I think you’re missing that this abdication of personal freedoms to the government in the form of government imposed restrictions on cigarette and alcohol sales is precisely how we’ve gotten to this point over time; arguably following a planned strategy. People who normalized prior subordination to government in the case like cigarettes, alcohol and other things; are now already even more primed to abdicate even more freedom to mommy and daddy government than the prior generation.
It seems clear to me that America is heading into an extremely repressive system where even the nominal use of America may just end up falling by the wayside within the lifetimes of some people alive today. Functionally speaking the, notional or spiritual death of America happened a very long time ago, probably 1840 but obviously no later than the outcome of the Civil War which turned a decentralized union of federated states that formed a republic, into a centralized dictatorial federal power and later the groundwork for becoming the empire we are only 55-80 years after the Civil War, depending on how you want to look at it.
I think people forget that there would have been people who experienced the Civil War that destroyed the central premise of the Constitution, that sovereign states join in a Union to cooperate, and the formation of the Empire of America by no later than the end of WWII.
Those things never happen abruptly, they happen in following a long strategic plan based on objectives not timelines. Part of such a plan is causing ever increasing dependence, deference, and subjugation to government, which is really just someone else’s control over you, the people who make up the “government”, instead of your own control over you. Part of that is giving the impression that money and daddy government will take care of the children, as a tool to psychologically manipulate people by hijacking their instinctual care and concern for protecting children.
It’s why and how they’re more pushing age verification, not ban for minors with similar criminal penalties for anyone who allows minors on the internet/social media. No, you as an adult need to confirm and tie your identity to the digital fingerprint that is tied to all the data that was and is collected about your activity over the last 20+ years … to protect the children of course.
It’s why some people refer to the majority of humans as cattle. You just have to herd them around and they moo and then start fattening up on corn instead of grass, just like the last generation did before they were harvested.
Have you ever considered that it’s a front? You may think that store that never has customers is just run incompetent business people, but in reality the real objective is not the one you believe it to be, and it’s actually great if you were to refuse understanding that.
I've found that framing topics like this as primarily a pretext for different motives is a sure-fire way to be ignored by people you may want to convince.
As always, the goal in convincing others is to take someone from their current understanding and bring them closer to yours. You can't get there if you don't start the topic at their current understanding of it.
You are making a mistake in equating several things here. Not only is this SpaceX IPO that has latched itself onto pensions through accelerated inclusion in the S&P100 and other funds a different and rather unique matter, but excluding harmful industries is really rather stupid of people who oppose those industries.
If, e.g., all those who opposed those industries had instead bought the industry stock, the people with those ideals opposed to those industries could have at the very least profited from the sale of the stock...which the company itself basically does not see direct benefit from (you are not buying the stock from the company or giving the company any money in most case)...and used/committed that money to even greater opposition. If a catalytic number of those had formed, they could have also even made real impact through shareholder initiatives and actions demanding changes by pressuring board members who rely on votes, etc.
It's one of those nonsensical, moralistic and ...sorry... foolish mindsets that common people have, the idea that simply by not participating the King will leave them be. The psychopathic narcissists in control will never leave you be, no matter how much you virtue signal by not buying their stock from someone else that is not the company or no matter how much you ask or how far you run and beg and ask to be left alone.
Frankly, although I am not certain that it was done intentionally, if I were a major mover and more powerful person, I would propose the very kind of moralizing, self-righteous campaign that has shot the commoners in their feet by getting them to simply check out and not participate in things the could have otherwise controlled a lot more.
So instead of people who actually care...but are clearly rather foolish...all/a disproportionate amount of control and power and money is left to those who do not have those qualms. Hence why none of this "excluding harmful industries" has affected anything whatsoever and we now have square mile measured AI data centers and tens of millions of low climate impact people being moved into high climate impact countries, and we have more war and death and addiction than humanity has seen in 90 years.
In case it is not yet clear to some of us, a stock is like if you went to some second hand/thrift store and bought a brand of clothing that was reviled for some reason or another, i.e., use of child sex slave labor, you giving a thrift store money to wear the second hand clothing not only does not benefit the reviled company, but just alone wearing second hand clothing will likely have more a positive impact than guying some other company's clothing that will later turn out to have used regular child labor.
