Remember folks, "They followed the law"...
for the anti-video among us
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Banks were forced to commit fraud:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_16...g-wall-street/
To echo Lewk, at what point do we start blaming people?
:haha: thats my link you thief! stop making poor choices!
You can't own information :downcast:Quote:
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
Haha sorry I completely missed that :p
Thank you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
TL; DR. (I did just finish it a few minutes ago.. very nice.)
For whom?Quote:
Originally Posted by agamemnus
I mean that the article is nice. . .
:rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by The Beeb
This is what happens when Palestine and Iraq aren't in the news.
It's the great unwashed trying to find an excuse to get away from cleaning up in order to spend time their family over Christmas.
Luck has nothing to do with your lot in life, eh?Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
You make your own luck.
Prove it. You win the next lottery and I will agree with you.Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
You can't alter any odds to your favor?
It costs £2 to buy a Euromillions lottery ticket here, twice a week - able to legally buy from the age of 16. Retirement age (for my age) is currently 67 but likely to be higher. That makes approx. £208 per year, for 51 years.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ziggy Stardust
Don't gamble, take that 'just' £2 twice a week and save/invest it. Long-term savings rate in stocks averages to about 7%. Those £2 tickets over the long-term will become worth over £102,000 by the time you retire.
Only fools/greedy people think they'll win by gambling. You make your luck here by refusing to play a game that is loaded against you. I speak as someone who has never bought a gambling lottery ticket (as opposed to raffle tickets which I buy sometimes merely as a donation to charity, I don't actually expect to win).
EDIT: PS just since it's you - add in a 20-a-day smoking habbit and you'll have well over £1million.
He wasn't saying playing the lottery is a good idea, but you said you can make your own luck. I'd still like to see you do that.
Also, 1 million for smoking? What have you been smoking? :p package a day is under €2000/year, I'd like to live 500 years too.. :)
You make your own luck by choosing not to play games stacked against you! Someone who gambles and loses is not unlucky, they're the expectation.
As for €2000 a year, it won't take 500 years to save a million. You're forgetting compound interest.
If you save €2000.04 per year (my calculator uses monthly savings of €166.67 so hence the 4 cents), over 51 years, with compound interest at a rate of 7.00% then you'll save up: € 981,428.81
That will be: € 102,002.04 of total deposits
Plus: € 879,426.77 of interest.
That's virtually your million right there from your own figures, without adding in the non-gambling.
Suicide for the poor and oppressed. Gotcha :up:Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
And let's not forget inflation.
That's the Real (post-inflation) rate of growth over the last two centuries. So inflation is already taken into account.Quote:
Originally Posted by Khendraja'aro
OG: Your alternative to not gambling is suicide? Gotcha.
The alternative was to see the point in the original message :noob: Flixy even tried pointing that out to you, and you of course ignored it, cause it would have gotten in the way of your lewklike hardon about blaming people for their lot in life.Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
The point stands. Objectively, losing the lottery is not unlucky it is to be expected.
If you choose to gamble you're making a decision that will almost certainly cause you to lose money. Saving is a better alternative. Someone who saves is not more lucky than a gambler, they made a better decision.
whats to be expected is not the same as changing one's luck.
are you seeing your hangup yet? No one is suggesting to (not) gamble except you :haha:
I'm surprised you aren't seeing the thought disconnection here, especially after the replies that have already appeared in your thread about luck.
Ah, yes, So, the money you get from investments is not subject to, say, taxes... And "Real (post-inflation) rate of growth"? Heh. Right. Of course, it's perfectly possible for everyone to get that interest rate. Just using the average is a really dishonest move. Not to mention that higher interest rates (like those 7% you're proposing here) are only possible if you also run the risk of losing the money you invested.Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
Oh, I see...you chose which sperm would get in the egg first and which vagina you'd pop out of. :rolleyes: And of course you made sure your mom didn't drink or smoke while she incubated you.Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
Er, the lottery of life. C'mon man.Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
Why do I get the feeling this argument is going to go all the way to the Strong Anthropic Principle?Quote:
Originally Posted by Being
Neither conditions nor "luck," nor whatever you think Rand is championing are deterministic. They're environmental conditionals, and any you look at will be just a few amongst a great assortment in any life of more than a short length. Further, aggregate statistics are absolutely meaningless as a method of examining any individual or case study. Cut the crap. That goes for you too, Minx, unless you think it's actually possible to have 2.5 kids.
It's funny how you try to make things like this technical. I suppose next you'll be arguing that nothing is left to chance. When you have no input as to what happens to you, there is a chance that you will get lucky and get something better than the worst possible alternative. If you get hit by a car while walking down the street, there is a chance you won't be seriously injured. Lucky you.
