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    athos77 ,

    The stock market is a mood ring for rich people.

    LufyCZ ,

    Do you have a 401k?

    davel ,
    @davel@lemmy.ml avatar

    The 401(k) is one of neoliberalism’s crowning achievements. Its effects are breathtaking in scope.

    • It allowed companies to even more easily abandon employee pensions.
    • It moved retirement savings to the retail financial market, so the financial industry could skim even more from people’s investments than they could when they were in the institutional market of pensions.
    • It rewired the brains of the top ~20% of the working class into thinking of themselves as capitalists, against their own class interests chefs-kiss Now they watch corporate news coverage on “the market” and “the economy,” thinking they’re temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
    • It makes workers blame themselves for their meager retirement savings. If only I had made better investment choices! If only I had contributed more to my 401(k)! (even though they really couldn’t have, because of all the other effects of 40 years of neoliberalism.) Better that they blame themselves than the capitalist class that imposed this bullshit neoliberal system on them.
    Blue_Morpho ,

    It moved retirement savings to the retail financial market,

    Weren’t they always their anyway? That is a company would have a pension but that money was invested in the market under the direction of the pension manager which really meant the CEO.

    davel ,
    @davel@lemmy.ml avatar

    Two things:

    • While institutional investing does include the stocks & bond that regular people have access to, it also includes much more that regular people don’t. Regular people can’t invest in private equity, for example.
    • Pension funds aren’t in retail investment accounts like ours are. They’re not in Schwab, Vanguard, Fidelity, etc. accounts (at least not in those companies’ retail accounts; they may be in their institutional accounts.)
    Blue_Morpho ,

    Pension funds aren’t in retail investment accounts

    That they are in different categories doesn’t change that the end result is identical: The pension fund tells it’s broker to buy MSFT or the 401k owner buys Vanguard which buys MSFT.

    davel ,
    @davel@lemmy.ml avatar

    Sure, I clarified exactly that in my first bullet point. But you’re still not accounting for the pension fund manager’s ability invest in say Andreessen Horowitz, which you cannot do unless you’re a multimillionaire.

    Blue_Morpho ,

    That seems like a good thing so the CEO can’t tell his pension manager to gamble employee savings on his billionaire friend’s side hustle.

    Andreessen Horowitz: “In 2019, the firm applied to restructure as a registered investment adviser in order to have more freedom to take up riskier bets like cryptocurrency.”

    davel ,
    @davel@lemmy.ml avatar

    I’ve been in the tech industry for a very long time, and I know people rich enough and dumb enough to invest in A16Z. They can afford to lose money so I’m not about to stop them.

    Blue_Morpho ,

    They can afford to lose money so I’m not about to stop them.

    So why advocate for a return to the old system where CEO’s could do that with their employees’ money?

    davel ,
    @davel@lemmy.ml avatar

    It would be an improvement if we could go back to the pre-neoliberal, Keynesian days, but I highly doubt it’s even possible.

    I advocate for something else altogether hammer-sickle

    c0mbatbag3l ,
    @c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world avatar

    Perfect, trade out one system where the 1% takes 80% of the production into another system where historically a ruling elite of military/government cronies took the top 80% of the production.

    Same problem different aristocracy.

    Go read Progress and Poverty, capitalism isn’t the issue. Capitalists pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes by making themselves the most important part of the puzzle, is. Giving themselves most of the credit for production and thereby most of the profits from said production.

    davel ,
    @davel@lemmy.ml avatar

    Henry George & Simon Patten & John Keynes had better ideas than the neoclassical/neoliberal economists did & do have, and it’s unfortunate that they’ve been memory-holed. Nonetheless capitalism is the core issue, and will be until we abolish private ownership of the means of production.

    c0mbatbag3l ,
    @c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world avatar

    I disagree, the fundamental issue with communism is in its design. You either let the government control your economy, in which case authoritarianism will leech those who toe the party line to the top and corrupt. Or, you design another system/group to handle economic concerns. In which case, they will simply turn into a government in all but name.

    There’s a reason the state owned businesses of the fascist Nazis and the collectivist “public ownership” of the Soviet Union looked the same in practice, when in the realm of theory they couldn’t be more separate. Those in power (whoever they may be) when allowed to put people in positions of authority who they desire, will just put their favorite yes men there. Whether that’s a required backing of the nazi party/a bullet to the brain, or just being next in line because Lenin had your superior killed for failing to meet expectations. Authoritarianism is the rule of the day and they all exercise it equally.

    The economy is best left to the needs of a market that has the appropriate organization and division of labor, land, and capital. It only self-destructs due to the misguided notion that wages are derived from capital instead of labor, and the justification of the capitalist at how much of the slice they deserve based on that misdirection.

    davel ,
    @davel@lemmy.ml avatar

    Yeah now you’re talking pure nonsense. Just fractally wrong at every level.

    frezik ,

    Don’t forget putting a lot of money in control (not own, but control) of a few investment companies. Vanguard and Blackrock could shift the entire market by choosing how their indicies get allocated. Most of that money came to them by way of 401k ETFs.

    Now, if you have a 401k, putting it in an ETF is invariably your personal best option (for the proportion invested in stocks, anyway). But there are implications here when everyone does it.

    Rooskie91 ,

    Just say you don’t understand how they work.

    LufyCZ ,

    Maybe you don’t, it’s not that complicated actually.

    You put in money, stocks go up, you take out more money when you retire.

    frezik ,

    That’s how it works from the perspective of an individual. Now think through the implications when everyone is feeding the same ETFs from two or three investment firms.

    LufyCZ ,

    Yeah so what are the implications?

    The S&P500 index is a bunch of different companies, the fact that the ETF is managed by one company or another is irelevant, what matters is the underlying stock.

    Chakravanti ,

    When the bladder gets overfilled and the inevitable combustion goes down and all all the piss goes everywhere and no one wants it anywhere…

    …Monero takes over.

    davel ,
    @davel@lemmy.ml avatar

    The crypto grift is a symptom of late stage capitalism. It’s never going to take over anything but suckers’ wallets.

    Chakravanti ,

    Or in this case, dope.

    frezik ,

    It’s covered elsewhere in this thread in more detail: midwest.social/comment/5784445

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