> If a catalytic number of those had formed, they could have also even made real impact through shareholder initiatives and actions demanding changes by pressuring board members who rely on votes, etc.
For SpaceX, from Matt Levine [0]:
> SpaceX will have dual-class stock, with Class B shares getting 10 votes per share. Musk owns 93.6% of the Class B (and 12.3% of the low-vote Class A), for total voting power of 85.1%.[5] Tesla does not have dual-class stock, Musk is a minority owner, and he has worried aloud about the risk of losing control of Tesla’s robot army because he doesn’t have voting control of the company. Not a problem at SpaceX! Build all the robot armies you want!
> Because of Musk’s voting control, SpaceX is a “controlled company” under stock exchange rules, so it doesn’t have to have a majority of independent directors or an independent compensation committee. So the board of directors can be made up of Musk’s buddies, and they can pay him whatever they want.
> Even aside from controlling 85% of the voting stock, Musk gets to appoint a majority of the board of directors himself, without the Class A shareholders even voting.[6]
Does not sound like this is remotely true for SpaceX, then?
While not wrong, your perspective is very simplistic. A company gains massively from strong stock performance - they can issue more shares to raise capital, give handouts, take loans at better rate, pursue M&A with stock payment, ... So anyone who buys stock they ethically disagree with is certainly supporting that company - and inversely not using those funds to the advantage of other companies that they find morally more appealing.
I get your point and it is the reason I said “most of the time”. But frankly, what I think the perspective you espouse here is suffering from, is a kind of grandiosity and self-righteous moralization of the very kind that is self-defeating, because it misses the scope and scale of things. In other words, the perceived/expected and the actual effect are very far divergent.
Someone saying “I’ll show that mean ol’ corporation the business by not buying their product but buying their competitor’s product” or the like, is the very same kind of trap that this fake “democracy” of the western world produces, where effectively everyone who votes with any sense of that being an effective activity, simply does not understand that the whole system is captured and rigged against them. It’s all a managed illusion, a carnival game, a flashing, dinging, blinging, chiming slot machine that makes you think “I’m do close, I can tell…oh, well, better luck next time” when the behavior and signals are all programmed to play on well understood patterns of psychological behaviors of hope and despair.
It’s precisely why the ruling class cheers on and supports democracy so much … because it really is so great for them… and it makes the commoners think it’s great for them at the same time. So rather than the “activists” of the 60s having had billions upon billions in wealth they could have used to prevent wars and corporate evil we see all over the place today (assuming they would have done that, which is a bit of a stretch considering the “boomers” today), they have little more than moralization and virtue signaling.
"... a stock is like if you went to some second hand/thrift store and bought a brand of clothing that was reviled for some reason or another, i.e., use of child sex slave labor, you giving a thrift store money to wear the second hand clothing not only does not benefit the reviled company ..."
This is incorrect and, frankly, ridiculous especially in light of your own scoffing at the "foolishness" of others.
The secondary market value for company stock has a direct impact on current and sustained operations in areas including, but not limited to:
- the ability to sell debt and the interest rates at which it can be sold
- the ability to attract and retain executive "talent" with stock compensation
- the ability to attract - or ward off - takeovers and buyouts from other firms
- the ability to expand operations, or development, through follow-up offerings
Your observation of this basic truth (that company shares purchased by at-large market participants don't yield funds directly to the firm) is, of course, correct.
However it is not as profound a factor as you think it is.
That's interesting to me because I know for a fact that commercial baby food is augmented with what are effectively liquid plastics, i.e., petroleum based food "fillers". I know a scientist that ended up resigning quite a bit of time ago now from the parent company because of his resistance to pushes to "research" the maximum amount of "food safe" plastic liquid filler that could be added to baby food without having immediate and/or apparent health effects on the baby.
Yes. I know that sounds fantastical, but it is so. And no, he did not feel like being crushed and ground down like a bug in processed food by "speaking out" or "whistleblowing". Those are terms that are nice, but reality is often quite different in practical terms, especially when industries have captured and/or have agents inside the regulators and the government itself.
