5 ms·

Having "underlying risk" to something just means you invested in it before. So for you it's not a gambling as long as you... have gambled before in the other di

• hgomersall 2mo ago
  It's all gambling. You can dress it to as having a social purpose, but that's not why most people do it - they want the numbers to go up. The stock market is exactly the same - middle class gambling.
  • Dylan16807 2mo ago
    > You can dress it to as having a social purpose, but that's not why most people do it - they want the numbers to go up. Too cynical. This disqualifies basically anything you can do with money. If you put it in a bank to get interest you are solidly into the not-gambling end of the scale. And I don't think an index fund is that much more to the gambling side.
    • hgomersall 2mo ago
      Not really. The question is are you working for your money or are you hoping the money will provide free rent for you. If the latter, you're gambling. The only reason it's relatively risk free is because the system has been thoroughly stitched up in favour of the rent seekers.
      • Dylan16807 2mo ago
        I'm confused by the ideas you're combining here. Do you think all forms of rent-seeking are gambling or just ones that involve money in a direct way? The only risk in a bank deposit is up at the "societal collapse" level. Are you really so extreme as to say that's gambling, and if so isn't having money at all a form of gambling?
        • deleted 2mo ago
          [deleted]
        • hgomersall 2mo ago
          The point is largely around expectation. Sure, the base case of putting money in a bank is very safe, but the interest on that is not. Factor in inflation and its pretty easy to get negative returns on bank deposits. If you fiddle with "investments" with the intent of making money without doing anything else, that's gambling. Sticking money in the bank with the hope that it's still there next time you come back to it is not really gambling. You're just doing the default thing.
          • Dylan16807 2mo ago
            > Factor in inflation and its pretty easy to get negative returns on bank deposits. But that applies to having money at all. That can't be enough to call it gambling. > expectation, intent I understand your argument here, but I disagree. Shifting to the bank that offers the best rate is good management, not gambling. Understanding how interest works and being motivated by interest to do bog-standard money storage doesn't turn that storage into gambling. > without doing anything else I don't understand how this connects at all. Maybe it reflects badly on you if you want to turn money into free income, but that doesn't make it any more or less of a gamble. It's a totally different axis.
            • TheOtherHobbes 2mo ago
              >But that applies to having money at all. That can't be enough to call it gambling. It is, because there's no choice not to gamble. You have to make choices, and none of those choices are risk-free. The options are on a scale between low-risk negative-return and high-risk high-return. But the risk is never zero - not even in FDIC insured accounts - and there's an element of randomness involved in the outcomes. That's the point. There's no option to say "I have this store of value, and if I don't do anything with it it will retain its value forever." It won't. So you're forced into risk assessment and randomness, not just with money but with assets in general. This is the foundation of the economy. All non-trivial transactions are based on risk/reward estimates, and some parts of the economy can force risk and hazard on others. It's not just a casino you can never leave, it's a casino where the management use various tricks to siphon money from your assets into their pockets without giving you any agency over what happens.
      • the_other 2mo ago
        > Not really. The question is are you working for your money or are you hoping the money will provide free rent for you. If the latter, you're gambling. So putting money in my savings account is gambling, but investing in businesses is not. I suspect I misunderstand your point completely.
        • Dylan16807 2mo ago
          They're saying that investing is your neighbor's business is gambling but starting your own business with the money isn't. But if it's the same risk I don't see why.
    • Altern4tiveAcc 2mo ago
      > If you put it in a bank to get interest you are solidly into the not-gambling end of the scale Isn't that a bet that your government won't devalue your currency fast enough?
      • danielmarkbruce 2mo ago
        Inflation is a risk. A real, underlying, unavoidable risk. People with that risk aren't gambling. You are conflating risk with gambling. You can go through life without gambling, you can't go through life without risk.
  • nickjj 2mo ago
    > The stock market is exactly the same - middle class gambling. Our entire society is based on being forced to gamble. If you don't invest your money in some capacity then inflation will eat you alive.
    • hgomersall 2mo ago
      Why should having money ever give you a return on that? I ask that question in the context of moral philosophy, not a capitalist society. Surely there are better ways to determine how an individual should live that doesn't typically amount to emerging from a lucky orifice?
    • RussianBot9580 2mo ago
      @hgomersall: emerging from a lucky orifice is in fact the main thing in life if you think about it. After all, we are collectively a computer made of monkeys, and the function it is computing is natural selection. Kin selection is one aspect of it. Everything else - including money and innovation - is window dressing.
      • hgomersall 2mo ago
        Sure, so should we, as society, reward it further by also providing more free money?
        • RussianBot9580 2mo ago
          Well, society is welcome to try to stop them. These appeals usually go like this: we should stop providing more free money to the people who are strong enough to go and take it. Individually we are weaker, so let's stop this collectively. But someone needs to lead the collective. And just like that - you have created another strongman who will just take what he can. In other words: Communism.
  • danielmarkbruce 2mo ago
    Buying small pieces of businesses isn't gambling. The fact the price moves around a lot isn't the point of it, it's just a result of people buying/selling. In gambling, the risk itself is the point.
• postexitus 2mo ago
  No - it means you are exposed to - electricity / gas / oil prices. Or Wheat maybe?
  • vasco 2mo ago
    Everyone is exposed to those so by that definition nobody would ever be gambling. I was trying to be charitable so assumed the bar was higher in the what-if.
    • danielmarkbruce 2mo ago
      You aren't exposed to football game outcomes, nor dice rolls or cards flipping. I, in california, am not exposed to electricity prices in the northeast. My exposure to wheat prices is extremely small - if I go and bet a lot on wheat going down, I'm gambling. If you are creating risk that didn't exist, you are gambling.
• danielmarkbruce 2mo ago
  If you are an oil company entering the futures market to reduce your risk on oil prices, you aren't gambling. If I enter the market and short oil for fun, I'm gambling. The stock market isn't gambling if you are just buying equities - you are literally purchasing a small stake in a company. The fact that prices move around a lot doesn't make it gambling per se. If I offered a new price on your house every day, it doesn't make your house purchase a gamble.
  • vasco 2mo ago
    Reducing risk is a form of gambling. You're just betting on the "please don't" rather than the "please do". The point is always the same, you want to end up better off than others that didn't buy what you bought. If the oil futures purchase turns out to have been worthwhile because price went up due either to production going down or demand up, that doesn’t somehow create new oil. You just get to buy it cheaper than others. You coulda yoloed on spy puts and used that money to buy the more expensive oil at market prices and it's all the same. But you call one gambling and another not gambling, idk, it's all similar to me.
    • danielmarkbruce 2mo ago
      No, it isn't. That's just not the definition that is used by people who gamble and are in financial markets. Words have definitions. No one uses the word "gambling" when they buy insurance on their house. They payoff is contingent, but it's not creating risk for it's own sake.
    • c22 2mo ago
      When I invest I don't really care if I end up better off than others. I'm just hoping to catch some slice of the ongoing economic growth so my at-rest wealth doesn't become devalued by inflation.
      • vasco 2mo ago
        Words have meaning, my sentence didn't stop where you stopped reading. The key words you're missing come right after when you stopped quoting.