0.1 - 0.999 - they raised round after round of VC, paying back the previous round with big profits.
1 - they sold the gullible public (which never should have happened - regulators should have prevented the IPO!) on a business model with no real hope of profit.
Keep in mind that regulation has been relaxed significantly each decade for a long time. There is a political party which exists almost entirely to eliminate regulation, and they boast about it. One would be led to believe that regulation was what was holding us all back from living full lives.
I think that the state regulation, control, bailouts, and corruption are holding us back.
You can have the state pick winners and bail out idiot investors when they lose their shirt. I would rather make individuals and companies responsible for their own good or bad bets.
For me, part of that means letting people place their bets with minimal state intervention and guarantees about the bet.
In 2008, the bailouts were for the banks and institutions. They did nothing for the people who had already been screwed.
Finance and wealthy interest control US policies. By a large margin, the public welfare is funneled upward to a minority with the power to direct and focus lobbying. The individuals on the ground get far less.
A free market allows some groups to become so powerful that they can exert forces which prevent competition. Then the free market ceases to exist, and the monopolies take control. Whether this is corporations in an industry or wealthy groups in a population, it is the same.
> letting people place their bets with minimal state intervention
What is the value of this freedom when all the bets are placed with "institutions" which will rob (/cheat) the investor?
Any rock you turn over, you will see preference given to people of power or wealth. The accredited financial institutions have been publicly shown to favor insiders or themselves, for example. Retail investors would be advised to invest in things that the institutions knew were bad by the firms they trusted in and paid for advice to.
There is virtually no fairness or mathema†ical equality afforded to everyone in the current systems of government. To believe otherwise is fantasy. If one is in the right group, they have a marked advantage. For the rest, they are almost assured to get much lower results from their efforts.
I agree with most of you sentiment, but differ in that I think that government is the broken tool which funnels funds up tow a small minority (eg massive financial institutions).
If institutions and individuals get to freely distribute the costs of their mistakes, there is a reduced incentive to make smart choices.
>What is the value of this freedom when all the bets are placed with "institutions" which will rob (/cheat) the investor?
I think that institutions maintain monopoly power largely due to the help of the government.
>Any rock you turn over, you will see preference given to people of power or wealth. The accredited financial institutions have been publicly shown to favor insiders or themselves, for example. Retail investors would be advised to invest in things that the institutions knew were bad by the firms they trusted in and paid for advice to.
>There is virtually no fairness or mathema†ical equality afforded to everyone in the current systems of government. To believe otherwise is fantasy. If one is in the right group, they have a marked advantage. For the rest, they are almost assured to get much lower results from their efforts.
My point exactly. The government has an ultimate monopoly of power in the US and is a corrupt steward of that power.
See Roosevelt's New Deal that saved the country (and got America in shape to fight WW2).
The reason ETFs are putting money in riskier and riskier places is that there is too much money concentrated in a few places, and there are rules as to what % of their investments can be put into one investment.