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This is the trap of modern society. Think about what you're doing: instead of anything productive, you thought a good use of your time was sitting there staring

This is the trap of modern society. Think about what you're doing: instead of anything productive, you thought a good use of your time was sitting there staring at numbers, hoping to find a pattern to make money off of people; who in their own right are using insider information to game a system; which itself is set up to capitalize off the fact that the larger economy has failed, and now all that's left is to just make money off of guessing.

rwmj 6mo ago
True, but hx8 isn't to blame here and was simply trying an interesting experiment. Blame the system instead.
- ModernMech 6mo ago
  I did blame the system, I said it's the trap of modern society. The only reason hx8 fell into this trap was because they thought it would be profitable, that's not a moral failing on the part of the poster.
yieldcrv 6mo ago
Finance has always been the largest sector on the planet through every economic environment you have been alive for, I don't really understand why there is a current of this community that acts so divorced from its perpetual and all encompassing existence their whole lives Despite you being an individual, you reflect an aberration of sentiment here that makes no sense For example, the larger economy hasn't failed, another view is that this is price discovery of a mispriced agent in the market. A wage worker whose actual productivity isn't valued accurately, and a market based solution has been developed that allows for closer accuracy. More profits to the insider and the copy trader, their available capital and liquidity is derived from their utility to the employment sector and their potential profits with that capital and liquidity is derived from the event's actual utility to the market. Additionally, the productivity of all agents isn't known, you don't know what they were doing with their time before and it likely was suboptimal already - as in doomscrolling on social media or vegetating on the couch. Finally, you have no way of quantifying if those lazy things were suboptimal uses of time, or if a completely active other activity was suboptimal or optimal, as this goes into relative utility and schools of ethics.
- TheRealDunkirk 6mo ago
  > the larger economy hasn't failed It's only a matter of time until Social Security starts to fail, right after we've paid all the boomers their full benefits (and just in time for me to be eligible), and then they'll have to implement "austerity measures." After that, groceries, gas, housing, health "care," and higher education will have fully broken the middle class (it's already broken me, and I have a good job and a paid-off house), and the economy (sans imaginary AI investment bullshit) will be exposed as failing. AI (such as it is) will hammer entry level jobs, and tax revenues will be impacted by this. At the same time, we're going to have to start some sort of menial UBI, but with what money, I have no idea. Service on the national debt just surpassed military spending last year. When the shit hits the fan in another 10 years, the country will have to either go to war to reset the accounting ledgers, or actually put themselves on a budget. Which do you think will happen? Given the numbers and rates we can see at present, all economic activity right now is a process of moving deck chairs on the Titanic. Sure, it hasn't failed, but it is an absolute certainly that it WILL. It's just a question of WHEN, and it's relatively soon. We have no adults in Washington. It's clear they're ALL just trying "get theirs" before it all comes crashing down.
  - yieldcrv 6mo ago
    Everything you described is future liquidity and who has it, but whether that’s the economy or enough of it to make a statement is unclear to me And you wrote this all as a reaction to people trading on prediction markets? Markets that show velocity of transactions in a new, novel and growing way, which is the goal of our economies - to discourage hoarding in favor of transactions Being a permabear doomer has nothing to do with the existence of prediction markets and other people’s participation in them
  - prepend 6mo ago
    Social security will fail slowly by reducing its payout a little at a time. It can’t really fail all at once unless the US government dissolves. And people have been losing money on that bet for 250 years. Luckily, if someone thinks the USG will actually fail, it’s really easy to trade on that possibility.
zahlman 6mo ago
We should be happy to live in a world where a significant fraction of people can conclude that "doing something productive" is not a hard requirement for survival.
tikhonj 6mo ago
The real trap of modernity is treating "productivity" as some sort of quasi-religious moral imperative.
hx8 6mo ago
This comment is so patronizing because it's 2008 angst against the financial sector wrapped up in the assumption that the people participating in the financial sector aren't aware of that angst. We're deep in a hacker news comment thread, no one here should be beating the desk about productivity. I would recommend you look into Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber, where he makes an argument that 50% of American jobs are not only not-productive, but actually harmful. Your argument isn't taken to its logical conclusion yet.
- ModernMech 6mo ago
  I'm well aware of "Bullshit Jobs", but that's more support for my conclusion that the modern economy has failed. Why do we have people doing bullshit jobs rather than something else? My argument is taken to its logical conclusion plenty of places in this economy, it's just not evenly distributed -- just look at the minimum wage being $7/hr juxtaposed next to an extra value mean being $12. That's a failed economy, sorry.
  - hx8 6mo ago
    There's a lot I could unpack here, but I'm just going to pull on the string I find most interesting. "Why do we have people doing bullshit jobs rather than something else?" There honestly isn't that much else left to do. Most of us in the western world are incredibly well fed, well housed, well transported, well educated, well defended, and well cared for(health/dental). Sure, all of that could be better and/or cheaper, but by historical standards we are doing incredibly well. We're engaging in all of these activities with only a fraction of the people that were spent on it in the past, and the people that are working directly in these fields are more productive than ever. We're talking care of our societal needs with fewer people than ever before. What exactly do you expect the rest of us to do with our time and how will it be anything other than bullshit?
    - ModernMech 6mo ago
      > There honestly isn't that much else left to do. No, there's toooons of work to do. It sounds like you and yours are doing fine. My community is hungry, sick, lacks access to education, faces striking illiteracy, are not only not defended by but are actively attacked by local police and security forces. > What exactly do you expect the rest of us to do with our time and how will it be anything other than bullshit? Well there's a national childcare crisis going on where childcare costs more than a mortgage. There's also an education crisis going on where education costs more than people make in 10 years. There's a housing crisis going on where people can't into homes and are becoming forever renters. There's a healthcare crisis going on where people cannot actually afford to go to the doctor or have to ration their medications to get the care they need -- even with insurance. So my proposal would be to take people a way from doing bullshit jobs and get them into those professions to help out with those various crises.

rwmj 6mo ago

True, but hx8 isn't to blame here and was simply trying an interesting experiment. Blame the system instead.

