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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

This was futures, not stocks, but I see where you're going.

Market makers aren't competing with buy-and-hold investors. Price fluctuations like this don't affect people that are investing in the fundamental performance of the underlying company. The price may swing by a few percent randomly in either direction, but in the long run, a growing company will have a growing stock price.

Equities make up much of my portfolio and I haven't been disappointed. As cynical as everyone is about how "big companies suck", they have historically done a pretty good job creating value. And I think that will continue for some time.

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>As cynical as everyone is about how "big companies suck", they have historically done a pretty good job creating value. And I think that will continue for some time. //

It's not like resources can run out or anything. You just dig up more.

But you can make processes more efficient and add more value with less human interaction. Consider Amazon vs. your local mom and pop grocery.

>add more value with less human interaction //

This sounds like an oxymoron.

Financial efficiency and value often appear to be at odds. Amazon certainly appear to spend less resources in the delivery of goods. Low cost of acquisition isn't necessarily correlated with greater value in terms of human fulfilment.

I've often wondered why we don't have [more/widespread] community kitchens, less work needed for food production, reduced waste and transportation costs, etc.. Why can't I go somewhere and get a quality, healthy meal that is cheaper than what I can make at home.

Assuming you're an engineer, it is probably not cheaper for you to cook at home if you factor in the cost of your own time. As soon as you involve a bunch of people that have no connection to each other and ask them to start doing work, they start wanting money. Hence, no community kitchens of software engineers: they can make a lot more money programming than by cooking you your food.

The short answer is "be the change you want to see in the world"

The long answer is a consumer's collective. If you are in the US a good example are the credit unions, where fees (of all kinds) largely don't exist. In the US, Consumer's Collectives legally have a democratic corporate structure. Private corporations legally are more like a dictatorship. Public corporations have a board of directors and are legally more like an oligarchy (unless one single person constitutes most of the board).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumers%27_cooperative

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