Full circle

The wealthiest own like 87% of the stock market, which both parties refer to as “the economy”…

First, the stock market only represents publicly traded companies. Privately held companies aren't on stock exchanges. If you own stock in privately held companies there are usually very strict rules about how and when, and to whom you can sell. Its not a quick thing.

But if we really want to hurt the rich, it means selling all your stocks and only buying the bare necessities. Leave them holding the bag on capitalism.

The non-rich selling all their stock would likely help the rich. Here's why: The rich use brokerages that monitor the stock market in realtime and can trade faster. As soon as a sell off would begin, the brokerages would get in and sell most of what they had first, meaning the non-rich would get a fraction of the value of the stocks they are selling. As soon as the selling of the non-rich ended, the rich would come back into the market and buy up the same assets they had before (and more) for a fraction of the price.

It was a travesty that pensions were largely replaced with 401ks in the 80's in the US (curious if a similar thing happened elsewhere in the world), effectively forcing participation in the stock market to have any chance at retirement.

They found another way to shore up the continuation and capitulation to capitalism while boosting their share prices at the sane time.

What an absolute con.

The only way to win is not to play

Not "playing" the stock market is a loss by default. Your money WILL devalue over time, your savings account WILL NOT keep up with inflation, and if you don't invest in stocks or have some other special financial backing/windfall, you WILL retire many years later (if at all) than you would have if you invested in stocks properly.

Though, you need to be very careful with your definition of "playing". As an individual/retail investor, buying individual stocks and trying to time ups and downs is not the way to go. If you manage to not lose any money that way, you're very very likely to make less money than if you had bought a broad market ETF like the S&P 500. In general, "playing" is bad and simply buying and holding boring funds for 30+ years can 10x your money by the time you retire, if you start young. Market up? Good, buy more! Market down 50%? It's on sale, buy more! Auto-investing is your friend. This is backed by solid math and like the entire history of the stock market.

The thing is, the rich make the rules. They want you to invest in ETFs like that because they can use your money to play their little games, inflate their wealth, and stay on top. As long as you do that, they'll make sure you make solid and consistent (over the long-term) returns, because it benefits them financially and anything else would lead to a societal collapse.

Trying to beat them at their own game by buying/selling individual stocks is a losing battle. They can see your incoming trades and act on them before your order goes through. If you find a big mistake they made, like GME, they'll simply change the rules and steal your money. It doesn't matter if it's illegal, nobody can stop them. They literally make the market.

But if we really want to hurt the rich, it means selling all your stocks and only buying the bare necessities

Isn't not being rich means you don't have stocks and already can't buy the necessities? Or is it just me?

But if we really want to hurt the rich, it means selling all your stocks and only buying the bare necessities.

I think this is going in the wrong direction, because A) nobody cares about how much you've got in your 401k when 87% of the market is controlled by six guys and B) its the bare necessities that are skyrocketing in price, not the luxuries.

I’ve always thought the push for “average” Americans to get into stocks was just another way for wealth to trickle up.

It was a way of back-dooring a tax carve out for the mega-rich. Mitt Romney's Roth IRA was worth $100M when he ran for office in 2012. Consider how somebody turns $4000/year in deposits into $100M in assets over 30 years and you can see the corrupt nature of our financial system clear as day.

The only way to win is not to play

The appeal of a general strike, I think, is misplaced. It fixates on the goods and services that make life in the US comfortable while neglecting the speculative assets that make wealth in the US grow exponentially.

Better than a general strike would be a debt strike. If you could convince 10M people to refuse to make a credit card payment in a given month, that would rock the fuck out of the capitalist class. If you could convince a union of service sector workers stretching from Walmart to McDonalds to simply refuse to collect payment for sold merchandise for a day, that would terrify the banking sector.

Because so much of this system is ultimately built on credit, not real material assets. So much is built on the theory of compounded interest, not materialist value. Wealth is, at its core, a promise of future income on rent. Attack the mechanisms by which people collect their rents and you can liberate the general population from an unnecessary expense rather than threatening them with a sudden onset of material insecurity.

The clue is in the term "Human Resources". I can't believe people just accept the existence of this phrase.

The final conclusion of capitalism is one solitary person holding all money. Like some crazy real life form of monopoly.

But you run the risk of ~~ incarceration~~ surprise litteral slavery

So dramatic! If you didn't want to be enslaved why did you walk right into the enslavement machine, designed specifically to ensnare you an make you a slave?

Once they do, you’d owe them. Maybe not dollars, maybe a moral obligation, but they’d only give you something expecting a return

I disagree that all relationships between humans must be transactional, which is what you're implying here.

Do you also believe you have a debt to your parents that needs to be repaid?

A good, free education is to the benefit of society.

You do not incur a debt for the 12 years of school you're already mandated to receive, because that education makes society better. You become a better, more productive adult as a result of it.

But now we find that that education is not enough. Most people are not graduating high school with the necessary skills and knowledge to become that fully functioning adult. So, it is too society's benefit to extend that education.

This should not be transactional. We the people provide the education, and we the people benefit.

Otoh, there's always work digging ditches or nursing. Most people would prefer nursing in that scenario. Extend this metaphor to whatever job we're short of and make that education free until we're not short of it anymore.

Once they do, you’d owe them. Maybe not dollars, maybe a moral obligation, but they’d only give you something expecting a return

Most advanced countries will give you all of your formal education for free or with a heavily subsidized cost.

It usually don't create an obligation, or some kind of moral one. Managers have this joke (that for some reason they never think about) where they are deciding of they'll train their employees, and one asks "what if we train them and they leave?", so the other respond "what if we don't train them and they don't?". State payed education is just that, but at a society level, and for everything the society expects from people instead of just work.

expecting a return

It's called taxes. In many normal places, some people qualify (based on secondary education grades or other things like military service) to receive free higher education (basically sponsored by the government) that is paid off later over the years by taxes or contributions to the GDP.

Fuck that, I never asked to be born. Send the bill to my parents.

I guess I take issue with the fact that you can't realistically opt out. Maybe if you are a wilderness survivalist type then maybe you can go do a Thoreau or Davy Crocket or whatever and just build a log cabin in the woods somewhere. But that's very rare these days, and society is moving forward so fast that tens of millions of people are being left behind because they lack the technical skills to thrive in a modern economy, and the survival skills to thrive in an old school agrarian economy. When that many people are left behind, it becomes a major social problem that'll come home to roost eventually.

Ah no, educated citizens is to the advantage of the society. Not in working power but in not falling back to a totalist system with low living standards.

If you're living in country with free education you borrow money from poor people to get education to make rich people richer and make poor people poorer. Taxes are regresive.