we both win at the expense of the people who bought at the crest and sold at the trough. Both win at the expense of...!! btw I haven't referred to my self. You've made another assumption
LOL Intelligentsia? Nigga please. Stu, I think you missed my point totally and completely (deja vu all over again). The fact that people often have different underlying assumptions, though they do not realize it, is exactly the point I was trying to make. If we all made the same implicit assumptions, 90% of arguments would never come about in the first place. It is often the case that if two people violently disagree on 'A', and both of them think their viewpoint on 'A' is obvious and clear as day, then neither has stepped back to realize they have made contrasting assumptions in regards to undiscussed element 'B' which leads to 'A' and catayzes belief in regards to 'A' in the first place. And yes you are right, the goal is to find common ground. And to find common ground, it is necessary to dig up and weed out the hidden assumptions that are creating the conflict. We are both trying to get to the same place- clarity of understanding- but you wrongly assume the journey is easy. And this necessary process- of finding where deeper assumptions are misaligned and then rectifying those misalignments before moving forward- or alternatively agreeing to disagree- is the "overcomplication" that you speak out against. Presuppositions / first assumptions are like the foundations of a building; they have to line up before you can build anything on top of them. To reverse a wonderfully eloquent phrase from Dan M: "It's not f--in' simple, it's f---in' complex!"
darkhorse, in typical fashion, is unnecessarily complicating matters. sure everything, at some level, is connected, but in order to be able to succinctly and coherently discuss a certain subject we need to arbritrarily draw the line at some point as to what is relevant, and assume that some things just "are". otherwise we'd have to drag ourselves through a quagmire of epistemology every time we wanted do discuss some topic. in the case of ZSG and the stockmarket, that line is drawn at the dollar value positions (long and short) of the market participants. as the stockmarket is a perpetual entity and there are unequal amounts of longs and shorts, for the purposes of this discussion (not to mention for the purposes of making money) the stock market is not a zero sum game.
Not having the patience to wade through this thread, the bottom line is Daniel hit it on the head here. It is certainly NOT a zero sum game. As I said, I have not read all the responses, but I don't need to. This is a clear issue. I can't even begin to see where it can be argued. This is not an "opinion" issue, as are so many that are debated on this site. This is simple mathematics. Peace, rs7 ps: welcome back Darkhorse!
LOL = last refuge of defeated position. oh, no wait. 2nd last refuge. you still have the, what's it called again? the darkhorse multi-variate complexity shield?
OK, a double LOL must mean I am wrong? Dark, my man, am I? All the wealth that disappeared in the stock market ended up somewhere else? It IS an net zero game? rs7