I know an even better way to ensure mass participation in the profits of companies- democratic ownership of the companies by their employees. There must be a name for a system like that.
Totally agree with this, though in order for Joe Schmoes to not have to care so much about the stock market, we need the kind of society where you don't have to make and save so much money to live a dignified life. Right now, the stock market is the only vehicle we have to reliably grow wealth over the long haul (at least historically speaking, that is). As an individual just trying to, as HN says, not have to eat dog food when I'm old, it's hard to jump off the roof before the safety net is laid out.
As a personal finance issue it is absolutely wise to have a retirement investment account but I see that as a necessity for living in the US today rather than as a public policy goal.
Tremendous piece. It also gets at another sinister dynamic of broad based stock ownership rather than tax/spend....in order to have a successful tax/spend regime in place you need to have a shared understanding of the "public good". This is a virtuous cycle in which high taxes=big pot of money=people spend a lot of time thinking about how to determine public good and allocate funds.
Conversely, a stock ownership regime is a tacit admission that there is no possibility of coming to shared understanding of "public good" and as such the best possible outcome is each of us individually making decisions, and hoping that our individual economic whims somehow translates into shared common good. Ofc this is better than a handful of billionaires choosing for us, but is still a deeply cynical view of human nature that says we are unable to collaborate, so why bother trying, let's just cross our fingers and hope that "market forces" will be determinative of collective preferences. Surely this will not work in the long run, probably not even in the medium run, and in the mean time it ossifies our society's collective action muscles in the short run.
I think a great place to start is to focus like a laser on repealing and replacing the Citizens United ruling, as soon as we possibly and permanently can. It'll take courage to put the genie back in the bottle, but we must try. Corporations are not people, plain and simple.
It would take a lot more than merely repealing Citizens United (though that would be good). Unfortunately corporate personhood is deeply ingrained in our legal system going back to the Supreme Court cases in the 19th century
It does feel really weird (as a person who owns stock/ETFs/funds) to live in the current doom scape reality and see our net worth hit new highs basically monthly.
It ought to be clear to everyone but members of the rentier class that the latest set of enclosures of public places and processes has been a major engine driving the rise of inequality in capitalist society. And it seems clear to me that allowing private ownership of critical infrastructure (and i hold a rather broad definition of “critical”) should not be allowed.
If we use Charlie Stross’ view of corporations as slow AIs it looks like most if not all of them are busy turning us into something like paper clips.
All good points. There's a very similar problem at work in the housing market. We need cheaper housing, but no one that owns a house wants the value of *their* house to go down. (Or can afford for it to, given that many people's individual wealth is only in their home.) It's a hell of a catch-22 that leads to NIMBYism and opposition to policy that could reduce housing costs.
I often wonder what it would be like to have the representatives in all the country's legislative bodies--or even the majority of them--actually work for the benefit of the people living in their counties, states, country. It has not yet happened in my small section of the United States, and I am afraid it never will. Meanwhile the stock market continues to rise.
Overwhelmingly, they work for the rich, not us. Indeed, many of them *are* the rich, and by no means just Republicans. For example, speaking of stocks, as Jason Koebler noted on the occasion of Nancy Pelosi's retirement from congress, the stock markets have been very, very good to Ms. Pelosi:
"Through wise taxation, regulation focused on the public good, and strong labor rights to empower unions, you get all of the benefits that the ownership society wants to produce without corporate decimation of our democracy and without the need to have centibillionaires in the world."
Good article. You went kind of easy on them though. I mean, I watched DELL and a couple others when they had those massive drops and then gains relative to the early tariff talks, I saw big investors making 10,000% in one day. Buying puts and calls! Huge amounts of volume as in yes they knew what was happening and profited insanely off of that knowledge.... And then there are people like Rourke capital who buy up a bunch of restaurants, bleed them dry, put them into a new sub company (inspire brands) and then take them public.... They put people on the boards who know what the stocks are going to do so they can short them when the time comes. Blah blah blah... It is so bad. We got to fix this quick!
As I'm sure you (Nolan) realize, there's also the not-so-minor matter of exposure to bursting bubbles, which is a perennial feature of stock markets and particularly relevant at a moment when the NASDAQ is being held up almost solely by a handful of companies that have gone all in on "AI".
I used to own stocks through a 401(k) plan, which I suspect is the main way non-rich people own stocks. I liquidated them into an IRA years ago, and I don't regret it, despite the much-ballyhooed boom in the stock markets. I'd rather not be any more involved than I can help in the shabby affair that is corporate capitalism, which systematically promotes myopically selfish people who abuse other people and trash the planet, condemning even themselves and their children to an impoverished future. Even more than that, I'm just not interested in gambling. Granted, "You don't have to play the horses / Life's a gamble all the same,"* but adding contrived risks to the practically unavoidable ones isn't my idea of a good time. It's irksome having to store money in savings accounts in order to prevent its value from being eaten away by inflation, but at least they're insured (although I expect the crooks and kooks ascendant in the USA will eventually get around to wrecking the FDIC and NCUA).
*Bruce Cockburn, "You don't have to play the horses".
I know an even better way to ensure mass participation in the profits of companies- democratic ownership of the companies by their employees. There must be a name for a system like that.
A worker cooperative is the name I know for this.
But what if employees only own a controlling stake of stock and the minority remainder are publicly traded?
If that happened I would shit my pants.
We should come up w a cool name for it, like ownershipism or something, that will get everyone on board and bypass their scaredycat circuits.
