The quiet part: "Silly workers, thinking they could buy they're way into the capital class with some surplus hours of earnings. They don't even know how the game works! Ah well, back to the toiling for them I suppose."
A risky bet that loses doesn’t mean the bettor did something wrong, and one that wins doesn’t mean the bettor did something right. They played odds against unknown factors and came out up or down. If the market is efficient at all, it’s in the aggregate, not on an individual basis.
But for “amateur investors” enough loss may mean that they’re out of the game, which is different than for those who have the luxury of more capital.
Personal outcomes for “amateur investors” are very much about luck, even when pursuing more ostensibly conservative strategies.
Its not like you have to have a certain amlunt of money to invest : we have nano options and fractional shares now. Theres no barrier to entry. E.g. you can run the same strategies as pros with the same risk of losing your bank roll. Having more money doesnt make it inherently less likely that youll lose all of it
Why is that?
and socially because the goal of the system is to get participants to behave in "optimal" fashion, for a certain very specific definition of "optimal".
Imagine how dysfunctional the world would be if you could never loose money investing in something.
This brings up questions like "where did that extra $50 come from", but maybe you get the point of the original comment now.
This is the underlying principle of investment, that the money is being utilized by someone for potential economic gain.
If that money is just parked such that its always available for a return then it isn't really an investment.