It feels morally wrong to invest in a capitalist company but can someone explain to a dumb idiot (me) how it actually is

  • Multihedra [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    Because we’ve seen the stock market, by and large, act in ways which are completely untethered from material reality.

    Aggregates like the Dow Jones are a full 50% higher than they were when trump took office in 2016. It’s been five years! I see absolutely no metrics tied to exploitation of labor or whatever else that would explain a 50% rise in asset prices. Rather, profitability has long been falling for companies as a whole.

    So the argument that “stocks are inherently speculative assets whose prices are simply determined by the amount of money that has nowhere else to go” (i.e., money which cannot find a more lucrative, actually exploitative investment like more factories or whatever) is far more convincing to me personally.