Around the Evergrande collapse there were stories about Chinese retail investors who had pushed money into their domestic real estate industry’s stocks.
Also you might painting too wide a brush with “the West”. I wouldn’t assume that Americans and, say, Austrians have similar exposure to public markets.
US household assets are fairly well distributed between real-estate and equity markets. China for example previously had ~70% of its household wealth tied up in real-estate, which has suffered enormous declines over the past four or five years.
That said, there's no question that US households have grown fat on the massive expansion of the tech giants. A one trillion $ market cap was shocking not long ago, now you've got Apple and Nvidia at $4-$5 trillion, each about as valuable as China's top 25-30 stocks combined. The US wealth base is highly exposed to a PE multiple compression event, which is likely whenever the bubbly valuations centered around the AI boom reduce.
Also to put a reference figure on it, China's top 500 stocks are roughly worth $11.5 trillion. Nvidia + Apple are worth a combined ~$9.6 trillion.
Both NVIDIA and Apple derive much of their wealth from off-shored manufacturing to… drumroll… China! (PRC+ROC)
If China decides to take over Taiwan and nationalises TMSC, redirecting their top tier silicon to 100% Chinese companies then what are the American firms worth?
Indeed. It's so much bigger (in notional terms) than the underlying stock market that you can manipulate it by making large bets in the derivatives market, then move the underlying cash markets with much smaller bets, and collect profit.
That is what Jane Street (IIRC) was accused of. Some of its traders then went to another hedge fund and did the same trick there, reducing Jane Street's profit, and ended up being sued by Jane Street. (BTW, Jane Street claims it was not manipulation, but basis trade arbitrage.)
> It is also used despite many developed countries or regions not being culturally Western (e.g. Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao)
The story we were telling young people that if they apply themselves, go to school and get a job they'll be able to afford family, house, vacations is moving further and further away for more and more people.
The turn towards financial nihilism will continue.
The threshold for greed is higher than the median net worth of an American. We tell people they need "generational" wealth to a make it in this country because housing, education, and healthcare are all so expensive
While "financial nihilism" is part of it, I think we should be putting even more attention towards the forces that are trying to deliberately encourage it for profit.
Kind of like pathological gambling: Sure, some people are susceptible, but there's also an entire industry around finding them and making them succumb.
We live in a capitalist society, not a labor-oriented society. The way to make big money is through capital - ie: purchasing property and then selling it for (hopefully) profit.
Laboring in a capitalist economy is a loser's strategy because your capital is you body's ability to produce value and that has a maximum physical limit. Why participate in an economy using a strategy that has a natural upper bound? It makes no sense. You're not even playing the game poorly - you're not playing the game at all.
This is the logical end conclusion, but in reality, we live in a middle ground where plenty of people have and will live in a society where they can sell their labor for a perfectly content life.
This doesn't make any sense. The population has experienced massive uplift over the last few decades. Their parents weren't going on vacations with the family as kids, they were struggling to put food on the table. Houses are outpacing inflation, but the home ownership rate continues to climb.
Some time ago it occurred to me that you can't just spend extreme amounts of money. You can only lose it by gambling. In a casino, on investment or on business, it doesn't matter.
Investment or business do also have some gambling factors in it. And both usually cost extreme amounts of money to get started.
However, I found that if the bar of doing business is high enough, "investing" in stock market maybe safer than start a proper business. Because if a business failed, you likely lost a huge amount wealth, including everything you put into the business and maybe more. Whereas if you buy stock responsibly (for example, DCA VOO/&QQQ), there's a high chance you'll eventually bounce back.
Maybe that's one reason the young Koreans invested so much in their stock markets. Their country failed them by restricting them from opportunities, the only way they can save themselves is by gambling.
I recently heard that 80% of small businesses - bodegas, non-chain restaurants and so on - make less money than if they'd just put their starting capital in the stock market.
Especially in Korea, I know there's a sense of despair in the young adult population on their future. How will they afford to get married, have kids, have a house? Leads to chasing financial outcomes that are uncertain - crypto boom in Korea years back is an example
For those who don't know what's going on in Korea, KOSPI is up 3x in the last year and a large amount of HBM employees have made huge amounts of bonus pay. This has led to an insane FOMO frenzy in a society that's already very competitive.
Add to that, stock gains in Korea are often used to finance housing purchases (or real estate investment) so many retail investors are scared of being "locked out" of housing (which is a requisite status symbol for dating or marriage) if they're not making the same capital gains others are.
Currently Korean social media is full of stories of leveraged day traders who've gotten rich the past year, HBM employees who've made bonuses worth decades of salary (e.g. memes of Samsung employees in luxury cars), etc. Lots of comments along the lines of "everyone is getting rich except me". It's all reminiscent of the crypto frenzy in the US a few years ago but way more intense and concentrated.
Housing usually is needed for living. Not a status symbol for dating. I see how it can help the same way as not starving to death will also help with dating, but the framing is odd.