It's funny how you try to make everything a matter of chance. The sheer absurdity of the idea that who one is born to is a matter of luck, for instance. What crock of shit did that idea get pulled from? There's a reason I saw Anthropic in this discussion. Rand is his genetics, his prenatal environment, and his life since being born, whether that's a life lived according to Chaloobi's determinism or one with room for free will arising from whatever gives it emergent properties: a soul, quantum fluctuations and zero-point energy, something we haven't begun to imagine, etc. If Rand were not born to his parents and raised in his environment and living the life he's lived than he would not be Rand. Rand would never have existed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Being
Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
You're missing one of the largest parts of the Occupy movement, Rand---that income inequality is seen as a result (or at least a symptom) of a 'stacked deck or rigged game'; policies that have favored the top 1% of the political or financial 'elite'. There's a different set of rules for the wealthy and powerful, and they largely make the rules through lobbyists and/or legislators. That's the revolving door between politics and politicians that's got little to do with actual leadership or governing.Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
Just look at your example above, about "how to get rich by saving". First off, there's no such thing as 7% compound interest savings accounts anymore, let alone high-interest CDs, because the Federal Reserve and Treasury have decided to keep propping up banks and lenders instead of workers or savers.
Secondly, investing isn't the same as saving. The stock market has become more like a Lottery. Didn't we have a thread about that not long ago? Now there's such high volatility and risk that millions of retail investors simply pulled out, especially anyone close to retirement age....after seeing what happened post-2008 to millions of retiree nest eggs that went poof. Even for those in the US lucky enough to have a pension, those were also "invested" in the markets and saw huge losses, or companies went bankrupt with their pensions switched over to gov't insurance (PBGC). Ogre knows all about that as an airline employee.
Long-term investors (20 years or more) haven't done much better than a 5-6% compound interest savings account could have accomplished, while paying less in taxes. Or paying with the anxiety of insecurity, boom or bust..... especially since our US healthcare system is more like a Lottery as well. It's a bad scene when seniors are forced to choose between buying medicine or heat in the winter. It's tragic when folks can do all the right things but still be bankrupted by one medical emergency. :sour:
While I'd agree with you that people can spend less to accumulate money, that's NOT the same thing as earning living wages, needing to work 2 or 3 part-time jobs (without benefits) just to keep up, while having a dysfunctional banking industry that doesn't favor savers. More broadly, since our economies are based on consumption, and mostly from people not in the top 1% but from the middle or low income brackets...if people stop buying that cup of Starbucks coffee or take-out meal, choose to save $100 instead of buying holiday gifts for their kids....that paradox of thrift kicks in, with horrible consequences.
:haha: I guess god decides who you are born to. No luck involved there. Merry Christmas. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
It's not absurd at all, Fuzzy. You can't acknowledge "anthropic" factors, but call it a crock of shit at the same time. :confused: It's a matter of "chance" in that we can't choose our genomes or our parents. That's not to say our parents didn't have some "choices" or free will, but we weren't active parties to those decisions, and are to a large extent....stuck with variables we can't change.Quote:
Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
I'm honestly not sure where the Strong Anthropic Principle comes into the picture. I was responding to Rand's "you make your own luck" remark. I don't think Rand believes in determinism, esp. because he says he doesn't :confused: I don't understand your point about aggregate statistics either so a post-Christmas-dinner clarification would be appreciated :p
For you everything is luck people: How far are you willing to take that? Can we hold a person accountable for anything? For instance, if a guy goes and commits a murder, isn't it really just because he had the bad luck to have the genetics and series of events in his life that led to him deciding to kill somebody else? Where is the line drawn, and for bonus points, why is it there and not somewhere else?
I'm not a determinist. I'd have to take into account things like mental illness and the like, and factor those into his punishment and rehabilitation. How are you going to rehabilitate a person--or avoid the need for rehabilitation and punishment in the first place--without understanding how and why people end up doing the things they do? Good luck curing those gays for example.Quote:
Originally Posted by Wraith
Why does the lack of accountability mean that we can't take action on his actions? I mean, we can clearly recognize someone as mentally impaired and thus not in control of his actions - and yet we lock him away regardless if he's dangerous.Quote:
Originally Posted by Wraith
:haha: :sour:Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
Wraith, why did you start with a bad outcome and work your way backward? :confused: Maybe it's the other way around. For example:
A couple finds they can't procreate (for whatever reason) and decide to adopt a child. Turns out that child has Cystic Fibrosis, or some other inherited chronic illness. They can't get proper medical care using private employer-based health insurance, and can't afford to purchase health insurance without an employer subsidy.
They have to bankrupt their family in order to qualify for Medicaid, and even then the care isn't very good. Perhaps they refuse to claim "welfare" and instead think...believe....it's up to them to do anything necessary for their child. Even if it means robbing a durable-medical distributor to get a humidity oxygen bed tent and oxygen tanks, or stealing from a pharmacy to get bronchodilators or prescription strength mucus buster meds.
For those who are ardent anti-government ideologues, even claiming personal bankruptcy to get Medicaid coverage for their child is considered "welfare", or exploiting and abusing our healthcare system. They may also say anything "free" shouldn't have the same high standards as those who "pay" for quality of care.
What if it's a unique circumstance unlikely to be repeated? Let him go then? Furthermore, are you seriously suggesting that we lock away people because they are dangerous to society and not because of specific actions they undertake? There is a difference between the two.Quote:
Originally Posted by Khendraja'aro
Didn't we have a discussion recently about how some actions are to be taken as incontrovertible proof of a person posing a permanent danger to society?
Btw you guys don't most legal systems distinguish between premeditated murder and heat-of-the-moment killings?