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The world did fine before derivatives. In fact some might say it did even better. And gambling only makes the wealth gap worse. And there is a ton of nasty ince
by amelius 8mo ago
The world did fine before derivatives. In fact some might say it did even better. And gambling only makes the wealth gap worse. And there is a ton of nasty incentives linked to it.
- JumpCrisscross 8mo ago> world did fine before derivatives The Hittites and Bronze-Age Egyptians had forward-deliverable contracts that, if you squint, they would trade amongst each other. The idea of being able to assign a contract to a third party to which you're a beneficiary is about as old as civilisation. In part because it's obvious. In part because it's impossible to police. But mostly because it's useful. (I'm ignoring insurance and reinsurance, both of which are derivatives and rely heavily upon them.)
- amelius 8mo agoThe scale of things was much different back then. Not comparable.
- JumpCrisscross 8mo ago> scale of things was much different back then "Scale back derivatives" is a reasonable argument. "Ban derivatives" is silly. > Not comparable Totally comparable. I'm actually struggling to think of an infrastructure-building civilisation in history that didn't have some form of tradable forwards.
- nradov 8mo agoNonsense. Derivatives have been actively traded in the USA at least since 1848 (and even earlier in other countries). Nothing was better about the world in 1847.
- egberts1 8mo agoThe Dutch? Early 1500s? That is what my reading recollection is recalling on 'derivative-like".