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Be kind to your elders (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/whitepeopletwitter@sh.itjust.works
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[–] 20 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Nobody is expected to understand crypto. Same with the stock market and generally the economy. If it was simple and see thru you couldn’t run this many scams.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    Same with the stock market and generally the economy.

    Okay, you can tap the breaks on that one. There's a book from 1949 called "The Intelligent Investor" that's been the benchmark for savvy stock market analysis for generations. Hardly the only one (although a lot of the newer stuff is just variations on the core themes). Understanding price-to-earnings, market share, debt-to-asset ratios, and marginal return gets you a long way towards consistent middle-of-the-road long term safe returns.

    Same with The Economy. Get a copy of Piketty's Capitalism in the 21st Century and you will have a firm grasp of macro-economic models and trends by the end of it. You'll get a core understanding of the difference between short-term investment returns and long term value creation. You'll get an idea for the broad reasoning behind different public policies and their impact on the broad growth and development trends seen over the last 500 years.

    There's no need to mystify markets or economic systems. In the same way that a modern physician has a generally firm grasp of the human body (without knowing how every single cell is going to behave or every single genetic variant of human is going to respond to a given treatment), a modern business analyst has a generally firm grasp of their industrial or market focus.

    Even crypto is something people can broadly understand as a modern iteration of a privatized experiment in currency manipulation. The thing about crypto is akin to understanding how a casino works. Analyzing the system doesn't mean you're going to be able to profit from it. Its like analyzing a grizzly bear with a plan to engage it in a boxing match. The best analysts will tell you "You're going to get horrible mauled if you interact with this thing, stay away."

    If it was simple and see thru you couldn’t run this many scams.

    The scams aren't a product of (lack of) transparency so much as they are the result of misinformation and market manipulation.

    You've got a guy in a big wagon with a bullhorn selling "Better Than Aspirin!" for $10/pill right outside a pharmacy selling aspirin for $3/bottle in a bottom shelf at the back of the store. The moral of this isn't "Nobody will ever understand pharmaceuticals". It is that there's is a great deal of money in capturing people's attention and then lying to them.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    In the same way that a modern physician has a generally firm grasp of the human body (without knowing how every single cell is going to behave or every single genetic variant of human is going to respond to a given treatment)

    But the cells existed before us and we are simply trying to understand them.

    We created the economic system and now we make conflicting theories about how it behaves.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago*

    But the cells existed before us and we are simply trying to understand them.

    So are the humans who are engaging in commercial activity.

    We created the economic system and now we make conflicting theories about how it behaves.

    We are participating in an economic system created by our forebearers and trying to create policy with an eye towards preferred outcomes. And there's a lot of disagreement on which policies and which outcomes we should be aiming for. One could say that we are in a state of contradiction that is constantly refining itself in pursuit of new stable states. But this isn't something any single individual - or even elite cartel - has dictatorial control over.

    I only get to truly be a capitalist when I'm living in an industrial society. I only get to truly be egalitarian when I've reached a point of (perhaps Kropotkin-ian or perhaps more Roddenberry-ian) post-scarcity. We can create the technology and the social structures that allow for the existence of certain economic states. But we're still constrained by our inputs and outputs. Understanding that is essential in achieving preconceived economic goals. And we can identify what those constraints are, how to mitigate them, and how to focus efforts toward an end by building new capital and new bureaucracy to channel human labor towards certain purposes.

    Some individuals have the opportunity to exert exceptionally large forces over the system in pursuit of outcomes, while others are buffeted by the downstream consequences of these choices lacking significant agency. But we're still all in and of the system, constrained by it to some degree. And we can extrapolate certain fundamental rules of order within the system, in the same way you could extrapolate the biological consequences of feeding a thirsty man a glass of water or a diabetic man a chocolate bar.

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