Week(s) 30-2: Strictly for your scared amusement
"...[They say] scared money don't make none..."
- Every hip-hop artist ever
I tried to start this entry by thinking of the well-known hip-hop song where I first heard this line. I am clearly hearing it in the voices of either EPMD or Mobb Deep in my head, but I cannot seem to prove any such lyrical connection through a basic Google query.
As it turns out, from further, much looser Google queries, this is one of those axiomatic lines that is tossed about in the canon of hip-hop lyrics like an intertextual hot potato at the demonstrable-authenticity buffet, its actual origins in the recorded annals of the aging genre increasingly impossible to track as the citations pile up year after year.
That, and/or it is simply a popular line to use in mainstream hip-hop because, y'know, cash, money, cash money, paper, raining paper, raining cash money paper, 65-70% chance of raining cash money paper on Thursday, the inhuman size of my murderous genitalia, cash money, I have 400 cars and 400 scars and 400 guitars.
Just for the sake of something to discuss, let's delve further into the meaning and validity of this popular phrase, which of course finds application well outside the world of hip-hop. Let's also begin with the a priori assumption that you don't make investment decisions based on the lyrics of Lil Wayne. (Although I will say that if Jay-Z ran an investment-related show on CNBC, I would be MUCH more inclined to listen to his advice than that of Jim Cramer.)
The variation provided by the prompt: "Scared money never wins." This has a clear connection to gambling. Anyone who's done any research whatsoever into the gambling industry knows that-- save for engaging in behaviors that are likely to get you kicked out of most casinos, if not admitted to the ICU, in very short order-- gambling in the literal sense of the term is inherently stupid.
"The house always wins" is another saying popular with gamblers, and it's not only contradictory to the "scared money" saying, but it's a lot closer to the truth.
More than perhaps any other capitalist endeavor primarily funded by average-Joe consumers, casinos are built on profit, which means that they are built on an assumed and infallible house edge by design at every possible turn. They have no tangible product for sale that could be damaged, lost or stolen, and that's obviously a plus for them. But the staggering amount of overhead involved in licensing, staffing, construction, upkeep, security, advertising and comps for something on the scale of the average casino means that the built-in house edge must be stupidly huge in most cases for a casino to maintain consistent profitability.
Read: You're totally fucked the second you walk in the door.
You might be able to avoid long-term losses or even earn some degree of consistent, significant profit in the casinos over a period of play-- if you're engaged in certain types of card play, and if you're incredibly good. Start sticking your money into slot machines or placing bets at the roulette table, and you might as well dance around the parking lot pelting passers-by with your quarters; it'd be no less profitable long-term as a strategy.
This is my oversimplified, birds-eye-view-research perspective on casinos, and your mileage may vary; you may have gotten out at the right time now and again. But my money is always scared in casino situations, which is why I don't really go to casinos despite their omnipresence in my area.
I've never felt that lack of commitment to my wager is what caused me to lose. I've always known, instead, that the probabilistic house edge that is planned into every casino game is what caused me to lose.
Whether it's cars, scars, or guitars, I absolutely hate putting money toward something, knowing full well that it's more likely than not I will take a loss, partial or total, on what I put in-- which is why I buy darned near everything used offa Craigslist at this point, and in most cases I don't buy a thing unless I already have a clue of its average demonstrable real-market value something like 1-2 years running.
If I'm going to throw money away for no good reason, I might as well dispense of it through channels / causes I believe in. The likes of the Green Party and the Electronic Frontier Foundation don't exactly run most of the nation's casinos, far as I am aware.
Right, but then there are other applications for this phrase outside of gambling. And here again, this phrase utterly fails.
When one invests in, say, a business, it's natural for the investor to have some degree of trepidation. There is no established correlation between the 36ish percent of US small businesses that fail in the first two years and the percentage of "scared money" that funded those failed businesses. 100% of small businesses were founded on at least mildly spooked money, if not outright terrified money.
Can we just agree that a better, more responsible, less dumbly-metaphysical phrase regarding financial advice is "You gotta spend it to make it"? I think most experienced capitalists can pretty much agree on that one. And it doesn't exclude the possibility of "scared money," nor does it sneakily suggest a guaranteed return on investment if you beat your chest loudly and grunt repeatedly as you slap the stacks of cash down on the table.
Now, finally, if it's not money that you're actually talking about... then maybe this phrase has some marginal merit. Y'gotta givvit whatcha / allya got, stock footage of jets flying overhead, [your image here] bench-pressing 400 pounds as the sweat of victory drips off of [your image here], shoot for your dreams, aim for the skyyyyyyyy, GUITAR SOLO BY KENNY LOGGINS.
Then again, you could maybe just say what you mean for once instead of speaking in cliche-cum-extended metaphor. You might as well be expressing yourself by quoting Beavis and Butthead "in character." I actually know people that still do this, by the way. Professors, even. It's so sad.
Chapter summary:
- "Scared money never wins / don't make none" is a dangerous, dangerously wrong axiom that should be retired and/or totally ignored.
- You know what else needs to be retired? The term "gamechanger." Next dude that uses that goddamned term in my presence will come to know me as "voice-register-changer" when my knee meets their groin at terminal velocity.
- Casinos hate you and hate your ass face... unless your ass face resembles one of a handful of dead presidents.
- Jay-Z > Jim Cramer.
- Investing wisely always entails some degree of risk, thusly, some degree of trepidation. Not that you should ask me, because my retirement account at present could maybe earn me a brand new Yugo-- if I had a time machine to go back and buy one.
- I take things pretty literally sometimes.
- I also like cake.
- My next entry will hopefully be better than this.
- Ain't no such things as halfway crooks. Scared to death, scared to look, they shook. You ain't a crook, son. You're just a shook one.