What if we got rid of stocks?
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Ive often seen individuals on the left talking about how billionares shouldnt exist etc., but when probed on how that could be accomplished the answer is usually just taxes or guillotines. I dont think either is great.
What if instead, corporations were made to be unable to be sold or owned. Initially theyre made to default to popular election for their board, and after that they can set up a charter or adopt a standard one, ratified by majority vote of their employees.
Bank collapse would probably follow, how could that be remedied? Maybe match the banks invalidated stocks with bonds?
I would very much like to see this happen.
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The stock market shouldn't exist.
Fight me.wrote on last edited by [email protected]The stock market isn’t the root of all evil - it’s just one way for companies to raise money and for regular people to invest in those companies. Without it, businesses would still need funding, but the money would come from a much smaller circle of the ultra-rich and private investors. That would make the system less democratic, not more.
If we got rid of the stock market, we wouldn't get rid of corporate greed or wealth inequality. We’d just move them into darker, less transparent places - behind closed doors instead of in public view. Ordinary people would lose what little access they have to ownership and wealth-building. Rich people would still get richer, just in ways even harder to regulate.
So if the goal is to make the system fairer, abolishing the stock market isn’t the answer. Reforming it might be - but killing it outright would probably just make things worse.
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The stock market shouldn't exist.
Fight me.Fight you?
Brother, I've come to join you.
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Fight you?
Brother, I've come to join you.
C’mon, surely we can find something to disagree over for some good ‘ol’ leftist infighting.
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Even if we ignored the immediate collapse of the world economy, if you were starting from scratch how would you get anyone to take risks and put money/time into creating a business?
Even if people did decide to do it, no banks would be able to lend to you (what banks? They need a massive amount of money to start) as they would have absolutely nothing as collateral.
With a proper UBI and social safety net they’d be raking much less of a risk.
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Ive often seen individuals on the left talking about how billionares shouldnt exist etc., but when probed on how that could be accomplished the answer is usually just taxes or guillotines. I dont think either is great.
What if instead, corporations were made to be unable to be sold or owned. Initially theyre made to default to popular election for their board, and after that they can set up a charter or adopt a standard one, ratified by majority vote of their employees.
Bank collapse would probably follow, how could that be remedied? Maybe match the banks invalidated stocks with bonds?
Stocks are arguably one of the most important inventions in human history. Money/capital are an abstract thing that represents some quantity of anything. It is the universal exchange of value.
What a stock allows you to do is it allows for the collective to pool value to create something that cannot be accomplished by any members individually.
For example imagine ur in a desert with 1000people and your all dying of thirst and it costs 1000currencies to build a well to get water. But the richest person only has 100currencies. Nobody can afford to build a well and now everyone dies. With stocks that means that everyone can put a couple currencies in and in return get a shair of the water.
With ur proposal how in the hell would u build a well? Where do u get the 1000currencies u need to build it?
Their defiantly is an issue with the centralised ownership of capital and workers have no steak in the companies they work at. Their is a very interesting court case related to henry ford where he initially wanted to reinvest into his company and employees but the court rules that the purpose if a company is to make the shareholders happy which meant they got all the money.
Of course the way u fix this is you simply give workers a steak in the company. How you do this is difficult. One way would be to force everyone to be paid a certain percentage of their paycheck extra that they must have in a stocks for the company. Essentially all companies are giving everyone an pay rise but they get paid in the companies stocks. But if u do this everyone will just sell those stocks so u make it an account they cannot just spend until they retire but if ur gonna do this then ur gonna want to put it into a good index fund. And would u look at that u just reinvented Australian super funds. The Australian people through super funds own about 30% of the Australian stocks as well as a decent amount of international stocks. This is why Australians are so rich per capita, this also gives Australian government so much international leverage via directing where this capital goes. Australian super is about to die due to some bullshit new tax on unrealised gains in super so our country will collapse in 30years from that but that's not really relevant.
The real issue is that trading is the most gate kept thing in the world. The only reason banks exist at all is because they get a good interest rate from the federal reserve give out slightly shitter interest rates to everyone else and pocket the difference. To trade on an exchange u gotta pay ridiculous fees that are not subject to free market competition cos legal shenanigans.
That's not to mention private equity meaning the public can't buy into something they believe in when its new and undervalued cos they literally can't.
The real solution is to make it all open and free for everyone. A decentralised unrestricted free market of trade would be the great leveller. The advantages of the billionaires would be stripped away from them the market value of stocks would stabilise to represent their true value.
