of major life problems was too risky for my other goals at the time (early marriage, wife still in school, ...). That's what I meant by "self insurance." If you add up thousands of events, each of which are fine on average, then the aggregate is likely fine. If one of them is devastating though, the risk of devastation is high if you only have a few events. > pitch in and help I'm not familiar enough with rural CO culture to comment. In other rural areas I've seen, neighbors are happy to help with labor (coming together to ward off wolves, helping rebuild broken structures, ...). They're happy to help with physical goods that are effectively a manifestation of labor (bringing over dinner as you're struggling financially or what have you). They're not going to give you a new cow though. Your finances are still hosed if the wolf gets to you.

hansvm 2y ago

> same cost of doing business In aggregate, sure, but people make personal decisions for personal reasons, not because of aggregates. Early in my career I had an opportunity that looked like a 92% chance (based on stats of previous people going through the program) of a nice tech job and an 8% chance of >2yrs of financial problems keeping me out of tech (1st year going into debt for a below-CoL internship type thing, 2nd year working 80+hrs/week in a decidedly non-tech job to pay off that debt, not having time to devote to portoflios and programming better). On average the program is great, but I didn't take it because an 8% chance of major life problems was too risky for my other goals at the time (early marriage, wife still in school, ...). That's what I meant by "self insurance." If you add up thousands of events, each of which are fine on average, then the aggregate is likely fine. If one of them is devastating though, the risk of devastation is high if you only have a few events. > pitch in and help I'm not familiar enough with rural CO culture to comment. In other rural areas I've seen, neighbors are happy to help with labor (coming together to ward off wolves, helping rebuild broken structures, ...). They're happy to help with physical goods that are effectively a manifestation of labor (bringing over dinner as you're struggling financially or what have you). They're not going to give you a new cow though. Your finances are still hosed if the wolf gets to you.