Occupy Hobos

[GGT]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Being]

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?

I guess god decides who you are born to. No luck involved there. Merry Christmas.

[GGT]

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.

It's not absurd at all, Fuzzy. You can't acknowledge "anthropic" factors, but call it a crock of shit at the same time. 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.

[Aimless]

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 I don't understand your point about aggregate statistics either so a post-Christmas-dinner clarification would be appreciated

[Wraith]

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?

[Aimless]

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.

[Khendraja'aro]

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?

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.

[GGT]

Good luck curing those gays for example.

Wraith, why did you start with a bad outcome and work your way backward? 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.

[Loki]

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.

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.

[Aimless]

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?

[Khendraja'aro]

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.

Uh, Loki, what do you think the purpose of punishment is? Congratulations, by the way, on your ability to interpret my statement in the narrowest sense possible.

I mean, did I state somewhere that my example of mental retardation is the only thing possible to be considered? No? Then I'm somewhat astounded how you're leaping to the conclusion you're clearly making here.

Punishment is a social function, by the way.

[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. It's a matter of "chance" in that we can't choose our genomes or our parents.

It is outside our control but that doesn't mean it's chance. It's not a probabilistic outcome. Whether we are born at all or not may be, but who we are born to is not.

[Loki]

Btw you guys don't most legal systems distinguish between premeditated murder and heat-of-the-moment killings?

A useless concept if there's no free will, as Khen suggests.

[Khendraja'aro]

A useless concept if there's no free will, as Khen suggests.

Uh, no, that's actually not what I suggested?

[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 I don't understand your point about aggregate statistics either so a post-Christmas-dinner clarification would be appreciated

So you think it is possible to have 2.5 kids? The map is not the territory. Statistical data is not the reality, it's a specific, deliberately myopic representation of reality which we create and manipulate to detect patterns which apply to the whole. The whole is not a specific finite bit of the whole and things we can say about the whole do not necessarily apply to the bit. We can know that a certain amount of a material will decay in a set period of time but we do not and can never know when the bit will decay. Statistics are a means of making sense of the aggregate, of whole populations, not of individuals or their lives.

[Wraith]

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.

You just dodged all the important parts of the question. The murderer thing was just an example.

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.

Sounds reasonable - but are you agreeing that they aren't accountable, or simply saying it doesn't matter?

[Khendraja'aro]

Sounds reasonable - but are you agreeing that they aren't accountable, or simply saying it doesn't matter?

If there's no free will, then the concept of accountability does not really apply. However, it also does not matter as even a system without free will will have an actio-reactio-paradigm.

A system without free will, contrary to what Loki or Lewk imply, does not mean that we let people simply run free, even if their deed was a one-time event - since that would send a signal to the others that such behaviour is a-ok which would be the entirely wrong thing to do in such a system, due to its very nature. Nor would we only have one method of punishment, independent of type, severity or cause of the crime - because, again, that would be a foolish thing to have in both systems.

Then again, the whole shtick of having no free will while philosophing about the lack thereof gives one serious 13th Floor vibes.

[Ziggy Stardust]

For you everything is luck people ...

Not one of them. Just because I'm arguing against: you make your own luck, that doesn't mean I support the complete reverse of that statement. I think you are aware of that, lesser lights however ...

Thanks Rand for deliberately missing the point. Never expected anything else to be honest.

[Aimless]

You just dodged all the important parts of the question. The murderer thing was just an example.

I assumed you included me in your "everything is luck" category, but your example/question suggested that you ascribed to me some sort of deterministic view that I do not actually hold. You asked how far I was willing to go, and why. I am not a determinist so I don't want to take it to that extreme of non-accountability (how far), and I draw the line where I do partly because of what it means for rehabilitation and deterrence (why). RB believes in "free will"; I believe in "constrained will". That's not the same as believing in total determinism and total unaccountability, any more than a belief in "free will" necessarily means that you have to treat the severely mentally impaired exactly the same--wrt accountability--as the mentally competent (ie. the Lewkowskian position).





Re. luck, perhaps wiki can clarify:

Luck or fortuity is good fortune which occurs beyond one's control, without regard to one's will, intention, or desired result. There are at least two senses people usually mean when they use the term, the prescriptive sense and the descriptive sense. In the prescriptive sense, luck is the supernatural and deterministic concept that there is a force which prescribes that certain events occur very much the way the laws of physics will prescribe that certain events occur. It is the prescriptive sense that people mean when they state that they "do not believe in luck." In the descriptive sense, luck is merely a name we give to events after they occur which we find to be fortuitous.

Luck as lack of control

Luck refers to that which happens to a person beyond that person's control. This view incorporates phenomena that are chance happenings, a person's place of birth for example, but where there is no uncertainty involved, or where the uncertainty is irrelevant. Within this framework one can differentiate between three different types of luck:

Constitutional luck, that is, luck with factors that cannot be changed. Place of birth and genetic constitution are typical examples.
Circumstantial luck—with factors that are haphazardly brought on. Accidents and epidemics are typical examples.
Ignorance luck, that is, luck with factors one does not know about. Examples can be identified only in hindsight.

