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by andsoitis 13 days ago
> What if we invested half of those trillions directly in socially impactful measures

There’s no real “we” in this case. The money is coming from private coffers, people looking for ROI on their hard-earned money. The money isn’t coming from a central planning process.
3 comments
PaulDavisThe1st 13 days ago
As noted elsewhere in these comments, it was that long ago before the biggest thing propping up capital investment in the USA were the assets backing union workers' retirement funds. That very much wasn't "people looking for ROI on their hard earned money" and was very much closer to a "central planning process" (though admittedly, not all the way there).
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trescenzi 13 days ago
There is a we though. Society might not act collectively or via central planning but culture can function as such to a degree. The culture in the US is currently that it is ethical to seek returns on your capital regardless the source. This didn’t always used to be the case and it doesn’t have to be the case.
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AloysB 13 days ago
Fair point.

Yet, "we" will suffer the potential consequences.

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andsoitis 13 days ago
Can you tell us more?
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wpasc 13 days ago
not OP, but i believe the commenter is referring to how GFC in '07 had wide ranging negative effects for a lot of people who had nothing to do with investments in mortgage backed securities
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andsoitis 13 days ago
> GFC in '07 had wide ranging negative effects for a lot of people who had nothing to do with investments in mortgage backed securities

GHC '07 can be directly traced to a (in retrospect) failure of regulations AKA the government AKA "we".

Our democratically elected government has the ability to strike, what they think, is the right balance.

The companies and investors cannot be expected to take the broad view, so it is the WE who are responsible in a way, are we not? In a way, "the people" have, on balance, decided what level of regulations.

We would be tempted to complain that the lag and fidelity of choices by "the people" cannot be faithfully represented by the government. However, there's no better solution than what we currently have that I can think of, but I would love to hear about a scalable approach that caters to more individuals' specific wishes on a very very long list of policy decisions and that has short turnaround time.

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