I wish we had a word for this, where everyone’s getting rich, there’s a run on stocks, but prices of assets are all going up. Some people are missing out completely whereas a select few hoard wealth in other forms. And of course the government starting to notice and trying to intervene.
With housing their being so cheap, what the hell is the problem anyway? It's impossible to have expensive real estate in a country that's dying out fast.
no it's very possible because in an aging country people relocate to a handful of cities. 50% of South Korea's population now lives in the Seoul metropolitan area. The real estate that's getting cheaper is the one decaying in the countryside.
It's like saying Russia can't have expensive real estate because the country is big, what matters is where people are actually moving.
Cities in Australia consistently rank in the top 5 most expensive real estate indices and we ain't short of space here, it's just not many people are interested in living in a dusty Outback desert.
And for many, if the property is not within 10km of the Sydney or Melbourne city centre, it might as well be in the dusty Outback desert.
I'd think Starlink will help change this. Not for living in the actual dusty Outback (which has its own risks/dangers/inconveniences), but for living in many other places in Australia that are lovely and not too far from desirable areas.
Most people want to live where other people live, for reasons ranging from social connections to access to services and infrastructure. I doubt broadband access access plays even a small role.
Yeah, like I said, not talking about the boonies. There are plenty of lovely places that are >10km from those two cities, but which are still close enough to services and infrastructure.
But indeed Moscow is one of the cheapest cities to buy housing in Europe... On par with poorer East European capitals and second-tier Central European cities.
Housing is incredibly expensive. Roughly half of Korea lives and works in the Seoul metro area. The average salary is roughly 40,000 USD and the average apartment (maybe 84 square meters) is over 1 million USD.
Government efforts to cool housing inflation have resulted in a 40 percent minimum down payment for a mortgage.
Housing in Seoul and much of Gyeonggi is a pipe dream for most
Huh? According to https://seoulhomes.kr/en/properties/prices/, in Q1 2026, the average apartment in Seoul sells for ~₩1.2B, ~₩45M per 3.3sqm, that's ~840k USD and ~9.6k USD per sqm or ~900 USD per sqft, in what world is that cheap?
Population can age fast while the supply of desirable places to live still doesn't meet demand.
> housing (which is a requisite status symbol for dating or marriage
I get that culture is hard to change, but it still seems easier than changing the economics. There are men and women out there who presumably are interested in partnering up; at some point you'd think biology will take over irrespective of which achievements have been unlocked. What's stopping them?
System of education? The current form of it have nudges and blockers everywhere to stop population explosion leading us all into Soylent Green type situation.
Oh, you forget - we lie about social status, including to ourselves. Women and men. And as for what determines status ... first rule of social interaction: you can't ask a woman her age and you can't ask a man his wage (in other words: humans are social animals and this information is only available through playing the social game of deception).
So in practice 80% or so of the population is below "average social status". People who don't absolutely need to pair up (historically women can't earn, but require, money and men can't take care of a home/place to sleep, but have to), will refuse to pair up with someone below their signaled social status. In other words: there are TWO average social statuses. First, there is what people believe their own social status is. Second there is what people, on average, see as others social status.
In a "natural" human society, it's basically impossible for anyone over 25 or so to "pair up", unless they have a partner, which is not common at all. Since social status ALSO determines the distribution of food, at that point the first real period of weakness (you get sick, you hurt your leg, you ...) is the end. You can delay this by forming cliques, but not by that much.
Oh and of course, that has an analog in our society. Look how much a plumber gets paid (ie. it's pretty disappointing), despite the shortage. There are low status and high status jobs, and even where it doesn't make sense they determine pay. E.g. there are a lot of cities with a total glut of lawyers ... it makes no sense to give 7 figure wages for people when 70% of whom can't find work, but we do. By contrast there is an incredible shortage of construction workers, and still they're not paid half what a lawyer gets. Rather we'll get immigrants to do it. Why? Because a great many people would rather signal that they're above manual labor than get 7 figures a year.
In other words: I will live in destitution rather than admit I'm low social status, even if low social status would pay well.
Oh and don't forget credit cards: 80%+ of people worldwide consider feeling rich (and showing off) more important than, ironically, money. Note also the many complaints about the economy, which are never about having or not having money, the big complaint seen everywhere is that people who don't have money "feel poor". One might think it should be perfectly normal to not have money and feel poor.
Which also is the big lesson in investment that's coming up: countries will raise inflation to any level rather than cut expenditures. That's how we got to 20% inflation in the 80s. That's how Argentina or even Zimbabwe got there. Ie: when we're getting close to that point, for the love of God, don't buy government bonds.
Preventing obvious human habits from destroying us seems to me the best reason to really give developing AI your best effort. Because the whole "job destruction" argument has a hole in it you could fit a planet through: people don't want to do the destroyed jobs. What do you think is the best: AI taking jobs? Or, that we force young people into nursing, plumbing, construction, ... through more and more extreme measures and making everyone a lot poorer? That's how the system rebalances after all, make people poorer until the plumbing gets done.
