It can act as an additional revenue source thus allowing you to cut on the hours you work per week. If you can train yourself, or find a proper mentor. Though I think a proper mentor is the real bottle neck, so too many try to train themselves and lack the proper knowledge for where to start; too many go to CNBC to start..
If it became mainstream it would just mean more volatility which for me.. volatility is a good thing. Yet were not even close to that, not many trade. Which is fine too, adaptability is key. I think the "you can't" stuff really flows out to other areas of the economy, e.g. starting up etc. So we get into this thing were people don't even try, or they try and fail once and don't bother getting back up. Granted, having a family etc is problematic .. though I do know someone who failed thrice starting businesses while being a mother of 5. That has to be pretty challenging and seeing her persevere tells me many more can be successful if they get past the initial hurdles.
I don't know.. I work about 15 hours a month opening up positions and closing them with my brokerage account. Have been doing this for a good 12 years or so now. Granted the earlier years were fraught with hard learned lessons that any newbee would make without proper mentorship.
To me, it just seems like too many see that initial hamster wheel and jump on without thinking much about things. Then again, they lack proper education. I'm not even sure if it's about teaching them how to trade and invest, instead people need to be taught how to think critically and break out of the victimization trend. Then again, I'm not sure if that will help things much either.
I don't really consider myself part of HN. I'm an observer. Lots of interesting articles are shared with some great comments that follow.
I think though the Google and Youtube stuff is a bit different than what I would like to see with Amazon and abebooks. Youtube was known for it's commenting feeds, there was an anonymity around making comments with usernames to hide behind. Forcing you to create a single login so to connect to your profile page on Google removed that anonymity and was aimed at curtailing the atmosphere found in the comment sections. Thankfully, it has prevailed to some extent as I always enjoyed the comments on videos despite how crude they can be at times. It's cheap entertainment. For Amazon/Abebooks... I mean it's really about just ordering products. I suppose if you write reviews there is that issue sort of but not really either. I rarely see reviews on abebooks compared to amazon. The atmosphere within reviews on Amazon say pre-2009(?) was humorous as well. However it seems Amazon has long stamped out the trolling comments/reviews. The comparison I think might not work so well then in regards to single login. Especially considering that abebooks/amazon aspect is to order things and have it shipped to my house..my residents. I'm not necessarily trying to be anonymous behind various usernames. I rarely do reviews, and it's with a different account usually to counter books that only have 1 review by someone giving it 1 star because it took too long to ship..or something thus not based on the content of the book. Well I use to anyways counter that stuff but I really don't care much these days so I don't really bother. I just want to simply order books without having to log onto 7+ different sites all owned by the same corporation.
Sort of wish they'd focus on what they already have first. I mean I get it, it's a good market to get into ...but.. how about - making a single login for abebooks fr, uk, com, etc.. that aligns with your main amazon account and - audible account. Why do I need maybe 7 different accounts on services owned by the same company? Better yet, how about taking the databases of books on sale at the various abebooks sub regional sites and put them on the main amazon.com page. I collect a lot of old cookbooks, and old lectures (Rede, Chichele, Ford etc) and often find that to find better deals than what is on amazon.com I have to go on different abebooks sites to find them. Also - have had experiences where I go on amazon fr or ca and order a cookbook easily purchasable on those sites vs .com site. It's terribly aggravating! So I just wish they'd focus on making that easier to deal with before venturing onto other areas. That said, grocery should be decent.. I already hire taskrabbit individuals to do my shopping for me..they are hit or miss.. I never put them in charge of buying seafood..never.
My undergrad and grad were in liberal arts. After earning my PhD I took an mpa online as I was bored and able to pay for it out of pocket easily enough. One of the things the stood out for me at least is that I really missed just browsing the rare book collections and all the various microfilms and archives the library the university had. The digital pdf articles weren't really anything special. I probably learned more from the stacks than I did even while working on my dissertation. Actually my one professor one time brought me to the archives and taught me in detail all the numerous odd tricks in researching old paper documents. This has been an important lesson as I research a lot of older non-digitalized archives on personal time for side projects.
In hindsight, I have this conflict of views sort of. If automation goes the ways in which some fear, then physical institutions will provide a place for people to go instead of rioting out in the streets. To build on Salman Khan's thoughts about online education becoming the Aristotle/Plato model while the physical area acts as a place to build projects and so forth.. this could be one way to go [0]. At the same time, I've read a number of books about the atmosphere of campuses pre-1960s. Personally I feel we protest too much these days. So perhaps a focus on online campuses while limiting fewer people to the physical campuses can allow for the protests to die down and perhaps a return to the pre-1960s era. That said, I have my doubt that people are just going to be content sitting at home in mass learning.. so perhaps Salman Khan's ideal will be what emerges. Then again, it would also be ideal that we don't throw out the old way completely. It would be ideal with some smaller liberal arts colleges could be dead set in their ways in just teaching old liberal arts. Ideally without the computer so to encourage actually reading texts in whole and producing critical thinking. This would be the elite probably due to the cost of that education.
My bias yields to the hope that the majority of all jobs are destroyed by automation and that people having nothing else to do but to get phd's in the subject that they are interested in. Perhaps though the access of education will depend on the level of talent and knowledge; for the masses a khan/coursera style approach, for the mid-level an approach that is a hybrid of khan as Plato model and physical interaction for project development. The upper end, the elite would be in person primarily, small classes in cohesive campuses with lack of protests that disturb the open learning environment; of course moocs would be available to these students but the primary purpose would be more old form to develop better critical thinking skills. The moocs, even if PhD programs are developed will suffer the hive mind problems as one can see in say many social media platforms (reddit, facebook, twitter etc).
