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by Decabytes
755 days ago
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This is true for everything now a days. People collect limited edition things speculating they will be collectibles in 20 years, they jump on new programming languages and try to develop the first libraries so their name can be attached to the de facto CSV parser for the language, they try to get on new social media platforms early to become the next influencer etc. The world is a lot less naive then it used to be |
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I have a slightly different perspective on this - I think people have become more naive than they used to be.
"Speculating on future value" in the ways you've described - either investing money in collectibles or investing time in writing fresh libraries, investing time and money in attempting to become an influencer, etc - is basically gambling.
Your odds of success are either extremely low, competition is high, or investment takes a long time to bear fruit with high risk (collectibles becoming worthless, new programming languages dying, social media following never taking off, etc).
Spending 5 years chasing trends or buying up collectibles - basically trying to get lucky - looks "less naive" when it works, but it's basically survivorship bias (or first-mover and other strategic advantages, etc). If you fail, you've sunk a large amount of money and/or time in your life into a bunch of "worthless" pursuits.
(And to counter the "but it's not worthless if you learn something" argument, that's true, but it's not the point being made here. And using that as post-fact justification for losing all your time/money is a self-sustaining problem if you don't consciously evaluate your opportunity cost in advance.)