But in the process there's no control and no sense of skill or judgement or expertise. I'm just a gambler.
If on-the-other-hand I gave that money to a GP in a fund to invest on my behalf, they could come back with a game-changing amount of money in some circumstances, and there's a plausible claim of skill and expertise in my selection of the GP, and the GP's selection of investments.
Same potential for asymmetric returns as gambling, but in a format that reinforces the illusions of skill and control and just maybe really is a question of skill at some level.
I want to say that losing money by being bad at things is always possible, but making money by being good at things is far more a matter of intangibles than anybody want to admit, and proving that any success was deterministic rather than little turtles racing down the beach to the sea and on-average half make it is nearly impossible.
We all love the illusion of control. But the statistics just don't bear it out as a fact in business.