A modern economy as best as I can grok it: Money used to buy stuff: $100 Money used to buy money: $200 Money used to bet on money used to buy money: $400 Money used to buy money to bet on money used to bet on money used to buy money: $1300 Total: $2000 % used to buy stuff: 5%
-
-
Some day I hope to get religion. But I can’t shake the feeling that there’s no there there. Beliefs about beliefs about beliefs is just noise past a point. Like really, technically noise. That’s why you don’t numerically differentiate noisy sensors too much in control theory.
Show this thread -
This makes me a reactionary I guess. If you carry my line of thought too far, you land on injunctions against usury in Islam, where even basic interest is sinful. The pragmatic line is “when are we adding more noise than signal with the next degree of indirection?”
Show this thread -
It’s not just many levels of indirection that kill you. It is layers of leveraged indirection built on top of a noise-limited set of signals. Like trading on the future rolling of a marble on the deck of a ship in a storm, where coordinate frame is local galactic supercluster.
Show this thread -
I think I draw the line at a fiat economy with interest rate mechanism and a basic futures market. Ie instruments based on predictions about stuff. Anything more exotic you’re asking for trouble.
Show this thread -
It’s also bullshit work; created to keep people busy. It just happens to be bullshit work crafted for very high IQ genius types instead of mediocre minds fit only for bureaucracy. Cheaper to create than comicbook extended universes. No need for pesky artists and camera crews.
Show this thread -
The ability to get lost in the higher realms of exotic financialization is exactly the same as the ability to get lost in comicbook universes. Imagination plus IQ. But with much more boldness than MCU demands.
Show this thread -
Higher physics has been the same way lately which is why there’s a natural brain drain to finance.
Show this thread -
I have to wonder: what happens if this time around the bailout is ONLY for the 5%. Inject capital into stuff economy. The banks get a piece if stuff-people decide to give them a piece. Reinflate the economy bottom up rather than top down. Impossible thought experiment of course.
Show this thread -
1 trillion divided by 330 million is about $3000. Here’s a thought: airdrop $9,000 into the checking account of every American. Cost: $3T. A mere 3x-ing of the deficit. Let’s see how much trickles upwards into exotica. Test how much skin in the game we *want* in Wall Street.
Show this thread -
Heh strikes me that a taste for exotic financial products among the ultrawealthy is kinda the same as their taste for exotic game meats in Wuhan, which I hear is a scarcity era necessity from cultural revolution now driven by demand from rich elites. Both risk exotic diseases.
Show this thread -
tldr of my thread
https://twitter.com/davecporter/status/1238183623624396802?s=21 …https://twitter.com/davecporter/status/1238183623624396802 …
Show this thread -
If you don’t participate in the higher financial markets, you’ve been signed up for a religion without consent. It’s like if your tax $ were used to fund faith-based initiatives with no strings attached. Violation of separation of church/state. Oh wait they’re doing that too
Show this thread -
World to China: please stop eating pangolins unless you’re literally starving. World to Wall Street: please stop trading pangolin options unless you’re doing it in an opt-in trading card game like MtG. My MtG playing friends are nice. They don’t create tail risks for me.
Show this thread -
In Discworld, the gods play a board game up on Cori Celesti where their game moves literally shape discworld history. That’s basically what we have here.https://discworld.fandom.com/wiki/Cori_Celesti …
Show this thread -
The gods live in the kingdom of Dunmanifestin on Cori Celesti. Play on “done manifesting”. They have earned fuck-you-money levels of belief among the mortals so their fates are not tied to those of believers. No need to answer prayers or pay attention. https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Dunmanifestin …
Show this thread -
By contrast small gods of discworld are scraping by on low, critical levels of belief, not mass levels of uncritical belief. They have to *work* to keep divine status via belief flows. Better off than mortals since they are immortal but they’re the working rich without FU$.
Show this thread -
-
Conversely, someone who owns no stocks, is unbanked, and can’t get any credit has no direct exposure to the meltdown right now. They’d be totally pleased to just get airdropped cash to stay home, and a free drive-through COVID-19 test.
Show this thread -
To what extent financialization drives *meaningful* computations is a distinct question from whether it does technically *correct* computations sorting signal from noise and doing arithmetic correctly.
Show this thread -
Alice might correctly bet that Bob is wrong by 2x on his belief about how many angels a Chuck believes Bob thinks fit on a pinhead. Correct but meaningless to non-angel-believers. Especially if *nobody* actually believes in angels. Only in other people’s beliefs about angels.
Show this thread -
When you are in traffic, you *are* traffic, but at least everyone is going somewhere from somewhere When you traffic in beliefs about beliefs, you *are* belief... it’s like traffic that’s just going around in circles without trying to get anywhere from anywhere else.
Show this thread -
Imagine driving around in traffic purely to hit the green stretches on google maps and beat the times on the red stretches. Grand theft auto joyriding. Imagine if that kind of driving behavior were 95% of traffic and you were in 5% trying to drive to work or home or go shopping.
Show this thread -
Now imagine if the government printed money just to pay people to drive around for no reason. So you get paid by the mile, and big bonuses if you beat point to point times predicted by google maps. I suspect that’s what the economy is at this point.
Show this thread -
This week has made me realize that my financial anxiety is 100% a function of my cash positions and guaranteed cash receivables. I‘ve had like zero emotional reaction to watching my retirement portfolio tank. It’s too far away in time. About 20 years before I plan on touching it.
Show this thread -
That’s because as a largely passive investor, I’m screwed only if everybody else is as well, which means I have bigger problems anyway. Still the adrenalin rush of my small side bets on individual stocks doing well helps me understand the true market gambling addicts.
Show this thread -
The pros say I have high time preference. I say they have low reality preference. We’re both right. For eg I bought $1500 worth of
$ZM last week (yes, I’m sheeple). That’s my current play limit. I’d be pleased if that blew up to 15k. But I’d be 10x as pleased with 10k Fed airdropShow this thread -
Why? The latter is more real. Like driving to work. The former is less real, like driving around to catch green stretches on google maps.
Show this thread -
But buying
$ZM is still more real to me than say buying S&P puts, even though that’s an impoverishing mindset. If my Zoom bet goes to zero, I’ve learned something. My thinking about virtual future is off. I’m wrong to believe that we’re poised for secular shift to remote work.Show this thread -
What have I learned if I lose the same amount on a miscalled S&P put? Just that I was wrong about beliefs about beliefs among a bunch of MtG-playing gods. Strikes me as... not very satisfying or meaningful. It’s also the reason I haven’t stocked up a million rolls of toilet paper
Show this thread -
Yep, TP hoarding beyond your immediate needs, factoring in stock outs due to average TP-insanity levels, is the same exotic-financialization trader mindset. It’s just accessible to the prepper-poors. “Woohoo, I’ll sell my surplus TP at 100 rounds of ammo per roll when SHTF.”
Show this thread - Show replies
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.