It's more of a personal preference than overt philosophical stance. I just don't think it's anyone's business where I'm applying or may end up working (I don't want the references to know where I'm applying or may end up working).
I suppose if this is passed it goes to the many reasons why I enjoy living my life trading with my own funds without the stability of holding a career with an employer. So far no drug tests is pretty much the winner but if genetic testing bill becomes law then I'm pretty sure that tops drug testing. I'm not a fan of background checks and I refuse to give references..but that's easy for me since I'm not applying to jobs. I wish more people collectively refused to participate in the whole reference thing as well. Nonetheless, I suspect this bill will become law and more things to occur to make working for employers even more invasive.
Robinhood being free of commission and having no minimum is a good start for the larger pool of people without much to put up. Personally I started with $500 from student loans and a scottrade account. I wish Robinhood was around when I was starting. You could start investing/trading in theory with just $1.00 but there is the problem that many S1 stocks are not too great. However a good $45 stock that goes up and down by $3 over a 2-4 week period is accessible. Even if not, $45 to $48, then back down to another stock at $45 in the range can lead to similar results. However one must not get into the trap of only wanting that particular price point, it's just an example. With Robinhood I would have been able push out to higher amounts sooner due to the lack of commission fees.
To me, a $45 start anyone working can figure out. Part of the problem if you ask me is the normalization of the notion of "you can't", etc. I've been reading Mass Flourishing and The Complacency Class this past week; the "you can't" notion, the loss of risk aversion seems to be the key driver. However I think it's also where we put of value regarding information. Instead of watching a sports game or the Bachelor, read a few books about investing and trading which you can get at a library; worldcat.org can help one find such libraries that hold those collections. However many would scuff if they were told to make that trade off.
Thanks for posting this. Sums of a lot of my feelings when reading the more ill-informed comments related to markets. Btw, Interactive brokers I personally prefer. Etrade and likewise others I find be too much oriented for beginners.
Robinhood I tried once but hate that it's only for the phone. My terminal is much more capable of trading than my phone.. though I get why Robinhood was designed like that... to appeal to those who are more phone oriented.
One of my best short sells besides 2009 short selling, was twitter. My money was allocated else where so I couldn't get in on the Snap fun. However this was pretty predictable outcome.
Encouraging more work from home might be a good start. However I can't see this being the solution for everything obviously (how is one to work from home as a prep cook?). However there seems to be a lot of opportunity to expand work from home positions. The last few jobs (mostly office related) I held could have been work from home while saving the company money by being able to cut on office space. Meh, then there's the argument "well they don't work as well at home", which could be countered by financial incentives/perks. Overall it would be nice to see a shift an attitudes regarding work from home. Less commuters then at least would make it easier for the prep cook or whomever who's needs are physical appearance to get to work easier. But of course, most people like to be around people and work from home is away from people which is to many anti-social and thus looked down on. I think that's the real reason for the deeper issues around it.
My trading terminal I have directly wired in as just issues with wifi can become costly in the middle of a trade. That said, my leisure laptop and all I'm totally fine with wifi. Then I again the leisure laptop really doesn't get the heavy use such as gaming. Some lectures on youtube is probably the most test it gets. My phone (iphone 6), despite being relatively new has always been terrible with wifi which I always found weird.
If the numbers were different we could marginalize these people. But the numbers aren't different and it doesn't help that generally speaking liberals tend not to vote in off elections. So the problem is even worse. Marginalizing will blow back.
Outside Philly, Upper Makefield. I think we have FreshDirect which some how manages to encourage people just to go the shops themselves due to how terrible their service is.
I too would suspect Bernie Sanders would have had some military events. I'm not saying either side is perfect. I am saying that shouting down at one group is not going to solve the problem. Especially if half the nation doesn't believe in climate change and typically more apt to vote than their liberal counterparts.
I never said it would be easy. All I'm saying is to shout them down and ridicule them is going to make the problem worse. Socializing is a good first time. Keep talking to them. Try not to lose your cool. It's hard.. it's really hard. I know people who are Trump fans and are caught up in one aspect that they like about him. Be it ant-immigration or whatever. I do my best to make them think I'm actively accepting their views.. then I do my best to talk about some stuff here and there..if I get them to acknowledge one flaw in their thinking then I see that as a positive. Its going to take years..decades and luck.
None of my grocery stores within the 60 minute range offer delivery. I wish they did. I live outside of a major city, in a pretty wealthy area. There is no instacart, no amazon fresh, etc. Uber doesn't even deliver here. It's pretty lame and the population exists to support even just one of these services.
If it became mainstream it would just mean more volatility which for me.. volatility is a good thing. Yet were not even close to that, not many trade. Which is fine too, adaptability is key. I think the "you can't" stuff really flows out to other areas of the economy, e.g. starting up etc. So we get into this thing were people don't even try, or they try and fail once and don't bother getting back up. Granted, having a family etc is problematic .. though I do know someone who failed thrice starting businesses while being a mother of 5. That has to be pretty challenging and seeing her persevere tells me many more can be successful if they get past the initial hurdles.