Actually, can someone help me figure this out? Like should individuals be investing in other things that aren’t stocks to loosen the grip of capital ever so slightly. Like for example, should I be investing with a local credit union or something like that? Should I not be investing at all? Baby anarchist just trying to learn, thank you 😊
Actually, yes. I’d argue that if you invest in bond you fundamentally undermine some of the worst aspects of capitalism. By definition bonds are still a sort of capital; however, a lot of the short-term-ism is motivated by stock speculation, so I’d argue they’re significantly better from a moral perspective. High Yield bonds make quite a lot of money and while they’re “riskier” than normal bonds they’re far safer than any stock.
It’s also worth noting that bonds aren’t as popular as stocks because when you recommend bonds to other people you’re sorta in a worse investment position. Sure the bond value goes up when they buy, but the money in bonds is from the dividends not the bond itself, so if you invest in bonds and tell other people to invest in bonds it becomes harder to buy more bonds when it comes time for re-investment. Moreover, if everyone invests in bonds there bond yields are likely to go down as there is more money to barrow. Also you pay more taxes because corruption.
You could stop trying to “invest”. Like instead of hoping for numbers that go up, you could offer local collectives interest-free loan or in general just give money to community organizations that would be helpful to you in situations were you would have relied on investments.
Or buy bonds in companies (including co-operatives) that you think are ran in a morally acceptable ways.
I mean call me a capitalist pig, but I think investing can be a crucial funding mechanism for science, journalism, coding, or any public good / innovation that doesn’t necessarily make a direct profit. Like right now science is falling apart because it was overly reliant on government funding and Trump has done a really good job of halting that. Even ignoring the salaries, science is expensive. Like $100/day just for supplies to run a single lab plus a couple 3k purchases every month. Public donations just aren’t a realistic funding mechanism for that.
I think young scientists like myself should be putting the bulk of our salaries into personal research endowments (Yeah, like FIRE). Like, it’s giving up on retirement and home ownership, but I’m not willing to give up my research. Heck, even with that plan there are serious problems with how to fund equipment or rent lab space unless I come into a lot of money… Sorry, I think I’m spiraling into despair.
My point is that we need independent funding mechanisms. Like, yes tenure has shown that not every scientists will keep working without being on a financial treadmill, but if a scientist proves willing to sacrifice their personal finances for their research goals having a larger organization like a university match their investment with “matcher” research-endowments seems reasonable, and those funds might work if they start as donations that are then invested as endowments (after you prevent admin from taking a huge bite out of it).
Actually, can someone help me figure this out? Like should individuals be investing in other things that aren’t stocks to loosen the grip of capital ever so slightly. Like for example, should I be investing with a local credit union or something like that? Should I not be investing at all? Baby anarchist just trying to learn, thank you 😊
Actually, yes. I’d argue that if you invest in bond you fundamentally undermine some of the worst aspects of capitalism. By definition bonds are still a sort of capital; however, a lot of the short-term-ism is motivated by stock speculation, so I’d argue they’re significantly better from a moral perspective. High Yield bonds make quite a lot of money and while they’re “riskier” than normal bonds they’re far safer than any stock.
It’s also worth noting that bonds aren’t as popular as stocks because when you recommend bonds to other people you’re sorta in a worse investment position. Sure the bond value goes up when they buy, but the money in bonds is from the dividends not the bond itself, so if you invest in bonds and tell other people to invest in bonds it becomes harder to buy more bonds when it comes time for re-investment. Moreover, if everyone invests in bonds there bond yields are likely to go down as there is more money to barrow. Also you pay more taxes because corruption.
You could stop trying to “invest”. Like instead of hoping for numbers that go up, you could offer local collectives interest-free loan or in general just give money to community organizations that would be helpful to you in situations were you would have relied on investments.
Or buy bonds in companies (including co-operatives) that you think are ran in a morally acceptable ways.
I mean call me a capitalist pig, but I think investing can be a crucial funding mechanism for science, journalism, coding, or any public good / innovation that doesn’t necessarily make a direct profit. Like right now science is falling apart because it was overly reliant on government funding and Trump has done a really good job of halting that. Even ignoring the salaries, science is expensive. Like $100/day just for supplies to run a single lab plus a couple 3k purchases every month. Public donations just aren’t a realistic funding mechanism for that.
I think young scientists like myself should be putting the bulk of our salaries into personal research endowments (Yeah, like FIRE). Like, it’s giving up on retirement and home ownership, but I’m not willing to give up my research. Heck, even with that plan there are serious problems with how to fund equipment or rent lab space unless I come into a lot of money… Sorry, I think I’m spiraling into despair.
My point is that we need independent funding mechanisms. Like, yes tenure has shown that not every scientists will keep working without being on a financial treadmill, but if a scientist proves willing to sacrifice their personal finances for their research goals having a larger organization like a university match their investment with “matcher” research-endowments seems reasonable, and those funds might work if they start as donations that are then invested as endowments (after you prevent admin from taking a huge bite out of it).