it is funny though my ohio moped group chat and the swoops group chat were like all about stocks, its interesting how accessible and tangible this made trading to all us regular shmoes, and at the saem time exposed just what utter bullshit the stock market really is.
And when you get into really looking at it and thinking about it, really none of it still serves the purposes of supporting new innovations and new business, that's almost exclusively done by venture capital groups. to some extent it promotes companies to pursue bigger growths and gains, but shouldnt they do that anyway?
Then you start thinking about how it enabled giant monoliths like amazon to not just exist but materialize enormous capital based on speculation and faith, to literally destroy any competition. Like in those cases its' the anti-capitalist consolidation of wealth and power and you get these unshakable monopolies. there is no room to compete, they can (and did) just rely on the stock speculation to take massive losses, undersell and squeeze out any competition, then buy them out at rock bottom, blatantly employing all the unscrupulous techniques that anti-trust laws used to protect consumers and businesses against...
Or you look at the fact that stocks have actually gone up through this massive global pandemic, enormous tolls to lives and businesses and still ongoing, yet stock market continued to rise, saved by HUGE infusions of cash by near zero interest loans and low fed lending. Like consider this past year we have failed to save lives or livelihoods, people are suffering from isolation, losing lives and family members, losing jobs and businesses, and the one thing we did manage to save was the stocks, and the super wealthy investors and firms that manage them. And some of us middle class folks eke out a modest boost to our retirements or whatever to be totally ok with ignoring the EXTREME polar distribution of wealth
yeah - so how about them stocks.