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by Zigurd 110 days ago
I hope everyone reading this realizes that commodity futures are useful and easily distinguished from prediction markets, which are a ruse to get around restrictions on gambling.
2 comments

The world did fine before derivatives. In fact some might say it did even better. And gambling only makes the wealth gap worse. And there is a ton of nasty incentives linked to it.
> world did fine before derivatives

The Hittites and Bronze-Age Egyptians had forward-deliverable contracts that, if you squint, they would trade amongst each other. The idea of being able to assign a contract to a third party to which you're a beneficiary is about as old as civilisation. In part because it's obvious. In part because it's impossible to police. But mostly because it's useful.

(I'm ignoring insurance and reinsurance, both of which are derivatives and rely heavily upon them.)

The scale of things was much different back then. Not comparable.
> scale of things was much different back then

"Scale back derivatives" is a reasonable argument. "Ban derivatives" is silly.

> Not comparable

Totally comparable. I'm actually struggling to think of an infrastructure-building civilisation in history that didn't have some form of tradable forwards.

Nonsense. Derivatives have been actively traded in the USA at least since 1848 (and even earlier in other countries). Nothing was better about the world in 1847.
The Dutch? Early 1500s?

That is what my reading recollection is recalling on 'derivative-like".

Incase you missed this in the Epstein files:

> This is the way the jew make money.. and made a fortune the past ten years, selling short the shipping futures, let the goyim deal in the real world.

One instance obviously, but not often do you hear them say the quiet part out loud. Most of the times it’s just firms profiting off hardship and/or prior knowledge, which is easy to hide.