"...in the United States, the commerce departments of state governments generally prohibit or restrict the use of certain words in the names of corporations unless those corporations are legitimate chartered banks. For example, words prohibited by the state of Louisiana include bank, banker, banking, savings, safe deposit, trust, trustee, and credit union" [1].
This is worth stressing: such regulations often exist to prevent fraud from outright scammers. If such a regulation did not exist, I am confident there would be institutions that called themselves a "bank" but met none of the basic consumer protections we expect from a bank.
Generally, it's a good idea to force labeling of businesses and products to match their potential customers' expectations of what they mean. It's one of those places where fostering a well-functioning free market (by decreasing information asymmetry, to put it succinctly, even if we're not talking outright scammers) is at odds with some strict notions of liberty (to call your business or product whatever you please).
There are similar requirements in some jurisdictions for lawyers. For instance if you work for a law firm, but are NOT a lawyer, you’re business card must indicate that.
Given the crisis of 2008, I would say that this failed utterly, wouldn't you? It's just another few millions lost in regulation compliance to add to the billions lost to the "outright scammers" that are the regulated banks.
That accountability doesn't work for everybody, of course.
I learned in school that gyms sell more memberships than their facilities have space to support. People think that by buying a membership, they're locking themselves into going and working out because they're paying for it.
Sometimes, however, people conflate paying for the gym membership as actually going to the gym, and then don't go at all.
But yes, as you said: it boils down to accountability.
I disagree with the idea that the market has room for a finite number of millionaires.
See Paul Graham's essay on wealth, specifically the subject about the pie fallacy. "...although there may be, in certain specific moments (like your family, this month) a fixed amount of money available to trade with other people for things you want, there is not a fixed amount of wealth in the world. You can make more wealth. Wealth has been getting created and destroyed (but on balance, created) for all of human history." [1]
For money that's true (and of course being a millionaire is about money), but for "success" it isn't. Success is a relative term, which does seem to act a lot like a 0-sum game. That is, I'm only successful if other people around me aren't.
While we might all become richer collectively, we will never feel more successful unless we have someone to compare ourselves to.
It depends on how you define "success." By your definition, it necessitates seeing someone else fail in order to feel successful. But I think that's a narrow view of it, and fewer things are zero-sum than people often assume (though plenty of things still are, yes).
A few examples come to mind. One is the craft beer scene. Microbreweries often adopt a collaborative business model with other breweries in their area, rather than being cutthroat and trying to run each other out of town. When a town becomes known for having a thriving beer scene, it attracts more customers in total, to the benefit of all the breweries there. It widens the proverbial pie. Thus, by association with that scene, all the individual businesses become more successful than they would have been otherwise. And in that case I'd say success is about more than money - name and quality recognition, and building a dedicated fan base would probably factor into it as well.
Of course there are limits to that model, such as a local market becoming too saturated, but I think it's a good example of success being a more nebulous term than only being dependent on defeating others.
Disagree. Success isn't really transferred. If I help you do something I know and you help me do something you know we are both more successful. Wealth on the other hand can't really be shared without losing it.
There is absolutely a limit to the amount of unique ideas/efforts which make a return across a large percent of the population. That population has an upper limit on spend and time spent adopting said product. They don't have an unlimited amount of time and that's exactly what companies have been hammering on to extract more of. Facebook, for example.
It's time we stop pushing this STUPID narrative that software can make you rich if you are just willing to throw your user's interests out the window and "work harder". That is not how this works.
Wealth is finite at any given moment and it so happens that growth does not affect everyone equally.
On top of that developed economies tend to grow slower - we may all be millionaires by early 70s standards with our fast cars and air travel, but I don't think in 50 years we will be millionaires by today's standards - there simply won't be that much growth in the future.
Investment supposes this is not true because wealth is not an evaluation of liquidity. The hardest thing to realize is that that's poor people thinking and you're already behind if that's how you operate (ie the vast majority of the world, including me).
I always found the whole idea to be contradictory. They say that the pie isn't fixed, then go on to explain all the risky things you need to do get a larger piece of the expanding pie. Which does in fact mean the pie is finite, just not definite. Because outside of these texts online, success rate is a real limiting factor.
Yep! Dropping out of high school to go backpacking on the AT was one of the better decisions I've made. It's been a decade and a half, and I'm still making connections through the trail network.
Since you're such a recent finisher; Springer Fever is a real thing, and I think it's best not to suppress it too much.
No. The sunk cost comes into play in explaining why we've gone to Disney World three time too many simply because we bought some multi-day package years ago. I hate Disney. She hates Dianey. But, we gotta use up the stinking tickets.
Anybody interested in this might want to check out EME (Earth-Moon-Earth) communication: point an antenna at the moon, bounce a signal off of it, and coordinate with someone back on Earth to receive it.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banq_(term)