I'd say it's more citizen-level apoptosis. These women are the ones exiting the gene pool, not the whole civilization.
But also 4B is an outsized meme especially in the west. It's like furries. We all know about them, but they are not typical people who you can draw conclusions about the civilization from.
The women aren't the ones detecting they have something wrong with them. They are detecting there is something wrong with the next level up, and shutting down that whole thing. Like an apoptosis gene triggered by excessive misfolded proteins.
But in reality they aren't "shutting down that whole thing", they are shutting down their personal lineage and not much else. The women might not be conscious of something wrong with themselves, but if they were cells in a body, their behavior would not indicate the body is sick, only that they are.
You think status signaling isn't part of biology? That it just happened to independently appear in every human culture and many animals that we are aware of?
It’s just a short-cut. The most ostentatious courtships of bird species are found in populations without significant predators. Evolution has granted this as advantage, because they don’t need to screech and squawk and hide from predators.
Take the Birds-of-paradise from New Guinea as the archetype.
I think we're underestimating how relatively recent these social phenomena are.
Just a few decades ago, the average person had very limited exposure to people outside of their immediate town (outside of celebrities and public figures), which really grounds your standards and expectations of other people. Spend 5 minutes in any social media or dating app today and average people around you will start to look severely below average.
There was also stronger cultural pressure to settle down by a certain age, which again, forces you to be more realistic with your options. The tldr is that Our Paleolithic biology has only so much capacity to adapt to today’s rapidly changing culture and environment.
They've also driven a noticeable drop in stock prices in the closing minutes that have been used by quant algos to squeeze even more money out of the market as the leverage is a unmanaged algo that was predictable and could be driven up before it had to force trades.
It's not just the gambling of people, but the systematic use of bots to squeeze leveraged vehicles.
The problem isn't leveraged funds, it's margin on leveraged funds.
Leveraged funds are the safest way for the average investor to get access to leverage because unlike margin there is no risk of margin calls, and your money generally won't go to zero unlike options which are vastly more complicated and can expire.
The reality is that using leveraged funds (or any leverage) is a completely rational move because the average person will never retire wealthy unless they're already making a tech salary or similar.
Investing has always been gambling, even Warren Buffet made his biggest early wins on all-in bets.
Leveraged funds can be an excellent tool for portfolio construction, for example, products like 100% stocks + 100% bonds (so -100% cash; internally borrowed in the ETF), e.g. RSSB.
And just because it's available doesn't mean it should be your only ETF/ETP. Not a recommendation or advice, but something like 50% TQQQ, and 50% risk-off asset (gold, bonds, whatever); rebalanced regularly isn't crazy, and might even have alpha.
> Leveraged funds are the safest way for the average investor to get access to leverage
I... do not agree that leveraged funds are somehow a safest way to access leverage.
Every product including leverage has inherently a non-linear P&L. And from my experience, non sophisticated investors always struggle to grasp the implications of that. It makes returns (on capital) very path dependent, and very nasty during volatile regimes. It breaks the naive assumption of "well I could always hold and wait for the dust to settle".
> unlike margin there is no risk of margin calls
This is a bit of a weird statement. Leverage implies margin, you cannot make it disappear, the funding and associated risk has to come from somewhere, it's just that it is continuously applied, instead of fixed timings.
I do agree that it simplifies planning and reserve management though.
> even Warren Buffet made his biggest early wins on all-in bets.
This is a bit disingenious, note that Buffet did not use leverage...
> This is a bit disingenious, note that Buffet did not use leverage...
In a way, but Buffet wasn't making those investments exclusively using his own money. Effectively there's a degree of implied leverage when you get a performance reward from investing other people's money.
If you invest only $200 a month in the S&P 500 from the age of 18 to 65 you'll end up retiring a multi-millionaire. It doesn't take a lot but people are either unaware of how it works or not disciplined enough to put aside $200 a month. Considering that on average Americans are spending $150+ a month on subscription services and $300+ eating out there's plenty of room in the budget for investing $200 a month.
There's very few people in the world that can maintain 47 years of uninterrupted discipline. Most people hit one or a number of:
- A significant health issue that also drains them economically
- A broken marriage that cuts their savings in half (or less)
- A low point in their life where saving for retirement just doesn't make sense in their heads anymore because they feel they'd rather die tomorrow.
- A streak of bad events longer than they planned for (the car breaks down, they got fired and their mother-in-law needs financial assistance all at the same time)
- Etc, etc...
The point is: nobody is retiring a millionare through the process you described. Either you save signfiicantly more at certain points (because you earn more) and get lucky enough with the above where you make it there, or you don't retire a millionare even after having saved consistently for many periods in your life.
