> You have agency over your business. You're just betting on a stock. You wouldn't own enough stock to have meaningful agency over it.
Yes you have more agency in deciding how to run the business, but you have little to no agency about the economic environment you're in. You're highly concentrated in one financial asset, which means any little hiccup can have huge repercussions for your life, especially since you probably only have one business in one particular economic niche.
Whereas if you own a portion of dozens/hundreds of businesses, you have less control of how they are run, but no one business doing badly will impact you as much, nor even one particular economic segment (energy, transportation, tech, agriculture). By owning a broad index of companies you are more diversified.
Further, with modern financial products you can diversify not just between market segments (S&P 500, Russell 3000), but across countries (which deals with the now do Japan retort).
> How would you convince people that they aren't gambling when investing in stocks?
How about:
> But in a casino the longer you play, the higher your chances of walking away a loser since the house has the edge.
> The stock market is the opposite of a casino. The longer you play, the higher your odds of success in terms of experiencing positive returns on your capital.
Is running a plumbing business gambling? Is opening and running a restaurant gambling? (Sure there's risk in running a business but risk is not the same as gambling.)
Because owning stock is basically owning a slice of a business. Owning a unit of a S&P 500 ETF or mutual fund is owning a slice of five hundred businesses.
> Death penalty is supported because we think it sends the person to eternal torment in hell, not because we think it purifies them.
It is also supported because it can be used as a self-defence mechanism.
We take it for granted that when we lock up 'really' dangerous people they will be safely away from society, but that kind of infrastructure is a fairly recent phenomena in human history. Prison breaks/escapes still happen:
Not only from a building-prisoners perspective, but also from an excess-resources point of view: through most of human history, suggesting using society's surplus—which probably wasn't there—to feed someone 'evil' while everyone else had to work away would have seemed very unfair.
If a single individual has the right to self-defence against an attacker, and a ("small") group of individuals have the same right (e.g., a bunch of folks worshipping in a temple, mosque, church), then wouldn't a "large" group of individuals (e.g., society) have a right to protect themselves from an attacker?
With regards to "hell": someone, while waiting on death row, many repent of their actions and try to find redemption, but still be executed from a legal point of view:
And as we've seen in the PC space, this will absolutely destroy security as the general population will simply hit "Ok" or "Allow" on any (security) prompt so they can get to their desired goal.
The words "reading list" implied to me a list of books, article, etc, that one would go over to learn about the topic.
Can anyone familiar on the topic suggest a list? Perhaps starting with a "101" item for those that want a general understanding / scratch a curiosity itch and perhaps proceeding to more technical items for those that want to dig deep.
Yes you have more agency in deciding how to run the business, but you have little to no agency about the economic environment you're in. You're highly concentrated in one financial asset, which means any little hiccup can have huge repercussions for your life, especially since you probably only have one business in one particular economic niche.
Whereas if you own a portion of dozens/hundreds of businesses, you have less control of how they are run, but no one business doing badly will impact you as much, nor even one particular economic segment (energy, transportation, tech, agriculture). By owning a broad index of companies you are more diversified.
Further, with modern financial products you can diversify not just between market segments (S&P 500, Russell 3000), but across countries (which deals with the now do Japan retort).