2mo ago

What if we got rid of stocks?

Ive often seen individuals on the left talking about how billionares shouldnt exist etc., but when probed on how that could be accomplished the answer is usually just taxes or guillotines. I dont think either is great.

What if instead, corporations were made to be unable to be sold or owned. Initially theyre made to default to popular election for their board, and after that they can set up a charter or adopt a standard one, ratified by majority vote of their employees.

Bank collapse would probably follow, how could that be remedied? Maybe match the banks invalidated stocks with bonds?

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Stocks are arguably one of the most important inventions in human history. Money/capital are an abstract thing that represents some quantity of anything. It is the universal exchange of value.
What a stock allows you to do is it allows for the collective to pool value to create something that cannot be accomplished by any members individually.
For example imagine ur in a desert with 1000people and your all dying of thirst and it costs 1000currencies to build a well to get water. But the richest person only has 100currencies. Nobody can afford to build a well and now everyone dies. With stocks that means that everyone can put a couple currencies in and in return get a shair of the water.
With ur proposal how in the hell would u build a well? Where do u get the 1000currencies u need to build it?
Their defiantly is an issue with the centralised ownership of capital and workers have no steak in the companies they work at. Their is a very interesting court case related to henry ford where he initially wanted to reinvest into his company and employees but the court rules that the purpose if a company is to make the shareholders happy which meant they got all the money.
Of course the way u fix this is you simply give workers a steak in the company. How you do this is difficult. One way would be to force everyone to be paid a certain percentage of their paycheck extra that they must have in a stocks for the company. Essentially all companies are giving everyone an pay rise but they get paid in the companies stocks. But if u do this everyone will just sell those stocks so u make it an account they cannot just spend until they retire but if ur gonna do this then ur gonna want to put it into a good index fund. And would u look at that u just reinvented Australian super funds. The Australian people through super funds own about 30% of the Australian stocks as well as a decent amount of international stocks. This is why Australians are so rich per capita, this also gives Australian government so much international leverage via directing where this capital goes. Australian super is about to die due to some bullshit new tax on unrealised gains in super so our country will collapse in 30years from that but that's not really relevant.
The real issue is that trading is the most gate kept thing in the world. The only reason banks exist at all is because they get a good interest rate from the federal reserve give out slightly shitter interest rates to everyone else and pocket the difference. To trade on an exchange u gotta pay ridiculous fees that are not subject to free market competition cos legal shenanigans.
That's not to mention private equity meaning the public can't buy into something they believe in when its new and undervalued cos they literally can't.
The real solution is to make it all open and free for everyone. A decentralised unrestricted free market of trade would be the great leveller. The advantages of the billionaires would be stripped away from them the market value of stocks would stabilise to represent their true value.
And now we are entering into conspiracy land so put on ur tinfoil hats. Their is a system that would have decentralised and equalised capital and that would have been to issue an nft that literally was the stock/asset that could be used to back a loan in a smart contract. Unfortunately nfts where adopted by some Nazis pushing monkeys that somehow mysteriously got into the mainstream via traditional celebrities known to push pro us government takes. Then it all fell down and died in the eyes of the average person completely poisoning the idea for perpetuity. I suspect crypto was purposely poisoned by billionaires and the us government as it threatened the USD as the international reserve currency (one of the only things that motivates the us to go to war) and threatened to remove the systematic advantage of the billionaire class.
- For example imagine ur in a desert with 1000people and your all dying of thirst and it costs 1000currencies to build a well to get water. But the richest person only has 100currencies. Nobody can afford to build a well and now everyone dies. With stocks that means that everyone can put a couple currencies in and in return get a shair of the water.
  With ur proposal how in the hell would u build a well? Where do u get the 1000currencies u need to build it?
  Functioning governments exist to help manage pooled resources.
  
  So the state is responsible for everything sounds a lot like communism. We have seen how effective communism is throughout history I'd much prefer our current system to that.
  
  It is literally our current system where we pool taxes to pay for large projects like parks and sidewalks and plazas and public fountains and water utilities.
  All the capatalist and socialist countries do it.
  
  Yeah but ur proposing the removal of all private equity so the government is responsible for everything ie communism. My point still stands.
  Plus if the government does everything what incentive is there for anyone to improve anything, or to innovate? In our current system if anyone has an idea and can sell it to someone with equity they can go build it and get rich.
  
  People can work together without requiring stocks or formal governments. The 'government doing everything' requires citizen involvement, which would be spread among the community when centralized wealth isn't overriding public influence. There are a ton of government agencies that improve things and innovate, have you not heard of the Large Hadron Collider that was built by the European Space Agency (ESA) and European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) which are both government agencies? NASA and other government agencies pioneered manned space flight. Government agencies improve and innovate all the time!
  Honestly, the stock market is the real issue with stocks. The idea that people should get rich is another detriment to society, because accumulation of wealth to have wealth leads to negative outcomes.
  