$200 per month is the minimum to retire with $2 million+. But you can always put more in as your financial situation improves (like getting a raise). You can also make wiser decisions like not getting a $770 a month car payment (yes, that's the current average new car payment in the US).
I work with clients of all financial levels and almost all of them have upwards of $600 a month to put toward retirement/investments once they get on a proper budget and develop the discipline to stick to it.
Yes, emergencies happen but not as often as you'd think and most incidents are manageable, especially if you plan for them. Saving ahead of time for car maintenance or AC replacement, having a bucket for medical expenses or family, getting a prenuptial agreement, etc.
I've been a financial coach for over 20 years and almost all my clients who have reached retirement age have done so as millionaires using this exact method.
As a Korean, the reason people rush into stocks is simple: labor value has been completely destroyed.
Realistically, it's nearly impossible for high income young people in their 20s and 30s to buy a house in Seoul. That forces them to move to the provinces, but then there's almost no infrastructure. No companies either.
So many people turn to leverage in hopes of a life changing reversal.
The recent rise in the KOSPI index happened because some of the loopholes that Korean conglomerates used to make inheritance easier were blocked by revisions to the Commercial Act. One of the uncertainties that had been called 'Korean risk' was removed, and the market went up.
For a Korean man, the moment you leave Seoul, not just the outskirts, but out of Seoul entirely, there's no one to talk to about IT jobs. I live outside Seoul, and the infrastructure gap is about 10 to 20 years behind. On top of that, there are no IT companies, just mostly low income manual labor jobs.
The median monthly income for Korean men is about 3 million KRW, while the average Seoul apartment price is 1.3 billion KRW and the median price is 997 million KRW. That means you'd need to work for about 25~30 years just to buy a home, but job tenure is getting shorter, so that's not realistic.
So people gamble on leverage, hoping for a life changing win. Everyone around me knows it's gambling, but they figure they're already in a dead end situation anyway, so they have nothing to lose.
I live and work in IT outside Seoul, but the IT business has already matured, and there are many well established companies. The Korean market itself is small, so early movers have already taken the lead. There's no room for latecomers like me. That's why I take on work from the West, China, and Japan regardless, but even that's hard without a reputation.
The moment you leave Seoul, a Korean's chances of success drop to nearly zero. That's why people cling to the city so desperately.
And honestly, I've hardly gambled on my life. But I'm drowning in debt, and sometimes I feel like a fool for working so hard.
Can people live cheaply in the outskirts and work remotely for a foreign company? Or would that still not get you on track to be able to buy in/near Seoul?
Korean and English have very different grammatical structures. I can read English in real time, but writing, listening, and speaking are difficult. (Maybe it'd be different if I were more proficient, but I've never lived abroad, so that's how it is.)
Because of that, remote work usually requires speaking, so most interviews end in rejection. I can communicate through chat, but the vast majority of employers want interviews.
And as the IT industry has grown and become more established, Korea has developed its own standards that diverge from global norms. This makes Korean IT hard to sell globally. I try to follow global standards, but in Korea, I'm told I'm using 'wrong technology' or doing 'over-engineering.'
Either way, the technology you learn or implement is often quite different—because the market leaders set the technical standards.
So independent developers in Korea have to learn both Korean IT standards and global standards—on top of English. (This is extremely painful.)
So if I could do remote work for a foreign company, it would be really, really great. But in reality, English is usually where things fall apart. Koreans often praise Korean as a 'scientific' language, but for most Koreans, it actually acts as a shackle. On the other hand, it's also because of this language that the domestic market is able to maintain at least a minimum level of viability.
It could work, but those types of jobs (paying significantly more than local salary and yet fully remote in a different time zone) are few and not easy to get nowadays (not that they were ubiquitous before).
To be precise, it's because of Korea's corporate structure. Korea operates in a way that favors large conglomerates. Since the media is also owned by corporations, it tends to protect corporate interests rather than amplify citizens' voices.
The core problem with 'sacrificing one region to save another' is that you need a market to consume what you're saving. But there is no market to consume it. Most regions are organized around subcontractors for specific large conglomerates.
The typical structure is: large conglomerate (prime contractor) -> powerful local subcontractor -> sub->subcontractor. Often, the powerful local subcontractors are companies founded by former executives from the prime contractor.
In other words, it's a subcontractor-of-subcontractor structure—and the state doesn't block it; it actually encourages it. To survive, independent developers have to work as sub-subcontractors. Because starting a business requires capital.
I've worked across a wide range of fields: finance, drones, factory machinery, tax SaaS, and more. I've worked in over 20 domains. Why? Because while developers are scarce in regional areas and needed, when project budgets shrink, developer labor costs are the first to be cut. Since there's no other work, developers accept poor conditions. And once you get on the wrong side of a powerful local company, finding the next job becomes difficult.
Most independent developers can't succeed unless they can handle this wide range of domains.
