Saying "I wish capitalism didn't exist" isn't praxis.
We've got to work with the world as she exists.
this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2024
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chapotraphouse
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Don’t beat yourself up. The fractional harm that your meager efforts to not get wiped the fuck out by inflation cause is comparable to every other type of consumption under capitalism.
You have to live and living means participating in your society. When does that effort to continue existing cross over into the lying and self dealing that, for example, people into effective altruism are famous for?
I don’t know where that line is, but you’ll figure it out.
A lot of normal workers here have 401ks and other retirement plans, and usually that involves stock trading, either by the worker or by the company holding the money. Hell, even banks gamble with your money when it sits in their accounts. And the HYSAs are high yield because some poor guy got finessed by the interest rates. And more than likely, that money is going to a bunch of weapons companies while sitting around.
Maybe I’m just coping because I have some money invested in ETFs and some of the larger percentages go to shit like Lockheed and I don’t want to think of myself as bad. But I don’t know. I don’t touch those ETFs once I buy them so they function no different than a bank account. Maybe even worse because there are penalties for selling.
The only thing that will redeem me is if my retirement money in the ETFs tank significantly. It will be fully deserved for willingly giving my money to Silicon Valley and weapons companies that enable genocide.
The other option is to manually choose the stocks, but would that be worse? You would become obsessed with stock performance and constantly checking the news and potentially becoming reactionary when your value goes down. At least with ETFs I buy and forget and can focus on the real world and try to negate my contribution to evil.
I feel better about credit cards when I pay my balance and full and every time I use cash back, knowing that I'm not causing them to make any money, and I'm actually costing them some money.
Yeah pretty much how I use them. But I'm pretty sure they earn money from every transaction or the whole thing would not exist.
If I were you, I'd rather just keep the money itself as is, not trading stocks or using credit cards...
I honestly have no experience with that sort of thing and rather not go through the mental gymnastics to do so, regardless of how my money depreciates and how safe using credit cards is...
I'd just want a simple life... don't want to overcomplicate shit as I do...
I get it but it's simply not feasible. Every rupee I earn will be devalued continuously. The government in my country has also brought in massive inflation since 2014 and it only gets worse as the currency is weakening and the country is being sold off to capitalists.
you live by others labour , it is dirty .
and it will always be Dirty .. there is no escape to the Fact that you live Parasiticlly from other peoples Labour .. the ONLY avenue you have is the Avenue of Hirachy and Elitism.
You can start to consider yourself much more important then those that labour .. Of better Ideology ..Birth ... Culture ..Race ... Personal Biographie etc..
When you do that it will not feel so dirty anymore . but you will be then Dirty for others. So no escape from the Dirt without Abandoning Passiv income.
EDIT: Also you reduce it .. like a Hole Factory / Company all its Employees , there dreams and Hopes ... compressed into this crudes form.
He's not living off other people's labour. He's using it as a bank, cutting out the bank in the middle to maintain above inflation rates of interest.
If you're using a bank the bank is doing the exact same thing putting your money in stocks too.
Even Marx speculated a bit, relax.
Marx was actually one of the biggest Dogecoin holders of his era
Trading stocks on speculation is just gambling against the random nature of the market. It's no different than going to a blackjack table and can be fun (also dangerous and addicting). You're not engaging in capitalism you're engaging in a game with other players (traders).
Owning stocks like in a 401k investment account is different. I won't do it. At least with pensions (i.e. a pension fund) you could gain some sort of political purpose through its corporate and government investments. This led to famous instances of corruption, as well, but it still demonstrates the political power of the investment.
The 401k destroyed that. It's now just all of the rent seeking with none of the voice. Pure liberalism. They're literally passing laws in states right now that make it ILLEGAL to consider what you're investing in and if it's an ethical business or not.
Saying that you have to invest in stocks or else you'll lose money is like saying you have to vote for Biden or else you'll lose rights. I don't really give a shit if you do either, and your personal situation is something I don't know about. But both should make you feel dirty, yes.
Owning stocks isn't just existing under capitalism. This isn't treat discourse. You're not buying an Xbox that someone was exploited into making. When you own a stock, you are the capitalist. Owning part of the company gives you a part of what's taken from the employees or others, directly. A lot of common retirement investment is with large funds that own real estate. When you get your 5% return on your investment it's not just magically growing on a tree. It's coming from rents.
