"So I've been working on a program, it's been getting data from the FOREX portal and I've been doing dummy trades with it, and I sent it live three weeks ago, and I earned enough to take my wife to a country club for the weekend."
"You want to use it to quit your job?"
"Yeah. I want to earn enough to not have to show up here anymore."
He brings up the portal and his data. Over the day, he's "earned" about $500. He is stoked.
"You want to know the best thing? It's self-reinforcing. This pattern works better week by week. The best thing is that when some human spots a pattern, then he publishes the pattern, and people start to believe it, they start to follow the pattern and they get all excited when the recognise it in the data. Then as more people follow it, it is self-reinforcing. It gets stronger when people buy and sell on the pattern."
It's not fair, I say. Small nations get hit very hard by currency bubbles, people starve, you know.
"It's not a good system. But it's a big system. And when the whole planet is trading like this, you should expect a lot of inertia. It's like a mountain, it's just there.
And worrying about the morality isn't going to put dineros in my pocket."
I think the reason I posted it is because I find this quite a viscerally confronting moral position. This particular individual is totally refusing to recognise his part in the system - in fact he is pleased and satisfied to float on the bubble, and regards this as a worthwhile goal for his life. He is ready to trade in a generative, creative career for a shuffle-piles-of-money-at-the-expense-of-the-vulnerable career.
I am probably demonstrating my strangeness in the degree to which I disapprove. Youse all probably don't think this is a problem.
But how is this different to:
Pyramid selling schemes of any kind
Marketing superfoods or supplements for weight loss which are highly doubtful, or knowingly fraudulent
Running an energy futures market a la Enron
Packaging tranches of debt for on-selling as assets a la Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae
Selling FOREX pattern recognition software? or books?
At least with shark fins or illegal drugs, there is actually a product which makes someone somewhere feel happier about buying.
So those currencies whose national production has been left plundered by FOREX traders chasing 'candlesticks' or 'pennants' or 'head & shoulders' profiles in the data (not that FOREX is the only culprit of course, there are many other 21st century globalisation-related trade phenomena which contribute), the otherwise unemployed seek to find another currency. Like shark fins or poppy heads. This picture of rotting finless small nations' production capabilities lets me post my disapproval in a way everyone can see.
Quit your FOREX trading, lunch friend of mine. Build infrastructure or sell drugs or get a job as a personal trainer. That way I will be able to keep my own lunch down better.
"You want to use it to quit your job?"
"Yeah. I want to earn enough to not have to show up here anymore."
He brings up the portal and his data. Over the day, he's "earned" about $500. He is stoked.
"You want to know the best thing? It's self-reinforcing. This pattern works better week by week. The best thing is that when some human spots a pattern, then he publishes the pattern, and people start to believe it, they start to follow the pattern and they get all excited when the recognise it in the data. Then as more people follow it, it is self-reinforcing. It gets stronger when people buy and sell on the pattern."
It's not fair, I say. Small nations get hit very hard by currency bubbles, people starve, you know.
"It's not a good system. But it's a big system. And when the whole planet is trading like this, you should expect a lot of inertia. It's like a mountain, it's just there.
And worrying about the morality isn't going to put dineros in my pocket."
I think the reason I posted it is because I find this quite a viscerally confronting moral position. This particular individual is totally refusing to recognise his part in the system - in fact he is pleased and satisfied to float on the bubble, and regards this as a worthwhile goal for his life. He is ready to trade in a generative, creative career for a shuffle-piles-of-money-at-the-expense-of-the-vulnerable career.
I am probably demonstrating my strangeness in the degree to which I disapprove. Youse all probably don't think this is a problem.
But how is this different to:
Pyramid selling schemes of any kind
Marketing superfoods or supplements for weight loss which are highly doubtful, or knowingly fraudulent
Running an energy futures market a la Enron
Packaging tranches of debt for on-selling as assets a la Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae
Selling FOREX pattern recognition software? or books?
At least with shark fins or illegal drugs, there is actually a product which makes someone somewhere feel happier about buying.
So those currencies whose national production has been left plundered by FOREX traders chasing 'candlesticks' or 'pennants' or 'head & shoulders' profiles in the data (not that FOREX is the only culprit of course, there are many other 21st century globalisation-related trade phenomena which contribute), the otherwise unemployed seek to find another currency. Like shark fins or poppy heads. This picture of rotting finless small nations' production capabilities lets me post my disapproval in a way everyone can see.
Quit your FOREX trading, lunch friend of mine. Build infrastructure or sell drugs or get a job as a personal trainer. That way I will be able to keep my own lunch down better.
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