  OK so let's say a bunch of people decide to work together without stocks or formal government. Each of these people can provide a certain amount of "critical resource" but each person only has so much and some more than others. So these people working together decide that they all put in what they can and whatever they build together will be distributed among the people according to how much "critical resource" they put in. Congratulations u have reinvented stocks.
  The 'government doing everything' requires citizen involvement, which would be spread among the community when centralized wealth isn't overriding public influence.
  What are u saying here? The government dictates what the people do to achieve some outcome dictated by the government? That's literally how the soviet union was run.
  I'm not denying the government cannot do things (if they couldn't why would they exist) just that the free market optimises and improves. For example the cost mass per kg to space.
  SpaceX Falcon Heavy: Around $1,500 per kg. SpaceX Falcon 9: Approximately $2,720 per kg. NASA Space Shuttle (retired): $54,500 per kg. NASA Vanguard (early rocket): $1,000,000 per kg.
  Who did it better?
  But ur idea is also fundamentally flawed from a logical point as well. The ingenuity and creative problem solving capacity of the entire population is far greater than that of some inner circle of party members. Government agencies improve and innovate until some private company comes along optimises and improves till it is a market viable solution.
  Ownership implies control of it if u own it you control it and thus can sell it hence a marketplace. Having wealth isn't about having the wealth its about what u can do with the wealth. If u don't get rich off doing something innovative what's the point? For the good of the peoole? If it has no material benefit to you why do it? This is the foundational reason the USSR collapsed Ohh and all the starving dead people cos the government solutions where overpriced uncompetitive and not subject to free market pressures.
  I do need to ask are you intentionally saying some of the dumbest shit I ever heard to troll or do u genuinely believe that communism would work? Please read a critical thinking book, a history book, an economics book, and a phycology book. Then u will understand how utterly untenable these ideas are.
  
  Who did it better?
  NASA did all the work to establish the concept of space flight. NASA is also held to more stringent safety requirements because they are a government agency, which drives up costs. NASA blowing up a rocket on takeoff is seen differently than a private company, which just costs more. Same as medical equipment vs similar non-medical equipment, getting from 99.99% reliable to 99.9999% is a cost multiplier.
  Not to mention the cost to send stuff to space via private companies is subsidized by investors. It is a made up number, like all the cab 2.0 company pricing when they first started ignoring laws that applied to cabs.
  It isn't more efficient to do everything privately. It just looks that way if you ignore all the government funded research and investments hiding costs.
  Also I'm not talking about communism. I'm just talking about government vs private, and if you can't wrap your head around that then call it socialist.
  
  NASA did a lot of work no doubt they then made all that work public for the private sector to iterate on and improve and bring to market. Eg the accelerometer in ur phone was a NASA invention but it required someone in a private company to decide to put it in a phone and mass produce it.
  NASA isn't held to more stringent safety requirements NASA literally defines the safety requirements which they apply to spacex, and any other space company as well as themselves.
  NASA blowing up a rocket on takeoff is seen differently than a private company, which just costs more.
  Tell me u know nothing about an iterative development and testing cycle without telling me u know nothing about an iterative development and testing cycle. Spacex falcon 9 is statistically safer than literally every other transport method on earth including walking. Its safer than all NASA rockets. Perhaps them blowing up so many rockets taught them how to not blow up rockets?
  Now here's the kicker NASA doesn't actually do that much they design some parts or requirements then let private companies take bids to actually build it.
  Independent speculative analysis thinks that the commercial launch fees are enough to cover the rocket price. Not to mention that starlink is a profitable service that is funding most of spacex costs as of now. Plus their are other launch companies that offer similar/cheaper(depending on launch profile) launch costs that due to free market completion will keeps costs far lower than NASA launches.
  That's how the government works they fund things with taxes that are distributed to all citizens equally. The citizens then use those things to generate value which is taxed and continues the cycle. Every dollar spent at NASA has a 27x return in terms of GDP from the private sector. Ie NASA spends 1$ and releases research/technology then the public uses that research/technology to generate 27$ of value. I never said it more efficient to do everything privately its just more efficient to do most things privately.
  Healthcare is a great example its more efficient for the government to negotiate prices on behalf of everyone then let the public market compete to fill that service requirement. Its called socialised healthcare yet still takes advantage of private institutions competing in a free market to fulfill the collective service requirement. If the government runs everything u get the NHS which has gone to shit and cant afford to service all the people. If the government runs nothing u get the american system where the poor get fucked. If the government performs collective bargaining between the people and the provider u get the Australian system where everyone gets healthcare almost instantly of world class quality. U need both private and public working hand in hand. The governments purpose is to ensure free unrestricted competition between private entities and to negotiate with those private entities on behalf of the people that the government represents. That's how a government works it doesn't build a road it negotiates with a bunch of contractors who are competing with each other and pays the cheapest one to build the road.
  U say socialist yet u describe communist. I like the socialist policies my government has free healthcare, good roads, cops, firefighters, national defence etc etc. These things cannot function without leveraging the private capital and competition of the free market.

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