You get downvoted, but IMO you make a good point. There's a lot of things on ZH that are far-fetched, many articles by guest writers that are clearly in the 'conspiracy theory' corner, but if you use your brain to filter out the noise, there's a lot of truth to be found on ZH that most other media outlets don't want to report on (for whatever reason).
It's not just HN commenters who are typically poorly educated about finance, almost nobody thinks any more about these things than what they get from the mainstream media.
Years later, after things have crashed and burned and many of the 'conspiracy theories' that had been on ZH years before they turned out to be (at least partially) true, those same people flock to movies like 'The Big Short' in large numbers, and the talk of town is 'how nobody could have seen this coming'... :-/
> I recall HN saying gold market manipulation was conspiracy theory (...)
This is a pretty good example actually. ZH covered the gold/silver/libor market manipulation in pretty good detail. They also explained a lot about the insides of these deals, I frankly had no clue about. They did a pretty good job on thios one. However, this is not a conradiction to what [parent] said. Consipiracy theories do attract an authoritarian leaning mindset, he is right.
Also, on a sidenote: There are conspiracy theories that have some credibility, some of them even became true in the past (NSA, P2, at some point even the existence of the Mafia was one). Conspiracy theories become problematic, when they become an ideology. When you explain everyone and everything in the context of a conspiracy, you run in a one-way filter-bubble, because everything supports the theory, especially facts, that contradict them.
I'm with you as far as the level of finance knowledge on these boards. It's not surprising coming from a world where actually making money in your business is an afterthought.
That said, regarding ZH and "gold manipulation": what's exhausting is their claim of the magnitude of the effects, as if precious metals prices would suddenly fly through the roof. For example, when some of the big silver banks were busted for price fixing--a story that ZH covered extensively-- what happened? No visible effect on silver prices. So, the conclusion drawn is that there must a bigger conspiracy.
I'm with some of the other commenters here. ZH is on the bleeding edge of financial news, but you have to untangle it from the hyperventilating. And the comment section is a cesspool.
One shouldn't expect HN commenters to be well educated in the fields of economics and finance.
They are, after all, complex fields that take degrees and years of study and this is largely a tech forum. You don't see economists jumping onto stack overflow and yelling about how wrong this or that piece of code is, but somehow the reverse occurs with mind-boggling frequency.
I did stop reading any financial website years ago. It seems that I missed this story about the (proof of the) gold market manipulation and i followed this thema for years. Can you give me a link for this, my google foo doesn't work.
Rule #1 do not complain about down-votes, if you mind too much about them you will get gun-shy or putting filter. I have enough down votes but it still stings a bit, once past the initial sting, you will realize that people are politically and ideologically vested, irrespective of left or right, they will piss on your parade if you shake their world view and honestly, I may be one of them.
Say what you want to say respectfully and do not worry about votes.
I recall HN saying gold market manipulation was conspiracy theory, ZH was right HN commenters were wrong.
There's a long list but when it comes to finance HN commenters are typically poorly educated.