It seems they may have just turned into the online propaganda zombies they are now.
There are still small, local community newspapers that serve somewhat of their old function of keeping people informed and even some who hold local politicians accountable, but they are increasingly rare and in the case I am thinking of, holding local politicians accountable will probably end with the passing of people who were real newspaper journalists and stayed that way. The old school journalists at a local newspaper I know somewhat reminds me of “the old woman” from Fahrenheit 451, trying to hold onto something as long as possible, fighting against going silently into the night like everyone else.
But at least we will not even understand what we lost once it is gone because AI will simply be gaslighting us about reality/the matrix.
It is a central theme covered in too many sources to list, but it is always a deal with the figurative devil, treason, betrayal of not just oneself, but everyone else who trusted you, lifted you, and relied on you.
It is why treason is such a pernicious and evil act even when one is ignorant of perpetrating it, because you may personally advance your own position for a moment by making a deal with the devil, but the real price is always immeasurably greater.
It is also why no one hates the traitor more than the devil himself, because he knows best what a vile and untrustworthy traitor the person is that would betray his own people. Even the devil cannot even respect that, hence why the only thing one can be sure of when making a deal with the devil is that the devil and his children will always stab you in the back.
It is the existential question all of “the west” is wrestling with right now. Whether they can stop the traitors among them who have long ago made many deals with many devils and his many children…or will they personally “profit” in the short term all the way to figurative hell.
We love in a kind of bizarro world where the “capitalists” have printed so much money that they’re wildly inefficient in allocation of resources, as evident by all the excess cash sloshing around; while the “communists” of China and to some degree Russia and the BRICS in general are widely efficient in allocation of resources, as evident by the creativity and innovation and advancements they’ve made in very short order.
Russia has allocated a significant proportion of its resources to exterminating its own children.
China has done well, but the rest of the BRICS categorization makes no sense to me. India (and also Pakistan) are behind China on renewables but are having a huge surge right now.
Well, China's efficiency seems to come mostly from the government enforcing competition between companies by several mechanisms, and creating some "free entrepreneurship" areas where they allow people to start companies with almost no strings attached.
And I don't see what you are seeing on the rest of BRICS.
I can't see much creativity and innovation in Russia. They sell oil and natural resources & use the money (whatever is not stolen by oligarchs) to fund an unnecessary war which they are losing.
If anything, Russia is a prime example of inefficient allocation of resources.
Thats a good argument but those are also features that could be provided by the force of government power in a government and country where the government is not and has not intentionally been corrupted, partially for the very purpose of preventing something like digital cash that is anonymous just like cash was before people foolishly gave in to the “convenience” of cards and acting like they had money by using credit cards.
It seems clear to me that America is heading into an extremely repressive system where even the nominal use of America may just end up falling by the wayside within the lifetimes of some people alive today. Functionally speaking the, notional or spiritual death of America happened a very long time ago, probably 1840 but obviously no later than the outcome of the Civil War which turned a decentralized union of federated states that formed a republic, into a centralized dictatorial federal power and later the groundwork for becoming the empire we are only 55-80 years after the Civil War, depending on how you want to look at it.
I think people forget that there would have been people who experienced the Civil War that destroyed the central premise of the Constitution, that sovereign states join in a Union to cooperate, and the formation of the Empire of America by no later than the end of WWII.
Those things never happen abruptly, they happen in following a long strategic plan based on objectives not timelines. Part of such a plan is causing ever increasing dependence, deference, and subjugation to government, which is really just someone else’s control over you, the people who make up the “government”, instead of your own control over you. Part of that is giving the impression that money and daddy government will take care of the children, as a tool to psychologically manipulate people by hijacking their instinctual care and concern for protecting children.
It’s why and how they’re more pushing age verification, not ban for minors with similar criminal penalties for anyone who allows minors on the internet/social media. No, you as an adult need to confirm and tie your identity to the digital fingerprint that is tied to all the data that was and is collected about your activity over the last 20+ years … to protect the children of course.
It’s why some people refer to the majority of humans as cattle. You just have to herd them around and they moo and then start fattening up on corn instead of grass, just like the last generation did before they were harvested.
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