78 points

The wealthiest own like 87% of the stock market, which both parties refer to as “the economy”…

So while I get how the thought of a general strike where we stop working is attractive.

But if we really want to hurt the rich, it means selling all your stocks and only buying the bare necessities. Leave them holding the bag on capitalism.

I’ve always thought the push for “average” Americans to get into stocks was just another way for wealth to trickle up. You’re not savvy for buying what Nancy Pelosi bought a month ago, you’re just pumping her numbers so she makes more when she sells.

The only way to win is not to play, but enough people need to refuse to play for it to work

permalink
report
reply
73 points

The wealthiest own like 87% of the stock market, which both parties refer to as “the economy”…

First, the stock market only represents publicly traded companies. Privately held companies aren’t on stock exchanges. If you own stock in privately held companies there are usually very strict rules about how and when, and to whom you can sell. Its not a quick thing.

But if we really want to hurt the rich, it means selling all your stocks and only buying the bare necessities. Leave them holding the bag on capitalism.

The non-rich selling all their stock would likely help the rich. Here’s why: The rich use brokerages that monitor the stock market in realtime and can trade faster. As soon as a sell off would begin, the brokerages would get in and sell most of what they had first, meaning the non-rich would get a fraction of the value of the stocks they are selling. As soon as the selling of the non-rich ended, the rich would come back into the market and buy up the same assets they had before (and more) for a fraction of the price.

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points

Wouldn’t this require that we’re all selling off at the same time?

permalink
report
parent
reply
14 points

Wouldn’t this require that we’re all selling off at the same time?

Yes, which is another impossibility. However I was giving OP the benefit of the doubt.

permalink
report
parent
reply
41 points

It was a travesty that pensions were largely replaced with 401ks in the 80’s in the US (curious if a similar thing happened elsewhere in the world), effectively forcing participation in the stock market to have any chance at retirement.

They found another way to shore up the continuation and capitulation to capitalism while boosting their share prices at the sane time.

What an absolute con.

permalink
report
parent
reply
25 points
*

Well, to be fair pensions werent like cash reserves, they were investment funds.

Which is a different issue all together.

But that’s how Bernie Madoff got so much, in addition to wealthy individuals he scammed the pension funds of major cities.

Shit didn’t get fucked up overnight, it was a slow progression. Which is why we can’t just roll back 50 years and pretend it’s solved, shit will just fuck up again.

Edit:

And even when it was a cash reserve, it was basically tied to the stock of that company.

If they went bankrupt, no pension.

So say you got a Walmart pension, it was dependant on Walmart existing till you died. If a major player was dethroned, it meant a bunch of people losing pensions. So there was still a lot of institutional momentum even back then

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Which is why we can’t just roll back 50 years and pretend it’s solved, shit will just fuck up again.

Capitalism

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Thankfully, my employer still has pensions. For how much longer? Hopefully a long time.

permalink
report
parent
reply
35 points

The only way to win is not to play

Not “playing” the stock market is a loss by default. Your money WILL devalue over time, your savings account WILL NOT keep up with inflation, and if you don’t invest in stocks or have some other special financial backing/windfall, you WILL retire many years later (if at all) than you would have if you invested in stocks properly.

Though, you need to be very careful with your definition of “playing”. As an individual/retail investor, buying individual stocks and trying to time ups and downs is not the way to go. If you manage to not lose any money that way, you’re very very likely to make less money than if you had bought a broad market ETF like the S&P 500. In general, “playing” is bad and simply buying and holding boring funds for 30+ years can 10x your money by the time you retire, if you start young. Market up? Good, buy more! Market down 50%? It’s on sale, buy more! Auto-investing is your friend. This is backed by solid math and like the entire history of the stock market.

The thing is, the rich make the rules. They want you to invest in ETFs like that because they can use your money to play their little games, inflate their wealth, and stay on top. As long as you do that, they’ll make sure you make solid and consistent (over the long-term) returns, because it benefits them financially and anything else would lead to a societal collapse.

