Comment by jollybean | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jollybean | Hacker News Reader

About 1/3 of them want to pursue careers in Social Media as 'influences' as well.

Gen Z will be 'crypto millionaires' but those millions will be worthless.

I think finally we can say 'The Kids Are Not Alright' without being entirely old cranks, or rather, there is a kind of a problem that didn't exist before now that we are in 'the age of surplus' at least for middle->upper tier kids.

When I hear Crypto talk, all I hear are sad addicted gamblers talking about 'The Slot That's Tilted to Win' which is only marginally better than classical investors just speculating, but at the very least, investing and allocation of capital are materially important things.

The saddest thing of all is that an entire generation thinks that wealth comes out of thin air, and that they somehow deserve to be rich because of some luck entirely disconnected with the collective participation, work and input of a lot of people. 'Inequality' is a problem no doubt, and a lot of the 'rich' didn't do much to earn it either, but that's a separate question.

> The saddest thing of all is that an entire generation thinks that wealth comes out of thin air

Citation needed

The citation is in the title: believing that people are going to get rich by holding/trading magic numbers, which is not a value creating activity, is believing that they're going to get rich by creating value out of thin air.

How is this different than your typical wall street trader in the 80s and 90s? The only thing that's different now is that access to these markets isn't gated behind class and privilege, anyone can participate. Maybe that's the most scary thing of all, not that this is different, but that this is how it's always been and we just told ourselves a beautiful fiction of "hard work" and "grit".

Truth. P2TFP

?

Wall Street trades assets, mostly ownership of companies, bonds and other things that have underlying value, which is also objectively measurable.

'Investing' is a key part of our financial infrastructure, it underpins everything.

Most bankers make their money off of financial services i.e. investing for others (Private Wealth, Retirement Funds), Investment Banking, providing special financing vehicles, market making etc. etc.. Some investors make their money from 'trading'.

Most trading is a financially valuable thing, it provides liquidity to investors.

Now - yes - it can get into bubble like territory, detached from underlying reality, and very speculative, in which case there is some analogy to crypto, but by and large, it's a secondary issue.

And FYI this has nothing to do with the 80's or 90's.

'Access to Markets Behind Glass Ceiling' is actually false.

You have 'access' to 100% of publicly traded stocks. You have for several generations. You even have access to private investments and hedge funds, so long as you meet a minimum criteria (i.e. 100K in the bank). While working at those banks it'll help to have an Ivy League background, even then it's still possible to work there.

The more money you have, the more access to investment opportunities, but that's rational and inherent in the system.

Other than 'any asset can be speculative' there's almost nothing to relating crypto to equity and bond markets.

Don't write off gen z, write off their parents and educators who haven't shown them another way.

We have created a harsh economic climate, surely we are more responsible than the next generation.

Tech has built a brand of meteoric magic, it's not surprising snake oil can be sold in such an environment.

Their parents hit their early adulthood with the advent of the internet. I don’t think anyone knew wtf was going on.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com