• darq@kbin.social
    501·
    1 year ago

    Except if you have enough money, it’s not even gambling anymore. The only way you’d lose is if everybody loses.

    And that’s completely ignoring the fact that enough money lets you influence the rules of the game to tilt the odds in your favour.

    • Techmaster@lemm.ee
      9·
      1 year ago

      Once you have enough money you can make even more by betting against others’ success.

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
      4·
      1 year ago

      And if you’re only slightly rich (as in, daddy’s a lawyer) you can afford to gamble, lose, and then try again.

  • merc@sh.itjust.works
    36·
    1 year ago

    If you’re rich you can afford to gamble, lose and try again.

    If you’re poor, you can gamble, win, and then have to spend your winnings helping out your family and community. Like, paying for the operation your uncle needs but couldn’t afford, or helping mom’s friend from church avoid losing her home.

    This is a reason that a lot of poor-person owned businesses don’t grow. They may start strong, but then the business owner has trouble continuing to invest.

    • AlwaysNowNeverNotMe@kbin.social
      7·
      1 year ago

      Not unless you do it outside a golden palace that abstracts your money into vouchers and chips.

      But generally wealthy people make more gambles in business, partnership, accountability, other people’s lives and social welfare, and the general stability of the world.

      Like say becoming an arms dealer then paying the cost of a F-150 economy package to a couple senators and having them spend their endless war chests with no audits or oversight on some missiles to kill some goat farmers or something.

      Or creating a pesticide with the upside of remaining active in soil for 4 or 5 centuries (and recycling in the human liver for up to a year after exposure) and having it produced in an impoverished southern town and then exported to French Polynesia so they can continue to grow cloned banana trees.

      Or like taking doctors on nice yacht lunches and golf trips and telling them yes you really have developed a non addictive opioid.

    • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
      3·
      1 year ago

      Was any of your ancestors a particularly successful mass murderer in the middle ages and/or a recent civil war?

      • Wogi@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        I mean, depending on your definition of mass murderer, you can safely say yes.

      • enkers@sh.itjust.works
        4·
        1 year ago

        I disagree. The serious answer is you have to be the one person that gets lucky.

        Take 1024 people each with $1000. They all play roulette and go all in every round, half on black half on red. After 10 rounds, 1023 people have lost all their money, and one has won a million dollars.

        The person who “made it” didn’t do anything different, or play a +EV game. He just got lucky.

        • PaintedSnail@lemmy.world
          3·
          1 year ago

          Roulette is not a positive sum game, though. If you keep playing, eventually you will lose everything to the house.

          A positive sum game is where repeated plays will average out to a net gain. The secret is having enough initial capital to keep you alive if your initial gambles don’t pan out. People living paycheck to paycheck don’t have that

          • enkers@sh.itjust.works
            4·
            1 year ago

            You’re correct, but you’re also being a bit pedantic and ignoring the point OP is trying to make. It still illustrates the point just fine at 47.4% instead of 50%. Odds of winning 10 in a row go from 1:1,024 to 1:1,746.

  • MeanEYE@lemmy.world
    5·
    1 year ago

    Image is actually cut off. What’s missing is below each person there’s a swimming pool. For poor people it’s filled with water, for successful it’s filled with money.