Trying to beat them at their own game by buying/selling individual stocks is a losing battle. They can see your incoming trades and act on them before your order goes through. If you find a big mistake they made, like GME, they’ll simply change the rules and steal your money. It doesn’t matter if it’s illegal, nobody can stop them. They literally make the market.

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points
*

Your money WILL devalue over time

Yes, that’s why as much as politicians say they hate inflation, it’s necessary for capitalism.

Otherwise people just shove their money under a mattress and the “inverted funnel system” collapses.

But inflation isn’t inevitable just because capitalism needs it to maintain the machine.

Quick edit:

What you’re doing is like back before we had laws as a society, saying we can’t outlaw crime and murder, because the people who don’t agree will kill us and steal all our stuff…

We’re talking about a drastic change to society, it ain’t just a tweak. You can’t use bits of the old system that are gonna be gone for a rationale to preserve the old system.

If we get rid of capitalism, we get rid of forced inflation that only exists to prop up capitalism…

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points
*

Well, sure, if we’re talking about complete overhauls, money doesn’t technically need to exist at all.

I just thought it dangerous to spread the idea that you win the stock market by not playing, because that is demonstrably false and will lead to some very poor outcomes if followed in a realistic sense. I agree that an ideal society may very well not have a stock market, but for the love of god, please don’t try to be the change you want to see in this instance.

Inflation is necessary for a lot more than just capitalism. Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production, not trading money for goods and services.

It’s really important to understand that money =/= capitalism. That is a widely held misconception that is very effective at stunting societal and economic progress, at least in the US.

For example, inflation encourages people to spend money on innovation and progress rather than simply hoarding wealth, regardless of if an oligarch owns the profits or if the workers do. Yes, there can be other/better motivators for progress than just money, but you can see how it can be beneficial in economic systems other than just capitalism.

I don’t think you’ll find any reputable/knowledgable people that hate all inflation. It’s a widely agreed fact that a little inflation is good for everyone. Politicians/economists are say they don’t like high inflation. It’s better to target something like 2% yoy.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point
*

Otherwise people just shove their money under a mattress and the “inverted funnel system” collapses.

It’s actually because people would have to accept pay cuts from time to time, or companies would have to fire wholesale all or their people in a short time.

Also, rents would have to go down, debit could explode overnight… I’m not sure if people having a reason to invest is even an important enough reason to register.

Either way, none of that has any relation to capitalism, unless you count “any society that uses money” as “capitalism”.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

What about bonds or precious metals - would those represent a better return than sticks?

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points
*
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

No.

Bonds are safe and good for reducing risk if your time horizon (aka the amount of time until you expect to use the money) is short. They aren’t good for long-term or chasing even moderate returns. For example, if you want to retire next year and don’t want to delay things if the stock market happens to crash before then, bonds are an option. That’s why retirement funds tend to shift more into bonds the closer they get to the target date, but it’s a tradeoff of growth for a more reliable retirement date.

Precious metals are just plain bad. https://www.macrotrends.net/2608/gold-price-vs-stock-market-100-year-chart

The stock market even outperforms real estate in the long term. Afaik, generally speaking, there isn’t an option out there that beats broad market ETFs. Optimal investing, statistically, is basically as simple as regularly dumping money into the same fund every year, no matter what. The earlier you start the better, since compounding returns can mean that 5 - 10 years makes a big difference once you hit retirement age.

It’s imperfect, but this helps get the point across. It’s an investing game based on real market data. https://buildyourstax.com/

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point
permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points
*

But if we really want to hurt the rich, it means selling all your stocks and only buying the bare necessities

Isn’t not being rich means you don’t have stocks and already can’t buy the necessities? Or is it just me?

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

But if we really want to hurt the rich, it means selling all your stocks and only buying the bare necessities.

I think this is going in the wrong direction, because A) nobody cares about how much you’ve got in your 401k when 87% of the market is controlled by six guys and B) its the bare necessities that are skyrocketing in price, not the luxuries.