There's no functional difference to buying a $200,000 apartment and renting it out as a landlord or putting $200,000 in a 401k managed retirement fund that owns several hundred apartments buildings. And they do.
There are more ethical ways to invest money than owning stocks.
Individual, alienated, consumer decisions are ethical? This is what happens when no class analysis. Landlords aren't bad because they make money from rents. Landlords are bad because their interests align with the interests of the ruling class, and they oppose the interests of the working class, who they exploit as a class. the contingent material realities of owning property for the sole purpose of getting personal income has the effect of changing peoples beliefs and behaviors. The system warps their worldview and pits them against the workers, but it is the system that benefits one class by exploiting another that is the enemy, not individual landlords. It is the system that alienates and exploits.
There are undoubtedly evil, unethical people who are drawn to real estate and speculation, and I would have serious reservations calling the bourgeois capitalist executive of some giant real estate development/property management company a "good person." But an individual owner of a 200k property (which is essentially nothing, a tiny house far from any urban area), which may have come to them through a lifetime of earnings, or just lucked into it or inherited it from a family member, is not by default a class enemy or individually ontologically evil. They may become that, though owning a single small property wouldn't produce much income; forcing them to either sell or expand with the market.
I really don't see the point of lecturing somebody over a fucking 401k. Must be nice living in a perfectly hermetically sealed ethical bubble, into which no evil ever permeates. People out here calling themselves leftists while recreating the underlying logic of religious purity politics.
Maybe you can enlighten me on more ethical ways to invest my money because at this point I think not putting money into a 401k is a terrible financial decision.
Tax deferred compounding interest is too good of a deal for the average person to pass up. Over 30 years you'll be looking at anywhere from 100-150% return on investment.
$50 a paycheck for 30 years with 5% avg return turns your $39k total contributions into $100k in retirement savings. $100 turns $78k in total contributions into $200k savings.
For many people who find saving difficult, me included, being able to set it and forget it, plus the understanding it needs to be for retirement to get the full return, has allowed me to save money I would have spent/wasted otherwise.
Due to the compounding factor, the sooner a person starts the better the return, so to discourage young people to not put money into a 401k is IMO actively harmful.
IMO It's like telling someone they shouldn't have health insurance. Yeah it's bullshit that society forces us to participate in a fucked up system but not having it puts future you at a terrible risk.
Just to clarify: a 401k is just a savings account that is tax deferred. By itself that doesn't make any money or interest. Most people then take that money and have it invested. That's what I'm commenting on.
The return in a 401k is from (typically) a managed fund or an index fund. It's a good return, as you note. That's because it's largely from rent extraction.
It's a great deal if you are ok with functionally owning a small apartment in some other state where a family pays half their paycheck so that you get your 5% return on investment. But know that is what is happening.
The whole "I have no other choice" position is past any point I'm trying to make. I don't know anyone's specific situation.
What are ethical ways people could/should invest their money into instead?
I'm not going to ever be a landlord, but I want to retire at the point.
I would at least sympathize with the idea that in a worthwhile society someone who has served the country their entire life deserves a dignified retirement funded by people of working age. Insofar as that goes, the money in a 401k doesn't grow on trees, but it's still a reasonable way to appropriate the funds theoretically.
You're describing social security entitlements, which are badass
Social security is not sufficient to provide for a retiree on its own, and assuming the bourgeois vampires in Congress won't kill it completely is a huge gamble.
They're destroying social security because it's good and it works, yes. I'm not telling anyone to gamble on it being around.
You literally said people should feel dirty for having a 401k.
What's that have to do with social security?
You should feel dirty if you have a 401k that's invested in stocks
What's that have to do with social security?
Love to pretend not to understand the context of my conversations so I can score debate points or something.
For working class Americans, there are 3 options:
- 401k
- Try to rely on social security exclusively, in spite of the fact that it's both insufficient and likely to disappear, realize this is nonsensical and move to 3
- Work until you drop dead
Just want to be sure, you think everyone who isn't independently wealthy should just do 3), because doing 1) is immoral? Do you feel I'm misrepresenting your position here? It's easy to get misinterpreted in text so I want to be 100% sure that you're not saying something else.
