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Limiting buys and limiting sells

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@tarazkp
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8 min read

We finally got a hanging light for our dining room tonight. While this isn't actually a necessary thing as we do have a standing lamp in the corner (which we use mostly) and dimmable downlights sunken into the ceiling, it is good to be able to close off the space and add some depth to the room. It is a famous Finnish designer light and retails for 900€ - but the best thing about it is that we got it for the bargain and much-loved price of free!

Well, we didn't "get it", it is a loaner that we can use until whenever from my wife's sister. This is really handy as we have been looking around for something, but the prices are quite ludicrous and we are unable to test them first, so having something like this guides our decisions in the future. It looks good, but doesn't have a bulb in it yet so will take better images later to show the space.

But, this is not really what I wanted to write about specifically, but does loosely lead into the discussion as it is about not buying and what I want to talk about, limiting sells.

A little conversation

As the eternal caveat, this is not financial advice - it really isn't. Not even close - In fact, none of what I give is financial advice in anyway, as I don't tend to give advice, but I do like to have discussions around finance, investing and wealth creation, development, protection and other factors that a financial advisor might give advice on.

For me the reason that I like to have conversations around these things is that discussions about "money have been made taboo in most cultures and societies, meaning that they are underrepresented in the public narrative. Yes, there are plenty of articles on it and the like, but within social circles, most people shy away from discussing finance with friends and family. What this means is the public narrative surrounding money is almost entirely driven by the media, which is of course not only not impartial and don't have our best interests in mind, but also monetize the failing of society, meaning they are incentivized to encourage failure.

FUD, FOMO, Fuckers.

Anyone that spends a bit of time in crypto can see how the media drives cycles of FUD and FOMO around the ups and downs of the market, often FUDding when people should be buying, FOMOing when people should be taking some profits. What people don't seem to think about however is that they do this with everything in order to generate cycles of hype and disaster to emotionally push and pull their viewership on every possible topic they can for clicks. Because of this, when the media says buy, it is probably too late (or not the right time) and when they say sell, it is probably a good idea to hold or consider buying.

So, opening up the discussion of finance to peer groups and making them socially acceptable, takes a lot of the control the media has from the conversation, giving people more visibility on what is actually going on. In my regard, there is more value in understanding and exploring the mindset and general practices of investing, than constantly chasing and researching every individual opportunity, because it means building a clearer process to build from.

But, in order to use this "platform", it still needs to be fed, so rather than tuning into the media, building peer groups of knowledgeable and skilled people who actually have best interests of others at heart, can create streams of information that is more likely to be valuable and actionable.

Collaborative individuals

While a lot of people want a better global economic outcome and, better results for themselves, we also know that this isn't going to happen through the centralized gateways we currently have. So, that means we have to decentralize, but that doesn't mean we do not collaborate. Instead of working as individuals to maximize individual wealth, the most value in the future is going to be through community investing models, where groups of people invest together in unison, even though their investments are individuals owned, controlled and with opt-in decision making.

This is why community-driven investment is going to change the global economy, as rather than people proxying their demand for products to organizations incentivized by maximizing organizational wealth, demand comes from the people and is driven by the people directly. It fundamentally changes the economic outcomes of the people, by shifting the focus of demand onto what the people want to demand.

Changing the flow

This is a massive problem for centralized organizations like governments and very large corporations, as they have enjoyed being able to direct the flow of value themselves, to themselves for a very long time. They invest and own, then tell us where to put our money either through influence or, by law - like a government directing tax money to buy goods and services that do not support the people, from their friends, family and who offers the greatest kickbacks who are running on profit maximization models.

Friends and family are important for building communities and crypto is expanding what it means to a global level, by introducing trustless networks so that the "friend or family member" needn't be known. This allows people to connect and interact much like they do with social contracts, except the contract is digital and embedded into the blockchain.