I’ve always thought the push for “average” Americans to get into stocks was just another way for wealth to trickle up.

It was a way of back-dooring a tax carve out for the mega-rich. Mitt Romney’s Roth IRA was worth $100M when he ran for office in 2012. Consider how somebody turns $4000/year in deposits into $100M in assets over 30 years and you can see the corrupt nature of our financial system clear as day.

The only way to win is not to play

The appeal of a general strike, I think, is misplaced. It fixates on the goods and services that make life in the US comfortable while neglecting the speculative assets that make wealth in the US grow exponentially.

Better than a general strike would be a debt strike. If you could convince 10M people to refuse to make a credit card payment in a given month, that would rock the fuck out of the capitalist class. If you could convince a union of service sector workers stretching from Walmart to McDonalds to simply refuse to collect payment for sold merchandise for a day, that would terrify the banking sector.

Because so much of this system is ultimately built on credit, not real material assets. So much is built on the theory of compounded interest, not materialist value. Wealth is, at its core, a promise of future income on rent. Attack the mechanisms by which people collect their rents and you can liberate the general population from an unnecessary expense rather than threatening them with a sudden onset of material insecurity.

permalink
report
parent
reply
65 points

Under capitalism the people are a natural resource to be exploited for wealth, just like minerals, wood, and arable land.

permalink
report
reply
9 points
*

The clue is in the term “Human Resources”. I can’t believe people just accept the existence of this phrase.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

Yeah. And “human capital” is another one that just makes my skin crawl.

FWIW, there are a bunch of folks trying to shift the practice over to “People Ops”, while refering to employees as actual people, which is way better. As a bonus, this gives the formerly called HR people a more meaningful scope for their work.

That said, the name or the idea does’t keep some from whitewashing or running with PeopleOps as a kind of virtue signal. Consider this article that minces all of this together while making it sound normal: https://peoplemanagingpeople.com/articles/rise-of-people-ops/

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Agreed, but please remember that this is the same under fascism and communism.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

The final conclusion of capitalism is one solitary person holding all money. Like some crazy real life form of monopoly.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

That’s because the game was specifically meant to show people what capitalism does.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-3 points

Communism proved that in death camps you are guranteed work until the day you die.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

I’m sorry I must have missed the part of Karl Marx’s writings where he said all peasants must be herded into death camps?

But that’s even besides the point. Communism is a complete paradigm change and very few people are asking for that. Universal Education, Healthcare, and Income are compatible with well regulated market systems. Yeah there’s tankies that want a centrally planned economy run by an authoritarian figure, and there’s anarchists who want everyone to slot into a commune with no higher level of governance, (thus, Communism). But calling social reforms Communism is a bad faith argument and disinformation. Don’t be that guy.

permalink
report
parent
reply
0 points
*

I’m ex soviet living in a country where all the things you want are reality. And where those violent ones you don’t want were a reality. Only the latter part is being mostly idealized. There is as much normalization of violence going on in the left meme circles as there are in the right ones and I don’t get why it’s okay to be a faschist casually calling for mass murder of undesireables as long as the symbol on the red flag is yellow. Americans have always been completely out of touch with the world but this is getting a bit too much.

permalink
report
parent
reply
22 points

Show what they know. I’ve been highly inefficient at it.

permalink
report
reply

If you are ever stuggling in life, you can always shoplift surprise civil asset forfeiture items from a corporate chain store. 😉

permalink
report
reply
4 points

But you run the risk of ~~ incarceration~~ surprise litteral slavery

permalink
report
parent
reply
14 points

Serfdom reinvented

permalink
report
reply

Microblog Memes

!microblogmemes@lemmy.world

Create post

A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, Twitter X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.

Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.

Rules:

  1. Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
  2. Be nice.
  3. No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
  4. Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.

Related communities:

Community stats

  • 13K

    Monthly active users

  • 2.2K

    Posts

  • 103K

    Comments