As anarchists: Do you buy shares, get money from interest, invest or save for retirement?
As anarchists: Do you buy shares, get money from interest, invest or save for retirement?
Hey I am currently in the privileged position to think about what I do with the money I saved as an emergency fund. Do I put it in an account that gets interest so less gets lost to inflation?
But from my understanding the bank can only pay that interest because they loaned the money to someone that uses it to exploit people labor or extracts rent from them etc.
Where I live saving for retirement is currently not that big of a thing because its something the state manages, but what do folks do that dont have that?
Should anarchists buy stocks or what else should they do with money that exceeds their safety needs?
Tbqh the only absolutely verboten thing to me would be becoming a landlord and charging market rates.
You're very much in a "no ethical investment" situation in a capitalist country, so if you don't want to exploit labor your choices are pretty limited beyond joining a commune somewhere.
I hope this does not come over as a gotcha or trick question, but why is being a landlord worse for you than owning share of a public corp like lets say Tesla or Apple?
You aren't bourgeois until you don't need to work to live (retirement doesn't count because you're living off your own dead labor). Interests on your monies are kinda rent, but if you can't live off it, you aren't an oppressor. At worst you'd be petty bourgeois, those who partially live off rents and labor of others but still have to work. Contrary to annoying Marxists, because the petty bourgeoisie still need to work to live, they're still working class. You're probably fine.
Besides, even “pure” proletarians who supposedly only live off their labor (no such thing as a pure class condition BTW) the tools by which they labor off from (hammers, machines, etc.) are still crystallized dead labor because it was made by others. Everyone in society lives off the labors of others before them. What is despicable are those who live off expropriation, the owners.
Investing or saving up with money is generally a bad idea. It's like a casino: the bank always wins. If you can find a way to invest in a practical thing instead, that's probably preferable.
That said, some banks offer investments that are earmarked for a specific purpose, like for example renewable energy. I did that for a while, and I feel that in sum it was probably OK to do so. I didn't get much interest on it either though.
buy land and "liberate" it to plants and other animals?
yes, i know that ownership isn't coherent with anarchism. Unless you can change the 'system' today, creating pockets of this or that kind of liberty is at least a step in the "right" direction
This is my main plan. Buy land and use it to run eco businesses like organics recycling (taking yard scraps etc. and turning it into compost and biochar); green energy production (solar and wind); and a permaculture microfarm and plant nursery for locally-appropriate plants and trees.
farewell
Over the years I saw several instances where people wanted to buy property collectively and asked for private loans. This atleast stop market / capitalist control of some living spaces
There were two posts about this subject in !climate_action_individual@slrpnk.net
One post by @silence7 was a link to site on climate-friendly credit unions that don't invest in unethical things, and the other was a post by me on choosing to invest in ESG index funds that are verified by FossilFreeFunds.org due to normal banks investing your money into fossil fuels without your consent (I wasn't aware of the climate friendly credit unions when I made it).
Personally, I think it's fine to invest because, in a world with pensions being increasingly uncommon or defunded, it's realistically the only way to be able to retire, or survive while being out of work due to medical issues at old age without going bankrupt. Though I'm speaking mostly through the lens of living in the US.
For me, this question untangles like:
- do I have objections to indirect ownership?
- do I have objections to speculative investment?
- do I have objections to passive income?
To answer:
-
I have objections to indirect ownership, so I don't like the concept of owning shares in companies where I'm not involved - especially if those companies don't have any kind of internal democracy. I might make an exception if a company did something I would consider very useful to society, or if a fund only dealt with companies that do something very useful. I would worry about oversight - how would I know which companies respect their workers?
-
I don't oppose speculative investment, but I do that rarely - only when I'm confident that a market is irrational and I know better. I consider most markets defective, allowing a person who finds a market malfunction to extract profit. In total, I have made a speculative investment about 5 times in my life. It can result in loss or profit - for me it has resulted in profit. I have maintained a hard rule for myself: I'm only allowed to invest money which I would not cry about losing, and I'm not allowed to hurry.
-
I have limited objections to passive income. I don't mind my neigbour earning money with a solar park he built with my assistance - if it provides kilowatt-hours to the grid, it's not passive in my book... but I consider the proliferation of rent-seeking behaviour as a gateway to dystopian class society where people lose their autonomy. :( Additionally, I object because the country where I live (Estonia) taxes passive income lower than active income - another gateway to a dystopian future. However, if passive income was taxed appropriately (equally or higher than doing work), I would not have that objection since it would not destabilize society. I do not currently earn any passive income, and I have even stopped simulating it (over here, that is done to optimize taxes).
My answers reflect my own behaviour and may not particularly sync with any political or economic theory.
When I've had excess money, I have sometimes spent it to cheaply obtain something that is broken (in my case, a malfunctioning electric vehicle, the leftovers of a welding shop, such things) that I definitely know I can fix and sell for profit, or disassemble and sell without loss. I avoid such ventures when I'm not confident enough.
I live in the states so my comments will be specific to that.
For an emergency fund I like a high yeild savings account from a credit union. It's a federally insured liquid way to stave off inflation. The interest earned is going to vary but it should usually beat inflation. You could also do bonds. Similarly quite safe but not nearly as easy to access in an emergency so those are better for longer term saving.
Both of these options are on the more ethical end of investing. Just make sure the credit union isn't loaning to logging or oil and gas.
Some related discussion over on anarchistnews.org: