There are so many wealth making opportunities that give more than literally zero expected value, and don't require 20% of your wealth.
You can become rich by following the rules of expected value and compound interest.
Backtest this against the population and tell me that people today wouldn't be richer if they made sound financial decisions based on the information at the time. I know I would be richer. The kicker is, wealth inequality would rise along with median wealth, because compound interest. This is so unpalatable for some people that they argue against sound decision making and reduce wealth creation to coin flips.
OP here. The most common argument against this type of thing is what Paul Graham calls "The Pie Fallacy" [1]. But I think that argument is fundamentally flawed. While wealth can be created from nothing, one typically requires a certain amount of wealth to get to the level where they can start creating wealth.
Exactly. People talk about compound interest as of it can make you rich. It can't. It might multiply your wealth by 2 or 3 in a country where the difference between rich and poor is a factor of 100.
Wealth generation is not wealth distribution. It is entirely possible for you to become very, very rich thru wealth distribution resulting from processes that retard wealth generation or reduce wealth globally.
Actually generating wealth is hard, it's so much easier to inject yourself into existing transactions and take a cut instead.
If wealth was a zero-sum game, thia would make sense. Fortunately, it's possible to create new wealth so that everyone is better off, even if some get richer than others relatively.
If wealth was a zero-sum game, thia would make sense. Fortunately, it's possible to create new wealth so that everyone is better off, even if some get richer than others relatively.
If wealth was a zero-sum game, thia would make sense. Fortunately, it's possible to create new wealth so that everyone is better off, even if some get richer than others relatively.
The example that is used in this blog post is completely and absolutely wrong. He portrays wealth accumulation as a zero-sum game with people coin-flipping against each other. In reality, someone does not have to lose for wealth to be created.
I strongly disagree. In the real world, wealth is very much not zero sum.
Look around where you live, at the things that you value. How many of them were created with human effort, versus just existed in nature? Look at everything from computer you're typing on to the chair that you're sitting in to the roof over your head. EVERYTHING that was created with human effort is an example of wealth creation.
I don't mean that nobody can be harmed in the process of creating wealth - certainly they can. I mean that the process of accumulating wealth is not zero-sum: each dollar that I earn is not a dollar that somebody else lost. The economy is not some big pie that we split up unequally. The process of creating wealth increases the size of the pie.
Wealth isn't being created. For every person getting rich there's someone else buying in at the current price which is.... euphoric for a "digital commodity" with no inherent value.
You can become rich by following the rules of expected value and compound interest.
Backtest this against the population and tell me that people today wouldn't be richer if they made sound financial decisions based on the information at the time. I know I would be richer. The kicker is, wealth inequality would rise along with median wealth, because compound interest. This is so unpalatable for some people that they argue against sound decision making and reduce wealth creation to coin flips.
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