/biz/ - Business & Finance

>>55059799
There's not that much to buy materially, which is why all sorts of grifts abound, either in dollar-terms (payday loans, variable-rate mortgages, subscription services, etc.) or in material terms (various kinds of plastic shit).
Materially, in the sense of "useful goods", you can actually buy almost nothing, as you said.

>>55059812
Both, in money-terms, are designed to siphon money away from you, but in real terms, they're actually designed to make you imagine that you're "spending money". I mean, yes: you are, according to the logic of money, "spending money", but the deception that this is designed to induce is the belief that money is really important and that you're maybe also some rich guy. These things are, yes, money-sinks, like in an MMO, where it's pretty transparent that they're just there to keep you busy. Gold in WOW isn't really worth anything, is it? It's not even worth anything in terms of the in-game economy; people trade runes or whatever (or maybe that's just in Diablo 2).
When some financial grift or another makes you lose a lot of money, you think "oh shit, where's all the money! Oh no, I gotta get money!"
When some good you (want to) buy costs money, it makes you think "oh man, look how expensive this is! Look at how useful this money is!"
While yes, money is useful in the material sense of being able to purchase necessities like food, the actual, underlying reality is not only that money isn't real, but also that there is nothing to buy. There's not even any point, in the grand scheme of things, to the money.
But don't take it from me, just listen to what's being constantly said on this board; it is as easy as reading. What is everyone's complaint?
>you missed out on teenage love
You can't buy either time or your previous mental state back.
>why is housing so expensive
An increased population increases GDP, but since it also increases the demand for housing, it doesn't increase the relative supply of housing. And because housing is seen as an investment, a minimum expected yield is assigned to it, even increased "wealth" doesn't increase the affordability of housing. The very demand for housing to be an investment negates the possibility of it being affordable. And seeing it as investment change its utility into that of an investment, but this "invisibly"

>>55059856
swaps out its pre-existing utility of being shelter. Since people need shelter to live in and to start families, this means that the "investment" in financial terms destroys the investment in real terms (into the material future, as in "humanity existing"). Because money is a financial instrument, money cannot, in principle, alleviate this - on a whole-system scale, anyway; obviously, on an individual level, one can buy a house with money.
>tfw no gf
The sex-ratios are self-balancing to roughly 50/50, and can only be unbalanced by quite ghastly factors such as alcoholism, death in childbirth, and war. And while it nominally sounds "cool" to say that "I want to die in a war", it's not actually cool when your house gets bombed.
Similar to housing, no amount of increased productivity is going to "make women more affordable", since women "measure" relative, not absolute wealth. If everyone drives a Lambo, it's as good as if nobody drove a Lambo (or had a yacht, or a mansion, or anything else). It's actually worse to have Lambos involved, since producing and purchasing Lambos does take a lot of needless effort. I'm sure it's a nice car and everything, but I'd be sick of it within 10 minutes of getting one.
>should I kill myself?
What probably bewilders people most of all, though not consciously because the brain won't allow this conclusion to rise to the level of conscious understanding, is that anyone should be unhappy after having "made it". Yet we do invariably get threads about people being miserable after, and seemingly as a result of, "having made it". On a larger scale, the phenomenon that rich people are miserable is common enough. Why can't they just buy happiness? It's constantly "being sold", at least implicitly. Happiness is of course a phenomenon in the brain, and all external, material goods, in principle, are categorically inferior to it. The richest man in the world would be miserable, almost as if by divine decree

>>55059898
, if certain computations didn't happen in his brain. Some neurons firing, some neurotransmitters facilitating certain neurons firing, overcome all that supposed material wealth. What they're trying to do doesn't even work conceptually, but money deceives them. They are, somewhat tragically, props in a game that they do not understand. Plausibly, if not correctly, they say "I have all this money and these lambos. I MUST be happy!" According to the world's logic, yes, but the world's logic is not correct.
So yes: money is "useful" from the perspective of the in-game economy, but the in-game economy is not that useful itself, because there's nothing useful to buy. Obviously "they" don't tell you this, because spending (real or imagined) is the mechanism by which money "gets" its value in your mind. If they admitted to there being nothing useful on which to spend the money, the money itself would become worthless.
Like, you know, there is, sure enough, enough basic supplies and vendor trash to buy at the village store, but it is, well, only vendor trash. Who the fuck is going to buy 5000 basic iron swords? And as a quest reward, nobody takes the gold, ever. It is understood by everyone in terms of the meta that you should never take the gold, which is why no one ever chooses the "evil path", except for roleplaying purposes, but even then it's unsatisfying because all you're getting is trash gold with which to buy vendor trash (and maybe the trivial satisfaction of seeing the gold-stat go up, but really, that satisfaction comes from imaging that you're in a completely different game in which that gold is useful).