Suppose you make an app that 1 in 10,000 people use. In the US, with 340 million people, that's 34,000 users. Add in the English-speaking world, and the potential user base is even larger. And since the global UI/UX standards are based on US standards, it's easier for apps to scale globally.
But if you release an app in Korean, and 1 in 10,000 people use it, that's only about 5,000 users out of 50 million. The scale gap is enormous.
That's why Korea has concentrated everything into one region to maintain global competitiveness. This is the side effect.
But I think this is becoming a global problem. Just as the fertility crisis isn't unique to Korea, Korea is just a more visible case because its landmass is small. I'm convinced that all countries will eventually go through similar pains
Disagree on that being the advice in the US. Most basic investment advice (and target-date funds) will use a three-fund portfolio containing US, ex-US, and bonds.
Generally the default fund in a decent 401(k) (employer managed but largely employee funded retirement plan) will be a "target date retirement fund" that contains a mix of equities and bonds according to the expected risk tolerance of someone at that age, and generally the equity component is also split between US and foreign equities.
ungreased0675 | 18 hours ago
[OP] mapping365 | 18 hours ago
appplication | 16 hours ago
brcmthrowaway | 18 hours ago
dcrazy | 18 hours ago
Also you might painting too wide a brush with “the West”. I wouldn’t assume that Americans and, say, Austrians have similar exposure to public markets.
adventured | 17 hours ago
That said, there's no question that US households have grown fat on the massive expansion of the tech giants. A one trillion $ market cap was shocking not long ago, now you've got Apple and Nvidia at $4-$5 trillion, each about as valuable as China's top 25-30 stocks combined. The US wealth base is highly exposed to a PE multiple compression event, which is likely whenever the bubbly valuations centered around the AI boom reduce.
Also to put a reference figure on it, China's top 500 stocks are roughly worth $11.5 trillion. Nvidia + Apple are worth a combined ~$9.6 trillion.
jiggawatts | 17 hours ago
If China decides to take over Taiwan and nationalises TMSC, redirecting their top tier silicon to 100% Chinese companies then what are the American firms worth?
HWR_14 | 16 hours ago
sitkack | 16 hours ago
China is not going to sabotage themselves like that.
tyeaglet | 16 hours ago
jiggawatts | 15 hours ago
By whom?
China would be mad to destroy the most valuable building on that island.
I doubt Taiwain would bomb themselves.
I can't see anyone in the US acting like this either.
oasisaimlessly | 13 hours ago
inigyou | 12 hours ago
hiddencost | 17 hours ago
WorkerBee28474 | 17 hours ago
FabHK | 17 hours ago
That is what Jane Street (IIRC) was accused of. Some of its traders then went to another hedge fund and did the same trick there, reducing Jane Street's profit, and ended up being sued by Jane Street. (BTW, Jane Street claims it was not manipulation, but basis trade arbitrage.)
Of course, 9 out of 10 gambler end up in the red.
vkou | 17 hours ago
xyzzy9563 | 16 hours ago
QGQBGdeZREunxLe | 12 hours ago
> It is also used despite many developed countries or regions not being culturally Western (e.g. Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao)
inigyou | 12 hours ago
raziel2701 | 18 hours ago
The turn towards financial nihilism will continue.
trvz | 17 hours ago
purpleflame1257 | 17 hours ago
itake | 14 hours ago
Governments have only managed to slow, not stop or reverse this trend.
Terr_ | 16 hours ago
Kind of like pathological gambling: Sure, some people are susceptible, but there's also an entire industry around finding them and making them succumb.
kelseyfrog | 16 hours ago
Laboring in a capitalist economy is a loser's strategy because your capital is you body's ability to produce value and that has a maximum physical limit. Why participate in an economy using a strategy that has a natural upper bound? It makes no sense. You're not even playing the game poorly - you're not playing the game at all.
Behemoth66 | 15 hours ago
kelseyfrog | 15 hours ago
dozerly | 15 hours ago
ToValueFunfetti | 8 hours ago
bananamogul | 17 hours ago
(Which is not to imply that these are smart men).
scotty79 | 16 hours ago
verteu | 16 hours ago
nirui | 14 hours ago
However, I found that if the bar of doing business is high enough, "investing" in stock market maybe safer than start a proper business. Because if a business failed, you likely lost a huge amount wealth, including everything you put into the business and maybe more. Whereas if you buy stock responsibly (for example, DCA VOO/&QQQ), there's a high chance you'll eventually bounce back.
Maybe that's one reason the young Koreans invested so much in their stock markets. Their country failed them by restricting them from opportunities, the only way they can save themselves is by gambling.
inigyou | 12 hours ago
inigyou | 12 hours ago
djchung | 17 hours ago
chanux | 17 hours ago
https://www.reutersconnect.com/item/south-korean-retail-inve...
