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Comment by chillacy | Hacker News Reader

> militant activism via buying stock as a means to sticking it to the man.

> beginning of another stock market crash

Hmm sounds like it's working then..

Going off of the resentment against the 'elites' in wsb comments to the tune of "I started broke and I'll go broke again but if the rich go broke..."

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Maybe we'll see a new class of financial instrument come out of this. Not sure how it would work but I have to imagine that some clever person on Wall Street can find a way to sell shares of:

> Give me $1 and I'll make sure your target loses $5

Spite investing? Count me in.

this sounds both illegal and extremely fun

But it’s no longer effecting just the rich. It’s working people with pensions and 401ks... and this better not mess up the decade long sweet bull market for a handful of millionaires.

I'm not without sympathy for them, but I also think it would be good if people stopped allocating their retirements towards "money tricks on Wall-Street" and instead found ways to put it towards creating a world worth retiring in.

Money tricks on wall street do have effects on the real world, some of which are positive.

Almost everything has a cost and benefit. Point is to tilt more toward benefit.

Sure, occasionally.

But I think that the most common side effect is an increase in class stratification--which I'd argue undermines the political stability of the future that you're hoping to retire into.

If they did that, I doubt their would be retirements.

Assuming all eco-tech companies on WS are trustworthy enough (not Enron-esque), and investing in eco-tech will "create a world worth retiring in", most people would have seen a significant part of their retirement go to zero.

Or if they decided to invest in a publicly traded life-sciences company in hopes of finding more breakthroughs, they would see their investment go towards funding some pricey acquisition instead.

"Create a world worth retiring in" is as vague as it gets.

What "a world worth retiring in" means in each retiree's case is gonna vary based on their situation. Wanna die on Mars? Maybe put it all in Space X, I don't know.

All I'm saying is that it's a shame that we're taught that the point of investing is to make money, rather than make a difference with a side effect of having more money. Because left to its own devices, money tends to motivate some pretty awful things.

I don't want retire rich, I wanna retire post-scarcity. I hate letting my money sit in an account while smart kids can't afford college. Those kids are gonna develop the tech that saves my ass one day--or not--depending on how we play our cards now.

Blindly picking a fund based on performance just feels like shooting my future self in the foot.

> I hate letting my money sit in an account while smart kids can't afford college

If you know of a smart kid that can't afford to go to college, you could make them a reasonable interest loan and it would be a win for both of you.

There's a YC idea there somewhere. Especially when a lot of family offices are looking at wealth preservation over volatility.

What is YC about it? It's called a predatory private student loan.

Agreed.

It doesn't matter that I'm the one collecting interest instead of the bank--I've still set that student up to go forth and play zero sum games until they're out of debt, which is the kind of thing I'm wishing for a way to avoid.

> I've still set that student up to go forth and play zero sum games until they're out of debt, which is the kind of thing I'm wishing for a way to avoid.

You feel that society investing in education is a zero sum game?

Well most of YC is predatory pricing covered in a veneer of good intentions and tech.

There are things called Income Sharing Agreements that in theory better align the incentives of lenders and students.

Yes, hedge fund's gambling affects us all and now they went too far and woken up an anti reaction. Don't blame others for the risks that Wall Street takes.

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