4 ms·

It might be a variation on: If you owe the bank a million dollars, the bank owns you, but if you owe the bank a billion dollars, you own the bank.

lotsofpulp 7y ago
step 1: get sufficient voters invested in equities via index funds and ETFs, meaning pension fund investments, 401k, personal investments, etc. Step 2: bail out market each time as it’s politically untenable to let the broader market prices decline Socialism, but the higher % of total equity you own, the better the socialism works for you. Bonus if you have connections to people who can help you finance purchases, especially when the market is down.
- cmrdporcupine 7y ago
  It's only "socialism" in the bizarre American definition where "socialism" = "anything government." Socialism is social ownership of the economy, what you're describing the opposite. There's another word for what you're describing, which is the extreme capture of the state by corporate entities: corporatism. The extreme form of which is fascism.
  - perpetualpatzer 7y ago
    >Socialism is social ownership of the economy Having a large portion of the population with fractional ownership over a broad portion of the economy (via ETFs, etc.) sounds a lot like "social ownership of the economy" to me. Unless, by social, you mean "equal" ownership (as GP points out).
    - cmrdporcupine 7y ago
      There's a yawning gap between your "fractional" and "equal" when you consider that the vast majority of the few million ETF and mutual fund shareholders with a few tens of thousands in their retirement accounts (if they're lucky) have an _extremely_ small fraction and really no voting power or control. I mean, they send me their prospectus. I can listen on the call. That's about it. And that's not even accounting for the fact that the majority of citizens don't even have retirement funds to get them through.
thrav 7y ago
+use jobs as leverage

lotsofpulp 7y ago

step 1: get sufficient voters invested in equities via index funds and ETFs, meaning pension fund investments, 401k, personal investments, etc. Step 2: bail out market each time as it’s politically untenable to let the broader market prices decline Socialism, but the higher % of total equity you own, the better the socialism works for you. Bonus if you have connections to people who can help you finance purchases, especially when the market is down.

cmrdporcupine 7y ago
It's only "socialism" in the bizarre American definition where "socialism" = "anything government." Socialism is social ownership of the economy, what you're describing the opposite. There's another word for what you're describing, which is the extreme capture of the state by corporate entities: corporatism. The extreme form of which is fascism.
- perpetualpatzer 7y ago
  >Socialism is social ownership of the economy Having a large portion of the population with fractional ownership over a broad portion of the economy (via ETFs, etc.) sounds a lot like "social ownership of the economy" to me. Unless, by social, you mean "equal" ownership (as GP points out).
  - cmrdporcupine 7y ago
    There's a yawning gap between your "fractional" and "equal" when you consider that the vast majority of the few million ETF and mutual fund shareholders with a few tens of thousands in their retirement accounts (if they're lucky) have an _extremely_ small fraction and really no voting power or control. I mean, they send me their prospectus. I can listen on the call. That's about it. And that's not even accounting for the fact that the majority of citizens don't even have retirement funds to get them through.

thrav 7y ago

+use jobs as leverage