But it seems there's still a lot in their FA phase in the FAFO cycle.
x313 | 17 hours ago
Add to that, stock gains in Korea are often used to finance housing purchases (or real estate investment) so many retail investors are scared of being "locked out" of housing (which is a requisite status symbol for dating or marriage) if they're not making the same capital gains others are.
Currently Korean social media is full of stories of leveraged day traders who've gotten rich the past year, HBM employees who've made bonuses worth decades of salary (e.g. memes of Samsung employees in luxury cars), etc. Lots of comments along the lines of "everyone is getting rich except me". It's all reminiscent of the crypto frenzy in the US a few years ago but way more intense and concentrated.
vasco | 16 hours ago
x313 | 16 hours ago
aunty_helen | 16 hours ago
uncivilized | 16 hours ago
rcbdev | 16 hours ago
anukin | 15 hours ago
krackers | 13 hours ago
inigyou | 12 hours ago
anovikov | 16 hours ago
Barrin92 | 16 hours ago
no it's very possible because in an aging country people relocate to a handful of cities. 50% of South Korea's population now lives in the Seoul metropolitan area. The real estate that's getting cheaper is the one decaying in the countryside.
It's like saying Russia can't have expensive real estate because the country is big, what matters is where people are actually moving.
SturgeonsLaw | 15 hours ago
And for many, if the property is not within 10km of the Sydney or Melbourne city centre, it might as well be in the dusty Outback desert.
apparent | 15 hours ago
atwrk | 14 hours ago
apparent | 14 hours ago
anovikov | 14 hours ago
timoshishi | 15 hours ago
Government efforts to cool housing inflation have resulted in a 40 percent minimum down payment for a mortgage.
Housing in Seoul and much of Gyeonggi is a pipe dream for most
anovikov | 14 hours ago
oefrha | 15 hours ago
Population can age fast while the supply of desirable places to live still doesn't meet demand.
stickfigure | 15 hours ago
I get that culture is hard to change, but it still seems easier than changing the economics. There are men and women out there who presumably are interested in partnering up; at some point you'd think biology will take over irrespective of which achievements have been unlocked. What's stopping them?
numpad0 | 15 hours ago
lottin | 15 hours ago
stickfigure | 13 hours ago
spwa4 | 13 hours ago
So in practice 80% or so of the population is below "average social status". People who don't absolutely need to pair up (historically women can't earn, but require, money and men can't take care of a home/place to sleep, but have to), will refuse to pair up with someone below their signaled social status. In other words: there are TWO average social statuses. First, there is what people believe their own social status is. Second there is what people, on average, see as others social status.
In a "natural" human society, it's basically impossible for anyone over 25 or so to "pair up", unless they have a partner, which is not common at all. Since social status ALSO determines the distribution of food, at that point the first real period of weakness (you get sick, you hurt your leg, you ...) is the end. You can delay this by forming cliques, but not by that much.
Oh and of course, that has an analog in our society. Look how much a plumber gets paid (ie. it's pretty disappointing), despite the shortage. There are low status and high status jobs, and even where it doesn't make sense they determine pay. E.g. there are a lot of cities with a total glut of lawyers ... it makes no sense to give 7 figure wages for people when 70% of whom can't find work, but we do. By contrast there is an incredible shortage of construction workers, and still they're not paid half what a lawyer gets. Rather we'll get immigrants to do it. Why? Because a great many people would rather signal that they're above manual labor than get 7 figures a year.
In other words: I will live in destitution rather than admit I'm low social status, even if low social status would pay well.
Oh and don't forget credit cards: 80%+ of people worldwide consider feeling rich (and showing off) more important than, ironically, money. Note also the many complaints about the economy, which are never about having or not having money, the big complaint seen everywhere is that people who don't have money "feel poor". One might think it should be perfectly normal to not have money and feel poor.
Which also is the big lesson in investment that's coming up: countries will raise inflation to any level rather than cut expenditures. That's how we got to 20% inflation in the 80s. That's how Argentina or even Zimbabwe got there. Ie: when we're getting close to that point, for the love of God, don't buy government bonds.
Preventing obvious human habits from destroying us seems to me the best reason to really give developing AI your best effort. Because the whole "job destruction" argument has a hole in it you could fit a planet through: people don't want to do the destroyed jobs. What do you think is the best: AI taking jobs? Or, that we force young people into nursing, plumbing, construction, ... through more and more extreme measures and making everyone a lot poorer? That's how the system rebalances after all, make people poorer until the plumbing gets done.
Those are the choices. AI it is. At least for me.
readthenotes1 | 15 hours ago
Porn and 4B divert coupling...
mock-possum | 14 hours ago
pas | 13 hours ago
inigyou | 12 hours ago
eudamoniac | 6 hours ago
But also 4B is an outsized meme especially in the west. It's like furries. We all know about them, but they are not typical people who you can draw conclusions about the civilization from.
inigyou | 2 hours ago
eudamoniac | an hour ago
inigyou | an hour ago
It's not just a small number of women.