And now we are entering into conspiracy land so put on ur tinfoil hats. Their is a system that would have decentralised and equalised capital and that would have been to issue an nft that literally was the stock/asset that could be used to back a loan in a smart contract. Unfortunately nfts where adopted by some Nazis pushing monkeys that somehow mysteriously got into the mainstream via traditional celebrities known to push pro us government takes. Then it all fell down and died in the eyes of the average person completely poisoning the idea for perpetuity. I suspect crypto was purposely poisoned by billionaires and the us government as it threatened the USD as the international reserve currency (one of the only things that motivates the us to go to war) and threatened to remove the systematic advantage of the billionaire class.
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The stock market isn’t the root of all evil - it’s just one way for companies to raise money and for regular people to invest in those companies. Without it, businesses would still need funding, but the money would come from a much smaller circle of the ultra-rich and private investors. That would make the system less democratic, not more.
If we got rid of the stock market, we wouldn't get rid of corporate greed or wealth inequality. We’d just move them into darker, less transparent places - behind closed doors instead of in public view. Ordinary people would lose what little access they have to ownership and wealth-building. Rich people would still get richer, just in ways even harder to regulate.
So if the goal is to make the system fairer, abolishing the stock market isn’t the answer. Reforming it might be - but killing it outright would probably just make things worse.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]I'm not saying it is. But everything that offers the chance will be abused. And the way it currently exists, it shouldn't.
Currently it's just a massive machine for people with massive money to get more, channel money / misdirect analysis / hide and exploit all others. On paper one might disagree, in reality though...
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Ive often seen individuals on the left talking about how billionares shouldnt exist etc., but when probed on how that could be accomplished the answer is usually just taxes or guillotines. I dont think either is great.
What if instead, corporations were made to be unable to be sold or owned. Initially theyre made to default to popular election for their board, and after that they can set up a charter or adopt a standard one, ratified by majority vote of their employees.
Bank collapse would probably follow, how could that be remedied? Maybe match the banks invalidated stocks with bonds?
i think an easier way would be to limit stock trading to once per fiscal quarter.
stocks were invented as a way for people to invest in things they believe in, and get some money back as thanks. with the advent of rapid trading, the economy has become hopelessly slaved to the ticker; the business is no longer what makes value, value is what makes value.
it's all turned into speculation. eliminating that part would go a long way.
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Ive often seen individuals on the left talking about how billionares shouldnt exist etc., but when probed on how that could be accomplished the answer is usually just taxes or guillotines. I dont think either is great.
What if instead, corporations were made to be unable to be sold or owned. Initially theyre made to default to popular election for their board, and after that they can set up a charter or adopt a standard one, ratified by majority vote of their employees.
Bank collapse would probably follow, how could that be remedied? Maybe match the banks invalidated stocks with bonds?
Had to read twice. My gut reaction was "Getting rid of socks? Why, you monster? Blisters and smelly shoes everywhere!"
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Ive often seen individuals on the left talking about how billionares shouldnt exist etc., but when probed on how that could be accomplished the answer is usually just taxes or guillotines. I dont think either is great.
What if instead, corporations were made to be unable to be sold or owned. Initially theyre made to default to popular election for their board, and after that they can set up a charter or adopt a standard one, ratified by majority vote of their employees.
Bank collapse would probably follow, how could that be remedied? Maybe match the banks invalidated stocks with bonds?
I don't get how you can think Taxes aren't the answer but removing stocks are. Billionaires exist because they have a lot of money in some form and are able to reinvest that money to get more money. If you remove stocks, they will find another way to have a lot of money, whether that's owning a lot of business, buying up properties etc.
Start applying a sort of wealth tax, disallow financial influence in election (putting actual limits on spending), fix the loophole for passing on wealth to children with little to no tax, etc.
There really isn't a simple solution, but a wide range of changes that need to be done in my opinion. -
I'm not saying it is. But everything that offers the chance will be abused. And the way it currently exists, it shouldn't.
Currently it's just a massive machine for people with massive money to get more, channel money / misdirect analysis / hide and exploit all others. On paper one might disagree, in reality though...
Investing in the stock market isn’t something exclusive to the rich. For someone like me, it’s pretty much the only realistic way to build any significant wealth for retirement. Without investing, I’d just be losing money to inflation by keeping it in a bank account. Now that I’ve got it invested, I’m already earning enough in returns to cover a few months’ wages each year. It makes no sense to want to take that possibility away from everyone just because you despise billionaires.
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Stocks are arguably one of the most important inventions in human history. Money/capital are an abstract thing that represents some quantity of anything. It is the universal exchange of value.
What a stock allows you to do is it allows for the collective to pool value to create something that cannot be accomplished by any members individually.
For example imagine ur in a desert with 1000people and your all dying of thirst and it costs 1000currencies to build a well to get water. But the richest person only has 100currencies. Nobody can afford to build a well and now everyone dies. With stocks that means that everyone can put a couple currencies in and in return get a shair of the water.