>>55059799
normie roastie at my job spends over a months worth of salary on 1 vacation, she usually goes on 2 big vacations and 1 small vacation a year.
She buys birthday gifts/Christmas gifts/anniversary gifts for her boyfriend, her parents, her sister, her boyfriends parents. Imagine buying like 20+ useless gifts in a year.
Has an Icloud subscription, Netflix subscription, spotify subscription, Amazon prime subscription.
Add eating out at expensive restaurants, clothes, concerts, make up, hair products etc to the mix as well.
Buying the new iphone, buying meme gadgets like the iwatch, new apple laptop once every 2-3 years.
Dumb decorations, just in our shared office she bought candles some dumb plants, Christmas lights and stickers, Halloween stickers and some fake pumpkin. She didn't even bring the same decorations the next year so she buys new ones yearly apparently.
That's pretty much what she spends her money on, other than necessities like her car, food, electricity, water and whatnot.
And she comes and complains that she can't save money too kek.

>>55059942
The things to buy does function like the money-sinks in an MMO, but it doesn't function "metaphorically" like that, it actually functions like that. It IS that. There IS nothing to buy with money. It wouldn't even matter if all the money would be gone tomorrow, it wouldn't even be a real loss. It'd be a real loss in terms of disabling a game mechanic, but it wouldn't be a real loss in terms of the fantasies people have about what money can supposedly buy (which it actually can't anyway, so again: no great loss).

Wait till you move out and then realise you don't own a fucking knife or fork

>>55059971
I am moved out and buying kitchen stuff was the first thing I bought

>>55059973
Alright so get to work then

>>55059973
Deck out your whole kitchen for less than $100 from a discount store

>>55059999
/thread

>>55059799
I'd like to own a home with a big garden some time and I bought a van.
that will take me at least 7 years to pay off. Student loan didn't help either.

>>55059812
>>55059856
>>55059898
>>55059942
>>55059960
shut the fuck up faggot way too much text you talk way too much and no ones reading a single word

>>55061500
You beat me to it.

Agree OP I really just spending money on housing, groceries, gas/insurance and life necessities. Occasionally I'll buy some clothes, new shoes, etc but that's like twice a year and a few hundred bucks at most.

I don't own a house so all my money is getting stashed for that.

>>55059799
>I bought oysters yesterday just out of sheer boredom
How's the mild food poisoning holding up? Have you shyarded some liquid brown yet?

>>55059799
White people are lucky because they don't have to send 25% of their paycheck to family back home

>>55061500
Nobody needs to read anything I or anyone else writes. I'm trying to give you information for your benefit, but if you don't like it, that's fine too.

>>55061667
>White people are lucky because they don't have to send 25% of their paycheck to family back home
They just send the 25% to someone else's family in their own home. Unlike none whites, who send 25% of it
>"home"

>>55061667
You getting to live in our society where taxes only ever go up and the cost of living rises from increased demand is enough burden. Sorry you have family to support, mine are all dead from the misery of being American.

>>55059799
Buy sex
Buy cars
Buy houses
Travel and shit

It’s all very expensive anon, even millions won’t be enough to do it all. I’m doing a 10k vacation this summer for 10 days. I paid 30k to a sugar baby last year. The house I want costs well over a million dollars and my current house is 550k. My car is 50k and I want a Porsche 911

>>55061667
you can always go back to your shithole and never return, low IQ parasite. No one wants you here in a civilized country anyway

>>55059799
Do you pay rent and feed yourself and drive your own car?

>>55061500
Checked and speak for yourself

>>55059812
>>55059856
>>55059898
>>55059942
>>55059960
I read all this, and most of it is true but a bit long winded.
What I didn't see mentioned is money as a means of freedom. Sure there's only so much vendor trash you can buy, but some money sinks are mandatory, you MUST constantly put money into housing/food/internet/etc if you want a bare minimum of healthy/good living. That permanent money sink means you MUST keep farming and earning money.
Until you reach a point where the money you've earned is lent out at a rate that's higher than your money sink, or you have enough savings to last you the rest of your life, you're forced to keep farming. That's the best thing money can buy you, freedom from having to farm, freedom to spend time as you desire.

>>55061779
Ghastly snownigger. Cheers

>>55062032
Money is the in-game means of escape, in the sense you described. Yes, suffering is real, so it's understandable by people would escape it via money. To some degree it works, I mean we do need our daily bread, it's unpleasant to go hungry, but it cannot quite work by virtue of what it is. Certain things are conceptually impossible for it to do, as described. The difference is qualitative, so no amount of money can, in principle, accomplish certain kinds of things, it's more about that.
>a bit long winded
I know. I can't do much about that, I'm afraid. I just talk this way.