When the misfolded protein response triggers cell death, the proteins that activate the response are not, themselves, misfolded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfolded_protein_response
xboxnolifes | 14 hours ago
xtiansimon | 9 hours ago
It’s just a short-cut. The most ostentatious courtships of bird species are found in populations without significant predators. Evolution has granted this as advantage, because they don’t need to screech and squawk and hide from predators.
Take the Birds-of-paradise from New Guinea as the archetype.
xboxnolifes | 5 hours ago
Of course signaling is a short cut. You cant transmit your entire lifes experiences to another people in an instant. You signal and read signals.
dumberquestions | 5 hours ago
Just a few decades ago, the average person had very limited exposure to people outside of their immediate town (outside of celebrities and public figures), which really grounds your standards and expectations of other people. Spend 5 minutes in any social media or dating app today and average people around you will start to look severely below average.
There was also stronger cultural pressure to settle down by a certain age, which again, forces you to be more realistic with your options. The tldr is that Our Paleolithic biology has only so much capacity to adapt to today’s rapidly changing culture and environment.
cyanydeez | 10 hours ago
It's not just the gambling of people, but the systematic use of bots to squeeze leveraged vehicles.
FabHK | 17 hours ago
bwfan123 | 15 hours ago
mkotlikov | 16 hours ago
Leveraged funds are the safest way for the average investor to get access to leverage because unlike margin there is no risk of margin calls, and your money generally won't go to zero unlike options which are vastly more complicated and can expire.
The reality is that using leveraged funds (or any leverage) is a completely rational move because the average person will never retire wealthy unless they're already making a tech salary or similar.
Investing has always been gambling, even Warren Buffet made his biggest early wins on all-in bets.
dannyw | 16 hours ago
And just because it's available doesn't mean it should be your only ETF/ETP. Not a recommendation or advice, but something like 50% TQQQ, and 50% risk-off asset (gold, bonds, whatever); rebalanced regularly isn't crazy, and might even have alpha.
Galanwe | 15 hours ago
I... do not agree that leveraged funds are somehow a safest way to access leverage.
Every product including leverage has inherently a non-linear P&L. And from my experience, non sophisticated investors always struggle to grasp the implications of that. It makes returns (on capital) very path dependent, and very nasty during volatile regimes. It breaks the naive assumption of "well I could always hold and wait for the dust to settle".
> unlike margin there is no risk of margin calls
This is a bit of a weird statement. Leverage implies margin, you cannot make it disappear, the funding and associated risk has to come from somewhere, it's just that it is continuously applied, instead of fixed timings.
I do agree that it simplifies planning and reserve management though.
> even Warren Buffet made his biggest early wins on all-in bets.
This is a bit disingenious, note that Buffet did not use leverage...
mkotlikov | 15 hours ago
weakened_malloc | 14 hours ago
In a way, but Buffet wasn't making those investments exclusively using his own money. Effectively there's a degree of implied leverage when you get a performance reward from investing other people's money.
phyzix5761 | 8 hours ago
kilburn | 5 hours ago
- A significant health issue that also drains them economically
- A broken marriage that cuts their savings in half (or less)
- A low point in their life where saving for retirement just doesn't make sense in their heads anymore because they feel they'd rather die tomorrow.
- A streak of bad events longer than they planned for (the car breaks down, they got fired and their mother-in-law needs financial assistance all at the same time)
- Etc, etc...
The point is: nobody is retiring a millionare through the process you described. Either you save signfiicantly more at certain points (because you earn more) and get lucky enough with the above where you make it there, or you don't retire a millionare even after having saved consistently for many periods in your life.
phyzix5761 | 5 hours ago
I work with clients of all financial levels and almost all of them have upwards of $600 a month to put toward retirement/investments once they get on a proper budget and develop the discipline to stick to it.
Yes, emergencies happen but not as often as you'd think and most incidents are manageable, especially if you plan for them. Saving ahead of time for car maintenance or AC replacement, having a bucket for medical expenses or family, getting a prenuptial agreement, etc.
I've been a financial coach for over 20 years and almost all my clients who have reached retirement age have done so as millionaires using this exact method.
jdw64 | 16 hours ago
Realistically, it's nearly impossible for high income young people in their 20s and 30s to buy a house in Seoul. That forces them to move to the provinces, but then there's almost no infrastructure. No companies either.
So many people turn to leverage in hopes of a life changing reversal.
The recent rise in the KOSPI index happened because some of the loopholes that Korean conglomerates used to make inheritance easier were blocked by revisions to the Commercial Act. One of the uncertainties that had been called 'Korean risk' was removed, and the market went up.
For a Korean man, the moment you leave Seoul, not just the outskirts, but out of Seoul entirely, there's no one to talk to about IT jobs. I live outside Seoul, and the infrastructure gap is about 10 to 20 years behind. On top of that, there are no IT companies, just mostly low income manual labor jobs.
