this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
593 points (94.9% liked)
> Greentext
7571 readers
2 users here now
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The entire stock market. Not even metaphorically, the entirety of it, is so the rich can get richer and stay that way.
Eventually economies will have to scale to a non-growth sustaining setup which renders the 'free money from nothing by sitting on vast quantities of it' obsolete. It's a setup where literally millions of people put into shit like ROTH IRAs depend on money being created from nothing due to an inability for most economies to sustain retirement unless you invest in it yourself. Those social safety nets are going to be a nightmare to figure out when that realization hits.
In that world, the little guy gets almost exactly what he puts into savings. No compound interest. No making vast quantities more for the people on top. No millions putting in a little at the bottom to get an extra 10,000, while the people on top of the pyramid make LITERAL trillions.
That, is a literal ponzi scheme. Because modern economies depend on what's essentially accounting magic to keep rich people in power there while handing down as little as possible to the masses to BARELY survive their twilight years.
Short of unlimited free energy combined with carbon sequesteration, the stock market is almost a literal direct indicator at how much pollution we've created too. It's not sustainable. The market as we know it from the last 100 years is not sustainable in the same way in the next 100. Economic growth and pollution have only recently started to taper off thankfully. Greener initiatives are even good signs for stock now. Hooray!
I'm just glad I won't be old enough to have to go through that incoming disaster lol.
https://www.entrepreneur.com/money-finance/the-stock-market-is-a-legal-ponzi-scheme/355907
https://conduitadvisors.com/stocks-are-a-fraud/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/02/10/can-we-have-prosperity-without-growth
https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2020/02/12/economists-slow-economic-growth
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LxgMdjyw8uw