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It feels like a weird backdoor to socialism. Look, we're capitalists, we trade stock on open markets ... but really most stock market gains come from a tiny fr

It feels like a weird backdoor to socialism. Look, we're capitalists, we trade stock on open markets ... but really most stock market gains come from a tiny fraction of companies with incredible performance, so everyone just invests in index funds to make sure they own all of the stocks, including the ones that will go up a lot ... and since we all own all of the companies, we start making sure our government works to prevent the companies we own from going out of business ...

Analemma_ 1y ago
So what should be done instead? I pile everything into index funds because actively-managed funds charge higher fees for worse performance, and telling me I must invest with them instead of indexes seems much more straightforwardly socialist than whatever you're fretting about.
- lastofthemojito 1y ago
  Of course you do, that's the reasonable thing to do. It's just interesting to think about what broader shifts will accompany the transition from pension to 401(k) style retirement. My parents and grandparents owned little to no stock AFAIK. They didn't care directly how Wall Street did, they just cared about their pensions (which admittedly, I'm sure was opaquely tied to how well some companies were doing). With a sizeable 401(k) I absolutely care about how Wall Street does, and so does a much higher percentage of the population these days. You used to occasionally see bailouts of too-big-to-fail companies or industries, now the White House holds buy-a-Tesla day, presumably to boost TSLA. Just today the US Commerce Secretary announced that a UK airline would buy at least $10 billion of Boeing airplanes (Boeing stock is up ~4%). Maybe it's just me paying more attention to stock market news these days, but my impression is that politicians have recently begun to care a lot more about the overall stock market going up because a lot more voters care about the overall stock market going up.
yupitsme123 1y ago
It's not really socialism because you don't own or have any say in the company you work for. And not everybody owns stocks. It's more like feudalism where those kings cut in the people below them so that they have a stake in the system and don't get any ideas about revolting.
deleted 1y ago
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Analemma_ 1y ago

So what should be done instead? I pile everything into index funds because actively-managed funds charge higher fees for worse performance, and telling me I must invest with them instead of indexes seems much more straightforwardly socialist than whatever you're fretting about.

lastofthemojito 1y ago
Of course you do, that's the reasonable thing to do. It's just interesting to think about what broader shifts will accompany the transition from pension to 401(k) style retirement. My parents and grandparents owned little to no stock AFAIK. They didn't care directly how Wall Street did, they just cared about their pensions (which admittedly, I'm sure was opaquely tied to how well some companies were doing). With a sizeable 401(k) I absolutely care about how Wall Street does, and so does a much higher percentage of the population these days. You used to occasionally see bailouts of too-big-to-fail companies or industries, now the White House holds buy-a-Tesla day, presumably to boost TSLA. Just today the US Commerce Secretary announced that a UK airline would buy at least $10 billion of Boeing airplanes (Boeing stock is up ~4%). Maybe it's just me paying more attention to stock market news these days, but my impression is that politicians have recently begun to care a lot more about the overall stock market going up because a lot more voters care about the overall stock market going up.

yupitsme123 1y ago

It's not really socialism because you don't own or have any say in the company you work for. And not everybody owns stocks. It's more like feudalism where those kings cut in the people below them so that they have a stake in the system and don't get any ideas about revolting.

deleted 1y ago

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