Oddbean

Not in a general sense as most believe (which you caveated obviously), in fact, one can argue the opposite, the overwhelming majority of investment fails and merely wastes resources. This is exactly why investing should be left to actual investors. Plus, too much investment can be just as big of a problem as not enough. Not really disagreeing, but I think this general sentiment is very dangerous. Because it allows people to excuse forcing people into putting their savings in to stupid, thoughtless trash like "indexes" and other instruments for no reason, and it leads to gross over allocation to massive corporations and bloats the ever loving shit out of financial institutions. Always feel the need to counter this idea, even though your statement is true because of your qualifier.

Also there's another point to be made here: "Savings" and "investing" are the exact same thing. Savings IS investing. The question is what should we be investing in? The people and their families, their livelihoods, their security, their sustainability, and their optionality and freedom to explore that which they desire and have meaningful time for connections and self discovery?... Or some huge corporate enterprise that will stick them in a cubicle and they will be trapped without options because they have no savings? ALL savings is investment. Personal savings is investment in your future, family savings is investment in your time, options, and sovereignty, and producing a surplus for society is an investment in humanity as a whole as you leave those resources for others to create and work with under the trust that they will be good custodians of that value you've produced.

Respectfully hard disagree here. Saving is net neutral. Saving is saving. Not spending, not investing. Investment always carries risk of course, but usually you asses the risk and invest in companies that have a ROI. It's just impossible to invest in the current monetary system because prices and priorities are so ridiculously distorted, it's impossible to responsiby invest. Bitcoin is slowly killing that distortion. Saving is high time preference. Investing (in a normal world, not 🤡 world) is low time preference. It's hard to see because of the 🤡 world we live in.

lol, respectfully hard disagree in return.😆 This may be a semantic disagreement. But to further explain, there is no such thing as idle resources in an economy (aside from literally purchased and rotting capital). Money is not a resource, it is a record keeping system. The act of saving is producing resources into society and holding onto a receipt of your contribution. All savings are the creation of capital for productive endeavors, it is simply that you choose to not yet decide which enterprise to place it in, so you simply leave it to the whole of the economy to decide. But your net contribution remains an investment of resources regardless. TARGETED investment is to believe you have found something that will, on net, do better than the average of society (which will be realized in the value of the money itself). Thus it becomes worth it to explicitly decide where those resources go. But either way it is a net capital availability for society, and what it means is the same. One is simply targeted, while saving money results in investing in the index of the entire economy that uses it (in an abstract sense). Plus being critical for the safety, security, and mental well being of all members of society in their individual situations. In other words, there is no objective claim that “investing is better than savings,” because it is purely a subjective judgement over where resources should be directed. To my future, or to a business enterprise? To anyone in the economy to determine where it goes, or to a specific counterparty or idea? And to say that the security, net surplus, and personal sovereignty of the individual isn’t important or “as important” as some business enterprise for society is, imo, to misunderstand what society is. To sacrifice the well being of the people for the blind goal of “more output” is to beg the question of what is valuable to begin with. You have to make that judgement first before making the claim, which means it’s built entirely on our subjective idea of which is a more valuable use of resources. But it’s ALL an investment of resources somewhere.

WERE TRYING TO FIX THE WORLD OKAY! Sincerely, all with love nostr:nprofile1qqstnem9g6aqv3tw6vqaneftcj06frns56lj9q470gdww228vysz8hqpz4mhxue69uhk2er9dchxummnw3ezumrpdejqzrthwden5te0dehhxtnvdakqz9rhwden5te0wfjkccte9ejxzmt4wvhxjmcjgxv3n I can only pray that I can contribute as much to fixing the world as Guy has. I may disagree here, but we're aligned in our goals and I have nothing but respect for him 💜

Another way to look at it. To take the Bitcoin standard example. The person that invests time (read money) in making a fishing rod instead of just fishing by hand is delaying getting fish now to get more fish later on. (low time preference) Investing money (read time) in a company for more productivity in the future, is low time preference. When you save, you are engaged in high time preference. It's the better move currently as the future is so distorted, it's hard to know what a good investment is actually, but that comes with less productivity. This is why debt CAN be good. Debt is just leveraged investment. Most investments right now are bad, so most debt right now is bad. A time investment in making a fishing rod and a money investment in a productive asset are no different. Time is money is labor is energy. This is why you should be spending Bitcoin anywhere that accepts it. Spend and replace until the new monetary standard arrives to the masses.

This is all true, but realize that you are using an example without money in the equation. When you add money then the act of saving allows investment for others to be available in the first place. And it doesn’t require a loan, this is what producing extra resources and thus lowering their price will naturally do. - If Bob doesn’t know what to invest in, he can produce and save money, and this gives the societal surplus of the same amount for Tim to make his fishing net. the same thing happens with the capital, him loaning it is merely for him to think he know exactly *what* to invest in.

I been thinking about this. I think bitcoin will be pristine capital and capital formation will be needed to pursue risky endeavors. Thus ending zombie companies using cheap money to stay afloat and devalue labor.