So there’s really only one thing to talk about this week, and that’s the whole mess that happened with GameStop and Wall Street. It’s pretty much a perfect look at the wider problems we regularly discuss.
When the ultra wealthy find their positions challenged, they have little problem demonstrating that the free market is only free to them, and that all their shaming lectures about how you should invest are total garbage.
The whole system is a bunch of made up nonsense, designed purely to ensure the elite stay elite at everybody else’s expense.
Honestly, the circles in the glasses makes it look like googly eyes, so it’s pretty on brand.
Wall Street is just loot boxes with even more collateral damage.
“It’s not our economy, it never was.” Can someone mark this down? A historical quote? Someone should put this in the history books. Quoted by Jim Sterlingson.
Remember, hold the line. It’s like the Joker said, “it’s not about the money, it’s about the message.” That message is, we know how your game works trust fund babies and we’re taking all the goodies.
“Stock trading isn’t gambling, it’s surprise financial losses for the poor” Bobby Kotick, probably.
Robinhood is like being kicked out of a casino for being too skilled at blackjack.
“It’s an attack on wealthy people!” Said a billionaire to the camera.
“NO SHIT!” Said everyone else who isn’t rich.
Stephanie Sterling, the gender garbage Karl Marx of videogame youtube. Good.
George Carlin: “Rags to Riches, The Amercian Dream… Because you have to be asleep to believe it”
Robinhood actually locked people out because there business model exists in make-believe.
Trading on Robinhood is fee free, they can afford to do this because they sell user data to hedge funds, effectively selling a peek at upcoming stock market movements while hopeing most users lost money.
When the movements were obvious, and users started making money. Robinhood couldn’t afford to cover its trades, couldn’t afford to do its entire stated business model.
Robinhood only existed to make the rich, richer!
“The great lie of capitalism is that YOUR labor will earn you capital. The grim truth is that your labor IS the capital.”
— Jim Stephanie Sterling, 2021
Remember the rule: if a service is free, YOU and your information is the product
It didn’t start as a populist uprising, but it’s becoming one.
Broke: This is an attack on rich people!
Woke: Yeah, that’s the point.
Bespoke: Consider why it’s very likely that a bunch of redditors having a laugh were able to do far deeper damage to the stock market than Occupy Wall Street could. I’m not sure myself, but it might indicate an important lesson going forward.
“When aren’t my tits allowed”
Asking the real questions over here.
_”If Gamestop’s stocks are ever worth anything, I’ll gender bend.”_
– Jim Sterling, at some point in time.
There’s a saying in the investing world: “It’s easier to make two million out of one million than to make two out of one.”
I recently learned that this is actually a law. SEC Rule 506(b) regards anyone worth over $1 million to be an “accredited investor,” regardless of their actual education, experience, or qualifications for investing, and limits the number of non-accredited investors in a new stock to 35. This means that a new company _can’t_ be funded by a grass-roots movement that will make hundreds or thousands of poor people rich if the company succeeds. All publicly-traded companies _must_ be funded by millionaires. *By law.*
Yeah, it was never our economy.
“It’s gambling, but with thousands of human lives on the line.”
It’s never NOT with human lives on the line. Remember that.
Robinhood: “Trading for the rest of us.”
Normal people: “Okay”
Robinhood: “Not like that”