thirdplace posted:if you are looking to invest for selfish reasons it should be in land and sustainable improvements to land, so you can both minimize participation in the main economy and weather any coming collapses. if you're looking to invest for marxist reasons you should give all your money to terrorists obvi
If I give my $800 remaining to the terrorists now,... what if I was going to turn that into $1000000 by next week, which would actually make, you know, a huge ass difference?
Now watching: Oz Season 2 Epi 4
i haven't read much about microcredit recently but these are my usual points:
until recently the repayment rates were completely bogus numbers. like their sour debt numbers were based on metrics that most banks would never use. people who hadn't made a payment in years were still on the books as loans in good order. at one point something like 25% of new microloans were being used to pay off old microloans. i think something like 25% of the money made available (beyond that) was also just being used for everyday expenses. those sorts of numbers are crazy, it means almost no due diligence is being done. there's a good reason for that, though, which is that we're talking about incredibly informal economies in poverty, where the cost of monitoring and investigation and such are really high in proportion to the money you'll recover.
(i realized at this point i could ramble on a lot so yeah)
swampman posted:drwhat posted:
Yeah that seems to be their consensus. there's some microfinance-enabling company that is targeting Peru and they have a really good job for me but I'm wondering if the liberal bullshit would suffocate me or if there's something good in it. at least where I am now it's 100% raw capitalism, I appreciate the candor
Would be nice if i had all the links to all the articles but i dont right now, so I guess you can go predate on the worlds poorest people without feeling a shame over it
I already predate on the world's poorest people by existing in a rich country, don't I. i'm just curious if I am at a senior enough level of a business that is working on that stuff, if there is some direction I can push that will make the practice better or if it's just an unsalvageably corrupt idea at the base of it.
getfiscal posted:until recently the repayment rates were completely bogus numbers. like their sour debt numbers were based on metrics that most banks would never use. people who hadn't made a payment in years were still on the books as loans in good order. at one point something like 25% of new microloans were being used to pay off old microloans. i think something like 25% of the money made available (beyond that) was also just being used for everyday expenses. those sorts of numbers are crazy, it means almost no due diligence is being done. there's a good reason for that, though, which is that we're talking about incredibly informal economies in poverty, where the cost of monitoring and investigation and such are really high in proportion to the money you'll recover.
so this place is trying to ... oh, I just read more about it
they want to do psychological testing of microcredit applicants to determine who is the best candidate capitalist and give them numeric Entrepreneur Scores
never mind, maybe someone will bomb them
http://www.eflglobal.com/efl-tools
drwhat posted:I already predate on the world's poorest people by existing in a rich country, don't I. i'm just curious if I am at a senior enough level of a business that is working on that stuff, if there is some direction I can push that will make the practice better or if it's just an unsalvageably corrupt idea at the base of it.
Its usury.
drwhat posted:this is only tangentially related, but what do y'all think of microfinance schemes. unbelievably liberal useless bullshit way to introduce the bad effects of capitalism on developing economies, or potentially useful way to increase the power of powerless classes in unequal societies? hit me back, just to chat, truly yours, your biggest fan, this is stan
arent most of them basically just loansharking operations
drwhat posted:yeah I guess I thought it was like 0% loans. I didn't expect that they would actually be trying to make profits. guh
like there's nothing the rich wouldn't want more than people arguing about interest rates on microloans instead of full employment and production for use and such.
stegosaurus posted:my goal is to save like 25 grand for a down payment and then get a mortgage on a house somewhere in the middle of nowhere and raise goats. I have 1.5 grand earning negative interest taking inflation into account. this is my destiny.
cool. my rent is cheap for its location but eventually i'd like to graduate from living in an apartment with animals in the walls. my dream would be to have a condo in quebec or something.
stegosaurus posted:my goal is to save like 25 grand for a down payment and then get a mortgage on a house somewhere in the middle of nowhere and raise goats. I have 1.5 grand earning negative interest taking inflation into account. this is my destiny.
invest getting more jobs
getfiscal posted:i don't think the interest rates are a big deal. i mean they are a small problem compared to the bigger picture of what's involved. the microcredit itself isn't the problem as much as the fact that it's being used as an ideological thing to promote the idea of poor people as entrepreneurs instead of workers. if it performs that function it's worth losing some money on. also the bigger institutions themselves don't make a lot of money on it, it's the local fixers that make the things barely functional, because that's where the expenses are. it's just the wrong debate.
like there's nothing the rich wouldn't want more than people arguing about interest rates on microloans instead of full employment and production for use and such.
this is actually the thing i was thinking about with my original question, but it is even more demoralizing to me that not only is the whole thing ideological but also doesn't even have the veneer of nonprofitability and bleh. i didn't read much about it before because i was just putting it in the basket of dumb shit that's terrible. anyway thanks everyone for giving me a clue
stegosaurus posted:my goal is to save like 25 grand for a down payment and then get a mortgage on a house somewhere in the middle of nowhere and raise goats. I have 1.5 grand earning negative interest taking inflation into account. this is my destiny.
Heh once i realized my money is like totally depreciating in bank account, I took it all and invested in small businesses, which are now collapsing like a used car lot santa in a y2k civilaztional collapse
stegosaurus posted:mortgage payments on shitty houses are way cheaper than rent and as a plus you're not tossing your money into some other shithead's mortgage, but your own. and you're not paying someone else's property taxes, but your own, as well.
the average home price in canada is like 400 grand now. a microcondo in toronto costs like 250-300k. i'm not sure how i'll afford that any time soon.
swampman posted:stegosaurus posted:my goal is to save like 25 grand for a down payment and then get a mortgage on a house somewhere in the middle of nowhere and raise goats. I have 1.5 grand earning negative interest taking inflation into account. this is my destiny.
