conceptually holding more cash than you can usefully spend reduces your cash value and doesn't have to happen with inflation
I remember Buffets letter to shareholders apologising Berkshire Hathaway wasn't able to continue delivering the same historic returns because that trajectory would require them to own every publicly traded asset in the world after ten more years.
even now you can potentially eliminate the major inflationary risks by holding property without debt and rely on policy consumer price regulation to hold basic necessities in check but I personally think that energy risks and not only exceptional weather events put that out of contention for sanity sake. In fact if energy infrastructure and general infrastructure development is increasingly critical for the future it makes little sense to have a cash savings incentive in the economy despite this is unfortunately not a explicit case for the generational savings deprecated in a way that I readily appreciate.
edit to remove accidental negative from I personally [don't] think that energy risks....
This seems more like chasing yield and less like cash losing value or being a bad asset. Cash obviously has benefits to hold and that isn’t changing soon.
absolutely agreed I'm all cash since 2018 in fact, which is why I'm sensitive to the cost of that liquidity.
I noticed a comment sadly without details reporting a third party obtained a crypto collateralized 7 figure loan obtained in a matter of minutes which interested me enough to plan a new survey of the infrastructure in the market. I'm personally interested in pending short term 5 figures as a business. but only if I can figure out how report to credit agencies specifically for positive feedback and I am only interested in non secured lending but whilst holding the underlying as the custodian. unsecured loan performance is a particularly valuable credit record history especially in the present volatility. the model I wish to pursue is to provide liquidity for trading traditional instruments and by acting as custodian for both crypto and trad assets, providing as USP analytical tools and guaranteeing fills on quotes from my ticker, acting as guarantor for the trades to a mainstream financial or bank. I won't go into the model but it does include kicking back fees from my prime broker for the volume and transparently revealing the collars around the spread enabling truly immediate liquidity and real time netting. hedge strategy p&l to benefit customers when closing in the market thereby paying every customer for anything that they left on the table excess for buying the liquidity.
Given that all of those things have increased in cost at rates far beyond 2%, I don't really see how you blame that on the inflation of the USD as a whole. They have their own systemic problems attributing to their astronomical costs.
> Given that all of those things have increased in cost at rates far beyond 2%, I don't really see how you blame that on the inflation of the USD as a whole.
My point is inflation isn't being measured in a way that actually matters to people worried about more than buying groceries and a new laptop.
If all those things were included in the measurement inflation would be way over 2%.
Well maybe common sense tells us how the system should work, but in a regulated industry in the real world the technical details matter. Hope we can get to the ideal solution after enough of these fiascos. Robinhood needs to be at the cutting edge to keep their customers.
I find this, similar to the arguments against robinhood and extremists on social media, basically boils down to treating people as sheep and wanting to protect them from themselves.
I think it is a stretch to say r/wsb insiders are obviously taking advantage of newcomers. You can’t spend much time with WSB without developing some financial literacy, and there are compelling ideas. It is not just flexing and hype. Also, I don’t think there is a precedent (such as the pyramid scheme) for what they are doing in the market.
I think there is some truth to your mention of young Reddit person being vulnerable, but I think it is risky trying to protect them with regulation.
> It is not being left to die because you can’t afford treatment. It is bad enough that we don’t need to exaggerate.
If you don't have the money to pay, hospitals in the US are only required by law to stabilize you. So, for instance, if you can't afford cancer treatment, you'll likely die of untreated cancer.
In South Carolina, where I work for a hospital, you automatically qualify for Medicaid when you’re diagnosed with cancer.
This way people don’t die from untreated cancer.
Getting diagnosed early when uninsured is where we fail as a society. Our politicians cover up this failure by giving them Medicaid so we spend $500k treating advanced disease and they still die, rather than universal coverage.
There are many reports of people self-rationing insulin and dying as a result. That's as close to "left to die because you can't afford treatment" as it's possible to get without murder charges.
As someone with 2200 purchase on amazon over the last several years, you're definitely wrong. I have to use every trick up my sleeve to not get pure hot alibaba trash. It USED to be that amazon best seller items were good at least, and now those are an absolute trash garbage fest as well too. Go try to buy a strainer, charger, literally any appliance, anything, and tell me you get good results.
I recently bought Amazon's best seller hot oil frier. When we turned it on, the cheap thin metal of it bent from the heat so that the hot oil dripped on the floor. Turns out it was straight from a Chinese noname brand but marked as "sold by Amazon" on the website. When I tried to refund it, they told me that Amazon had just purchased the items for resale and that I should contact the original manufacturer for warranty. And they gave me a Guangdong address and a Gmail email.
