• Tovarish Tomato
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    1 year ago

    The first part about how a few investment firms own pretty much everything is on point but it gets weird towards the second part. The author uses 1984 imagery and equates the control that “megacorp” (as he calls it) has over the media to “Marx’s utopia” where the means of communication are centralized in the hand of the state. Also, the author seems to be some kind of stock guy. Their investigation was prompted by the whole Gamestock thingy and, although I stopped reading at section 5.0.3, it seems like their argument is building up towards something along the lines of “muh big corporations are controlling the market so that I can’t make any money off of it”. In summary, a decent investigation into the ownership structure of the modern economy with a severely misguided conclusion on why this is a problem.

    Edit: Alright I looked into this a little more since I was really bored and the author goes full horseshoe theory by claiming “Both Communism and Fascism have their roots in Socialism” and Rockefeller gained from the " Communism Economic Design Model" wtf even is this? Also, the account that posted this only has two comments on lemmy both linking to this website, seems like it’s just spam tbh. Please don’t upvote this.

    • Rummsy@lemmy.today
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      1 year ago

      To my understanding, part five is a trip down memory lane. That is, it covers a bunch of information on Rockerfeller, The Standard Oil Company, and other industrial giants.

      edit: removed misguided dribble

      edit: Aw, picking on the new guy? 🙁 Alright, I guess I can go back to just watching. I admit this has been on my mind a lot. I don’t really want to talk about anything else. I haven’t been able to find anything else that refutes the claims. I’m kind of shook. There’s lots of historical documents sourced. I guess we could argue that the historical documents are wrong?

      I don’t know. I guess I believe that it’s not so far fetched that a few of the humans before us were smart enough to know and understand how to gain control of the majority of shares of lots of major supply chain companies. Hell, isn’t JP Morgan still around making decisions with the private banks that print all the money for the US, The Federal Reserve? (Haha! A tie back to the original topic of the thread… kind of.)

      It’s not like I can go around in public saying “hey, did you hear that a bunch of investment firms in the US all own majority shares of every major brand, infrastructure company, and each other?”

      They’d put me away… 🤡

      • Tovarish Tomato
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        1 year ago

        I’m not disagreeing that the entire economy is owned by a small circle of corporations/individuals. The sources provided for this are probably accurate as well although I haven’t bothered double checking. We know this is true. In fact, Marx predicted it over a decade ago. But this article comes to the wrong conclusions on why this is a problem because the author has petty bourgeois aspirations and is butthurt about the fact that they can’t profit off the stock market themselves because it is run by the bourgeoisie. On top of that it equates socialism to fascism which is so fucking stupid I’m not even gonna go into that. Anyone active on Lemmygrad should know this is false and refrain from spreading anything espousing such ideas. It feels like you have no idea what beliefs this community holds which is ok, but if you find yourself agreeing with any of the opinions you find here I’d suggest you look into Marxism. I believe it will give you a lot more insight into why the economy is structured the way it is than this “investigation” ever will. It’s not that a few smart people figured out how to take control of the companies that run the economy. This is an inevitable consequence of capitalism and as long as this disgusting socioeconomic system is allowed to persist nothing will change about the fact that the world is run by a very small group of people who line their pockets.

        • Rummsy@lemmy.today
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          1 year ago

          edit: removed misguided dribble

          I guess my take away from that part was the author trying to explain what people at the time thought and was trying to give us context. A historical lens. Not that the author believed it.

          • Tovarish Tomato
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            1 year ago

            Yes, the author states “Both Communism and Fascism have their roots in Socialism” and this does not seem to be referring to any contemporary ideas but rather the authors opinion. On top of that, the author claims to support this statement later in the text but I couldn’t find any elaboration on why this would be the case. Now I suggest you either engage with the point I am making about capitalism instead of copy and pasting paragraphs of text in the hope of spreading this bs or just go somewhere else with it. Pretty sure mods will remove this anyhow.

            • Rummsy@lemmy.today
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              1 year ago

              I think I might not be wise enough to engage here. I’m sorry for wasting your time.

              I think we agree about the inevitable consequence of capitalism. To me the text also suggested that capitalism is a disgusting socioeconomic system. I’m confused because it sounds like we’re saying the same thing.

              I’m also not saying I agree with everything the author says. Some people have very strange and sometimes dangerous takes.

              • Tovarish Tomato
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                1 year ago

                I apologize for misinterpreting what you were trying to say, it seemed to me that you were agreeing with everything the author said, which was wrong.

                While the author is right about the ownership structure of the economy I think that the whole article comes to very wrong conclusions. Also some background info that may be of interest. The author is some guy that posts on r/superstonks which makes me believe that he is very much a proponent of capitalism, although I can understand that it may not seem so by just reading what is on the website. Admittedly, it also took me a good portion of the text to get suspicious. A few things that gave it away were:

                1. Them admitting that an investigation into GameStop started their investigation

                2. The repeated references to Orwell’s “1984” which is basically CIA-funded anticommunist propaganda

                3. The assertion that a few people controlling the means of communications was the same as what Marx advocates for in the communist manifesto, so basically equating the problems of capitalism with communism

                Though I haven’t read the entirety of the article I feel like the author is criticizing capitalism from a rightist point of view, basically arguing that there isn’t really a free market because it’s all controlled by a few individuals. This seems especially plausible when you take into consideration that they are trying to make money off of stocks but feel like they are being scammed by the big players in the market who play both sides. This is basically the whole thing Wall Street Bets was complaining about with the shorting going on against GME. It is primarily for this reason that I believe this investigation is severely misguided and we should refrain from spreading such stuff. I thought you were agreeing with this. While there is a valid point to be made in a lot of instances to “take the good and leave the bad” I don’t think it applies here due to the blatant anti-communism and the availability of much more thorough and in depth analysis of these issues. I believe Marx’s “Das Kapital” is a good resource on this, especially the concept of centralization of capital, although I will also admit that I do not fully understand this concept as I haven’t found the time to thoroughly study it yet. Furthermore, the author just randomly brings up vaccines at some point and also talks about the Rothschilds which is very sus when arguing that a small elite of people control the world economy. The whole thing kind of smells like some conspiracy theorist doing some actually decent research (as in the part about Investment firms owning everything) to then spin it in a direction that completely contradicts the evidence he presented, namely that we have to fight these evil guys owning everything so they can’t run the stock market anymore and the small man can also make a profit on stocks.

                Edit: Also I apologize for the condescending tone I used towards you, I thought you were one of this stock guys trying to spread their stuff here, sorry 😅