With ur proposal how in the hell would u build a well? Where do u get the 1000currencies u need to build it?
Their defiantly is an issue with the centralised ownership of capital and workers have no steak in the companies they work at. Their is a very interesting court case related to henry ford where he initially wanted to reinvest into his company and employees but the court rules that the purpose if a company is to make the shareholders happy which meant they got all the money.
Of course the way u fix this is you simply give workers a steak in the company. How you do this is difficult. One way would be to force everyone to be paid a certain percentage of their paycheck extra that they must have in a stocks for the company. Essentially all companies are giving everyone an pay rise but they get paid in the companies stocks. But if u do this everyone will just sell those stocks so u make it an account they cannot just spend until they retire but if ur gonna do this then ur gonna want to put it into a good index fund. And would u look at that u just reinvented Australian super funds. The Australian people through super funds own about 30% of the Australian stocks as well as a decent amount of international stocks. This is why Australians are so rich per capita, this also gives Australian government so much international leverage via directing where this capital goes. Australian super is about to die due to some bullshit new tax on unrealised gains in super so our country will collapse in 30years from that but that's not really relevant.
The real issue is that trading is the most gate kept thing in the world. The only reason banks exist at all is because they get a good interest rate from the federal reserve give out slightly shitter interest rates to everyone else and pocket the difference. To trade on an exchange u gotta pay ridiculous fees that are not subject to free market competition cos legal shenanigans.
That's not to mention private equity meaning the public can't buy into something they believe in when its new and undervalued cos they literally can't.
The real solution is to make it all open and free for everyone. A decentralised unrestricted free market of trade would be the great leveller. The advantages of the billionaires would be stripped away from them the market value of stocks would stabilise to represent their true value.
And now we are entering into conspiracy land so put on ur tinfoil hats. Their is a system that would have decentralised and equalised capital and that would have been to issue an nft that literally was the stock/asset that could be used to back a loan in a smart contract. Unfortunately nfts where adopted by some Nazis pushing monkeys that somehow mysteriously got into the mainstream via traditional celebrities known to push pro us government takes. Then it all fell down and died in the eyes of the average person completely poisoning the idea for perpetuity. I suspect crypto was purposely poisoned by billionaires and the us government as it threatened the USD as the international reserve currency (one of the only things that motivates the us to go to war) and threatened to remove the systematic advantage of the billionaire class.
For example imagine ur in a desert with 1000people and your all dying of thirst and it costs 1000currencies to build a well to get water. But the richest person only has 100currencies. Nobody can afford to build a well and now everyone dies. With stocks that means that everyone can put a couple currencies in and in return get a shair of the water.
With ur proposal how in the hell would u build a well? Where do u get the 1000currencies u need to build it?
Functioning governments exist to help manage pooled resources.
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Even if we ignored the immediate collapse of the world economy, if you were starting from scratch how would you get anyone to take risks and put money/time into creating a business?
Even if people did decide to do it, no banks would be able to lend to you (what banks? They need a massive amount of money to start) as they would have absolutely nothing as collateral.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]How would you get anyone to take risks and start a business
People create things all the time without a profit motive. Assuming they have a good safety net behind them that allows them to start up there ideas people will create. Case in point the app were on right now, it's developed open source with no profit motive, no stocks, no company. It's built by a bunch of hardline communist who believe in an open social network.
What banks
There are credit unions that function as co-ops with no stock ownership
they would have absolutely nothing as collateral
Co-ops can have collateral just like any other business, property of a store or factory, stock ( in the product sense ) etc. Yeah we wouldn't have silicon valley with vcs betting millions on unproven tech, but do we really need that?
Also this is all assuming there's no state involvement or planning. The state has a great credit line that it can use to backstop loans for small cooperative enterprises or just create the enterprises itself, eg. City run grocery stores like zohrans been pitching.
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Ive often seen individuals on the left talking about how billionares shouldnt exist etc., but when probed on how that could be accomplished the answer is usually just taxes or guillotines. I dont think either is great.
What if instead, corporations were made to be unable to be sold or owned. Initially theyre made to default to popular election for their board, and after that they can set up a charter or adopt a standard one, ratified by majority vote of their employees.
Bank collapse would probably follow, how could that be remedied? Maybe match the banks invalidated stocks with bonds?
What your describing is a socialist revolution. Marx referred to it as the abolition of private property, which he said is the goal of communism. Private property doesn't mean your phone or car or home or whatever, that is personal property, it's stuff you own to use. Private property is something you own to make money from, stocks, bonds, rental properties etc. That type of property is based off power and exploitation, the power to kick someone out of there home if they don't pay rent, or the exploitation of the working class by extracting there surplus value (profit) which goes to pay a stocks dividends, or to be reinvested in the business thus raising the stocks capital holdings and the stocks value.
