[runarberg]

> Do you also support abolishing the stock market?

An anti-capitalist here: Yes... Oh heavens, yes. There are few things I desire more then to see all the stock markets in the world burn and never to be rebuilt. For me, people who make money at the stock market are participating in a systematic exploitation of the working classes. The siphoning of profits away from the workers who created them and earned them, and into the hands of the rich who contribute nothing, yet get everything.

[satvikpendem]

What is the alternative? I'm sure there will still be trade of labor even in a socialist economy. This is assuming the labor theory of value is right, which it isn't, but I'll be charitable.

[runarberg]

There is no need for an alternative. Trading stocks is not a necessary precondition for trading goods and services. Most of mine, and probably your businesses are done without anybody holding stocks in the stuff you are buying or selling. You can abolish the stock market, and pretty much everything stays the same... except the rich lose one (of many) avenues of systemic exploitation.

[satvikpendem]

They'll just exploit you another way. At least those invested in the stock market actually have upward mobility from being poor or middle class, see Bogle heads or the FIRE movement.

[intended]

Eh.

Stock markets serve(d) a function as vehicles to invest in risky ventures. In other words, a way to channel investment.

In the average case scenario, removing the stock market results in rich people being the ones who can afford to fund projects, and thus owning the outcomes.

The underlying case would be for wealth concentration and therefore power concentration. Addressing that would give the working class more options to fund projects or work, more than being the right type of person in the right network to land a rich patron.

[runarberg]

If they ever served such a function, they no longer do so. Today’s risky ventures are funded by venture capital and the results are disastrous. I propose an alternative system where you fund your risky venture by taking out a loan at your local credit union, by crowd-sourcing it, or better yet, just don’t. I think we can give risky ventures a brake for 20-100 years.

Maybe concentrate our efforts on undoing the damage this era of capitalism has wrought us, maybe starting with reinstating consumer protection, dismantling the state surveillance system, protecting against the effects of the climate disaster. If you have a good idea on any of those, run for office, or get a degree and work with your local (state funded) university on the matter.

[intended]

They definitely served that function.

The sucky rule about history seems to be - “is this better than what was there before.”

Equity markets can definitely be made more competitive, and being ungodly rich needs to be more expensive than it currently is.

Loans don’t work the same way as equity investments, because loans are essentially low risk tools. They have a fixed payoff every month/year, whereas something like an expedition or new product launch can recoup its investments only post a certain period, if at all.

As a result loans originators don’t invest in high risk ventures.

This is a rule of thumb, there are many instruments you can create which will fill the gap.

We definitely need more competition and user protection in markets (and in general). The pendulum has swung very far in favor of firms in the US, and that needs to be balanced.

[satvikpendem]

Good luck with that pause. Things like the climate disaster require risky ventures these days like carbon sequestration at scale, you can't undo it just by doing the same things as today, which is basically what you're advocating for, upholding the status quo, for 20 to 100 years. You'll probably say that's not what you mean but that's what the outcome will become.

[runarberg]

Please just stop. Capitalists have already caused way too much damage with your “risky ventures”. After a thousand of these risky ventures with each one of them making the climate disaster worse actually, I think it is time that you are just stopped. “Just one more risky venture bro“, is just gonna cause more damage on top of the damage already being done.

What we need are boring and proven solutions. Lets start with boring old regulations, maybe boring old taxation, on top of boring old infrastructure build out (using proven technology; none of these modular small nuclear power plants; they don‘t exist and won‘t save us). And Finally boring old international agreements, this time without capitalist polluters polluting the agreements, just like the one which saved us from nuclear proliferation and the ozone layer depletion.

As for the status quo. The status quo is currently that the interest of the rich trumps everything. Climate inaction is the status quo because rich capitalists benefit from polluting, so governments simply allow them to continue. Risky ventures do nothing to stop that.