Trust the trustless

For example, my sister-in-law trusts that when they need the light back, we will give it back to them without trying to claim it as our own. Also, she trusts we are going to to take care of it and if something were to happen to it, we would replace it. If we did try to claim it as our own or broke it and didn't fix it, it would create unwanted tensions in the family. There are no written contracts on this at all, nor was anything explicitly said - social contracts based on cultural practice.

In the similar way in crypto, all kinds of smart contracts are allowing people to trade various kinds of goods and services without requiring the family connection. The "laws" are written into the contract and are protected by the blockchains - making them hard to break without repercussions, with the consequences also written into the code. This is why "code is law" - but it doesn't mean that the code can't change, once enough people agree on a new cultural practice.

Indecent centralization

And I think that this is why it is so important to have the open discussions amongst ourselves, as when we are fed a media narrative that is influenced heavily by the law-makers, the narrative is going to drive for outcomes that favor the adherence to their will, regardless of what we as the consumer might want. We have seen how this process has led to the economy we currently have, where a decreasing amount of people have an increasing amount or wealth, power and control over everyone else. This means that more narrow decisions are being made that satisfy fewer people at the cost of the majority of people.

We should be able to do better than this, but in order to do so, it requires collaboration in aw way that is both inclusive and exclusive simultaneously, giving people the freedom to organize and still compete against each other in various ways too, whist excluding those who are looking to restrict and centralize decision making to control others. Crypto projects for example are *all opt-in, meaning that it is a decision to participate and succumb themselves to the local blockchain law. Yes, everyone can still have an open discussion on whether the laws should change, but in the localized sense of the blockchain, the current rules are always valid and enforceable by the blockchain and the available mechanisms coded.

The law today, not tomorrow

This is why for instance, the argument about downvotes on Hive is fine, but people have to understand that it is not a switch. In order to change the "law" requires the majority of *staked support to agree, as this is a Delegated Proof of Stake blockchain. This means that stake has the power to decide and everyone participating here today is under the same law. No one forced anyone to join and if people joined willingly without understanding and now do not like dPOS governance, they are welcome to opt-out of Hive at any point.

Now, some people will say the community can never make a difference, but that is also not true. In fact, the reason that the bidbot era from Steem is gone, is because over the space of two years, people like myself and many others worked in order to change the stake voting in order to bring in free downvotes, a slight curve (now gone) and 50/50 curation - it was known as the Economic Improvement Proposal (EIP) and required a lot of work to have implemented. This led to the eventual fork from Steem to Hive too, as a group of highly staked users who were abusing the pool, voted in favor of Justin Sun - those users are now witnesses on Steem - go and have a look how well they are "working" for the community.

Participating in useless

My point is, community matters and we matter, but in order for us to make changes, we have to work together openly and in smaller groups to build understanding and capabilities. But, because we need majorities and staked users to make a difference, things happen quite slowly. This is actually very healthy, as it means that there aren't wild swings in community process, which gives the opportunity for the community to build, without having the rug pulled immediately from under their feet and as long as they are participating and engaged, there are very few surprises.

See - this wasn't about trading at all - but it is about buying and selling. We have created a world where there are many "initiatives" that people are constantly getting involved with, but they will never lead anywhere because no one is committed and they require very little skin in the game. Most "social movements" are centralized narratives introduced to divide and conquer and break down our chances of actually affecting change, and rather, support the continued centralization of wealth and power into the hands of the few to further cement their position.

Opting for new skin

This is an opt-in process too and what I think will come about through increased discussion and especially conversation around investment, wealth and ownership - is a change in culture, a redefinition of value and the opportunity to build global communities of family members and friends that we will never actually know, at least from a trade perspective. For a better economy to be developed, it takes participation and this only happens when there is a paradigm shift toward that direction. Open discussion aids in this process, but at the end of the day, it has to be backed up by participation, activity and shifting an increasing amount of what we value from where it is now, to where we want it to be to have skin in the game, that we want to play.

Sell what isn't working - Buy what you think will. Talk of change is cheap - stake in success is not.

Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]

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