[RandBlade]

Not one of them. Just because I'm arguing against: you make your own luck, that doesn't mean I support the complete reverse of that statement. I think you are aware of that, lesser lights however ...

Thanks Rand for deliberately missing the point. Never expected anything else to be honest.

I did not miss the point. You asked me how to influence the lottery, I did. I took someone who was reasonably expected to lose the lottery, to someone who was reasonably expected to win £100,000.

You may not see a difference between winning and losing £100,000 so I'm sorry if it went over your head, but I do.

[Ziggy Stardust]

I did not miss the point.

Yes you did.

You asked me how to influence the lottery

No I did not. I asked you to win the lottery to support your little sound bite "you make your own luck". Which is a contradiction, since luck is outside the zone of your control. Which is why I took the lottery as a point since the result is outside your zone of control. All you can do is minimize the effects of the slings and arrows, which is where your influence steps in. My point is no less and no more than "you make your own luck" is bull. What you just did is tell me how to avoid risks. Well, that's great son but that's missing the point.

I did. I took someone who was reasonably expected to lose the lottery, to someone who was reasonably expected to win £100,000.

Thus missing the point.

You may not see a difference between winning and losing £100,000 so I'm sorry if it went over your head, but I do.

I see the difference, I don't think you're sorry, it did not go over my head, it's quite transparent what you're trying to do.

[RandBlade]

I'd be curious how you define "luck" - and that is why I put it in quotation marks in the top, so far in this thread there have been many definitions of luck. I'm an atheist, I don't believe in the supernatural, so any supernatural definitions of luck I simply don't think exist.

By luck I think people normally mean whether chances go good or bad. Good luck is good chances, bad luck is bad chances. But as for chance, there is little that is well and truly left to chance such that we can not influence it. If we take a situation where we have 10 completely random and equally important events with a 50-50 chance of going good or bad then that is neutral right? Getting 6 or more to be positive is "good luck" while 6 or more going negative is "bad luck".

But if someone else influences the chances before the events happen, maybe guarantee one will happen somehow and then load it so that there's a 90% chance of each going good - does the second person have "better luck" than the first? What about from the perspective of the first? On a purely random level everything is equally random but events will almost certainly go better for the second.

No I did not. I asked you to win the lottery to support your little sound bite "you make your own luck". Which is a contradiction, since luck is outside the zone of your control. Which is why I took the lottery as a point since the result is outside your zone of control. All you can do is minimize the effects of the slings and arrows, which is where your influence steps in. My point is no less and no more than "you make your own luck" is bull. What you just did is tell me how to avoid risks. Well, that's great son but that's missing the point.

Why is luck outside your zone of control?

There is much in life that is inside of our zone of control and that includes the lottery, which people tend to view as outside and thus prescribe to "luck". The result of the draw may be outside of our control, but how much we spend on it etc is not. What I did was bring it back inside our zone of control. You may be unhappy about this, but the fact is that we don't live in a vacuum. By changing our decision before the event, we change the result of the event.

[Ziggy Stardust]

I'm answering this in the other dedicated thread.

[RandBlade]

I meant to post that in the other thread.

[Being]

In the news today about a load of hobos in the US having their dirty tents removed.

Just wondering if you are offering work to those whom you label hobos? If you don't have job opportunities for them, is it fair to make a judgment on their desire to work?

[RandBlade]

Yes.

[Being]

Yes.

How many personnel requisitions do you have unfilled?

[RandBlade]

Upto 50 right now. It's never been zero in 6 years of trade.

[Hazir]

Earlier today, while I was shopping together with Ronald we chatted a bit about the general financial situation. The general flow of the conversation was that 'bankers' still didn't get that what was acceptable in 2007 is totally unacceptable in 2012. I expressed my usual disbelief at not a single banker being prosecuted for their role in the crisis. And then I said 'If this whole thing does go belly up though I wouldn't be surprised if actual heads would roll'.

And then I read this in the New York Times and thought: 'well that fits in that thread about Occupy Hobos', so here you go.

Every time I think about this subject I am surprised how people like Loki really don't get that that whole Occupy thing is not something that's occuring in a vacuum and that it's not just some stupid hippies-ex-ante that are raging against the machine.

[GGT]

Every time I think about this subject I am surprised how people like Loki really don't get that that whole Occupy thing is not something that's occuring in a vacuum and that it's not just some stupid hippies-ex-ante that are raging against the machine.

People are waking up, thanks in large part to the internet and social media. The Occupy movement is a symptom nobody should ignore, even that guy from the Heritage Foundation who chalks it up to media rhetoric.