This is something that Richard Wolff talks about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation Of course they are like any other business they don't always work out. https://institute.coop/about-worker-co-ops/examples-worker-cooperatives
I’ve been thinking about the stock market a lot recently and this was excellent. There could be a lot more here
Totally agree with this, though in order for Joe Schmoes to not have to care so much about the stock market, we need the kind of society where you don't have to make and save so much money to live a dignified life. Right now, the stock market is the only vehicle we have to reliably grow wealth over the long haul (at least historically speaking, that is). As an individual just trying to, as HN says, not have to eat dog food when I'm old, it's hard to jump off the roof before the safety net is laid out.
As a personal finance issue it is absolutely wise to have a retirement investment account but I see that as a necessity for living in the US today rather than as a public policy goal.
Tremendous piece. It also gets at another sinister dynamic of broad based stock ownership rather than tax/spend....in order to have a successful tax/spend regime in place you need to have a shared understanding of the "public good". This is a virtuous cycle in which high taxes=big pot of money=people spend a lot of time thinking about how to determine public good and allocate funds.
Conversely, a stock ownership regime is a tacit admission that there is no possibility of coming to shared understanding of "public good" and as such the best possible outcome is each of us individually making decisions, and hoping that our individual economic whims somehow translates into shared common good. Ofc this is better than a handful of billionaires choosing for us, but is still a deeply cynical view of human nature that says we are unable to collaborate, so why bother trying, let's just cross our fingers and hope that "market forces" will be determinative of collective preferences. Surely this will not work in the long run, probably not even in the medium run, and in the mean time it ossifies our society's collective action muscles in the short run.
Good stuff, thanks.
I think a great place to start is to focus like a laser on repealing and replacing the Citizens United ruling, as soon as we possibly and permanently can. It'll take courage to put the genie back in the bottle, but we must try. Corporations are not people, plain and simple.
It would take a lot more than merely repealing Citizens United (though that would be good). Unfortunately corporate personhood is deeply ingrained in our legal system going back to the Supreme Court cases in the 19th century
It does feel really weird (as a person who owns stock/ETFs/funds) to live in the current doom scape reality and see our net worth hit new highs basically monthly.
It ought to be clear to everyone but members of the rentier class that the latest set of enclosures of public places and processes has been a major engine driving the rise of inequality in capitalist society. And it seems clear to me that allowing private ownership of critical infrastructure (and i hold a rather broad definition of “critical”) should not be allowed.
If we use Charlie Stross’ view of corporations as slow AIs it looks like most if not all of them are busy turning us into something like paper clips.
All good points. There's a very similar problem at work in the housing market. We need cheaper housing, but no one that owns a house wants the value of *their* house to go down. (Or can afford for it to, given that many people's individual wealth is only in their home.) It's a hell of a catch-22 that leads to NIMBYism and opposition to policy that could reduce housing costs.
I often wonder what it would be like to have the representatives in all the country's legislative bodies--or even the majority of them--actually work for the benefit of the people living in their counties, states, country. It has not yet happened in my small section of the United States, and I am afraid it never will. Meanwhile the stock market continues to rise.
Overwhelmingly, they work for the rich, not us. Indeed, many of them *are* the rich, and by no means just Republicans. For example, speaking of stocks, as Jason Koebler noted on the occasion of Nancy Pelosi's retirement from congress, the stock markets have been very, very good to Ms. Pelosi:
https://www.404media.co/nancy-pelosi-one-of-the-greatest-wall-street-investors-of-all-time-announces-retirement/
Hell, ya!
"Through wise taxation, regulation focused on the public good, and strong labor rights to empower unions, you get all of the benefits that the ownership society wants to produce without corporate decimation of our democracy and without the need to have centibillionaires in the world."
Voters are stupid. They have failed to vote for their best interests for decades.
God bullshit. Gun nonsense. Abortion. Plus other diversions.
The tribal two party system.
Propaganda.
Of course we should tax more.
We should do a lot more than that.
But the few control the herd.
The only change is when the US has a " let them eat cake" moment. We were or are almost there.
Sadly life is going to really suck for everyone when it gets that bad.
Especially the rich too dumb to leave the country.
It's a meme stock market.
Thank you!
YES YES YES YES Finally someone outlines it in a way that I can share to others
Good article. You went kind of easy on them though. I mean, I watched DELL and a couple others when they had those massive drops and then gains relative to the early tariff talks, I saw big investors making 10,000% in one day. Buying puts and calls! Huge amounts of volume as in yes they knew what was happening and profited insanely off of that knowledge.... And then there are people like Rourke capital who buy up a bunch of restaurants, bleed them dry, put them into a new sub company (inspire brands) and then take them public.... They put people on the boards who know what the stocks are going to do so they can short them when the time comes. Blah blah blah... It is so bad. We got to fix this quick!
Let's leftists collaborate on some option trading!
As I'm sure you (Nolan) realize, there's also the not-so-minor matter of exposure to bursting bubbles, which is a perennial feature of stock markets and particularly relevant at a moment when the NASDAQ is being held up almost solely by a handful of companies that have gone all in on "AI".
I used to own stocks through a 401(k) plan, which I suspect is the main way non-rich people own stocks. I liquidated them into an IRA years ago, and I don't regret it, despite the much-ballyhooed boom in the stock markets. I'd rather not be any more involved than I can help in the shabby affair that is corporate capitalism, which systematically promotes myopically selfish people who abuse other people and trash the planet, condemning even themselves and their children to an impoverished future. Even more than that, I'm just not interested in gambling. Granted, "You don't have to play the horses / Life's a gamble all the same,"* but adding contrived risks to the practically unavoidable ones isn't my idea of a good time. It's irksome having to store money in savings accounts in order to prevent its value from being eaten away by inflation, but at least they're insured (although I expect the crooks and kooks ascendant in the USA will eventually get around to wrecking the FDIC and NCUA).
*Bruce Cockburn, "You don't have to play the horses".