In Marxism private property is the justification given to the working class for there exploitation, and abolishing it will free the working class and allow them to organize horizontally like you said with voting, without bourgeoisie property relations.
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Ive often seen individuals on the left talking about how billionares shouldnt exist etc., but when probed on how that could be accomplished the answer is usually just taxes or guillotines. I dont think either is great.
What if instead, corporations were made to be unable to be sold or owned. Initially theyre made to default to popular election for their board, and after that they can set up a charter or adopt a standard one, ratified by majority vote of their employees.
Bank collapse would probably follow, how could that be remedied? Maybe match the banks invalidated stocks with bonds?
unable to be sold or owned
So what incentive is there to start a company? Who funds it? People are expected to start a company, take all the financial risk, for what exactly?
People being billionaires is not the issue people like to think it is. Public servants becoming millionaires by trading and taking bribes/kickbacks and cushy jobs upon leaving politics is the problem.
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Investing in the stock market isn’t something exclusive to the rich. For someone like me, it’s pretty much the only realistic way to build any significant wealth for retirement. Without investing, I’d just be losing money to inflation by keeping it in a bank account. Now that I’ve got it invested, I’m already earning enough in returns to cover a few months’ wages each year. It makes no sense to want to take that possibility away from everyone just because you despise billionaires.
I understand and am happy for you that you see a benefit in this for you.
However, I came to the conclusion that it is trivial for those in power to simply fuck you over on occasion. If you're a small investor and lose, we'll tough luck you signed up for it. If you're the bank, oh dear, we need to rescue it! There are various examples of crashes and closures but it really is fine to have a different opinion.
I just wanted to state I am not having mine simply for fun and did quite some research and also worked in a critical financial field once where made up money in a global scale was proven.
As you will also have your background for your opinion. That's fine!
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How would you get anyone to take risks and start a business
People create things all the time without a profit motive. Assuming they have a good safety net behind them that allows them to start up there ideas people will create. Case in point the app were on right now, it's developed open source with no profit motive, no stocks, no company. It's built by a bunch of hardline communist who believe in an open social network.
What banks
There are credit unions that function as co-ops with no stock ownership
they would have absolutely nothing as collateral
Co-ops can have collateral just like any other business, property of a store or factory, stock ( in the product sense ) etc. Yeah we wouldn't have silicon valley with vcs betting millions on unproven tech, but do we really need that?
Also this is all assuming there's no state involvement or planning. The state has a great credit line that it can use to backstop loans for small cooperative enterprises or just create the enterprises itself, eg. City run grocery stores like zohrans been pitching.
But why would people take loans out to start businesses if there’s no way to pay the loan back? Where is any profit from the business going?
Without ownership of a company there’s no reason for anyone to start a company and take on all the risk.
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I don't get how you can think Taxes aren't the answer but removing stocks are. Billionaires exist because they have a lot of money in some form and are able to reinvest that money to get more money. If you remove stocks, they will find another way to have a lot of money, whether that's owning a lot of business, buying up properties etc.
Start applying a sort of wealth tax, disallow financial influence in election (putting actual limits on spending), fix the loophole for passing on wealth to children with little to no tax, etc.
There really isn't a simple solution, but a wide range of changes that need to be done in my opinion.People should be allowed to give their money and possessions to their children with NO tax whatsoever.
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How would you get anyone to take risks and start a business
People create things all the time without a profit motive. Assuming they have a good safety net behind them that allows them to start up there ideas people will create. Case in point the app were on right now, it's developed open source with no profit motive, no stocks, no company. It's built by a bunch of hardline communist who believe in an open social network.
What banks
There are credit unions that function as co-ops with no stock ownership
they would have absolutely nothing as collateral
Co-ops can have collateral just like any other business, property of a store or factory, stock ( in the product sense ) etc. Yeah we wouldn't have silicon valley with vcs betting millions on unproven tech, but do we really need that?
Also this is all assuming there's no state involvement or planning. The state has a great credit line that it can use to backstop loans for small cooperative enterprises or just create the enterprises itself, eg. City run grocery stores like zohrans been pitching.
That's fair.
Didn't think about coops, I assume that if they went completely underwater their creditors would still own them though.
Could all still work, but could be clunky, would probably all get worked out in time.
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Ive often seen individuals on the left talking about how billionares shouldnt exist etc., but when probed on how that could be accomplished the answer is usually just taxes or guillotines. I dont think either is great.
What if instead, corporations were made to be unable to be sold or owned. Initially theyre made to default to popular election for their board, and after that they can set up a charter or adopt a standard one, ratified by majority vote of their employees.
Bank collapse would probably follow, how could that be remedied? Maybe match the banks invalidated stocks with bonds?
Upvote for blue-sky thinking.
