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Comment by pathseeker | Hacker News Reader

>It's plain unethical and ridiculous that 20 year olds with no steady income get access to highly leveraged financial instruments that can ruin them for life.

None of these instruments can ruin a 20 year old for life. Worst case is 7 years of trashed credit from a bankruptcy.

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You might have missed the story of the 20 year old that killed himself as a result of Robinhood: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/06/17/20-y...

A healthy person wouldn't kill themselves in that situation. I don't think it's fair to say he killed himself as a result of Robinhood.

None of the financial instruments did that. That person didn't even have actual debt, just one leg assigned on a spread that would have been resolved by the end of the weekend.

That's a pretty damn bad "worst case"

If it wasn't robin hood it would have been something else. It takes a certain addictive personality to keep doubling down and doubling down.

Not necessarily. There aren't really that many frictionless ways to gamble hundreds of thousands of dollars on your phone. People, especially young people, may make stupid, reckless decisions, but those decisions are often harder to get into and limited in scope and damage.

And I have no defense for the "something else"s -- casino gambling exploits people in exactly the same way: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/12/losing-...

Cash advance on credit card and you can gamble on whatever you want. The cash advance on the credit card is the dangerous part.

You could even cash advance on a credit card, buy a car, and wreck it and be in the same financial situation as you would if you gambled it away on robinhood.

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