Gambling isn't some brilliant new idea, even if you rename it. I understand the technical distinction trying to be made, but seriously, it's gambling.
No one "bungled" anything. They just aren't being prosecuted..yet.
No one "bungled" anything. They just aren't being prosecuted..yet.
An anti-capitalist here: Yes... Oh heavens, yes. There are few things I desire more then to see all the stock markets in the world burn and never to be rebuilt. For me, people who make money at the stock market are participating in a systematic exploitation of the working classes. The siphoning of profits away from the workers who created them and earned them, and into the hands of the rich who contribute nothing, yet get everything.
Stock markets serve(d) a function as vehicles to invest in risky ventures. In other words, a way to channel investment.
In the average case scenario, removing the stock market results in rich people being the ones who can afford to fund projects, and thus owning the outcomes.
The underlying case would be for wealth concentration and therefore power concentration. Addressing that would give the working class more options to fund projects or work, more than being the right type of person in the right network to land a rich patron.
Maybe concentrate our efforts on undoing the damage this era of capitalism has wrought us, maybe starting with reinstating consumer protection, dismantling the state surveillance system, protecting against the effects of the climate disaster. If you have a good idea on any of those, run for office, or get a degree and work with your local (state funded) university on the matter.
The sucky rule about history seems to be - “is this better than what was there before.”
Equity markets can definitely be made more competitive, and being ungodly rich needs to be more expensive than it currently is.
Loans don’t work the same way as equity investments, because loans are essentially low risk tools. They have a fixed payoff every month/year, whereas something like an expedition or new product launch can recoup its investments only post a certain period, if at all.
As a result loans originators don’t invest in high risk ventures.
This is a rule of thumb, there are many instruments you can create which will fill the gap.
We definitely need more competition and user protection in markets (and in general). The pendulum has swung very far in favor of firms in the US, and that needs to be balanced.
What we need are boring and proven solutions. Lets start with boring old regulations, maybe boring old taxation, on top of boring old infrastructure build out (using proven technology; none of these modular small nuclear power plants; they don‘t exist and won‘t save us). And Finally boring old international agreements, this time without capitalist polluters polluting the agreements, just like the one which saved us from nuclear proliferation and the ozone layer depletion.
As for the status quo. The status quo is currently that the interest of the rich trumps everything. Climate inaction is the status quo because rich capitalists benefit from polluting, so governments simply allow them to continue. Risky ventures do nothing to stop that.
I don‘t care. First we need to address the urgent problem which is new carbon being released. Lucky for us that is also the easy problem. All we have to do is stop constantly catering to the interests of the rich. Let polluters become bankrupt if we have to.
mRNA vaccines were initially studied and developed in good old boring state funded universities, the stock traded research labs which did later develop them got state funded research grants. The stock market came nowhere near funding them until they were already proven. In fact publicly traded companies held patents and prevented a fair distribution of essential vaccines, leading to more people dying from COVID. Without the stock marked I am sure this technology would have been shared and lives would have been saved. Trading stocks in companies with mRNA patents was not about funding risky ventures, but about pandemic profiteering.
Alright, not worth discussing further with someone who doesn't actually have any solutions to issues, much less care about them in the first place. Have a good day and good luck with your philosophy.
Now I don‘t consider day trading to be gambling (even though it is packaged and marketed to appeal to and sell to gambling addicts). For it to be gambling, it would need to be a game.
It is something far more sinister and far worse then gambling. I consider it exploitation, or more accurately capitalist exploitation. This also applies other aspects of the stock market, even the ones which are not marketed to exploit gambling addicts, including investment backed retirement funds [401(k) in the USA], index funds, and publicly traded companies. To me, all these things are equally bad (well actually the retirement funds may be the most sinister of the bunch) even though day trading might have the ugliest manifestation. These are all exploitation of the working class.
It's skimming.