Originally Posted by JonLaw
Originally Posted by metis
Interesting that so many people define "rich" as an income level. Many "rich" families would be homeless if their incomes were to cease.

Because they don't save enough of their income and don't pay off their mortgages, etc.

Of course, if everybody saved enough of their income....hmmmm.

... they'd never be hungry again? (Using La Texican's logic here)


In all seriousness, Jon's last points reflect the exact same thing that I was referring to. This is a system that prides itself on "smartness" but it's really a house of cards built on aggregate human behavior-- and there's no factor for "human irrationality" since it's assumed for modeling purposes that people will ALWAYS act in their own self-interest. That's demonstrably untrue right from the beginning. Human beings may THINK that they are acting in their own self-interest, and they may sometimes choose to act in what they believe to be someone else's best interests, even at cost to themselves, and sometimes for reasons which are entirely irrational.

You can't really account for irrational human behavior, and modeling the behavior of large groups of people without considering that, or making the assumption that irrationality is bound to be an outlier phenomenon... well, it isn't always. That's what fuels bubbles to start with-- that couldn't happen in the first place if it were only true that a few people were behaving irrationally.


Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.