If the only two options for investing are "become a ghoulish rent seeker" or "don't do that" then yeah that's where it would come down
You didn't mention "become a landlord" as an option. Why not? That's a perfectly viable path for many working class Americans to retire into.
So you do think people should just work until they die.
What does that even mean? I think people should not invest their money in rent seeking and should put it elsewhere when they can, even if it means receiving less of a return on investment.
Are we just debating ethics and morality? It's pretty boring ngl
put it elsewhere when they can
Where? Specifically?
Like a savings bond? Is that what you're asking?
So instead of a stock index fund, which is where a pension would have put the money anyways if I were lucky enough to have one, I should give the money directly to the US government to hold onto so they can ensure that they can afford Israel's bomb budget? That's way more ethical?
EDIT: like the ethics gap is so big that anyone who just puts the money in the stock index instead of choosing to give it to Uncle Sam is a "rent-seeking ghoul" who should "feel dirty?"
"so they can ensure that they can afford"
They don't need your money
Whatever helps you sleep at night while paying not only taxes into the US military's budget, but voluntarily buying bonds to fund them.
Do you see how this conversation is asinine? There is no ethical choice under capitalism.
There's a moral difference in owning a savings bond and being a landlord. Sorry if you don't want to engage with that and think it's all a wash because nothing is ethical under capitalism.
Having a savings bond and being a landlord are different and both are different from having a 401k account that is invested in mutual funds.
Putting your retirement savings in a mutual fund doesn't make you a capitalist anymore than owning the savings bond makes you a bomb manufacturer.
I said above:
There's no functional difference to buying a $200,000 apartment and renting it out as a landlord or putting $200,000 in a 401k managed retirement fund that owns several hundred apartments buildings. And they do.
We can disagree there, then. There's a much cleaner and direct connection between a fund and rent extraction than there is between a savings bond and a bomb. That's exactly my point. These details matter.
You can lump it all together if you want. I see more nuance.
I don't agree that the connection is much more direct.
Do you feel the same way about pensions?
EDIT:
Also, when I was 19, making less than minimum wage waiting tables at a buffet, struggling to make my half of the rent payments for my shithole apartment I put what I could spare into a 401k. I didn't look at the investments at all, which means they were whatever the fund did by default, aka probably stocks. Was I a landlord at the time?
I addressed pensions in my initial comment.
Most pension funds have a similar issue in that they are investing in rent seeking etc. But unlike 401ks, pensions carry with them significant political power than can influence where the money is going. This is (imo) why they are being gutted in favor of individual 401k accounts.
Unions and pensions can be powerful tools. They're being replaced by Independent Contractors and 401ks.
If a pension fund looks identical to a 401k index fund then yeah I'd have the same opinion.
This is so fucking tiresome.
Unions exist to support their members' interests. To that effect they want the pension funds' money invested efficiently and safely. They're not buying bonds for moral reasons (again they're not, it's a direct investment in the US Empire) but for security reasons. They're not buying specific stocks because they're more moral, but because they look like promising investments.
It's not morally better than a 401k, it's just more efficient and removes the individual worker from having to deal with the investments personally.
They're being gutted because it's cheaper for the companies who are extracting every dime they can from their workers.
So I guess revised list of options
- Pension - only if you're a dirty rent-seeking landlord
- 401k invested identically to a pension - only if you're a dirty rent-seeking landlord
- social security - not viable
- die at your post - leftofthat approved
- shovel more money directly into the empire's coffers - leftofthat approved
Damn those are some bleak options, yeah. Almost like the US is a capitalist hellscape or something.
"Join us or perish" is what they seem to be signaling, yeah.
Apparently you see that as only having two choices and are going with "join them," which is fine I'm not your morality coach. I'm certainly not asking you to sit down and die.
You can rationalize it all you want. That you have no choice but to participate. I hear it all the time from people telling me to vote for Biden.
I hear it all the time from people telling me to vote for Biden.
Eat my ass
They usually say that too eventually. Have a good one.
They usually say that too eventually. Have a good one.