The median monthly income for Korean men is about 3 million KRW, while the average Seoul apartment price is 1.3 billion KRW and the median price is 997 million KRW. That means you'd need to work for about 25~30 years just to buy a home, but job tenure is getting shorter, so that's not realistic.
So people gamble on leverage, hoping for a life changing win. Everyone around me knows it's gambling, but they figure they're already in a dead end situation anyway, so they have nothing to lose.
I live and work in IT outside Seoul, but the IT business has already matured, and there are many well established companies. The Korean market itself is small, so early movers have already taken the lead. There's no room for latecomers like me. That's why I take on work from the West, China, and Japan regardless, but even that's hard without a reputation.
The moment you leave Seoul, a Korean's chances of success drop to nearly zero. That's why people cling to the city so desperately.
And honestly, I've hardly gambled on my life. But I'm drowning in debt, and sometimes I feel like a fool for working so hard.
apparent | 15 hours ago
jdw64 | 15 hours ago
Korean and English have very different grammatical structures. I can read English in real time, but writing, listening, and speaking are difficult. (Maybe it'd be different if I were more proficient, but I've never lived abroad, so that's how it is.)
Because of that, remote work usually requires speaking, so most interviews end in rejection. I can communicate through chat, but the vast majority of employers want interviews.
And as the IT industry has grown and become more established, Korea has developed its own standards that diverge from global norms. This makes Korean IT hard to sell globally. I try to follow global standards, but in Korea, I'm told I'm using 'wrong technology' or doing 'over-engineering.'
Either way, the technology you learn or implement is often quite different—because the market leaders set the technical standards.
So independent developers in Korea have to learn both Korean IT standards and global standards—on top of English. (This is extremely painful.)
So if I could do remote work for a foreign company, it would be really, really great. But in reality, English is usually where things fall apart. Koreans often praise Korean as a 'scientific' language, but for most Koreans, it actually acts as a shackle. On the other hand, it's also because of this language that the domestic market is able to maintain at least a minimum level of viability.
strangegecko | 15 hours ago
usrnm | 15 hours ago
That actually sounds like a business opportunity, if there is a steady stream of people moving out if Seoul.
> On top of that, there are no IT companies
Why don't Korean companies embrace WFH? Again sounds like a huge competitive advantage on the job market
alephnerd | 14 hours ago
They aren't. That's why those areas are falling behind.
jdw64 | 14 hours ago
The core problem with 'sacrificing one region to save another' is that you need a market to consume what you're saving. But there is no market to consume it. Most regions are organized around subcontractors for specific large conglomerates.
The typical structure is: large conglomerate (prime contractor) -> powerful local subcontractor -> sub->subcontractor. Often, the powerful local subcontractors are companies founded by former executives from the prime contractor.
In other words, it's a subcontractor-of-subcontractor structure—and the state doesn't block it; it actually encourages it. To survive, independent developers have to work as sub-subcontractors. Because starting a business requires capital.
I've worked across a wide range of fields: finance, drones, factory machinery, tax SaaS, and more. I've worked in over 20 domains. Why? Because while developers are scarce in regional areas and needed, when project budgets shrink, developer labor costs are the first to be cut. Since there's no other work, developers accept poor conditions. And once you get on the wrong side of a powerful local company, finding the next job becomes difficult.
Most independent developers can't succeed unless they can handle this wide range of domains.
Suppose you make an app that 1 in 10,000 people use. In the US, with 340 million people, that's 34,000 users. Add in the English-speaking world, and the potential user base is even larger. And since the global UI/UX standards are based on US standards, it's easier for apps to scale globally.
But if you release an app in Korean, and 1 in 10,000 people use it, that's only about 5,000 users out of 50 million. The scale gap is enormous.
That's why Korea has concentrated everything into one region to maintain global competitiveness. This is the side effect.
But I think this is becoming a global problem. Just as the fertility crisis isn't unique to Korea, Korea is just a more visible case because its landmass is small. I'm convinced that all countries will eventually go through similar pains
oezi | 16 hours ago
In Germany the consensus is MSCI World or FTSE All-World ETFs.
I believe in the US most advice goes to VTSAX (US Total Market), VOO (S&P500) and maybe QQQ (NASDAQ100) which means only US stocks.
What gets recommended in other countries?
rafram | 15 hours ago
oezi | 14 hours ago
rafram | 7 hours ago
khuey | 15 hours ago
e.g. Fidelity's fund for people planning to retire around 2050 https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/summary/31579...
itake | 14 hours ago
My IRA/401(k) actually has close to 100% cash/bonds to minimize annual taxable impact and the rest of my portfolio is equities.
khuey | 6 hours ago
eudamoniac | 6 hours ago
oezi | 14 hours ago
khuey | 6 hours ago
eudamoniac | 6 hours ago
amarcheschi | 15 hours ago
This of course if you're doing by yourself, banks definitely won't recommend that but some other bullshit fund with high costs and poor performances