And largely speaking, when you make money on the stock market it comes from a multitude of sources, including the hedge funds you seem to despise.
Not to mention, just because you made a profit on the market doesn't mean someone was screwed over. The stock is worth whatever it's worth when you sold it. It's an open market...
You do seem to have some fundamentals about the stock market, savings account, and finance a little mixed up.
I don’t despise hedge funds any more then I despise the stock market as a whole. We don’t need it. In fact I would argue that the existence of the stock market is actively harmful. I would go so far as stating the stock market is partially to blame for the current climate crisis. That is, if it wasn’t for the stock market, perhaps people would have acted sooner and prevented the climate emergency.
But fundamentally the stuck market is an idiotic idea. If we didn’t have stock markets, and someone pitch the idea of the first stock market here on HN, I don’t see how any businesses would subject them self to being bought and sold like that.
Are you trolling? You do realize why those shares are out there, right? Because your company needed money, and those people gave your company their money to get started, grow, hire more people, etc. Is that not bringing something of value?
The interest you are paying when you take out a loan is a) compensating the creditor for money lost because of inflation, and b) paying for a service. The bank/credit union at the same time will at the same time a) compensate for inflation and b) reward savings accounts for injecting money into the bank/credit union.
This is fundamentally different from shareholders buying stocks from a business siphoning parts of the profits from the workers to the shareholder.
People taking loans need the people that open the saving account, and get something of value (money they need). Workers don’t need the shareholders, and they get nothing in return (except lower salaries).
I’m sorry if I sound like I’m talking down to you. It is just that the different is so obvious I don’t know how to explain it differently.
I will state this once as simply as I can: stock market investors are rewarded for funding companies by taking on that risk in hopes that the companies they invest in produce a profit. It is overwhelmingly similar to the process you are describing with your credit union, but in a much more distributed way.
> Workers don’t need the shareholders, and they get nothing in return (except lower salaries).
There would be no workers if companies didn’t have the capital the needed. So no, the workers very very much need the shareholders. The money has to come from somewhere. No bank is going to bankroll the next Airbnb, Uber, Instacart, DoorDash, etc.
Beyond that, the workers aren’t owed a penny more than they agreed to be paid. If public shareholders didn’t exist, the owners would have full ownership which is what happens with small businesses. Nowhere in these circumstances are workers any better off. Profits and losses are not their domain.
I’m sorry if I sound like I’m talking down to you. It is just that you are a victim of cognitive dissonance possibly due to your unconscious bias against wealth.
Whatever the confusion is, I have it too.
Tomorrow, you sell it to a third person for $10.
Who lost money here?
