Original Blog Entry: Cashing out symbols

time*treat — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 01:47:04 GMT

(... in my travels...)

Can the average person be wealthier than the average person?

Can 50 million Boomer investors compound their paper wealth at a rate far in excess of the growth in the real wealth of the national economy - and then successfully cash out that paper wealth into real goods and services?

What happens to the price of symbols when too many people start cashing out symbols and there aren't enough real resources to go around?

Mathematics says any fixed number of people cannot each put $X into the pot and EACH get more than $X out. For each person receiving more than they invested , at least one other participant must receive less than what they put in.

Human nature (greed and stupidity) and history says that if the project is dressed up and given a fancy name (usually with the word market in it - stock market, real estate market, or gifting when there is even less pretense of offering something of value) and the vague notion of defying simple arithmetic, there will be plenty of people lining up to lose a portion a their $X to the creators of the scheme.

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