this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2024
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chapotraphouse
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Trading stocks on speculation is just gambling against the random nature of the market. It's no different than going to a blackjack table and can be fun (also dangerous and addicting). You're not engaging in capitalism you're engaging in a game with other players (traders).
Owning stocks like in a 401k investment account is different. I won't do it. At least with pensions (i.e. a pension fund) you could gain some sort of political purpose through its corporate and government investments. This led to famous instances of corruption, as well, but it still demonstrates the political power of the investment.
The 401k destroyed that. It's now just all of the rent seeking with none of the voice. Pure liberalism. They're literally passing laws in states right now that make it ILLEGAL to consider what you're investing in and if it's an ethical business or not.
Saying that you have to invest in stocks or else you'll lose money is like saying you have to vote for Biden or else you'll lose rights. I don't really give a shit if you do either, and your personal situation is something I don't know about. But both should make you feel dirty, yes.
Owning stocks isn't just existing under capitalism. This isn't treat discourse. You're not buying an Xbox that someone was exploited into making. When you own a stock, you are the capitalist. Owning part of the company gives you a part of what's taken from the employees or others, directly. A lot of common retirement investment is with large funds that own real estate. When you get your 5% return on your investment it's not just magically growing on a tree. It's coming from rents.
There's no functional difference to buying a $200,000 apartment and renting it out as a landlord or putting $200,000 in a 401k managed retirement fund that owns several hundred apartments buildings. And they do.
There are more ethical ways to invest money than owning stocks.
Individual, alienated, consumer decisions are ethical? This is what happens when no class analysis. Landlords aren't bad because they make money from rents. Landlords are bad because their interests align with the interests of the ruling class, and they oppose the interests of the working class, who they exploit as a class. the contingent material realities of owning property for the sole purpose of getting personal income has the effect of changing peoples beliefs and behaviors. The system warps their worldview and pits them against the workers, but it is the system that benefits one class by exploiting another that is the enemy, not individual landlords. It is the system that alienates and exploits.
There are undoubtedly evil, unethical people who are drawn to real estate and speculation, and I would have serious reservations calling the bourgeois capitalist executive of some giant real estate development/property management company a "good person." But an individual owner of a 200k property (which is essentially nothing, a tiny house far from any urban area), which may have come to them through a lifetime of earnings, or just lucked into it or inherited it from a family member, is not by default a class enemy or individually ontologically evil. They may become that, though owning a single small property wouldn't produce much income; forcing them to either sell or expand with the market.
I really don't see the point of lecturing somebody over a fucking 401k. Must be nice living in a perfectly hermetically sealed ethical bubble, into which no evil ever permeates. People out here calling themselves leftists while recreating the underlying logic of religious purity politics.
Leftists can do a little landlording as a treat