ModernMech 6mo ago
I did blame the system, I said it's the trap of modern society. The only reason hx8 fell into this trap was because they thought it would be profitable, that's not a moral failing on the part of the poster.

yieldcrv 6mo ago

Finance has always been the largest sector on the planet through every economic environment you have been alive for, I don't really understand why there is a current of this community that acts so divorced from its perpetual and all encompassing existence their whole lives Despite you being an individual, you reflect an aberration of sentiment here that makes no sense For example, the larger economy hasn't failed, another view is that this is price discovery of a mispriced agent in the market. A wage worker whose actual productivity isn't valued accurately, and a market based solution has been developed that allows for closer accuracy. More profits to the insider and the copy trader, their available capital and liquidity is derived from their utility to the employment sector and their potential profits with that capital and liquidity is derived from the event's actual utility to the market. Additionally, the productivity of all agents isn't known, you don't know what they were doing with their time before and it likely was suboptimal already - as in doomscrolling on social media or vegetating on the couch. Finally, you have no way of quantifying if those lazy things were suboptimal uses of time, or if a completely active other activity was suboptimal or optimal, as this goes into relative utility and schools of ethics.

TheRealDunkirk 6mo ago
> the larger economy hasn't failed It's only a matter of time until Social Security starts to fail, right after we've paid all the boomers their full benefits (and just in time for me to be eligible), and then they'll have to implement "austerity measures." After that, groceries, gas, housing, health "care," and higher education will have fully broken the middle class (it's already broken me, and I have a good job and a paid-off house), and the economy (sans imaginary AI investment bullshit) will be exposed as failing. AI (such as it is) will hammer entry level jobs, and tax revenues will be impacted by this. At the same time, we're going to have to start some sort of menial UBI, but with what money, I have no idea. Service on the national debt just surpassed military spending last year. When the shit hits the fan in another 10 years, the country will have to either go to war to reset the accounting ledgers, or actually put themselves on a budget. Which do you think will happen? Given the numbers and rates we can see at present, all economic activity right now is a process of moving deck chairs on the Titanic. Sure, it hasn't failed, but it is an absolute certainly that it WILL. It's just a question of WHEN, and it's relatively soon. We have no adults in Washington. It's clear they're ALL just trying "get theirs" before it all comes crashing down.
- yieldcrv 6mo ago
  Everything you described is future liquidity and who has it, but whether that’s the economy or enough of it to make a statement is unclear to me And you wrote this all as a reaction to people trading on prediction markets? Markets that show velocity of transactions in a new, novel and growing way, which is the goal of our economies - to discourage hoarding in favor of transactions Being a permabear doomer has nothing to do with the existence of prediction markets and other people’s participation in them
- prepend 6mo ago
  Social security will fail slowly by reducing its payout a little at a time. It can’t really fail all at once unless the US government dissolves. And people have been losing money on that bet for 250 years. Luckily, if someone thinks the USG will actually fail, it’s really easy to trade on that possibility.

zahlman 6mo ago

We should be happy to live in a world where a significant fraction of people can conclude that "doing something productive" is not a hard requirement for survival.

tikhonj 6mo ago

The real trap of modernity is treating "productivity" as some sort of quasi-religious moral imperative.

hx8 6mo ago

This comment is so patronizing because it's 2008 angst against the financial sector wrapped up in the assumption that the people participating in the financial sector aren't aware of that angst. We're deep in a hacker news comment thread, no one here should be beating the desk about productivity. I would recommend you look into Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber, where he makes an argument that 50% of American jobs are not only not-productive, but actually harmful. Your argument isn't taken to its logical conclusion yet.

ModernMech 6mo ago
I'm well aware of "Bullshit Jobs", but that's more support for my conclusion that the modern economy has failed. Why do we have people doing bullshit jobs rather than something else? My argument is taken to its logical conclusion plenty of places in this economy, it's just not evenly distributed -- just look at the minimum wage being $7/hr juxtaposed next to an extra value mean being $12. That's a failed economy, sorry.
- hx8 6mo ago
  There's a lot I could unpack here, but I'm just going to pull on the string I find most interesting. "Why do we have people doing bullshit jobs rather than something else?" There honestly isn't that much else left to do. Most of us in the western world are incredibly well fed, well housed, well transported, well educated, well defended, and well cared for(health/dental). Sure, all of that could be better and/or cheaper, but by historical standards we are doing incredibly well. We're engaging in all of these activities with only a fraction of the people that were spent on it in the past, and the people that are working directly in these fields are more productive than ever. We're talking care of our societal needs with fewer people than ever before. What exactly do you expect the rest of us to do with our time and how will it be anything other than bullshit?
  - ModernMech 6mo ago
    > There honestly isn't that much else left to do. No, there's toooons of work to do. It sounds like you and yours are doing fine. My community is hungry, sick, lacks access to education, faces striking illiteracy, are not only not defended by but are actively attacked by local police and security forces. > What exactly do you expect the rest of us to do with our time and how will it be anything other than bullshit? Well there's a national childcare crisis going on where childcare costs more than a mortgage. There's also an education crisis going on where education costs more than people make in 10 years. There's a housing crisis going on where people can't into homes and are becoming forever renters. There's a healthcare crisis going on where people cannot actually afford to go to the doctor or have to ration their medications to get the care they need -- even with insurance. So my proposal would be to take people a way from doing bullshit jobs and get them into those professions to help out with those various crises.