Heh once i realized my money is like totally depreciating in bank account, I took it all and invested in small businesses, which are now collapsing like a used car lot santa in a y2k civilaztional collapse
dogs always need to be walked though.
but it also just doesn't understand the political economy of slums. i mean most people in slums don't have addresses, so the idea that somehow the government will be able to assess ownership and such in any way is crazy. the government also doesn't care about slumdwellers at all. if they want to build a condo tower there they'll just bulldoze the shacks and use paramilitaries to beat up people who try to resist. look at the favelas and the world cup. in the early 2000s you saw all these crazy valuations where they'd be like "untapped capital locked in slumdwellers property is like $40 billion in egypt" or some shit.
one of the first ways they tried to stabilize loan repayments was creating a collective responsibility system. so it would be a local women's credit cooperative and if some women didn't repay then it would freeze loan availability for other women or something, presumably to 'protect the capital stock' or whatever, but in reality what it did was make the women chase after other debtors. like women would show up at your shack and strip it of all the tin in order to collect on your debts. that sort of thing happened so often that now even the government of bangladesh hates yunus, 'the banker to the poor' who won that nobel peace prize, who, by the way, is a hardcore libertarian.
guidoanselmi posted:so inspired by my ex's comment that'd she'd have to do "cost benefit analysis" of whether or not she wants to get back together with me in the future, i did the most xkcd thing imaginable and made a real* cost-benefit tool for whether or not to commit to a relationship upon moving/ going somewhere new (or in general, i guess, but you have to change some of the equations).
so yeah, i guess i'm doing this for reals while i have like 5/6 other work & skool projects going. showed it to a bunch of people for review and p much everyone thinks it's crazy good & comprehensive/publish-worthy if in academia. patent is being slowly drafted.
anyone wanna help me program this into a real web service/be a partner or know someone reliable who'd work with me? pref someone who knows stats.
*yes im a shitlord kkkapitalist who is preying on people's childish notions of objective truth in living out their day-to-day affairs.
e: also this
Edited by laika ()
guidoanselmi posted:quotin my own poast from an old thread
guidoanselmi posted:so inspired by my ex's comment that'd she'd have to do "cost benefit analysis" of whether or not she wants to get back together with me in the future, i did the most xkcd thing imaginable and made a real* cost-benefit tool for whether or not to commit to a relationship upon moving/ going somewhere new (or in general, i guess, but you have to change some of the equations).
so yeah, i guess i'm doing this for reals while i have like 5/6 other work & skool projects going. showed it to a bunch of people for review and p much everyone thinks it's crazy good & comprehensive/publish-worthy if in academia. patent is being slowly drafted.
anyone wanna help me program this into a real web service/be a partner or know someone reliable who'd work with me? pref someone who knows stats.
*yes im a shitlord kkkapitalist who is preying on people's childish notions of objective truth in living out their day-to-day affairs.
ill make the website
guidoanselmi posted:quotin my own poast from an old thread
guidoanselmi posted:so inspired by my ex's comment that'd she'd have to do "cost benefit analysis" of whether or not she wants to get back together with me in the future, i did the most xkcd thing imaginable and made a real* cost-benefit tool for whether or not to commit to a relationship upon moving/ going somewhere new (or in general, i guess, but you have to change some of the equations).
so yeah, i guess i'm doing this for reals while i have like 5/6 other work & skool projects going. showed it to a bunch of people for review and p much everyone thinks it's crazy good & comprehensive/publish-worthy if in academia. patent is being slowly drafted.
anyone wanna help me program this into a real web service/be a partner or know someone reliable who'd work with me? pref someone who knows stats.
*yes im a shitlord kkkapitalist who is preying on people's childish notions of objective truth in living out their day-to-day affairs.
i will if you promise to sneak in code that makes it always answer yes if someone enters my name
guidoanselmi posted:so yeah, i guess i'm doing this for reals while i have like 5/6 other work & skool projects going. showed it to a bunch of people for review and p much everyone thinks it's crazy good & comprehensive/publish-worthy if in academia. patent is being slowly drafted.
anyone wanna help me program this into a real web service/be a partner or know someone reliable who'd work with me? pref someone who knows stats.
*yes im a shitlord kkkapitalist who is preying on people's childish notions of objective truth in living out their day-to-day affairs.
i'm highly skilled, super busy, mostly unreliable, and completely skeptical, send me a pm
getfiscal posted:drwhat, you're smart and employed, tell me what i should be doing as a job, based on what you know about me. wait before you say something mean please uhh don't be mean.
the smart thing is fake. actually it's all fake. this is the skill that underlies all jobs/skills, being able to fake it (but thank you for the compliment anyway)
i think you should have a job where you are paid to write intellectual things. i have said this before, like over and over every time you post about it. you write things that are very comprehensible and you're able to translate completely esoteric concepts into things that i think almost any interested person could understand. you have a very broad set of knowledge that lets you see the big picture of things. it's good shit.
you could try these guys. what's the worst that could happen
http://www.stratfor.com/about/careers#MEA
or send these guys a thing
http://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/write-for-us/
or idk something like that. i'm serious, though
Edited by drwhat ()
i mean i spin in circles obviously and say the same things every few months but i mean in the past few months i have: earned some money, gone to the gym a bit, started a driving course, etc.
