> Factor in inflation and its pretty easy to get negative returns on bank deposits.
But that applies to having money at all. That can't be enough to call it gambling.
> expectation, intent
I understand your argument here, but I disagree. Shifting to the bank that offers the best rate is good management, not gambling. Understanding how interest works and being motivated by interest to do bog-standard money storage doesn't turn that storage into gambling.
> without doing anything else
I don't understand how this connects at all. Maybe it reflects badly on you if you want to turn money into free income, but that doesn't make it any more or less of a gamble. It's a totally different axis.
>But that applies to having money at all. That can't be enough to call it gambling.
It is, because there's no choice not to gamble. You have to make choices, and none of those choices are risk-free. The options are on a scale between low-risk negative-return and high-risk high-return. But the risk is never zero - not even in FDIC insured accounts - and there's an element of randomness involved in the outcomes.
That's the point. There's no option to say "I have this store of value, and if I don't do anything with it it will retain its value forever."
It won't. So you're forced into risk assessment and randomness, not just with money but with assets in general.
This is the foundation of the economy. All non-trivial transactions are based on risk/reward estimates, and some parts of the economy can force risk and hazard on others.
It's not just a casino you can never leave, it's a casino where the management use various tricks to siphon money from your assets into their pockets without giving you any agency over what happens.
If everything is gambling then we lost track of what we were doing and need a new word for what we're trying to regulate. The answer is not to give up because it's a spectrum, it's to mark off thresholds.
There's a difference between unavoidable risk and imposed financial risk, much of which is caused by the financial industry itself.
Being killed by a meteorite is a statistical issue. Having your house stolen by a bank during a manufactured recession is a crime, and should be avoidable.
Yes, that was actually happening after 2008. For example:
Fair point re seeking the best return given the same risk profile.
Allow me to refine my point: It's gambling when you seek to increase your risk profile in the hope of gaining higher returns, without actually doing anything else other than "invest" the money.
> It's gambling when you seek to increase your risk profile in the hope of gaining higher returns
I generally agree, but I don't think it's a binary. If an insured bank is 10% gambling then an index fund is 20% and roulette is 100%. And the snow derivative sounds like it's probably above 80%.
> without actually doing anything else other than "invest" the money.
I don't see why this changes whether it's gambling. Investing in a restaurant and starting your own restaurant are both very risky bets.
But that applies to having money at all. That can't be enough to call it gambling.
> expectation, intent
I understand your argument here, but I disagree. Shifting to the bank that offers the best rate is good management, not gambling. Understanding how interest works and being motivated by interest to do bog-standard money storage doesn't turn that storage into gambling.
> without doing anything else
I don't understand how this connects at all. Maybe it reflects badly on you if you want to turn money into free income, but that doesn't make it any more or less of a gamble. It's a totally different axis.