I have retirement money strictly in retirement funds. Other money in index funds and non-US currency baskets, and I play with call options when I know more than the market.

My suggestion was more a thought exercise for the reader, yet genuine advice at the same time. We love to complain about capitalism, but we are often complaining about it in its current form, a post 1971 era filled with ever increasing corruption, which is the greater problem.

felt deliberately misleading

It wasn’t intended as such, I still think it’s a valid point.

Why would you advocate to be fucked like that lmao?!

We are being fucked either way. We take it up the ass from big tech constantly - so why not buy stock in knee pads and condoms if we have no option but to take it? It’s all just a waiting game for the music to stop anyhow.

current administration / crime family

It’s all been crooks for 50 years. They get more and more brazen over time. At this point it’s the entirety of DC in on it. The current admin is certainly more brazen than the prior - but I don’t think he’s any more crooked than the rest. He’s just dumber than the rest.

Your simplistic take just functions as bait to have others financially raped and abused yet further

I think you’re simplifying in the other direction. I’m not wrong that investing in good growth companies rewards you. I’m not wrong that identifying good companies can often be as simple as “what company’s products do you use”.

You’re taking the issue of corruption in the markets and making that the basis for refusing to invest in markets

[–] PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

I say you're underselling my position entirely with that last sentence, in a way that borders on uncharitable. Boiling down today's extreme escalation in corruption (by my measure) into just garden-variety "corruption" is dishonest (by my measure). And I never claimed to refuse to invest in markets, nor recommended such for others, in fact I make it pretty damn clear how I think most folks are best served BY specific investment choices. But nonetheless your phrasing is at least broadly in line with the spirit of my points, yes.

I'm claiming there are at least 2 classes of entity in the market, you and I are in the "get fucked every which way" class. Doesn't mean there isn't money to be made in a broad sense, even for that class, and it seems like we agree on that pretty solidly. We disagree from there, kind of increasingly so, the further we go from those broad points, and it doesn't sound like we are going to get any closer to one another's POV by further discussion.

[Edit: to respond specifically about your "why not buy knee pads and condoms" - because of the nature of opportunity cost, and the nature of finding one's own dignity worth preserving, as I talked about in my "encouraging abusive loops" note above. You don't HAVE to be up in there, trousers loosened, defenses applied, ready to go. Ya could just do other things with your money.

Again, my own is where my mouth is - I largely exited US stock positions somewhat recently due to a timely combination of factors, some old and some new, overlapping with the ones I'm discussing here. The lovely thing is - I'm no longer tethered to this gross beast that promises and delivers ruin, for everyone slightly below my rung on this idiot ladder (with the delivered ruin getting more inescapable and more omnipresent, the farther one descends those rungs...).

And of course ya never addressed the "how can everyone enjoy the fruits of capitalism?" parts, and how that idea can't really hold up to scrutiny.]