By now every product listing on Amazon should be treated like SEO spam.
Plus there's now all these sellers trying to buy a 5 star review by promising a gift card. I recently saw a baby carriage with lots of 5 star reviews from teenagers who tried it out with plush toys because they didn't have kids yet.
They did give in and give me a refund eventually. It's just that I was surprised by their laissez-faire attitude that their topseller was some random no-name factory in China.
Attorney General would still be interested in the fact that you were sold a deep fryer with such a potentially dangerous flaw by Amazon, and the run around they initially gave you.
They really are like low quality SEO blog spam. I can't believe how many products I see with almost all 5 star ratings...for a completely different product.
Yes, I actually quite literally fear for my life from factory chemicals or defects. A few years ago I saw a charger that was amazon's "best seller" and it had tons of 1 star reviews of peoples houses catching on fire...
I once ordered a USB charger from Amazon that said you needed to have 3m of empty space in every direction to avoid the fire risk. I just wondered how anyone could satisfy that and put the charger into a wooden cupboard. Maybe I should revise that decision now :/
Yes, I would for your safety with anything even remotely dangerous, like electronics (I watch out even with a strainer which is just steel, but can be covered in loads of carcinogenic chemicals from china etc).
I recently just got fooled again, I needed to buy a cooking butane torch for grilling cheese. The "best seller" was quite nice looking, had great reviews, great photos.
I actually got it in my hand and it essentially fell apart. I immediately threw it in the trash as there's no way I'm putting highly flammable gas into this junk. I went to a head shop and bought one for the exact same price with amazing quality... its funny how we started out with brick and mortar, migrated to online... and now I'm going to start migrating back to brick and mortar.
I didnt mention anything about amazon's inclination to fix it. I said that it's pure garbage on amazon and it takes an astronomical amount of work to find NOT trash, and even after this many orders I still get fooled when using all the fake review spot apps, etc.
It's impossible by design to find "the good stuff."
Even when purchasing from "legitimate" product pages, they'll send you co-mingled counterfeits. You have absolutely no assurance that what you're buying is legitimate.
I think it's often impossible to distinguish whether something is good on amazon. For many products there are often 100 chinese clones with fake brand names and suspect reviews. I only use amazon now when I need something specific and if I know it will be difficult to find elsewhere. Specifically for PC and tech products, I've actually found best buy is great these days at stocking popular stuff at about the same price as amazon.
what’s a category of good that Amazon excels at where they are the dominant seller e.g. where the search term has not been gamed by a dozen marketplace sellers?
even with Amazon as the direct seller I don’t find them to be cheaper than other stores for almost anything. it’s really only when the pricing is competitive and directly from them where it makes sense to buy given convenience of fast shipping if you have Prime.
the only thing I can think of is their own private label, but even there it seems extremely hit or miss just reading some of the reviews - sounds like everything is just sourced from bottom of barrel Chinese manufacturers that slap an Amazon logo on things.
I don’t think there is a category where amazon shines, but I have had good results with car parts, gardening supplies, tools, books, household items.
I usually find a brand name seller with a website or a specific part number.
Or if I don’t know/care about a brand I read some reviews and look at review pictures I don’t buy the cheapest item and still scrutinize best selling item.
The top results could be garbage as people are saying, but somewhere in the first page of top rated results is the best item for a great price.
In a rural place, prime is a huge time and money saver, have had good customer service. I still don’t think other online retailers have caught up to amazon, I hope they do .
I agree with you completely. I've yet to have a shoddy counterfeit product with thousands of purchases over a decade. Any actual problems are also solved within minutes.
Can someone link a product listing that they received a counterfeit from?
"HIFI Audio Decoder Amplifier - Aimpire AD10 MINI USB DAC CSS XMOS XU208 ES9018K2M OPA2134 Audio Amplifier Decoder"
This is a fake. Strange how the URL says TOPPING but the product is from "Aimpire". Aimpire has been photoshopped into some, but not all of the product pictures (where TOPPING is still visible in a few).
Turns out that Aimpire has had a contentious relationship with Topping (the designer and manufacturer of the real thing), started making their own (inferior and unlicensed) versions of the Topping product.
Looks like this one is "sold by amazon.com". Huh. Guess it slipped by their counterfeit checkers.
This is a strange case. The reviews seem to say people are buying the Topping product but getting the Aimpire product. But if you buy from this page, you're knowingly purchasing the Aimpire version. Are people buying Topping from another listing and getting this?
EDIT: never mind, looks like this product used to say Topping and was changed, and that's why the URL is still the original wording. That's clearly a scam then.
