I don't think anybody wants to return to haggling for piece of fruit they buy from the supermarket, yet somehow many of my friends are regular office worker that feel they have an edge over the highest paying industry in the world.
I can count the number of people I've met who genuinely beat the smart money, with no formal training, on the fingers of one foot. (The one guy who would maybe fit into that category was a physicist who was formerly a professor at Harvard, so still hardly the kind of person you were talking about.)
The problem is that ordinary people are replicating the strategies that professional traders use, without realizing professional traders bet other people's money, keep the profits, let their customers eat the losses, and reboot at-will with fresh "other people's money" when they go bust.
The "norm" (average) for money managers can be achieved by having half the money managers lose money to the other half. This works well for them, because when they win they win, and when they lose someone else pays. Money managers can go big or go home, and keep trying, because in the long run they're not eating the losses.
But people betting their own money on the same strategies actually lose their own money when they lose.
People used to see working as a normal part of life, and used to invest part of their salary in solid funds to retire on those investments later. Those in well-paying jobs expected to retire on a bigger amount than those in less well paid jobs.
Nowadays, people seem to view the idea of working as an insult and want to retire in their 30's on some insane gambling profits, both in the /r/wsb community, in the FI/RE community and the bitcoinists.
I do wonder what caused this attitude change over the last 10y or so.
For the system to be rigged in favor of the ultra-rich, you'll need a army of enforcers, the influencers, the lawyers, even the developers that are "just doing tech".
Gambling with your savings might seem like a personal choice, but in the end there will be bailouts that I will have to pay for. You might not agree with where I draw the line, but ignoring that there has to be line is putting your head in the sand and ignoring reality.
I can't blame you for choosing your source of income, it makes sense if you choose what it right for yourself. You are probably a highly talented individual that is leaving the actual value creation to the rest of us though, and one by one people are giving up.
I swear, some people here want to live in a nanny state.
One person is not important, but if a million people engage in some economic activity we're all affected in the long term, so should have a word to say about this.
Your comment addresses the latter. Unfortunately, that means it’s wholly non-sequitur.
Do you have any examples? The classic "authoritarian" human suffering example is the Nazis, or communist Russia - and I don't think either of those claimed to take away liberties for the sake of "their own good".
Cannabis (might) have real implications on mental health, I'm not sure I agree.
And come on, we’re past this point in the medicine now. By the time any mental health implications take root, the person is dead. That’s why I said “palliative care”. Anyone refusing marijuana for analgesia to someone suffering from terminal illness is violating the Hippocratic Oath. The science is clear.
I'm not sure what cannabis offer over Opioids, but if state authoritarianism is limited to such a niche I wouldn't worry over it.